Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Losing Big To Apple On Campus
destinyland writes "Apple is closing in on Microsoft's share of operating systems among the computers of incoming freshmen at the University of Virginia, confirming earlier reports of an ongoing trend. A yearly survey shows that among 3,156 freshman who own computers, Microsoft's share is just 56% (down 6%), with Apple's share rising to 43% (up 6%), continuing a six-year pattern. In 2004, it was Microsoft 89% vs. 8% for Apple. 'It seems likely that the Mac-using students will outnumber their Windows cousins this school year,' notes one technology blog, citing a new study showing that 70 percent of college freshman are choosing the Mac. Other interesting data from the Virginia study: In 1997, 26% of incoming freshmen said they didn't own a computer, a number which has now dropped to 0. Laptops now comprise 99% of the computer population. And Linux use has dropped from a high of 2.5% in 2004 to a rounding error this year."
Linux dropped to a rounding error? Really??
Maybe those running Linux didn't want to goto jail for knowing how to use a hacker OS with that scary black screen and gray text mode or maybe this article is full of shit.
of self-entitling, coddled youth?
...don't they know that Steve Jobs wants to control their lives?
Joking aside, I wonder how much that market share number changes when you look at the mobile market. I'd bet 95% of incoming students have cell phones of one type or another. I'd also bet that Windows-based mobile phones are probably near zero percent, with iPhone and Android sharing the lion's share of the market, but it'd be interesting to see what those numbers are for college students as compared to the outside world.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Notice how these just come out of thin air? It's on the blogs too, where there are organized cheerleaders stuffing ballots and blogs. Sort of desperate if I do say so myself.
Most of these Apple using students will soon find out that their degrees are as useless as they themselves are.
Business??
pffff. Have fun waiting tables.
so much for the year of the linux desktop :(
Linux use has dropped from a high of 2.5% in 2004 to a rounding error this year.
Paraphrasing Principal Skinner: Why, there are no children using Linux, either! Am I so out of touch? (pauses to think) No, it's the children who are wrong.
In an unrelated story, the number of unemployable students due to lack of PC experience rises to 43%.
Now we just have to wait for the generation of programmers educated/weaned on MS tools to die off, and we're good :)
That 90% of the people answering that they used Apple were talking about their cellphones and MP3 players.
... considering Apple does not even offer Macbooks with core i3's. You must get core i5 or i7 and pay out the wazoo (to the tune of $1700+) for it or else you're stuck with core 2 duo's, as far as I know. Then again, UVa is not a tech school and so I don't expect many of their incoming class to know or care. Meanwhile, my $500 dollar laptop from a local store 4 years ago still runs AutoCAD 2010 just fine with a $40 RAM upgrade.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is true. This generation of Freshmen went through high school using iPods and iPhones, which serve as "gateway drugs" to Apple's PCs. Plus laptops are supposedly more popular than desktops, especially among college students and Apple's laptops tend to be highly rated in the media. Plus, there's that sweet deal of getting a free iPod with the purchase of an Apple laptop for education... I'm with George Burns from back in the day. Ah, to be 18 again.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Apple is now the big man on campus?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Maybe it's like that at U of V, but being a college student myself I only know 2 people who own macs, either at the local community college where a bunch of my friends are or at the tech school I go to. Linux is more common there than macs are..
Which is going to suck extra hard for them given what a complete disaster Microsoft Office for the Mac is!
(iWork is marginally better for some things, but in my experience both MacOffice and iWork suffer from various glaring compatibility problems with Windows Office!)
Interesting result. Certainly isn't the case at my local University. I do wonder about the demographic of the surveyed college? For example are they fairly wealthy? I cannot imagine students around here even being able to buy a Mac Book, you see many more cheap Dells, HPs, and Acers. You also see a lot of people who don't own laptops at all and certainly don't bring them to classes. Also very odd how few of the students owned a desktop... With it claiming that tons own two or more laptops but only a small selection owning a laptop AND desktop. Again, locally many students here have a desktop in their room and no laptop at all (which is largely down to how cheap desktops are). As I said, I am deeply curious how rich these kids are.
You can run Windows on a Mac when you need.. But if you buy a Mac for the better hardware specs, you might as well play with the Mac OS - which you'll find runs smoother on Mac laptops than any Windows-based laptop I have seen. Just try the touchpad on the newest Mac laptop and you'll see it is far superior to any touchpad on any Windows laptop available now.
Seriously.. the laptops available for Windows fucking suck. They're shit. They're all shit since IBM sold Thinkpad to Lenovo. Dell makes shit. HP makes shit. The consumer 'Best Buy' laptops are shiny shit. The 'enterprise' class laptops are flimsy shit. Nothing available holds a candle to any of the Mac laptops in terms of hardware. They're all too thick or flimsy or get too hot. The only thing Mac is missing that would allow it to take over the enterprise is a docking station (probably because that's against Steve Job's whackjob religion.)
Show me a Windows laptop with hardware that can hold a candle to Mac's current lineup, and I'll buy one. I'm currently using a Dell M4400 and I think it's a flimsy piece of crap that has a formfactor as usable as a potato chip and somehow it gets good reviews. I don't own any Macs - but other developers I work with use them.
Oh ya.. and Windows 7 is a crappy OS that just happens to be less crappy than Vista.
It's really sad.. I went from being the biggest nerd in the world that had to have every latest and greatest gadget to being the most jaded. Every new electronic device from cell phones to laptops is missing features I used to have with an old device. At least Mac is making an attempt to introduce higher quality with newer devices. Every other company is racing to offer the cheapest piece of Chinese shit they can find.
If I haven't affended you a little, it's because I spent so little effort in my rant. Am I the only one that is completely annoyed by the lack of technological progression in consumer electronic devices - both hardware, software, and everything else that has to do with them?
--- We need more Ron Paul!
This is a good thing. Not because Apple is better than Microsoft but because the diversity of operating systems will lead to more portable designs of software which will eventually free us from specific OS dependency altogether.
where a jiggy blonde, chased by white-clad storm troopers runs down aisles of vacant-faced youths who are staring at the image of Steve Jobs on a huge screen above their heads. He is mouthing off something about the primacy of the Apple Way. She spins around, the hammer in her outstretched hands flickering in the harsh light from the screen. The camera tracks the hammer in slo-mo as it arcs towards the screen, impacting between Jobs eyes in a brilliant flash of energy...
What do you mean, its been done before?
Based on my anecdotal evidence from Texas A&M University, the % of desktops are around 30-40. People like to control their TVs, play video games, and download gigs and gigs of music and videos. Many people that come to school with a laptop switch to a desktop sophomore or junior year, due to the above reasons plus they realize that their laptop never leaves their desk, due to the vast number of 24/7 computer labs on campus.
Recently the private school my daughter goes to went 100% Macbooks and servers. Support and forced upgrade costs pushed the IT department to draw a line in the sand and decreed absolutely no MS allowed (except for Office).
Of course it's a double-edged sword. There's higher upfront costs but the TCO is greatly lowered through IT not having to deal with the all the problems related to using Microsoft software. And switching from one monopoly with crappy products to another potential monopoly with ok products is to be debated.
But personally I'm willing to pony up the extra money for the Macbook instead of a cheaper Dell. Mainly because the higher costs of using Microsoft products has greatly increased operating costs for the school over the last 8 years. Which is passed on as tuition increases so this is a long-term solution. Dumping MS in this case is essentially an investment.
At IIT (the Illinois one, not the one in India), the tech department didn't collect this sort of data. But if they had, they would've thought I ran one Windows machine instead of two Linux boxes, because they didn't know Linux and would not help me get the network going unless I told them I was running a single Windows or Mac computer. I ended up getting all the network settings for Windows and putting them in the right place myself, and hiding both systems behind a router. Several of my friends had similar experiences.
I will note that many of my professors, especially in the CS department, used Linux almost exclusively, and some actually would not accept Microsoft Office documents (they allowed pdfs and sometimes OpenOffice documents). There was just a huge disconnect between the people in charge of the student portion of the network and the rest of the campus.
I work in a University IT shop and we've seen trend the past few years as well. It looks like we'll be approaching a 50-50 split this year.
Loads of disposable income because of student loans. No concept of value because they've never had a real job. No desire to be the kid with the Dell when everyone else has a shiny Mac, including the elitist effete instructor. Sounds like the perfect market for Apple!
