OSNews

WHO CARES?

It isn't about market share. It's about installed base.

Market share just measures how the company sold in that particular quarter. Why does Apple get treated different from all other companies in this respect?

Who cares?

I mean seriously, I am just happy the way it is.

And from this mac users perspective, even if Linux surpasses MacOS, it will still be a good thing for Apple.

Linux apps seem congenial to Mac apps and so will probably transfer over time to MacOS overtime.

So, who cares?

I certainly don't.

this is another way of saying that pc vendors have been discounting heavily.Apple is not growing at the same rate as PCs in the developing world either.

I wouldn't worry so much about the first issue. PC vendors will discount themselves into non-existence, at least many of them.

Apple should have a product with an attractive price point for emerging markets.

OSX-x86.

Every conference Gartner has in Florida has Ballmer or Gates as a keynote. And for the past five years they have steadily commented on the demise of OS X.

Unfortunately, this doesn't jive. Apple can't make its profit on the mere efforts of its iPod. In fact, they are making many new inroads, but if everyone ate the food Gartner was serving for a side dish you'd think the Internet was one ubiquitous XP Network.

These figures are a joke. They extrapolate statistics based upon how many units are purchased from a recent quarter and then exclaim whether market share has increased or dropped.

Hello!! These are useless statistics as they lead people to believe that only 1.8% of computer users are OS X users.

So I suppose with all the backorders now being filled, thanks in part to IBM puking on the fab process, we will see a sudden spike in market share after first quarter results are posted in January 2005? Of course we will.

And we will also see Apple's stock surpass $60 and gross sales surpass $2 Billion for the quarter with net profits increasing as well.

But in the end, the % of OS X users recorded will never be accurately measured, only speculated. And these prigs get paid to report on such crap.

No.

That is not the solution.

It may look like that to you. But it isn't the solution. Tell me have you ever run a business before?

It won't for several reasons, the least of which is simply that Apple doesn't want to go into direct competition with Microsoft.

More importantly, Apple makes revenues off of hardware. So, even if Apple jumps to x86 market, it won't do much good since most likely Apple will find a way to tie down the OS to their specific brand of hardware.

Have you ever studied Apple's SEC filings? Have you noticed how most of their highest margins come from hardware?

Why on earth would Apple want to dump all that for some scrapings from selling OS?

As well, perhaps if you haven't noticed that Apple makes such an OS of quality ONLY because they can predetermine the hardware that it will fall upon. Without this, you enter the driver hell that Microsoft fell into with Windows 9x-Me. Only recently has Microsoft gotten an ACCEPTABLE handle on the issue.

Finally, I would like to end this compilation of various points to your trollish, redundant, and, frankly, tiring question by suggesting that those who doubt the vitality of Apple, let me point to the fact that their target audience is not YOU if you believe that their prices are too high; if you believe that there is not enough games on their platform; if you believe that they should sell only OSes; if you believe that they should work on selling x86; if you believe that they should release their OS as GPL; et cetera.

They frankly don't you as customers. They target music and video professionals (a niche for which Apple has gained quite some reputation and carved themselves a nice piece of pie), scientific professionals (a new and budding market that few outside IBM seem to focus on), graphic professionals (they already own this field), UNIX developers/professionals of various forms, et cetera (you get the idea).

They don't focus on general commodity markets because the margins are too small there. Why go for the small pickings when you can go for a larger piece of pie with less work, no?

And if you believe, that Macs are outrageously overpriced, get a clue, grow up, and try to catch a wiff of 2004 before it passes you up in a couple of monts.

I think people hear "decreased market share" and come to the conclusion that folks are selling their Macs and buying Windows machines. This is not the reality.

The problem is that global marketshare reflects numbers for all sorts of markets that Apple doesn't attempt to sell to. Raw numbers like this are as useless as measuring Nissan's marketshare against that against every company that manufactures any powered vehicle - boats, plans, trains.

The problem is that the makeup of the computer market has changed but the standards for measuring it haven't kept pace. The result is an incredibly misleading headline like this one.

All developers care about is who is in the market for their software. If you're developing video software (for example), you'd be insane to not market it to Mac OS X users. And if somebody bought a $300 PC at WalMart, are they really going to buy an $800 3D modeling package? What about PCs that are sold as glorified cash registers? These aren't the same thing.

The research has to be recalibrated to reality. I see all sorts of new users pouring into the Mac OS X community from everywhere.

- Scott

And we will also see Apple's stock surpass $60 and gross sales surpass $2 Billion for the quarter with net profits increasing as well.


I thought you were just pulling that number out of your ass, but apparently according to Yahoo! Finance, at 10/29/04, 5p.m., AAPL stock is trading at $52.40!

Wow! I knew Apple was doing well, but i never dreamed that they would be at a high that they have not seen since September, 2000.

That's cool.

And the best part is when one purchases several hundred shares just over $12.

"And the best part is when one purchases several hundred shares just over $12."

HAIL! I'm here! :-D

"It isn't about market share. It's about installed base."

Do you believe that the Apple executives are as unconcerned about the decline in Apple market share as you are? Do you believe that Apple's V.P. of Sales said to Steve Jobs something like "Don't worry Steve. It isn't about market share. It's about installed base."

What kind of financial reasoning did you use to arrive at your conclusion?

Would you hold the same belief if in the next market share report you learned that Apple's share had again dropped? Is there any market share lowpoint at which you would begin to be concerned about the future of Apple?

Apple seems to have built a very loyal following of customers that use Macs for niche applications such as music and video production. Assuming that Apple continues to be the market leader in those niche segments, and assuming that Apple continues to lose share among general purpose computer users, what will Apple's ultimate Mac sales volume be in a few years? Will that volume be sufficient for Apple to justify making and selling Macs? Will that volume be sufficient for Apple to even be able to make a profit in their Mac business unit?

Microsoft is finally shipping an OS (Windows XP) that most customers seem to be satisfied with. So, I don't see any major reason for general purpose computer users to "switch" to the Mac, and therefore don't see any reason for Apple's market share slide to stop. Do you see a reason why Apple's market share slide will stop? If so, would you be kind enough to share that reason, and the supporting evidence, with the rest of us?

I'm not anti-Apple. In fact, I'm an avid iPod owner and am trying to find a way to like OS X. I don't want Apple to do poorly. But with market share numbers like Apple's it seems to me that Apple is doing very poorly in at least one very fundamental way.

Nicely put Doug.

"Nicely put Doug."

I don't think so, EUGENIA!

This an interesting point of view about Apple:
http://www.macitynet.it/macity/aA19181/index.shtml
(it's in italian)

Why have you NOT noticed?

Pretty soon the tree will get cut down to get more sun lite onto the windows.
It doesn't take a genius to see the difference.
For the price of one G5 you can get two faster P4's with much better hardware specs.
And Apple doesn't own the graphics market any more. A lot of places switched to Windows to run Adobe. Specially all the schools are replacing their mac labs with pc labs because of tight budgets and large savings when buying pc hardware.
Apple will price itself out of the market and soon one in billion will run mac and osx, only the most die hard mac enthusiast.
Besides, even if they margine $1000 on one mac sale, they could sell 100 copies (maybe even 1000) of OSX for x86 with $100 margine and make $10000, ten time more.
Not a difficult math realy.

"And Apple doesn't own the graphics market any more. A lot of places switched to Windows to run Adobe."

There isn't about this on the web than stupidities fron persons like you.
There is much about switch from PC to Mac.

"Specially all the schools are replacing their mac labs with pc labs because of tight budgets and large savings when buying pc hardware."

Or they are staying with their good Mac labs more time than who owns PC labs.

A good apple comes always from the tree that makes few fruits.

I disagree with you there. You are asking for one company to outsell against an entire market of hundreds of vendors representing one market. This is what people are trying to explain. This is not a valid statistic of how the company is doing, I'm sorry. Sure we would like them to grow faster than the market but doubt that will happen, Unless there is a saturation point in computers. The reason it was possible back in the 80's was due to a much smaller market overall. So I disagree that this marketshare statistic doesn't hold a lot of water. The company overall has been doing well, even better than when they had more marketshare in the 80's, just because they can't grow at a faster pace than the market doesn't mean they are in trouble. That said of course they want to sell more and they are, just not at the pace of every other company combined. Let be a little more realistic.

>This an interesting point of view about Apple:
>(it's in italian)
>Why have you NOT noticed?

Because I am not Italian.

apple sold more computers this year than last year.
more last year than the year before.

Also you need to compare apple to dell or hp or gateway, not to all other pc vendors. How many units did apple sell this year as opposed to dell? thats where the numbers will matter.

