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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 bet this is mostly an american phenomenon.
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.
America, enjoy your technological ass getting kicked by Europe and Asia 2016 onwards.
Someone please set this article to trollbait or impressionsgenerator..
O and if you're an advertiser and are paying slashdot you're a fucking imbecile, no one here will ever buy your crap because we saw a pop-up (which none of us ever see BTW)
iFirst astroturf check! win! calling the herd, check! lets smear our iSmug on this poor subhuman linux dudes. GOGOGOGO!
Great argument you've got there. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm convinced. According to me, Linux has a market share of 46% of all incoming freshman at U of VA.
soooo you really believe that no one in college uses Linux? And you're trying to mock me? Jesus Christ your a fucktard, I mean apple fan-boy, sorry...
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!
If you take the software into account, then there is a huge difference between both systems.
Windows = crap
Mac OS X is pretty decent and you get a bunch of fully functional apps right out of the box.
I don't know if you're sarcastic, but I can't stand the stupidity of your comment.
PC stands for Personal Computer, which was an IBM Personal Computer series model and it ran IBM_Cassette_BASIC.
Then later the IBM PC compatible clones came. Later on they stopped being hardware compatible, but since everything was written for DOS anyway, they became DOS compatible instead. Later on DOS turned to Windows and firmware turned to drivers.
All was written to run om Intel and AMD CPU's and finaly Apple trown in the towel and started to ship Intel powered computers.
So Apple computers powered by Intel CPU's are simply PC's too.
Please die.
Here be signatures
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.
I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong. Find something with comparable specs, and it's going to cost you about the same amount of money. Moreover, Apple sweetens the pot for student with a 15% discount a lot of very nice free software and, as I recall, a free $100 - $200 dollar printer and or iPod Touch. Ohh, and two stickers.
Moreover, in my experience, Macs tend to depreciate slower and last a bit longer then my Dells.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
The iPod and iPad products. They often introduce people to Apple, and again, at the end of the day when the dust settles, these are superb products and they naturally predispose people - students, anyone - to think positively of Apple.
They are also highly not interoperable. (Every single aspect of it: the App Store, the chargers, iTunes only running on OSX and Windows, DRMs, not supporting open formats, ...)
A friend of mine bought an iPod because it looked cool, and after fighting to transfer song under Linux, sworn to never buy Apple again...
...Microsoft's share is just 56% (down 6%), with Apple's share rising to 43% (up 6%), continuing a six-year pattern.....
It should read
There all fixed.
Overpriced is your opinion, and you're welcome to it. If you're not familiar with the Apple platform I'm sure such a large change is scary to you. If you've used it you wouldn't be making these insane comments, and you certainly wouldn't be putting Windows 7 in the same category as Snow Leopard.
I've only recently considered getting rid of 2 older Macs because they're PPC. My 2007 MBP runs great and I just finished upgrading to Snow Leopard. In the meantime my coworkers replaced their (not cheap) HP Evos twice. Display problems, hinges getting broken, hard drive failures, etc on 4 other machines -- and these were $1500 laptops.
Consider the downtime and the cost for Suzie Smith to bring her computer to Geek Squad every time Windows barfs and you're out considerably more money with considerably more fuss and bother. Screw that, you get what you pay for. My time is worth a lot to me and you can bet my kids will have Macs in college because my time is important to me.
Hey I can appreciate not having the cash for the initial outlay. No shame in that. For some no amount of saving helps because you're always going to have $3 or $400 for a computer. That's cool. Apple doesn't market to you. You will have to shop elsewhere, just like I don't wear Ferragamo shoes anymore. It's all about choice. I choose my Mac stuff. You choose collecting old cars or whatever. No big deal.
Linux is by no means free.
First, consider that the cost differential between a new Linux-based PC and a new Windows-based PC is essentially $0 due to the difficulty in getting a PC without an OS unless you build your own.
Second, consider the complications involved in getting that Linux-based PC to interoperate with the various applications, networks, etc that might be found on your typical college campus and you've just opened up a huge can of wasted time.
I was a Linux user for many years. But let's be honest. Linux is great for serving but has almost no merit as a college student's OS.
There are loads of free things in this world, but that doesn't automatically imply that you should value them positively.
I use OpenOffice both at work and home with very good results. I do not allow any scripts to execute in any office document simply because I'm an enterprise admin. If you're using VBscript "extensively" you're probably doing something wrong, perhaps trying to operate outside MIS by building your own databases.
As far as your "rosey [sic] comment" trolling goes, listen kid. If you're still talking about theses, you're too young to know what you don't know and too dumb to shut up. Based on your negative attitude and borderline incompetency I would have pegged you for a government worker long before you admitted it. I'm only sorry that you're being compensated for a job clearly beyond your abilities.
No, I'm not buying a Mac for you. You will have to learn to do without.
>>>Overpriced is your opinion, and you're welcome to it. If you're not familiar with the Apple platform
I've been using them off-and-on since 1991. I forget which model was my first, but it was a one piece so probably the Mac SE (68000 based). Then a Quadra (68040), then the first PowerMac, followed by a Power G4 model running 10.5
The reason I used Commodores, Amigas, and Macs was because Windows 3.x was a piece of shit. I'm not exaggerating. Worst desktop I've ever used.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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
By "homos" I mean, the "think different" crowd. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
>>>They use the SAME INSTRUCTION SET.
No they really don't. It's why you can't run Mac OS on an IBM PC-compatible, without some major hacking.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
dude its not so much about having a cheap computer. if we can put the shiny aluminum finish aside , its about having a computer that is a lot more powerful and faster than the stinking pos toy that is an apple mac.
i don't care if a laptop has rounded edges or not. i don't care if you like the nice and shiny web 2.0 icons (you tasteless sodomite,) what i care about is being able to getting the job done, and being free to muck around with the guts of that computer if i need to.
i don't care if you consider yourself "counter-culture" for owning a mac; its pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that you are in fact the worst type of lemming.
like many here i'm seriously enjoying the way that Apple voices are fading out across the internet as they all move to read-only platforms like the iPad and the iPhone. now fuck off back to itunes and stay off of slashdot!
We had some people like you when I was in college. They were in specimen jars.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sounds like a typical sour grapes Southern Virginia Community College (ODU) grad.
My parents were poor and I went to W&M. My poor friends went to UVA. The only difference between UVA and W&M vs VCU or ODU is about a 2x higher SAT score, and an extra 100 points of IQ. Note this isn't so much a comment on the intelligence of students at UVA and W&M, just a comment on how dumb the typical VCU/ODU grad tends to be.
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?
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
Sure.
Malware writers aren't interested in fanboy arguments about how your pet platform's current deployment numbers stack up against a defunct product from nearly two decades ago. They only care about how your platform stacks up against other platforms, right now. And right now there are still a lot more Windows boxes than Mac boxes in use.
Okay, look, I'm sick and tired of this argument. Market share doesn't mean shit, installed base does
Most people aren't economists, and don't care that much about the specific terminology, and when they use the phrase "market share" they usually mean "installed user base". For some purposes, the meanings are interchangeable.
>>>my 2003 powerbook doesn't run snow leopard, but is now stuck at leopard, because it's a powerPC based machine,
I'm amazed. My powermac won't run 10.5 leopard at all, because the processor is too slow. And of course 10.4 is no longer supported by Apple, so that means I'm stuck running old, obsolete browsers. NOW contrast that with microsoft's long cycle, where Windows98 can still run the latest Firefox or Opera. Businesses demand that kind of long term support.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall