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Apple Climbs Into Third Place In U.S. PC Market
Tibor the Hun writes "According to Gartner and IDC, Apple now has between 7.8 and 8.5% of market share. While those numbers are not astonishing, they are not insignificant, and their growth does not seem to be slowing down. Will the pearly gates of acceptance open up for them once they reach the magic 10%, and will that have a positive effect on desktop Linux adoption? Hard to tell, but it's good to see that normal people (not just us geeks) are choosing to go with a different OS, rather than staying with the headache-inducing Windows."
And since when have Apple users been considered "normal" around here?
Or did you really mean 'orthogonal'
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While those numbers are not astonishing
Not astonishing? A single company, offering a proprietary product*, is outdoing nearly all of several hundred companies combined who build to a given standard! Astonishing indeed!
* - including hardware, OS, and a broad range of application software
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Why is 10% "magic"? This number is significant because that's how many fingers we have?
If TV and the movies have taught me anything, it's that at least 90% of the computers and laptops out there are Apples. Hell, even alien civilizations use Macs on their motherships.
Has anyone else noticed that after Vista came out, Microsoft seems to have been losing ground? Netbooks/UMPC's are selling with OEM Linux like hot cakes, and Apple is steadily gaining market share. I also bet that the disappointment with SP1 made it even worse for ol' Billy. Even if Windows 7 is all that and a bag of chips, it'll be too late because Joe the Layman will have seen that Linux really is ready for prime time.
Hard to tell, but it's good to see that normal people (not just us geeks) are choosing to go with a different OS
Most of the Mac owners I know are normal people. Either students that got an imac laptop from their school, older people who wanted an easy to use computer, or an artist (musician, photographer, graphic designer, etc.) who wanted a powerful machine that wouldn't get infected with a ton of spyware and viruses in a week.
None of the Mac owners I know (besides myself) are very tech savvy, they just know that their iPod works great, their PC is always infected with "viruses" (usually some spyware they installed cause it promised free smileys), and their friend's Mac never has any problems. Personally I didn't buy a Mac just for a different OS. If I want to toy around in something other than Windows, I just go install Linux on whatever old computers are lying around the house. I bought the Mac specifically for Aperture, and Final Cut Pro since I do a lot of photography and video work. I know there exists open source software or expensive Windows software to do that stuff, it's just none of it is as powerful or easy to use as the Mac versions. I don't need Mac OS to have a stable computer, I just like the software that exists for the Mac.
Apple has seen these numbers before. They're currently on a crest, but they'll sink and rise again. They have an upper limit of around 10-15% market share. They've made it quite clear that they don't *want* any more than that, and aren't interested in meeting the needs of the rest of the market.
I've got my share of -1 postings from ripping Apple but on this you are off base. I think thi would have been true in 1992 but it is certainly not true today. It's a completely different world out there. Personal computers running Windows have become corporate computing appliances, not personal ones, where Apple has doggedly focused on being a personal computer and is imaginatively building a software, service, and shopping stack designed to build a premium consumer brand.
If they decoupled their anaemic hardware offerings from their OS, they could see double digit growth yearly, but failing that they'll stay right where they've always been.
Apple has double digit growth yearly. Apple stock is kicking total butt right now in a stock market that sucks. I wish I would have bought them a couple of years ago when Jobs first came back... I'd be retired!
Secondly, Apple hardware is hardly anemic. Apple's new PowerMac, for example, is the latest Harperton Xeon and while it might be a tad pricier than the equivalent from the likes of Dell, I guarantee you that the entire service experience, from Apple store to home, is very, very good.
Christ, I'm talking myself into buying a Macintosh... and that's the thing about Apple - you walk into the store, and it reflects the sort of perfection that Americans expect from products.. indeed, Apple has gone beyond even Japanese cars when it comes to the detail of their products...
This is my sig.
all it takes to run Windows is to pop in the disk and let it install
This little bit of folklore deserves to die.
1. Got a system restore disk? (Not an OEM-style installer!) Then sure, many minutes later your "my documents" is gone, but you are pretty much back up to day-1 status.
2. Got an OEM installer disk? How many of those disks do not include the drivers for devices like, ohhh your *ethernet* adapter? That is the purest soul-sucking time sink ever.
Apple's installer is pretty great for this reason. I seem to recall it kept my wife's home files intact.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"Will the pearly gates of acceptance open up for them once they reach the magic 10%, and will that have a positive effect on desktop Linux adoption?"
Absolutely not.
