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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."
One word - 'LEOPARD'
:)
If there is a down blip, it's due to people waiting for Leopard, not because of vista, and ho boy...wait 'till you see her hit the track
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.
This strikes me as low for a brand new windows OS. I'm not familiar with previous statistics, but I would have thought that sales would increase quickly after the release then slowly decrease. If it is at 2% now, I don't expect we'll get much more after this.
$20 says Microsoft will simply disable XP machines to boost sales.
Vista TAKING a NIPPLE OUT of Apple in OS Wars?
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I powered my Mac off yesterday and forgot to turn it back on. Try it again now...
*throws hands up in the air*
Ok, Microsoft, you win.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
My new operating system had 100% growth as I sold my 2nd copy and it still had far fewer reported bugs than either OSx or Vista....Only 2 users reported blank CDs but thats just a distribution problem...
=)
Maybe it's because a lot of people knew that the iMac, mini, and Mac Pros were due for a refresh.
What websites do they monitor so I can fire up my Windows 95 machine and make an entrance?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
' Meanwhile, Vista is rising, the article says, with just over 2% of computers connected to the Internet using the new Windows OS
They won't be connected for long:
net start BOTNET
> Aren't most Mac users waiting for leopard to come out
What, waiting for Leopard before browsing the web again? I you are goin to make an argument at least make one that makes sence.
Maybe like which web sites are the stats generated from, maybe those are somewhat windows biased?
+----------------- | What is the question!
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.
The tone of this article is very misleading.
I do a lot of consulting work and it's very hard to get a new PC for someone that doesn't come with Vista. They don't want Vista but they have no choice. Then we get to deal with figuring out what software they need works and what needs patches and what just plain doesn't work and never will.
The actual decline they have reported is 0.3%; which I'm sure is well within there margin of error.
Which means, Apple's share hasn't changed. Despite the fact there are less PowerPC machines than before.
According to this: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933606.html there are about a billion internet users worldwide. 2% would be 20 mil. MS claims to have shipped 20 million, or so, copies of vista. So that means that every copy they have shipped, even on new computers at stores, has been sold and brought up on the internet pretty much. This seems... fishy.
Can we get real? Apple's market share dropped for one month? Let's see what could cause that:
There. That took about 3 seconds to think up. When Vista has displaced Apple for 3 months in a row, we can talk. Until then this is stupid hype designed to make Vista look like it isn't a dog sales wise (when from MS you would think it would have started selling like Windows 95 did). Plus, this is the PowerPC share that dropped. They are old and slow as hell (I'm using one). Now that CS3 is out (and was about to come out by the time they did this survey) you'd be an IDIOT to buy one. So the Intel side didn't jump up. People are probably waiting for CS3 (to put their requisitions in at work), or for Leopard (coming any time now, June 21st at the latest).
Non-story.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Give the guys at Roughly Drafted a week or two to point out all the reasons this sort of assessment is downright wrong, while decorating the article with all sorts of nice pie charts, graphs, and equally questionable statistics. Then we will know what really happened. Because the mainstream media certainly has an anti-Apple agenda, we can't trust just ANY statistics.
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.
Microsoft's share raised relative to Apple's for computers connected to the Internet...
Step 1: Release buggy O.S.
Step 2: Require users to constantly go on line to get patches.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit.
It turns out Step 3 reads, "Wait for market share to be calculated by number of machines going on line."
Broadband usage figures are hard to track down but seem to sit around 40% of households and 70% of active internet users. That's a hell of a lot of home computing users that still use dial up. 0.3% variation is pretty easily explained during a period where those dial up users are forced on line for hours at a time to get their Microsoft OS patched while the Apple users can just log in to get their mail then go about their day.
A drop in overall percentage doesn't necessarily mean a drop in users. It could easily mean that Windows is growing, and the Mac market is stagnating before a new release.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
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.
Yes, but that is not the point. You expect the percentages of PowerPC-based Macs to fall, but percentage of new Intel-based should increase of at least the same amount, which does not seem to be the case, according to the article.
FTA:
"Net Applications collects its data from the browsers of visitors to its network of more than 40,000 Web sites."
Any statistics that purport to show "usage" based on browser hits is inherently suspect, especially if the stats are used to imply they have some larger meaning. If they can answer these questions, I'll believe them:
- How are the servers of these "40,000 webs sites" identifying unique users? (server logs, scripts, or both? How long are the sessions they are looking at?)
- Are they looking at number of hits, unique user views, or what?
- How well can they ensure that machines are not being counted multiple times?
- Which sites are included? Are both microsoft.com and apple.com sites included? What about msn.com or mac.com? How many tech-savy sites are included and how many might-as-well-be-AOL newbie sites?
- Are the results from some sites weighted above or below other sites?
I'm not saying they haven't taken all these things into account, but publishing them (or referencing them by a third-party) without including how the data was gathered makes this all just so much noise.
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.
make world, not war
just over 2% of computers connected to the Internet using the new Windows OS.
And 4% of the desktop computers connected to the Internet are using Linux! Woo! We're beating Windows!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
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.
TossableDigits.com: Temporary Phone Numb
Do you remember when you were a kid?
Remember the first time you ordered something in the mail? All you did was think about how cool the thing was going to be.
