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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.
I'm waiting with baited breath for the release of the Intel PowerMac. I've never, ever, ever owned a Mac in any form. I've got a ton of Windows workstations and Linux servers, but never a Mac. This will change in August. I'm tired of ridiculous Windows behaviors (disk defrag inadvertantly deletes required system DLLs...nice), and ready for new ridiculous Mac behaviors, knowing I'm not giving dollars direct to Microsoft ever again.
RW
... 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.
At least in my college-age demographic it is. I'm seeing a HUGE desertion of PC's in favor of the MacBooks (the MBPs are a little bit out of the range of the average college student). It's going to be a good year for Apple.
As long as George Clooney dies, I'm all for it. Heck, take Marky Mark too.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Mac Minis making a giant wave, and the boat... almost... makes it...
basically getting a mac now means being able to do all the stuff you've always done on your pc - plus all the stuff a mac can do. in the past there was always what you were 'giving up' - now that's gone. it is now the windows machine that runs less software.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Isn't everyone tired of the phrase "perfect storm" yet? Why do people keep using it?
*Just kicking it does not include gaming.
... 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.
Windows now has about 95% of the desktop market. Nobody is suggesting that will drop to 5% overnight.
Yes, the vast majority, of windows users will stay with windows, no question. But there is always that segment of the market which will be shopping for a new PC soon, and may consider a Mac.
How large could that segment be? 5% would be huge. If Apple could get another 2% - 3% of upcoming PC sale, Apple's sales would double. Clearly that is very significant.
My old laptop is aging and I want something new. The Macbooks look good, feel good, seem to be so much more secure, and, in general, have only one drawback which is price. That's a one-time thing and I'm at the point where I'm ready to suck it up and spend it. This after twenty years of PC use. I can't be the only one drooling over these things.
More than that, the next iteration of OSX promises to be more efficient while Vista is likely to be far less effecient, need way more resources, and still suffer the same fates as my previous Windows machines.
Beyond all that, have you seen the Mac stuff? It's so cool looking!
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
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.
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
MSFT is strongly pushing DRM for video content whereas Apple so far has been silent on the matter. I do not foresee Apple making a sharp about face and forcing HDMI down our throats at this stage in the game. If you value your freedom of fair use, I would suggest looking at Apple.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Hi, my name is Brent, and I've got a problem.
Oh, wait, wrong meeting.
I made the switch a couple of weeks ago, but the interesting thing I'm noticing is that the tech community, the network admins and programmers, are going to be the last ones to make the switch, and that's why it's going to catch us geeks off-guard.
In my day job, I'm a SQL Server administrator. I rely on MS tools to get my job done, and I can't do my job on OSX - or at least, I couldn't until Parallels came along. Boot Camp is a nice idea, but since I have to have SQL Server Management Studio running all day, dual-booting would mean I'd have a shiny laptop running Windows. Big flippin' deal.
Most of the guys around me said, "Why make the 'switch' when all you're doing is running Windows AND Mac OSX all the time? How can that possibly save you time or energy?" Well, it doesn't - it involves more work - but I'm having a great time doing it. As I write this, my keyboard is glowing. That's coolness.
All of us network admins and infrastructure managers rely on more Windows-centric tools than we'd like, more stuff tying us down to Windows longer than our end users. The end users seem to use more generic applications like Office, and they're able to make the switch even faster than the supposedly high-tech guys.
Normally, when a Big New Thing comes out, the geeks are the first one to make the jump. Apple's making it so easy to make the switch that the push is coming up from the end users. Attention, Windows network admins: there are probably people right now in your organization thinking about making their next computer an Apple. Be prepared when they start asking support questions like, "Which of our applications don't run on a Mac, and why?"
What's your damage, Heather?
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.
for most of the geeks :-) Before being bashed by FOSS gurus, let me show my example.
