Recent PC sales numbers indicate a sluggish marketplace, though laptops are doing slightly better than desktops, and upgrades to flat panel monitors continue unhindered. Of the major computer manufacturers, though, Apple’s sales have been extermely high, accorsing the Merrill Lynch analysts.
we mean less than 25% of the overall market.
They are.
They are high for selling hardware. Dell would be the only person above 25%.
This article has no numbers.
“Hot”
“Extremely High” sales?
A Mac is a PC
By definition, no it’s not. A Mac is a Mac and a PC is IBM-compatible (which nowadays means Wintel-compatible).
nuff said.
What do you expect from them? Not that all their unsubstantiated news stories are worse than the rest of the medias (hello Jason Blair, Philip Glass and Wired reporter!)
I must account for at least one of those “hot” sales, because I bought a mac mini 1.42 last month. Now I’m thinking of getting an iMac G5 2.0 by the end of the year.
By definition it is. PC=Personal Computer. When IBM called it that, it was the IBM Personal Computer (5170 i think). Apple was making PC’s at the time (Apple II) as was Radio Shack with the TRS-80.
However IBM sold so many, that people began to think of that as the only PC. But Words to not lose their meaning because people missuse them.
Mac’s are personal computers, just not IBM PC compatibles.
Sorry – just a pet peeve. I have always hated when words are coopted.
Of course, the PC was intened to keep the personal computer revolution from killing IBM’s mini business – it failed, but we still pay the price of IBM’s half hearted entry into the field.
Just bought a new power book, and see more of my friends buying mac’s everyday. I have not seen anything like this in years. There is a real increase in people buying macs. The fact that the growth comes when the industry as a whole is stagnant is a pretty signifigant sign. Perhaps everyone is beigining to notice that emporer gates has no clothes.
What are you trying to say, bobby? That we should just start calling our mac’s PC’s? And thus confuse everyone when we say our PC can’t run PC software?
A Mac is a Mac, a PC a PC.
Dashboard Leaves Macs Vulnerable
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67484,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
I’d buy one if I didn’t have one already. shame the new powerbooks are so bloody expensive. Great but really expensive.
I know, they might not be that expensive comparatively but £1200 is a lot of money for a computer.
Every time I go to the mall nearby where there is an Apple store, it is packed! And people are buying, not just browsing. Funny, I never see more than 1 person at a time at the Dell kiosk.
I bought a PowerBook for home about 6 months ago, and don’t forsee myself buying another Wintel box for home. I’ve already convinced at least 3 friends of the same thing.
On the business side however, I don’t see how Apple will ever crack into that market. Maybe in 10+ years.
Sorry – not that big a deal. I am just old enough to remember when PC stoped meaning personal computer and became one particular (bad) type of computer.
Mac’s are clearly superior to windows machines, i do not want confusion. But my old TRS-80 Model III was a PC too.
It is kind of like Fed Ex in reverse. People say Fed Ex when the send something overnight – their name was taken over. People say PC when they mean x86 machine running DOS or Windows.
It is not a big deal, i was just feeling ornery (SP?). Gius old guys a little leway – lol.
Actually words can lose their meaning if people keep misusing them. Language has never been static.
LOL
You cannot buy in a Dell kiosk, you have to order over phone or net. Not suprising that they doesn’t have ‘costumers’.
I don’t have any statistics, but I can say that I just recently bought my first Mac. It came in the mail yesterday; I booted it up and used it a bit, and now I’m excited about putting in the included Tiger disc and upgrading to the latest and greatest.
So yeah, Macs are hot in this household at least. I’m sick and tired of fiddling with Linux and with x86 hardware, and I’m long past fed up with troubleshooting Windows. I’ve used the Mac for one evening and I already want to convert all my friends.
1. Cool…
2. Catching up in specifications…
3. Did i said cool?
“LOL
You cannot buy in a Dell kiosk, you have to order over phone or net. Not suprising that they doesn’t have ‘costumers’.”
Umm…actually Dell does have kiosks.
