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66% Apple Market Share For Sales of High-End PCs
An anonymous reader lets us know about a recent analysis of retail computer sales numbers that shines a spotlight on Apple's sales growth as the PC market has flattened. In the lucrative >$1,000 PC segment, in the first quarter of 2008, Apple's retail market share was 66%. This includes a 64% market share for laptops and a market share for desktops of 70%. The article attributes the bulk of this success to Apple's stores. Fortune picked up this report and pointed out the somewhat obvious fact that the >$1,000 PC segment is Apple's by default, since Dell, HP, and Lenovo sell the bulk of their machines in the $500-$750 range, and Apple has only one model selling for less than $1,000. As the analyst said, "If you don't give people a choice [in the Apple stores], people will spend more."
is exactly why I don't own an Apple. I'd love to have a Macbook Pro, but I just can't justify paying that much for yet another computer. I really think Apple would increase their market share of all systems if they lowered their prices or at least had models that started at lower prices.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
If you were to count BTO computers sold over phone or internet in the U.S. Apple's market share would drop. Add the rest of the world and Apple's market share shrinks even more.
That said, Apple is gaining speed and is only going to be selling more computers for the foreseeable future.
Very funny, you flipped a troll conversation about Apple fanboys into a Windows fanboy send up. It is as if the entire energy and malice of the GP was turned onto the GP by a subtle shift in balance.
Most of the stuff on
I mean seriously. If you can't drop a grand on a computer and you are "professional" then I think you might need to think about another profession. All these people whining about computers that cost more that $1000. I don't get it. A photographer can easily spend $10K on a good digital camera set up and not blink an eye. Ask any carpenter how much they have spent on their tools, 10K is a drop in the bucket. But so many /.ers get their panties in a wad about spending anything more than $500. This is so stupid. Why not get something that works. As a long time windows user that made the switch, OSX simply works better. I still have to use windows at work and I have reboot 2 or 3 times a day. Although I do have to admit that Macs run windows better than any Dell, HP, or whatever I've had. So in short if you are a professional and you are still messing around with low end crap....all I have to say is you get what you pay for. And if you consider this flamebait or a fanboi masturbation exercise then so be it....I know what works.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
No flashing logos? On the MacBook I'm using right now there's a giant glowing Apple logo on the back of the screen. I also get the spinning disk quite a bit. =D Or how about when something happens in an application that's out of context and the Dock tells you about...by bouncing the icon until you switch over. I think that counts as a flashing logo. =D
As for not "moving my hand from one place" try moving between open files in Xcode within the same window pane without using a mouse or the touchpad. Its <option><command><left arrow> or <option><command><right arrow>. I don't mind having to use two modifiers but I do mind having to use two hands. Or how about page-up and page-down? Again, on my MacBook, for aesthetic sake, page up and down were left off. So, I have to use two hands (<fn><arrow up> to page up. Or Home and End. Is it <command><left arrow> or <fn><left arrow>. I've found it depends on the application. Will it take me to the end of the line or the end of the text? And will the cursor come with it? Or Delete. Again, depends on the application.
Yes, no stupid buttons on a MacBook (or Apple keyboard) Instead, Apple decided to appropriate the functions keys. Who needs those right? I do: Parallels or VMWare is worthless without re-assigning all the Expose and Spaces keys. <Command><F12> here I come!
Also, on my 4 year old eMachines I can click, right click, scroll and middle click without having to move my hand off the trackpad either. And, there are trackpads out there that pan too. Sure, it doesn't do it with two fingers like the Mac trackpad, but at least I get two real buttons which can then simulate a third (for true Unix goodness)
Look, my primary machine is my MacBook and I love it. Further, I do Visualization research on a Quad core Mac pro. But OS X and Apple are not the end all be all of of good design. I love the MacBook keyboard but guess what? Showed up on the Vaio first. And the matte grey finish for the hand rests? Mine are kind of scummy and discolored. I've had a bunch of Dell laptops (D610, D620, Inspiron 3200, 700m) and I've never had the hand rests of them go all scummy. And don't get me started on the Dock...