Some of you may recall that, back in the late 1980s, the Mac's market share was about 18%. For a period of time lasting into the mid-1990s, Apple was the #1 maker of PCs (IBM, Compaq and Dell rounded out the top 4; HP, Packard Bell, Gateway and a few others fought over the scraps).
If you take into consideration the fact that Macs lasted longer than PCs in those days and Mac users tended to buy more software (claims supported by numerous published Gartner studies), you could make a fair argument that Macs represented as much as perhaps a third of the total installed base and of the potential software market.
This was not seen as sufficient. Throughout the entire mid-80s through late-90s, the PC press maintained a steady drum-beat of, "Apple doesn't have enough market share to survive." Of course Apple's not going to make it if the press keeps telling everyone they can't! Combine this with some of Apple's strategic management blunders, and you have a perfect recipe for also-ran status.
Not that any of this is necessary to ensure Windows' continued market dominance. Most businesses are going to use what other businesses in their industry use. Most people are going to buy for home use what they are comfortable with at work. Windows' prevalence is its own best selling feature. This is why Microsoft enjoys a "natural monopoly", and why it will take a bigger disruptive market force than anything we've seen so far in the past 20+ years to change it.
I think you have to be a little insane to use some Apple hardware. Does anyone remember the puck mice? The ultra-flat desktop keyboards they're selling now are almost as bad. The earbuds that come with iPods are all universally crappy, both in build and sound quality. It's bizarre that, with Jobs exerting such obsessive compulsive control over Apple's output, crap products like these somehow slip through the cracks. It's almost like Jobs is schizoid.
Then again, if Apple just isn't good at designing certain things, what are they supposed to do? Start selling updated IBM Model-M keyboards with their high-end desktops? Grado's with the iPods? Paint microsoft mice white!!? It's almost unimaginable, and I see that as a problem.
This is my main beef with Apple. They're too image conscious. Admittedly, some of their user-base just wants to be fashionable, but is being fashionable really a long-term plan for success? Given how much of an asshole he is, sooner or later Jobs is going to become "uncool". Increased market share and, hence, lessened uniqueness isn't going to help. Normal people will use uncool hardware if it's *good*. This is a lesson I feel Apple needs to learn.
...and at this juncture some of the best Windows computers are Macs. You heard me right. They also make some of the best Linux computers. Now that MacIntel is the standard architecture for Macintosh, some people are actually running Windows or Linux on them. The reason why they do it? It's because quality control at the major PC manufacturers is down in the dumpster. If you want something that's built as good on the PC side, you have to go with boutique manufacturers like VoodooPC or Alienware, and even those are questionable because VoodooPC is now owned by HP and Alienware is owned by Dell. Since Lenovo took over the ThinkPad and ThinkCentre lines from IBM, quality has gone down the crapper quicker than you can say "ni hao."
Of course, part of the experience of Macs includes Mac OS X. And the folks who buy Macs only to put Windows or Linux on them are kind of unclear on the concept, in my not so humble opinion. Mac OS X is right now the best Unix or Unix-like operating system on the desktop. Now that Leopard is at 10.5.4 it is just plain awesome and just plain works. 10.5.2 was good for me too and so was 10.5.3, but I had no occasion to use 802.11n connectivity and I know that broke with 10.5.2. With 10.5.4 even those with 802.11n wireless access points are happy.
Still, if it means more people with Macs regardless of what OS they run, that's fine by me. More Macs sold equals more visibility for Mac. Everyone assumes that Macs run Mac OS X so the bigger the market share the more likely people will consider Mac users as more than fringies.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You are absolutely right. I worked for HP for quite some time, and believe me - the commodity hardware that $500 HP computer is built with is dirt compared to what Apple uses.
Think about it. HP sells a consumer laptop for $500 that includes all the bells and whistles, a webcam, shiny media buttons, etc. etc. Then they sell a business end laptop for 3x as much that is slower and has less features. Do you think there is a reason for this?
Consumer laptops are made with the absolute cheapest parts HP can source THAT DAY. Two laptops sitting next to each other on the shelf at the store can have different parts but look exactly the same. The quality control in this situation is, understandably, not good.
Business machines are the same in an entire series. They use good, proven hardware, and every single machine uses the same stuff. That way you can flash the same OS image onto all of them without problems. You can't do that with the consumer stuff.
So when people compare Apple to HP or other manufacturers, keep in mind that it's the business class machines that you should be looking at. Apple doesn't use commodity hardware - they use the same piece in every unit in a series, and they use parts that are high quality and proven to work well.
This is why people think Apple is expensive, when it's actually quite competitive.
or else!