I'd like to study why freshmen are buying expensive macs rather than inexpensive everything else.
iburnaga.blogspot.com
Apple sells image to its users, and image sells product to the young. Apple is cool (or whatever term kids use for "cool" these days), while PCs are not. Nevermind that Apple is even worse than Microsoft when it comes to keeping its users on a leash, because Apple computers are young and hip (or whatever terms are used for "young" and "hip" these days -- heh) and they aren't Microsoft.
PS - I wonder how long it will take Apple to lock down the Mac platform as tightly as the iPhone platform.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Yup, kids are getting dumber these days.
Interesting result. Certainly isn't the case at my local University. I do wonder about the demographic of the surveyed college? For example are they fairly wealthy? ...
As I said, I am deeply curious how rich these kids are.
UVa is a so-called "public Ivy". It's consistently rated in national Top 25 rankings every single year. Its competitors are schools like the Ivy's, U. of Chicago, the big 3 in California, Northwestern, etc. They're as selective as any Ivy, and so they're attracting the same kind of affluent students. There have been some complaints in the state of Virginia that UVa prefers out of state "stars" to some of its own better students (whether or not that's actually true, I don't know). But most UVa students, academic-wise and income-wise, wouldn't be out of place in any Ivy school. UVa has more in common with Brown or Dartmouth than they do with, say, Penn State.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Unfortunately this is another reason they are less employable, they are all experts with their macs and most business runs on Windows, so now they can't even work the equipment they need to use let alone their job description.
Day one on the job... This is a second mouse button!
Where do -you- think that the majority of both Linux and Apple operating systems are developed?
my guess is that more will be running windows, but on dual boot mac laptops. I don't actually care, buy the machine that you want, but don't ask me to fix it.
I'm sure they're not considering any dual booting. Also, if the support staff says "We support Windows and Mac - if you run anything else, we won't talk to you ", every .DOC format" or "do a Powerpoint" or gawd knows what as part
student with a dual boot system will say "Uh... yeah. Sure.. it's uh.. running windows. See?". To make matters worse, I'm sure there's
enough brainwashed profs out there telling people to "Submit this in Word
of the course requirements. At that rate since M$FT Office is only available on Windows and Mac, that's all you'll see registered...
The University of Virginia is one of the most liberal schools in the country. If you are a liberal, you are not cool if you don't have an Apple; hence, if you got to the University of Virginia you own a Apple; hence, the statistics. They claim to be conservative but they really aren't. Sure when compared with Pelosi, sure they are more conservative. When compared with someone with conservative values, they a just another liberal. Just look at their college ranking inside the University. English Literature is their best college, ranking 12th in the country. When is the last time you heard of a conservative English Lit professor. That's right never. The rest are just a hodge podge of colleges put together just to say they have e.g. a computer science program, or some type of engineering. It will always be true, if you own an Apple you are a liberal.
Now, admittedly this was in high school, but back in the '80s Apple was *IT* as far as computers went. The art lab had a Mac, the math/programming lab had 8 Apple IIs with CPM, the computer lab had a dozen more Apple IIs, the physics teacher had an Apple II, and the administrative offices had a few of them (with hard drives, woo!).
The drafting class had *ONE* PC with AutoCAD or something, that the teacher wouldn't let anyone even touch. I asked to play with it, but the closest I got to it was he once asked me how to delete this file. "DEL whatever.ext". "But file names can only have 8 characters!"
Sean
I answer help desk phone calls at a large research university that brings in about 10,000 freshmen a year. It's very common for them, or their parents to ask "Which kind of laptop should we buy, PC or Mac?". It's not that they don't like one or the other, or they don't know the difference. It's not that they care which is cheaper, or which looks prettier. It's not that there's a particular processor that's better than another, or the graphics chipset is faster, or any of the geek stuff that we argue about.
They just want to know, for this campus, which machine will give them or their kid the least amount of hassle while doing everything they need to get through four years of classes. Will it run MS Office? Does it work with the on-campus apps (online class material, email, calendar, etc)? Is it going to break and cost me more money in two years? If it *does* break, how much of a PITA is it to get it fixed?
When people, incoming students or parents, ask which they should buy, I tell them honestly that I have a 13" white MacBook with OpenOffice that does everything I need for all of my classes, works with all of the on-campus apps I need to deal with, and generally causes me no grief, and I like it.
When people ask me which is better for dealing with viruses, I answer that 100% of the calls I receive for malware/virus infections are from PC users; I add that I still run antivirus software on my Mac, and the university requires all Mac users to run it, but I've never taken a Mac virus call. I am enough of a hacker to know that Mac OS X is not perfect, and that it has security holes. But I've yet to take a call that dealt with the results of one, and I've taken plenty of calls for Windows machines whose end resolution was a complete reinstall.
After that explanation, people go next door to the store and buy a Macbook, and I never hear from them again unless they have forgotten a password.
That, friends, is why Apple is kicking the crap out of machines running Windows.
The only reason why these type of statistics are ever quoted is in the hope that they will persuade people to buy, in this case, a mac - instead of a Windows machine.
They are meant to convince you that there is a trend, that you should be part of it, and that you don't want to be part of the out crowd.
A rational person in control of their emotions would ignore them and make their choice based on the technology, the need and, if it's important to you, the politics.
It's UVA, of course it will start to skew to Mac's. Its a very liberal arts type school, which will lean Mac overall.
Owning a Mac these days doesn't mean you are using OS X. More people are buying Mac hardware simply because it can run Windows OS. People got to stop equating Mac sales to OS X use because they are not 1:1 anymore.
I went to all the links and the only one with actual information (The University of Virginia) shows the majority of students are using windows. The analyst that is cited as the source provdes zero information.
I did a quick search and it appears I am not alone in thinking this guy is making up these numbers.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+fortuneapple20+(FORTUNE:+Apple+2.0)
I wager he just shorted the stock and knew apple fan boys would parrot his lies.
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
I want OpenOffice to be good, i really do. I download each release hoping that this time it will be better, but it never is. It is always slower, more prone to crash, feature lacking, and incompatible with the things that I am doing. I always end up using it for a week or two, then running into some bug or problem, them spending half a day trying to fix it. At some point i realize that the faster MS Office will do what I want without bugs and the time lost to Open Office could have paid for a new copy of MS Office.
I wish they would stop trying, and failing to copy MS Office and instead focus on being really good and fast at a basic set of features, rather that being mediocre at a lot.
And when Apple has a decent market share (which is what you're helping them achieve), the security holes will get exploited. That's a given. Further, the Mac people might be less used to dealing with it and more vulnerable (from a user perspective, not software) to it than Windows users are. I just hope for them that the UNIX core makes OSX more resilient than Windows overall.
When you're spending mom and dads money.
Wait till these kids start spending their own cash. Things will change.
Stop calling them either liars or idiots. You are the one who is way off. Take a Macbook, expand it from 2GB to 4GB, change the 250GB drive to 500GB, add iWork, add Microsoft Office home and student edition, and add Applecare because now you've got quite a lot riding on a measly 1 year warranty. You're looking at $1676.95. And that's without Aperture, Logic Express, Final Cut, Filemaker, no DVI adapter, and no airline adapter. Just that stuff will take you up to $2491.90, and that's the CHEAP version of Filemaker.
So, $1500.00 is easily reached with the bottom of the line Macbook, even with a 15% discount.
Does this mean that 2004 was the year of the Linux desktop?
You must get core i5 or i7 and pay out the wazoo (to the tune of $1700+) for it or else you're stuck with core 2 duo's,
Well, I'm going to ignore the fact that a Core Duo or equiv AMD or basically any non-Atom level CPU from the past four years or so is ample for 99% of what most US college students use their PCs for (Word, EMail, YouTube, Facebook). The sad fact is that it doesn't really matter if the PC they're buying is $500 or $1,500 - they are (overwhelmingly) not paying directly for it. They are buying it out of loan funds, or parent funds. It's pretend money that doesn't really come due for *ever*. And on top of that, most campus bookstores or computer stores *want* to upsell the students on the most expensive PC possible to boost their margins, it's easy to see why a premium pricer like Apple features prominently within this market.
Da Blog
Degeneration (and general baseline stupidity) is strongest in that corner of the planet. "And Linux use has dropped from a high of 2.5% in 2004 to a rounding error this year" proves this.
How?
OSX and Windows 7 are both modern, capable, operating systems. The OEM system bundle generally well balanced and competitively priced.
You can chose from the best in both FOSS and commercial/proprietary software.
And when Apple has a decent market share (which is what you're helping them achieve), the security holes will get exploited.
