Forbes Predicts 5% Desktop Share for Apple in 2005

sebFlyte writes "Spurred on by the iPod, Apple's share of the desktop computer market will grow to five percent (from three percent) this year, according to research from Morgan Stanley. Apparrently nearly 20% of iPod users surveyed are planning to switch to Macs, and the sales figures for the last few quarters are backing up the theory of the iPod Halo Effect. All this suggests the question ... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?"

Comments

I'll switch

[jholder]

But not because of iPod. Really, a nice desktop, integrated desktop apps, plus the joy of a UNIX cli under it all. Beat the pants of Linux for me.

Re:I'll switch

[nate nice]

" The GUI is limiting and a pain to program"

You have to be kidding me. The OS X API (Cocoa) is easily the best MVC, OOP framework I have ever used and learning how to program GUI app's in it is a breeze. They supply you with Interface Builder which allows you to visually create your GUI and then generate the classes for it so you can control it. It's pretty much out of the box.

Personally, I never found it easier than OS X for GUI programming and the whole point of the API (well, one of them) is to not distract you with the views so you can spend more time on the controllers and models.

Any command line tools you're missing can generally be downloaded and compiled (if you like this way/no binary around) so if the things you want are not out of the box, use fink to get all you want.

But anyways, the Cocoa is probably the most well designed framework for native application development around. If you cannot figure out how the GUI works and how to use Interface Builder/ Project Builder I suggest getting some more programming experience in a MVC/OOP environment. Grab a book or read some Websites. It's really great.

Why this is big

[bonch]

More marketshare means more income to spend on R&D. With what Apple puts out already, I can only imagine what they'll start putting out with more marketshare (compare to Microsoft's $10 billion a year R&D, and all they can put out are picture-viewing smartphones and media center TVs). At some point, there's a threshold where growth begins to fuel itself through momentum (maybe ~10% or so). With Longhorn not due out until 2006, Apple has the opportunity to grow a few more points next year as well.

Bad troll. No cookie.

[numbski]

Open OS. Very open OS in fact.

Closed desktop environment. Free IDE.

Tell me why you're not happy about this again? You could always run X11 and use KDE or Gnome or whatever. I personally feel that Aqua is worth every penny.

Re:I'll be one of the converts

[znu]

You're missing the point.

Look at how Apple is marketing the mini. What they're pushing more than anything else is the software bundle, and what regular users can do with it. It's almost as if the hardware is irrelevant. That explains why the small size is significant, but at the same time, not really the point of the thing; a small, unobtrusive device is a sort of physical representation of the fact that hardware is fading into the background.

Even the tiny box the Mac mini ships in is sort of reminiscent of software packaging. It's almost as if Apple is selling a really slick bundle of software that just, you know, happens to run itself without any need for the user to supply a computer separately. And at this price point, a lot of consumers who want to get into digital media might consider buying the thing basically as a media creation appliance, with the intention of keeping their existing computers for "computer stuff."

Basically, everything has gotten fast enough now that for most users in the consumer market, hardware performance just doesn't matter anymore. Design, quiet operating, operating system and software bundle are much more important, and Apple gets that, even if some performance-enthusiast tech-heads don't.