Dell closed today at 35 bucks a share, and they have been chugging along at 31 - 36 bucks over the last 52 weeks. Apple finished at 52 , with a 52 week range of between 19 - 52. Does that mean apple is dell's daddy? oh, and microsoft is 27 , and has stayed fairly stable last 52weeks. So apple rules ms too, right? no , ms has huge volumes , 80 million, dell has 35 million, and apple only 14 million. Who cares? Apple shareholders Are_Not_Complaining.. nor will they if Apple continues it's trend of steady increase. But for all of you naysayers and poo pooers, Apple is on it's last legs, going down BeOs's same path. Your mighty pc's with Xp on them are far more powerful, hold thier value WAY better, and never break, get virus, or falter EVER!!! (hahahahaha!) sorry, couldn't help myself. Oh, I run a pc, on Mepis ( no xp here!) and it's going to make a fine boat anchor some day!! No , seriously, I could probably get 100 bucks on ebay for it, it's only 3 months old! I paid 700, another 400 for a vid card and ram, so it'll get 150 or 200 on ebay.not
But i had a g4 emac for 6 months and sold it for 900 ( paid 1100) , but i took a bath on my g5 , when i paid 2100 and sold for 1700 6 months later. Next up, dual 2.5 g5, can't wait, going to be sweet xmas this year!

Again Apple is a hardware company ! They don't make money off their software they just use it to sell their expensive hardware. Microsoft would crush them if they were to jump into the OS software biz. Apple would do better making consumer electronic products ( I.E. Ipod ) instead of jumping into the OS biz.

The italian news takes another american news from a research company.
Are you sure that you have never seen this news before?

And to add to everything you said, Apple will have to start developing all it's apps in-house eventually. It's already happening.

"It's already happening."

Apple started developing its apps BEFORE that other choise to drop ther apps.
This is the time of Premiere: Adobe drops Premiere for Mac when Apple DVD Studio Pro turn it down the Adobe bad software.

heh, someone always tries to make Apple look good by saying they should be compared to Dell. Unfortunately, it tends to backfire. Thus!

Dell's revenue for their most recent quarter: $11.7bn
Apple's revenue for their most recent quarter: $2.35bn

I can't be bothered plumbing shipment figures out of the results, the revenue numbers should represent it pretty well.

Apple - Unsuccessfully going out of business since 1984.

Doug summed things up well.

But to those who things Market share doesn't matter, you're fools. You all talk about install base, like that doesn't go away. Further more, if your market share is shrinking your install base is shrinking as a percentage of the market. Also there is this idea that the install base computers don't go away, which is also wrong. Older computers are going away to, and when your market share is low, there is a good chance they are going away faster then new ones are getting bought. About the only G3 macs out there in large quanities still is iMacs and iBooks, but those G3 imacs are getting old, and probably won't be around much longer.

Market share matters a lot, if you keap dropping for to long you got squat, or third parties give up on you, or investors pull out thinking your going under. Apple has stated they want to get to 5% it does matter.

That said, I'm happy with my new Powermac, and I don't want apple to grow too big. There is advantages to being small. For one the odds of getting sued by the gov. like MS did is low. So apple can continue to intergrate things into the OS or provide good free apps with the OS. This is the main reason I got a mac, is MS can't improve do to legal action against them. Also with less people creating software for the platfrom there is a concentration of higher quality apps. I much prefer 1 great option in my apps, then 100 bad ones. The windows world is flooded full of crappy apps. I'll pay to keap the number of apps down and quality up. There is also a bunch of other reasons to get a mac, the distortion feild keaps you feeling nice and warm and fuzzy .

Gold Medal for all users of Apple Macintosh. You earned it.

1. I believe that it is you and the other market-share-is-meaningless folks who could benefit from a little explanation. Apple is the only vendor of OS X machines. Therefore, Apple's market share is the same as OS X's market share. The market share numbers strongly and consistently indicate that a shrinking percentage of customers are willing to purchase OS X. This does not bode well for the future of OS X. For example, if a shrinking percentage of customers are willing to purchase OS X, it is probably also the case that a shrinking percentage of customers are willing to give favorable word-of-mouth OS X recommendations to other potential customers. For another example, the market share of OS X is now so low that even traditionally pro-Apple ISVs such as Adobe have decided to focus their development efforts on Windows and to even recommend Windows to their customers.

2. The shrinking market share numbers also point to the numbers that are even more troubling from a financial perspective: Mac unit sales are declining. This decline in unit sales was reported in the market share report. My main point earlier was that Apple has to have a certain sales volume (regardless of market share) to justify making and selling Macs. Otherwise, Apple would be better off investing its money elsewhere. Apple's recent shifts of top management talent away from the Mac and toward the iPod and iTunes groups suggest that Apple has already concluded that it might be best for Apple to invest its money in non-Mac efforts. Also, Apple has to have a certain Mac sales volume to even make a profit in its Mac business unit. Right now it seems that Apple is comfortably above that sales volume, but for how long? If the sales volume keeps declining then Apple is going to have to make some hard decisions.

In short, in the IT market's recent "rising tide" it seems that many other vendors rose with the tide (sales volume increased) but somehow Apple sunk. That is perhaps the most troubling piece of data of all.

While I think that OS X should not be considered a direct competitor to the PC something needs to be done to ensure some comporable growth in the platform. I don't think they need to lower their quality or price as much as they just need to market their platform better. It is a great platform for consumers who are tired of worrying about installing the latest security updates and constantly be on the lookout for spyware. They don't have to market their computer to every demographic, but they do need to market it more.

No one is climbing on apple's sinking ship, especially at such exhorbinant prices. Jobs has no long term vision, but instead seems trapped in the failed hardware profit model which can't last in the time of commodity hardware.

Apple certainly has die-hard fans, who'll eagerly pay premium prices for 2nd rate performance, so the company will flounder in it's isignificance for years. Apple has no killer apps, no performance edge, nothing but pretty boxen and fanatics who'll say the obvious isn't true... that Apple's a failure and soon it will be a hair's breadth from collapse.

Whenever there's a discussion on market share of Mac there will never cease to be a flame war

Why can people be civil. Present your points clearly but politely. Words like ass and fanatics should be avoided.

No wonder our world is a mess. If we can't even behave in a forum how can we behave in the real world ?

"1.8% Apples sold to the PC industry"
I think that would be the same ratio of strawberries shipped to raw sewage.

You would benefit from reading what I wrote better. ;-) I never said it didn't matter. This is a marketshare number based on Apple vs. the entire computer industry. 1 against a total marketshare combined of Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Joe Blow, and mom and pops.

@zamorins
I couldn't agree more. Sad world this is when someone is insulted for having a different opinion isn't it? Think I'll call it a day.

the first person who threw an insult instead of a rock was the start of civilization !

Most of these shipments of PC's were to enterprise customers. Apple doesn't even compete in that market. With that said..having a 1.8% of worldwide market share isn't to bad.

Pulease, the number of units sold by Apple has INCREASED but NOT at the same rate as the rest of the industry, hence, their marketshare has decreased; also, Apples market ISN'T the ultra-cheap, that is where MOST of the growth is.

Also, comparing one company against the rest of the industry? hell, why don't we compare IBM PC shipments to the industry, "Oh, they SUX00R, the only hold 1.8% of the market!".

I wish some people here would get a damn education before making such *STUPID* and *ILLINFORMED* statements.

Did anyone here knows that in the third quarter Apple have stopped selling iMacs during 2+ months?
This is the declining..

The Big problem of Apple isn't the price of their computers.. They are really well priced, cheaper in the majority of cases than PCs of big brands.

The Big problem is supply and presence. And Apple is working to solve this.
More and More Apple Stores, and IBM is working hard to solve the G5 issues.

I'm sure this fourth quarter will be a lot better if Apple invest more in advertising.. I'm seeing them selling nearly 1 millon of macs..

marketshare and install base ARNT the same thing. im sure to say noone over at apple cares is a bit of a stretch, but really, its not exactly terrible either.

think of it this way, apple is at 1.8% marketshare. now i work in a relatively small company (~60 people) but theres two in my team that own macs. as for the people i know, the vast majority do have x86 boxes, but i have several friends who have macs, including the people at work i would put put that number at close to ten. now, if install base and marketshare are the same thing, then that means my social circle is around 500 people, which its not.

i mean really, apple has been doing better then it has in years. sure they care that markets they arnt a part of are booming right now. but im pretty sure that they care about that alot less then the size of their quarterly profits or their stock price.

The biggest problem with these types of stories is that they fail to recognize that Apple is the sole vendor of the Macintosh platform. If you wanted a fair comparison, you would compare Apple individually with Gateway, HP, Sony or Dell, but instead you get the usual Apple versus everybody else nonsense. Of Course Apple by themselves could not have even close to the same levels of sales as the ENTIRE Windows PC market, so it is rediculous to even make these comparisons. As it is, their supply chain has a hard enough time meeting the current demand for new Macs. So it's not like there is low demand for them anyways.

.......in Western Europe and Japan are going DOWN and I cannot see a couple of lost months production of iMacs being responseable for this decline.

Couple this with the increasing disparity of software useability through various versions of OSX and the continuing bleeding of Mac software developers, then their longterm outlook can only look grim.

Since Apple is primarily a hardware manufacture with low volumes their prices will always remain skyhigh to provide healthy(?) profits.

Has anybidy got the guts to ask Apple the real reason why sales outside the US are in such decline ??

It will be very interesting to watch the trends over the coming 6 months...... this will show the actual longer term direction for unit sales World-wide.

As the economies of Europe and Japan continue to perform poorly you are very likely to see sharp declines in unit sales outside North America.

