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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?"
I plan on getting my mac mini. I've been looking for a way to not have to use Microsoft anymore and a combination of a new mac mini and an old machine running fedora is how I'll do it.
I do not have an iPod (and probably won't buy one), but my next system will either be a G5 iMac or a Mac Mini. The irony is that an X-Box was the final factor in my decision, since I found myself spending most of my gameplaying time on the console, I do not need a PC around to run games.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I used to hate Macs; pre-OSX I was convinced they were complete garbage. My next computer will probably be a Mac. I do own an iPod, but it wasn't the iPod that convinced me to switch; it was seeing that OS X is based on UNIX, and that it looks incredibly spiffy, and that it's stable, and....
Have you ever been face-to-face with their 30" Cinema? It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
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suwain_2
I have been consulting for a large Linux shop the last few months and was surprised at the number of people running Mac laptops. The company itself provides Linux desktops for everyone, and Windows laptops for the suits, but a lot of the developers and other IT people use Mac laptops for their personal computers. I have to say I have been pretty impressed with what I have seen in terms of performance. Besides Mac just give you that extra little "Wow!" factor. Of course it is BSD under the hood, so it is a real OS. They really are slick machines. I do not think that the Ipod is the influencing factor here though.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
I think this is what Apple finally realized with the Mac Mini. They'll never get people en masse to go to the Mac cold turkey, but by giving them an affordable option, there's a lot of people who might try it since there's a way out (they can just write off the $500).
I guess the better question is - what percentage of Mac Mini purchasers continue to use it actively and don't eventually write it off as a bad investment? And how many of them swear off Windows?
Schnapple
...but it wasn't an iPod that convinced me, it was having a cheap 400mhz iMac to use as a server/living room stereo for a couple years.
Not only was it great for some simple hosting, utter silence and low power consumption, but I found that I even preferred to do casual browsing on it -- despite being so remarkably slow (OS X - Quartz Extreme = Windows on a 486). It's just so comfortable.
As others have pointed out in this thread, there won't be as many Slashdot "switchers" as there will be "adders," and that probably counts for the larger population as well (why throw out the old computer when you can keep it for the dog to use?). But I bet many will follow the cheap Mac they bought on a lark to a shiny new Powerbook, just like I did.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
I switched last year. Bought a nice, shiny dual 1.8GHz G5 Powermac and have never been happier. Yeah, it's not perfect and I do keep my old secondary PC around for games (along with my XBox, PSX and Dreamcast) but the crap I no longer have to put up with is worth it.
For me it wasn't the iPod. It was iTunes. I was using iTuines for six months before I got my iPod and it was my experience with iTunes that made me look at the Mac for the first time in five years. I had not liked OS 9 and below and I used to consider Macs to be a joke back when they first came out.
And yes, I did give Linux a try. Several, as a matter of fact, starting with SLS 1.0 back in 1993/1994 and the last time with Suse 9 last year. I never got along with Linux very well. I figured that if I tried it out seven times in ten years and never got comfortable with it it probably wasn't for me. But I did give it an honest try.
The Mac, well, OS X, I got along with from Day One and am quite happy with. A++ Would do it again.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I'd stuck it out with Linux since making the trek to my University with a bag full of floppies and downloading Slackware 0.97 or something like that, years and years ago. I trashed Windows to install a real operating system and scoffed at the Mac.
... oh ... 10 years in front of Gnome and 5 years ahead of KDE.
But recently, I got tired of Linux. The endless quest for a better desktop or a more compatible distribution. You've just upgraded? Congratulations, now go and recompile all your multi-media apps (like DVD playing). Want to plug in a device that's been on the market for a couple of years but no one in kernel land has? Good luck and plug it into your partner's mac to use instead.
For me the final straw was buying a G4 iPod, and deliberately setting up a Windows machine so that I could make sure it was formatted VFAT rather than HFS so that it would definitely be able to be used with my Linux system. And viola, it too didn't work! So, goodbye Linux, hello Mac. Sold my Linux custom-built workstation for $500 AU, bought an eMac, and have never looked back. I'm more productive, significantly more compatible with any device I want to buy and the interface is about
I still use Linux, I think it's a great server platform, but for the desktop, nah. I'm even going to be buying myself a bright shiny new 17" PowerBook soon out of my own money rather than continue to use Linux as my laptop OS for work.
