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Apple Now Selling Better Than One Laptop In Six
Lucas123 writes "Apple's share of the laptop market has grown over the past few years and the company is now beating Gateway in sales, according research firm NPD Group Inc. in Port Washington, NY. 'Their sales are continuing to grow faster than the rest of the marketplace,' the firm stated. In June Apple was responsible for 17.6% of laptops sold (at retail) in the US and is now in third place behind HP and Toshiba."
Most college kids I see at coffee shops have a Mac notebook...
I guess Apple's strategy of marketing to younger people is finally paying off. Also, does this prove the iPod's halo effect is Real?
Let me preface my comments by saying that I have not used in a Mac in 6 years or more. So I am not a zealot. From what I saw at Best Buy this weekend, I think the sales may go up even more. I hadn't realized that they were selling them now, but I saw a crowd ganged around a table where they had the laptops and iMacs sitting out for people to play around with. There was a steady stream of people and you could feel a sense of excitement about it. Unfortunately I was there to buy a washer and dryer...
With Vista firmly planted on the rocks, Apple are in a strongest position they have been in since the original Mac.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm not surprised by this. In terms of Apple computer products the iBook is the closest thing to the iPod. Also laptops tend to be viewed by the public as more personal in nature than desktops. The question is now: how far up the Mac line the iPod carryover will go?
PS
For those too lazy to read the summary, this doesn't include online sales.
" In June Apple was responsible for 17.6% of laptops sold (at retail) in the US and is now in third place behind HP and Toshiba.""
Eh? So much for the overpriced for value stereotype.
Snore. Let's see the actual numbers that include direct order.
That's not to say that this isn't impressive, but how about keeping the sensationalism down a bit?
In any event, this doesn't really get me excited, as I'm even less inclined to buy into Apple's expensive machines when I can run FreeBSD or Linux on the cheapest of the cheap laptops and be very happy.
It's too bad that more market share for Apple doesn't translate into more open hardware specs instead of "we support Windows and Mac OS."
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
from TFA:
> NPD, which collects its data primarily from retail sources and excludes
> most online and all direct sales
Given what a large (and qualitatively different) chunk of the market has been excluded from the stats, it doesn't seem like their 1/6 number is necessarily representative of the full state of the laptop market.
I'm writing this on a four year old G4 Tibook that continues to run and run and run...
I may never buy a new laptop again at this rate. Or, at least until OS X doesn't work on PPC chips.
Then, I'll just run OpenBSD...
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
My $0.02 armchair guesstimate is that Vista's resounding belly flop is helping Apple's sales figures. For most of those who yearn to escape Microsoft's bumbling clutches, the Orchard is definitely more inviting than the herring-scented wilds of Linuxland. I've got at least one family member of my own who has looked out through the broken window and found the air under the apple trees to be a very welcome change (and two others are seriously considering it).
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
What percentage of the retail market are laptops? If it's a high percentage then that would mean that an increasing number of people are truly abandoning windows. I for one would love to survey those who have purchased Apple laptops with the following.
;-)
1. Long time Apple evangelist.
2. Recent convert. I use to use Windows XP.
3. Recent convert. I don't like/hate Vista.
If the third option is chosen then we would could with some certainty conclude that MS finally has shot itself in the foot with Vista. If option three is not the majority answer then I guess the holy war debate will continue.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
A lot of "budget" laptops have Vista that have no business running on them.
Basically, if a laptop has less that 2 GB of RAM and a decent graphics card, it should NOT be sold with Vista.
If Dell was smart they wouldn't see a single laptop that didn't have 2GB of RAM.
What's happening is people buy these ugly underpowered Windows laptops, many brands with crappy trialware pre-installed -- and then see the performance of a Mac.
If this article was about HP's 28.4% market share or Dell's 23.8% market share in total computer sales according to IDC (like this one, this wouldn't be on Slashdot. That said, it's great that an alternative to Windows is becoming somewhat mainstream, but we don't need quite so many articles about it, it's starting to become like "Vista adoption slow" or "Microsoft hates its customers" or "Microsoft is gaming ISO" or "It's finally the year of the Linux Desktop" or "Firefox gaining marketshare", we've heard it a million times, and it's not really news anymore...
...that they don't suck as much as Gateway? Seriously, Gateways are a POS. All of them. Ever. The only decent things were their servers, and that was via acquisition. When Apple starts beating Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, etc, then they should be proud. Oh, and I'm a current Mac owner. Have been since the late 80's.
"Unfortunately I was there to buy a washer and dryer..."
The iWasher and the iDryer.
I find it kinda amusing that either earlier today or yesterday there was an article about how Gateway got bought out for just over a dollar a share and most the comments were tashing the company's business model and how it was driven into the ground.
Then this article triumphs being tied with Gateway as an achievement.
White Macbook - $1099
Dell Ubuntu - $959 (configure similar to Macbook)
And imagine you are just another teenager buying a laptop. Do you think Apple won't be able to impress you?
This will get modded flamebait, but I doubt that this bump in sales will be sustainable.
I expect that lot of these new Apple buyers are people who, like me, just grew weary of Microsoft,their attitude, and the endless virus and other problems.
The problem for Apple is that they, and the fanboys, are selling the product as perfection, as complete out of the box, as seamless and needing no attention beyond plugging in the power supply once a day.
The reality of course is much different. Macs have some pretty serious deficiencies, even in the much vaunted user interface. Macs crash just like a Windows computer. Macs experience hardware issues. Macs, if you use them heavily, need regular maintenance to keep them running smoothly.
After two years with a Mac I tell people that really it's no more or less easy to use than a Windows machine, and has just as many irritations and problems. They're just different irritations and problems.
Because Apple sells their computers as the most perfect thing in the world, all of those day to day issues seem that much more disappointing.
My guess is that a lot of these "switchers" will hang onto their MacBooks for one cycle, then revert back to Windows in order to avoid compatibility issues, cost issues, and in some situations the lack of specific software that isn't available on the Mac.
At the end of the day there just isn't that much about the Mac that makes it a slam dunk for every user.
Three Squirrels
People have been told 'Apple is dying' for decades. This makes your average Joe inclined to avoid them.
But when you have young people, who haven't had this drummed into them, and they see the success of the iPod and the iPhone, they're happy to consider a Mac just like any other brand. And because they have an iPod, there's brand awareness, so it may well be the first laptop they look at. And if they like it, they're sold and out of the market for something else.
Just last week, I went into an Apple store to buy my wife a 15" Macbook Pro. The salesperson told me they had none in stock, didn't know when they would have any in stock, and that it was a national shortage at all of the Apple stores. He suggested ordering it online. Not entirely believing him, I checked stores like Best Buy and they all indicated long back orders on 15" Pro's. So, we ended up ordering one online, with a 2-3 week lead time.
Don't get me started on the free iPod offer. Buy a Macbook directly from Apple, pay upfront for an iPod (including tax), clip UPC's, send them in, and then wait for a check.
-Can I have XP instead of Vista on this one ?
-Can I install Ubuntu ?
I guess I could try to run Linux on the Mac hardware, but I'm worried so few people probably do that, I would be in relatively uncharted waters and have lots of problems. So what's the scoop? Does Linux on MacBook Pros work, including driving the 30" screen at full resolution? I doubt I could run VMWare on a Linux MacBook, which would be a big problem.
> That's the Vista Black Hole of Suck effect.
Goatse!?
Eww, I have to go wash my brain now.
I'd be curious to see how these figures compare against the earnings of the companies against which they directly compete and more importantly, the non-portable equivalents of their products. As far as most people are concerned, apple are mainly selling nicely boxed PC laptop components at a knock-down price. I do not care to start a flame war as to the quality (or lack thereof) of said components, however apple appear to have abandoned the the innovation in their previous market and designs and are now (to me) are pandering solely to (and dominating) to the youth market consisting of people with a large degree disposable income who care mainly about appearance. For devices which are going to be maintained and upgraded over a period of time (desktop PCs for example) apple seem to have fallen way behind the curve and thus, I would like to see direct comparisons between (say) apple vs lenovo for laptops or apple vs dell (or fill in the blank for cheap) desktops.
NPD is brick and mortar only excluding some notably large brick and mortar outlets (walmart). Although it encompasses a large fraction of the market it under represent any firm with large online or mail order sales or any firm that sells a lot through Walmart. I do believe Apple is gaining a lot of lap top market share because it's price premium isn't as high in that market and it's got brand power that Lenovo or Gateway don't. I was thinking of recommending we get one for the office because of the amount of print work we do.
I am not a Apple fan, but I recognize it's strengths and weaknesses (note to people in the Steve Jobs RDF, it's not perfect).
