You might be tempted to argue, Well, of course Phil Schiller would say that, he’s Phil Schiller. That’s true, insofar as that even if Schiller believed that Windows 7 is going to adversely affect Mac sales, it’s not like he’d admit so in an interview. But the gist of his remarks isn’t that he expects the Mac to hold its own, but rather that he expects the Mac to continue to thrive. Why set such an expectation if he didn’t believe it?
This gets to the heart of the weird, orthogonal, indirect competition between Windows and Mac OS X. Yes, they compete. Yes, it is both fair and inevitable that Windows 7 will be compared against Snow Leopard in every review. But Microsoft is selling licenses to an OS, the majority of them for low-end PC hardware. Apple is selling computer hardware, none of which is in the low-end market.
So it’s entirely possible that Windows 7 will be good for both Microsoft and Apple. The Mac can continue to gain a few percentage points per year in the higher-profit premium range of the market, while at the same time Windows 7 could grab a majority share of the overall market, mainly at the low-cost high-unit-sale end of the market.
Bingo.