What Google Apps mean for Apple

The announcement that Google Apps for your domain would be available in a version for the enterprise at fifty dollars per user came as no surprise to almost anyone.  I've been using the beta version for several months.  It's actually gotten very reliable.  With this new move, I'm wonder if Google Apps and accessories are a good thing for the Mac or something that actually makes Windows PCs tolerable enough that fewer people will consider Macs? I can't believe there won't be some impact on Apple at least down the road.

My last post, "Great Apple tools should matter," danced with the thought that more Apple applications for the Windows platform might actually be a good thing for Apple even though it would be highly unlikely that Apple would ever embrace the concept beyond what they've already done in Quicktime and iTunes.

I was a little shocked when this Apple Update popped up on my Windows PC the other day. It was then it really hit me that Apple if the company wanted to, could vastly improve the computing experience on Windows PCs even they just fixed the update process.  The question is where do you start and at what point do you stop.  If you improve it too much, Windows users would never consider Macs.  If you don't do something significant to the computing experience, the vast majority of Windows users will continue to ignore Macs.

The Google approach so far is to make the Windows computing experience better, perhaps even tolerable.  Today I happened to install the Google Pack.  I was already using Google Desktop with some of its gadgets.  What I get when I add Google Pack and Google Apps for your domain is a Windows system that is more usable than when it comes unaltered from Microsoft. 

My Dell with Windows XP enhanced by Google is certainly no Mac OS X machine since it still seems at odds with itself at times, but it is better with the Google tools than it is without them.

This past month I used the Google Docs to write a couple of articles for one of our local magazines, Dropping Anchor.  They were relatively small articles, and I found the Google tools quite acceptable.  I've started using the Google calendar which seems to be easy to subscribe to from iCal.  My friend Stephen convinced me to give Picasa Web albums a spin.  It's a very nice tool and in my opinion an easier tool for publishing photo albums that the combination of iPhoto/iWeb/.Mac.  The Google alternative is also free and almost as good as what I can do with own catalog.

There are three conclusions to draw from all of this.  One is that Google is making significant progress in the Windows world.  It is a big part of the experience of many Windows users and will get bigger.  Some, like me, might find Windows better for the fact that Google is there.  I suspect many others including some enterprises will come to that conclusion.

Other than iTunes, Quicktime for Windows, and the Bonjour Windows printer tool, Apple has chosen to keep its crown jewels close to home.  If nothing else as some readers have suggested, the Windows world cries out for a better email experience.  Has Microsoft made that happen with Vista?  I don't know, but the mail client I played with in my quick taste of Vista was a lot more Mac like.

My second conclusion is that by bringing an application like Mail.app to Windows, Apple could have built some tremendous brand loyalty with Windows users.  My guess is that one of the more popular skins for Thunderbird is the one which tries to make it look Mail.app.  Would that eventually help to sell Mac hardware? I think so, but perhaps I could be wrong.

My third conclusion is that Apple once again is missing a big trend.  This miss has the potential to be much bigger than not having CD burning drives in your computer.

Anyone that is aware of industry trends should agree with me when I say that software as a service is gaining traction almost every day.  The Google move to the enterprise with their apps is the biggest affirmation that this is happening.  Even Microsoft gets it.  Their Windows Live service while not nearly as reliable or feature rich as Google's offering still indicates that the Microsoft ship is once again turning.  The whole email as a service business is a thriving world which is driven partly by the difficulties many users find with Outlook and some support people find with Exchange.

It's hard to classify .Mac as a software as service.  Even if we did, it would be clearly uncompetitive. As I've said before, this is my last year at .Mac because the value isn't there.  It doesn't have the flexibility of other services and in becoming simple to use has become a pain in the rear to use.  Certainly Apple has missed the boat on providing users with a robust calendar and contact solution which might have justified the dollars for .Mac and filled a huge customer need.

I've run into some other innovative software that leads me to believe that the web might be out running Apple when it comes to putting innovative tools in the hands of users.

When you look at the head start that Apple had with Quicktime and Quicktime VR, you have to wonder why no tools ever came out of Apple to help users really do anything since the advance of making movies and exporting them as Quicktime. 

The only inexpensive tool for VR that I've found is Panorama Maker from Arcsoft which creates Quicktime VR scenes which I could only get to work on my .Mac site.  Unfortunately Arcsoft has an unbelievably arcane way of selling upgrades so I've never been able to give them money for an upgrade so all I can say is their free software which I have gotten with two cameras works far better with Windows and Flash than it does the Mac and Quicktime VR.  The shame of it is that Apple really has done very little to help the end user in this area.  This area of innovation was Apple's to lose, and they have done that.

