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Gartner to Apple: Stop selling computers

arstechnica.com — Two days before Apple's stellar 4Q results, a report from Gartner suggested that they should get out of the computer hardware market altogether.

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  • bitterg, on 10/12/2007, -7/+106Did anyone need any more proof that Gartner has its head up its a**?
    • Quix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+62Alternate headline: "Why Market Analysts Don't Lead Multi-Billion-Dollar Technology Companies."
    • PYREX, on 10/12/2007, -35/+6i agree. stop selling computers start selling OSX and gadgets.

      fu*k windows & vista. bring OSX to the masses!!
    • dimitrisokolov, on 10/12/2007, -9/+23
      No, you have all the proof you need. Gartner Group are idiots. Dell? Dell makes crappy computers and has crappy support.

      Apple is on the right track and most everything they do is outsourced to manufacturing in Taiwan or China anyway. Apple is all about design.

      What is Dell? Zero design, slap crap together and sell it cheap. They don't produce one item that is cool or sought after. No one attends a DellWorld event do they?
    • TheWorm, on 10/12/2007, -18/+13Me to Gartner: ***** you.

      Which leads me to ask..who exactly is Gartner anyway???
    • thatsiebguy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+21Here, I will try to act like a Market Analyst: "Ferrari should stop selling cars. They should instead, sell the experience of driving.." Yep, sounds just as BS.
    • daza, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3dimitrisokolov, I don't know where you live but DELL LCD's are hot property in Australia. If you're looking at a good quality, but cheap monitor any size above 22" you're sure as hell getting a DELL. They make some top-of-the-line notebook configurations that other vendors simply do not sell here. Not to mention you can sometimes pick up a huge bargain on your notebook.
    • willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4WOW!!!!
      Such violent response to an opinion?

      Its no wonder they get called fanboys

      does this mean pro-Apple is anti-free speech?
    • matt0ne, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3@ willcode.

      Not violent because we're apple fanboys, its because thats the lamest idea I have ever heard. Where the heck am I going to get my laptops?
    • tuxuser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3i think this guy is a bit TOO pc minded.
    • cquinnd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3 willcode4beer,

      Gartner get paid for these "opinions", and have a worse record of ideas that flop than they have of actually predicting market trends that would turn out to be beneficial for companies or consumers.
    • iainc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2For the love of God, I wish Dell would stop making computers because they're not very good at it. Oh, and maybe Gartner should keep to the statistics and stop giving advice - they're not much good at that.
  • clutchperformer, on 10/12/2007, -7/+41How does one get a job at Gartner? Is it like other "analyst" and "consulting" firms in that I have to graduate from an ivy league school with an exaggerated sense of importance and a degree in political science?
    • puffarthur, on 10/12/2007, -20/+8looks like someone is bitter he only got into a state school...
      haha jk man. not all ivy leaguers have an exaggerated sense of importance. just like not all state and community school students have a sense of inferiority.
    • Comatose51, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hit it right on the nail. The business consultants I know are pretty much what you've just described. Don't forget, Enron was McKinsey's biggest customer until it collapsed. So much for their flaunted Ivy Leaguee intelligence.
  • friend18, on 10/12/2007, -14/+5They must be scared.
  • DaveClarkOne, on 10/12/2007, -26/+6If anyone deserves to have "MORON" etched on the forehead, it's this guy. I'm sure Mike Tyson's tattoo artist can oblige. This is a thread failure now.
    • xtr3m, on 10/12/2007, -4/+28Gartner is not a guy.
    • zybch, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Probably started off as a single guy though, who's company was bought/wrested away and then used for evil.
  • swoopdog, on 10/12/2007, -13/+59I think microsoft should stop making operating systems
    • mictester, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Microsoft DON'T make "operating systems". They make overpriced, ineffective computer games that they claim are operating systems. They should just give up altogether.