Take a look at the press release on their web site.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/pressoffice…
I purchased an iBook about 5 months ago and absolutely love it. It is the most used computer in the house. My wife has an HP laptop and she often wants to use mine. Before getting it, I hadn’t used a Mac since high-school about 20 years ago, but curiosity struck me, so I bought an iBook and I haven’t looked back since. Now, most of my friends want to get Macs also.
I’ve noticed the same thing in the Apple store where I live. It’s always full and I always see someone in there buying either a laptop or workstation (not to mention the iPods.)
The funny thing is this: In contrast to all of the iPod advertising I see on TV, I haven’t seen an Apple computer commercial in a long time (remember all of the switcher commercials?) So all of their sales must be through word of mouth or print.
Most of all, I’ve noticed that Apple users become very enthusiatic with their purchase after they purchase it. Along with Linux fans, they/we seem to be almost cultlike in their admiration of their Macs.
I currently own 6 Mac’s, only the mac portable (the origingal suitcase sized thing) has had any problems but I think that is software. My Mac II (form 1986) even still works. I have replaced one flyback transformer in the Mac II monitor.
The only reason i own so many is I keep getting laptops with larger screens.
I work with windows and have owned several of them as well. The differance is that i have to fix them all the time (I had the worst problems with my high dollar sony). Apple Hardware is more solid hands down.
As for software stability, XP finally exceded the stability of my Mac II (running system 7.5 I think). It has not come close to any incarnation of Mac OS X.
We do not even need to touch the virus/malware issue.
Anyone (other than a heavy gamer) whoy would go back to x86 and windows is absolutly insane. I assume you were mounting that mac that had problems on your basketball backboard.
Still wish Macs came with iWork. Are they still shipping with antiquated AppleWorks?
Yep – still AppleWorks, unless thay changed in since tiger came out. Fortunately it is cheap – $79.
A mac is not just a PC. Its really a Power PC.
and really it does have power ( literally and figuratively speaking )
Mac = Personal Computer based on IBM PowerPC chip
seen as a mac uses a PowerPC chip made by IBM, maybe the x86s need a new name.
My flatmate bought Tiger and it came with a trial cd of iWorks 05 in the box.
I’m a linux user and would get a mac mini (not a ‘big mac’ [very sorry, I had to crack that joke]) but as a full-time student with more money coming out than going in it’s just not viable.
Working for a reseller in the DC metro area I’ve observed several things regarding recent Mac purchases.
Some of the new users are of course PC users and have purchased a Mac for the home and still continue to use a PC in the workplace.
PC converts have used 98 to XP and few have upgraded their PCs from the OS that it shipped with. Not sure about SP and security updates. I would imagine their PCs are poorly maintained. Most are frustrated with their PC and it didn’t make a difference how current it was.
Most students that have PCs and get a Mac want to move off of the PC entirely with exceptions of course.
For the user that does web, wordprocessing, spreadsheets, home finance and email, most lose very little moving to Mac and are willing to find alternatives just to stay on Mac and make it work.
I have not met anyone that preferred the PC over the Mac after using the Mac for some time.
Cost was not a factor in most instances and some people viewed the Mac as another PC.
Informal observations and nonscientific. I still see PCs flying of the shelf at Costco, Best Buy and WalMart.
Ok, it’s easy. Say Apple had a 5 percent share last month, then this month they have a 10 to 15 percent share. That would mean hot to extrememly hot, depending on the reporter.
Say, HP had a 10 percent share and dropped to 8. That would be slow.
That is cleared up.
But, in reality, Apples are seling a lot better these days, and defiently since the release of the mac mini, and some older models (that are still better than most x86 models), have gone done in price. Face it, Apple has better hardware on the market, and people are starting to realize that, as well as the OS that looks pretty and is stable.
My powerbook 12″
I can not install Linux, I can not play game, my warcraft keep s crashing on in particualr mission.
I’d rather play warcraft III on Linux with wine.
Oh, there is no wine for powerpc.
Gentoo Linux on AMD 64 Rocks!
In this case Mac OS is not exactly or clearly superior than Linux.
I wish this trend of increased Mac sales would continue, it is good for the whole PC industry – competition is always good.
But I’m afraid that unless there are some technical breakthroughs pretty soon, this whole trend will come to a crashing stop early next year.