Mac OS X - what Linux could have been, and what Solaris should have been.
I'm not paranoid - everyone really is out to get me.
After finally making the plunge last year to buy a Mac, I found myself giving more and more consideration to getting an ipod (something I'd previously wrote off as being overpriced, and unneccesary).
A year later, my ipod's with me daily, and serves up more than just music, via the amazing Pod2Go software. The only regret I have is not taking the plunge earlier than I did!
I went from hours and hours of tweaking, and modding my systems to behave in a somewhat intelligent manner, to just having a computer work the way I want it to. Someone in a different thread once put it best: "If I want to tweak and play, I can do so, but when I need to knuckle down and do real work, it just works, no tweaking needed". I couldn't have said it better myself.
I was a happy iPod owner for around a year.
I got a Mac Mini last week, and from my experiences so far - I'll never go back to Windows on my personal computer.
Bought an iPod July 2003. Bought an iMac February 2004. Bought two more iPods. Buying a Powerbook any week now.
So yes, it works.
--- witty signature
I had the opposite experience today. I installed an ADSL moden + router + two wireless cards in two Dells. After two hours it STILL wouldn't work as planned with WPA. I felt like I was a being from space, trying to use 30th centtury tools and know-how to fix mud huts on the Congo river in the year 890 AD.
The complexity of windows is baffeling. I was amazed that something that works so easely on Mac could be so incredibly complicated on another platform. The nearest thing I had to WiFi network problems befor was my GFs iBook that had to enter a WPA-PSK password on every boot, but it was solved after some consulting on the Apple site forum.
I sweated, wept and toiled and yet I had to leave the installation half finished because I only had two hours available. Depressed and alone i reached out to grab the Old Friend that never disappoints, Jack Daniels. Suddenly, a light came on in the corner. It was my alu PowerBook, that woke up upon registering that my Bluetooth cellphone was nearby. As it changed the "away" message in Aduim to At home and available, and automatically synced the phone with adressbook, I realized. I don't need booze to drown my Windows memories. I only need the comforting white light of an Apple.
Ok, so it wasn't that bad. But the installation didn't work as planned and I have to go back tomoroow and that sucks.
As for the price difference, the laptops are very competitively priced FOR THE QUALITY OF WHAT YOU GET. Sure, there is no cheap piece-of-crap-but-it-works Apple laptop equivalent to the Office Depot Compaq special you read about in slickdeals, but we're talking internal slot-loading dvd/cdrw or dvd burners in a 12" laptop. Find me a reasonably priced Dell or Sony with those specs. And there's no comment on the Mac mini, its price competition is obvious enough.
All that said, it's all about OS X for me. I think OS X is the best desktop OS ever. I'm on my first Mac (an original 12" powerbook), I've had it for over two years, reloaded it once, and this is by far the most reliable and most consistent operating environment I've ever used.
I like the look of OSX. No, I LOVE the look. Everything is so refreshingly appealing to the eye. I like the built-in capability of 128px icons. I like the dock. However, I can get icon sets and other nice, colorful, appeasing items for XP Prof. Hell, I can get OSX imitation themes for it.
I work with a bunch of designers (I'm a devloper), and I am on a Mac probably 2 times a week for a few hours. I don't feel overwhelmed enough by OSX to actually switch to Apple. I use an XP Prof. machine, and I NEVER have any problems with it. It has failed on me maybe 1 time in the past 6 months. Maybe. My coworker has a Mac, and it freezes on him probably 2 times a week. Freezes in a manner than doesn't allow him to do anything besides restart. I just sorta laugh to myself, and continue working.
Maybe I'll switch in the future, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend 2500 on a 15" Powerbook when the only thing that I admire about OSX is the "prettiness". I spent 1700 on a HP zt3000, and got pretty much all of the same features for, oh, about 800 less.
Just my 2 cents. I really don't have anything against Apple, and I'm glad that they're taking market share from Microsoft. But when I have a perfectly good AND CLEAN XP OS, I can't bring myself to fork over the extra "style" money required to use an Apple.