Okay, look, I'm sick and tired of this argument. Market share doesn't mean shit, installed base does-- malware authors are not looking at market share reports and saying, "Oh, if only Apple had x%, I would SO write for OS X!" The installed base of OS X today dwarfs that of the classic Mac OS that existed in the 90s, back when Apple had ~15% market share. Yet malware was quite a bit more of a problem in the classic Mac OS days than it has been in the OS X era.
It was worth people's trouble to write malware for an OS that had several million fewer machines running it back then, but it's not worth their time today for an OS that has a much larger user population? Care to try to explain that?
~Philly
Compare machines of the screen size before insulting someone. An apple refurb is $1349 plus tax and any additional RAM. That's pretty close to $1500 and significantly more costly than a 15" PC. I wouldn't give my kid a 13" machine for school if I could help it. They spend too much time staring at it over the 4 years.
MacBooks tend to last a lot longer than Windows machines. I'm not talking about build quality here (although that also helps) but about useful lifetime. Any MacBook or MacBook pro built in the last four years can still run the most recent OS, and is therefore good enough to run any software your university course may want you to use. This definitely isn't true for Windows laptops, and especially not for low-end Windows laptops: you'll have a hard time running Win7 on a two year old budget Dell or Acer. So a lot of these students could be using the hand-me-downs of their older siblings, parents, whatever.
Most people don't care about "free" when all they see are computers for sale that come with the "free" operating system already installed. Very few people really buy a barebones computer and then go pay retail or otherwise acquire some OS. All they see is a bundled price, this has been industry standard for like forever, so that is how it goes. A starving student will buy used, and THAT will come with a "free" operating system on it.
Yes, it SHOULD have been made a requirement at the retail level ages ago to SHOW the software cost in the total bill, or to force these guys to offer alternatives, but the government didn't care, people didn't seem to care, so there ya go. It's just what comes with the machine, so the software is "free enough" for people.
And for that matter, very few people build their own desktops, and when it comes to laptops, that falls way way down to insignificant levels, even within the hard core tech savvy crowd. They may wipe the disk and install something else, but the incidence of barebones laptops or build from scratch laptops is microscopic in terms of numbers. It is possible, just very unlikely.
So "free" or Free never enters the picture for most people. Just the way it is.
And that deal with Dell and Canonical..from day one you could see Dell wasn't sincere about it, it was a sop or something, just to get them shutup and to "prove" to the shareholders or whatever that "linux doesn't sell" so they could eventually abandon the idea and have it go away.. They had "dell recommends windows..yada yada" on top of the pages for the few models with ubuntu they were selling! I mean, WTF, I saw that and thought "no way am I ever buying from them for being such dickheads about it". And there was no price savings, and most models you couldn't get, and you had to hunt to even find those. It was a con from day one. Ya, they would sell you one, but their effort was some sort of con, a half assed attempt designed to fail. That's my opinion of course, can't prove it, but recommending windows on top of the linux computers page is rather glaring evidence that they never were sincere about the effort.
The fix has been in for a long long time now. Wintel on your boxes, or now Apple has such good cred with phones and whatnot they are using that to boost sales with their other offerings, and free operating systems are relegated to mostly server use and the one dude out of a thousand-that's it, one in a thousand maybe- who geeks out with the hardware. And even there the free software enthusiasts are dwarfed by just the gamers. Heck, most hardware geeking that kids do revolves around video games, I don't think this can be disputed, so that means Windows.
It looked for awhile that netbooks might provide the big breakthrough, but that is lost now as well, back to mostly windows on those things from the manufacturers.
I like linux just swell, use it exclusively. never tried any of the BSDs but I assume they work fine as well. so now you have to ask the question, why having totally free stuff doesn't work, and the only credible answer is, it isn't a real mainstream business, and there is no credible mainstream retail level business to be made from it. As such, it will continue to exist, but at low levels and "hidden" like in various gadgets with embedded systems, android phones, etc. But mainstreet-mainstream desktops and laptops, DOA. When Free and free doesn't work, it is no longer much of a viable business model, if it ever was to begin with.
Now if someone with really DEEP pockets wanted to out canonical canonical, and do a "stack", hardware plus guaranteed to work free software offering (just offering the software is not a real business model with any hope), and then advertised the snot out of it nation wide/globally..perhaps.
Short of that, small mom and pop "linux installed" sales, and a few enthusiasts, and that's it. And half the enthusiasts (right here on slashdot for one example) still use windows and a
You know, if you're going to call bullshit you might try getting your own facts straight first. The study in the summary states very clearly that it's a survey of incoming freshman only. The study in your link is of all students. In fact, if you take the link the summary and take the last four years of students (= all students like your study), you get that Mac ownership of that body is 32%, which is DAMN close to the study in your link showing 27% of the laptop owners of the total student body owned macs.
So is it my turn to talk about how you probably shorted the apple stock and new that the apple haters would parrot your lies?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
I'm currently studying at a University in Australia and I've notices the distribution of OS's depends on which faculty your in. If your in engineering or IT the OS distribution is something like 70% Windows 25% Linux 5% mac.
However venture up to the humanities and arts side and every one has macs. Its not like they use these macs for anything useful. They need safari and a word processor and iTunes, but they look nice and they match their outfits.
The other factor to this is that a lot of colleges were still had Unix-based CS curricula in 1999-2004, so Linux probably dropped for that reason. Additionally, if you are a CS student and want to learn/use Unix/GCC/etc for CS projects, it's much much easier on a Mac than either Windows+Emulators or Linux (assuming you don't already know it).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Linux belongs on the server. The Linux desktop sucks. I used a Linux as my main desktop for more than ten years before getting disgusted and just switching to Mac OS. Instead of working on stability and usability they keep focusing on trying to copy Windows and Mac OS and stupid graphics. If that is all they offer I may as well just use Mac OS which overall works better and it still offers all the Unix and programming tools I'm familiar with.
I don't know how they would count me. I usually have a laptop with Mac OS, a laptop with Windows, an iPad, and an iTouch on me at least. And of course have Linux running in VM on both laptops and am remotely connected to my Linux cluster for doing all the real work.
My guess is that pure-Linux laptops have gone down with the easy availability of VM. Why bother getting Linux running on your laptop when you can just run it in VM on your laptop. Not as if there is a major selection of laptops with Linux preinstalled available.
I can see why Apple is destroying Microsoft. Apple laptops look better, are lighter, run cooler, have better battery life, have better screens, and last longer than most PC laptops and you aren't getting a crapshoot as with PC laptops. Even major branded PC laptops are difficult to judge if a specific model is is good or not. And Mac OS is more attractive, easier to use, more powerful, and more secure than any version of Windows. And it doesn't get a major redesign every single time a new version comes out and you don't have to choose between thirty slightly incompatible variants of the same version. Even the Mac version of MS Office is better than the Windows version. The only reason to have a PC is if you are a major PC gamer (I'm assuming most students don't need to run a legacy app).
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
These are just isolated statistics from one institution and in no means representative of a whole country or the whole world for that matter, but interesting none the less. As a long time mac user (25 years ago I bought my first mac and I still use mac today) a long time windows user (2001 I bought my first windows machine and I still use windows everyday) and long time linux user (circa 1997 I built my first linux server (RH5.something) and I still use both FC13 and Ubuntu 10 ). As a java web app developer my main dev machine in the work place runs FC13. It replaces an Win XP box that i have dev'ed with for the last 3 years. At home for private projects my machine is a Mac Pro. I only mention these facts to add some cred to my next statement. I hate all of the OSes for differing reasons. They all suck. They all have their individual issues that get in my way as I try and work in my chosen profession. As a long time /. reader, I am continually amazed at the amount of FUD spread (by particularly /. posters about, who in my view should know better) about the various OS'es. Don't get me wrong, I love the jibing and the fanboi accusations but, OMG please at least check your facts before hitting your keyboards.
If one where to survey my immediate family, I mean my brothers, my sister my nieces my nephews, my own children even, (over 10 people) the only one in my family that uses a windows PC in exclusion to any other OS, is my 80 year old father. The rest all use macs as either their main computer or only computer. This does not mean that this is typical of a world wide trend, it is just a trend within my family.
And when Apple has a decent market share (which is what you're helping them achieve), the security holes will get exploited. That's a given. Further, the Mac people might be less used to dealing with it and more vulnerable (from a user perspective, not software) to it than Windows users are. I just hope for them that the UNIX core makes OSX more resilient than Windows overall.
There will still be benefits to increased Apple installed base, even for MS users. All operating systems have vulnerabilities and then there's always social engineering anyway. The large majority of machines on the internet having the same vulnerabilities makes things worse for everyone, regardless of which company releases that software or what software you individually are running.