The majority of Mac sales are portables. That’s good, in that it’s the hottest market segment anyway. The problem is that Apple is being seriously left behind by technical developments in portables. The “power”book is a joke compared to what you can get on the PC side for the same amount of cash. Mac portables still have some advantages: lighter (very important), battery life, style and of course OS X.
But screens, CPU and GPU are a disaster. Higher end PCs have better screens BY FAR. IBM failing to come up with a G5 you can stick in a portable is a serious handicap – and the G4s are pretty much at the end of their rope (that emabarrasing bus!). In fact, the whole selling point of Tiger is cut by half on Mac portables – it is optimized for G5, and NONE of the Mac portables have a video card that *fully* supports Tiger. So right there, Tiger on an Apple laptop is a muted advantage.
What is it with Apple and video cards? Beats me. They s*ck donkey b*lls across the whole hardware line.
As of now, Apple can still sell laptops and they are not horribly uncompetitive to PC laptops. Good. But I’m afraid, that if PCs continue to pull ahead next year, and Apple remains stuck with crippled G4 and crippled video and so-so screens, they will see a dramatic fall in the “rising sales” trend. I’m afraid Apple has less than a year left to pull off a G5 and decent GPU in a laptop.
That said, if I were to buy a laptop **today**, I’d go for a 12″ iBook. In fact, I will, with the next upgrade (hoping it will be early June).
we really need some number beyond the “hot” title before we can evaluate.
Everything i’ve read indicates that the mac mini is selling well but again some recent numbers might be nice.
Your PowerBook certainly CAN run Linux! Perhaps it is you, as a n00b, who is unable to locate, burn and configure the Linux variant which will work on your Apple hardware. My 2001 TiBook runs YellowDog just fine 9thank you, TerraSoft!)
I, too, also have an AMD_64 for games, however. It is a rocking, smoking system for games, with a 6800GT overclocked and driving a Dell 2005FPW LCD.
But, the only machine I will trust to read mail on is the OS X TiBook.
UNIX is for work. Windows is for games. Got it?
If you are a serious gamer go back, there is more selection. I belive you can run linux on your 12″ powerbook, i have never heard that you can’t.
I find OS X to have everything that linux has, plus more. I can run allmost all the linux applications (as long as i can get the source). I have always prefered BSD to linux, if for no other reason than the better licensing (GPL is less free than the BSD license – let the flamefest begin). However OS X goes a step further, it is a Unix that an average user can use. Sure they can’t run all the Linux stuff, as that requires as much expertise to set up and run as it does on Linux, but they can run the Mac apps easier than they do with windows.
As for Warcraft, I have not played in in a couple of years, but it ran fin on my old 500MHz iBook, so not sure why you are having problems. World of Warcraft runs fine as well.
Like i said earlier, unless it is for game selection – anyone who would go back to windows is crazy. (AMD64 is etter, but unless you drop windows, it is just a better grade of crap.
But I have to make a few comments, OSX is not ideal…
I am running Tiger here on a mini, and if I run Linux (Gnome or KDE) the system still is much snappier and bearable to use for certain tasks.
That is not to blame on the processor which is rather fast but more on the way it does graphics. And as I see it there is no real way out because for the stuff the mac does, the graphics card is at the lower limit of things.
(mainly if you do compositing you have a problem on your hands with 32 MB graphics ram and a rather slow AGP, or if you do life resizing in combination with double buffering and composting you have a problem with every combination of existing graphic cards no matter what machine you use)
I still love the mac for being rock solid, but I dont see OSX as the ideal unix, there is no decent application remoting like X does it (and NX makes it really great), there is no good package management on the unix side of things, the libs and compilers break lots of existing OSS code, so just snap the stuff into the mac is often problematic.
On the OSX side of things, Aqua still is slow as rubber, although the rubber got a little bit of a speedup. I dont see the situaton really significantly increasing on the lower end machines any time unless apple manages to pull off Quartz2dxtreme there as well, which currently only halfway works on the high end machines.
Apple must be supplying them with all of their computer hardware for free for the next 5 years or something.
