1. Apple doesn’t seem to care about market share. Steve Jobs believes that excellence alone will lead Apple to a larger market, but it is difficult to sell quality to the ignorant and brainwashed.

He believes that Microsoft creates third rate products so it will eventually destroy itself. Microsoft’s dominance is a result of the DOS market, twenty odd years ago, demanding the cheapest possible price rather than the best quality or performance. Microsoft was always about “good enough.” Poor technical decisions at Microsoft, decades ago, are leading it to a dead end.

2. Apple is not in business for profits alone. Jobs & Wozniak launched Apple because no one else would manufacture its computer design. They first offered the Apple I to HP and was turned down. Steve and Woz’s original mission, of excellence, is prevalent in Apple’s management. It was the loss of that mission which almost lead to Apple’s demise. If Apple were about profits or market share, they would have sold out to Microsoft or Dell, long ago.

3. Mac OSX exists for only one reason: to sell Apple hardware. Therefore, any sales of Mac OSX or Xserver software for use on a PC costs Apple a sale.

4. Apple’s Marketing plans are geared for the upper half of the Consumer market plus its niches in Graphics, Design and Education. Since Mac OSX was released, Apple has been slowly widening its marketing mission. The best way of thinking about this is to say that Apple is ever becoming more NeXT-like. Apple has adopted many of NeXT’s plans, but it does this slowly. Partly, this is to keep Microsoft focused on other issues.

5. Tactically, Apple is aiming to take over the SMB market. This is important, because over 50% of the employees in the US, and much of the world, work for companies which have fewer than 200 employees. These companies tend to have part time web or Internet administrators who appreciate Apple’s work in making servers easier to use. The intent is to use the servers like it does the iPod and iPhones to entice people into buying Macs.

Apple’s server hardware is excellent, but intentionally limited. Apple has no, apparent, interest in running on mainframes. Otherwise, it would remove the caps on its number of users.

Apple is likely to think that running MacOSX or Xserver on PC’s or mainframes would dilute its brand name and its mission. Apple is in no hurry. It is doing well these days. More of the market is turning its way, so it need not be abrupt or sacrifice its values.