Guy Kawasaki has returned to Apple as an Apple Fellow, to serve as a developers' advocate. "Apple needs someone like Guy to yell loudly about various inanities every now and then." . [TidBITS, 7/3/95.]

The average corporate user spends more than $41K over five years to keep a PC running. The PC Asset Management Institute estimates that companies overspend about $20B/year on PC management. [Information Week, 6/26/95, p. 36. EDUPAGE.]

I don't know if $41K is accurate, but the more I hear about Intel chip design, PCs, and Windows, the more convinced I am that Apple stock is on the way up over the next several years. Cary Lu has published an essay in The Seattle Times, 6/18/95, with anecdotes about corporate mindset switching over to Macs. Intel, for instance, has one support person for 30 Windows users -- a good ratio, due to computer-literate users -- but discovered that one division was doing fine with a single Mac support person for 120 users. Lu's advice: "I think you should get the same kind of computer that your most technically astute friend uses. And if you don't have a technical friend, you will be much better off with a Mac -- with a few exceptions." PC users have trouble running 25-35% of multimedia CD ROMs, with many ROMs requiring special software or hardware configurations; they therefore rarely buy CD ROMs. "In the past five years, I have not seen a single incompatible or even difficult-to-install CD ROM on a Mac." One CD ROM vendor reports that 40% of sales are for Macs, yet most support calls are for PCs -- and one call can wipe out the sale profit. For Microsoft's titles, PC users call for help 3-10 times as often as Mac users (adjusted for market share). Apple computers also last longer than PCs before obsolescence; perhaps twice as long, and with fewer upgrades or repairs. Developers like the Mac better -- so much so that Pagemaker came out in a Windows version first, because otherwise managers feared programmers would never finish the Windows product. Soon PC programmers will have to write for DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95. Lu mentions several former Intel executives and PC clone makers who are switching their start-up companies to Macs. "Microsoft's genius lies in getting things to work -- more or less -- despite the PC chaos. Apple's genius lies in avoiding chaos." [ or , comp.sys.mac.advocacy, 6/28/95.]

(Microsoft's genius has also been in marketing -- convincing people that what is available is what they need -- as was true for IBM at the corporate level. Public opinion can turn very fast if another company comes out with leapfrog technology. Lu, a Windows 95 beta tester, notes that Microsoft is promising features such as long file names that Apple had 11 years ago. Apple will be coming out with its own new operating system next year, and it could be a big advance. One change that I'm eager for is a family-oriented machine: different file selections and start-up options for each user.)

Dave Winer printed a very nice Microsoft reply saying that the following is not so, with transient exceptions. For your consideration, though: "I realized that Microsoft is just another company. Hiring from the general talent pool created by the American education system. Young people who mistakenly believe that they have extra insight into the world just because they work at a successful company. You can see Bill fighting against this, reminding his troops over and over that the competition has to be taken seriously, to be respected, to be feared. ... It must be a losing battle, even for a man of Gates' intensity and intelligence. Microsoft, with 17,000 people, is less and less Gates, and more and more average. It has to be that way." -- Dave Winer , DaveNet, 5/31/95.