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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."
I agree. Call it fanboyism, but I do not think Linux is such a terrible operating system that it would see no use whatsoever, or practically so. Perhaps more colleges are requiring certain software that's Windows- and/or Mac-only. Perhaps there's been an increase in multimedia design students, for which I understand a Mac is best. But Linux is a pretty decent OS on its own merits, and it's free- something that ought to appeal to poor starving college students.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
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.
and it's free- something that ought to appeal to poor starving college students.
Most college students purchase a computer before their freshman year and intend it to last throughout their entire four year program. That means they are still at home, still largely unphased by the costs of college, and living far more dependently on their parents' income than they will on campus.
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.
It amazes me that people can take one small piece of data and extrapolate so much from it. Incoming freshmen from one university. So what? If it really was news, it would be at all campuses around the US (or North America, or the world for that matter). Rage on MacBois
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
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.
I'm not lying but maybe the teacher was - SHE'S the one who said it cost her $1500.
The cheapest MacBook is still $1000..... still a hell of a lot more than $350 or $450 for the WIN7 machine. Way overpriced. Why buy an Acura when a Honda is just as good (and made by the same company besides)?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
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.
The $450-range Toshibas are pieces of shit. The 15" laptops have horrible ergonomics and build quality. They feel like they're going to fall apart if you move them around too much and the keyboards are off-center from the screen which makes them horribly uncomfortable to type on. The number pad they so "thoughtfully" include isn't used nearly enough to make up for the ridiculous ergonomics. Even the smaller laptops are bulky and don't fit well in backpacks or messenger bags. The power supplies are monsters and have very fragile feeling DC connectors. 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.
You can (and obviously will) naysay Mac laptops but at least some thought went into their industrial design. They fit neatly into bags because they don't have oddly shaped bottom panels that catch on things. The MagSafe adapter has saved me from destroying my computer on a number of occasions, and they go to sleep and then wake up from sleep very quickly. I'll spend the extra money to get a laptop with features that actually make it nice to use. Bullet point features like a faster CPU or RAM don't mean a whole lot when I'm putting it into or pulling it out of a bag a hundred times a week.
The justification would be the same as for the nicer car, if the car feels nice and has better fit and finish it's probably worth the extra money. You interact with the fit and finish every single second you're using the thing. If it's build cheaply you feel it every time you touch it. I'll get a car with power windows and locks so I don't have to check every door handle when I get out like a rube to make sure they're all locked. I can roll all the windows down at once when it's been sitting in the sun so I don't need to crank the AC when I get in it. I'll get the more comfortable seat that's easier to adjust because I sit in it every single day.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"It amazes me that people can take one small piece of data and extrapolate so much from it." This is called a survey or statistics. "If it really was news, it would be at all campuses around the US (or North America, or the world for that matter)." This is called a census and takes much more work.
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.
Excuse you?
The $450 toshiba laptops are fine and half the models in that range come without a keypad.
On the other hand I prefer my $550 lenovo. They did include a keypad but with thin keys, making the keyboard about normal sized since the screen is 16:9, which I prefer anyways and have on all of my desktops. I could have gotten a $400 lenovo or toshiba but I wanted a video chip that didn't have intel written on it.
The three macbooks I've used on the other hand I can't stand, the keys all have that weird feeling like theres already a fine powder spilled on them. Other than that, which admittedly is a personal pet peeve and probably doesn't apply ot a lot of other people, they're fine ergonomically, but by no means far superior to any other laptop.
Also they should check the numbers on how many people buy a mac going into college, realize its an expensive piece of shit after a year(Compatibility? Whats that?) and have to go buy a real computer anyways. I personally know 3 people that have "had to have" one and were immediately disgusted that they had spent so much money on something that offered very little extra and was actually worse in some cases. Of those people 1 admits it freely and 2 give you a strange look and espouse the virtues of the mac while already having admitted they won't buy another one.
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
Why buy an Acura when a Honda is just as good (and made by the same company besides)?
This is telling. I'd buy the Acura. Heck, I drive a Lexus instead of a Toyota. They may be made by the same company, but they aren't the same car. The noise suppression alone is worth the difference in cost, but there are a dozen other reasons to choose the Lexus too, including resale value, dealer support, complementary car if you ever need warranty service, etc.
