OSNews

Apple's market share of NEW computers IS up. I don't remember the world figures, but the quarter before USA figure was 2.8%. The last quarter, with less product available the figure was 3.7%. That's a decent jump.

The installed base is larger though. Macs last longer in a usable state than Pc's do. This skews the actual figures if all that is being considered is new computers sold.

An example at my house is that we have one working B&W G3, and three working G4's. I'm not being counted because I haven't bought a new machine since 2002. I'll finally be counted when Apple comes out with a PCI Express machine sometime in 2005. And then only for one machine, even though we won't be retiring any of the ones we have now. A lot of mac users are like that.

During this time period (the G3 was bought in 1998, or so.) most every Pc user I know has replaced their machine. Sometimes twice. A couple of people three times.

That means that there are more Pc's out there than the numbers suggest, or that there are more Macs out there than the numbers suggest. What do you think?

Even machines ten years old can use OS X ( with a free utility), sometimes slowly, but usably. Can XP run on a ten tear old Pc? Almost never.

Linux machines are great, but in a different category, though you can run Linux on a Mac as well. At the Linux Expo here in NYC this year as well as last, I saw an increasing number of users using Powerbooks, and iBooks. Sometimes using Terminal, sometimes not. Sometimes running Linux, sometimes not. Interesting.

Sometimes I use X11 to run Open Office or other programs. They work pretty well, but it feels like going back in time.

Everybody is in everybody's space now. Who knows what will happen.