I don’t see how PC sales can ever be “sluggish” since they account for the vast majority of computer hardware being used by the public and private sectors. That being said, I am a bit of a mac “fanboy” so I can’t complain about the flavor of the article too much. 
Maybe you were referring to darwin, but if not I do not understand this statement: “there is no good package management on the unix side of things, the libs and compilers break lots of existing OSS code, so just snap the stuff into the mac is often problematic.”
Managing applications on a mac could not be simpler. Everything comes bundled in one “app”. You install something by dropping it where you want it, and uninstalling it by deleting it.
I can not install Linux,
Really? Which distros have you tried. In my experience Ubuntu goes on without a hitch.
Oh, there is no wine for powerpc.
How would you know if you can’t get Linux on? And why would there be a need for Wine under Linux? The program you want is called MOL.
In this case Mac OS is not exactly or clearly superior than Linux.
If your problem is that you can’t play games, that’s not the problem of the OS. That’s called a crap compile on the part of the game company.
“and NONE of the Mac portables have a video card that *fully* supports Tiger”
Dude what are you talking about? Every Powerbook currently being sold fully supports all of CoreImage! Powerbooks are portables are they not?
As an aside, the only thing you really miss with the iBook’s videocard right now is the “ripple” effect in Dashboard. Trust me, you aint missin much.
I do agree with some of the things you said however but your statement that NONE of the portables have a video card that supports Tiger is just plane stupid.
Also we must define what “supports” means.. because every mac that is currently being sold can have Tiger installed on it and work so I guess that the card in some way or another supports Tiger. Hell even my old iMac G3’s video card supports tiger in that I can install and use Tiger on it!
I’ve been a PC person since I built my first 286/10 in 1987. I had an Apple 8500 w/dual 604/200s for a while to run BeOS, but since then it’s been the PC for everything – from OS/2 to BeOS to SuSE Linux & Fedora Core 3. A few months ago I got a tossed PowerBook G4-800 to “play” with, and all I can say is OSX is pretty sweet. I’ve found myself ignoring my Dell Latitude (Fedora) and my SuSE & BeOS desktops, and I don’t miss them at all. Yeah, the 15″ screen on this thing could be a heck of a lot brighter (like my Dell), but there’s just a lot of little things that add up to a nicer experience on this machine than on the IBM, Dell, or Gateway laptops I’ve used. (OK, I miss BeOS enough to buy Zeta.)
9 of the top 25 computers at Amazon are Macs.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/pc/a…
Tiger and iLife still in top 10
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/new-for-you/top-sellers/-/soft…
As for software stability, XP finally exceded the stability of my Mac II (running system 7.5 I think). It has not come close to any incarnation of Mac OS X.
Spoken like a true Mac biggot. I don’t care for Windows much but I have to use it at work and run a lot of apps concurrently don’t ever have any problems with it. I don’t have a Mac so I can’t comment on it.
You hate Apple because linux won’t run correctly because the linux developers cannot get it right? What delightful logic.
I’ll buy that useless bauble called a powerbook off of you for $5 if it’s so useless.
There was a time when zealots would say …
It’s not a PC unless it’s a Mac
did i really just see someone compare the powerbook cpu’s with an x86 laptop’s cpu? Are you trying to compare the proce of a 1.8 ghz ppc with a 1.8 ghz x86, cause if you are, you are foolish. A 1.8 ghz ppc is nearly twice as fast as a 1.8 ghz ppc.
When will people learn that you can’t compare apples to oranges.
“A 1.8 ghz ppc is nearly twice as fast as a 1.8 ghz ppc.”
I’d say they’re about the same. Or exactly the same.
Of course they’re hot, you can install Linux on them.
Macs can still be referred to as PCs. It depends on the context. Even Steve Jobs has referred to Macs as PCs on occasion.
please see the arstechnica tiger review for any clarifications. my 12″ powerbook, while not the speediest machine, does quite well with tiger. the geforce 6200 with 64? ram is more than sufficient to take advantage of tiger’s new graphics improvements. regardless, non-accelerated drawing is still better in tiger (see ars review).
for those who dont know, a VNC server is now available in tiger. check out sharing and remote admin prefs.
from my experience installing tiger on a dual-1.8 g5 and a 1ghz 12″, tiger should improve most systems its installed on. i recommend 512 RAM and both my installs were clean installs (the only way).
