The recent claims in the technology world that Microsoft will defeat Apple are not actually new. Examples such as Zune, which targeted the iPod in the past, Windows Phone, which emerged as a rival to the iPhone, and Microsoft Band, which was positioned against the Apple Watch, were concrete indicators of this competition.
Now it is said that Microsoft will challenge Apple’s Mac computers with a new concept called Copilot PC. According to this claim, Copilot PCs, which Microsoft will design and produce itself, will leave Apple behind by providing an overwhelming advantage not only in the computer market but also in the artificial intelligence market called Edge AI.
Can Microsoft Copilot PC disrupt Apple Macs?
So what is the basis for these claims? According to technology analysts, Copilot PCs will offer different hardware options to their users as they will be produced in accordance with the standard designs determined by Microsoft. They will also have unlimited access to Microsoft’s software development tools for a monthly fee and will be able to purchase artificial intelligence-supported applications from approved application stores.
On the other hand, Macs with M3 chips will lack this flexibility and users will have to make do with the limited options Apple offers. In fact, Microsoft Copilot, which is built into Copilot PCs and functions as an artificial intelligence-supported chatbot, will not be available on Macs.
All of these lead some analysts to predict that Apple’s end is near and that the dominance of the computer market will pass to Microsoft. However, at this point it is necessary to ask some important questions.
First of all, it is worth remembering how successful Microsoft’s strategy of entering the market late and then aggressively dominating it has been in the past. For example, Windows 95 managed to capture the graphical interface desktop operating system market, even though it was released ten years late.
Similarly, Windows NT disrupted the well-established UNIX workstation market and destroyed OS/2. Microsoft Office applications have eliminated strong competitors such as Lotus 123 and WordPerfect. Internet Explorer also managed to dethrone Netscape. However, these successes do not mean that Microsoft always wins.
In fact, what Microsoft is trying to do today with the Copilot PC seems to be a repeat of its effort to create an iPod Killer with Windows Media Player branded MP3 players in 2006. At that time, companies producing Windows PCs were producing MP3 players in accordance with the standard designs determined by Microsoft and were trying to compete with the iPod.
However, the iPod continued to maintain its market dominance and Microsoft’s attempt failed. The same situation occurred with the Microsoft KIN phone, which was introduced in 2010 and was expected to rival the iPhone. KIN could not prevent the rise of the iPhone and was buried on the dusty shelves of history as a commercial flop.
At this point today, Microsoft acts as if it has discovered the importance of artificial intelligence processing capacity on the local device with Copilot PCs. However, Apple took an important step in this field with the Neural Engine it introduced with the iPhone X in 2017 .
The Neural Engine was a processor of Apple’s own design, developed specifically to accelerate artificial intelligence operations by performing 600 billion operations per second. Apple has continuously improved the Neural Engine since 2017, making it stronger with each new iPhone and iPad model.
With the A12 Bionic processor introduced in 2018, the Neural Engine became capable of 5 trillion operations per second. This number reached 6 trillion with the A13 Bionic in 2019, 11 trillion with the A14 Bionic in 2020, 15.8 trillion with the A15 Bionic in 2021, and 17 trillion with the A16 Bionic in 2022.
The Neural Engine in the A17 Pro processor, which was last introduced in 2023, has reached the capacity to perform 35 trillion operations per second. In addition, Apple started using the Neural Engine not only on iPhones and iPads, but also on Mac computers starting from 2020.
In other words, it has been selling artificial intelligence-supported Mac computers for four years and has significant experience in this field. On the other hand, Microsoft is trying to present the Bing Chat chat robot, which is still in its infancy and built into Windows PCs, as the most important feature of Copilot PCs.
Therefore, Microsoft’s claims that it will defeat Apple with Copilot PCs are similar to scenarios that have been repeated many times before and failed. As in the past, Microsoft is trying to gain market share by imitating Apple and making its own technologies seem more innovative than they are.
But whether consumers will fall for these tactics depends on whether Microsoft can deliver a truly innovative product. Time will tell us this. So, for now, it seems more logical to turn a deaf ear to analysts creating doomsday scenarios.
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