1 Million Windows to Mac Converts So Far in 2005

UltimaGuy writes to tell us AppleInsider is reporting that according to one Wall Street analyst over one million Windows users have switched to Mac in the first three quarters of 2005. It is speculated that these numbers are a direct result of the popularity gained through the iPod and related technologies in addition to security concerns from Microsoft. From the article: "According to checks with Apple Store Specialists, Wolf also said a larger than expected percentage of Windows to Mac converts appear to be purchasing Apple's higher-end systems and that their transition is fueled by the epidemic of viruses and malware on the Windows platform."

Comments

"switched" or "also bought"?

[conJunk]

TFA:

"If we assume that all of the growth in Mac shipments during the past three quarters resulted from Windows users purchasing a Mac, then purchases by Windows users exceeded one million," the analyst said. "Indeed, the number of Windows users purchasing Macs in 2005 could easily exceed our forecast of 1.3 million switchers in 2006."

TFA seems to be using "switched to" and "converted" interchangably with "purchased", implying that every Windows user who bought a Mac was turning his or her back on PCs. I don't think that has to be the case at all. If we assume that TFA is right about the reason for such good Mac sales (derriving from the strength of the ipod), then isn't it reasonable to assume that a fair number of those are people who are buying Macs not as their exclusive computer, but possibly in addition or in complement to their PCs?

Maybe the real signficance of this (assuming the numbers are correct) is that it's no longer uncool to own more than one computer!

Re:Onlly reason I haven't...

[danrik]

Your mistake is buying 2GB of RAM from Apple. They overchage for RAM unlike anything i have ever seen. Save yoruself some money and buy from someone else.

Re:The Mac Experience - not all its cracked up to

[MKalus]

Have you had a look at Pages? That may just fit your bill?

Re:No Surprise Here

[Laitment]

Actually, it's based off of the Darwin operating system, and uses the XNU kernel, which is based off of both the Mach and a customized version of the FreeBSD kernel.

Re:Analyze this!

[jma05]

>> Most of this is working on CVS stuff (do a checkout when you have a net connection, edit away, then commit when you get back). I know it can be done on Windows, but it's damn ugly.

Not really.
http://www.tortoisecvs.org/

Re:As a Mac user

[lar3ry]

I'm one of those "Linux users converted to Mac."

My first Linux box was before TCP/IP worked reliably on it... before X Window worked. ST-506 drive (hundreds of MB!) and 256KB memory modules.

My first Mac box was a Mac Plus (well, I also had an Atari ST that had the Mac emulator running on it).

I've always liked the Mac software, but got drawn in (and still am drawn in) to the Open Source / freeware / "All Software Has To Be Free" mantra.

For fourteen years, I did my damnedest to make my Linux desktop experience as good as it could be.

Then, I decided to go Mac again. Mac Mini... 512MB.

It's not the fastest platform, nor is it the most programmable. However, it is the most consistent one that I've found. I'm back with a Mac, and use Linux as a server O/S and firewall.

I wonder what would happen if I got a G5 system, or, peraps, should I wait until the Intel Macs arrive?

If I have to design my own system (motherboard, case, RAM, etc.) then it's a no-brainer... Linux wins. If I have to purchase a complete system (or one for a non-computer person), it would almost definitely be a Mac.

I'm really happy that the state of the art has gotten us here!

Re:Just another Apple myth

[Fahrvergnuugen]

Why do asshole posts like the one above get modded up?

If you want actual evidence showing the relative success of the companies (and thus proving the parent has his head up his ass), click this

Full page here

Re:No Suprise Here

[Absentminded-Artist]

Well, any Mac expert will agree that there is a potential for abuse when Grandma and little Billy start downloading screen savers and games off the web on the Mac and just type in their username and password as they install indiscriminately. However, the fundamental difference between OSX and Windows is that even if malware is installed in OSX it has limited power. The vehicles for self-propogation aren't there. And even if little Billy downloaded a nifty game bundled with adware and rootkits and managed to install it on his system, his Dad and Sister's Macs wouldn't be in danger because Macs come with all ports shut off by default. Without knowing Dad's or Sis's username and password, the adware couldn't install itself across the network onto their machines. This means that virii can only spread via IM or emails through social engineering: i.e. trojans - which all systems are susceptible to. Malware may adapt to meet the Mac market, but it couldn't self-propogate the way it is doing in the Windows market.

Of course, you may counter that we have yet to see what nefarious powers OSX malware one day may have. And I'll concede the point that even though there has been no malware, spyware, adware, or viruses for OSX in the five years it's been around that doesn't mean there won't ever be those sort of apps gunning for OSX security. However, my experience on both platforms has shown me that Apple's OS is fairly robust, their attitude about security exploits is very aggressive, and there aren't the same available vectors for attack in OSX that make Windows so attractive to phishers, crackers, and other binary scum...

Re:Analyze this!

[makomk]

Unfortunately for you, at least two of the items on your list (the WG511 and the Hauppauge card) are items for which the manufacturer's totally redesigned the hardware (and changed the drivers required) without actually bothering to change the name or model no. As you can imagine, this makes hardware compatibility lists not that useful. AFAIK, all versions of the WinTV cards are supported by either bttv or cx88 (depending on version), but not all versions of the WG511 have working Linux drivers.

