I'd venture to guess that the $300 million aren't for beating Apple, but for nurturing and mentoring the company that will replace Apple as Intel's primary/flagship notebook processors customer.
I'm not an Apple fanboy but I use their laptop products. And according to the author, they should completely change their keyboard layout to better support UK-specific idioms (while ignoring other markets, but still keeping the production costs all under $1000 per unit), as well as to accommodate at least four new dedicated keys and a tiny mouse nipple.
That's just not going to happen.
I don't dispute that it works. But it does rather detract from, well, the aesthetic elegance of the machine. Apple has these fancy backlit keyboards--it's a great shame to make the keycaps wrong.
Plus, it also causes big problems when I let others use my machine. Hunt-and-peckers don't stand a chance when your keys are mismatched. Though they probably struggle even with the regular Apple layout--good luck finding # on the keyboard, since Apple doesn't deign to print it. Sure, once you know it's option-3 it's not so bad, but I don't know how you're meant to just figure that out for yourself.
And the thing is, it's all just gratuitous. Apple's layout isn't in any meaningful sense better. It's just... different.
Is this only an issue with a US keyboard layout perhaps (I've a Dutch layout)?
UK keyboards on PCs have a dedicated key for #/~, " is shift-2 and @ is shift-'. £ (currency symbol) is shift-3.
On a Mac the " and @ are the wrong way round (shift-' and shift-2 respectively), and the key that should produce # instead generates \. The only way to get a # is option-3, which is not marked on the keys. The Mac "UK" layout is basically the US layout with £/# reversed.
Riiiiight, Apple’s marketing plan is to take a successful and strongly differentiated product and then say it is interchangeable with its competitors' products. Actually, they will say it is inferior because it lacks goodies like VGA ports.
Joel Spolsky wrote a long time ago that companies like to commoditize their complements[1]. Apple wants to commoditize the CPUs and the applications, Intel wants to commoditize tablets and notebooks. Intel is going to fight like a dog in a cage to get people to think that notebooks are all pretty much the same, provided there’s an “Intel Inside” sticker plastered on the case.
Apple is not going to play along, period. Instead, they are busy trying to get people to ignore the bits and pieces inside. How much RAM is in an iPhone? Who makes it?? How fast is the CPU? Apple is working hard to make these questions irrelevant for mobile devices, and Intel’s behaviour is going to encourage them to do the same in notebooks.
I don’t see this article as being about Apple vs. the cloners. I see this article as being about Intel vs. the entire notebook manufacturing sector, with Apple being the biggest target.
[1]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html