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars
Managing applications on a mac could not be simpler. Everything comes bundled in one “app”. You install something by dropping it where you want it, and uninstalling it by deleting it.
Ok maybe you havn’t been in contact with a good package maintaining system. What you basicly wants is this:
1: A central repository of binarys (so that I can trust them)
2: Updates for security fixes
3: Dependency management
mac osx have fink that does this but it’s kind of sucky (IMO) due to the fact that the packages doesn’t hold that high quality.
This is a bit offtopic. I run both Office 2004 and iWork on my iMac G5 and PowerBook G4. Although I love apple products, I would say that iWork needs a lot of work. The features are nowhere near MS Office. I personally suggest for people to wait for upcoming version of iWorks software. With every box of Tiger you can get a trial of iWork. Really try it before you buy it.
which guarantees the survival of the company!
this is really great news for mac supporters
i bought a powerbook 15″ 1.5ghz last year. the machine is as fast as >p4 3.0.
i c all kinds of people using mac these days, not just audio,video,design,science,medical folks.
yougsters who own ipod are inclined to become another swticher.
technical users notably unix geeks, sun, novell and other folks working in IT industries are increasing mac switchers.
Obviously great sales is good news for the company. More revenue dollars means more development dollars and better offerings.
Everybody wins.
Looking forward to upgrading the machine. Some more legroom for the system to play in.
I will agree with comments regarding the graphics cards. I also don’t understand why Apple doesn’t beef up the graphics cards in their systems. Getting the young’uns in with a good performing games platform is low-hanging fruit. I have no idea why this should even be an issue.
By Alexander Kjäll
“Ok maybe you havn’t been in contact with a good package maintaining system”
ah dude.. maybe you should try installing a few apps on a Mac.
Just arrange your dir anyway you like, and drag & drop
Thats it.
ah dude.. maybe you should try installing a few apps on a Mac.
Just arrange your dir anyway you like, and drag & drop
I own a mac and I like it, but I still feel that there is a large gap in osXs package maintaining system (or lack thereof).
Maybe you haven’t tried to administrate a large number of installations or maybe you like to go around and do everything by hand. The X still have some way to go in that regard when compaired to (most)linux or *bsd.
andrew: [i]Ok, it’s easy. Say Apple had a 5 percent share last month, then this month they have a 10 to 15 percent share. That would mean hot to extrememly hot, depending on the reporter.
Say, HP had a 10 percent share and dropped to 8. That would be slow.
That is cleared up.
But, in reality, Apples are seling a lot better these days, and defiently since the release of the mac mini, and some older models (that are still better than most x86 models), have gone done in price. Face it, Apple has better hardware on the market, and people are starting to realize that, as well as the OS that looks pretty and is stable.[i]
I could not have said it better. Why are all the intelligent posts from PC people?
But, in reality, Apples are seling a lot better these days, and defiently since the release of the mac mini, and some older models (that are still better than most x86 models), have gone done in price. Face it, Apple has better hardware on the market, and people are starting to realize that, as well as the OS that looks pretty and is stable.
maybe the us markt is completly different from europe. I can’t see any better hardware from apple here.
The only HW difference is the CPU, all aother components are exactly the same.
The PPC CPU may have more power per MHz than a desktop Intel P4. But is it really better than a AMD or Pentium M at the same MHz count?
I can’t see any G5 Notebooks, why?
Onather thing i am confused about is where the sales are slow or hot? U.S. only? Apple compared to dell? or what?
Dell maybe the largest “PC” vendor of the world, but here in europe it isn’t.
=======================
Ok maybe you havn’t been in contact with a good package maintaining system. What you basicly wants is this:
1: A central repository of binarys (so that I can trust them)
2: Updates for security fixes
3: Dependency management
mac osx have fink that does this but it’s kind of sucky (IMO) due to the fact that the packages doesn’t hold that high quality.
=======================
Hmmm. A bit of a slap, nice. Why do I want a central repository? Just to FIND the software? I can use macupdate.com or versiontracker.com for that. Or is this just another open source vs. closed source issue for you?
