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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. "
Even I, a long time PC user wanted to get a MacBook, but... I don't have 1100 to drop on one. Damn me not having much money!
Yay, I have a sig.
... It is. Windows XP works pretty well, and there's really no more reason to switch PC platforms than there is to change your heat pump. It works. You'd be an idiot (quite literally) to waste time and money for no reason. That's the public attitude.
Sorry to upset you. Mod me down.
... doesn't care. A computer is about as exciting as a heat pump. It's a dusty tan box that sits under their $50 pressboard "computer table" from Wal-Mart that they turn on to check email and surf porn, and every so often, open a pirated copy of Word to update their resumes. A car, on the other hand, is one of the biggest status symbols that Americans have. That, and many people rely on cars to do important stuff, like get to work. Computers aren't used for anything more important that a paperclip for most people.
They face stiff competition when an almost identical Compaq laptop is $300 cheaper -- and has a bigger screen. Same CPU, same RAM, same graphics chip, same ports -- except the Compaq also support 802.11a -- same HD, etc.
With the Compaq you can opt for an AMD Turion 64 w/ATI graphics chipset instead of the Intel and it's CHEAPER. The Mac has the built-in camera but the Compaq has the option of a built-in Lightscribe DVD+-DL burner for $25 more.
Yes, the Mac is more fashionable but the big point is going to be OS X -- will the general public (i.e. -- not Apple fanboys) be willing the make the switch at a 30% premium?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I've got to say, I love my Mac. I used to love 'em, switched to PCs during the late Windows 3.1 timeframe, and then switched back last year.
Macs are growing, and they are growing fast. Apple's US laptop market-share DOUBLED in the last six months. Now one in eight laptops sold in the US are Macs. For an alternate OS, that is huge. And because the MacBook was released during the middle of that period, there was a disclaimer with those numbers that the trend will very likely continue.
And why not? Mac laptops are sexy. They look great. They have almost every feature you could want (I still don't understand why for such a media friendly company, they don't have media-card slots). They are light. They are thin. They are quiet. It amazes me that many new Dells and such have to have their fans on all the time and it's quite audible. When they dare to do anything complex, a little jet-plane enters the room. My Mac (admittedly a G4, although I hear the recent Intels aren't bad at all) is dead silent. It took me like 2 weeks to realize there was a fan in the thing (not that I was looking). When going full-tilt with graphics, it's about as loud as most people's Dells and such are at idle.
Macs have had (and still do) a few issues. Graphics cards is a major one. I hope the switch to Intel helps this more, because my 1 year old laptop has a sorry graphics card compared to what was available on PCs at the time (Radeon 9700 or 9800).
That said, the stars are converging for Apple. They have HUGE brand trust and are "cool" thanks to the iPod. Their hardware looks and performs excellent. The OS is amazing. I've been running Vista for about 18 months in the form of Tiger. When Vista comes out, I'll get Leopard and be ahead again. I help neighbors and such with computers and I can't tell you how many problems could be solved with a Mac. "I want to edit movies." If you had a Mac, you'd have all you need thanks to the amazing iLife. But they were on a PC so they had to buy a FireWire card, video editing software, DVD burning software, and none of it was as easy to use as the Mac software. I know people who can't find their files. They just don't get the filesystem organization (you've seen 'em: everything in My Documents). Spotlight would save them so many hassles. I've set them up with Google Desktop... but it's no the same. Spotlight is integrated into EVERYTHING. Even the standardized File dialogs.
Then there is the Intel switch. Biggest complaint from people I've told about Macs in the past? "Then I have to buy all new software." This is people who run everything from just a handful to expensive things like Photoshop. Now with Intel, you can get a Mac and run those programs though Parallels or dual-booting. End up not liking the Mac (I doubt it), you can run Windows FULL TIME. You have very little to lose for what you stand to gain. If this was available when I was looking, I would have bought a Mac about a year earlier.
Games could use a focus. Apple REALLY needs to advertise the OS. The latest ads were a good start, but I show people my Mac and even little things (the keyboard and screen responding to ambient light) wow them. Apple needs to get people to know about this stuff. Then there is stuff like Exposé that just blows their mind. They have seen NOTHING like it on the Windows side (as opposed to things like Spotlight that have rough equivalents).
My biggest problem with Apple for the last 4 years or so (both as an observer and now as a user) has been their lack of advertising of OS X. They seem to be stuck with an almost word-of-mouth sales techniques. Maybe with recent moves (more stores, going into Best Buys and using Apple personnel to run the Mac section) will help.