What is ferrari's market share in the entire global car market? 0.005%? less? I'm pretty sure they don't care either.. why should Apple

Your infamous and stale car analogy might hold water if Apple hardware was a Ferrari, but everybody and their brother knows that it's not true, and x86/AMD is just as fast or faster than top of the line G5s. All the rest of the parts on the apple are standard, commodity, industry components that are used by PC makers too. The cat is out of the bag whether Apple likes it or not.

Have you ever studied Apple's SEC filings? Have you noticed how most of their highest margins come from hardware?

I studied theem, last year for an MBA class. I think that Steve Jobs is;

a) short sighted
b) a control freak and does not want to see people using gis beloved OSX running on ugly home made boxes.

I think the window of opportunity has now passed for an OSX X86 machine though. Should have done it two years ago.

What decline? I guess I should ignore the sharply increasing amount of mac laptops I see at my school. Three years ago I would have to search for a mac user (I knew 1). Nowadays I see them everywhere and can't count all of the mac users that I know now.

OSX is almost a dream OS for us Computer Science majors. Why must you trolls spend your time trashing our choice? Go outside and take your energy out on a baseball or something.

I too get sick of people thinking that anyone that critizes Mac dislikes mac's. In fact the opposite is true, if we weren't at least interested why would we waste our breath commenting here?

What those who bring up the arguement that 'macs market is creative and science pros' fail to realize is that that Apple is not alone in that market and that Apple MUST stay competitive. SGI is one of their competitors who even recently announced a kick ass Itanium Linux solution in this category. Do these zealots not realize that *gasp* some of this market share loss could be in the very fields that Mac has traditionally been strong in?

Fortunately Apple knows this and has begun a recruiting effort for sales distributors to business' in the East and West coast to keep their current markets from "switching". An example in my midwest area is the local Columbus Newspaper. Most desks use an original iMac. While this is a testimony to just how long OS 9 was usable and G3's Apple should actually be nervous because eventually they will upgrade and what will it be? --- So far those they have upgraded are in the printing area and they ain't Apple's. They're Dell WinXP's. Perhaps this demonstrates why pushing MS Office for Apple may have been a horrible idea in the long run I don't know. Will they bother with keeping Macs on the reporters and classified's office desks when they upgrade, or will they say "well the Dell's are great so why not get them?"

Some Apple sales specialists aint doing their job evidently. And that's just one example. I know of others that have "switched" too. Marketshare as you pointed out Doug is EXTREMELY important especially if you are in so called "niche" business' cuz Apple aint the only solution in that market anymore. Speaking of which Apple's relationship with one HUGELY popular multimedia vendor even has been getting frosty: http://news.com.com/2100-1012-5181434.html

>>The biggest problem with these types of stories is that they fail to recognize that Apple is the sole vendor of the Macintosh platform. If you wanted a fair comparison, you would compare Apple individually with Gateway, HP, Sony or Dell, but instead you get the usual Apple versus everybody else nonsense. Of Course Apple by themselves could not have even close to the same levels of sales as the ENTIRE Windows PC market,

Actually the article nor users did that. In fact it has been pointed out in the thread that Apple fails even when compared one to one.

That being said though, Apple want's to be compared one to many due to being the sole vendor of their platform. OS-X is a beautiful OS indeed and they should open the platform up though not necessarily x86 just open PPC again. That is clearly the answer. And NO it would not be a driver mess again because today the Mac is made up of mostly PC parts, or have you forgotten when they started doing this when the G3 was introduced? Standard PCI? - check, Popular video cards? - Nvidia, ATI - check, AGP - check. SATA - check.
They could overnight convert those considering Linux but havn't done so yet. Heck they'd more than likely gain customers from us Linux nuts too as we tend to have several machines and are OS fans anyway! I really do believe it would be an overnight success.

>>OSX is almost a dream OS for us Computer Science majors. Why must you trolls spend your time trashing our choice? Go outside and take your energy out on a baseball or something.

Actually Altair you're dead wrong. This has actually been a good thread to read all the way through. Most of them (except yours) has at least even been related to the ACTUAL ARTICLE. So there havn't been "trolls" here but rather discussions about the article which evidently you didn't read.

Four years ago, at an ISP meeting in Amsterdam, of the fourteen people attending:
- 1 mac
- 13 i86's running 20% linux/80% windows

This year, same meeting, 14 people
- 7 Mac powerbooks
- 3 Mac ibooks
- 2 x Dell running linux
- 1 x HP running windows
- 1 IBM running the real deal: FreeBSD

True, technical people ... but in my world Apple rules.

"That being said though, Apple want's to be compared one to many due to being the sole vendor of their platform. OS-X is a beautiful OS indeed and they should open the platform up though not necessarily x86 just open PPC again. That is clearly the answer. And NO it would not be a driver mess again because today the Mac is made up of mostly PC parts, or have you forgotten when they started doing this when the G3 was introduced? Standard PCI? - check, Popular video cards? - Nvidia, ATI - check, AGP - check. SATA - check.
They could overnight convert those considering Linux but havn't done so yet. Heck they'd more than likely gain customers from us Linux nuts too as we tend to have several machines and are OS fans anyway! I really do believe it would be an overnight success."

Let me know how it goes trying to run that nvidia card or ati card in your pc. open up the g5 , if you are ever in the company of one, and point to all the stuff that's also in your dell............ ugh i said inside of a ...... dell. vomits!

You are under the impression that Apple's number of shipped units has shrunked over time. As other posters have pointed out, this is patently *FALSE*. Appl'e is shipping more units than ever before, and their Mac department has been seeing 9% year-on-year growth. http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=690

As has been pointed out many times, market share != installed base. Apple has a smaller market share mainly because it isn't growing as fast as the rest of the industry. Apple has no problem selling macs. In fact, it may even be having problems meeting the demand. Witness the waiting queues and shortage of iMac G5s. A single vendor cannot compete with the rest of the industry.

Naysayers have been predicting Apple's demise for years. They can keep going at it for many more years to come.

1. price
2. price
3. price

This has been beaten to death. Macs are not expensive. Especially their laptop lines. Find a comparably priced x86 laptop that matches the Powerbook 12" or iBook 12" or any powerbook for that matter.


4. closed powerpc ecosystem (few graphics cards, no standard scsi cards, etc.)

This has more to do with HW manufacturers not writing drivers for the mac. What has Apple got to do with this?


5. hobbled ui design (1-button mouse, bad keyboard, dysfunctional "dock", poor support for dual monitors, etc.)


Again, all stuff that has been beaten to death. You can use a multi button mouse (I'm using a 5 button mouse at the moment). Don't like the keyboard(why?), plug in another one.

However, i agree with what you said about the screen menubar. It's quite annoying since it's hard to tell what apps have the focus. The upside is that you have more screen space but this is becoming a non-issue with the emergence of large monitors.

Dell's revenue for their most recent quarter: $11.7bn
Apple's revenue for their most recent quarter: $2.35bn

That's nice, but we're looking at the largest PC manufacturer in the world. Does Apple need to compete with the largest PC manufacturer in the world to survive?

even though dollar is worth less than euro compare these prices in eu with us prices:

-iBook from $999 in US, €1089 (€908) EUR in Italy
-powerBook from $1599 in US, €1799 (€1499 without tax) Eur in Italy
-eMac from $799 in US, €849 (€708) eur in Italy
-iMac from $1299 in US, €1399 (€1166) in Italy
-powerMac from $1499 in US, €1679 (€1399) in Italy
-iPods (mini, 20 gb) -$249, $299 in US, €279, $339 in Italy

currently one € is worth 1.27$

they need to issue this price discrepancy, I understand tax is bigger in Eu, but even without tax it is more expensive

anyway, thanks for the link,

I am thinking to enter longer term short position in AAPL and this is another argument for that.

> Dell's revenue for their most recent quarter: $11.7bn
> Apple's revenue for their most recent quarter: $2.35bn

That's nice, but we're looking at the largest PC manufacturer in the world. Does Apple need to compete with the largest PC manufacturer in the world to survive?

Now compare them to the 2nd, HP.
They make huge revenues as well (they're just behind Dell) but the profit on it is miniscule. Apple has relatively small revenues (though 2.3 Billion is hardly anything to sneeze at) but make very healthy margins.

As for the figures, over the last Q Apple has been flat. PC sales have been growing in far eastern markets flat or even dropping elsewhere.

Over the year Apple grew 9%, but the PC market grew faster - so they appear to be shrinking.

BTW isn't Gartner the same people who said most Linux users are just using it to pirate Windows?

"BTW isn't Gartner the same people who said most Linux users are just using it to pirate Windows?"

Yes. :-)

Altair was semi-correct on his point. There are more students using macs, I see it at the college now. And while this means squat right now, in the future, these will be the people running/making decisions in businesses. So, hopefully the more prevalent Macs become to students/future buyers the more secure they are in their future growth. (which will always be below the global market share).

Yes, Macs are a niche, but I think they have done a good job securing a place in the future, especially with the linux tidal wave expected over the next few years. They have been diligently working to give their user base the best system they can (whether through new features in the OS, or new programs), and at the same time they've been branching out to other markets (science, supercomputing, etc.) and trying to gain some new territory.

So for all the doomsday prophets out there - Macs will never be as big as Microsoft, as Cheap as Dell, or as customizable as Linux, but they will always be pushing forward in their design/OS and doing the best they can for their existing customers.

