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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."
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.
...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?
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.
Oh and Windows skills are in shortage?
I'd sooner be proficient in a Unix based OS and know some really sought after skills than simply know only Windows.
Owning a Mac or using a Linux machine means you get exposure to Windows and OSX/Linux since Windows boxes are unavoidable.
It is the year of Linux on the desktop if you count smartphones as desktops
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.
... 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.
Not everyone's primary concern is finding a cheap computer. Apple has always shied away from bottom feeding and releasing cheap computers. The real telling one would be to find out how much of the Microsoft percentage went with them over price. If 3/4 of the Microsoft camp went that way over price then the numbers may be heavily slanted for Mac already.
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.
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.
I thought serious students used http://www.lyx.org/?
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.
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."
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
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.
OS X Loses Market Share for Fourth Straight Month http://www.maclife.com/article/news/os_x_loses_market_share_fourth_straight_month
I'm not that surprised. I graduated a couple years ago and I'm going back for my masters this fall - there are a LOT of programs at most universities that require you to buy a Mac. So while some degree of the increase in Mac sales are the trendy rich kids who just want to seem cool, most of that change is probably due to the slew of programs that have recently started forcing students to buy a Mac.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is the second time in this thread that I've caught an Apple hater claiming that a fanboy had made up facts when the Apple hater himself had been making up facts. This study from February 2010 by Rescuecom ranks Apple #1 in reliability for the last three years. As for pre-magsafe macs, I can only surmise that you don't see any because you haven't been looking. My laptop and my desktop are both 5 years old and are PPC (one's a G5 desktop and one's a G4 laptop). THEY RUN FINE. I did have a service call on the laptop once because a key on the keyboard stopped working. Also, where in the world did you get this idea that you can't get applications? I've never had a problem in my life getting a universal binary for something. As for getting batteries and replacement parts, you're nuts, have you ever heard of ifixit? Just two years ago I got a battery for a 1999 G3 lombard laptop (yes, that one runs fine too!). The idea that you can't get replacement parts for old macs is just silly. Good lord, I don't know why I even read these slashdot apple hate-fests...
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Whatever:
1) Not every environment is like the one you work with - my browser doesn't highlight spelling errors, yours does - bravo, your environment has training wheels, that helps you look smarter than you otherwise would appear...
2) I never said students shouldn't protest tuition increases, I simply pointed out the dichotomy of buying expensive computer hardware whilst "crying poverty" when it comes to school tuition.
Ken