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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
UVA is a state school, but is sometimes called the "public Ivy" (Bobby and Ted Kennedy both went to law school there after Harvard). UVA and William & Marry cater more to the polo shirt and pearl set crowd than other state schools here like VCU, ODU, etc, which are more what one would consider "public".
Everyone I know that went to UVA came from a fairly well-to-do background, or had insane amounts of financial aid. A couple of my friends had full-ride scholarships + stipends for undergraduate to UVA.
I would be surprised if more than 10% of the students there couldn't afford a Mac if they wanted one.
Great! So owning a Mac not only makes me better at high level computer work (not just Mac repair), but it ALSO makes me better an UNIX AND Windows at the same time! What a magical product.
Proficiency in OSX does not equate to proficiency with Unix.
I can guarantee the vast majority of OSX users have no idea that it is based on unix.
Oh, we're alive, all right, but as to how many of us have decent tech jobs currently... that's something else. We cost more to insure, we tend to be less "hip", and we don't have the energy levels of a 20-year old. Nor are we particularly enthused about working more than a normal workday. And these are the (essentially correct) assumptions us "oldies" face when applying for any job. There's not much need to adapt if you can't get hired, you know.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The only reason the colleges can even get away with that is because of the interest-free loans and other moneys that the students don't have to actually work for. My bet is that once they're out on their own, having to pay their own bills, whatever the perceived value-add that Apple has will be as obsolete as their college computers.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Where are my mod points when I need them? Mod parent up!
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.
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
Congratulations on missing the point. He meant that if you use a Mac or a Linux machine, you've probably already used a Windows machine, so you have experience with both Windows and your other OS.
WINDOWS && (LINUX || MAC)
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
There are a LOT of programs at most universities that require you to buy a Mac.
I'm currently a college Junior and have never encountered this. What programs require a Mac, and why?
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.
As a mac user, i must say the GP makes a good point and point out that the first 2 methods you mention won't show pictures in full screen and are thus crappy. The 3rd one is not intuitive. How would someone know this wouldn't open dozens or hundreds of preview windows?
A 4th solution is to import all the pictures into iPhoto but it's needlessly time and disk consuming for the purpose stated.
Apple needs to fix this. That is all.
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
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.
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
1) Nickel. Time for you to go back to school, which obviously didn't take. Hint: the red squiggly line under your fuckups is for YOUR information
2) They SHOULD be protesting increasing tuition, since they are not receiving a better education, and are yet being charged more tuition. If anything, they are indeed receiving an inferior education to what has been available in the past.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Parent is either stupid or a troll. I don't care which.
Look, regardless of what you think about Macs and PCs, how many *average* PC users keep a computer more than 5 years and are satisfied with it? How about Mac users? I don't know about you, but in my sample group, half the Macs I know of acquaintances having are several years old. It never occurs to them to replace it.
Contrast that with the PC users I know, who end up buying a brand new computer every 2-3 years since 'it's broken'. Now I know it just needs a reformat to be good as new, but they don't.
Average non-technical liberal arts major hears "Our 5 year old Macs are working great!" and "My Windows machine crapped out on me in two years" and realizes, unlike you, that the Mac is at worst two and a half times the cost of the Windows machine. So, they make a prudent investment and buy a Mac - security, simplicity, and quality all come free. So, they made the sound financial choice *without considering the time most people lose screwing around with a PC for 5 years*
When you're used car shopping do you pick the 1989 Geo Metro with 200k miles on the transmission for $300 over the 2002 Honda with 80k for $3000? Sure, at first you'll save money - but not for long...
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
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
You might want to look at Apple's Q3 results: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/20results.html
I don't think Apple breaks down revenue by product type, but they sold 3.47M macs, 8.4M iPhones, 9.41M iPods during the quarter. My guess is that the macs are their highest margin products, but even if margins were the same across the board the price point of a mac is much higher than the other products. Because of this, it is likely that macs are generating at least a third of Apple's hardware revenue and profits. They aren't about to walk away from a business that is generating billions of dollars per year in profit.
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.