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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.
For those too lazy to read the summary, this doesn't include online sales.
You can run FreeBSD or Linux on the "expensive" Apple machine as well. Heck, you can also run Vista on one, if you must!
The cheapest of the cheap laptops are generally sucktastic, big, and heavy (And generally come pre-installed with Vista). My MacBook Pro is far more stylish and compact than almost every other equivalently priced Windows notebooks. OS X is a joy to use, and coupled with an AG-HVX200, Final Cut Studio, and a couple of big external drives... and I am a production unit on the go. It just works best for what I do. Which is why I "drank the koolaid" in 2003 and bought a Mac to start with. After 17 years of using MS-DOS and then Windows... I am loving being an "Apple Fanboi" and I cant see going back to Windows for anything other than the occasional game.
I think a lot of people are discovering that OS X just works, and doesnt need the sort of tinkering and maintenance that Windows rigs generally do to stay in top running shape.
I cant remember the last time I did a virus scan or a defrag...
Oh...
Last week...
On my roomies computer, so the damn XP rig would actually work again.
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.
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
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.
Well, then you're not in Apple's target market. Personally, I'd buy an expensive laptop and run Linux or FreeBSD on it, since I value things like light weight, long battery life and fans that don't sound like a turbojet. If you factor in the hardware and include things like noise level, size, weight, build quality etc then Apple laptops aren't bad value in their price range.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Who are the selling them to?
I'm writing this on a four year old G4 Tibook that continues to run and run and run...
They're probably selling them to people with 6 or 7 year old Macs. Getting 6-7 years of useful life out of a Mac is quite common. This is a testament to how well OS X has supported older hardware. (Let's see Vista on a 7 year old machine.) I'm much in the same boat as you; I've got a 4 year old PowerMac G5 and a 3 year old AlBook. As much as the geek in me would love to find an excuse to get a shiny new toy, both machines still serve my needs quite well.
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.
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),
Yeah. Jessica Tandy.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
When you make products that suck less.
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)
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?
You do know that Apple sells family packs of the OS, right? For $120 or so you can load 5 computers with the latest and greatest.
And, no offense, calling each release of OS X a service pack is just
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
....Leopard? You sure? Why would a machine ship with a beta OS?
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
I too, used to laugh at Apple Fanboys. I got fed up with XP, thought I'd try OS X, with the ability to fall back to XP on the same hardware, if I wasn't happy with OS X. Well, there was no looking back! (And Parallels lets me run any old legacy thing I need, which turns out only to be MSN webcam, and little else.)
:) (But the more market share they get, the stronger they'll be, and the longer they'll be around for me :). The only reason I want people to convert, is I know it would be for *their* own good, not for validation of myself as a Fanboy.
So crash free, virus free, and great performance, it's a dream come true for me. External displays work as expected. Everything just works, in general. (A few gotchas, but *very* few as compared to XP.)
The funny thing is, I don't consider myself a Fanboy. But when I talk about the Mac, I get excited about how well it works, and people accuse me of it! Well dammit, I *am* excited about how well it works for me! And want to share it with others. At the end of the day, I don't care if people convert, as long as it's there for me.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
That overload is going to have to get a hell of a lot cheaper in order for me to accept it. :-)
In all seriousness, what do you guys actually do with your Macs that justifies the expense? I completely understand if it's just that it's aesthetically pleasing, too, I have an impractical car that runs fast and looks cool.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
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
1995 called: they want the "Mac vs. PC Flame War" back.
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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.
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.
.
With all due respect, if you're smart about how you surf...you won't have to run a virus scan. I haven't had a virus scanner on my XP machine in five years and I haven't gotten a virus yet. Think about something before you click on it. Don't be a random internet user and you don't get crap on your computer.
A question for you: What is it about OS X that makes it good for audio/video/graphic work? That's your assertion, so I assume you have at least of some reason to believe it.
If you're confused as to why some choose OS X then I would suggest doing some research into the features that made NEXTSTEP a compelling Unix Desktop and workstation in the 90s. For instance:
That's NEXTSTEP.
Now, say you chose NEXTSTEP as the basis for your perfect operating system and desktop environment. You get to keep all of the good design decisions, throw away or refactor all of the bad design decisions, and do it without any backward compatibility restrictions. What you end up with is OS X.