The Mac market is already exploding. Just wait to see what happens after WWDC. With the real power desktops out, I wonder how much their market share numbers will jump. What will Leopard do (especially if they advertise it). What will happen in Back-To-School season (between the MacBook and their recent free-iPod-with-Mac-purchase programs), and Christmas?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
On the one hand I'm VERY tempted to just say "Ah, the classic reaction of a typical Windows IT guy." Not willing to learn anything new, afraid of becoming irrelavent.
On the other hand, I can understand the reticence since you're not talking about work, and you truly don't have experience with Macs since you don't have one yourself.
Unfortunately for you, while keeping your family on Windows (presumably) means you won't be caught unawares whenever problems come up, it means you will have a lot more time taken up by it--whether it's simple maintenance or fixing something that's broken. Goodbye personal time.
I convinced my friend's mom to get an iMac to replace her aging PC, with the promise that I'd be available to help whenever she had problems. She's only called twice with Mac-specific issues, once when she got confused about the password box, and the other about the Mac version of Excel. She's been VERY happy with her Mac, even gave it an nickname based on how quiet it ran.
In turn, my "support calls" after getting her set up have amounted to just a few hours in the last 8 months, and I don't have to support the steaming pile of garbage that Windows too often is. I already waste too much time in a Windows admin role at work (it's not even my main job), the last thing I needed was to blow any of my personal time on it as well.
Not meaning to troll, but what the hell are you talking about? For protected HD content from the new formats, you'll eventually require an HDCP-compliant display and output device. Which you can have over DVI or HDMI, and there are a few monitors that already support this. This goes for blu-ray and HD-DVD players just as much as ANY computer system, be it Vista, XP (assuming they actually write playback software) or OS X. Microsoft isn't pushing for content protection any more than Apple is, it's been required of them so people don't complain that their new MCE05 system won't play so much as a DVD. Love them or hate them, Microsoft isn't stupid about this - they know that content protection is a royal pain in the ass for consumers, but either they play along or they don't get the content. And with their digital home push, I'll leave it up to you which one their choice is.
The content industry said that HDCP will be required for legal full-resolution playback on content with the ICT set (nothing now, but at some point (supposedly 2010 or later), all of the content on the winning HD format). So either support it or you can't play. Blaming Microsoft is either really ignorant or really fanboyish. Apple will require it too, the only difference that Apple controls its hardware so well that it should be fairly transparent to the end-user, unlike PCs where we tend to have a lot more give. Of course, displays are the one area where Apple products tend to have that give, but at least with the notebooks and iMacs, you can be damned sure that the display will be connected by an HDCP-compliant connection when they're packing a next-gen optical drive. I wouldn't be especially surprised to see Apple to be giving the Mac Pro an HDCP-compliant output at WWDC, or upgrading their Cinema displays for the same. Microsoft just writes the software - they have NO control over the hardware it goes on - so they take flak when these inconsistencies occur. If it was all well-done, everything with digital output and/or input would have been compliant for the start, and none of us would have been any the wiser since it's all transparent. But it's not, and Microsoft makes an excellent scapegoat. Blame Sony, they're the ones that actually helped come up with the stupid idea (with many others I'm sure, but they're also an excellet scapegoat) - just like CSS and AACS, but those two (well, we'll wait to see with regards to the latter) are transparent enough that it's usually not much of an issue.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I see.... so tried is a new euphemism for pirated?
Paradimes in OSX that suck: 1) To eject a CD-ROM, USB-key, or external storage, I drag it to the trash. That seems illogical to me.
I think the word you were looking for was "paradigms". Drives are dragged to the trash because you are not only ejecting the media but you are writing the file system buffer back to the drive (in the case of read/write media) and deleting its cache. With XP, you are also supposed to eject USB devices before disconnecting them for the same reason.
2) To install a program, I "click-and-drag" it to my "hard drive". I had to google how to install something in OSX. Double-clicking the downloaded file yielded some puzzling prompt I can't recall.
First of all, did it occur to you to RTFM? Second, you are not "installing" anything but rather copying the application bundle from the disk image for folder on the desktop to your applications directory. I call FUD on this one since most applications will run from a disk image let alone from the desktop. You should not expect it to behave like windows.
3) Driver management is a nightmare. Sure, it works great with Mac hardware, but who wants to be locked into one brand? Oh wait, Mac-happy fan-boys do.
What driver management? Oh wait, you are running a pirated/cracked version on your Dell. Did you expect it to work on your Dell? Locked in? How do you like the WMA ecosystem and being locked into windows?
