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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."
Aren't most Mac users waiting for leopard to come out ... which is scheduled for around May-June? If your spending a premium dollar on a machine , $1500-$200 at least ... I think your a little patient to get most bang for your buck)
... you are forced to buy Vista.
On the other hand , most anyone trying to buy a generic run of the mill PC has no choice but to get Vista. Yes I know a geek can find and get a bare PC , but walk into Best Buy, Dell, etc
Maybe it's because a lot of people knew that the iMac, mini, and Mac Pros were due for a refresh.
I bought an iPod and liked it sooo much got one for the wife. She then after liking the device so much, became tired of the "crazy damned computer" that I set up for her that ran Linux, and bought a Mac laptop.
My wife still has some problems, but seems quite happy so far.
So yes, in our case, buying an iPod led us to buy a Mac.
..........FULL STOP.
That makes no sense. What do you mean, people are switching to Windows and Linux from OSX in the meantime? If what you're saying were true, the numbers would stagnate, not drop.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
I use both Macs and PCs and it seems like I buy and upgrade PCs a lot more often. My latest Mac is a Powerbook G4 from early 2004 and I'm just now starting to think about a replacement. Over those last 3 years I've bought 2 PCs and will probably buy a 3rd long before I replace the Mac. The PC's just feel dated after less than a year while the Macs take about 3 years to feel the same way. At least to me.
If PCs have a much shorter useful life, their percentage of sales will be higher than their actual percentage of machines in use.
Apple's market share is attempting to take away from that of Windows.
Vista is cannibalizing the market share of XP.
Market share is like your weight. It's going to fluctuate, and there are too many variables for a month-to-month evaluation to be useful to anyone other than short-term traders. Today I'm 1.5 pounds heavier than yesterday. Tomorrow it will be down.
Seems way too simplistic to reduce the situation to two "equivalent" numbers. At least, if you expect the information to have any use other than getting us to click on the story and be exposed to banner ads.
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.
I'm sorry, what?
Maybe I misunderstand, but what do you mean, the only way to upgrade on the PC side is to buy a new machine? That is *so* not true it's not even funny. I certainly upgraded my PCs dozens of times; I still have a chimera machine somewhere that started it's life back in the dark ages as a 486/66 running DOS and Windows 3.1 and is now a Pentium II running Windows ME, after being upgraded to Win 3.11, 95 and 98 in the meantime. It also went through quite a few hardware upgrades (at least 3 different video cards, at least 4 hard drive changes, CD and DVD readers added and removed, and so on). I think the only original parts still in are the case/power supply and an ancient Soundblaster. Oh, and the keyboard. They made good keyboards in the old days, nothing like the mushy modern stuff.
As far as notebooks go, I love the Macbook pro, but I don't like its price tag. Though its superior engineering should translate into a longer lifespan than most PC notebooks, which are almost throwaway items now.
You're using her as bait, Master!
You're suggesting (seriously?) that you don't expect Vista to show up on more than 2% of desktops? I would like some of whatever it is you smoked this afternoon.
I think OP was being hyperbolic. Point is sound, though - you think 2K and 98 had a slowing effect on XP uptake, I'd say XP will slow Vista much worse.
I was talking about upgrading to Vista and kinda highlighted it to draw attention to the outrageousness of the statement. With the recent lawsuit about the sales of computers up to the release of Vista as "Vista ready" even though they were really not, points out that the upgrade process to Vista is pretty damn steep.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
This chart on browser trend is interesting too. IE's market share is slipping like the Big-3 autos. Slow and steady.
I can't wait until IE dips under 50%. That should drive off the last of the 'IE only' websites, which seem to be decreasing in number (of course, I support one at work, though for a limited corporate audience- gack! I am lobbying heavily with the vendor to support Firefox!!).
But I hope Firefox doesn't get too dominant (fortunately, it won't). Competition and the adherence to open standards (at least for more mature technologies) are good things.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
Meanwhile, Vista is rising, the article says, with just over 2% of computers connected to the Internet using the new Windows OS.
I wonder how many of these are just virtual images... Realistically it's probably a negligible number, but of the more than 20 people in my department here at work that I just polled, 1 of them uses Vista as their production environment, and 8 of them said they've dabbled with it in a virtual image. Granted I work in the tech industry so my percentages are probably a bit skewed...
Microsoft not having proprietary hardware lock-in is exactly my point; the need to cater to every conceivable chuck of hardware along with permitting copious permission between drivers and the kernel is not an advantage. It's a major contributor to instability and only when it was no longer advantageous to gaining marketshare did Microsoft make any overtures to changing that.
The attraction of OS X is that you have it before you, on a piece of hardware on which you know it will run. You don't have a situation where Microsoft points to the OEM, the OEM points to some Taiwanese chip maker's web site for an "updated" driver, unsigned by Microsoft to fix what should have been working the second you pulled the computer from the box.
God bless Linux, but I have to tell you, it has its moments. Is it superior to Microsoft? You bet your sweet bippy. Am I going to run it on my primary notebook machine? I have. Why don't I now? Because I deal with computers and electronics all day and the last thing I want to do when I'm on my own time is maintain a computer in typical PC fashion.
Or, to put it another way; having the hardware and OS lock-in was an attraction to me because I was pretty certain that I wouldn't have to endure the torture of Microsoft in the workplace. And I was right.
As you said, it's always slow before Macworld or WWDC, and this last MacWorld was totally lame for actual Mac owners since it was only about the damn phone and tv. No Leopard, no replacement for the long-absent iSights, no Blu-Ray DVD. The actual "Macintosh" is far more stagnant than I ever remember seeing it in the last five years.
Murray Todd Williams
Further, a variation of 0.3% seems within a margin of error for the ebb and flow of users visiting a block of web sites--even tens of thousands of web sites. For all we know the dip in MacOS X users visiting those web sites came from an "Apple TV" effect: MacOS X users may have been more likely watching their bright shiny new Apple TV boxes rather than surfing the web.
(I'm not saying this is what happened; I'm saying that the statistics used here are hocus-pocus at best.)
I use firefox, because I prefer the wider selection of extensions and I actually prefer XPCOM, but hey... to each his own.
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