Is OS X going to have to give way to another OS like Linux?

With the Mac share swirling around that yellow stain just at the rim of the toilet, I am willing to bet Linux could be in a prime position to dethrone what few shares of the market the Mac has left. Then again, I once thought that WebTV was going to change TV forever! (Give me a break, it was the 90’s)

The Mac platform is essentially stagnant. That becomes obvious when you look at the declining market share numbers—not from research firms, but from the W3C, which monitors online activity. As of December 2004, the Mac share as measured by online activity is 2.7 percent (Linux is 3.1), with all the rest going to various flavors of Windows. I’m now convinced that this stems mostly from Apple’s inability to make the Mac a commodity computer by pricing it to compete with PCs made inexpensively in China and selling with razor-thin margins.

The company figures it has certain market niches locked down. This includes computer users in advertising agencies, news bureaus, and various professional organizations as well as creative artists and writers. I also count an odd, die-hard faction of true believers, but these people are inconsequential except in online forums, where they make a fuss whenever anyone discusses the Mac. They probably hurt the Mac community more than anyone by creating an unfair crackpot image that gets associated with the machine.

CEO Steve Jobs’ star persona makes the situation worse. His attention to the Apple flagship has been eroded by the success of Pixar, and more recently, by the iPod and iTunes initiatives. None of these has anything to do with the Macintosh. Keeping it on track is a full-time task—Jobs cannot be in the computer business, the movie business, and the music business and make them all successful. You see the results. Market share for the Mac is crap.