Despite the fact that we have seen how the new tablets will look and what hardware they will have iPad Air si iPad with Retina Display, the conference Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), since last evening, a revolution has started from which some competing companies will come out a little "shrunk". For starters, Apple decided to stop asking Mac owners for money to install the latest version of the OS X operating system, so OS X Mavericks it's available for free on any Mac that can run it without major performance problems.
Without thinking too much, you will realize that this is a direct hit Microsoft, a company that was built on the basis of the revenues generated by the sale of the operating system Windows. There are certainly enough people in the management team Microsoft who swallowed hard last night when Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), announced that OS X Mavericks it will be available for free on 4 year old Macs and surely some of them are sweating now. Don't worry, I'm not doing it because of ordinary consumers, because there the impact will be small, because the prices of PCs compatible with Windows are low and few will choose a Mac over the Microsoft operating system.
The biggest problem for Microsoft will be the companies that will decide not to buy PCs with Windows, but Macs, precisely because they will not have to pay hundreds/thousands of dollars over the years to have of updates. This means saving enormous amounts of money and getting probably better results, Macs being extremely appreciated as stable computers, on which you can work easily and quickly, something that not everyone will say about Windows and his problems.
Apart from the problems of costs for upgrading to new versions of Windows, the productivity component must also be considered, Apple offering free alternatives for Microsoft Office, but also photo/audio/video editing software. Many companies would save enormous amounts of money by choosing a Mac instead of a Windows PC based on this component alone, and if we add the fact that they will no longer pay to have access to new versions of the operating systems, things become even more great. The same thing can be thought by many consumers who would be tempted to pay for one MacBook Air a higher price than that of a laptop, but would receive, in the long term, much more benefits.
Practically adopting the free model, Apple hits hard at Microsoft, but this is not its only victim. Apart from Microsoft and Google, it will suffer from the launch of a free productivity suite, those from Google having success with the online versions of Google Apps, some of the applications being alternatives to Microsoft Office. Many companies have chosen to use Google's online services instead of paying hundreds of dollars for Office licenses, but how will the same companies think when they have Pages, Numbers and Keynote for free on Macs or in iCloud?
With this new strategy, Apple intends to change the mentality of consumers who will expect to receive almost everything for free when they purchase a new computer. Apple makes a lot of money from its iDevices and would have no problem covering the development and research costs for the software, so for it we are talking about a well-calculated risk that will turn out to be very good in the end assumed. For the rest, hard times are coming, but not in a month, but in a year, when the world will start to think differently.
