400,000 Windows Users Switch To Mac

bonch writes "Analyst Charles Wolf of Needham & Co. wrote that 400,000 Windows users have moved to Macintosh, citing factors like the fabled iPod halo effect and the desire to escape the Windows virus epidemic. Mac shipments rose 35 percent, three times the rate of the PC market, with sales expected to surpass 45 percent in the current quarter. Quote: 'Assuming that Mac shipments would have been flat year-over-year, these percentage increases imply that about 200,000 Windows users purchased Macs in both the second and third fiscal quarters.'"

Comments

this is surprisingly good news

[VolciMaster]

and not because I'm an Apple fan (though I am). It means that people are starting to decide on the machine they are going to buy, not merely on price, but on capability (or incapability when it comes to virii). I presume that the majority aren't the so-called media pros that Apple normally markets to, but rather 'typical Joe' computer buyers who have decided that the benefits of a less-attacked platform far outweigh the higher cost. They're also not being put off by the lack of applications often cited for the Mac platform, which makes sense considering most people only want to send and receive email, chat online, surf the web, and do homework (papers etc).

The real test of this switching will, of course, have to be seen to continue over the next couple quarters, which would also show that most people are not caring about the processor used in the machines, so long as they work well.

Re:this is surprisingly good news

[Gulthek]

I would love to go to the Apple if I could build my own machine instead of being locked into what they want me to have.

But that's just me...not everyone builds their computers. I do it cause it's cheaper and I just don't have the disposable income that others have. But I'll always crave a Mac.

So "they" want you to have it, but you crave it also. What is it you want out of a Mac? Why won't a cheap tower G4 work? Go to Low End Mac and browse their articles and found sales. You can get macs from less than $100 to over $10000; and you can't find something that matches your ideal?

If you only crave a mac, then you don't need it, and in that case you don't need a dual processer G5 to edit video in realtime with (or whatever). Sure you may want and crave the latest and greatest from Apple; but their older and now cheaper machines are great deals!

I have an 800 Mhz G3 iBook, and a dual 1.8Ghz G5. For day-to-day stuff (iTunes, email, web browsing, movie watching) the iBook holds up extremely well to the G5. It certainly doesn't feel limiting.

Rethink your "Mac Mini" doesn't cut it for me statement and try one out in the Apple store. Or pick up a cheap G4 if you really want customizability. But don't imply that Macs are only for the wealthy.

Mac Market share has always been higher

[BitGeek]

This has been a long time coming, and is less dramatic than I think people will realize.

The numbers of mac users have long been under-reported for a number of reasons:
1- The "independant" research agencies don't reports sales apple makes directly or thru apple specific retailers.
2- The sales market share is reported, rather than the Total Addressable Market (TAM)
3- Macs last a lot longer than PCs and are useful a lot longer
4- Windows is counted twice- once when the PC is sold and once when an upgrade is bought, meaning that many of the "new PC sales" are actually windows upgrades.

They don't go into their methodology for a reason-- because the goal is to market windows as the dominant platform. (How many linux boxes were shipped with windows and count as "windows marketshare"? A large percentage.)

Recently I heard that an independant survey had been done to find the TAM, and that this survey found that %16 of the household machines currently in use were Macintoshes.

I'm glad to see Apple has been growing Mac shipments. I hope that software developers will realize that the Mac market is much larger, and vastly under-served compared to windows. But then, again, I think maybe I should shut up and go write some software to sell, and hope nobody shows up to compete with me. :-)

I wonder if the intel switch will affect sales for Apple... but I don't think so. Most people don't realize that Macs don't already use Intel chips (believe it or not!) and it seems amazing to believe, but I think mainstream america thinks that Apple makes windows boxes and doesn't really see what the difference is.

This would explain teh failure of the switch campaign-- people think Apples are just another form of PC like Dell, and why would you care? They just buy what the salesman at the local store tells them to buy.

This brings up the third factor for Apple. The halo effect helps, and the ipod store brings people in.... but these average, mainstream amercians, then end up asking the salesman what computer to buy, and since they are in an Apple store, he sells them a Mac.