      Game Over, Microsoft
    • afa06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Perhaps they are heading to this direction, considering that they are designing CPU.
  • sfslim, on 10/12/2007, -4/+33There's an excellent deconstruction of exactly how stupid this recommendation is over on Daring Fireball, John Gruber's excellent Mac tech and opinion site.

    http://daringfireball.net/2006/10/gartner_jackasses

    Unable to conceive of any /worse/ advice that anyone could possibly offer Apple at this juncture, John emphatically bestows his "Jackass of the Week" award on the both of them.
  • jeff25624, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14I just don't understand how any one could rationally come to that conclusion. I mean seriously, Apple is doing better than ever, is poised to reach even greater heights, and these guys suggest they stop selling computers? I just don't see the logic behind it.
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6It's hard to see something that isn't there.
  • galore, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Please. Gartner exists to provide some (expensive) foundation for internal pitches to upper management. In rude terms they are a ***** factory.
  • SgtBeavis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15FWIW, IMO Apple doesn't sell Macs based on how good OSX is. The iPod is a pretty good music player from a software (or firmware if you prefer) but that's not why people buy it. People buy it because the hardware is so dang cool and works great. I submit to you that there are better MP3 players on the market that support a much wider variety of music formats. They have better software but Apple has better hardware (or design if you prefer).

    IMO hardware is what gets people to look at Macs. They see it and go, oh gee that looks pretty sweet. I think I'll give it a roll. Then they try OSX and they go "holy crap this thing actually friggin ROCKS."

    Apple, as many have noted, is a damn good software company. But its the hardware that gets people in the door. Its what got me. OSX is just the icing on the cake....

    ......ok, its the icing, chocolate syrup, cherrys, sprinkles, and a side of homemade icecream.
    • archer75, on 10/12/2007, -14/+2"IMO hardware is what gets people to look at Macs. They see it and go, oh gee that looks pretty sweet. I think I'll give it a roll"

      Not even close. Why would I pay for overpriced hardware that I can buy most off the shelf for cheaper? And then be locked into a machine that isn't that great for gaming and I am VERY limited on what video cards I can use and can ony get from apple?

      Anyone can do the hardware. It's nothing special and actually more limiting than anything I can do on my own.

      No, it's OSX that makes it special. And if apple stopped selling computer hardware and went straight to really pushing OSX and thier apps it would open up a much much larger market to them.
    • UCFMark, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6It's the design, not the hardware. Most people who buy macs look at them and think that they are "pretty" or "cute" or even "cool" looking. Most of these people don't know and couldn't care less about the hardware underneath. And yes, OS X is very flashy.
    • kevinmotel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3i care about looks and the hardware under the hood. why not have my cake and eat it too?
    • stuartjmoore, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4the better grade plastic alone is reason enough
    • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Well, the case on my MacBook Pro is all aluminum and the keys are backlit and the touch pad is large enough to actually be useful. It's really a good piece of hardware.
    • uppedbyhiggins, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You can not beat the service at Apple--it's like a mother's unconditional love (as long as the warranty/AppleCare is still valid...maybe 'unconditional' isn't the right word, but you get what I mean).
  • derekknight, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Apple to Gartner: suck it.
  • mouthster, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3Dude, I hate to be the one to cry dupe, but this is ridiculous.
  • Cyre, on 10/12/2007, -18/+5They should quit, apple computers SUCK!
    • slipknotrobb, on 10/12/2007, -16/+4Yes, Apple computers suck. A$$.
    • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -7/+7Yeah Apple computers suck.... air using a fan, to cool off the interior of the computer, just like almost every other PC do.
    • h0dg3s, on 10/12/2007, -15/+3Yeah ***** macintrash
    • Skizzot, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6Yeah, damn them for having an effective OS and quality hardware and design. They sure do suck.
      Go play with your dell.
  • CdnPhoto, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Apple to Gartner: Stop making stupid analysis's
    • iainc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1analyses, mate. But I dig your point of view :-) Gartner are talking out of their collective ass.
  • aklobby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Stahlman has really even published any other research notes... he's a contractor... how did this one get past the Gartner "peer review".
  • 1911wolf, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2More evidence that the profession of ***** Artist pays well, very well.
  • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2In other words:

    "Gartner to Apple: Make less money."
  • sdubois92, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6never gonna happen. Putting OS X on a Dell is a form of rape. A perfectly built, safe, easy to use OS on a cheap plastic box spraypainted black? nope
  • valenciastudent, on 10/12/2007, -8/+6Apple to Gartner:

    ***** Off.
  • PrimoTurbo, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3It's a good suggestion, apple is already on intel what else are they making themselves hardware wise? Umm not all that much, just the case and some little crap.