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
How about the option: "I used to use Linux and switched when I found out that someone could make *nix both pretty and easy to use!"
(Not that I found Linux hard to use, but I wasted a lot of time with sysadmin tasks. I cherish that time because it taught me a lot, but in the end, after I'd learned enough, I just wanted to be productive. I'd still choose Linux over Windows any day.)
APPLE laptops have better parts then there desktops that use laptop cpus and hd's
also the mac book pro has a better video then the new imacs and the mac pro that only comes with a 7300 in the base system and they come with 2gb of ram the mac pro only comes with 1gb.
Also the ram in the mac book costs less.
I was just wondering where I could plunk down $1500 on a laptop with a 13" LCD.
Boot Camp is mostly just a nice marketing gadget. It tells people they can move to Mac hardware without the "risk" of cutting themselves off from Windows. But, this is mostly just a feel-good/hand-hold to ease the transition. Once people have switched to a Mac what % really use Boot Camp and run Windows? I don't have any numbers but I guess once people experience OSX there's very little motivation to buy an XP license.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The music industry's business model is busted. Traditional news media's business model is busted. Hell, you could argue that Microsoft's is busted. Having a busted business model doesn't mean that a company is small or easy to beat.
Apple is further hampered by their policy of selling their own OS on their own hardware, while Gateway piggybacked on the success of Windows. Apple still beat them out. So, yes, I'd say that's an achievement -- if only an achievement until Gateway is bought by Acer, but an achievement nonetheless.
Since when is beating Gateway a badge of honor? This is more a sign that Gateway is falling off and not growing like the rest of the industry.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
All new Windows laptops sold are Vista. What's even worse, the hardware in these new laptops does not readily support Windows XP. I just bough a Gateway MT6711 from BestBuy for $450 closeout sale. The geek at BestBuy said it was impossible to install Windows XP on this model. At that point a normal person would have walked out. It took me 5 hours, combining drivers from HP, Toshiba, Intel, Motorola, Realtek and Marvel, to get the Gateway running XP. I'm thinking about setting up a shop to install Windows XP in these new Vista-only laptops. Seems like there is a demand.
Three years ago I helped my parents find a great deal on a Dell laptop for my sister, who was just heading off to college at NYU. I was rather pleased with myself too; we used one of those 50% off coupons I found and got a great-spec machine for the price.
When the family got together for the holidays I asked her how the computer was working out; she complained to me that all the cool kids had MacBooks and she was "embarrassed to be seen in public with the ugly Dell next to all the sleek Macs."
So I can honestly say the Apple's success here is unsurprising to me; the laptop market is one that is well-suited to Apple's core strengths. Though a desktop is largely perceived as an appliance - it's an utilitarian box that you use to do stuff with - a laptop has the additional function of being a status symbol and expression of personal taste. Your desktop stays at home, but you can carry your laptop around with you. An iMac may look great, but its usefulness as a signifier of taste is constrained by the simply fact that it stays in your room. Now that the laptop market has become so important, Apple is in a great position to capitalize on their previously under-exploited brand identity.
And this is before we even consider Apple's incredibly devious "buy a Macbook, get an iPod" promotion. If Mom and Dad offer to buy you a computer for college, are you going to choose the PC or the Mac that comes with a great MP3 player? Unless you're a gamer, you're going to opt for the latter (and even if you are a gamer, you may just decide to get your fix by playing networked games with the roommates on an 360 anyway),
When you make products that suck less.
is passing them on their way up, while Gateway is falling down the well. Obviously at some point those two intersect. But more important is the fact that Apple is selling premium gear at a tidy profit while Gateway sells commodity gear at a razor thin margin. If you're a stockholder who are you going to reward and who are you going to punish, regardless of marketshare? You're conflating marketshare and stock price when that isn't reasonable.
Contra-wise I'd say it's darn impressive that Apple can outsell a competitor, who has widespread retail distribution, and who is selling roughly the same hardware at a significantly lower price...
"...The most fabulous object in the universe!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I fit into the camp of:
Use the best tool for the job.
Most of the time I think that tool is Linux, but that is besides the point. I don't get Mac laptops. Why? I understand that OSX is the superior platform for audio/video/graphic work, but if I was doing that; I would want the beefiest hardware in a workstation I could get, not the "sacrifice power & upgradability" that you get with a laptop. So that brings us to the reason for laptops; "portable office machine". or Get the job done while on the go. Yes, I am aware that that you can get MS Office for Mac, but then how do you justify the price and general compatibility issues that would then arise in a mixed-OS shop?
In short; I don't get it. If you have a Mac Desktop, and need to do your audio/video work with on the go, then I can completely understand; but the sales numbers that they show, indicate that there are more laptops then desktops being sold.
Please explain this to me.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
(eom)
It is definitely not my reason for owning a macbook, but I heard that several times:
....."
".... and it can also run Windows if I really need it for something
I think the Intel switch and the option to run Windows is a huge selling point for many.
For me on the other hand is that it is the only laptop that actually runs UNIX out of the box with a functional desktop, without constant headaches for drivers and all.
I respect, love and use Linux every day, but when you face all the little quirks of a laptop when trying to put Linux on it (especially a new one) you know what I am talking about. And when you think you solved it all, you realize that your battery dies a lot faster, or your backlight just does not go out when the screen saver starts.
I myself own a Macbook, and while I have seen many OSes, touched and owned many hardware devices, I have to say that this was my best ever computer/OS selection. I admin servers and develop mostly for LAMP web, if you wondered, and yes I also enjoy having a decent DVD player program with a remote under UNIX (yes mplayer + lirc + whatever - but i mean out of the box, not after 3 days of hacking)
And as usual no reference to prove that. Nice try, better luck next time.
The numbers in the summary do not include direct sales (i.e., nearly all corporate buys) or internet sales. In other words, it doesn't include the two main channels through which laptops are sold. The article, however, does include the full numbers:
Apple's share of U.S. [laptop] sales [is] 5.6%, far behind leaders HP (28.4%) and Dell (23.6%) but tied with Gateway.
In other words, Apple sells 1 laptop in 20 (in the USA; it's closer to 1 in 50 if you look at global numbers), not 1 in 6. Not quite as impressive as the summary or title make it appear, eh?
Your next major home OS upgrade will cost you a bit per installation.
Frankly I'd be more supportive of MacOS if it was "sold" like Solaris is sold; you get a license for all supported versions with your hardware. Or that you could buy "N" upgrades upfront with hardware purchase for a reasonable fee (like 50% off).
$80 for what amounts to service packs is irritating to me.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I have an expensive 24" iMac now with memory max'd out. It's very cool. Now for portability hmmm... I was hoping for a low power cheap linux thing... Probably rather have an Asus Eee if the price is still low vs Nokia tablet or whatever, but I may have to login to my school acct and see what they're offering for discounts on the MacBook, I think you get an iPod Nano with that too. I already have one, but there's eBay. and BTW, music sounds like shit on the iPod, rather like the iRiver and iAudio , my friend has the H240 [?] and I have the X5L... but in the Nano's defense it's great form factor and battery life, good for lecture type audio book sort off stuff...
My friend got the MacBook retail it was nice, don't expect to play games on it. For that it sucks. Need a MacBook Pro and he got one of those too. I think if you want it for your main computer the MacBook Pro is the way to go, unless you can't afford it.
Fanboys got to astroturf or they'll die. Just can't handle the truth.
Apple's sell a little over 1% of the world's PC.
Behind Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba.
heck, homemade linux boxes probably outsell apple.
Black Hole of Suck? Is that a new Microsoft Windows acronym, BHOS, to go with BSOD, Blue Screen of Death?
How about HMC, High Maintenance Costs? It's the PMS of computers: "I'm sorry, I can't work today, I have a virus."
Or maybe SMISABM, Support for Microsoft is Support for Adversarial Business Methods?
If it's a high percentage then that would mean that an increasing number of people are truly abandoning windows.
More specifically, dumping MS Windows for X Windows.
Someone I knew bought an iPod, and since (afaik) it only works with iTunes, I was trying to setup iTunes on a PC.
It wanted to know his address, and that was OK, except... I could not tab the focus to the 'State' field in the address dialog which was required to be filled in to proceed). It was skipped in the tab order, with no way to select it except with a mouse. Of which that machine had Zero. (Windows MCE box, to which all his CDs had previously been ripped, fully setup and used previously without a mouse.)
Not the biggest issue in the world, but pretty annoying.
Note the qualifier "at retail" in the teaser. I seem to recall an article some months or years back that said AMD had overtaken Intel in chip sales...at retail stores. It was trumpeted like some great victory or something.