Destineer, aka MacSoft, is a very important game porting house for Mac: it has the exclusive porting of the entire Microsoft and Atari game catalogs.
Now, Destineer is developing a new game engine for that it will be used inside their new Close Combat series (CC: Fist to Fight; CC: Red Phoenix), a well known game frachise licenced from Microsoft, for PC/Mac and XBOX.
A game porting house for Mac become original game house for Microsoft.

Aspyr is another very important game porting house for Mac: it has a long time contact with EA and EA Sports.
Now Aspyr is an original game houses: a new Tony Hawk's skateboarding game for PC and Mac, licenced to another house for the XBOX version, and in future "Rebel Without A Pulse" for PC/Mac and XBOX, the first science-grotesque game based on the Halo engine from Wideload, a spin off of Bungie.
A game porting house for Mac become original game house for itself.

I don't know what you think, but for me it's clare that the Apple installed base isn't so little if two game porting houses have now the might to become two original game houses for PC/Mac and XBOX.

"Because I am not Italian."

Weak, Eugenia, very weak! There are was to translate that article. Besides, to be fair, you should be looking EVERYWHERE to find news for your site, and not just selecting the news that fits YOUR stilted opinion.

"And to add to everything you said, Apple will have to start developing all it's apps in-house eventually. It's already happening."

That's OK, because their applications beat the s**t out of everything else out there, Mr. Limburger. Can't wait for their Photoshop and Office killer apps!

I find the timing of this Gartner report suspicious. Apple has been receiving pretty much nothing but great press and great numbers over the past few months, while XP and MS have been in the spotlight for "not-so-good" reasons...as usual. People have been ditching IE in favor of Firefox, and some have gone completely over to Mac or Linux. I gather MS's pal, Gartner, is trying to help stem the negativity. Why couldn't they wait until after the holiday season and report on that quarter. We know why. Because this holiday is going to be huge for iPods, iBooks, iMac G5s, and even PowerBooks.

Must be the innate American madness of focusing everything on THIS quarter's figures over last quarter and if they are not better........

Madness. Misses the points about margins and a lot of other important business things. Just beating each quarter just does not tell the whole financial story - as I said just beating the quarter on its own - is madness.

This comment from Nicholas Blachford
"BTW isn't Gartner the same people who said most Linux users are just using it to pirate Windows?" says enough to cover this article.

Marc. Well said. "And these prigs get paid to report on such crap."

Bit like Politicians they get paid huge sums and their buddies get golden parachutes - everyone else "not connected" gets poorer and mostly their results are a mess.

Do we have anymore a free media in the West? Free from commercial and political pressure.......

Another good poster.

If ie is the problem cut it out. oops that is almost impossible to uninstall, now I wonder why?

I wonder why it is so full of security holes.

I wonder why so many companies rely on it.

Companies must be run by sheep, unable to compile daily bad news and make decisions to secure better their computer systems.

Amazing really.... in the meantime we are all busy off loading production to China and other places and call-centres to India, and then we are in denial at the rising unemployment.

Management stinks right now.

Gartner has confirmed that Apple continues to hold 100% of the Macintosh market. Film at 11.

I am sure i could make a honda civic outperform a ferrari if i spent the money. But, when someone asked me what i drove, i'd still have to say "honda civic." That's exactly what happens when people say their x86 computers are faster and cheaper than macs. Sure they can be.. but you've still got another intel or AMD computer. Another honda civic. You dont have a macintosh, and this is the reason apple doesnt need to worry about market share. That, and OSX is more than a match for windows. Maybe not on responsiveness, but on power. OSX can do windows networking almost as well as a windows computer, linux networking, and even apple networking if you still use it. I have tons of apps to choose from: OSX apps(the office suite, which is the one and only good thing to come from microsoft), classic mac apps, and most UNIX and linux apps run with little or no trouble. Just to avoid any trouble, along with the powerbook i am using now i have a 2.2ghz celeron box.. so i can appreciate cheap hardware.

"Why couldn't they wait until after the holiday season and report on that quarter. We know why. Because this holiday is going to be huge for iPods, iBooks, iMac G5s, and even PowerBooks."

Apple is a "fashionated" brand and it has two big quarter: April-June and October-December, two pre-Holidays quarters, when parents take presents for their sons.

"That's OK, because their applications beat the s**t out of everything else out there, Mr. Limburger. Can't wait for their Photoshop and Office killer apps!"

Yes exactly, Apple has the best software writers in the world and yup even beats up Adobe. Go figure, they have people from Next, Be, Discreet(nothing real),people from logic, acid, Adobe/Macromedia(original Final Cut Team), the list goes on...

Who cares about market share, serve customers first! The current market we have 95 companies selling x86 and one Apple.............Of course Apple can't compete against the other 95....duu....but Apples profits are on the rise and market share in music and video. Thier lowend computer, the 300 dollar iPod/hp ipod clone is doing fantastic too!

I'll continue to buy Macs as long as Apple continues to sell them. I don't care about market share.

i used babelfish to translate the italian article you mentioned. it's seems to primarily focus on the iPod hardware and music business of Apple. If this is the what is keeping Apple's hardware sales up, it isn't very good news for their bread and butter computer sales.

It also states that there is a increase in sales of iBooks which is all well and good but there is no indication if these are existing Mac users or 'switched' users.

Regardless if the Gartner report is biased, your article does not really defend Apple as growing or shrinking.

Apple's marketshare may be declining, but it's MARKET is still growing, and at an increasing pace. If apple makes it to 30-50 million installed base, which they are heading towards, they will have a market that is more than big enough to attract developers to compete with the windows market. You don't need that many developers to make a good program. Look at Microsoft. They have thousands of developers trying to fix the holes in XP, and they still can't do it. Meanwhile, Mac OS X dev team is MUCH smaller. I don't need to tell you how well they're doing.

If you still think macs have a slow UI, you haven't been to an apple store recently. If you think the dock sucks, you haven't used a mac long enough to know that it is actually quite powerful, much quicker to use that the start bar, and there are alternatives that provide a great amount of customizability, power, stability, and speed.

Macs do not clutter nearly as bad as Windows machines. I have trouble understanding why, but i own and use both. I routinely have to reorganize or do clean-install on my windows box, and have done anything like it on my pow

If apple loses adobe photoshop, they can easily leverage core image, and create a photoshop killer. If they lose office... well look at keynote. It's clear that they can easily wipe the floor with microsoft when it comes to office apps. So who's worrying about apple going in-house on development? Not me. I'm hoping for it.

Most people that don't know about current mac technology think about oregon trail when you mention the mac platform. With the rapid growth of iPod, iTunes on PC, and Windows problems, people are beginning to rediscover what apple has to offer.

The grass is greener on this side of the fence.

compared to 2 years ago, i'm seeing a lot more Macs around me especially at work.

Since I don't believe that desktop PCs and Macs are even in the same league, I don't believe Macs should be lumped in with the lowly PC. In that regard, how about this statistic?

Apple has 99.9% of the OS X based computer market. The balance goes to those trying to run OS X by emulating the PowerPC architecture.

It also states that there is a increase in sales of iBooks which is all well and good but there is no indication if these are existing Mac users or 'switched' users.


From the article at AppleInsider that I quoted earlier :

45 to 50% of CPU buyers at Apple's retail stores remain PC converters or those new to the Macintosh.
The article in full is at http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=690

Looks like Apple is doing well with a rather high number of 'switchers' or first time mac users.

Some statements about Apples marketshare from Sites that are
non-Microsoft sponsored:

"With Apple stores booming in many major U.S. cities, the company is looking to further expand. So this fall, small boutique versions of its high-profile outlets -- no grand staircase, no theater, limited display space -- will start sprouting up in shopping malls. The strategy could be key to boosting Apple's PC market share, which between January and June nudged up for the first time in six years, from 2 to 2.2 percent, according to market-research firm IDC. "They're going after people who aren't looking for an Apple experience," says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster."

Source:
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,713848,00.html

That indeed is a good statistic.

However, I still will stand by my first point after reading the appleinsider article. Most of the bulleted points are talking about excellent iPod sales and nothing dramatic other than the statistic you stated about computer sales.


Apple has decided not to compete in the sub-$800 PC market and instead will focus its efforts in its booming music business and related products. "We don't think we can make a lot of money there."


Again from the article, if Apple concedes they have no market other than on their music related business, it seems they are really pushing themselves into even more of a niche corner.

we love our 'niche corner' thank you

My family have all switched to macs in the last few months, and they still loose market share?

Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that Apple products are so overpriced in the European market? If there European pricing structure was even close to that of the US market they would sell many many more systems!

Just wanted to beat them to it.

"My family have all switched to macs in the last few months, and they still loose market share?"

Today my mother's "boyfriend" bought my old iBook G3/466 SE Graphite to run a particular CAD app ONLY for Mac, more powerful than Autocad and not-compatible with the Autodesk app, necessary for his job (he's a professional artisan with home design specialization that joined an achitect studio).
This is an exemple of how the Mac installed base can rise at the shadow of the official market share: a Mac is functional and powerful for more time than a same age PC.
At the same time, there are many persons that buy a Mac, many time a portable (iBook o PowerBook, especially 12-inch versions), and a PC too that they change it more frequently than their own Mac, for the same reasons I explane above.

"With Apple stores booming in many major U.S. cities, the company is looking to further expand. So this fall, small boutique versions of its high-profile outlets -- no grand staircase, no theater, limited display space -- will start sprouting up in shopping malls. The strategy could be key to boosting Apple's PC market share, which between January and June nudged up for the first time in six years, from 2 to 2.2 percent, according to market-research firm IDC. "They're going after people who aren't looking for an Apple experience," says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster."

I wonder how much Apple would of done if the G5 iMac would of been released on time for back to school and school sales.........should of been better I would guess. Just had some supply problems I guess.

Apple has decided not to compete in the sub-$800 PC market and instead will focus its efforts in its booming music business and related products. "We don't think we can make a lot of money there."


Again from the article, if Apple concedes they have no market other than on their music related business, it seems they are really pushing themselves into even more of a niche corner.

Conceding that the sub-$800 PC market isn't profitable doesn't mean that they're painting themselves into a niche corner. The cheap computer market is basically that. Cheap machines, with very small margins. Apple can't survive in that market unless they can manufacture loads and loads of machines.

They're still focusing on computers. In the portable market, Apple is doing very very well.

ince I don't believe that desktop PCs and Macs are even in the same league, I don't believe Macs should be lumped in with the lowly PC. In that regard, how about this statistic?

Apple has 99.9% of the OS X based computer market. The balance goes to those trying to run OS X by emulating the PowerPC architecture.

Well said! It's always done my head in the Apple versus the PC thing.

"Today my mother's "boyfriend" bought my old iBook G3/466 SE Graphite to run a particular CAD app ONLY for Mac, more powerful than Autocad and not-compatible with the Autodesk"

Oh, really? That would be what, exactly?

"app, necessary for his job (he's a professional artisan with home design specialization that joined an achitect studio)."

Yet, there are no real professinal CAD applications for the Mac. Applications like Pro/Engineer.... There are no professional-grade graphics cards on the Mac either. There may still be a place for the Mac in "artistic" applications, but next to no place in real design engineering.

"This is an exemple of how the Mac installed base can rise at the shadow of the official market share: a Mac is functional and powerful for more time than a same age PC."

No, they aren't. The rate of performance increase on the Mac side is lower. That's not the same thing.

within the month i am planning on convincing my mom that "she" needs an ibook so i guess there market share goes up ever so slightly once more

"Oh, really? That would be what, exactly?"

ArchiCAD.

"Yet, there are no real professinal CAD applications for the Mac."

There are. :-)
Autodesk asked to the professional MacUsers that use CAD if they want Autocad for Mac. The answer was "NO". ArchiCAD is only one of the many superior choise in this sector. :-D

"There are no professional-grade graphics cards on the Mac either."

I think if Pixar doesn't need them for its film anyone doesn't need them for anything. :-)

"The rate of performance increase on the Mac side is lower."

But in what f***ing world do you live?! :-D
Oh no, sorry, The stupid is me that I gave you my precious time.

"ArchiCAD."

Which is better than AutoCAD how? I'm sure it's better than AutoCAD for *Mac users* (since AutoCAD isn't available on the Mac anymore), but that's not saying the same thing.

"There are. :-) "

No, there are not. This is a market you do not understand.

" ArchiCAD is only one of the many superior choise in this sector. :-D "

ArchiCAD is in no way representative of the CAD sector and professional CAD apps. That would be CATIA, Pro/Engineer, SolidWorks, SolidEdge, AutoDesk Inventor and the like.

"I think if Pixar doesn't need them for its film anyone doesn't need them for anything. :-) "

Pixar isn't in the CAD/CAE market. They just make pretty pictures.

"But in what f***ing world do you live?! :-D
Oh no, sorry, The stupid is me that I gave you my precious time."

The same world most people do - the real one. Just look at how slowly performance improved with the G4.. Oh, wait... you might think that's representative of the rest of the computing market....

It's not.

"Which is better than AutoCAD how? I'm sure it's better than AutoCAD for *Mac users* (since AutoCAD isn't available on the Mac anymore), but that's not saying the same thing."

You don't understand: MacUsers that use CAD apps DON'T WANT Autocad.
This isn't a decision of Autodesk, but a democratic expression of the Mac peole. And let me say: POWER TO THE PEOPLE! :-X

"No, there are not. This is a market you do not understand."

Ahahahahahahahahah!
There are, there are not, there are, there are not... You seem like a boy. :-D
If there is a person that doesn't understand about a market this is you that don't understand anything about Mac. Sorry, this is a market you do not understand, BOY. :-D

"Pixar isn't in the CAD/CAE market. They just make pretty pictures."

No, Pixar makes LIVE PICTURES. There is a BIG diference:-)
Sorry, this a market you do not understand, BOY. X-D

"Just look at how slowly performance improved with the G4.. "

My friend, "G4" is a franchise. This is not a series of processors. Under the G4 franchise there are many different processor series. And under the same nominal Mhz performace there are manu different processors with different REAL performace: an MPC 7447A at 1.25Ghz is a lot more powerful than an MPC 7447, 7445 and so on. Again, this is a market you do not understand, BOY! :-D

Get a real life. :-)

Regarding Macintosh Support...

Marketshare is nice, but in reality is "the icing on the cake". What you really need for platform viability is a healthy developer community. And in that area, Apple has made significant strides with Mac OS X.

Firstly, developing for Mac OS X is less expensive. You paid a premium to develop for the old Mac OS; for any decent development tools and for more than a few SDKs. Now, all of that comes at no charge; dev tools are shipped with the OS, and updates to those tools plus any and all published SDKs can be downloaded with a gratis ADC registration. You can develop on any Macintosh, whether expensive or not. There are also claims that Cocoa makes it quick and relatively painless to develop applications, and that makes an impact on the bottom line. Developers' sponsors need to be convinced of these things to authorise porting to Mac OS X.

Secondly, you have a lot more options developing for Mac OS X. Java really is now "part of the system". Apple has been, and continues to, work towards making it easy to take existing code developed for a Linux distribution or a BSD, port it to Darwin, wrap Cocoa around it, and call it a Mac OS X application. And despite a rocky start, Darwin now has a well-maintained tree with current versions of gcc and of various interpreters (perl, python and ruby). Under the old Mac OS, none of these things were true. Developers consider options to be essential.

Thirdly, Apple is slowly but surely increasing its' usage of open standards and open source. They're already light years beyond the very closed world of the old Mac OS (anyone who has used Mac OS for an appreciable length of time will be easily able to confirm this). Developers like this for interoperability reasons, and developers' sponsors like this because they know where they stand - which is everything when it comes to managing risk.

Fourthly, Mac OS X is looking at certain inherent advantages. The OS is genuinely "modern" and has plenty of room to grow (just look at Tiger); the best that could be hoped for with the old Mac OS was, in many cases, "hack" features on top that the OS was really never designed to handle. In most cases, the OS is very stable; combine this with self-contained applications and no more extension conflicts, and life gets easier for support personnel. These are key considerations when considering commercial application support, since how your application is received and perceived relies very much on the quality of the platform on which it runs.

Apple still has a ways to go. For one thing, their developer documentation could be improved somewhat. Apple is still a secretive company (understandable, since they want to be first to market with their ideas) and this causes concern with developers, especially where they believe they might end up competing with Apple (which is a losing proposition on the Macintosh). And as yet, they don't have definitively superior OS features or a definitively superior hardware lineup. Yes, these things are coming, but they're not going to be here until next year, at the earliest.

But on the whole, a lot of objections to developing for the Macintosh have been removed. And we've seen developers consider Macintosh development seriously that would previously just laugh at the idea.

Were I at Apple, I would reverse the trend of shutting out specialist dealers, and appeal across the spectrum, especially to those that work with small to medium enterprises. Those are the large enterprises of tomorrow, and I'd be desperately wanting their opinions with the goal of them keeping their existing Macintosh network (as opposed to "switching up" to Windows NT as has happened in the past). But that's probably too much to hope for...

Regarding Internet Explorer (Windows version)...

If you haven't used it in a business setting, you probably don't know to what extent large organisations are relying on it for application delivery. All the "technology extras" (such as ActiveX) that are included, and the way in which Internet Explorer is integrated into Windows, is all about delivering applications using "web technologies". Microsoft's extras are spread through the system exactly so that "web applications" can interact with the system in all the same ways a compiled binary application can. This also has the completely intentional side-effect of requiring users to have Windows installed to use these applications, helping to nullify the platform commoditisation threat posed by HyperText (and to some extent, even helps in the "war" against Linux distributions).

Personally, I feel some organisations have taken it a little too far (trying to make _EVERY_ application browser-based, which will work, but won't work well). And it creates extra security risks. But until something better that is also "more open" comes along, Microsoft's business clients - the clients that truly matter to them in the Windows market - will demand that integration remain, and where impressed by the Longhorn demonstrations, demand it go even deeper.

A very interesting point of view. :-)

dude, come into the real world. the PPC processor performance is look at the G5 series of CPUs. 2.5 GHZ is as fast as the Athlon 64.

"dude, come into the real world. the PPC processor performance is look at the G5 series of CPUs. 2.5 GHZ is as fast as the Athlon 64."