But why an Apple laptop? Here's why: I can open up a bunch of SSH and X11 sessions to a remote server over wi-fi, close the lid and throw it in my back-pack, go eat lunch, come back and open the lid, and all of my remote X11 apps and sessions are still alive. OS X just works damn well on Apple's laptop hardware.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
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.
Enlighten me to which features SP1 and SP2 added that come close to:
Quartz Extreme, FileVault, Spotlight, Dashboard, Smart Folders, Core Image, Core Video, Automator, Time Machine, Spaces, Boot Camp, Resolution Independance... And Last but not least:
1 Install DVD For PPC 32 bit, PPC 64 bit, Intel 32 bit & Intel 64 bit with complete binary compatibility between all versions.
Math doesn't work the same way in canada...
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
Lots of people run Linux on the MBP. I, personally, was too scared of screwing up my EFI and boot records to run Boot Camp without Windoze (besides, it demanded 347MB to install! BLOATWARE!), so I looked at virtualization options. Being too cheap to pay for VMWare Fusion or Parallels, I eventually opted for the free, dual-licensed VirtualBox.
So now I can use OSX applications with a Gentoo machine compiling code in the background, with no human-noticeable slowdown (though I did have to find and turn on the option to use Intel's virtualization processor feature thingy).
No physical button, but you can right click with a second finger on the trackpad. I like it better than a button, but my wife hates it.
Work. (As opposed to "fiddle with a computer.")
Are you adequate?
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. :-)
When I upgraded my HD, all I had to do was copy the old drive to the new drive. No "reinstall the OS, run a bazillion updates, and then reinstall the apps and restore my files." A straight copy from the backup volume to the new drive was all it took, with no special ghosting software required.
And the granddaddy of them all..no activation or WGA validation.
Sleep on lid closure working? Check. Great battery life (4-6 hrs on a battery approaching 100 cycles)? Check. Maybe WinXP and Windows-running hardware has improved to meet these stats. I don't know, and I don't care. My MacBook does what I need it to do, with a feeling of reliability that I never had running Windows.
Yep, it has the aesthetics too...I was in a conversation about that very subject earlier today. I've seen quite a few laptops that just have a very busy design; buttons and lights for all sorts of rarely-used functions everywhere, I/O ports scattered hither and yon, cooling vents everywhere...a general case design where the different parts and colors just added a lot of visual noise. My MacBook is a nice, clean white; it is visually quiet, with none of the extras that distract from the useful functions.
Sorry to sound like a fanboy--I believe that you use what gets the job done. If Windows is what gets your job done, then use it. If Linux makes you more productive, use it. For me, it's the Mac.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
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.
Keynote. Keynote alone might force an upgrade from my iBook to a MacBook for lecturing/conferences.
Photoshop. Fortran. Run simulations while on the road without having to perform yoga contortions to get the machine to act like a proper UNIX box.
Just get work done quietly and unobtrusively, without the computer/OS having to announce its presence every minute, lest I forget the blessings that Redmond hath bestowed upon me.
My dream laptop would be an IBM X31 running OS-X, but since those were never made, MacTops it is.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Don't even bother feeding the Troll--Twitter that is. He's a huge troll who frequently brings his sock puppet "Erris" into discussions when he gets modded down.
2 64293
Here's a post that sums up a lot about twitter--posting it so that perhaps a few more people might be alerted to twitter's activities! http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=198321&cid=16
And just FWIW, I agree with you about XP. I use OSX almost exclusively now, but I've had some very solid XP installations, and at work our Win2003 server regularly matches our FreeBSD server for uptime (poor power being the main limiting factor)
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.
Why? All Macs these days come with Wifi (b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.
2. I want to adjust mouse acceleration. I can't figure out how without buying an expensive 3rd party app.
Just up your overall mouse speed.
3. I want to be able to launch my apps with one or two-key keyboard shortcuts. I can't figure this one out either.
Use Quicksilver. http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/ 4. My scrollbar in firefox doesn't work right. Is this normal?
This isn't normal. It works fine with my machine and all my workmates.
5. Many open source apps that I love don't have standard maintained OS X distributions (gvim, pidgin, etc). I could try compiling myself, or I've found older versions that other people have built for them, but that's rather a step backwards instead of forwards.
Try Fink Commander. http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/
Hope this stuff helps!