The truth of the matter is that retail sales of computer hardware pales in comparison to corporate and online purchases. If you focus solely on the corporate market, Apple makes up 5% or less (plus or minus a point or so) of the total market. Go look around your average company and see how many Mac's you see. Outside of the art/marketing/web design departments, it's very unlikely you'll find any of them. Last I heard, Linux had a better penetration versus Microsoft than Apple has versus the PC, and that's not saying much.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I find it kinda amusing that either earlier today or yesterday there was an article about how Gateway got bought out for just over a dollar a share and most the comments were tashing the company's business model and how it was driven into the ground.
That's what you find amusing about Mac fanboys?
How about folks bitching about Microsoft's control of the operating system turning around and getting excited about Apple, which controls both the operating system and the hardware, as if Apple would be any less noxious if it had the kind of marketshare that Microsoft does.
That said, if someone came to me for advice about a choice between Vista and Mac, I'd recommend Mac. Vista blows that hard. Which may have as much to do with the recent spike in Apple sales as anything else.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I'll probably get modded as troll and I know this is well-covered ground, but, in the UK at least, people are interested in using OSX but the entry price point is too high against the competition.
I wanted to buy my mother (owns iPod, likes iTunes, needs new computer) some sort of Mac, but even the Mini with IMO the bare essentials (DVDRW, iWork, KB&Mouse) is £633 = $1265. Sitting next to it at the store was an HP with DVDRW, MS Works and KB&Mouse for £250 = $500. The specs on the Mini are better but we're talking about a computer for mail, web, office, photos, iTunes.
The HP had Vista so I bought her a digital camera...
How many have there been?
For what it's worth, your analysis is completely on-target for how I'll be making my next laptop purchase.
1) I want to be done with Windows (as much as possible). In the hopefully rare case where I need to load Windows, their decision to go with Intel helps.
2) I want the stability of Unix.
3) I don't want to be tinkering with Linux. I just want things to work.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I first bought an iBook when OS 10.2 came out. I needed a laptop that just worked before going over to Europe for a semester and I remember getting strange looks as the crazy american kid (later in the semester 3 more mac users revealed themselves) with the Mac. But I was switching from PC/Linux to OSX because it was the cake (Unix goodnes) and icing too (MS Office, Photoshop, etc.)
Now that I am back in Grad School, they're everywhere and put my powerbook to shame. Eventually when OSX 10.5 is released I'm upgrading, likely to a Macbook.
But this past week has been hell. I've had to use a Dell laptop because of a specific application that is Windows only (will not mention any names 3D Studio Max). Every time I go to click the track pad mouse button I end up going for the middle out of habbit and hit the right mouse button...Any idea how annoying that is...
That being said, it's the first time I've really gotten to use XP Pro (thank god it's not Vista) and it's not quite as bad as say Vista. Everyone that has a Vista Laptop at school hate it. Half their applications don't work and word spreads quickly. As someone said, it has more to do with Vista really, really sucking, that more and more kids are to college this year with a Mac. But don't rule out the "coolness ipod trendy factor other". Especially amoungst the girls where they think it's a fashion acessory to go with their iPods...now if the Macbook only came in pink!
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Apple, selling a laptop running an OS compatible with just ~5% of computers out there has a staggering 17% of the entire laptop market.
I live in Boston, Mass. and here it seems that most of the computers are Macs (as far as laptops go). Go into any coffeeshop, and well, it's all Macs. We hosted a Plone Sprint and training session here, and it was about 70% Macbook Pros (we converted one guy halfway though, and I bought a new MBP then as well). The office I worked in, which is a co-working suite called the Betahouse in Cambridge (it's all web developers) is 90% Mac.
Maybe it's just the huge number of 'creatives' in the city, but it seems that around NYC and Boston, that Apple's pretty well taken over. Hell, my office has 70% of the people carrying iPhones (and that was true the first week they were out). I have yet to actually see anyone with a Zune. Period.
What's odd is that I lived in North Carolina for about 8 months, and most of the computers there were Windows-based PCs. My 4 macs were seen as oddities down there. Here it's par for the course.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
The constant improvement in Macs just keeps getting better. I have a 6-year old 700mhz iBook running OS 10.3 Panther, and it blows away most PC's for day-to-day tasks. The only thing I like better are newer Macs.
Even Linux is losing its allure - I still run it on servers, and enjoy it more than Windows - but I'm sorry, I have work to do, and too many Linux apps require me to read documentation - usually poorly written - for hours to get stuff to work. I have no experience using OS X server and frankly have been avoiding it because I'm afraid I'll like it too much.
I love the concept of Linux, I love the licensing freedom, but I can't understand why it's so difficult to install stuff. I don't have time to troubleshoot utterly obscure conflicts that occur more often than not when I try to install stuff.
Vista is a nightmare. Period. End of story. I know you can still get XP on new systems, but I know that MS will pull the plug on XP sooner rather than later.
Here's my problem. I am a networking consultant, and PC repair is a big part of my business - and I can no longer recommend to people that they buy PC's. They just suck too hard. I am in the position of having to tell people to buy Macs, even though I am not a Mac tech and although I can work a Mac as an end-user, I don't really know how to fix them. I can't recommend Linux to end-users, although I will recommend it to business that have locked-down machines that only need to do A, B and C - simply because an average person just can't be expected to install stuff on a Linux box. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking it's just too difficult.
So here I am, cutting myself off from future business because I'm telling people to replace their old PC's with new Macs. Anyone know the best way to get trained as a Mac technician without actually working for Apple?
There IS a market. I run a local pc sales and service store. we build our own pc clones and do service on pcs and macs. We get people buying stuff from best buy and bringing it in all the time wanting xp on it. we're like, sure! We continually find that a lot of people just don't like vista, or don't want to change from their tried and true xp. At the same time, we have some people that think vista is the coolest thing in the world, and can't wait to get their new vista machine home. i just love catering to both sides :)
1995 called: they want the "Mac vs. PC Flame War" back.
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Its has done me well, but I also use Win XP specifically for 3D solids mechanical plastic part design, because no reputable software for 3D mech design is on the Mac (yes I have used Ashlar).
I also run Win XP w/Boot Camp sometimes on my MacBook Pro and it is OK for occassional work (oldest model Mac Book Pro).
But, I envision running the next MacBook Pro with a solid state hard drive and kicking my old Dells out the door by probably January 2008 at MacWorld.
iPhone, in spite of massive FUD, has been zero learning curve, everything basically worked, and bi-directional synching is seconds per day to accomplish. This is a FIRST for a cell phone, in spite of what Microsoft's & Palm's CEOs so loudly stated with such verve before the iPhone launch.
Apple's product work, work well, and don't require $2000 training classes.
I am not surprised that Apple's market share is growing 3 times the PC growth.
I don't think anyone else is surprised at the growth either. Apple's team new they were right and stayed the course for 10 years to make this all happen. That is what it takes.
I am no Apple fanboy, been around /. for enough years to be pretty cynical about all corporations and technology cheerleaders but I bought a MacBook Pro about two months ago and am surprised to have come to the conclusion that it's the best piece of hardware I've ever owned.
I don't mean that in a fevered, evangelical way because, really, I don't care what the rest of the world uses but for me, personally, switching has made a big difference to my productivity and enjoyment of computers - I'd kind of forgotten the excitement I used to feel back in the day.
Over the past couple of years, Apple seem to be have been slowly but steadily getting it right in a sustained manner that I suspect will come more clearly to fruition when Leopard is released in October. I was kind of slow to notice this build-up, kind of resistant to the idea of buying into the cult of Apple and probably should have made the switch sooner, could have used this productivity boost a year ago, but, whatever, I'm glad that I eventually cottoned on.
Again, I don't much care what the rest of the world does as long as my experience and working environment keep improving. Some enjoy treating this as a spectator sport, like a never-ending baseball match between Apple and Microsoft, enjoying each play that seems to bring victory that little bit nearer. Bollox.
Sure, Apple probably will see quite a jump by the holiday season but Microsoft have simply dominated the market for too long to be pushed aside - the vast majority of people don't know and don't care to know much about computers and will happily "upgrade" to Vista when their existing machines die. What we will see, however, is a fairly fast and comprehensive migration towards Mac by programmers and other people who need to be creative and productive with computers. That probably represents just 15% of the market but it's an important 15% and giving those people better tools to do what they do is going to be beneficial for everyone.
In the meantime, I certainly recommend giving the whole Mac proposition a closer look, you might find yourself as surprised as I have been.
They (ok, WE) aren't bitching because of Microsoft's control of the marketshare-leading OS; we bitch because of Microsoft's control of the marketshare-leading OS and that it SUCKS. And even that isn't the real problem; the real problem is that it SUCKS and sometimes is REQUIRED. (Examples abound, so I shall avoid annoying myself by listing any.) Did I mention it SUCKS?