Not according to SPEC it's not. Frankly, if it doesn't run the software, it doesn't matter how fast it is.

"Firstly, benchmark is like onanism. You are an onanist?"

So, what does "modman" base his performance metric on, then?

Faith?

What do you?

"Secondly, there is software, it is good and run on powerful hardware. "

There is *software*, but it isn't the *right* software.
That hardware isn't as powerful as you believe.

"Thirdly, you are boring everyone. "

I am? Facts get in the way, don't they?

"You aren't a nice person."

Oh, really? Weren't you the one attacking Eugenia for not keeping track of Italian news articles?

There's no point arguing with a true believer.

you want to give me a link to that test? I googled and after 5 pages in when the listings were getting non relevant, I still had not found one that showed a 2.5 GHz Opteron v a 2.5 GHz G5.

I think the reason Windows retains such a huge percentage of market share is gaming. Gaming is still the killer app in the computer scene. Once linux gaming takes off, it's market share will increase substantially. Steve Jobs is anti gaming. I think if the new iMac had a better video card, they could have doubled sales. And most kids that have xboxes and ps2's still use their computers for gaming. My iBook does all my work applications I could possilby ever hope for. But I will never replace my desktop PC with a Mac due to poor gaming performance.

Not gaming, but the enterprise. If Apple wanted to concertrate and DID concentrate on the business market they could have really increased their marketshare.

I've never heard of that CAD mentioned above, who knows where it comes from. But far as people telling AutoCAD they don't want it, that comes down to people are leaving AutoCAD cause it's horrid. And those who do use it, architects, civil engineers probably just run windows boxes like most other people running some form of CAD.

Like mentioned before, serious CAD programs are Pro/E, Solidworks, Unigraphics. Solidworks is windows only, but the others are multiplatform, but most people simply run them on windows for the best bang for the buck. I have to use Pro/E on a sun blade 100, and it sucks.


oh, and far as pixar and video cards, how many of their computers even have video cards? Their computers are doing number crunching. When will people stop thinking video cards are doing much, it's like thinking you need a killer graphics card to do CAD, the card isn't doing crap.

A year ago the Pro/Engineers surveyed the Mac community.

Here is there answer:

http://d-digest.com/proedigitaldigest/V3I7/

Now for folks not doing Finite Element Modeling (FEM) and are interested in some top knotch NURBS based Modeling and CAID products SolidThinking 6 has recently been released:

http://www.solidthinking.com/products/index.htm

There are three products: Forma 5.5, Design 6.0 and Vantage 6.0

The original solidThinking Modeler was developed on NeXTSTEP. Its original team now works at PIXAR.

Brad wrote:


oh, and far as pixar and video cards, how many of their computers even have video cards? Their computers are doing number crunching. When will people stop thinking video cards are doing much, it's like thinking you need a killer graphics card to do CAD, the card isn't doing crap.


If you are referring to the algorithmic number crunching of putting all the frames into a seemless output than of course it is correct to have a rendering farm do that work, where clusters of free CPU cycles and highbandwidth throughput are tops.

However, animators aren't just doing that. They also run continuous previews of their modeling works, with post lighting effects mixed with real-time audio outputs. I'd imagine the new nVidia 6800 for the 30in Cinema Display are hot items at PIXAR, just as I'm sure X-serve and XRaid are working in conjunction with the racks of cheap Linux 1U/3U boxes that PIXAR bought a few years back when they began their migration from SGI IRIX render Farm.

But regarding the "card isn't doing crap," I will simply say, "IT SHOULD."

If Pro/Engineer, CATIA, ANSYS and other high-end FEM packages aren't leveraging the power of current GPUs that is the ignorance of the software developers who write the applications.

Who here knows of TIFFany 3.x? This application so thoroughly impressed the Adobe Engineers back in 97' that they subsequently began mimicking some of its capabilities in subsequent versions of Photoshop.

Well the team of two engineers who developed TIFFany, ala CaffeineSoft, both work for Apple Engineering.

Both graduated from Stanford. One became a principle engineer who continues to be an important architect for Quartz/Quartz Extreme.

I haven't spoken to them since WWDC 1999 but through the grapevine many of their ideas are flowering inside engineering, thankfully.

Apple could very well replace Photoshop within 3 months development time and it would be Pure Cocoa.

Adobe knows this by the way. The more OS X returns to Cocoa the faster, more flexible and scaleable OS X becomes.

Most people don't notice this but Steve is making true on his promise @WWDC 1998 that Carbon would eventually be replaced by an ever evolving Cocoa OS X. Cocoa is finally being leveraged throughout the OS.

I expect OS XI to be the first true Cocoa OS X version, which means Carbon will be put into Legacy mode.

Scientific Testimonials like the following will help people see what makes OS X Cocoa so worthwhile:

http://developer.apple.com/business/macmarket/neurolens.html

OS X 10.4 Tiger Overview:

Pay attention to the focus on Cocoa.

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/index.html

Its always the same discussion after Gartner publishe their misleading statitics. A lot of people come again in the same place and want to convince everyone that Apple has no future, apple is dead, and bla, bla, bla.

Why? Because, although we explained many times, thousands of times the same thing, and even this time people are trying to explain them, ....what does the Gartner statitics mean , and what does mean "Market share"?, they aleays come with the same speech.

Well, how should we explain you that? The market share does not major the number of Macintosh users, or a drop in the Apple market share does not mean that some guys gave away their macs for pc boxes. Sorry guys you just want to believe that it is convenient for you, and i guess you try to convince yourself about the dead of Apple. If so, ok, but please don't come here with the certainty that you are right, because you are simply not.

The market share ONLY measures the relative quantity of computers sold by a given compagny which is measured and compared with all the computers sold in the market including all the compagnies in that market. This market share simply measure the performance of a compagny regarding to another one. Now if you don't understand that, try just to understand what does 1.8% mean... It simply means that compared to the total amount of computers sold during the last quarter or so, 1.8 % percent of those computers have been Apple computers. That's the meaning of market share, there is no thousands of meanings, there is only one, you can check it by yourself.

A lot of Apple simple think that this number means that 1.8% of the computers used in the last quarter or so, are Apple computers, again, they think so, maybe because they feel that it is more convenient for them, or because they simply don't understand the things, they are too lazy to go and check what a number really means, it is easier to come and troll in a web site, isn'it? God help them to undertsatnd finally....

Now, we know what this market share means, but wait, it is a relevant? No it is not....
Look how this number is measured, and ask yourself how many compagnies are doing macintosh? Well one, Apple, and how many builders of pcs are there out there? Thousands of them, selling millions of pcs in markets where even Apple is not even playing? Apple is not selling ridiculous 300$ pcs, right? How many pcs like that are sold over the world, ...millions. Right? So now just ask yourself, how this idea of "market share" (knowing that it puts Apple in markets where Apple is simply not) could be used or be believed to be a good indicator of Apple health? It does not make sense, because even if Apple sell more macs, and it does, look the last results of Apple, sale of macs has grown for both laptops and desktops, that's a matter of fact check the last month quarter results, ...so even if Apple sells more macs, this increase can not be visible in the market share as the number of pcs sold in the market grows too, and it does, fater than apple, remember the 300$ pcs story....If the number of sold pcs grows faster than the number of sold macs (and remember that there is only one compagny doing macs out there), it is too difficult to understand that the market share of Apple will naturally decrease?, but in the same time it does not mean that the number of macs users decrease or that the installed base of macs decrease, that's simply not true to say that, and moreover again, look at the last quarter results of Apple. We are simply talking about two diffrent concepts: "How much do i sell comparing to all others", and "Is my sale growing if compared to myself?"

So people who say that Apple is dead because of their market share, they are simply wrong, and i would like to say that when Apple (for example the last quarter) comes with increasing profits, increasing cash, increasing sales for all products that they sell, those people don't appear any more when it comes to say that Apple is really healthy. Right?

Apple has managed to enter to new important businesses, science and high end computing, entreprise, professional video and professional audio production, 3d market, movie studios, and so, because of that, who can believe that the installed base of macintosh is decreasing, no it's increasing. By the way, last year, 2003, Apple' s profilt has grown by more than 300%, so who is dying, guys, who.....
Apple has one of the most powerful microprocessor out there, they have what many people involved in this industry think as the best desktop operating system, and so they have strong plateform, which is GROWING, no matter the market share number tells, because it simply does not tell the real fact.

Since 1998, Apple became a strong compagny, with amazing technologies around it, and with a lot of strong markets.
Simply, people who understand the numbers can see that, people who only believe what the pcs trolls tell around them, well i wish them a nice day, and stay a foul.....

For the friend "goldstein" about "new dual 2.5ghz mac is barely as fast as a 1.4ghz Opteron"

Oh really, the same as a 1.4 ghz Opteron, i guess you are a big one....

So explain me why the G5 is crunching the opteron as crazy here:
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html

Well don't cry, try to troll another time......

Have a nice day.....

Thanks for the well thought out and cogent post. I'd forgotten that happened on OS News : )

Personally, I feel some organisations have taken it a little too far (trying to make _EVERY_ application browser-based, which will work, but won't work well). And it creates extra security risks. But until something better that is also "more open" comes along, Microsoft's business clients - the clients that truly matter to them in the Windows market - will demand that integration remain, and where impressed by the Longhorn demonstrations, demand it go even deeper.