You most likely will not have any luck here. There are many chipsets out there without (or only partial) Mac/Unix/Linux support. I'm guessing that you have an older G4 or G5 based Mac, because, if you were to purchase a new Mac, it would have wireless and bluetooth built-in ($79 option on the Mac Pro, standard on everything else), so in your case, this is a problem, but for most switchers, and for those buying a new Apple laptop (since that's what the story was about) this wouldn't be an issue.
I'm interpreting "mouse acceleration" to be "adjust the tracking speed". It's located in System Preferences. In the Keyboard and Mouse preference pane, click on the mouse tab, and, you'll see slider controls for tracking speed. In addition, you can adjust the scroll speed and the double click speed. If you mean something else, I apologize. I never touch the mouse settings on the Mac or in Windows.
You are correct here. There isn't a native way of doing this in Mac OS X. Ironically, I think you could do this in the older Mac Classic system. Anyway, I use a product called QuicKeys to do what you described. Comes in very handy. Some of this support must be lacking on the Windows side too, because they make a Windows version as well.
Yes, the scroll bar sometimes breaks in Firefox on the Mac. I've found quality control lacking on the Mac version of Firefox, in comparison to the Windows version. Usually quitting and re-launching Firefox restores it to normalcy. I haven't found a trigger yet for this misbehavior. It never happens in Safari.
I believe the folks at Mac Ports and Fink can help you with most of your open source software needs. Follow their documentation and you'll be up and running with open source software in no time.
I hope my answers have helped you out.
I'll try to address these 1 by 1 and see if I can come up with some solutions for you.
1. I have some cheap usb hardware (wireless network dongle, bluetooth, etc). No drivers for mac. (I've spent hours searching mailing lists)
Unfortunately, you are pretty well screwed on USB unless the peripheral is of some standard device class that Apple supports (e.g. keyboard, mouse, hard drive, most cameras) or Apple has provided support for it. As far as I know, most Bluetooth adapters do work, particularly the Dlink ones. Look for an OS X logo on it, although what Mac did you buy recently that didn't have bluetooth built in? The networking situation is similar where most of the time the built-in gigabit and 802.11 support is sufficient for 99% of people. If you really need more network ports it's like any other system really, buy supported hardware.
2. I want to adjust mouse acceleration. I can't figure out how without buying an expensive 3rd party app.
There's a few different solutions. A google search for OS X mouse accelleration will get you to a couple of different macosxhints.com articles, one of which mentions MouseFix. Another article mentions a rebuilt HID driver although I would do that at your own risk. Or you can pay the measly $20 for SteerMouse.
I might also make a suggestion that you may simply be using your mouse incorrectly or using a bad mouse. Apple's mice are designed very lightweight and are extremely easy to pick up when doing long drags. If you're just trying to flick across the screen quickly I don't have any trouble doing that by moving the mouse a mere inch or so to get it from one side of a 1920x1200 screen to the other although admittedly you have to do it extremely rapidly for it to work.
3. I want to be able to launch my apps with one or two-key keyboard shortcuts. I can't figure this one out either.
Most people who want this use QuickSilver .
4. My scrollbar in firefox doesn't work right. Is this normal?
I have no idea. I am not very enthralled with Firefox on Mac. If you just want the Mozilla rendering engine you could try the sister project Camino. If you just want a browser then of course Safari is already there. Granted not all websites work with Safari but if it's something like a banking site I'll go use Camino or Firefox and then simply complain to the site that it should work in Safari. Did that to Verizon Wireless and what do you know, they fixed it.
5. Many open source apps that I love don't have standard maintained OS X distributions (gvim, pidgin, etc). I could try compiling myself, or I've found older versions that other people have built for them, but that's rather a step backwards instead of forwards.
There are basically two ways to get this. One way is to get Fink which is okay but I'm less than thrilled with the way they manage their port tree. Generally, Fink won't work with new OS X releases until a few weeks to a month after official release. The upside of Fink is that they have precompiled packages and use dpkg/apt plus some custom code (Python or PERL, can't remember which) to manage all of it.