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Buy an ipod to listen to music/podcasts. Go to istore to buy music/load podcasts. Get exposed to Macs. Need a computer Whats it going to be?
Apple has unprecedented brand loyalty that is largely gained by slingshot effect from the ipod. The upod user experience is flowing into other products too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think that being able to use any of the OS's a Dell could handle plus OS X was one of the factors that really got Apple to sell more computers. Before this, people were affraid to buy a machine which would be incompatible with work or school. After the move to Intel, they had no excuses and many saw the opportunity.
As for me, I'm still waiting for Apple to come out with something like a Tablet PC.
whatever flamebait, having a higher price is a marketing decision that increases capitolization. I believe their market share is higher in terms of dollars than stated, users sure, but dollars are what companies are after.
aparently people with mod points don't understand that dollars ARE more important than number of users, therefore having 1/6 of the users at 3x the price is a shrewd business move.
When Microsoft bailed Apple out by buying up it's stock. Get this: apple fanboys spin this as a "law suit settlement". Ha ha ha. They'd have lost any suit. They did not invent nor do they own the GUI.
Apple's finest hour : getting caught in bed with Microsoft.
Think Different!
I just bought my first Mac. A Santa Rosa macbook pro. And I use it almost exclusively now.
Here's what I don't like.
Ok, so why do I LIKE it (a lot)?
There's nothing not to like about this hardware.
Pair that up with the fact that their design team is solid and is producing exceptional quality designs such as the iPod line and the iPhone. (I don't own one and won't based on cost and that I have a good PDA phone but my colleague has one and I've tried it out and it's a good design.)
Apple made three pivotal moves:
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
I had a T800 but then the T1000 tried to blow it away. The older model was more solid but the later had vastly improved flexibility. The T1000 must have been using flash memory or something because moving parts were a bit of a no-go zone.
.
Do they support right clicking yet?
OSX does, what about the hardware?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
increases [market] capitalization.......appparently people with mod points don't understand that dollars ARE more important than number of users
Spelling/Grammar Nazi's don't care either way :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/reality_distortion_fi eld
There. That explains it.
Are you suggesting that it would be okay if Windows was an excellent product? If so, I think you just illustrated the divide between the free and commercial software mindsets quite well.
I don't, incidentally, mean that as a put-down. Tastes differ. But to me, it wouldn't matter if Windows was an incomparable paragon of superb engineering and design (though I would be happy to stop providing tech support to relatives). But having been forced to deal with expensive (in both time and money) transitions, first by Apple's abandonment of the Apple II line, and then by Microsoft's shenanigans from DOS 3.3 onwards, I've come to rely on Linux for the important stuff as much as possible for the freedom it gives me to control how I want to use my computer.
All that said, after having been forced to install Vista on the new laptop I got for my daughter because there are no XP drivers for some important components, I hope Apple eats Microsoft's lunch. But I still don't think Steve Jobs ascendant will be any more pleasant to deal with than Bill Gates was.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Will you douchebags just let the god damned "one button mouse" meme DIE already???
All current desktop Macs (except the Mini, which doesn't include a mouse) ship with the Mighty Mouse, which acts as a one-button by default but can be configured to have separate right and left click behavior.
All current laptop Macs have trackpads that act as one-button by default but can be configured so that a click while two fingers are in contact with the trackpad is interpreted as a right-click.
(IMHO two-button trackpads SUCK, because I always have to be conscious of where my thumb is so I don't left click when I want to right click, or vice versa. With the Mac I just have to put a second finger on the trackpad and click, without worrying which half of the button area is under my thumb at that particular moment.)
Apple has Mac OS license support subscription options for companies of all sizes.
You shouldn't complain on what you clearly don't know anything about.
Yeah, because nobody ever dumps Linux for an OSX machine they'll never have to tinker with just to make it work.
Like all the Apple commercials it is marketed towards people with a 4 year old mind (not saying your daughter isnt smart ;) )
better parts? thats the same cpu that comes in a dell. the same video board that comes in an HP....theres nothing special here, hell, they are even manufactured by AsusTek, you know, a "PEECEE" laptop maker.....the only thing special is the word Apple and the special chip to help keep everything nice and locked up
Math doesn't work the same way in canada...
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
You're missing a key point: Boot Camp and the promise of multi-boot makes getting an Apple machine a polyvalent solution.
While I am curious whether you've been looking for an opportunity to use that word in a sentence your whole life, I'm pretty sure that "polyvalent" doesn't really work here. The word's got a pretty specific use in chemistry and another in microbiology, after all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
why is it that software lock-in from microsoft is bad but hardware and software lock-in* is cool from apple?
* not to mention a lack of software support.
I'd like a Mac laptop. I don't feel much affinity towards Windows itself anymore, except that PC-based platforms are the only ones that do what I want them to.
As soon as Apple comes up with a convertible tablet PC with handwriting recognition, and something similar to OneNote (or a OneNote 2007 for OSX port) then I am not interested. I couldn't live without that app as a student -- it's simplified my life so much compared to the days of notebooks and paper.
Work. (As opposed to "fiddle with a computer.")
Are you adequate?
I wish you could install OSX on other hardware, like a cheap AMD box or something. Kinda wish their hardware was cheaper, I cant seem to justify buying a mac mini for 799.99 when I can get a machine with the same specs but a larger footprint and sometimes a free monitor for less, same goes for the iMac. Looks nice, but will it keep me on par with hardware technology until a few hardware updates to the line happen, seems hard if not impossible to update the video on the new iMac, really just how common are MXM video cards these days?
I'm thinking that person means Panther... if it's a really old cat, it's a Jaguar... and if it's a Puma, well, it should be put to sleep. :-)
Like my neighbor who returned 7 Gateways in a row? Sheesh. What are you smoking?
I wish that Apple stories were more grounded in facts than in sensasionalism...
Wow. Just wow.
It is a tremendously interesting time in computing based on the Vista flop and several excellent moves from Apple.
Apple has what is undoubtedly an excellent product in the macbook. While some posters have bemoaned the price (it's high, but it is what it is and there's some quality there or else there wouldn't be a topic here at all), in general I just really don't want Apple's business model to succeed.
To that end, I just built a Thinkpad X61 Tablet (that'll be here somewhere between now and Christmas) in an attempt to hold out on getting a macbook unlike the millions and millions. Principled Man vs. Excellent machine -- a couple of years should prove out the ending of what is a Sci-Fi sounding plot (i hope).
If your below story is true, with the sum of Gateway and Acer's notebook sales combined, won't that jack them quite a bit past Apple? Just a couple of months ago, Acer alone was just even with Apple notebook sales.
because it doesn't have a programming model comparable to Visual Studio 2005 and new 2008...
You got a hot rod Mac. Yes, you can configure it with quad-SLI and a massive RAID-0 suicide stripe. The one question is the same as the question asked in motorsports for decades: "How fast do you want to go? How much money have you got?"
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
And what really confuses PC types is that somebody like my wife would LOVE her inferior spec'd MacBook over a new MacBook Pro. I told her I'd get her a new MBP but she won't give up the MacBook....period.
As I'm typing this, yet another Apple commercial is on TV, which reminds of another element of the Apple success. I recently moved back to the US after living in England for two years. The only advertising I see in prime time and in NON-tech magazines is for Apple products. You know, advertise your product to the millions of people (who aren't tech geeks) in places they hang out, as opposed to page after page of ads in PC World and Wired magazines? Non-computer people need computers too (as silly as that sounds), so why not start advertising during the Late Show (just like the iMac commercial they just played)? I don't think I've ever seen a tv commercial for a Dell computer, or if I have, they aren't memorable.
don't act like security is the reason you're not on Windows and that you have to keep it separate from the net; I've had the same Windows XP install running for over a year and it runs as well as when I installed it, and there's no spyware.
It's sad that you would think a year is something to brag about. Having worked retail repair within the last three years, I can safely say you are a liar. People got creamed way faster than that and things have only gotten worse. Having to go through the pain of a Winblows reinstall every year is not acceptable for most people. Computers are a durable good and people expect them to last longer than a pair of flip flops.
Vista is no better and people are bolting for the exits labled "Linux" and "Mac".
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Some weight numbers would be nice.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Let's be fair: Microsoft Mac Business Unit has produced versions of Office for Mac that are superior to Office for Windows. The two iterations of Office for Mac OS X have both run rings around any version made in the same time frame for Windows. And let us not forget the legendary versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint for Mac (Word 5.x, Excel 4.x, Powerpoint 3.x) made before they became an integrated suite. The first version of Office for Mac sucked badly because it was a shovelware port from Windows. People hated it and refused to upgrade from the previous version. MS felt the heat from that. So they started Mac Business Unit and the first thing that came from them was Office For Mac 98 for Classic Mac OS. Then came Office 2000 for Classic and Office v.X. I still use v.X on my iMac G3 and my Clamshell iBook. I use Office 2004, the most recent iteration, with my spiffy MacBook.
