Fortune on HP/Apple competition in consumer market
updated 03:55 pm EST, Thu February 17, 2005
HP/Apple competition
With Hewlett-Packard's recent division of consumer and business products, Dell and Apple become key competitors, says David Kirkpatrick of Fortune. "The PC is just one of the elements in this equation. At Apple, . There the money machine is increasingly becoming the iPod, not the Mac ... If HP could bring seamless home networking to Windows customers, it could become Apple's strongest competitor." Kirkpatrick also says that "the only way HP is going to keep up with Dell in the PC market is to find a way to turn its biggest liability—the fact that most of its sales go through third-party resellers like Best Buy—into a strength. With the rapid evolution of digital home technology, there is surely a benefit to face-to-face contact with consumers in stores."
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Mar 2004
Home Networking...
"If HP could bring seamless home networking to Windows customers..."
When did HP buy Windows from Microsoft? Did I miss that article?
If anyone could bring seemless networking of any sort to the PC world, they would have by now. The fact remains that if you want a completely painless networking experience and you don't want to know anything about networks, then you need to go Mac.
My Airport Express hub is essentially in default condition (I've altered it's prefs only slightly). My sister bought a new iBook the other week and asked me to install her software for her. Pulled it out the box, turned in on, filled in the question thing you get on a new one and bang, it was on the network, on the net and could see my two network printers (one of which is an LPR queue using zero-conf) instantly. I could file share instantly with my other machines and all this with Appletalk completely disabled on the network. Instant, know nothing networking using TCP/IP on a bunch of UNIX boxes? Unheard of until OS X. They all even have IPv6 addresses without me doing a damn thing.
Does anyone honestly think that there will be a day when MS has caught up to Apple's networking ease of use? It probably will happen, but my grandchildren will be long dead!