So, while I think computer retailing is on the decline, Apple's stores strategy will prove to be brilliant. When the others won't carry your product or market it, do it yourself.

And I'm glad to see Apple showing the haters to be wrong-- when given a chance to know about them, people will buy Macintoshes.

Reason why...

[zygote]

Wired: "Fabled iPod halo effect"
Tired: "Steve Jobs reality distortion field."

I switched because of MS, not because of my iPod

[mcgroarty]

I recently switched to Mac because of the upcoming Intel switch. MacOS has been a pretty attractive platform since OS X 10.1 or so, but for all the ranting and raving about the PowerPC, it just doesn't stack up against P4 for general purpose computing. (Altivec is nice, but only helps in "broad brush" operations. It's pointless outside of graphic processing tasks.) Going Intel will be a huge boost for general purpose computing.

Meanwhile, I'm looking ahead at Longhorn. I'm not seeing Windows maturing in the way we'd all expected -- .NET was supposed to help unify the branching 64 bit architectures and foster finer-grained security controls, but MS are backing away from .NET for Longhorn. Instead of eating their own dog food and telling us it's good, they're telling third party developers "you go first" and apparently waiting to see if it's safe for THEM first. Why is skipping out on .NET so bad? Things are bad enough with wildly different Windows configurations, thanks to MS' lack of library/DLL versioning and much larger range of hardware platforms. It's impossible for a developer to test or even forsee every target configuration. And now instead of migrating to .NET with versioning and a narrowed virtual target platform, we're just going to add random combinations of DLLs from 3-4 slightly different CPU architectures in the mix.

MS' operating system lifecycle is 3 years and growing, and we're preparing to see more of the same. The current model is too fragile to do new and exciting things reliably, and so unless MS are working on a new OS in secret, Windows is going to be a pretty boring place for the next 3-5 years.

Re:Still a computing firm ?

[BitGeek]

Yes. There is no contradiction there. Apple is, and since 1984, has been an Operating System provider.

They sell their OS in a metal and plastic box, rather than a cardboard one like Microsoft... but that is what they do. The ipod and the Mac are just two product lines in their core business of making operating systems.

Re:Or there's a better explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, no no no. I always buy two or three G5s to help inflate obscure, random surveys about computers. It is worth the extra six grand.

Re:Article makes a lot of assumptions

[mcgroarty]

"Further more what is the plural for a Mac Mini?"

Mac Many.

My Parents New Machine

[Omega1045]

My brother and I just bought our parents a Mac Mini to replace their aging PC. They love it. I had been anti-Mac for a long time, for what I consider to be good reasons. My reasons for our decision of Mac over PC (Windows) in this case were:

1) My positive experience with my iPod,
2) The security and virus issues associated with Windows and the lack of said issues on Mac,
3) The Mac Mini is now in the range of price I am willing to pay for a desktop computer, especially one that will mainly be chacking email and surfing the web,
4) Positive reviews of Mac's OS X from programmers and IT geeks.

Mac has done a lot of things right lately to start winning over former Mac haters such as myself.

Re:More talk about switching than ever do...

[phillymjs]

From the geek perspective, why would I switch NOW? We know that the MacTel machines are coming which makes purchasing any PowerPC based Mac less reassuring.

Try looking at things from a perspective other than that of a geek. As a geek, you probably know how to secure and maintain a Windows box. I've got news for you: for every person like you using Windows, there's ten or more who aren't like you and who feel powerless to keep their machine from getting owned and/or having their personal information/identity stolen. We've got enough people just throwing out their malware-infested PCs and buying new ones that the practice merited an article in the New York Times.

As far as the non-geek public is concerned Windows malware is an unchecked epidemic, right now-- a Mac is a solution to that, right now. Non-geek types don't look at development roadmaps to determine when they purchase a new computer. They usually buy something current when they need it, and use it until it dies-- they will most likely never crack it open to upgrade components, and probably won't even upgrade the OS over the lifetime of the machine (a habit developed when the major Windows PC makers refused to support any OS other than what shipped with the machine). They have no reason to care about what's down the road, because everything they're buying today will cover their needs for a long time to come. When they're ready to buy another brand new machine, the Apple x86 transition will be complete.

~Philly