I haven't seen one for a while, but I used to get regular email with malware attachments from my windows using friends. Since I use linux, were no threat to me. Similarly, linux malware would presumably not run on windows if ever I sent it to them. So while both machines may be vulnerable the network is less vulnerable by diversity of software. The larger installed base there is of non-windows machines the better it is even for windows users. Swap "windows" for any other system that dominates the market in the future and it remains true.
If you compare computer costs compared to the cost of tuition, it doesn't seem like a lot. Perhaps teaching all of these future Mac fanboys Obamanomics is also bad for our economy, as these kids will be running around the halls of Congress in a few years.
So those kids that picket everytime their tuition bills go up (for example here at US Berkeley) are buyng macintoshes instead of the more affordable PCs? Why, how can this be? To hear them rant on and on everytime tuition increases you'd think they were down to their last nickle - oh wait, I was just reminded that Apple offers discounts to students and faculty - what is it 5%? THat must be how they afford all that cool Apple Tech...
Ken
but there cheap and there $1800 just for 15" screen and that is just for 256 Video ram and no card slot.
I know when I was in college like 5 years ago the only labs with Apples were the video design classes. I remember most of the students had windows computers but there was a small amount of students with the MAC's. I know I always stuck out with the Linux laptop some of your IT majors had linux laptops.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
I'm assuming that Mac+Windows was counted as Mac, Mac+Linux was counted as Mac, and Linux+Windows was counted as Windows (and no, I did not RTFA). I was a Computer Engineering major (class of '08) and most of the CEN and COS students with Linux were dual-booting it. After all, most computers come with OSX or Windows included, so why throw it away?
Also, this completely ignores the kids that install it to experiment or because they need it for class after they get to school. Why does it matter so much what they start with? A bunch probably bought their new laptops right before college, so they'll have whatever the computers came with.
How many of the Macs dual boot to another OS or have virtual machines of another OS?
I work at a university and I can confirm that you see a lot more Macs there than in the population at large. Number of reasons for this:
1) Apple is in with the hipster crowd and a lot of university students are. It is "cool" to own a Mac so they do for that reason alone. Same reason they'll spend $60 (really) on an Ed Hardy T-shirt (there's an Ed Hardy store right next to campus)
2) They tend to have more disposable income in that regard and income they aren't attached to. Normally their parents buy them a computer since all programs recommend it and some require it. Easier to spend extra money when the cost isn't your direct consideration.
3) The university computer store pushes Apple really heavy. The staff there are Mac fans and Apple gets a large amount of floor space, and that space is right near the entrance.
So you see a lot. But the majority? No not really. Also there's a big difference between Apple winning and MS losing. The computer store also does brisk business in Windows licenses and VMWare Fusion. Part of the reason Macs are now viable is that they run Windows. One of our student workers told an amusing story of the first test for 1Ls at law school. You have to have a laptop for it, they use a crappy automated testing software. Also, said software is Windows ONLY. This is clearly stated in the materials you get. This leads to much whining from the Mac owners, and then a run to the bookstore to buy Windows 7 and install it with bootcamp (said crap software won't run in virtualization mode).
Same kind of thing in the department I work in. We have a number of professors that buy Macs for their labs. In some cases, they only get a few. Their desktop, maybe a couple others are Mac and are used mainly for word processing and Internet surfing, maybe some Matlab work. The research systems are Windows. In others they are all Mac, and right after they get their shiny new Mac, they have us get a license for Windows 7 and Fusion. We have a number of important software packages that are Windows only. Also paying a premium for a Mac for a desktop isn't such a big deal, it is grant money anyhow. Paying a premium for a bunch of computers for simulations, well that is a bit harder to justify.
So ya, the point of all this rambling is that I've no doubt Mac sell well on campus, that is easy to see. However I do doubt that it is a majority, and I doubt even more that it is hurting MS.
LOL I have a little fedora box at work for dev purposes (I'm a network engineer so its convenient to be able to fire up nmap or whatever cool unix utility, stick an apache server onto the net for quick testing, etc.)
Every fortnight the poor desktop guys bring over a user's hard drive to zip some virused file (to send off to mcaffee) that is so nasty that you can't even manipulate it in windows (goes all funny with attributes etc) but of course to linux its just a file.
Now if only I can convince them to let me use a macbook pro or at least let me drop and SSD in...... not a chance (fortune 500 corporate IT, flexible as an iron rod) and the machine I look at 9x5 hours a week is by far the slowest and running the oldest OS (compared to my home workstation and personal laptop). :(
Really? That was such a big issue for you, you refuse to consider one at all?
How often have you bought replacement batteries for the other notebooks you've owned?
I'm just curious, because I've owned a LOT of computers (both PC and Mac) over the years. With most laptops I've had, either the original battery outlasts something else on the machine that winds up making me scrap the thing, or else the battery wears out, but one of the "user replaceable" replacements is difficult to obtain and more expensive than it's worth. So I wind up using the laptop for the remainder of its life by just plugging it into the wall all the time.
And with the long run-time on the newer Mac laptops, a full charge should allow using it on battery longer than I used to get from previous PC/Windows laptops even if I brought a second, pre-charged, battery along to swap out.
As the Technical Director of a group doing telecom related multimedia application development back in 1995 and a long time Mac User, I was sad when I had to make the decision to develop for Windows '95 instead of Mac OS. The reason was simply that Apple had abandoned the home and educational markets and there were far more development options in Windows by that time. I remember writing a letter about the problem to Mac Weekly (Now defunct I believe).
Getting back into the educational system is Apple's best hope of retaining the desktop market they once dominated.
-- Should there be smoke coming out of my CPU?
OS 9 had viruses. Macs had viruses that in the early days that were passed between floppies.
You can't tell me that OS X has smaller marketshare (or user base in total numbers) that it wouldn't be a lucrative market.
i have a mac book pro and i run windows server 2003 in a vmware box on it and have rooted my mac so that i can truly use the unix side but if a free program that would be supper useful to a student was released with a install script with the simple command passwd you would basically end mac's security clam and you would see a mass move back to windows... it not that hard to own a mac for your joy.
College can be very demanding and any time at all spent paying attention to a computer or its software or its operation needs to be avoided. Linux is a superior OS but there is a learning curve and the time spent paying attention to the computer may drain the constant pressure towards narrow concentration on subject matters. Back in the day we used to see hackers who used Apple machines simply because they wanted to use all of their concentration in penetration of other peoples' systems.
I get this question asked a lot of time. Oftentimes, the student wants a laptop to take to class, as opposed to a PC at the dorm room.
My response: Unless there is a specific need for a PC (like a TPM chip), I recommend a Macbook. Why:
1: Windows is easily available. Boot Camp or under a VM program. This allow for the Windows version of Office 2010 to be run which is the de facto standard. This also allows for decent games to be run.
2: Running a Mac means there is one less hackable machine on the dorm network. Yes, Macs do have security issues, but let's be real. Every Windows box up and down the campus network will get infected sometime. The Macs won't be touched.
3: Ease of backups with Time Machine. This in itself will save a LOT of work if papers get erased. Combine with Mozy and this will cover almost any backup issue. Windows takes a third party backup program to back up reliably. One can even hide a Time Capsule somewhere in the dorm for backups in a secure spot.
4: UNIX capabilities. A Mac user can write code in C, C++, or Java without having to install anything but the XCode tools. Perhaps Eclipse.
5: Ease of finding help. Colleges have a lot of Mac experts, while finding someone for Windows may cost.
Wouldn't lack of experience with Windows be a detriment to someone looking for employment in the business world, where Windows runs on well over 90% of all computers? I realize you can run Windows on a Mac, and many people do, but that seems like an expensive approach to gaining these valuable skills.
-Lod
Keep telling yourself that.
I answer help desk phone calls at a large research university that brings in about 10,000 freshmen a year. It's very common for them, or their parents to ask "Which kind of laptop should we buy, PC or Mac?". It's not that they don't like one or the other, or they don't know the difference. It's not that they care which is cheaper, or which looks prettier. It's not that there's a particular processor that's better than another, or the graphics chipset is faster, or any of the geek stuff that we argue about.
They just want to know, for this campus, which machine will give them or their kid the least amount of hassle while doing everything they need to get through four years of classes. Will it run MS Office? Does it work with the on-campus apps (online class material, email, calendar, etc)? Is it going to break and cost me more money in two years? If it *does* break, how much of a PITA is it to get it fixed?
When people, incoming students or parents, ask which they should buy, I tell them honestly that I have a 13" white MacBook with OpenOffice that does everything I need for all of my classes, works with all of the on-campus apps I need to deal with, and generally causes me no grief, and I like it.
