Vista Taking a Nibble Out of Apple in OS Wars?

PetManimal writes "Despite all of the positive buzz about the Mac operating system and the 'halo effect' of iPod sales, Mac OS X market share actually dropped last month, reports Computerworld: 'The share of PowerPC-based Macs fell ... from 4.29% in February to 3.94% in March. That dip was not fully offset by an increase in Intel-based Mac hardware, leading to a overall net decline in Mac share of 0.3%, to 6.08% in March.' Meanwhile, Vista is rising, the article says, with just over 2% of computers connected to the Internet using the new Windows OS. The figures are from a company called Net Applications, which collects its data from the browsers of visitors to its network of 40,000+ Web sites."

Comments

Dualboot?

[norminator]

I guess Boot Camp has just barely started supporting Vista, but how much of this could be due to dual-booting OSX and Vista on the same machine? Or from people that beta tested Vista? I tried out the beta, then installed a release copy of Vista on my work laptop, but then I switched back after a couple of months.

Not a shocker

[SengirV]

The macs haven't been rev'd in quite a while. I had hoped that revs would occur more frequently with the switch to intel, but it's simply not the case. And sorry, I don't count an additional option for 8-core on the Mac Pro a rev as much as it's another BTO option. Especially when they didn't change anything else on the machine.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

mini is still at CD, not C2D. iMacs haven't been updated in over 200 days. macbook and MBP in 150. Compare that with the ONLY way to upgrade on the PC side - buy a new machine, and you begin to see the appeal of Vista over OS X when it comes to hardware sales. Finally, Tiger is on it's way out as well. So people are holding off on new Macs until they come pre-installed with leopard.

Would like to see the figures once leopard comes out ;)

Re:Not a shocker

[wnknisely]

That's certainly true here. I'm holding off switching half of our users from Windows XP machines that have gotten long-in-the-tooth to new Mac minis until Leopard comes out and/or the Mini is refreshed.

Given that there's a new operating system expected in a few months, there's no reason to hurry. And for what it's worth, we made the decision to switch back in the late fall. We've been waiting that long for some sort of announcement.

Poor statistics

[wass]

The article's credibility is actually worse than that, the 0.3% they quote is ONLY the decline in market share of the PPC brand Macs. TFA briefly mentioned that increases in Intel OS X market share didn't offset the PPC decrease, but they didn't give the Intel numbers. And then they quote the PPC market share decrease, subtely implying it's the overall OS X market decrease.

So TFA was inaccurate, not sure whether it was on purpose or just due to incompetence.

Re:Very misleading

[mrsmiggs]

You aren't looking hard enough Dell (for example) will still sell XP to business and if your chosen vendor doesn't then you can still buy XP OEM from the most online retailers. The business I work for currently is still insisting on XP installs until the tech guys get up to speed for Vista support.

Virtualization has an effect

[ooglek]

Virtualization I'm sure has an effect on the numbers. I installed Vista on my MacBook Pro. I don't use it very often, but I did install it. I still have a MBP, I still run OSX day to day.

Numbers these days are becoming less and less useful as virtualization use increases. Just like "hits" or page views for web sites is less and less useful a number due to AJAX. Show us some numbers that mean something.

Re:2%? Seems high.

[dbrutus]

A copy of Vista is not simply a physical copy of the retail box but a Vista license wrapped up in whatever form you like (retail, pre-installed, volume licensing). A company ordering 100 Vista licenses and a single physical copy of the software traditionally gets marked down as a sale of 100 copies, not 1.

Re:Are mac sales lower than their market share?

[norman619]

YOu are joking right? Why on earth are you replacing your PC THAT often? Are you a gamer? I used to do broadband helpdesk and most of the peopel I helped had machines they've been running for 3 or more years. It was usually gamers who had the nice new systems. Oh how they loved to tell me what they upgraded to. LOL!!! I recently purchaced a whole new PC just for Vista. My old system is about 4 years old and still runs great. I'm converting it to a file server. So the question again is what are you doing to you PC's?

Re:pfft

[Aqua OS X]

Dude, you need to take a statistics class or something. We're dealing with market percentages, not licenses sold. If I have a cup that has 50 green M&Ms and 50 red M&Ms, and I add 10 green M&Ms and 5 red M&Ms, green M&Ms are now less then 50%, but that doesn't mean I lost green M&Ms.

You need to account for licenses sold in relationship to market growth, transitions to new OS, and consumers who have postponed purchases while waiting for new operating systems.

That said, PPC OS X usage dropped, Intel OS X usage increased, people are timing hardware purchases to coincide with Leopard's release, and people are cashing-in on their wait for Vista. These are factors that may reduce the PPC Mac OS percentage for March, but that is not the same thing as a reduced install base, nor is it a sign that the growth of Apple's install base is entering an extended stagnation.

Re:Could be the hardware.....

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

And as far as any of us can tell, you just lie when you talk. If you were to post verifable numbers your post might rank above anecdotal, but you didn't and it doesn't. So, your post is no more factual than the GP, but has a load more arrogance. Thanks.

I'd post numbers, but I don't have a lot of time to waste on arguing with people who are unlikely to be persuaded by facts anyway. Consumer Reports puts Apple hardware reliability as #1 overall. It put them #2 for laptops, right behind Sony. The study our IT guy bought access to only covers laptops but placed them #1 for laptop reliability for 2006 of all the major vendors. I'd post links if they were not both password protected, but buy an account at Consumer reports, it is well worth it.

If you're a real cheapskate you can read an article by someone who did pay for access to consumer reports, like this Ars Technica article. The most relevant excerpt might be, "As for reliability, Apple Computer crushes the competition, at least among desktops. Based on 77,700 responses, 11 percent of Macs bought between 2002 and 2006 went in for repair or had a serious problem. Sony was next best, at 15 percent, and Gateway was last at 19 percent. Among 50,100 respondents with laptops, Apple was at 18 percent, along with the majority of manufacturers. Sony was at 15 percent, but it should be noted that 3 points or less is not considered meaningful." That reference was in regard to their survey based study which suffers from self selection (but is still better than nothing) but their spot purchasing study concluded the same. In fact, pretty much every independent study I've seen comes up with similar results. Have you ever seen a real study (not an anecdote) that ranks Apple lower than #3 for hardware reliability?

Re:Windows Monoculture Still Strong

[Divebus]

Oh dear... 10 minutes on Google should fix most of that:

I've never seen a Macintosh POS system.

http://macpos.com/
http://www.christianjames.ne t/
http://www.posim.net/
http://www.posoe.com/ee s/
http://www.shopkeeper.com/
http://www.sixthse nsepos.com/
http://www.xpertmart.com/

I've never seen a Macintosh timeclock

http://www.conceptualize.com/

I've never seen a Mac waste hauling program.

I've never seen one period...

I've never seen a major financial package that runs on Mac, or even has a Mac client (think SAP, Oracle, etc)

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/macos/inde x.html
http://mac.unimaas.nl/sap/

I've never seen a medical billing package that runs on the Mac.

http://www.databaseconstructs.com/mchilites.html

On the other hand, I've never seen a virus that runs on the Mac. Heard rumors of them but have never seen it.