However, 2004 is likely my last MS Office purchase. I will either transition to iWork or to the Mac OS X port of OpenOffice.Org. Office 2007 on Windows is a smoking train wreck. Office 2008 for Mac will be the first Intel native Office. Intel native code GOOD. However, if it's in any way, shape, or form like Office 2007, it will never darken my MacBook. Screw that. With Numbers, the iWork spreadsheet, there is an Apple answer to every element of MS Office. It may take a learning curve, but it's better than struggling with the learning curve that is also apparently part of the Office 2007 experience.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
... and the ONLY bullet point on that buzzword list that I actually use is QE.
But I'm one of those freaks who uses an OS only because it happens to have the applications I want/need to use. From that standpoint, OS X and Win2k (I haven't used XP and don't plan to bother with Vista) both do exactly what I need them to do - they run my apps.
The fact that Apple keeps adding features I don't use while continuing to neglect the stuff I do use (*cough* finder *cough*) is a source of great annoyance to me. The fact that Windows is just an ugly-ass API between 3d Studio Max and my hardware - and that I don't need or use it for anything else - is a source of no annoyance to me.
The one feature that you list this is an actual point if niftiness is the single-DVD install. It's quite convenient.
Of course, the parent to your post is an idiot, so we're both ultimately wasting keystroke. All glory to the intertron, etc.
People still use their Thinkpad 600 from 1997. I know I do and it's still my favorite machine. This is being typed on a five year old X30 because my data processing finally exceeded what a 233 MHz processor could deliver. The 600's screen, battery life and keyboard are all superior. With 300MB of RAM, a 30 GB hard drive and a network card and Etch, it is more than adequate for normal use. Both of these machines were bought used and both are in excellent condition. I have carried both daily for more than a year and almost never had to boot.
I also have a five year old T model that was trashed when I bought it, but still works very well if it is not transported. The screen is excellent and the keyboard is comfortable if beat. The problem is with broken aluminum frame parts and a missing screw. I suspect the machine was used at a high school until it was no longer reliable when carried.
I've seen TiBooks in similar shape, but problems with newer aluminum based models. While I can't vouch for them in the same way, MacBooks look like good machines except for the lack of buttons and pointer device. People with touch pads have to lug a mouse.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I had an iBook. the video card died. It was long past warranty repair. I liked OSX better than fighting with Linux on my thinkpad, so..
I got a Powerbook. The logic board broke twice. The second time it was just out of warranty, and I refused to buy the AppleCare extended warranty (which doesn't cover drops). Sometimes it recognizes its "apple memory" sometimes it didn't. It just became too flaky to use, so I got another iBook.
The iBook came to me out of the box bad (logic board). I sent it in for service and they replaced the board, but took my bluetooth out. In my first two months of owning it, it spent more time at Apple than on my lap. Earlier this year, I dropped it and broke the screen hinge.
Faced with replacing it, I switched back. For about a thousand dollars, I got a gateway with a 15.4" screen, an ATI graphics card (I can play games again!), plenty of RAM, HDD, and a SD slot. To get a comparable macbook (the pro) would have cost about 3x the price. I can boot anything I want (including osx86 if I feel like it) and if I need to replace a drive, ram, or wireless card, I dont end up with a ridiculous pile of screws and the anger of the "Apple Genius".
Add me to the ranks of the "One Less Mac" crowd. I can take the glare of the hipsters at the coffee shop.
I've begun to notice almost as many macs as windows laptops in airport waiting areas. Maybe the PC users just don't enjoy using their machines and don't take them out while waiting for a plane.
Minor irritant, dedazo claims:
Oh, so you you fix PCs used by stupid people. I guess it's OK if you generalize that to everyone.
No, the hundreds of people with broken windoze I saw were not stupid, their software was. Anyone who works retail is quickly freed from the M$ elitism you suffer from.
Care to tell me why Mac stores are not crowded with all sorts of the same? No, it's not the popularity of Windoze, or that the Mac crowd is really smart somehow. Mac's core market is people who don't want to know about the workings of their computer, they just want it to work and amazingly enough, it does. Macs run for years without problems much like gnu/linux and other sane systems.
Oooh, I guess I must be lying, too.
Why yes, dedazo, you are! The posting history cited above shows both dishonesty and malice.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1 out of 6 doesn't seem like much of the market to me. Seeing as it is a two man show, 1 out of 2 laptops would be more like it. Apple is finally catching up to it's competitor. That is because they are finally pricing competitively.
I just purchased a notebook the other day after pricing them out for a week. The notebook I got from dell cost me $1100 with coupons. A Macbook Pro with IDENTICAL specs came out to a little over $2000. I'm sorry but looking trendy isn't worth an additional $900.
This version of the Flame War requires win2k or better, or OSX. There is a linux port, but it needs 2.6.x, and is still in beta.
Sorry 1995, you can't have this one.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Not at all; I am merely saying that if, for example, I am to get my tap water from a single source, I prefer it not be laden with heroic doses of lead and mercury. My post was meant to address the GPs attempted charge of hypocrisy; unlike a certain chair-tossing torgolodyte in Redmond, I welcome a healthy Linux base despite my personal rejection of the OS. And, were Macs still running on an OS 9 type environment, I probably would have switched six years ago.
But in a world where the only choice were Windows — well, there would not be a buggy fast enough to get me to my Amish conversion ceremony. English.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Windows has 97% market penetration. Some of these will be idiots; it's an inescapable fact. That is, people that are most likely to download & run reallycoolscreensaverlol.exe (the one that kindly asks you click "yes" to all security 'warnings' that may pop up)
At that point, they go and see idiots like you. You do no favours to further open-source at all. What a shame.
throw new NoSignatureException();
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
Funny thing about dell, is you have choices.... like
dell Inspiron 1420: $1,159...
You left out the main features which actually do matter in "choices."
dell Inspiron 1420:
# Looks like crap; don't want to get caught dead with one of these. Why not add pimping neon lights to this model too?
black macbook (std build):
# Looks great. Not ashamed to use in public; Apple actually employs designers
And not to mention there's an extra $275 markup on the black macbook. Compare those specs in white and the Mac is $1374.
I've seen a lot of Apple laptops over the years and some I liked and some I didn't. I've also seen and worked with a lot of other laptops as a web designer, network administrator, and consultant. I use a DELL Dimension with graphics and hard drive upgrades for work and have always been very happy with it.
My wife is just starting out as an assitant professor and got the laptop they purchased for her last week -- a Macbook Pro.
Leaving the OS totally out of the equation, the laptop itself is very elegant. It's very lightweight. It's very thin. It seems to be very well made. It is probably the nicest laptop I've ever physically had my hands on. The solution that Apple (finally!) came up with to prevent the power connector from snapping off of their motherboards is shear brilliance.
If you haven't seen one, the end of the power cord is magnetic. It pulls itself up against the power contacts on the laptop without anything really slotting into anything. You can knock the power connector loose from the laptop with absolutely no damage to the laptop. There's no traditional "plug in" mechanism holding it together. It's only held against the laptop (rather than inside a piece that's soldered to the mobo) by magnetism.
Quoth he
"It's all academic anyway..."
Not the halo effect in my case.
My mom's HP broke down one too many times. She got fed up and bought a Mac at my suggestion. After playing with it for a couple of weeks, I knew I had to get one, too. So, when the latest Macbook Pros came out recently I snapped one up.
No one in my family had ever owned a Mac until 3 months ago. Now, we have an iMac, a Macbook (brother-in-law got one after seeing mine), and a Macbook Pro. My brother has decided his next pc will be an iMac, too.
It had little to do with Ipods. A couple of nieces have Ipods, but I was never terribly impressed with them. Instead, it's due to my using a Mac in a couple of classes at my university. I liked them, but wasn't sure about buying one until I saw my Mom's in action.