When people ask me which is better for dealing with viruses, I answer that 100% of the calls I receive for malware/virus infections are from PC users; I add that I still run antivirus software on my Mac, and the university requires all Mac users to run it, but I've never taken a Mac virus call. I am enough of a hacker to know that Mac OS X is not perfect, and that it has security holes. But I've yet to take a call that dealt with the results of one, and I've taken plenty of calls for Windows machines whose end resolution was a complete reinstall.
After that explanation, people go next door to the store and buy a Macbook, and I never hear from them again unless they have forgotten a password.
That, friends, is why Apple is kicking the crap out of machines running Windows.
Or, because they took the idea of AOL's internet software and applied it to the OS GUI. Remember when you had to remember how to get your email from a server or use an internet browser? And what the heck was usenet? How do I find news? AOL made it simple. One little box was all you needed. Never leave the box and you will never be confused again.
For years, people stayed away from computers because they were difficult to use. OS X is all big colorful pictures and no options. You don't have to go download extra software to do anything. Just click on any big picture of what you want and BAM! you're a computer super genius doing your spreadsheet and email and dvd burning and stuff. That right there is the reason people are buying Macs in droves. Also, because it matches their ipod and iphone, which have a similar interface and comforting icon.
Whenever I use one I feel like a chimp in a scientific experiment on intelligence. I almost expect an apple to come out of a tube and land in a trough if I click on the apple icon. But that's just me.
...that at colleges with large homosexual populations there would be a lot of mac use. I suspect it's very small at Bob Jones or Brigham Young university
this is moded troll because Americans think that moding it troll they will make the truth go away. Which reaffirm what the guy was saying.
It was funny for a time but American stupidity is starting to get worrisome.
That, my friends, is a load of horseshit. You can buy a comparable Windows/Linux machine for about half that of a Macbook. If you don't have your head up your ass, and half-way paid attention during your intro to computers course in high school, you'll have no more problems with one over the other.
You nailed it. This also applies to just being the geek that people ask about anything computer related. I tell them to get a Mac so they won't keep bothering me.
On my old PB 1400 I switched to the iCab browser and never looked back, loads better than what was available at the time, IE or Navigator. Have you tried that on your older powerbook? It might resurrect it and make it useful on the web again. (note: haven't checked it out in 2 or so years now I guess, but it *used* to be pretty spiffy as browsers go)
Ah, the old "Macs are for babies" argument. The one that originated in the '80s, when the "superior" PC crowd was still convinced that the command line was the one, true way of computing.
I'd say that argument lost any remaining validity when Windows XP came out with its Fisher Price default GUI.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
And Linux use has dropped from a high of 2.5% in 2004 to a rounding error this year.
This might be true if you count the O/S that is installed on the student's laptop. However, most students also have a phone. And most students these days are buying smart phones. If is not an iPhone, it is probably an Android which of course runs Linux. And for those of you who think "Its not really Linux unless you can drop to a BASH shell", you might want to check out one of these bad boys.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
I wonder why that analogy sprang to mind when reading an Apple story.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seriously, given that the actual market numbers (Apple is selling more machines, but so is everyone else, so Apple is still less than 10%), and how much of their revenue is actually coming from iPhone / iPod type devices (we'll see how the iPad does), how long are they going to bother with desktops and notebooks?
The trend at Apple has been for the computers to be account for a smaller percentage of revenue in recent years. If that continues, the major shareholders will eventually wonder why R&D, manufacturing and support dollars are being spent on products that are no longer central to the company's revenue. Again, IF. Jobs' departure will speed up the shareholder pressure. It's likely to make the share price drop significantly, and without him there, the major shareholders will have more influence on the board. And Jobs himself has really been making comments about "traditional" computers in general in a way that makes me think that he's not overly interested in them as products any longer.
They're all shit since IBM sold Thinkpad to Lenovo.
This isn't true in my experience. Sure, there are some cheaper machines now under the Thinkpad brand, but the T and X series are still excellent pieces of hardware. Their specs are higher and they have more connectivity/upgrade options than comparable Apple machines, the keyboards leave Apple in the dust, their workmanship is generally on par, docks are available, they have good Linux support (if that is important to you), and they cost roughly 30%-40% less than a comparable MacBook if you spend an hour or two looking for a deal.
It's easy for you to make broad statements and summarily dismiss Thinkpads without much deliberation because Lenovo is Chinese-owned, but the truth is that the higher end Thinkpads are still nice (and less expensive than Apple notebooks).
Clueless college dorkette trying to convince her parents the she neeeeeeds a $2000 macbook pro.
Mom asks why not a $500 windows laptop... Child turns to dad... I neeeeed a $2000 macbook pro....for email and stuff. Mom walks out of the store in disgust. Dad breaks out the wallet.
LOL -
I have a 9 1/2 year old Mac laptop. But it's not running OS 9, it's running OS X 104, and can run all the things you listed.
Or I could just run Linux on it too. Being from Apple it also doesn't have things like worthless floppy drives, it has a decent complement of modern ports including Firewire400.
And OS X can run on older systems than that...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not trying to be a troll, but I work at a game development studio. We tried working on Apple hardware. We really, really tried.
Apple computers at our studio are used only to get things on the iphone. They are othewise considered useless to work. If someone formatted a mac at any moment, the only lost thing would be the certificates.
Apple hardware is a fucking joke, and OSX is a toy. By the way: fuck you OSX i don't want to update now or fucking ever.
You are, most certainly, doing it wrong
Your post can be summed up in one line:
Computer *USERS* want the least amount of hassles to get the job done.
That is something many of the computer *ENTHUSIASTS* in the FOSS community do not understand, can't keep up with or refuse to accept, finding the idea offensive. That is why Linux is barely on the map ( I am and have been a linux user for 10 years ).
Microsoft won its market share on price for "good enough" quality versus excellent quality at a stiffer price.
That was a long time ago. As the article shows, computer use has been mainstream for a while and as with luggage it has finally sunk in that paying a little bit more goes a long way in avoiding hassles. Microsoft hasn't fully seen and accepted this yet. That is partially why they are losing ground to younger people.
There is more to measuring compatibility than naming off an office productivity app. Far more insidious is the business apps that run local and have no Mac or Linux counter part. These apps are legion, because those corporations aren't software companies, so they write one version...for Windows. Where I work, the computing landscape is littered with these apps. For accounting. For sales. For engineering. For manufacturing. I have to support every MS OS in one form or another because of this. A one-off app here for Win95, another there written for DOS. A normal day in the office for me.
Ultimately, the compatibility these kids are missing out on in the name of coolness is that they are unprepared for how business function computer-wise. I have to deal with these "Apple Idiots" on a regular basis who are so enamored with the "Apple Way", but have zero clue that 99% of the business apps out there, only run on Windows.
"But, you could run them under emulation!"
Why? Why, when I could just run actual Windows and reduce my support complexity?
Check out the list of the top CAD/CAE/CAM packages and what OS they support. Windows. Windows. Windows. Windows. Etc.
If all you do is word processing, some personal spreadsheets and browse the internet, have your Mac. You've just paid far more money for a machine than you needed to, and deserve what you get.
Besides, real geeks have one of everything and never settle for just one system. THAT is so yesterday. "Oh, you only own a mac? That is so sad."
Bearded Dragon
After this, I pretty much stopped reading your rant. Although Apple does a quiet a few things that piss me off and show poor consumer response, they are NOT A MONOPOLY. What you're saying is that if anyone can charge a higher price because of their brand, then they are using "monopolistic competition"? Yeah, tell that to BMW or Sonoma-Williams or Ethan Allen... yes, they're all *frickin monopolies* because they can extract a higher margin from their brand (despite the fact that they are just making everyday items with higher quality).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
...getting back to the topic, I wonder about the claim that Linux users are a rounding error. That sounds very much as if someone's sample is non-randomly selected. I would intuitively expect to see that sort profile among arts students, but as soon as you introduce students from more "techie" disciplines to your sample, I would expect to see a larger proportion of users of Linux and/or multiple OSs.
Having said that, I consider myself primarily as a Linux user, but in actuality, I probably spend more of my time using this second-hand MacBook that I inherited from my wife when she upgraded to a more recent model.
A better question for you - how fast do you throw away your laptop (since you said you've had a LOT of them over the years)? I keep my laptops for 3-5 years and typically go through 2-3 batteries (I use my laptop a lot). So yes, it IS a big deal because 1) it's a hassle to take it to the Apple Store and 2) they charge WAY more than it would cost to buy a battery if you could replace it yourself.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
When you are writing malware and scanning IP ports, it doesn't matter that there are many millions MACs, all those IPs will be PCs.