They could look at XUL and Firefox, which is becoming more mature and offers a lot of the same possibilities for integration. I think given the security problems with IE and the fact that XUL is an open standard, more and more corporate IT dept's will be taking a good look at this. It removes the tie to one platform as well, which is good for keeping your options open. They've already been left with a bitter after-taste once from Active-X, will they swallow the same bitter pill with XAML?

Exactly, these so-called intelligent statistics! Everyone knows that one cannot trust statistics - just as one cannot trust a politician.

The one person I know who owned a mac decided to go with Linux (that was about a year ago). He loves Xandros and feels it is superior to the mac in every way possible.

Also, I've never seen a Mac running at a business. I'm not even aware of any POS, ERP/MRP, or hardcore accounting software for the platform. Granted, I haven't looked very hard but there's so many choices for PC that it's difficult to NOT see several without even trying.

Plus, games are almost exclusively windows only (few, few exceptions). And the publishing industry is moving towards windows very rapidly: adobe isn't even making some apps for the Mac any longer.

The last niche that the Mac has seems to be music/midi and with the release of Sonar 4 (which far eclipses even protools in features and functionality) the Mac is once again a 2nd rate platform.

I find it difficult to believe that Apple has even 1.8% marketshare. Who buys their stuff, only the super affluent in the large urban markets? Or is it like Harley's with their poor poor performance but sells purely on the mystique of the brand? It certainly isn't anyone who's on tight budget.

I'm firmly in this camp as well -- I've been using Macs for the past 17 years, and as long as Apple continues to make and improve the Macintosh, I will continue to buy them.

Better that I spend a little more cash up front to OWN the system, than have to spend twice as much if not more (in time as well as cash) dealing with all the problems that Windows users face on a daily basis. Price is totally a non-issue when compared with the serious threat windows users face daily. It has been posited that the average time for a Windows computer to become compromised after being connected to the 'net is 20 minutes; easily LONG before even being able to download all the security patches for it.

NO THANKS. :-)

I've got all the apps/games I will ever need and then some.
Darwinports now have reached a 2000-app milestone for open source applications ported to run on Macintosh. No software? Get with the times, man. heh. There is absolutely ZERO benefit to me to switch.

My present Mac is over 7 years old and still going -- though I am due for a hardware upgrade, my financial situation precludes this. However once I have secured a full time job again, a Macintosh is my next major purchase. _without a doubt_

Let me suggest that you are not looking in the right places. You need to broaden your knowledge base. Try visiting a few design studios, newspapers, recording studios, and even some businesses. Your campus may be filled with Windows only computers but that is not to be construed to "all campuses are x86 based".

I believe that all of us tend to "run" with folks who think like we do. Unfortunately, that narrows our life's experiences. The rich and the poor do not usually mix. Computer nerds tend to enjoy being with other nerds who AGREE with their opinions. Us humans prefer to be with those who are like us. Companies often hire on that basis also. Fraternities pick people who are like they are, etc.

So, lighten up. Learn to accept diversity in acquaintences, subject matter, politics, etc. You will be richly rewarded for your effort.

I still never understand all this noise. I basically abandoned windows (OK, I still have a win-box, but it gets used 5-10 times a year) several years ago for Linux. I loved (still love) linux, but the desktop experience was not so great 5-6 years ago. It was okay, but in all honesty, you were limiting what you could and couldn't do concerning apps, and even on the net by making the switch to linux.

I was delighted when Mac's became unix-y (though admittedly they really weren't ready for prime-time until around 10.2). I made the switch to Macintosh as my desktop of choice back then and have never looked back. Several other people I know have made the same choice, though truthfully, many of these people are unix/science geeks, so they may fall into the "niche" people keep discussing -- bottom line, though, is that people are switching from linux to macintosh.

Are Apple's too expensive? IMO, yes. The reality is that there is no similarity between a macintosh and a Ferrari, and most reasonable people understand this. The other reality is that it is the best (IMO) unix desktop around at this point, so it is what I (and several others I know) use at this point.

Do I look at Sager or Acer laptops with geeklust sometimes? You bet your ass. Many of these laptops (again, IMO) are far nicer than any apple offerings, but the reality is that I'd be stuck running linux as a desktop, and while I DO like the filesystem hierarchy MUCH better in most linux distros, I still feel that as far as a desktop goes, it isn't ready for prime-time. There are several distros currently making headway that may change this opinion over the next few months or years, but as for now, I'll pay too much for a desktop that I can use reliably to do what I need it to.

Is this the latest results.

Apple is currently a profitable company, and has been for most of the past seven years (since Steve came back). In 1996, they *lost* nearly a billion dollars. The doomsayers had more to work with back then; today they don't. I don't see how they're anywhere near being doomed. Apple has made a lot of smart moves to position itself as a more-or-less niche company. They're not all things to all people; that's Dell. I think their approach is about the best way possible, because it keeps their margins high and avoids direct confrontation with larger foes who could ground them into dust (Dell, Microsoft).

speaking as a home user, the mac is a great way to enjoy computers again, which many home users of windows dont really get. my dad never enjoyed computers until we went back to macs (our first 2 computers were macs followed by 2 PCs)

for freedom from viruses and slick, efficient computing, macs are all home users need. everything is neatly packaged. there's no downloading from the windows update site which takes a million tries just to get working. there's no installing java, a pop up blocker, a spam blocker: it's neatly bundled in. for a home user who just wants to plug in their computer, edit home movies and make dvds and organize music and photos and print stuff and work with office documents, the mac is a dream. there's no need to worry about viruses, and it does everything that the PC does with the same software in reguards to the home user. Most home users just need office, email, internet, finance programs for taxes, and "digital lifestyle" type things like what iLife offers. there's no disadvantage to the mac in these reguards. it's all advantages.

i dont know how to analyze apple's financial situation, but all i know is that no matter how low apple's market share is, it's still compatible and useful and a joy to use.

OK so market share is falling, does Apple have a plan to turn things around? If so, is it likely that that plan will work?

I wonder what the impact on sales for iMac was when it became clear that a G5 system was on the way? I guess the answer to this will be seen when the next quarterly report is published.

Yup market share is third on Apple priority. Meeting customers needs are number 1.

For once I was actually enjoying reading post until in the end we have the mac vs pc argument again.

@the raven
So we meet again quote the raven never more. Anyways microsoft being threatened by firefox? I think they should be glad a quality browser came to windows don't you think. I get 80% less adware ever since I got firefox in my system and thats one of those things that macs are so good against also. If their wasn't firefox on windows and microsoft didn't pay to much attention to adware except to rely on the likes of spybot and adware se then more people would make the "switch" such as myself since my computer gets like 200+ of those things and i am sick and tired of getting rid of them. So I disagree with you on firefox being a threat to windows but a browser great for all platforms especially windows. I do agree with you that gartners apple market share research is as credible as their last one with linux PC encouraging windows piracy which is not credible at all but revealing that gartner has obviously turned into a tool to create FUD. Damn this tab browsing thing is great

@hakime
barefeats.com? Who the hell are they. Refer to a proven website next time. If you just "googled it up" and not actually looked at like 5 or 6 sites that proven the similar results but just looked at this one then you just proved that you are gulible and biased researcher then. Sorry to say it but not many proved mac performance but many proved amd64 cpu performance and thats not only coming from 5 or 6 sites. Also apple at one point posted G5 "the worlds fastest desktop" uhhhum workstation against only the xeon and not even bothered including opteron benches and of course they won. Ever since then I was always skeptical of the G5 and so far I see no evidence of G5 being better than amd 64 in anyway. Also we amd fans don't care what clockspeed those G5s run at all that matters is the cost and take those cost and then do benchmarks on the same price point. Also why the hell does apple need watercooling at this point?

@johnone

People like you give make enthusiasts a bad image. How old are you anyway? I am guessing 16 because thats the way you are responding to ECS regarding CAD. You are not just hurting yourself but the Mac enthusiasts as well. I wonder why hackers are writing viruses for OSX now? Also don't give me that crap about OSX is immune against viruses because if you think about it since you guys were barely considered a target before who knows how many security flaws are in OSX.
Learn some manors and repect your fellow posters and you might actually get your point across to other people next time.


The mac is a great platform but in my opinion they really overprice the hardware to the point I see a 2800 system with a geforce fx 5200, 1gb or ram and only 1 250GB hardddrive. I think thats an absolute ripoff and to all you people calling a mac a ferrari I don't think ferrari comes with parts made by hyundai. It looks like a ferrari but drives like a elantra doesn't cut it. Also why the hell do I want a flashy computer anyway. Oh it looks great but gets burned by the computer I can build for 2800 bucks and looks better doesn't make me feel special. Makes me feel like I got ripped off and that makes me feel like an idiot. Only thing I see great about mac is OSX and that it catters well to its niche market. I am just hoping that watercooling doesn't become complementary for the high speed grades to the G5.

"How old are you anyway? I am guessing 16"

23 year old. Sorry for you. :-)

"because thats the way you are responding to ECS regarding CAD."