The other way is to get MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts). If on Tiger then download the Tiger binary dmg. If on Leopard, grab the source tarball then do the usual configure/make/make install. Either way will stick everything in a new /opt/local hierarchy. From there run sudo port -v selfupdate to make sure you are up to date and then if you want gvim the port is vim and you want either the athena variant or the gtk2 or gtk1 variant. The athena variant is obviously the most lightweight gvim you can build and if you can live with ugly menus and dialogs then I recommend it. Otherwise I'd suggest the gtk2 ve
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.
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.
Yeah, a non-admin account on Windows. Real usable. That's a good one.
Nobody's forcing you to upgrade, but you'd think a company with no other leg to stand on, would be a little nicer about the software that drives the sales of their overpriced hardware.
Also you should realize after a new version of the OS is released of OS X they still support the old ones and you still get upgrades and update to the OS. Every dot release is actually a major upgrade Like from Windows 3.1 - 95, 95 - 98, 98 - ME (That may not be a good example), ME - XP, XP - Vista (perhaps an other bad example) From 95-XP there were new version of Windows every couple of years, much like OS X. OS X Gets minor Update like 10.4.1, 10.4.2, 10.4.3... These are equivalent to service pack releases, where sometimes you may get some minor features, and increased stability in the OS. The 10 Dot releases offer a lot of new features and the OS looks and Feels different.
Apple has a faster software development cycle then Microsoft, it is not a bad thing, it means you have the option to use the most current technologies and fully utilize modern hardware.
Mac Hardware is not overpriced it is competitively priced., the problem is that Apple offers little in options they have sub class groups
Dells Website...
Intel® Core(TM) 2 Duo T7700 (2.40GHz) 4M L2 Cache, 800MHz Dual Core
NVIDIA Quadro FX 360M, 512MB Turbo Cache memory (256 dedicated)
15.4 inch Wide Screen WXGA Anti-Glare LCD Panel
4.0GB, DDR2-667MHz SDRAM, 2 DIMMS
* 160GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 7200RPM
8X DVD+/-RW w/Roxio Creator(TM)/Cyberlink PDVD(TM)
Dell Wireless® 360 Bluetooth Module for Windows XP
Intel® 4965 802.11a/g/n Dual-Band Mini Card
Standard Touchpad
$3,427
Apples WebSite...
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2GB
160GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
MacBook Pro 15-inch Widescreen Display
* Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
Accessory Kit
*iSight Built in Camera,
$3,199.00
*Better then the competitors.
Granted that the Dell has a couple of features that are slightly higher performance then the Mac such as a faster drive and perhaps a better video card. But I would expect those difference in spec would be about would account to about $150 difference in the price. But the apple has a built in video camera light sensor and glowing keyboard, motion detection, and the magnetic power adapter (don't mock it until you tried it) which would account for about $150 different in the prices as well. Then dell depending where you go on your website and coupons and such... You may be able to get an other $100 or $150 off but still after all this extra hassle you are not really paying much more for the Mac compared to Dell similarly spec are actually about the same price.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Now... everything you said and showed was fine, the machine worked without a hitch... the question is what did you wear?
It shouldn't matter what things look like but it does. You can have a functional laptop that an industrial designer hit viciously with the ugly stick, or you can have a functional laptop that looks good too. You can wear the suit you bought at Target or the one you bought at Armani. You can buy a solid, reliable Toyota or you can buy a solid, reliable Mercedes.
The choice is yours, and people will judge you accordingly. Branding is not something marketers alone do, you do it also, consciously or not all your actions and choices indicate who you are. Again, it's not ideal but it is human.
As for the screwdriver thing... I know a few tradesmen and they definitely have opinions on which brands make a good screwdriver and which ones are shit. They may not laugh at you, but they'll see which one you have and it becomes a part of the opinion they form of you.
Not running around the internet all willy-nilly makes a big difference too.
Hell, if I can't jump into the occasional pornado and see where it takes me, why have internet access at all?
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
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
Clearly spoken by someone who doesn't use Windows as a non-admin. I do, and it's perfectly usable. It has a sudo equivalent ("Run as") for admin tasks, just like UNIX, you can configure it to allow writes only to your home folder, just like UNIX, you can install untrusted applications within your home folder, just like UNIX.
People really need to stop using Win9x arguments against WinNT.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I think you're missing the point. As you yourself so eloquently explain, running Windows as non-admin is a pita (requiring sudo equivalents and changed configurations); furthermore, you still can't install most apps without having an admin password.
That is very different to how it works on Macs (or on some Linux flavours).