Back in the day, there were a 15% possibility that you will randomly hit a MAC, it's about 1% now, that's why there is no malware for Macs. It's the same than in biology. Vaccines don't protect 100% population, they only immunize about 80%, and that's enough to isolate viruses, as only a few victims will be vulnerable to them.
Where did college students get all that money??? I couldn't even afford a rudamentary Apple, and I certainly wouldn't want one either. What, are they the only ones immune to the financial collapse or something?! I built my super-rig for less than a baseline mac. Someone needs to teach these kids the value of ten thousand dollars, because clearly they are missing it. Like seriously, even on parents money that is crazy. And financial aid can't pay for a Mac, unless there is some crazy discrepancy where I live at half the poverty line (with private loans), and some kid can afford to burn his money like it is free.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
Because in the 90's, Malware was mostly about showing off.
In the 00's, it became about profit, and that means you want to compromise as many machines as possible with the least amount of effort. Technically inept users combined with a huge install base make the windows machines of today the low hanging fruit. Move those inept users over to a different platform, and target moves with them, it's that simple. The User is the weak link, not the system.
I'm a Linux user: I'll never buy a Mac, but I absolutely love this. The more people who buy Macs, the smaller M$'s market share will be. I don't push Linux on people because I do not believe it is suitable for most average Joes. I'm just sick of M$'s crap, with the whole broadcast flag/activation/removing of features like DirectSound BS.
I tell people: I'm not a Linux or Mac fanatic, I'm just a Windows hater. If they ask why, I show them credible reasons.
In my mind at least.
Young people need to make YouTube videos and other media tasks that are a chore on Windows. The Mac has subsystems for pro audio, pro video, it has world class typography, graphics, it has Unix which makes it suitable for Web development, and it's reliable.
Windows is a joke. It's like a kind of jigsaw puzzle you play with endlessly because there are pieces missing. I won't hire freelancers who uses Windows because they will send me shoddy work in bizarre formats and who knows if there is a virus in there. They're just not worth the trouble. What does it say about you if you didn't have enough sense to get a Mac by now?
I wonder how colleges are able to scrape these figures together? If anything the appearance of Linux use should be skyrocketing in order to work around having to install university provided crap to avoid having to deal with 'NAC' sandboxing.
User agent string from browsers? Survey? Maybe the number of linux users is declining because those users know better than to do what it takes to be counted.
Anyway MACs have always had a huge following in primary schools. They always pushed this channel hard. I see a lot of people with MAC hardware running windows and linux so maybe that could explain some of the figures?
It was worth people's trouble to write malware for an OS that had several million fewer machines running it back then, but it's not worth their time today for an OS that has a much larger user population? Care to try to explain that?
There were likely at least a hundred million fewer computers in the 90s.
Therefore, Mac has increased by quite a bit if you look at pure numbers, but in terms of total % of computers, they've gone down.
Let me try throwing you an example here.
Back in the early 1800s people would easily be willing to break into a person's house in order to rob them of a hundred dollars. Now, several million more people have, let's say, a thousand dollars in their houses and yet burglars nowadays don't break into houses with the intention of stealing a thousand dollars. Because the total amount that money is worth has gone down.
Thus, despite there being far more Mac based computers nowadays, it's worth even less of their time and money to attack them. If, on the other hand, businesses all went to Macs thinking "Hey we can protect from viruses!" then welcome to the limelight (relatively) small population of Mac users.
Also, rereading your post I have to ask one thing.
The installed base of OS X today dwarfs that of the classic Mac OS that existed in the 90s, back when Apple had ~15% market share. Yet malware was quite a bit more of a problem in the classic Mac OS days than it has been in the OS X era.
You've just noted here the absolute truth that increased market share = increased insecurity. So I don't get why you're having trouble comprehending that more market share = more attacks = less secure. I suppose part of it might be you haven't looked at the chart showing market share. 3 versions of Windows take up nearly 90% of market share while Mac and "other" only take up 5% each. 5% market share is, despite there being more Macs, far far less than 15%.
The terminology is all wrong for the University of Virginia underclassmen. UVa has neither freshmen nor seniors, but rather first years and fourth years, since Thomas Jefferson believed that no student is a senior of knowledge after 4 years.
Sounds like a non-problem then, since the new MBP battery is rated for 1000 full charge-discharge cycles while maintaining >80% of their original charge, whereas the industry standard battery lasts 300 charges. So, you can either buy 2 replacement batteries on your other laptops, or probably never replace your battery on your MBP.
And yeah, the battery costs more since it last over 3x longer than other batteries...
All your 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 are belong to us
The reason OS X doesn't have any malware is not technical, it's economic. Back in the days of Classic viruses were mostly written for kicks by people who were essentially hobbyist programmers. These days viruses are mostly developed for profit by people in developing countries, in particular ex Soviet states.
This shows us a few reasons for what is observed. The first is that malware writers target the OS they use themselves because that's what they're familiar with. Apples laptop lines are selling like gangbusters in the west, but Apples overall market share as measured by large internet sites remains small because they have virtually no presence in any markets where cost is the most critical factor - ie, outside west Europe and the North America. Malware writers don't target Macs because they don't have them, they don't have them because generally they can't justify the extra costs.
The second is that Apples market share is significantly skewed towards laptops. Do Apple even sell Mac Pros any more? I never heard of anyone actually buying one. You don't really want to build a botnet made of laptops because they frequently switch on and off, change IP addresses and if your bot is doing anything CPU intensive the user will notice.
The third reason is that the malware ecosystem is entirely Windows based. It's very common now for botnets to make some of their money by reselling installation services. You can see such a site at installsmarket.net - again, even if you're some kind of freak malware author who uses a Mac, your customers will be providing you with Windows EXEs, so you have a big incentive to stick with it.
A fourth reason is that a lot of malware infections happen through installation of pirated software. This affects Macs less because (a) there is less software available to pirate in particular games, (b) it's not unheard of for machines to come infected out the box in some poorer countries because the OS itself is pirated and (c) again the demographics of Mac users are skewed more towards people with money.
These reasons are primarily economic. For as long as the western consumer market continues to split apart OS-wise from the developing and business worlds, I don't anticipate this changing. Windows isn't going anywhere and the most attractive targets will remain on it for a long time.
Not to mention, no one is expecting an OS X virus, so you're less likely to be found out.
I wish they would stop trying, and failing to copy MS Office and instead focus on being really good and fast at a basic set of features, rather that being mediocre at a lot.
Different people has different needs.
I, on the other hand, wish that they will fix the MS Office compatibility issues. (e.g. table 1st column width, bullet indentation ... it's been 1.5 years since I last tried.) These two bugs were the key reason why I used MS Word instead of OO.o Writer for typing my resume 1.5 years ago.
I fully agree with you.
There is only one point I'd like to add: the script kiddie factor.
For Windows, a lot of information on how to write malware is available in a form understandable even for script kiddies. If you look at a VX site and disassemble some actual malware, you will see that many times, it's just existing tools glued together, often in easy-to-learn languages like Delphi. There is a lot of sample code available on how to write keyloggers, packers, binders and so on. An awful lot of "standard tools" such as trojans are readily available in source or binary form, and are often integrated in other malware. This makes it very easy to write malware for Windows, whereas for Mac OS, one has to do most things himself because the information is only available in theory, and actual ready-to-use code is rare. Of course this is already starting to change, but it will take a lot of time until it reaches the "Windows level".
Moreover, I would claim that more than 50% of Windows malware is pretty much harmless. It doesn't make use of actual vulnerabilities and is only dangerous as long as there is no AV signature for it (in many cases it's even detected by AV heuristics). The danger of malware can't be measured simply by it's quantity.
PS: if you disassemble some of the most "successful" pieces of Windows malware, you would note that even those are sometimes written like crap and mostly rely on some luser double-clicking it. This highlights that the lack of success of non-Windows malware does not have it's source in technology.
... the Mac people might be less used to dealing with it and more vulnerable (from a user perspective, not software) to it than Windows users are.
On the other hand, the Mac users may pay more attention to this problem, compared with Windows users who may have became too jaded to care.
I have changed from fixing my friends' desktops free-of-charge on-site, to telling them to "download AVG or buy a decent antivirus, and take care of your own problem".