    They should focus on their OS instead.
  • DSPGeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Gartner is a good example of why analysts should be soundly ignored. If y'all remember the NASDAQ debacle of 2000, most analysts rated crap stocks like Exodus and Worldcom screaming buys, while over on the buy side the I-Banks were dumping those shares as quickly as they could.
  • Harlequn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Pontiac just wrote an oped stating that Ferrari should get out of the car business.
  • totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5With Apple, its not just the hardware, and its not just the software. Its how well the software is integrated with the hardware, and how tightly controlled both environments are. And not just for OS X. One reason the BootCamp beta works so well is that Apple has total control of the internal hardware configuration of the machines it is running on, which makes setting Windows up much simpler, and easier to troubleshoot. The iPod environment is similar-total control of the hardware, the software that runs on it, and the software on the computer that interfaces with it.

    Giving up any of these advantages would be foolish for Apple; I'm surprised a tech. analyst can't see this.
  • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7The corollary to Gartner's advice is that Microsoft should quit selling Windows and focus on selling keyboards and mice.
  • artgon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1http://duggmirror.com
  • Tingler, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Apple to Gartner: Shut your trap.
  • eviltoaster2go, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Apple will most likely NEVER AGAIN License Mac OS.

    Way back in time Apple Licensed Mac System 7 and it was a disaster: mac clones from companies like Power Computing siphoned off money from Apple, profits sank, and the overall mac experience took a huge hit. Apple had to call the next operating system Mac OS 8 just to break off those contracts and start fresh.

    Apple wants to control the overall experience people have with their computers: software and hardware combined. Licensing the OS ruins that.
  • nonameguy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5totorototoro is right.

    The power of the Mac is in it's integration of hw and sw. How else were they able to migrate from the 68k to the PPC and now to Intel so nimbly.

    Apple doesn't design hardware or software...it designs *Systems*.


  • Bamborzled, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Me to Gartner: Don't hire meth addicts.
  • dustin551, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1If you think about it though, put OSX on Dell machines and you take big time marketshare away from Microsoft. You'd also have a better chance of getting into the work place (I mean more than design shops and small startups).
    • iainc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1But Dell would still make 2nd-rate rubbish and eat into Apple's well-deserved hardware profits.
    • d00d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You are such a ***** moron. How does letting Dell build OS X machines instantly add marketshare?

      Please note: People buys Dells because they have Windows on them, not just because it's Dell.
  • SuperSunny, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I just wanted to say, that I just bought a MacBook. For those who are saying Apple should focus on the OS a little bit more, er...you guys should start to do some research. Personally, the OS feels like I'm in the future. Don't you mean they should backtrack? It's breathtaking, simple, easy, and cool looking. What's wrong?
  • vagarach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Poor analysis by the analyst. Apple being a software company is quite a laugh. OSX is good, but not good enough to support the company. Notice though, how nicely a licensing model works on paper. Apple sells a whole lot of computers all with OSX on them, ignoring the fact that people are paying money for the computer hardware *and* for the usability of the OS and its programs. So if all they did was license OSX, someone else would do all the difficult and expensive stuff like designing hardware for them! Then it's mostly profit from millions of copies on computers that Dell is selling *for* Apple! Genius!

    How absurd. They should cut the guy's salary and pay him $2000 a year for this rubbish, since he clearly shouldn't be earning 100 times that.
  • jamief, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3'Cuz being the #2 OS on Dell machines went so well for Be and Red Hat.

    Next Gartner pearl-o-wisdom: Apple should stop wasting time and money making iPods and concentrate on the iTunes store.

    I'm not gonna register to RTFA, can somebody tell me if the word "beleaguered" appears in it anywhere? :)
  • Swift2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I must tell y'all something. The MBA degree sucks, and it distorts your judgment. The US was built into the economic powerhouse it became in the 20th century without a single MBA running anything. Most people didn't have a high school degree. Most businessmen were engineers or just that vague thing called "entrepreneurs." And in the era of the MBA, we're losing ground. The MBA degree is a way of commodifying your brain. Supposedly, according to these dorks, you can run a great car company or a cruddy payday loan company in the same way. The answer? No, you can't. Use your actual human brain, not Excel plus a bunch of friggin' business-school buzzwords. The MBA mentality is screwing us up. The people who have it think they're just being objective, but they're really just being corporatist political flacks.