:-) (just remember that IBM and BEA's VM's performs better than Sun's)
...), and it can become a pain to get things working. On Linux, things are far better than Windows. You have almost the same tools, but its far easier to get things working: just apt-get / emerge / whatever and you are ready to go. In a Mac, just "port install" what you need, just like linux. The difference between Mac and Linux is in the tools. The same ones + a fantastic editor (and cheap for some, expensive for others). Ok, its not that smart to left an inexpensive OS to go to an "expensive" one just because of an editor. But trust me, it worth.
:-)
:-(
I'm a Java and Ruby (on rails) programmer. I've dropped windows about 2 years ago, and used various flavors of linux in this meantime (debian, ubuntu, gentoo and ubuntu again). Less than one year ago I bought my first mac (mac mini).
Java development in Windows is "standard", in linux is good and in Mac it is great. You have the same tools as Windows or Linux and, since java is "portable", all other tools (frameworks) works fine. The difference between Windows and Linux/Mac is that Windows restricts you *a lot*. Ex.: I put all my libs in just one place, and make sym links to them in the projects I need. In Windows, its not possible (afaik) (yes, a simple example, but try to keep the libs updated on a windows box...) . And the difference between Linux and Mac is performance. *Usually*, a Java application runs faster on Mac than on Linux, because the Java VM in Mac is done by Apple, meaning that its built by the ones who knows the OS. In Linux, as you certainly know, is a certain pain to install Java (you need to follow one or another howto to get things working), and the performance is *usually* worse than in a Mac, because the VM is done by Sun, which is concerned mainly in getting things working. Yes, they care about performance, but not that much
When programming with Ruby, Mac is really awesome. Again, Windows looses here. In Windows, you have a set of tools (editors/IDE's) that also exists in other platforms, but its performance is poor (afaik). Also, some Ruby libs requires some sort of compilation (mysql, rmagick,
Besides these work-related details, you also get an OS that just works, with enough applications to do what you usually do on a PC, a good terminal (I definitely cannot use the "cmd" anymore), a more than nice UI and so on... And for people who asks me "why use a mac", I just ask the same: "why use a Windows". There is no reason to use Windows. I can't find something that Windows does better than Mac (ok, I left an space here for some +5 Funny comments).
But yes, there *are* reasons to use Linux instead of Mac. Specially if you want "all the freedom you can get", if you don't want to spend a penny in software or simply don't care about the UI.
Of course, I talked about just the OS itself. The hardware *is* more expensive, specially here in Brazil (macs comes from US, which means they are taxed in *only* 100%). But if you think a bit better, it probably worth. In my case, I spend more than 10 hours/day looking at a computer, so, it certainly worth for me
And I'm sorry, this would be a single-line comment, but it simply grows
ilex paraguariensis for all
When a mac app is ever-so-slightly needlessly-different in its user-interface, the Mac community gets up in arms. The fact that you have Gnome *and* KDE in that sentence is indicative of competing (and hence different) styles.
The mac has a long and established history of well-behaved apps, inter-operating via the OS. Nothing else comes close to the level of standardisation for all the commonplace things (cut/paste, print, preferences, user-customisable toolbars, menu layout, window management, etc. etc. etc.) It's a far more stable (as in: unvarying) environment for apps to co-exist.
Hell, you can run the whole thing with a mouse with only one button.. Twice as easy as anything else [grin]
I think though, it comes down to the well-behaved nature of the apps/developers, and the level of thought that has gone into how to make apps useful - have you seen the *size* of the Apple human-interface guidelines book ?
Take the menubar being always at the top of the screen - not everyone likes that (personally it bugs me to have to traverse two wide-screen displays to get to the File menu), but it means it's "infinitely deep". You can slam the mouse as fast as you like to the top of the screen and it'll still hit the menubar on a mac. Now I've seen people do the same thing on a PC (video-editing app), but they made it 1-pixel-in (presumably the border for a full-screen window took 1 pixel or something). Now it's nowhere near as easy to use... There are a myriad of little things like that, where it's been thought about on the Mac, and the lesson doesn't seem to have been transferred to any of the competitors.
Or hell, I could be wrong.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Digital and MS-DOS use CR-LF, UNIX uses LF, and Apple, bless it's heart, uses CR.
