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'Perfect Storm' of Mac Sales on the Horizon?
fkx writes to mention an eWeek article suggesting that, finally, the PC-using public is going to 'get' the Mac. According to the article, the new advertising, increased functionality of OSX, and Intel-based machines are all raising the profile of Apple's machines to new heights. From the article: "However, this cycle isn't your usual processor upgrade cycle that comes every time Intel or Advanced Micro Devices tweaks a process. This is a major shift that affects all parts of the Mac customer-developer-vendor ecology. Longtime Apple watchers can count two earlier events of similar magnitude. The first such transition occurred in March 1994 with the arrival of the PowerPC architecture. The Motorola 680x0 architecture that had served the Mac platform for a decade was quickly supplanted by a set of new, more powerful machines. "
An interesting question!
I don't exactly qualify as 'general public' having been using Linux exclusively for the past few years, but I have finally decided to check out what all this talk about OS X is. And I grew up on PCs - I remember when I was like four years old and fucking around at the DOS prompt (like I knew what was going on =P).
A few of my friends have Apple hardware, and they really like how 'OS X just works'. So after months of seeing my boss' Macbook Pro, I've decided to get one myself (after the conference, of course).
And I realize I'm paying a *lot* for a Macbook Pro. I could get something almost as nice for 30% cheaper, as you pointed out. But I am willing to pay the premium for OS X, after not spending *any* money on Free software for the past few years.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
And I'd be willing to bet that Compaq is at least 30% bigger than the Macbook. Find one with similar specs and dimensions and you'll find the price will go up. You pay for miniturization.
Odd you picked Compaq. Ususally people find some Dell to compare it to and neglect to point out that the Dell is 70% greater volume.
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The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You'll love it, especially if you love the command line environment of Linux. Being able to have both the great GUI and name applications (like Photoshop) as well as a true Unix subsystem and command line you can use were a big factor in switching to the Mac for me.
You mention defrag, and that is one thing I've never understood. In the time I've been using Windows, it has never run well without 3rd party software. In the 95/98/ME days defrag was probably important, but I found that a little program called MemTurbo make the system feel like it just booted all the time. It would somehow clean up leaked memory, or force specific things to be paged, as well as defragment the memory allocations.
Then Windows 2000 came along and it no longer needed that program (hooray!). But NTFS just gets SO fragmented SO fast. Without a 3rd party program (Disk Keeper, set to defrag during screen saver) then any system that gets quite a bit of use will slow to a crawl pretty fast in my experience.
Vista is supposed to have that built in, so I wonder what users will need next to keep the OS running smoothly.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
If you're talking about desktops or towers, then yes, the public couldn't care less. And Apple has woefully small market share in that area - probably around, what, 3 percent?
When it comes to laptops, though, there are different factors. Suddenly size, weight, battery life, and even appearance (well, for the fashionistas among us) come into consideration. And do I need to point out that a 17" widescreen notebook from Apple weighs about a pound less than one from anyone else?
This January, Apple's share of the US laptop market stood at 6% - about double its share of the desktop market.
This July, Apple's share of the US laptop market stood at 12% - double where it was in January.
Apple has projected that as universal binaries of more applications for "creative pros" become available, that share could go higher.
Maybe they'll continue to do better in notebooks than desktops.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
NuBus is hardly proprietary. It is the IEEE 1196 standard originally developed at MIT.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Someone did the math awhile ago, I can't find the link, but you're just plain wrong. The Mac is maybe $50 or $100 more than a comparable PC. And you'll be repurchasing software with Vista anyhow -- or living through the hell of the security dialogs.
That's assuming you actually have lots of software which can't simply transfer a license to the Mac.
And for twenty years, they've been changing things. You're going to have to retrain about as much to learn to use Vista as you will to use a Mac.
I admit there are problems, but would you like to tell me which one you think makes a Mac worse than a PC?
Sorry? It's not as open as I'd like, but as far as I know, you don't get ANY source code with Windows.
Target, yes. But it really is more secure. Prove me wrong, though, if you dare. I'll put my Mac on any network you like and let you hit it with anything you want.
Vista is just now starting to do some of the things that OS X has had for years, in terms of security.
The vast majority of computer users own less than $100 worth of software, and the price difference is also less than $100. Geek Squad charges $129-229 every time you screw up your PC. After just a couple of those, it's already cheaper to make the switch.
Personally, I don't think it's as useful as, say, a mass exodus to Ubuntu would be. But at least I can easily set up SSH, use Perl, and all that good stuff without hours of hassle, so I'd be happy with people using a Mac.
Anyway, get back to Digg. Your 12-year-old MS apologist friends miss you.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The issues are minor. Apple does fix stuff. And with the retail stores, it's even better. I've been a PC guy forever, but I just switched to Mac. Got a 15.4" MacBook Pro. Then my battery did the expanding thing. More than doubled in size. I took it back to the retail store (Yorkdale in Toronto), and got a whole new machine, no problem at all! Was back up and running in no time. If I had bought a Dell and something went wrong (and lets not kid ourselves, every company has issues occassionally), it would have taken ages to get the part fixed, including likely having to ship the machine somewhere and going without a computer for days. Every manufacturer of anything, computers, cars, and even pens, occassionally makes defective stuff. What's important is how the treat you when it happens. I couldn't be happier than with the staff at the retail store. Oh, and the computers aren't really that much more expensive. Considering you getting the top of the line chips etc, not old out of date Pentium M's or anything. Compareable hardware from Dell, Toshiba, etc has a compareable price.