This is statistics from a single university. Virginia was also one of the few places that used racks of XServe computers for supercomputing, and was showcased by Apple for that. Obviously, the university has some kind of special relationship with Apple. At the universities I have seen, Apple machines are a distant third to Windows and Linux, with Linux dominating in computer science. Most Mac usage seems to be laptops, not desktops.
Regardless of Apple's marketshare, their mindshare is as big, or bigger, than Microsoft's. A lot of Windows users hate Apple and their "fanbois". There has to be millions of haters who would love to wipe the smirk off Job's face by writing a virus to bring down Mac computers. They'd get massive press for their accomplishment as well.
The marketshare argument is a red herring, and even if it wasn't you can still get another 10 or 15 years of computing bliss on your Mac while you wait for the masses to catch on.
Macbooks are not more expensive than the rest.
The latest Macbooks are one of the best laptops around the $1,000 mark (which, interestingly enough, becomes a good €1,000 in Europe).
The only competitor is Dell, which has the advantage of allowing you to customize your hardware slightly. Macbooks are good by default though, while with Dells you need to tinker.
HP, Acer, don't make me laugh. That's very poor quality.
Now first of, my work OS is Linux. But I can see OSX taking over. It is always a bit of a hassle to get everything working right. Oh, sound and such are fine but dual monitor setup is still not 100% smooth in both KDE and Gnome. Gnome can't handle multiple wallpapers (and this looks bad monitors are different dimensions) and KDE just isn't smooth with positionting them.
It is usuable, but OSX is just that much smoother and you get it running from the moment you boot your new shiny machine. Nerds are dying out, not because there are fewer of them but because there are more computer users. Their percentage dwindles.
For me, the unique features linux offers (and please gnome stop robbing them) which is mostly complete control are worth the initial setup hassle. But if you are going to shop for a new laptop, and you can do math, then a mac makes a lot of sense especially if you opensource is just free apps to you.
But I know from personal experience that Windows is in decline. It has become easier and easier during job interviews to ask wether a linux desktop is acceptable, to the point that recently it ain't even an issue worth raising anymore because it has already become common in development environments.
Used to be only the boss had a mac and maybe the admin had a linux machine for some tasks. Now they are very common indeed and IT departments have gone from barely tolerating them to supporting them.
Price doesn't really matter to students. Either Windows comes with the price or they pirate it. Same really with OSX. Linux can't compete on price of people don't know the costs of windows.
Only nerds use linux, and statistically we are a rounding error.
Then again, only nerds used dos and windows 1.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
However, the simple fact is that nobody in the US buys N900s, so the fact that you can buy a pocket sized linux computer that incidentally makes phone calls is quite immaterial.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The percentage correlates highly to the number of people who do actual work to earn their degrees.
OK, I accept your challenge: The HP EliteBook line. (Which are never in stock at Best Buy/Future Shop.)
I'm typing this on a three year old HP 2710p which has since become the 2740p. It's an extremely tough 3.6lb machine with a lovely screen and stylus support, trackpad and trackpoint, a light (like the ThinkPad lights). The battery is rated for 5:30, up to 11 with an optional slice. It can take a very slim dock for extra USB, DVD, video, etc. The 2740p has both touch and stylus support and can be configured with Core i5 CPUs or ULV options, depending on your needs. They have the best keyboard I've ever used, they come with three year warranties as standard options, and they are lovely to work on. (I've upgraded HD and RAM on mine.)
I own it and a MacBook. It is by far my preferred laptop. The screen works well outside, it's sturdier, and it runs Linux brilliantly.
However, on balance, I completely agree with your assessment. Almost all PC hardware is junk. Apple doesn't make many types of machines but they are all of very high quality, they run Windows (and usually Linux) very well, they have stellar battery life, and they are the same price as decent PC laptops that can't run Mac OS.
I recommend Macs a lot at work. Why not? Don't like MacOS? No problem. I prefer my HP EliteBook but they're a pain to buy in town. I can send people to a half-dozen different stores in town that sell the full line of Apple laptops. As a bonus, the hardware is well understood and I might not have to support Windows! Easy decision for me. Plus, in Canada, Apple and Dell seem to be the only two companies that haven't switched over to bi-lingual keyboards with odd layouts.
It's a sorry state at the moment. Microsoft as monopolist was bad. Mac OS is a lovely OS and Apple makes nice hardware. Still, as companies go, Apple aren't great to deal with. I'm happy to see that MS has been unseated as the untouchable monopolist but I have to think that it will be worse if Apple finds itself in a similar position.
Here's hoping the competition will improve. Linux does keep improving steadily. If it could emerge as a reasonable competitor and keep things even, that would be my preferred outcome. Time, development, and consumer decisions will tell.
Sure, you can buy a new PC laptop for under $400, but will you enjoy using it? How about in two years?
You can pick up good quality used macs for the same price as crappy new PCs. And a decent new PC isn't cheaper than a low-end MacBook.
Personally, I'd rather own a three year old MacBook than most of what Best Buy/Future Shop/Stapes are pushing from Acer/Asus/HP/Lenovo. Most of what is in stores is junk. Apple doesn't sell junk.
(Having said this, I'm typing this on a lovely HP 2710p running Ubuntu.)
So you first claim that installed base matters, not marketshare, but then go on to ask why back then Mac OS, with more marketshare but smaller installed base, had more malware than OS X now. Seems that, in the end, market share does matter.
Only flaw in this logic is there ton's of people that use VMWare or BootCamp to run Windows on Macs.
In 2010, 90% is far greater than 10%. Back in the old MacOS days, 90% was also far greater than 10%. I suspect malware writers notice this and still write most malware for 90%.
Good work. Mine's only 7 yrs old, and runs leopard well. I do have an upgraded 9600 running Panther Server, but it just serves... rarely use it for desktop stuff.
The Admin and the Engineer
Students are notorious fashion and fad followers and it's probably fashionable amongst that fickle lot to buy Apple currently. Linux was probably fashionable with them a few years ago, now it isn't.
Nothing to see here...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
If you tilt your laptop back a little too far you're likely to snap the damn thing off in the plug.
They're also really unbalanced so tilting your screen back too far will cause your laptop to topple backwards.
It's the mythical 40" screen laptop with the sub-notebook base!
Its ginormous cathode screen makes it unbalanced to the traditionally heavier laptop base that holds 95% of laptop's hardware!
My god, what were they thinking when they were making it?!
Even the smaller laptops are bulky and don't fit well in backpacks or messenger bags.
They fit neatly into bags because they don't have oddly shaped bottom panels that catch on things.
I'm putting it into or pulling it out of a bag a hundred times a week.
Here's a CRAAAAZYYY idea!
Next time, buy a bag for your laptop that matches your LAPTOP - not your shoes.
That might help with the pulling-out, putting-in part.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A little background... I'm in the process of getting my MBA full-time from a big university in the Midwest US. Personally, I was shocked to see how many students came in with Apple laptops... Those students are fine until they take elective classes--too much business software runs on Windows only because, in the real world, Windows rules... Of course, those students start whining about how their Macs can't run certain software or end up leeching off those of us with Windows laptops.
It always ends up becoming a pointless philosophical debate with the iFans on why all this business software should be able to be run on Macs. But the reality is that Macs are 97+% not used in business (excluding maybe the Marketing or graphic design departments) and these vendors aren't about to spend time making Mac versions to appeal to the B-school students that will eventually run the software on Windows work PCs.
Three pieces of software that I've come across that are used in schools that just aren't available for Macs: Argus (real estate), The Marketing Game, and the biggie SPSS (statistics).
So, I've helped several Mac-limited students load Virtualbox and WinXP/Vista/7 x86 or x64, depending on what MSDNAA will allow me to get...
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
I meant to add that that ~15% number is meaningless because of the installed base. Today, Apple has a smaller slice of a much, much larger pie.
Ok, i dare you to name one such piece of software.
Im sure you wont get any such software running, with all the library changes (or are you talking about "hello world"?)
I am typing this on my MacBook Pro with a second LCD monitor hooked up to it (and external drives and MIDI devices and iPods and crap like that ... :-)
I've got an old G4 PowerBook running Linux (which I suspect she'll start using next term,) and an old 21" G5 iMac for a HDTV TV set (with a 1TB drive hooked up to it and a EyeTV OTA converter. [We watch maybe 4 or 5 hours a week of TV. {You read right. Jeopardy 5 time a week and the occasional cooking shows on PBS add up to single digit viewing times per week.}])
My wife insists on using a Windows XP based desktop PC. (I'm installing a new desktop for her next week with Windows 7 and her old PC will become a Linux based file server.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I think if a little effort were made to educate students to some of the advantages of Linux
Teaching users to check a PC's internal components against an operating system's hardware compatibility list wouldn't be "a little effort"; it'd be a lot of effort. The easiest way to be 100% certain that an operating system supports the hardware in a PC is to buy the PC with the operating system already on it. But I walk into a locally owned computer store, ask if someone can build me a PC with Linux, and no dice.
