Media Loves Apple and Its Army of Fans

cgriffin21 writes "Apple is getting more media attention right now than any other technology company, including Google. Microsoft, meanwhile, is languishing in the shadows like Cinderella on the night of the ball. That's the upshot of a study released Monday (PDF) by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which found that Apple was the focus of 15.1 percent of media coverage between June 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010. Google received 11.4 percent of media coverage during the period, while Microsoft garnered just 3 percent."

Comments

MS is hurting

[grub]

Apple was the focus of 15.1 percent of media coverage [...] Google received 11.4 percent of media coverage during the period, while Microsoft garnered just 3 percent.

That 3 percent Microsoft garners is reports of bug fixes and failed projects. Look at recent Microsoft tags on /. :

Microsoft To Release Emergency Fix For ASP.NET Bug
Microsoft Migrating Live Spaces Users To WordPress
Microsoft Says IE9 Beta Demand Overwhelming (Nice but it's free)
Researchers Demo ASP.NET Crypto Attack
etc. etc.

Re:MS is hurting

[IndustrialComplex]

MSFT would be even more irrelevant than they are already becoming if it weren't for vendor lock-in.

Seriously, where would they be?

In late 90s and early 2000s I managed a university's student computer labs. These weren't some podunk labs with 2 or 3 machines but entire buildings sometimes with 100-200 Windowsmachines and another 30% of them were Macintosh machines. (There were a few linux labs and when I left, we had 2 linux machines per lab)

If you knew the troubles we had getting the students to even use the Macs just for checking email, it could be a lesson in salesmanship. As it was, even when the windows machines were at 100% usage, you would see a long line stretching PAST the Macs while people waited for the windows machines. Hell, I'd see people more likely to use the Linux machines than Macs.

Microsoft may abuse its position through vendor lockin, but to get TO that position it was doing something right. Even now... last night my wife finally convinced me to install Microsoft Office because the slide software for OpenOffice was causing her so many issues.

It's easy to blame Microsoft's dominance on lockin and unfair practices, but that alone isn't why they are the top dog.