DEC operating systems for the most part use variable-record files with one record per line and either a 1 or 2 byte count plus an optional carriage control word per record.
CP/M and MS-DOS used CR/LF, but that was kind of an accident caused by the fact that every program was implementing its own I/O.
Apple and OS/9 and most mainframes that didn't used record-oriented files used CR, because that matched how FORTRAN behaved.
UNIX uses LF, because that's what the ANSI standard specified, but that was an "obscure standard that nobody else picked". I think they did the right thing because it happens to be very useful for a number of other reasons... but if it wasn't for UNIX gaining popularity it'd have gotten nowhere.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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?
For the last two decades I've always upgraded my machine by piece-mail. A new case, a new HD, a new mobo, a new video card.... So at every purchases it's only been a few hundred at most.
And how do you upgrade just the cpu/mobo without upgrading ram or the hd? I've got an old HP I'd like to upgrade but when I upgrade my cpu/mobo I'll hav to upgrade my ram and more than likely my hd as well as both the bus and the hd interface will be different. As my graphics card may not be compatible with a new mobo I may have to upgrade it as well. I don't see how over a preiod of more than several years you can upgrade a piece at a tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?
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.
Hmmm... Let's see. Looking at my "old" five-year-old G4 Powerbook.
PC Card interface (PCMCIA)
USB
Firewire
Ethernet
DVI
S-Video
ATA (IDE) hard drive interface
Laptop SDRAM
Yup. That's a closed architecture if I've ever seen it. Not.
The new laptops have standard laptop DDR memory as well. As a special bonus, I didn't shell out for the Airport card; I have a Microsoft-brand 802.11g PC Card wireless interface installed instead. (It was lying around and therefore free to me.) No extra drivers to be installed. It just ran under OS X as an airport device. How exactly could this laptop be any more open? Have you changed your Dell or IBM laptop motherboard lately for a 3rd party replacement? How about the CPU?
And the desktops are even worse! AGP and PCI on the motherboards. What were they thinking? Next thing you know, they'll be moving to PCI-X in the next generation.
The 1990s called. They want their "Macs are a closed architecture" whines back.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Anyone who already knows how to setup and administer/maintain Windows and its programs is smart enough to easily figure out the equivalent steps on a Mac once sitting in front of one, especially with Google at your disposal.
Take it from someone who learned Mac administration by myself first, and only started for Windows in 2000. By all rights it should be much harder for a Mac guy to pick up Windows admin skills, but I did, and without any MSCE certification courses either. I picked up most of these skills with no Windows PC of my own, so my situation is like yours, in reverse.
Your concerns about not being able to walk your grandmother through stuff is valid, but possibly misplaced given your examples. If you're physically at your grandmother's, as I said you'll figure them out fairly fast.
If you mean *talking* her through stuff over the phone that's different, so here's my suggestion (applies for Mac or Windows); I've set up and used the free (as in beer) and very user-friendly Bosco's Screen Share (http://www.componentx.com/ScreenShare/) with my friend's mom the couple of times she's needed help. It allows me to see or even control her screen (I set it up so she must click OK these requests; I can't just login any time I want). Much more efficient than describing a problem by words alone.
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.
1) "Fitts' law is a model of human movement, predicting the time required to rapidly move from a starting position to a final target area". Unless you never select anything from the menu, it applies. For every GUI-user you show me who has never selected a menu-item, I'd be able to find hundreds who had.
2) Did you get the bit about "infinite depth" ? That the edges of the screen make it easier to locate the mouse because of no possibility of overshoot ? Seems completely obvious to me, but hey! Actually it seems bloody obvious to others, too
3) If it's easier to do something, that's a better usability. End of.
Game, set, and match.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Out of curiousity, which of the two companies is actively selling DRM encumbered video? I agree, HDMI is a terrible thing, another opportunity to charge people more in exchange for hardware that does less and in the process help stamp out fair use. But Apple's no more our friend in this than Microsoft.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
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.