It all comes down to what you value. If you value price above all else, you're not the target audience for a Mac. If you care about elegance, simplicity, compatibility, and longevity, Macs are not a bad deal.
- Vincit qui patitur.
riiiiight....cause no Mac machine has ever had a manufacturing flaw, or problems related to cost-cutting measures. All the other machines fail at least 5 times a year and the Mac computers run flawlessly.
Nobody ever has to bring their Macbook to the Apple store because of optical drive failures, broken internal video cables, or hard drive failures. Gosh, Apple's NEVER been on the ass-end of a class action lawsuit for not supporting their hardware flaws and pretending they don't exist!
It's only those guys who buy cheap PC hardware who have to hang out with the Geek Squad all day or week.
Only Windows 7 barfs and never MacOS, that's why They took FORCE QUIT off the main drop down menu right? (Oh wait....hey!)
This is the kind of complete hyperbolic drivel that makes people who actually work with a wide variety of computers on a daily basis hate Mac fanboys.
I wish there were a planet that actually existed that was as beautiful as the one you fantasize that you live in...it'd be nice for me as an IT worker to have such an easier job where we could all get Macs and save fortunes and hours of time because they're perfect.
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
Right. Apple provides installed access to the UNIX terminal underlying the OS, includes an X server on the install DVD so you can run most (free) UNIX software with a simple recompile, and also puts their development suite, including full documentation, on the install DVD so you can do that recompile, or write some apps of your own.
Very locked down.
I've done countless comparisons of Macs to comparable Lenovo's, Dells, HPs, etc. For comparably equivalent machines, (sames size LED backlit IPS panel, same HD size and speed, same bus, memory, processor, bluetooth, camera, etc, etc) with comparable software (that generally means Win 7 Home Ultimate) Macs are, generally, 10% to 20% more, and not way overpriced.
Generally the Mac will have less ports, but has as compensation the large multi-touch track pad, the smaller mag safe power adapters, and that ultra-rigid unibody design.
I don't consider it overpriced, but it may be over spec'd.
I know the average Mac user doesn't actually know how to use a computer
as for this piece of GP AC weaksauce, the average Windows user doesn't know anymore about using a computer than the average Mac user. That's because they're, uh, average users. The person who actually knows how to really use a computer is in reality pretty rare - most people just learn (barely) how to use the software they need and do things by rote, and this isn't limited to Mac users. I see people double-clicking links in IE all the time...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
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?
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.
Wow. "Please die"? I know social graces are lost on many Slashdot readers, but really? You could take etiquette lessons from Mr. Turnip Guy a couple posts up.
<sig> </sig>
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.
Please don't insult us by saying that Win7 is just as good as OSX.
Please don't insult Windows by claiming that OSX is anywhere near as good as it, let alone better than it.
The hardware is better and the software is better.
The hardware is the same, but costs more (inexplicably). The software is worse. Neither of those is a compelling reason to choose a brand. In fact, they are the compelling reasons that keep me away.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
What do you think is going to happen now that OSX is reaching a sizeable portion of the market ?
Maybe it will get hit by viruses... or maybe it won't. I can't predict the future, and neither can you. I do note that the article you linked to is dated 2006... four years have passed since it was written, and the virus apocalypse has yet to arrive for Macs.
Oh, and guess what's going to happen to your shiny computer when you start installing third party software to try and fix the problem
Hmmm... the second link is titled "Mac OS X anti-virus software: More trouble than it's worth".... i.e. it's do-nothing software at the moment, because it has very little to protect against.
Sorry you can't say that OSX antivirus is "not getting viruses in the first place".
Sure I can, because that is currently the case: OSX machines simply aren't being attacked by viruses. It's like living in Argentina during World War II. The country's defenses may or may not be adequate to hold off the Nazis, but unless and until the country is actually attacked, it's not a problem for anyone. Yes, a virus could break out tomorrow that causes all kinds of problems for Mac users... but that's true of any OS. In the meantime it's silly to demand to run anti-virus software when the number of viruses is so small that the base OS can keep up with them by itself.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.