When I first started working for my current employer, we had a Macintosh network of roughly 20-30 Macs and a Mac server, all using OSX. Though I was very much PC biased when I started, I did grow to enjoy the Mac platform. They make a great MP3 player. *snicker* After working with the existing Mac network for a few years and getting very familiar with the inner workings, I have to say, Macs are expensive and slow and limited beyond practicality when it comes to business software solutions. Those who say "they make a product that just works," we've had several motherboards go tits up and the cost of repairing the computers damn near leaves them totaled. In fact my bosses laptop's hard drive died and he was quoted (from 1 of 2 of the only decent Mac vendors in the state) $800 dollars to repair / replace the drive. I took it upon myself to replace it and found out the hard way that hard drive replacement is a surgery that requires 20-30 screws removed, some hidden under keys. If that's not a sign that Apple is the next evil empire, I don't know what is. And Apple support? Forget it. I'd talk to the gypsies that work the Dell call centers any day. At any rate, the office manager that fooled the president into deploying a full-Mac network has since left. We have begun to phase out the Macs. Cleaning up the Apple mess left all over my work has been expensive but using computers that can actually keep up with their users pays for themselves. Plus there are so many better programs for accounting, scheduling, billing, basically any typical office-related software. Of course there are more security issues on the PC side than on the Mac side and it makes sense, there's a million more software applications to support and a million more choices for cheaper, faster hardware than that slow, proprietary, expensive crap they load in a Mac. If you want a stable, secure and wonderful alternative to XP, use Linux. But that's besides the point. Mac has no place in the workplace. (And my $800 Dell workstation would blow past the fastest dual-core Mac any day on an Adobe benchmark comparison). Flame on.
On Saturday night I was at a friend's house, and we had a few. More than a few, ok. We are all photo dorks so me and a few other guys have gear laid out on every available surface, including the floor. I'm showing pics on my Macbook, and I fold it up and put it to one side on the floor. My friend comes up to talk to me and I look up and BS with him for a minute, then I look down.
The stupid motherfucker was STANDING on my Macbook.
After appropriate freaking out, I unfold it and wake it up. Works perfect. I'm typing on it right now. Apple gets my dollar forever. My Macbook cost a whole $1249 Cdn and i've got FireWire, integrated camera and optical out plus a retarded easy to use OS, eat that Dell. I know for a fact that a Vaio or a newer HP would have just folded under that kind of abuse.
It's shiny! Sure it doesn't like to wake up from sleep sometimes and the wireless router in the downstairs office makes it kernel panic pretty predictably, I don't care! It's shiny! *drool*
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm (non-teaching) graduate-level support staff in astronomy at a state university known for its graduate-level astronomy program, and from what I see among the post-docs, professors and staff I work with, both at the university and elsewhere through collaborations, I think Apple's market share in some of the sciences is significantly better than one-in-six laptops, and has been for the last few years. A friend who did database work for an observatory told me of going to an ADASS conference a couple years ago, and getting looks of pity because he had the only non-Mac laptop in the room.
Why is this the case? It's not about iPods and it's not about Vista. It's about UNIX, X, and Boot Camp/Parallels/VMWare. The professor who used to have a Sparc, a PC and a PPC Mac in his office now just does his number-crunching and scientific visualization on an 8-core Mac Pro with dual 30" displays, and takes a MacBook Pro places with him. (I'm low on the totem pole, so I have a plain black MacBook.)
What's really amazed me lately is that this isn't just a US thing. I work near a major Japanese facility, so there are always Japanese scientists around. For years, they've always had these cute little Panasonic/Toshiba/Sony/Sanrio/whoever laptops that we never see at stores in the US (except at Shirokiya in Honolulu, I guess). Earlier this month, I actually worked with three of them one night, and they brought 2 laptops with them - both Macs. I never thought I'd ever see any "American" brand become that popular with the Japanese scientists.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Apart from the false statistics (Belgian beer OUTSELLS Bud!!! ..... [small print]...in Belgium[/small print]) I also have at least 10 people in my direct group of friends / colleagues / family who ALL first doubted the Mac and Mac OS X, but then eventually after long long periods of thinking finally switched from Win XP to the Mac.
They are ALL saying things like "I should have done this earlier" and "I'm never going back". Of course this is anecdotal and proves nothing but it shows at least that Macs and OS X have some sort of appeal to many users as soon as they get them.
I can easliy see why this works even better on notebooks, because they are being carried around and shown to groups of people who have never even seen anything other than a Dell with XP. This might spark interest, which might spark a visit to the store.
I'll never understand normal people. I thought the G3 and G4 iBooks were great, and regret that they are not manufactured anymore. I missed the G3 (I had a laptop that worked acceptably for me), but I've owned two G4 iBooks, and they were the greatest machines I've ever used. I recommended them to people, but none of them actually bought one.
Now Apple has switched to Intel, and, in my opinion, the MacBook is just a crappy PC laptop with a cool OS and firmware that makes it difficult to run anything else on it. I bought one, because it was cheaper than other options I surveyed, but I regret that purchase. However, other people are falling for it in droves. And liking it.
What gives? People say that Macs look cool, but they looked cool in the iBook days, too. People clearly love OS X, but that was there in the iBook days, too. Did they have cold feet about switching to a different architecture, and is the promise of being able to run Windows on your Mac what pulled them over the line? Are people finally getting so fed up with Windows that they are willing to try alternatives? Is Apple's marketing finally catching on? I can actually imagine that the iPod has put Apple on people's radar. Before, a computer was a PC, and only weird people had Macs. Now, Macs are an alternative to PCs, and cool people have Macs. However, this, too, has been true for some time...why is the switch happening _now_?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
OSX doesn't run on it, at least not legally.
I'm a web developer and I need to test on all platforms. As such, at this point in time, the only legal option is to get a mac, run osx and windows in parallels. All browsers, all the time, on one box that you can carry around.
As a professional, I cannot afford running pirated software. The only other option would be to have two computers, so that would mean your $1500 Asus + an old iBook or something, for let's say $200. That's $1700 AND you have two machines instead of one. In other words, there is no other option.
6 months ago, I was finalising my choice for a laptop - I wanted a Core 2 Duo with a 15.4" screen, didn't care about the OS (was going to put Fedora on whatever I got) and had around 500 pounds (now $1000) to spend. I had a look at the Apple UK site and was totally horrified at the UK pricing of their laptops! The basic entry-level Apple laptop (yes, a Macbook, not a Macbook Pro) was 1,000 pounds ($2000) in the UK and was approximately the same spec as non-Apple laptops at half that price.
Strangely, since then, I can't see any 15" Macbooks any more on the Apple UK site, so if I want a 15" Macbook, we're now talking a minimum of 1300 pounds ($2,600) for the lowest priced Macbook Pro - totally mad!
Needless to say, I settled on a non-Apple laptop and got an Acer (who are very strong in Europe and only just behind HP in European PC/laptop sales now) for under 500 pounds - very happy with it too.
All I can say is that most of my Windows-running friends caught at least one virus during the last four years.
I don't want to deal with this. I don't even want to think about it. That's why my Windows runs inside Parallels. I store my Windows-created files on the Mac side of things. Whenever I have an issue (some app suddenly doesn't want to start anymore, Windows starts to get slow, Explorer refuses to quit whenever I turn off Windows), I just throw away the image and make a new copy of the clean image. Takes about 10 minutes, and everything is back up running.
Frankly, I wouldn't want to use Windows on an actual Windows PC.
Back in my day, we used the arrow and PgUp/Dn keys for scrolling through long documents. Kids these days, they want to use the mouse for everything (hammer/nail syndrome). I bet in a few years Microsoft mice will have 100 buttons so people can type with them, because the keyboard is just sooo old fashioned.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It used to be like that (quite recently as well, indeed), until Ubuntu solved most of those problems. Hibernation (to disk), sleep mode, CPU speed throttling, backlight turning off when you shut the cover or after 15 mins (only when running on battery, you can easily configure that too but the defaults are usually good), wireless networking, it's all there by default. About time as well, that's for sure.
When all that stuff works, the battery lasts just as long as in Windows.
I've installed it on three different laptops of varying age (one of them newly bought quite recently) and all these things finally Just Work without any fiddling around.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
i don't know about you but it must've felt nice to stand on some expensive equipment.
Look, I mostly agree with you. But I don't think Parallels is really the way to go, especially if you are doing graphics intensive gaming/[other graphics stuff]. Try playing around with http://www.cs.utah.edu/~jmk/simian/ and you'll see why Parallels sucks.
I'd recommend a dual/triple boot if you have the absolute need to run Windows.
.
Apple changes from PPC to x86 and suddenly there's no reason to buy them? I use both and *they're exactly the same*, except that the new ones are faster. Of course normal people don't care what the CPU is.