So what happens is someone pops up with another software as service business.  Now it isn't as elegant as what you could do with the Mac and real Quicktime VR, and it probably isn't as good as what you could do with Panorama Maker.  However it is quick, easy, inexpensive, and anyone can do it. The results are better than anything else I've found for the price.  The software is by Mapwing and allows you to embed a virtual home tour in a website or let Mapwing host it at their website for a very reasonable fee.  Another unbelievable piece of software is Meebo.  It allows me to embed a live anonymous chat window for clients in my websites.  I doubt it would have been very hard for Apple to do that with iChat had they wanted to try.

I think Apple by putting all of its hopes of capturing Windows users on the iPod, iTunes and "iPhone to be" might have been outflanked by Google.  Certainly Google is going to make some money on the enterprise that Apple choose to ignore. Beyond that Apple is certainly being outmaneuvered in the software as a service business, perhaps even left in the dust.  That could have an impact on small business which does like Apple and on consumers which might grow to like free email, documents, and spreadsheets well before Apple ever gives us anything but a chance to buy more Microsoft Office at exorbitant prices.

Apple still has plenty of momentum right now, and perhaps some great new products with true differentiation driven by Leopard will make everything I have said irrelevant which is fine.  I like Apple products for the most part, iWeb and .Mac being notable exceptions.

Apple hardware and software are still an integral part of what I do, but more and more I'm depending on tools which with very few exceptions could run on any platform.

Still there is plenty to keep me on the Mac platform. Shutterbug has turned out to be an absolutely great tool to create the dedicated home websites that I need to do.  iMovie HD remains easy to use and comes with the hardware as does iDVD.  I'm more limited by my old Sony Digital Video camera than I am by Apple's free software. 

Enough of Google's stuff works on the Mac right now, that I would have to say that the Google Apps push into the enterprise certainly isn't going to hurt the Mac and might eventually create a batch of users where the Microsoft Exchange server doesn't rule the roost. That could be an opportunity for Apple.

However, innovative software and hardware has been the life blood of Apple.  If Apple misses the boat on software as a service or cannot deliver innovation as good as what we see on the web, then Apple's future might be a little more challenging than some people believe.

My 126 White Heron Lane website is created with a combination of Apple tools and web tools. I still have some work to do on it, and the house still is under construction and with complete lighting.

Even so, I'm pleased with the results which I don't think I could have achieved with a PC and my current PC skills.  It was relatively easy to do on a Mac and took a lot less effort than some of my Dreamweaver efforts.

That's a good enough reason to keep using my Macs.  They give me an edge in promoting sellers' homes and attracting buyers to them.  In the end Macs make my job easier even in the PC centric real estate world.

Comments

[John Muir]

Google are doing a great job, I've been using Google Docs since before they dropped the old Writely moniker and find it a terrific service. Software as a service is of course a big trend and one Apple will be as well aware of as anybody. But then again I'm yet to see service from Google or anyone else which can handle my 100GB music library! I've not experimented enough yet with Picassa, but I suspect it may take issue with the good few more gigabytes of photos I've ratcheted up with my digitial photography over the course of five years. I realise my digital pack-rat habits are a harsh test for any such services. But I can tell you that iTunes and iPhoto handle all these things with panache on my humble Intel Mac Mini and an external hard drive.

I wouldn't rule Apple's innovative prowess out of the pictute quite yet. We're in something of a golden era for getting your work done on the web, which is a good thing for everyone. Your point seems to me that Google and Co. are levelling the field and eating away at the Mac advantage. Maybe this is so. But only maybe. Windows has always been about "being good enough". And with all the caveat emptor style difficulties in wait for any less-than-expert Windows user to get their system configured for such activity, including a good half dozen or more user accounts for various web services, I still see the Mac being the sweeter option and just as immediately obvious as ever. The Windows experience has come a long way in the last seven years without Microsoft doing anything: I'm talking about Google, Yahoo and everyone else just like you are. But the Mac has become even better by improving its core suites in addition to riding this 3rd party wave to the full.

I know you're coming from somewhere else from me, as I'd never consider Apple putting out Mail and other apps for Windows as anything but a confused move. The strategy seems to be to use the stores and the iPod and iPhone, pushing the whole Apple ecosystem (which is still centred most comfortably on the Mac) forward with quite some momentum. Interestingly, there could also be some real progress on the enterprise and server side of things if Roughly Drafted is anything to go by.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/RDM.Tech.Q1.07.html

[amber]

Check out www.koolim.com