4) OSX feels like an OS that is 50 feet thick. And by that I mean it feels like there's layer upon layer of abstraction, as if it were trying to protect me from seeing how a computer really works. So you are saying that you do not like user friendly OS design and Object Oriented systems? If you want to hack away, go to http://developer.apple.com/ and read the documentation. Install the Developer tools and play with Interface builder. The power of the OS is all there for developers to extend. I think you are confusing complicated interfaces with "power". Open up a terminal windows and fill your boots.
5) OSX is not very business friendly. It doesn't fit business-logic.
What an absurd statement. Could you quantify that? By business friendly do you mean MIS friendly? Is it too damn easy to use that you are afraid business people might just use their computers are tools without needing so many MSCE's on their payroll?
6) The bundled applications were inferior. Give me Outlook Express over Apples default mail application any day. That thing was an utter, illogical, painful experience to configure.
More FUD and bullshit. You have got to be kidding me. Mail in Tiger has features features in common with Outlook 2003 like message grouping by topic threads. What is there to configure beyond email accounts and signatures?
7) OSX is slow. Seriosuly, it's just not as snappy as winXP. Granted, I was running OSx86 on a Dell laptop, but I've used OSX on a mac before, and it really is a little laggy from all the superflorous garbage it distracts you with. "Ooooh, dancing icon. Thor like!"
Yeah, having a GUI with a GPU accelerated compositing engine can be a bit slower than a simple bitblitter graphical stack like GDI+. Try out Vista and you will see how it is not as snappy either when running the Aero Glass interface.
To anyone who is considering buying a Mac: Try using OSX first!
That is one thing we can agree on. I would also suggest people try out Vista before blindly upgrading to it.
In my honest opinion, I think Windows Vista will pave over OSX when it's released.
Right. Do you even know anything about the current state of Vista compared with what was promised at PDC 2003? I use XP more than I use OS X simply because that is what I use at work and I used XP at home until the end of 2002. I'm afraid that your "experience" with a
pirated
X86 Tiger install does not qualify you to critique the OS X.Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I suppose when you go car shopping you complain that a fairly reliable Honda costs 20%-30% more than an unreliable, poorly designed GM. Sure, the Honda gets 25% better fuel economy, performs better and doesn't break down as much, but the GM is cheaper and it has a longer warranty than the Honda.
Bzzt. Thanks for playing. [PDF] You're right, though. Lots of IBM software is not available for Mac OS X. Like Lotus Notes and ViaVoice.
I'm not going to disagree with you about software availability. However, I think what you'll find is that you may have problems finding a "brand" that you're comfortable with. Everyone's favorite example: AutoCAD. Of course, there are plenty of CAD solutions on the Mac. However, if you must use AutoCAD for some reason, you're out of luck. This is true for games--a particular example of branding. If you're the sort of person who has to play the latest hottest game as soon as it comes out, you're out of luck on the Mac. For example, I got Star Wars: Battlefront for Mac OS X this past Christmas. It shipped in July 2005--about 10 months after the Windows release. So it certainly wasn't the hottest game by the time I got to play it. I still like playing it, though.
Well, some of your concerns are just plain wrong.
Again, in the consumer realm on the software side, I think you're taking about games. Everything else is covered. In that realm, suggest they buy an Xbox 360 or Wii for the kids to play games with. Mom & Dad will be happier about not having to kick the kids off the computer anyway.
Hardware, I'm a bit lost on. What do you mean "breath of hardware upgrades" for consumers. Are you saying that you can't upgrade memory, hard disks, or video cards on a Mac? Sorry, Macs use industry-standard hard drives. If anything, the problem with Macs are that they tend to be ahead of the curve, so you might have to buy Serial-ATA drives instead of a cheapo ATA/66 hard drive and that will cost you more money. Same with memory--the iMac uses PC2-5300 memory which is more expensive than other types. For example, a 1GB upgrade is about $165. For a Dell XPS200, 1GB of PC2-4200 memory is $120.
From the business software side, I might agree. But, before I do, I'd point out that Macs are cheaper for a business to support than Windows. So, obviously, the more Macs you have, the cheaper it will be. So suppose we ask this question: What job positions require Windows PCs?
Receptionist? That job is mostly about e-mail, etc. All available on Mac. Sales? Again, e-mail, etc. Perhaps some database access for looking up inventory and such, which can be done via the web. Macs have web browsers, so that should be fine. So we could switch Sales. Marketing? Ooh...lots of graphics and such. Plenty of room for Macs in marketing. General Management? Show me a software category that is used by general management that is not available on the Mac.
Engineering? Well, if you're developing Windows software, you need some Windows machines. There are also some great tools for other engineering disciplines which are not available on the Mac. Fair enough. Engineering keeps it Windows machines.
Accounting? There's accounting software for Macs, believe it or not, but I'll let them keep their Windows machines. There are some great accounting solutions for Windows.