Apple TV Video Converter a powerful software guides you to conversion from most of popular video formats such as AVI, MPEG, WMV, MOV, MP4, VOB, DivX, XviD etc to iPod MP4 video; and audio files as MP3, AC3, AAC to iPod MP3, M4A etc. www.apple-tv-converter.com
I have been running the same XP installation for over 3 years now with out one single malware/virus problem. On the other hand, my Mother's XP machine kept giving me a reason to go visit every week, to clean out/up her system. So I deleted her IE desktop shortcut and replaced it with Opera, changed her account from admin to regular user and installed Zone Alarm. Now, she never complains about her computer anymore. Personally, I prefer Kubuntu, it's all I run on my laptop. My home desktop runs XP (for gaming) and I use a Mac at work. All three have their proper place in my life. It's all about the user, education is key.
In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed as an Atheist.
I bought a G4 Powerbook 4 years ago after years of Microsoft certs, etc. I simply wanted to convert videos to DVD and after looking at all options, the Mac made sense. Best move I ever made. I now look at computer operations in a whole new light. As an Active Reservist in the US Navy, I see troubles ahead for the Reserves as this number not only continues to grow with Apple taking a greater slice of the pie, but the younger set buying them at a much faster pace. Presently, the Navy backbone of it computers is the NMCI Network (I refer to it as the "Big Dig" of computer networks ie: Boston Tunnel / leaks). This network requires it's members to use a CAC Reader with their ID for access to almost all of it's sites (eventually, all sites). This is strictly Windows based only. Although they 'have' OSX drivers, two issues here; 1. does not work, and 2. all of the internet programming is based for IE 6.0+, and not available for OSX. There is the argument that users can run Windows on the Mac, but many want nothing to do with Windows, and now with the release of Numbers (Excel), there desire to refrain from having MS is even greater. What is going to cause the Reserves problems down the road, the Reservist having Macs at home will have to travel to Reserve Centers (some areas are a 3 to 4 hour drive) just to do course, check records, etc. The Reservists will do this only when compensated - rightfully so. If the Military does not recognize that they need to begin to work towards coding for systems outside of Windows, they will not only have a more difficult time getting the new younger generation to join, but the cost of doing business will grow tremendously due to not recognizing the students today will be the Sailors of tomorrow - and they are not using their Dad's OS....
Navy Tim www.navytim.com
A big part of this is the excellent TeX environment which has been put together by volunteers working w/ and creating opensource software:
e /texshop.html
- TeXshop by Richard Koch (an Apple Design Award winner in 2002) --- http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/math_scienc
- Gerben Wierda's i-Installer.app and TeX installation --- http://www.rna.nl/tex.html
and lots of others, all of which has made its way into MacTeX:
http://www.tug.org/mactex/
I wish someone would make a Cocoa version of LyX though.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I thought Macs had always been popular in Japan since the early days when PCs were DOS and Macs had a nice Japanese-friendly GUI.
n/t
Hi, I know .... I tried ubuntu on a toshiba, a few weeks ago (laptop runs Debian now, and is only used to run a browser to display a nagios screen and flash operator for asterisk)...... I booted an ubuntu live because I was wondering about that backlight issue, and actually Ubuntu refuses to turn it off as well..... Screensaver starts, then monitor goes blank, but light stays on. It works with the XP that came with the Laptop.....
:)
:)
It is a minor issue, but then again, if it is your primary laptop and you hit a bump like this, you are screwed
Anyway I take your point. It's just that I run multiple linux servers and I do not think I need a linux laptop right now after getting a mac :
Just at home : I use a Linux gateway and for my VOIP needs (asterisk), I have a Linux desktop setup (dev machine) (Linux (1 or 2 screens) - synergy - Macbook (2 screens) - synergy - windows XP (1 screen) - synergy - linux laptop (1 screen)..... + various vmplayer images with Linuxes, BSD, Solaris, XP to test stuff
Who else read the headline and wondered why almost 5 out of every 6 Mac Laptops are stolen from the store or otherwise unable to be sold?
-USR1
The ONLY reason I use OS X is because Linux (debian and derivatives, in my case) lack the (easy) hardware support that is automatic when I use OS X. I prefer Debian. I prefer apt-get install to dragging to the Applications folder. But wifi is my only internet connection right now, and I haven't found a distro yet that recognizes/configures wifi for my Macbook out of the box. Most of them won't even recognize the keyboard, so I can't scroll to other boot options anyway. I don't dislike OS X, but I enjoy Linux more. I just can't use it. Still beats windows, though.
This has to be referring to retail only numbers. I find it hard to believe that apple is selling more laptops than Dell or Lenovo.
One's growing significantly. The other's flat or decreasing gradually.
I think it's about time that Apple gives their computer buyers the freedom to choose which operating system they like to run on their computer.
If OS X is indeed as good as everyone says it is, most people will use it anyway.
I also think Apple should sell their operating system to anyone with a PC, thus giving everyone the possibility to run the best (?) desktop operating system around. For Apple it can possibly only mean one thing; more revenue.
The argument against selling OS X separately is that then people won't buy Apple hardware. I think that at this time, Apple's hardware can clearly stand on its own.
Just make the best product out there, and then give us the freedom to choose for ourselves!
Sammy - my MacBook
a) don't have a nipple
Have used a Nipple. Outgrew the nipple (no matter how intuitive the use of it might seem). Can't do two finger scrolling with a nipple, a feature which makes a number of operations on a laptop even easier than a desktop. No thanks.
b) only have 1 mouse button.
Real OS's make using a single mouse button easy, and thus make the vegistal extra mouse button PC laptops struggle to include in a place that is not an ergonomic disaster unneeded.
If PC laptops with an extra mouse button are so great, how come almost everyone with a PC laptop has an external mouse while almost no Macbook users do?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
well, the major disadvantages of mac desktops are they are overpriced
Equivilent WIndows desktops cost more, even when (or especially when) they make some with the same useful form factor.
they don't play games
Except of course for all the Windows games, via bootcamp. Or the fair and growing number of native games. Or the fact that you can just buy a console and play all the same games people are playing anyway.
and to upgrade, you throw them in the bin and buy a new one.
I suppose that might happen with my seven year old Powerbook when it dies some day in the distant future... How old are your Windows systems again?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is referred as Fitt's Law in the OSX fanboi circles (I say this as someone who has just bought his fourth OSX machine and retired his last Athlon Linux box). The corners are the easiest to hit because the mouse can be slammed into them with a flick of the wrist. The edges are likewise easy to hit in approximately the right area, then you just slide along the edge to the item you want. Sounds good in theory.
What I hate is that there is ALWAYS a return trip back across the expansive 1980x1020 screen (or even larger), a trek that seems to take days across the frozen tundra of non-application desktop or the rocky real-estate of other applications, just to get back to where you were before you needed a menu item. And no, since my drawing or text or sound is NOT a menu item, I can't just use Fitt's Law to arrive magically and easily back to where I was.
In short, Fitt's does not help half of the trip to a menu item: the return trip. If you think about it, the corners are actually the second-easiest place to target with the mouse. The easiest place to target with the mouse is exactly where your mouse is already positioned. That is why right-click context menus win.
One last thought: I really hate nonlinear mouse acceleration. OSX is all about simplifying the controls, so it's got ONE slider from slow-and-low-acceleration to fast-and-high-acceleration. Of course, Fitt's is amplified if you have high acceleration, because one flick can still travel 2000 pixel distances, instead of the repeated lift-move-lower-slide mouse dance that you have to use otherwise. Maybe it's because I used mice for many years before acceleration was common, but I want fast-but-constant-speed, an option available to me on the "give users more choices" operating systems.
[
One of the things is that now, most if not all of the major reasons for resistance against using a Mac have all but vanished.
Can it run Windows apps? Yes
Is it easy to use? Yes
Is it affordable? Yes
The only quibble I could see is the claim that "They aren't the best for gaming". Well I just have a MBP, but it runs Halflife 2: Lost Coast, Oblivion, and Bioshock all just fine. Maybe not at full options (it's at about 75% on all options), but it works. The desktops have even better graphics cards (excepting of course the Mini). So asides from not being able to waste a ton of money and drop two 768mb graphics cards in your system so you can play on 3 screens at once at max settings... it's good for that too.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
That macbooks (pro/non) do not have high res screens available for 15 inch? It is annoying to browse websites with 900 lines of vertical resolution. Also the single mouse button on the unit makes it harder to use the thing away from a desk and that external mouse.
These reasons alone keep me from ever buying one.
I worked briefly at a physics lab in Japan. It was some years ago, so it's possible that I'm misremembering, but as I recall they were very fond of macs. At any rate, they had plenty of the little things around.
I followed the link you listed.
the HP there had a teaser price of 549 inculding a rebate. But this was for a celeron not a core duo, it had the shitty 6 cell battery, no the 12 cell, it lacked blue tooth, and a pile of other things. Once you gave it a core duo, a blue tooth, and the HP reccomended battery, it was $950. There wasa 100 dollar rebate so that would be $850. And you still are not getting things like mag safe, or the Apple Apps, or Mac OS. So feature wise it does not match the $1000 macbook, though it it does come close.