Now, do you remember the let down when you got the item and it was crap?
It's like that, every single day.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
Firefox is pretty good on OS X. There seem to be a lot of whiners about it, but I have it running almost constantly with varying numbers of tabs and it's always worked very well. I certainly prefer it to Safari or Opera. Who cares about native widgets? I'm looking at the Web, not a bunch of Apple themed Web pages.
Even if we do assume that their figures are incredibly accurate, this is how it shakes out:
Windows: +0.20
Linux: +0.15
Mac: -0.30
Not a huge deal, although I think the Linux uptick is a bit of an unreported story here. Also, what's with the share of Windows NT growing from 0.71% to 0.80% (the only other MicroSoft OS showing growth)? That's like a 12.7% increase for an ancient OS! So, yeah, given that anomaly, I'm somewhat disinclined to give their figures that much weight.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
You really think a significant number of people are using parallels to web surf? And if they are -- running OS X but actually choosing to do basic stuff like web surfing within a virtualized XP -- that actually says to me that they prefer XP, and they are being correctly counted.
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.
I never contend that apple has to sell OSX for any old box, as that would be business mistake for them, but if they aren't going to sell OSX, then they need to offer more hardware choices.
Mac market share is stable at about the 6% mark. These are the people who like integrated monitors or the toy mini. Pro just won't matter for market share as it is ultra high end.
If Apple actually has the slightest interest in increasing market share beyond the current they have to offer what mainstream buyers want and are used to. A decent mid size tower at an affordable price.
I actually want to buy a Mac. I use Linux/Solar/Windows at work and would like a decent Unix workstation at home, but don't find Linux polished enough (my desktop at work runs Redhat).
What is stopping me is the lack of decent midrange hardware without integrated monitor. This gap has to be obvious to Apple execs, perhaps they are moving the company in the direction of devices and away from computer and don't care about computer market share.
I will buy a new computer in the next 6 months. No midrange tower or equivalent and it will be another PC and that will be my computer for the next 4 or 5 years.
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
Oh dear... 10 minutes on Google should fix most of that:
I've never seen a Macintosh POS system.http://macpos.com/e t/e s/e nsepos.com/
I've never seen a Macintosh timeclockhttp://www.christianjames.n
http://www.posim.net/
http://www.posoe.com/e
http://www.shopkeeper.com/
http://www.sixths
http://www.xpertmart.com/
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
I've never seen a medical billing package that runs on the Mac.http://mac.unimaas.nl/sap/
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.Most of the stuff on
Security Log of Rent-A-Cop Sam MacSnappy
9:54 a.m. The store is due to open in a few minutes, and already there's a vast, unruly mob outside. Look at those thugs. I saw one guy crunching on a celery stick in an obviously agressive manner, and another slurping a Zero Fat Smoothie with total hostility for authority. Go ahead, Zippy. Make my day.
10:13 a.m. First arrest. Somebody named Merriam got a little too friendly with the new sub-$1000 unit. I told him, "You can do those kinds of things at home in your 1970's-decorated palace of sin," but in the end I still had to mace the sucker.
10:28 a.m. Man down! Man down! They're got Security Associate Clyde Dawkins on his back, and they're tickling him with a long feather boa and singing the "Macarena"! It's just unspeakable!
10:37 a.m. We've barricaded the storefront, but I don't know how long we can last. All these guys in thick, black retro eyeglass frames are throwing themselves against our makeshift barriers, then collapsing with long, attenuated sighs. It's like watching insane undernourished salmon trying to spawn--salmon in pencil-thin black jeans! The staffers are no help, standing around discussing their favorite yogurts and "the identify crisis of the Finder," whatever the hell that is.
10:48 a.m. That's it. I quit. No money is worth watching a grown man kiss an iPod.
I went out to see it with some of my MIT buddies; we weren't expecting much after ST1, so it waay beat the expectation game. One of the guys gushed afterwards, "That was exponentially better than the last movie."
All being geeks, we turned and started at him. "Ummm," I said, raising one eyebrow, "you do realize you are extrapolating from only two data points?" He turned red as a beet.
But apparently industry analysts have no mathematical shame.
There's a million reasons why market share could bounce down or up in single month. Maybe people were waiting for Vista machines with more memory. Maybe the manufacturers gave some nice rebates. Maybe a couple of big corporate customers decided to by a boatload of vista boxes for testing. Maybe somebody counted wrong.
Wake me up when you have the quarterly figures. No, make that semi-annual.
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I use Firefox on OS X, and my main issue is that it doesn't feel like a "proper Mac application". Certain things don't work like every other program.
For example, on single-line text input boxes, a Mac user should be able to hit the up arrow or down arrow to go to the beginning or end of the line. Firefox doesn't behave correctly.
Widgets don't just look wrong; they look like they were pulled off of a Windows machine. And submit buttons are a different size than regular buttons.
In the OS X version of Firefox, the menus aren't Mac-like at all.
Don't get me wrong; I actually prefer Firefox to other browsers. But Firefox has been on the Mac platform since 2003. Within the last four years, the theme has changed several times. Heck, the toolbar icons have changed at least once under each incarnation(Phoenix, Firebird, and Firefox). Within those four years, I would have expected an attempt at making the browser act and look like a proper Mac application, rather than a port from Windows.
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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