Updates for security fixes? What are you talking about here? The OS or for individual apps? Be more specific I guess so I can (weakly) reply to you.
And for the last… .app files have no dependencies, or if they do it will be for the base OS libraries and for the most part at time of download, the author will state which version runs on what version of OS X.
So I am guessing you must be referring more to the underlying unix operating system and x windows since you mention fink.
I am the administrator for many computers at a local REALTOR® Association. We have Windows XP clients and Windows 2003 Servers. Our computers have been rock solid with the exception of a couple of computers that had capacitor problems and a buggy driver for an Echo Mia sound card. My Mac and my Linux machines are great but they are not without their problems. IMHO they are just as stable as my XP machines.
“Yep – still AppleWorks, unless thay changed in since tiger came out.”
Much to my surprize, I just took delivery (two days ago) of a new Dual 2.0Ghz G5 (with Tiger) and iWork was preintalled. I expected to get iLife, but the preinstalling iWork was a nice touch.
Not sure if they give it away on iMac/iBooks/Powerbooks, but on the PowerMacs they apparently do.
did i really just see someone compare the powerbook cpu’s with an x86 laptop’s cpu? Are you trying to compare the proce of a 1.8 ghz ppc with a 1.8 ghz x86, cause if you are, you are foolish. A 1.8 ghz ppc is nearly twice as fast as a 1.8 ghz ppc.
uh, you mean they have such a huge production tolerance (faults) that you can’t compare two equally labaled PPC’s?
SCNR 😉
But to be serious. The Intel Notebook processors are much much faster than their desktop counterparts. A Pentium M 1800 is at least as fast as a 3000MHz Desktop Procesor from Intel.
I don’t think that the G5’s are really faster and they need more power, or what is the reason that there is still no G5 Notebook?
I think Apple should do the same like AMD and give them a rating compared to an Intel Desktop CPU.
Everyone can see then how fast (or slow) they really are.
And don’t tell me that you can’t compare it because they are using different architectures with a different instruction sets.
Both do the same, executing software like Office, Web-Browsers, Photoediting and so on. This is pretty good compareable.
Hardware wise, Macs arent too bad. Problem is they are expensive if you want something good, and for the same price I could build my own PC with just as good, if not better components.
Then there is the OS. Sure, it has a pretty face, but thats it for me. I’ve used OSX quite a bit and I still dont like the layout. I’ve been using Macs longer than PCs (thanks to my schools having Macs) and when I first used Windows way back on Windows 98, it just felt more comfortable from the get go. OSX is stable, but I am getting the same stability out of Windows XP anyways, nor do I have spyware/virus problems.
About the article, its seems vague to me. Apple computers are hot. Thats great, but how so? Is Apple selling more computers that any other computer maker? If thats the case, part of it could be that Apple only sells a computer that will run OSX. Add a second company selling them and I bet you will see Apple selling less computers due to another source of product being available. Or is it that there are more Apple computers being sold than all other computer companies combined? Anyways, I really couldnt get much out of this artice.
Sorry for being unspecific.
Yes I were refering to the X and unix parts, I don’t really use other programs when I’m using my computer.
I didn’t mean to start an open/closed flamewar, I were strictly talking about the open part.
I realise that most apple users don’t use the stuff from the unix world, so apple havn’t put any effort in doing it.
I want a central repository so that I don’t have to evaluate the risk for getting trojans and crap from downloading binary files. If there’s only one repository there is less job involved in evaluating the level of trust I should place in them.
And of course apps have dependecies (if you don’t use -static of course). What you get then you have apps without dependencies is a _lot_ of bloat.
and of course apps have dependecies (if you don’t use -static of course). What you get then you have apps without dependencies is a _lot_ of bloat.
It’s a tradeoff, and one I think the OS community has made poorly. Most mac apps are statically linked to all but the Apple-supplied libraries. While you call this “bloat”, I would gladly trade ten copies of a 2meg library (especially on disks with hundreds of gigabytes of space), for the ability NOT to have to worry about dependancies and central repositories. This choice also allows drag-and-drop installs and drag-to-trash uninstalls. What could be simpler?