P.S. I think the m1330 is actually a pretty nice piece of kit. Its designed well and its got discrete graphics and can be had for cheaper than a MacBook if you wait for a sale (which happen about every other day).
Keep in mind that the Mach microkernel is not unix, it came from CMU. Some userland stuff came from the *BSD lineage, but calling OS X a "true UNIX" rings about as true as calling windows + cygwin the same.
What's your next guess?
In OS X, Mac schedules threads and allocates memory. That's about it. The rest of the kernel services in OS X either came from BSD, or were written in-house at Apple.
Mac OS X is UNIX. Read and learn.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that Mac laptops are damn good PC laptops too... and some people are willing to pay the premium to have both a very nice OSX laptop and a great WinPC laptop that's not about to break in 12 months.
I've had experiences with my share of laptop manufacturers over time - with differing levels of disappointment - and I've seen paper machie constructions with more structural integrity than some Dell laptops.
I'm rather happy with my Lenovo these days. It's pretty solid and fast enough.
But from using current Mac laptops, I've been impressed at how well they work as a WinPC laptop (runs Vista better than any other I've tried), and the quality of hardware / design.
There's lots of competition in the PC mobile market.
But there's not that much competition for good and durable PCs in that market as one would like.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
A kind of similar tale for me. My college has a program where it "gives" the new students a laptop. It's a basic model, HP Compaq 6515b. Does it's job, not high end, but it does what it's supposed to. About a month before we got ours, we hear that the incoming semester received Macbooks. I've no idea what kind, but they were the same price as the Compaqs, so that may give you a ballpark.
And let me tell you, my friends, were all sorts of pissed. I asked them why, because logicaly, if the whole school uses Windows PCs, having macs would only complicate matters. Their responce, and I'm not making this up.
"Macs are pretty. I don't care how good they are, but they look nice. I feel like a REAL college student if I have a Mac on my desk."
Shocked me, and nothing I said could convince them that they wanted a Mac because they were pretty. IF they wanted it because of ANY other reason, i'd been fine. But just because it's shiny...it was just beyond me. Apple sells image, which is why they have whole stores set up to show it off.
Firewire (400 in the MB, 400/800 in the MBP). Tiny built-in webcam and microphone. Built-in DVI-out. Built-in analog/digital (optical) audio in/out. Thin. Light. Near-silent operation. Fast boot. Slot loading drive (minus points for not having a DVD burner on the entry level MB, which is pretty cynical). Magsafe power adapter. Tiny power brick with built-in cable management. Multi-touch trackpad (better on MBP, but even the MB has two-finger scrolling and tap.) No stickers. No preloaded crapware. OS X.
I have a simple FreeBSD notebook here and can do my work without MS-Windows. FACT sub $1000 PCs are crap..thats why most people that go to Dell's site to buy one of those $500 PCs leave spending around $1500 Who the hell buys complete PCs? I recently upgraded my old PC for just $300. It is over twice as fast as my last PC. And btw, I can construct an entire PC, part by part, and it runs without any problems for just $200 more. And it has a very decent quality, it is not comparable with any PC that companies like Dell sell (I have not single no-name component). Go and buy 1GB RAM more in Apple shop. They charge you about 10x as much. My PC parts are carefully chosen. They are not crap at all. I simply choose good quality prodcuts and try to find out which have a decent price at the moment according to their speed and power requirements. You won't have this choice with Apples.
In that Apple actually pays computer scientists, engineers, etc. a decent wage. And they are run by managers that actually give a damn about the job that their team does.
So we get things that actually work better out of the box, and mature well over time. Hell, each apple product I have bought has lasted me 4+ years. And then I only "upgrade" because I can afford to upgrade the storage of the laptops myself, increase the RAM significantly, and a fresh install, and give it to a member of my family. Who are shocked that the finest computer in their house was not the dell running vista, but the four-year-old mac... Gaining new Apple users, and when they will buy a new computer in a few years, they might decide to go with the brand that has lasting value.
Seriously, if you want to pay less, then you devalue their employees. Make 'em more like Microsoft minions, expendable and not working together at any point. Sure you get the product eventually... And its cheaper.... But customers will most spend the rest of that products life complaining about it.