    Steve Jobs loves making computers, many of which are very cool. When he was away from the company, it slowly started to suck. The visionary, sans MBA, returned, and immediately they began cooking again. They've now grown from something hard to measure to 6% of the market. And some pencil-neck peabrain from Gartner counts the cheese and thinks the whole world is a dumb as him.

    I don't mind them existing, but who hires these morons for consultants?

    Next: somebody from Gartner recommends outsourcing the Applecare help line to a bunch of lemurs in Madagascar. Sure, they can't speak, but they work cheap!
    • one1plus1one, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5s@Swift2

      You are definately on to something there Swift2. Our company hired an MBA consultant at $150,000 per year, who spent 1 year practically dismantling our company, and turned our IT department upside down, and decreased our search-engine rankings.

      Every idea that we had was overanalyzed by him, and made 100 times more complex to implement then it had to be.

      When he was fired, our IT Network Administrator (who only has a high school degree, and a couple of networking courses) simply stepped in, and acted. He did things without convening an endless series of meetings and analysis. He listened to our ideas and implemented them and experimented. Some of them worked. Some of them didn't.

      In the end he put our IT department back together, and increased our search engine ranking to 2nd place (by experimenting with adsense for a couple of months) and increased our profits by about 40 percent.

      What does that tell you about MBA consultants? (After 1 year of hell with them our company will NEVER again hire a self important MBA graduate again.)

      This company... Gartner, seems to be alot of those MBA types all congregated together.
    • clutchperformer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Okay, I'm going to make a truly biased, biggoted and scientifically unproven statement. And you guys are welcome and justified in taking me to task for it.

      Based on personal experience and second-hand anecdotes, I have found few redeeming qualities in 97% of the MBAs I've met/known/worked with or heard about.

      When I am hiring, an MBA is always kicked out of my candidate pool. But this is against my principles so I always end up digging their resumes out of the trash and interviewing them anyway. And I am always shocked by their swiss cheese knowledge: impressive at case study citation but cannot locate Luxembourg on the map. Completely competent at how to dodge labor laws but unaware that Iranians are Persians that speak Farsi. In short, very two-dimensional people lacking passion for anything more than personal gain.

      And the only thing I've found worse than an MBA is a Californian MBA. It's as if the state accreditation board in CA requires 20 credit hours of "My $hit Don't Stink" classes.

      My career, enterprises and fortunes improved by 80% when I instituted a personal rule of avoiding MBAs.

      The best workers and leaders I've found are motivated autodidactics, college grads who graduated with enough wisdom to embrace humility, and high-school educated ex-military. Give me those anytime over an MBA.
    • iainc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1> Next: somebody from Gartner recommends outsourcing the Applecare
      > help line to a bunch of lemurs in Madagascar. Sure, they can't
      > speak, but they work cheap!

      LOL! Or, worse still, Cap Gemini or Accenture.
  • menuhin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1What Apple sells is their DESIGN, including hardware design & software design
    However, they are not selling some other things well:
    services --- my random shutdown new macbook has been in repair for weeksss!!!
    robustness --- my old powerbook was not as rugged as my thinkpad: dropped and broken
    developer-friendliness --- they run a closed-design model
    • KibibyteBrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"developer-friendliness --- they run a closed-design model"

      Are you insane? Darwin is OSS and Unix is very well understood. I was able to write for OSX without any extra knowledge coming from a Linux background.
    • nandabanaotakun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Closed design? *Downloads nightly Webkit*
    • willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2KibibyteBrain, then why don't they release preview versions of the OS before the OS release?
      Even MS does that, it means developers can have new software ready the same day the OS is officially released.
      With Apple, if you're not in the special Adobe club, you pretty much have to wait like everybody else. User's suffer too because they don't get the same availability of software on release day.

      Now, I do admit that in the last few years Apple has become more developer friendly, and imagine, the software available has grown enormously since they have.
    • aristotle0dude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"by willcode4beer on 10/21/06
      KibibyteBrain, then why don't they release preview versions of the OS before the OS release?
      Even MS does that, it means developers can have new software ready the same day the OS is officially released."

      Excuse me? Apple does release preview versions of the OS if you attend the WWDC regardless of who you are. If your software is not a device drivers or haxie, it should run fine in 10.5 just like it ran in 10.3 and 10.4. Granted, your program will not be able to take advantage of all of the latest features but it should work if you wrote it against public APIs. Apple seeds builds of the upcoming OS to registered paid developers.