The difference is there is no $549 macbook. So you don't have the option of accepting fewer features for less cash.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That clever marketing sells products. Granted Apple has real world applications (Graphics/Sound), but its not near the utility that a Windows Machine is. Thinkpads are solid products, some people may complain, but i have had several thinkpads and support several hundred at my job. We only buy Thinkpads, Thinkcenters, X Series and P Series Servers. Can't beat big blue. Lenovo may have bought out the PC/Laptop division, but if i recall they are still using the IBM manufacturing plants.
I think the average consumer is incapable of performing simple research.
iPhone - Cool, but windows mobile devices can do more for less and have been around for years. The complaint it takes an IT guy to understand is rediculous.. Maybe someone that can RTFM.
iPod - Trendy. I have compared my Zen Vision M to a comparable video iPod. Zen is a much better product, and cheaper!
Macs - Again trendy, but cant do nearly what you can do with a PC.
Vista = the suck, might as well have been labeled the new Windows ME. XP is solid. Granted more spyware and viruses released for this platform, but you also have a larger market share, so of course there will be more sex deprived losers out there coding malicious content to offset the lack of physical contact (well other than themselves).
That's basically what I've done for my work laptop. I got myself a MacBook, and in terms of specs, it's priced pretty competitively compared to similar machines, but with the advantage of Mac OS. And then I've got Parallels and an old Windows install disk for those Windows business apps that I can't find suitable replacements for (Trados for those interested; non-Windows translation memory / mgmt software that also gracefully handles Japanese is sorely lacking -- any hints or suggestions welcome). Parallels is nice; I got used to VMWare on Linux a few years back, which also helped me cut my teeth on learning networking, and the convenience of not having to reboot to get at the Windows stuff is quite welcome.
Anyway, good luck! I say go for it -- once you've got the budget for a Mac, they're pretty compelling. Not that Apple doesn't have its own shenanigans as just another software corporation (c.f. iTunes DRM silliness and the like), but they seem awfully nicer to the consumer than anything Microsoft has done for some time.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I'm a professional web developer and have been for over 10 years. As soon as I heard about boot camp, I switched to a MacBook Pro (this was when I was an independent programmer/consultant). I loved the hardware and the look and feel of OS x. But unfortunately I needed Windows to do what I do (now only some of what I do). I started using Windows way back when I made the switch from DOS--suffice to say I am a long time user. I've owned several laptops and have to say that MacBook Pro ROCKS, and that's coming from someone that has never been excited by a computer before. I use a Mac at work as well, but that is a G5 Mac Pro. I only use the PC for a few things now using a KVM switch. The for me was great and I give my friends my opinion when they ask if they should go mac or upgrade to a new vista machine. If you can afford it, I tell them to go Mac and they will not be sorry. Personally, I don't care if they switch to Apple...like politics everyone has their point of view and what ever works for them, works for them (LOL When they call me with an issue on their PC--especially if its Vista--I now get to throw my hands in the air and exclaim "I don't know dude, I'm on a Mac"). I DO know what has worked for me, and as far as I'm concerned I'll never own another PC and most likely XP will be the last version of Windows I'll own.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
I don't know if many other people have noticed this, but Apple computers are showing up in a majority of television shows and movies. One show comes to mind where I see Apple products usually several times per episode. HBO's Entourage has heavy Mac product placement. Another show I can think of is 30 Rock on NBC. Also if you look in most catalogs and advertisement you'll see Macs in the photos (which is understandable since many photographers and nearly all graphic designers use Macs). It's no wonder that Macs are popular. One other company used similar tactics that was a HUGE success--DeBeers and diamonds in the 30s and 40s. Before the 30s and 40s diamonds were not nearly the status symbol they are today.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
I use a Panasonic Toughbook CF-27. 9 years old now, and the battery is STILL good (but due to be replaced). It won't die...
#1 use - hitting Thinkpads and Apple laptops; hardly fair, but it makes a really good dent. Titanium case, gel-packed hard drive, and a floating screen make this indestructible when compared with other laptops.
A couple of problems: Since it is so sturdy, I find it hard to justify replacing. As a result, I get "Mhz envy" -- this one is "only" 300Mhz. But it does Linux very well (including touch-screen support). Also, "only" 800x600 LCD. And "only" 128MB RAM.
But it won't ever have a cracked case, or crashed hard disk. And, as a bonus, I *can* use it as a hammer...
Guess I won't be running Windows XP real soon (or Apple OSX). Older Fedora Core 5 works wonderfully, though.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
if you really worked for a computer repairshop, why would you ever see a computer that was working?
Upgrades. I visit computer shops myself from time to time but don't have any that are broken.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
well, it was instrumental to saving the world from monsters. ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's a fantastic post that accurately describes my feelings on my recent switch to OS X. Despite some initial discomfort, I, too, have quickly grown to love my new Mac Pro.
...seriously, go get it. I'll wait.
...good.
I hate Finder almost as much as I the Dock. They're both useless for any sort of development environment. The Dock is quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers, as you must mouseover the icons to get any sort of textual description. Worse, you only get 1 icon per application, regardless of how many windows it has open. The result is cumbersome application switching. Finder, on the other hand, just comes across as a bit half-assed. You'll probably prefer the shell for anything but the most basic of file operations. (No cut & paste for files? C'mon, you're going to make me open a second Finder window, browse to the other folder, then come back here and drag the files over?)
Fortunately there are some fantastic pieces of shareware and freeware to (mostly) fix these issues. I almost never even see the dock any more.
If you haven't already, get QuickSilver, NOW.
Now get DragThing. This will replace the dock. You can make sliding drawers, floating panels, or something in between that can hold icons and folders. It also provides panels for a list of all the windows and/or apps that you currently have open, with or without text. I bought DragThing without thinking twice.
Witch is free and crucial for application switching, too.
With these two apps, I'm just as fast moving from one application to the next as on windows. Also, PathFinder seems to be okay as a semi-replacement for Finder. I'm still in the shareware trial period...haven't decided if I'm going to buy it yet though.
You can watch system resources with Menu Meters. I find that OS X does a fantastic job of splitting work up among my 4 processor cores; much better than windows.
Oh, and if you still have to administer windows machines, Microsoft makes a Remote Desktop Client for OS X. Also, Microsoft Entourage is good (maybe better than Outlook) if you still have to use an Exchange server.
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
My company (thousands of employees worldwide) use Thinkpads only.
There is a reason for that.
But yeah sure, if 3 people you know were unlucky, well, whatever.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Finally" switching is not about "growing a sack". It's about the fact that OS X is fucking excellent, and the prior Mac OSes sucked cold baboon piss through a straw. The hardware's always been nice, but foul software. No more foul than Windows, 'tis true, but then again my platform of choice has gone Amiga -> Linux -> OS X, so I've always had nice OSes :)
Shortcuts for specific tasks are no inherently better or worst, it is not like they are ingrained in our genes or something.
For any good reason you think a certain keyboard shortcut is great I can come with 10 reasons why it isn't.
OK, I am an expert in user interface design, but you should not feel intimidated and retreat into your monumental ignorance just for this reason.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
LOL... So let me get this straight, you got fooled into thinking the dual core Turion was equivalent to a core duo 2 in the apple? What a maroon. Check the bench marks. Even the Urion 2 could not even get within 25% of the Core Duo let alone the much faster core duo 2. Not to mention the fact it eats batteries. Well you got what you paid for. But why spend as much as you did if all you wanted was a tugboat?
.....and the company is now beating Gateway in sales..... I just can't believe it. How could it be? A company that just recently moved to commodity hardware and spends all its money on marketing would be overtaking that forgot about PC maker from the mid-late 90's, kinda road that second wave left in Dell's wake. One that never successful with really anything after their hay day. Gateway Servers Anyone? They shipped me, and I am not kidding, 3 in a row to demo back in 2000. All 3 DOA. Well Apple I'm happy for you. Your better than the left overs.
It's one click - Control + mouse. It's not wierd at all, and is easier to use than trying to work the right mouse button on any PC laptop in the market - because your hand is already right there on the keyboard!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
According the guys running the conference network, Macs were about 40% of the machines at SIGCOMM 2007. I don't have numbers but I've observed similar at IETFs and other networking geek gatherings.
IT at the medium-sized, engineering driven technology company where I work recently came to its senses and approved Macs as a supported platform. Naturally everyone I know is in line to trade their Stinkpad in.
Because I was done fixing it? Because it was my new one? Because I had just sold a replacement to a customer whose computer was beyond repair? You're really reaching here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.