He is "JCS", not "ECS". If you want to reply me, please, read WELL the posts THAN reply me. For this reason, all the rest you wrote is "fuffa", as we say in Italy. :-D

PS to moderator: "fuffa" is NOT a dirty word. :-)

Well Caliber FX,

Of course now Barefeats is not a proven web sites. I am sure that if Barefeats would have claimed that Opteron machines are faster than Apple machines, you would be the first to say "go and look at that web site to see how Apple is behind". Barefeast is a well-known tester of the performance of Apple machines, and they are not very kind with Apple. Just remember the time when Barefeats has tested the Apple G4 machines and has claimed that Apple hardware is running behint intel and amd. Don't say me that you don't remember that? And i am sure that at that time, Barefeats was rather a proven place for benchmarking for you, isn'it. So don't come now when Apple is ahead to say me go and check 5 or 6 sites, as far as i know, there is one version of photoshop, Bryce, AfterEffects, or whatever, the tested configurations are well exposed, so where is the problem?

And why a cooling system? Well go and check the noise of a Powermac G5 2,5 ghz, its extremely quite for such a powerful machine, much quite than Dual 2.0 ghz opteron machines or dual xeons machines. I guess that Apple could go without cooling systeme, that's obvious, but it would have recquired more work for the cooling system relying on fans only, and so more noise than the previous generation dual 2.0 ghz mahines, which was not acceptable for Apple. I am sure that everyone would have come and complain about why this new machines are more noisy than the previous ones, so now you complain that Apple is making a hard work of engeneering to satisfy their clients. Ridiculous?

And have a look to the last Athlon Fx @2.6 ghz,it is a very hot chip, close to the Prescott, around 100 watts. Ok its 130 nm chip, but Amd is not able to produce chips with this frequency using the 90 nm process, and the results is here, its very hot, and noisy to cool without a cooling system.....

Have a nice day.....

Ever since then I was always skeptical of the G5 and so far I see no evidence of G5 being better than amd 64 in anyway

The G5's FPU is better than anything on the x86 side. If you work with a lot of numeric code the G5 will mop the floor with anything that's x86 based. For example, see http://www.fftw.org/speed/ and compare the Opteron 2 GHz to the G5 2 GHz. You'll see that the G5 has a slight lead in double precision math. The neat things come when you start looking at single precsion math where the G5 positively mops the floor with any x86 processor. Heck, even the G4 with the altivec unit will handily beat an Opteron clocked twice as fast at single precision floating point.

No, FFTs are NOT trivial benchmarks that have no applications in the real world. Of course these aren't applicable to every application but for apps that are heavily reliant on floating point math, the G5 is a very very good chip and the Powermacs are competitively priced. Denying that is to demonstrate fanboy-ism.

Another reason why Apple ships less units per quarter , that I havent seen explicitly stated yet is you don't need to replace an apple every 18 months to stay current as you would with PC hardware. I have a 3 year old PC laptop that is useless under XP. I also have a B&W G3 that I still could use under OSX (till it burnt out). While this isn't great from a sales point of view, as a customer you know that when you buy an Apple it lasts a long time.

@Hakime
Depands on benchmarks e.g. Refer to http://www.barefeats.com/ut2004.html
for game results (near the end of article)(ecosystem vs ecosystem).

The Opteron box presented in your barefeat.com was not Opteron 250 @2.4Ghz solution (air cooled).

Refer to
http://www.barefeats.com/g5c.html
http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/1235/images/0015664_PIC.gif

Cinebench 2003 CPU rendering.
Dual Opteron 250 @2.4Ghz scored 632
Dual PowerMac G5 @2.5 scored 633

Addendum for "depands on benchmarks" POV refer to barefeats.com’s Adobe Photoshop 7 test i.e.
http://www.barefeats.com/g5op.html
(Dual G5 @2Ghz vs Dual K8 @2Ghz**)
**Using the old 333DDR not the newer 400DDR(e.g. CG stepping).

I don't see any good future for Apple unless they release OS X for x86.

Otherwise, they are just going to become a funny music-selling company with their stupid iPods.

Did you know they have the phenomenal number of 93 shops in the WHOLE WORLD )) According to Jobs this is incredible and amazing )))))))))))) (btw just like everything he speaks about on their stupid conferences)

"I don't see any good future for Apple unless they release OS X for x86."

You need glasses. :-)

Pulease, the number of units sold by Apple has INCREASED but NOT at the same rate as the rest of the industry, hence, their marketshare has decreased;

If you took time to read the article you would have seen that unit sales have also decreased.


Also, comparing one company against the rest of the industry? hell, why don't we compare IBM PC shipments to the industry, "Oh, they SUX00R, the only hold 1.8% of the market!".

Because it's a platform against an other platform. If Dell only sells say 3% that's not a problem, because software house will still catter for the 98% of the PC market that includes the 3% Dell. So a Dell user will have no problem to find support and software. Not so with Apple. If Apple has only 1.8% then OSX has only 1.8%, period.

What is ferrari's market share in the entire global car market? 0.005%? less? I'm pretty sure they don't care either.. why should Apple

Because Ferrari makes cars. In order to use cars you need:
a) petrol (gas)
b) roads
both are standardized.

In order to use a computer you need software. In order to use OSX you need OSX software. If OSX accounts to 0.05% only small shareware firms (enthusiasts mainly) will catter for it. Thus, you would not be able to run it.

Ferrari is more like a ultra high quality PC-maker (alienware, sony vaio, etc), not Apple, in that sense.

What decline? I guess I should ignore the sharply increasing amount of mac laptops I see at my school. Three years ago I would have to search for a mac user (I knew 1). Nowadays I see them everywhere and can't count all of the mac users that I know now.

OSX is almost a dream OS for us Computer Science majors. Why must you trolls spend your time trashing our choice? Go outside and take your energy out on a baseball or something.

Ha ha ha! fisrt you mention that you see more and more macs in your school and then you say that you are a ...computer science major!

But of course, you idiot!!! Normal people are not cs majors, though, and NORMAL sales of macs have declined.

because im not ITALIAN

Weak, Eugenia, very weak! There are was to translate that article. Besides, to be fair, you should be looking EVERYWHERE to find news for your site, and not just selecting the news that fits YOUR stilted opinion.

Weak? What kind of silly logic is this? Who told you we should pay any attention to your crappy article or go to the length to translate it from italian?

Eugenia should have looked around for foreign language articles she doesn't understand and translate them with babelfish?!!!

Are you a complete idiot?

Also, news editors publish the news that THEY see fit (i.e that FIT their opinion). That what a news source is, a source of opionion and taste. Else all news sources would be the same list of bare facts (translated from Italian or not).

because im not ITALIAN

Weak, Eugenia, very weak! There are was to translate that article. Besides, to be fair, you should be looking EVERYWHERE to find news for your site, and not just selecting the news that fits YOUR stilted opinion.

Weak? What kind of silly logic is this? Who told you we should pay any attention to your crappy article or go to the length to translate it from italian?

Eugenia should have looked around for foreign language articles she doesn't understand and translate them with babelfish?!!!

Are you a complete idiot?

Also, news editors publish the news that THEY see fit (i.e that FIT their opinion). That what a news source is, a source of opionion and taste. Else all news sources would be the same list of bare facts (translated from Italian or not).

But of course, you idiot!!! Normal people are not cs majors, though, and NORMAL sales of macs have declined.


Where in the article did anyone say NORMAL users? What's a normal user anyway? The post you're replying to was intended at those who claimed to be knowledgable in PCs and were comparing cheap x86 Opteron/P4 boxes to 'expensive' PPC G5 boxes. Who cares if sales to NORMAL users goes down as long as sales are increasing?

The average user wouldn't have a clue about what Opteron, Athlon 64, etc is. They're just happy with email, word processing, and maybe playing some music and viewing photos. In time, they might see that Macs (and Linux) provide a very viable alternative to Windows.

The last niche that the Mac has seems to be music/midi and with the release of Sonar 4 (which far eclipses even protools in features and functionality) the Mac is once again a 2nd rate platform.


What???!!!!

Sonar 4 has nothing to do with Pro Tools. It is a decent sequencer, but not many pros use it (public enemy do btw -and with the demise of Ray Charles there is one less user).

Anyway, most pros use either Pro Tools or Logic. The first is multi-platform the second is Mac only.

Some use Nuendo (multi-platform).

Of the Pro-Tools users, most use it on a Mac.

So there.

I didn't read this topic. :-)

Something no one is mentioning is that over 40% of new PowerMac/iMac systems shipped and stated in the last quarterly report come from former Windows users.

As has been mentioned prior and most recently, the turnaround rate for replacement systems have continued since Apple's inception to be historically slower than in the x86 space. You get more bang for your buck out of Macs than you do PCs.

Personally, I attribute this to Windows. Why? I have a Pentium II Celeron running Debian Linux with both KDE3.3.1 and Gnome 2.6.

The system has 384MB Ram, dual drives and runs just fine at 550Mhz. Slow to compile but doesn't stop me from being productive.

Ultimately, doing productivity work is more constrained to how much output one can generate versus how fast your computer system runs.

Games of course is a whole other beast.

My next purchases(plural) will be a dual G5 for OS X and an Athlon 64 FX-55 for Debian Linux.