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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."
Well you're either lying or simply mistaken.
http://apple.com/store
Choose the macbook. Add all the internal upgrades (RAM, HDD)
And it's not even close to $1,500. Not to mention as a teacher (and with her daughter being a student) they'd be entitled to a fairly big discount, at least 15% when I bought mine.
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
OS X Loses Market Share for Fourth Straight Month http://www.maclife.com/article/news/os_x_loses_market_share_fourth_straight_month
I don't know if you're trolling or just inept. There's at least three different ways to do what you describe. In three column view (selected with the [ | | ] button at the top of the Finder window) the picture thumbnail will show in the right-hand column. The second option is to use Coverflow (the button to the right of the three column button) and preview your pictures that way. The third is to select all the files (cmd+a) then open in preview, and use the next/previous buttons in there. Not identical to Windows, but three very good options, all of which seem pretty intuitive to me.
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.
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
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!
>>>you are missing an important detail: quality.
Toshiba is rated #2 in long term reliability,
Apple is rated #4.
http://voyager8.blogspot.com/2010/04/most-reliable-laptop-brands-are.html - But of course you will now come back and tell me why thee FACTS should be ignored, in order to bolster your religious belief that Apple is better quality than Toshiba. It's like debating evolution with a Christian... you never get anywhere.
.
>>>Windows laptops, unless they happen to be a Mac, are good for about a year and a half. Then they get pretty annoying. After 3 years, they are nearly unusable. By year 5, lets be honest, they collect dust and prevent papers from blowing away, and nothing else.
>>>
My Winodws98 laptop is over ten years and works just fine.
An OS 9 Macbook? Not so much.
Won't run Opera, won't run Safari, won't run iTunes, won't run IE. (They all require 10.4 or higher.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
On 10.5 and later, select the image and hit the space key. Use arrow keys as required to navigate.
In 10.4, press Command+(1/2/3) to switch views. Command+2 is 'scientific', Command+3 is 'programmer'.
If your movie is full screen, hit Command+Shift+3 and it'll create a picture on your desktop. If your movie is windowed, hit Command+Shift+4 and use the cross-hairs to define the area to snapshot.
I really don't get this. Either use the 'browse' button like anyone else, or just drag and drop the file in question into the file upload control.
Turn on 'full keyboard access' in the System Prefs (Ctrl+F1).
+5 informative my arse. Perhaps your time and energy would be better spend learning to use your damn machine instead of ranting about non-existent problems.
Caution: May contain nuts.
It's easy to argue that Macs last 2.5 times as long when you just make up facts.
If you have a 5-year-old Mac at this point, it's PowerPC so you can't even run many newer applications (nor can you run the latest Mac OS). If it was a laptop, the battery is now pretty much useless (and it's difficult to find replacements) too.
My friend's T60, which he purchased in early 2006, still runs Windows 7 (and Fedora) great.
Lots of people on my campus have Macs, but the majority of them are unibody, which means that they are at most 3 years old. I never see pre-Magsafe Macs, which means that they are at most a little over four years old.
Claiming that "security, simplicity, and quality" all come free is at best misleading.
In 15 years of running Windows, I have never (to my knowledge) been hacked or infected with malware. I use the built-in Windows firewall, install updates as soon as they are available, and (now) I run Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free and easy to install. Time and time again we have seen that being "UNIX-based" doesn't really mean squat from a security perspective in a world where malware and hackers increasingly target applications like browsers and PDF viewers. Safari has not done particularly well in that regard, especially when you compare it with Chrome (which I use) or even IE8, both of which sandbox essentially the entire browser. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they did not take security seriously (e.g. DEP which was only added in 10.6, and an ASLR implementation that is still extremely limited).
Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. I (and many people I know) find Windows to be simpler. Want to use a 5-button (back/forward) mouse on Mac OS? You need special software. On Windows, you just plug it in. In the case of my G5 mouse, Logitech doesn't even make Mac software for it, so you need to use a third-party program. Bind a mouse button to PTT in Ventrilo? Easy in Windows, damn near impossible in Mac OS X. Keep your computer from going to sleep when you shut the lid? Easy in Windows, hard in Mac OS X. Need to connect a Mac to a projector? Make sure you brought your dongle.
Obviously not everyone uses Ventrilo, not everyone has a 5-button mouse, and not everyone needs their laptop to stay on when they close the lid. But these are just the problems that I had when I briefly owned a Mac. But I do dispute the idea that Macs are somehow simpler when I have seen no data to that effect.
As for quality, well, it's been a mixed bag for Mac users. I know a lot of people who have trashed their MagSafe adapters or had their battery recalled and a lot of people who had overheating first-gen MacBooks. I seriously doubt that a plastic MacBook will hold up nearly as well as my (incidentally, cheaper) magnesium-frame ThinkPad T400 if it were dropped. I know that the Mac would do more poorly if Diet Coke were spilled on the keyboard (the T400 has keyboard drains).
Consumer Reports says that Macs are on the low-end for failures, at 19% per year. But Sony (17%), Toshiba (16%), and Compaq (18%) all have fewer repairs yet. Acer is tied with Apple at 19%, HP and Gateway are a point behind at 20%, and Dell/Lenovo are a bit further behind at 21%.
With your supposed "5-year" lifecylce, the chance of a failure in a Mac is 65%. For the worst PCs (Lenovo/Dell), it's 69%. That's not dramatically different.
I think I'm going to go with Consumer Reports rather than some random guy on Slashdot who (supposedly) has a bunch of friends with PowerPC Macs.