And no, I am not bashing the "free" concept of Linux, because Linux is a passion. One might spend a few days working out a glitch they encountered and submitting the fix. Then they feel great about accomplishing something no one else has done, and might go on to mend other things, or add other features. By keeping it a hobby that all are free to contribute to, people contribute for free.... And if we added up all those man hours on our favorite distro in a given year, it would be a fortune to pay.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
The mentality I really despise is that I use my iPhone at the coffee store because I'm some sort of "hipster" and I'm trying to impress everyone around me. Well here's a news flash, I'm not. I'm using my phone to access my email in a public place...where's the crime in that? This a far less worse crime than those idiot-borgs who walk around with the $49 blue tooth thing in their ear trying to impress how important they are upon us.
Frankly, I (and most other Apple consumers I know) don't give a rat's ass about what other people think about our stuff.
Other issues I noted really demonstrate that learning the "windows way" really limits the user. Example: you don't HAVE to close the document you have open to move it or rename it in MacOS, even though you've grown accustom to having to do so in Windows. I won't even get into the way Windows users over-think installing and uninstalling apps!
Personally I think the claim is mis-leading anyway. The category is narrowly defined as not only over 1000, but also bought retail. So it's crafted to exclude all the expensive workstations and servers bought by corporations, since they don't usually just drive a truck to WalMart to buy them retail.
Further... and I realize this is purely anecdotal:
100% of the people I know with Macs bought them retail in an Apple store.
0% of the people I know who have bought non-Mac PCs in the last 5+ years bought them retail. They bought them from a place like Dell online, built them from parts, had someone else build them from parts, etc.
Obviously Best Buy is selling uncustomized non-Mac machines to someone retail or they wouldn't still be doing it, but I don't know the people who are buying them.
Possibly, this says something about the appeal of the Apple store as a retail venue vs. as an online order venue. It's hard to say.
...Apple forces you to buy things...
Really? Did Steve Jobs come by your house and hold a gun to your head and bark: "Buy a Mac or else?" No? Boy are you lucky. Buy some Apple stock and get some of that profit back in YOUR pocket.
All theory is gray
Two reasons why PC vendors aren't doing that:
a) Microsoft can punitively raise their Windows licensing to the point where any savings from shipping Windows-free Linux PCs are erased. As long has Microsoft can maintain that kind of pricing power over what is a utility monopoly, things can't change. Incidentally, that's why every PC maker advertises "we recommend Windows XP/Vista." It's in their contract! Linux sales and advertising are tightly controlled by Microsoft using its OEM leverage.
b) PC makers investing in software development are afraid that their contributions to GPL software would be used against them. So HP develops a desirable Linux distro that works flawlessly with all the modern video cards, etc, and then Dell can come along and sell it on their PCs without any contribution back, and at no investment expense. Dell wins, HP loses all its investment.
The reason Apple is doing well is because it has no obligation to or dependance upon Microsoft for Windows licensing. If it did, it would instantly be in the same boat as Palm and the other PC makers. And secondly, Apple can invest heavily in developing its own proprietary OS.
Mac OS X is a unix distro with a unique kernel that is open but which no other PC maker can effectively really use or benefit from, and a proprietary development framework and GUI.
Recall that Ray Noorda at Novell and then Caldera tried to pull off something similar with OpenLinux and then United Linux, but couldn't manage to get either one together. If a major software developer couldn't wrangle a suitable Linux desktop distro, how could a PC maker like Dell or HP, neither of which can make software that isn't any better than a flaming turd?
Caledera's OpenLinux: The Linux "Mac OS X" That Failed
And for insight on how well a community/corporate partnership can work, look at OpenMoko. It predates the iPhone, but still can't dial from the GUI.
Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone
Before you volunteer to help a PC company develop a Linux distro, you might want to consider why they aren't asking for help and why the task might be less appealing than driving nails through your eyelids.
Mobile EEE PC, UMPC, and Internet Tablets vs the iPhone: Linux' Mobile Problem