      MSFT also releases special builds only for registered Select partners and MSDN subscribers like Apple does. I think you are confusing MSFT's habit of using the general public as free beta testers with builds that they send out only to registered developers.

      Apple used to seed to all paid developers through out the process until some people started releasing the builds onto bit torrent sites. Those pirates ruined it for some paid developers.
  • origclubsoda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Apple is a hardware company. Always has been. If they stop selling computers and iPods then what will they sell?
    • archer75, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1OSX, iLife, Final Cut, the list goes on and on. Though they shouldn't stop selling ipods.

      Microsoft does just fine with thier primary business being software. And it gives me the consumer the choice as to where I want to put that software.

      Apple could dump computer hardware or at least open it up so that OSX can be run anywhere. then the people who thing people buy apple's for thier hardware still would and the people who thing people buy apples for OSX would buy OSX but have freedom over thier hardware.

      And the whole time apple is raking in the dough.
  • graymatter, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Apple to Gartner: Stop doing this ***** research!
  • MrViklund, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2LOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooL

    That was the most idiotic ever... And I suggest that Gartner should quit the analyse business...
  • xutopia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I look at my work place. We have 20 machines with half of them using linux. 10 are programmers and they all would (and want) to switch to OS X but cannot because purchasing a new computer is out of the question at this point. However paying 500$ per seat to switch to OS X would be reasonable and if Apple would sell their OS for less than that I'm sure lots of people would be buying it.
  • rebotfc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Apple doesnt want you to use its OS xutopia, it makes no money there. The OS is the hook to encourage you to buy a mac.

  • SteveDeGroof, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Interesting thought. I suppose Apple could license the hardware to third-party manufacturers and just sell the OS. I could've sworn they started to do that in the 90s and then backed out.
  • jusu8888, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0The Gartner report is outdated. Apple is ALREADY out of computer business.

    Intel is doing the hardware design, Foxconn and the likes are doing the manufacturing. All Apple does is the case design and marketing. And if they were better at it, they would sell you guys Apple stickers.
  • eggyacid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I guess Gartner is in Dell's pocket.
    maybe dell should stop selling hardware and just focus on re-license OEM version of XP
  • bustergonad, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0This will be brushed aside,..swept done the memory hole into obscurity,..then 18 months from now, Jobs makes the announcement at one of the Macworlds that in order to remain competitive they are going to get out of hardware and license OSX for X86 systems that meet a certain standard,......Dvorak claims victory and a flawless track record, and Cringeley cant be reached for comment
  • hitkaiser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1To those saying that Gartner doesn't know what its talking about...
    Many large companies pay thousands of dollars to recieve their advice and reports, the truth is that many companies to listen carefully to what they have to say, not necesarily follow everything they say (that would be wreckless).

    If enough people are convinced something should be done, no matter the merit of the action, it puts a lot of pressure carry that out
  • raynevandunem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The report's URL, although it requires registration.

    http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=497146&subref=simplesearch
  • GoYe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Maybe Gartner should get out of the analyst business.
  • trancelgic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1My opinion of Gartners' opinion is Gartner is in bed with Dell. Things that make you go 'hmmmmm'.
  • specialkay, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well this article links from the initial post but its about the same subject, it suggests that it would be beneficial for apple to license the manufacture and sale of its products through dell and only sell their software.
    Read : http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,39163365,00.htm
    i quote
    "Increasing component costs and pressure to cut its prices mean Apple's best bet for long-term success is to quit the hardware business and license the Mac to Dell, analyst house Gartner has claimed."
    Companies such as these miss the big picture i feel, they don't seem to understand
    why the mac has such a following.
    Apple doesn't just sell hardware or software or a brand, they breed creativity in whatever they do, more than any company I feel, they are a company in a specific field at present, but within this field they excel to a high degree. Apple always push boundaries that no other company does. without the now reinvented apple. the computer industry would be lost, and our technological future, dim
    Hopefully Dell will never have any part in Apple, period. But If or
    when that day happens, I will cease buying computers.
  • bradbaxter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Gartner was great in the 80's, but started to slip in the 90's. Nowadays, just laughable.

    Actually, I have no idea who or what Gartner is.
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