Perhaps more colleges are requiring certain software that's Windows- and/or Mac-only.
Or perhaps MacOS X is a better UNIX / FOSS platform for many who would otherwise be interested in Linux? There is a pretty powerful BSD environment hiding behind that friendly GUI. I think the decision to go Linux over Mac OS X would be largely philosophical. I hear the cost argument but I don't think it applies that often and its possibly overstated given that its hard to find FOSS software that is available for Linux and not MacOS X.
In short, MacOS X is competitive on Linux's home turf: a unix-like environment. I believe that many historical Linux users where not into FOSS philosophy/religion as much as they just wanted a good unix-like environment.
The only problem with Macs is they run OSX. I'll take Win7 or Linux any day of the week over OSX. If it were just for the hardware I'd get a Mac, too!
What I find most ironic is how Apple is perceived as being cool even though Apple has become Big Brother itself! Look at how they limit iOS apps! My friends can't use half the Android apps I use on a daily basis. OK so these aren't Fart Sounds apps like the Apple store is full of, these are useful productive apps like TiKL which turns your Android into a Nextel-like walkie-talkie. I use this daily to keep in touch with my family and friends and co-workers that I couldn't go back to a phone that didn't have this ability, yet all my iPhone friends are left in the cold with this app because Apple wouldn't approve it. Why not? Because Big Brother doesn't think it's useful so therefore you can't make up your own mind, they'll make it up for you. Thanks Big Brother, er I mean, Apple!
>>>9 1/2 year old Mac laptop... OS X 104, and can run all the things you listed.
It won't run the latest Safari (requires 10.5 and up) or iTunes (ditto). Firefox 4 won't be runnable either when it's released. So you wasted ~$200 on OS X upgrades, whereas I spent $0.00 upgrading my Win98 laptop that still runs virtually everything.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You mean Simple Random Sampling, right?
Wikipedia has a bunch of other interesting expansions for that TLA...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_reassignment_surgery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium_sulfide
Self-Regenerative System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Racing_Syndicate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Republic_of_Serbia
Heck, maybe if we did a survey we'd find out that the Serbs really like BSD...
coding is life
So,lets say over the same lifespan I have to buy two replacement batteries - I just bought a new super battery for my laptop (I don't remember the cells, but it's double the size of the stock battery) and it gives me around 6 hours or so battery life and it cost me a whopping $54. Since I'd need two to match Apple's theoretical numbers, that means it would cost $108 more than the sticker price for the laptop. However, you also have to factor in that 1) my laptop cost $500, not $1,300 (I'll go nice and only use the 13" Macbook Pro for the example here), which means even with the extra $108 for batteries, It's still $692 less than the 13"Macbook Pro. Then there's 2) the insane amount of time wasted getting an appointment, going to the Apple store, waiting for the battery to be replaced, and then driving back from the Apple store (not even counting the fact that Apple probably charges a good $250 or more for the new battery - I've heard that it's cheaper to buy a new iPod than to have a battery replaced).
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Highlight an image the folder you want to browse and hit the spacebar. The image will pop up in a black-bordered window. There is a button to make it full-screen. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the pictures in that folder.
This feature is called "Quick Look" and was introduced with OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" in August 2009. It works with a wide variety of file types...like MS Office docs, PDFs, Photoshop files, and a variety of video formats. Just click once to highlight the file and hit the space bar.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In my humble opinion, the strategy of using Apple's iPod and iPhone products to draw them into Apple's stores and hook up people on their premium but expensive hardware is working. Some posters also mentioned that Apple hardware on average is much better than Windows hardware, and I agree. Most of stuff sold in Best Buy is so cheap (not just pricewise) but most people are willing to just pay twice as much for something that's almost guaranteed not to be a lemon, instead of sorting though dozens of models to find a good one. I agree with this explanation too, but IMHO iPod and iPhone are the primary reason. Another problem is the Windows Vista cluster fsck. A lot of people had become disappointed with Microsoft back then. Even those who never used Apple stuff before.
It won't run the latest Safari (requires 10.5 and up) or iTunes (ditto). Firefox 4 won't be runnable either when it's released. So you wasted ~$200 on OS X upgrades, whereas I spent $0.00 upgrading my Win98 laptop that still runs virtually everything.
I just used install discs from other computers I bought along the way. So it didn't cost me anything either.
And it's pretty weak sauce to complain a version of firefox not even out yet (!) won't run on it. COme to think of it - Firefox 4 will support 98? Seems unlikley. Wait a second - YOUR computer can't even run the current version of Firefox, mine can.
Basically at this point we are all laughing at you thinking that a Win98 installation on a computer of any speed is equal to Tiger.
If for some reason it eventually bothers me I can't run a newer version of Firefox I'll simply install Linux.
And as I said I still have far more modern port sets than you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure. Short version: you're wrong; it's about *relative* install base, i.e market share. For the TL:DR folks, read the last line.
Malware is business. It's about making money. A good install base doesn't mean much when the other option has 9x the install base. Windows (6.0 and up) is now harder to exploit than OS X, but it's not that much harder (and over half of Windows installs are still pre-version-6, usually run as Admin, and less likely to be fully patched). Until it is, it's generally just not worth the malware author's time to go after the less popular target.
It's all about the return on investment. ROI = (N * V) - C, where
N is the number of machines you compromise
C is the cost to develop and deploy the malware
V is the value of each compromised machine (essentially identical between OS X and Windows, from the malware author's perspective).
Taking V out of the equation as a constant, ROI is a function of N and C. Lets say you have 10M vulnerable computers, either OS X or Windows (ignore Linux and all for this) that you can exploit before the vulnerability gets patched. The current market share breakdown will be about 1M running OS X and 9M running Windows (all versions). Since we're targeting all versions of Windows, it's going to be a really expansive exploit - gotta get around DEP and ASLR and the different included software versions... let's say it costs you $5M to develop this exploit (given what I've heard of the prices a Windows exploit can get on the black market, this sounds about right). Now, let's suppose that you randomly wander across a major vulnerability in OS X's PDF Preview app, and your total cost to weaponize it is a measly $10K. Suppose V is about $1.00 either way (which is incredibly low, you could make that back in a few days selling it as a node in DDoS attacks; a bit of spyware or adware will net you several times that per target).
For Windows: ROI = (9M * $1) - $5M = $4M
For OS X: ROI = (1M * $1) - $10K = $990K
End result: paying 500x as much to compromise 9x as many machines it totally worth it when we are talking about *millions* of computers.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I think you are missing a key figure in your math! The ROI(Windows) has to be divided the among all the competition in the crowded malware space, whereas the ROI(Mac) is all on the table, especially for the first mover.
Also, V(Mac) >> V(Windows) since those consumers are spending more on their computers, it logically follows that those users have more disposable income (on average) available to be stolen. Plus the V(Mac) is much higher since it is an untapped market.
Even so, your preferred numbers are only enough to explain why there is more malware for Windows than OS X by several factors, say 10x or even 100x. Your speculation does not explain zero OS X specific viruses.
The only way for your math to explain the observed $0 ROI(Mac) situation is if C(Mac) is hugely disproportionate, say $100M instead of your $10K.
Are you open to the implications of your own reasoning? Or are you only interested in the math if it confirms your world view?
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Thank you for calling BS on this numbers game. Sure, a 10x market share could explain 100x viruses and botnets. It does not explain zero.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
I work for IT on a D1 school campus in Kansas. We will have about 5000 students on the dorm network, mostly freshmen, and we make them register their computers. We have seen a large increase in Mac's.. but nothing near the numbers they are showing. Iphones have been a huge growth, but I feel android will have a large spike in the near future. Their pre-register numbers (so far) are as follows:
Windows XP : 523
Windows Vista : 817
Windows 7 : 794
Windows Total : 2,134
OSX Tiger : 39
OSX Leopard : 216
OSX Snow Leopard : 354
Mac Total : 609
iPhone/iPod Touch : 418
Gaming Devices : 95 (xbox360, PS3 ect)
Will Apple develop some large, enterprise wide management software for all those Apple devices on one network? I may end up doing IT at a large university soon and I can't imagine how this works, there just isn't enterprise support for Apple products like there is for Microsoft.