Re:As a Mac user

[jcr]

Just to expand on that a bit: Apple's online store, and the iTunes music store are both WebObjects apps.

-jcr

Re:Time Value of Money

[nathanh]

It all depends if you'd rather have two-four hours for yourself or a little cash in your pocket...

You're deluding yourself if you think MacOS X doesn't require just as much tinkering. I'm a long suffering Mac user who has recently spent a few weeks with Tiger. I've easily spent 20 hours in the past month installing third party software like VLC because Tiger won't play DivX, finding various tweaks on macosxhints (eg, disable dashboard which is a memory sucking vampire), hunting down a crashing issue with ARD (had to replace it with OSX VNC), mucking about with configuration settings that have retarded defaults, and so on and so forth.

It's amusing that the GP commented on the multimedia keys, because attached to this Mac I have a Logitech keyboard and the multimedia keys don't work. Not even with the official Logitech drivers. Yet they work perfectly on Linux and Windows.

So don't give me any crap about Macs saving you "time and money". I use all three of the holy trinity quite heavily - Windows, Linux and Mac - and they are all about as sucky as each other.

Not surprised

[Tug3]

Just last night I was in a MobileMonday -meeting at a local bar in Helsinki. It used to be a meeting for nerds interested in mobile stuff, but it has been overrun by marketdroids and you rarely see a nerd there any more.

Anyway I was talking to a business contact, who is a partner in a management consultant company. His comment last night was that Microsoft is the sales department for OS X. They trashed all their PCs and switched totally to OS X -environment as XP's ServicePack 2 came out. They just couldn't get their PCs to co-operate with that pack. What amazed me was that this came from a guy that's allways used PCs and is in no way interested in geek-stuff - he is a management consultant after all. And this happens in Finland, that's propably one of the most pro-PC countries in the World. Three years ago I used to know only a couple of people who used Macs. Now it seems that number has well over trippled, and that's mostly converts.

Personally I do use PCs, Macs & Unix boxes (HP & Sun), with major OSs. But as a for my laptop, the choise has been clear for years. Apple's laptops were far ahead in battery life for years. Nowadays there's not that much difference, but the usability, stability and connectivity is still there...

Re:As a Mac user

[nautical9]

You just described exactly where I was at earlier this year. I had the unfortunate experience of maintaining a Mac lab in highschool, and used a few during my university years as well. All pre-OSX days. I couldn't stand working on them, with their horrible multitasking and memory management. I just didn't get the appeal of the Mac when compared to Unix or even Windows.

But after hearing all the fan-boys on this and other sites, and doing a fair bit of research into Mac OSX, I figured it was time to try out a powerbook.

After a few months of using it exclusively, I can't stand working with Windows or even KDE/Gnome now. A stock OSX Tiger install is incredibly useful (Exposé, Spotlight, iLife, Dashboard, and all that BSD goodness through Terminal.app). But after installing a few amazing (and free) utilities, it's the closest to desktop utopia I've ever been:

• QuickSilver - The most useful app I've ever used - hard to describe, but think of it as a command-line interface to the GUI (some use it as just an application launcher, but it's so much more).
• Fink - A BSD Ports implementation for OSX - think of Debian and Gentoo meets OSX - thousands of F/OSS apps just a command away from installing
• XAMPP - Apache/MySQL/PHP/Perl in a simple to install and run package.
• VLC - video watching without having to worry about installing dozens of codecs.

Never thought I'd say it, but I guess I'm one of the fan-boys now.

I still have a Windows box for gaming (although I have to admit there are far more games available for OSX than I imagined), and a few Linux boxes for serving, development, routing, etc. Although I now have all my development stuff running locally on my powerbook, so the linux boxes are less useful these days.

My message to people on the fence about switiching: give it a shot. It's not perfect, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of anything else.

Re:The Mac Experience - not all its cracked up to

[Smurf]

Then, I actually tried to create a tri-fold brochure with it. I could type a sentence, then wait 10 seconds for the first keystroke to appear, and another 30 seconds for the entire sentence to be inserted into the text. This occurs when editing Apple's own tri-fold brochure template.

This is very interesting. I was going to mod you down, but you are already at -1. Then I thought to myself: "I actually use and LOVE Keynote, but I don't really use Pages, so modding this comment without first hand experience would be unfair."

So I fired up Pages, opened the Three Panel Brochure template (I guess that's what you meant), and noticed that if I replaced the template text, the program would be dog slow. Not as slow as you say: after typing a very, very long sentence, the last character would appear around six seconds after I typed it, which is anyway too annoying.

So I was going to mod you up. But then I saw all the comments saying that they don't experience such a long lag... WTF? So I closed the document and started a new one using the Club Newsletter template, which looks fairly complex. To make things fair, I inserted five different pages all with several columns, pictures, side texts (or however they are called). By the way, everything looks very cool, and far more complex than the Three Panel Brochure. I started editing all over the place, with *absolutely* no delay.

So the problem is actually with the specific template! Apparently it's much more complex than it seems, or the author screwed up, or it uses a particular "feature" that kills Pages. In any case, you can make documents that look much more complex using other templates (although I only tested those two).

Someone please mod parent as "Underrated". I personally thought that describing my findings would contribute more to the discussion.

Oh, by the way: Pages - Just say yes only if you have already tested the template you want to use.

Keynote, that's a totally different story. Keynote rocks!