Forbes Predicts 5% Desktop Share for Apple in 2005 1045
sebFlyte writes "Spurred on by the iPod, Apple's share of the desktop computer market will grow to five percent (from three percent) this year, according to research from Morgan Stanley. Apparrently nearly 20% of iPod users surveyed are planning to switch to Macs, and the sales figures for the last few quarters are backing up the theory of the iPod Halo Effect. All this suggests the question ... how many iPod-touting Slashdotters are thinking of switching?"
I'll be one of the converts (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, there's some getting used to Mac ways of doing things, and some "unlearning" of bad windows habits. But, all in all, it's roughly equivalent to switching to a new Windows version as far as learning curve goes, with the additional benefit that everything just seems to work as a cohesive whole.
Now someone will come along and say - but this item works in some screwy way. I haven't found that item yet.
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:3, Insightful)
This suggests to me that your reasoning is flawed.
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:3, Interesting)
But two apps stick out, and force me to stay with x86.. halflife, and giants: citizen kabuto. Theyre both games.
Apart from that, another sticking point is simply that on spec.org, you'll find the strongest chip is the Athlon64. I figured I can upgrade my current machine to athlon64 and its motherboard, for $200 USD. Thats less than
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:4, Informative)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto has been out for the Mac, and running on OS X for at least 4 years. There's been a copy sitting at the "Compucentre" in my local mall since about mid 2001.
If you don't happen to live near me, use Amazon [amazon.com].
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:4, Insightful)
I like the whole idea of a cocoa GUI over FreeBSD + microkernel, tried OSX and loved it. Being Apple, it has much better application support than FreeBSD alone commanded.
But for a general purpose machine, both the much faster CPU, and bigger application market are good leverages, makes decisions tough. Thus the 3% of Apple. Otherwise goto any Apple show thousands of people walk around looking and lusting for the machines, and not buying them. Everyone knows Apple macintosh, many swear by it. Others would love to join, if it weren't for the very annoying application lackage. This is a serious problem when youre a gamer.
Mac lovers have told me to just buy a mac and just not deal with software that arent available for the mac. Now thats not so easy, given some of the biggest titles out there are PC-exclusive, heck not even a Linux version (and Linux's market is weaker for the same reason). Should any desktop OS gain the threshold market percentage, about 20% I'd say, software developers will take notice, and the application problem will be less acute. We're just not there yet, better hardware or not, better OS or not.
Hmm... someone might come up with a computer based on an unknown CPU, that runs awesome at 5GHz, beats the pants off Opterons, and the whole thing costs $100. Given not even netbsd runs on it, will you buy it?
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at how Apple is marketing the mini. What they're pushing more than anything else is the software bundle, and what regular users can do with it. It's almost as if the hardware is irrelevant. That explains why the small size is significant, but at the same time, not really the point of the thing; a small, unobtrusive device is a sort of physical representation of the fact that hardware is fading into the background.
Even the tiny box the Mac mini ships in is sort of reminiscent of software packaging. It's almost as if Apple is selling a really slick bundle of software that just, you know, happens to run itself without any need for the user to supply a computer separately. And at this price point, a lot of consumers who want to get into digital media might consider buying the thing basically as a media creation appliance, with the intention of keeping their existing computers for "computer stuff."
Basically, everything has gotten fast enough now that for most users in the consumer market, hardware performance just doesn't matter anymore. Design, quiet operating, operating system and software bundle are much more important, and Apple gets that, even if some performance-enthusiast tech-heads don't.
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:5, Informative)
I had to do a major upgrade to a 25 gig database last week. The server was aging, and had no free space to pull it off, so I had to migrate it all to my laptop, with a 160 gig external drive, and do it there. Even though it has a gig of ram, it still choked (created 7 gigs of swap) and took 2 days to pull it off. I left it sitting on the hotel air conditioner overnight, for fear of the poor little guy melting.
So what you're saying is "I need a very high end machine, so anything else is obsolete". Never mind that the Mac Mini undoubtably cost far less than your uberlaptop with external drive.
Yeah, I'd love to be able to pull off the "switch", mainly because I hate working 16 hour days on the road and would love to be able to shrug clients off and say "my computer doesn't do computer stuff, you can only buy music with it"
This is frankly just stupid. OS X is a full featured Unix. Outside of the very high end environment its capable of doing pretty much anything that another unix based os such as linux is. I do systems administration work on a Powerbook G4, and it's frankly far more up to the task than a PC. If you'd had a Powerbook you could have just put it in target disk mode and copied your DB over, no need for the external drive at all. :) Or booted off of it. I've yet to see a PC do anything nearly that useful.
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:3, Interesting)
For comparision, WoW cooks my 2.0g Wintel laptop and it's harddrive thrashes if I don't defrag after
Re:I'll be one of the converts (Score:3, Informative)
The mini isn't perfect. But it does fit a very nice niche. Our household is filled with computers... the mini will be the 5th (1 windows box that I'm giving away, a debian server, a ubuntu workstation, and an iMac already live in our house). We need a
Re:I won't convert (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if a third party monitor will work with an Apple-approved video card; this is probably something to ask your local Apple dealer. The Apple web site does describe the ATI and nvidia video card options for each model of G5, and the prices for them. As for software, if you look in the
Re:I won't convert (Score:5, Informative)
It will. Any VGA or DVI monitor will work fine.
The Apple web site does describe the ATI and nvidia video card options for each model of G5, and the prices for them.
Also ATI sells Mac 9800 and X800XT cards as upgrades.
I like the iPod Shuffle so much... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll switch (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'll switch (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no use for Linux anymore except as a server. I can just say if you are able to judge means of a person based on whether or not they are going to use a Linux machine, you are kidding yourself. And you must not have programmed more than "hello world" for the Mac, because it's not a pain to program at all.
But then again...
Re:I'll switch (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to be kidding me. The OS X API (Cocoa) is easily the best MVC, OOP framework I have ever used and learning how to program GUI app's in it is a breeze. They supply you with Interface Builder which allows you to visually create your GUI and then generate the classes for it so you can control it. It's pretty much out of the box.
Personally, I never found it easier than OS X for GUI programming and the whole point of the API (well, one of them) is to not distract you with the views so you can spend more time on the controllers and models.
Any command line tools you're missing can generally be downloaded and compiled (if you like this way/no binary around) so if the things you want are not out of the box, use fink to get all you want.
But anyways, the Cocoa is probably the most well designed framework for native application development around. If you cannot figure out how the GUI works and how to use Interface Builder/ Project Builder I suggest getting some more programming experience in a MVC/OOP environment. Grab a book or read some Websites. It's really great.
I switched (Score:5, Interesting)
As for the price difference, the laptops are very competitively priced FOR THE QUALITY OF WHAT YOU GET. Sure, there is no cheap piece-of-crap-but-it-works Apple laptop equivalent to the Office Depot Compaq special you read about in slickdeals, but we're talking internal slot-loading dvd/cdrw or dvd burners in a 12" laptop. Find me a reasonably priced Dell or Sony with those specs. And there's no comment on the Mac mini, its price competition is obvious enough.
All that said, it's all about OS X for me. I think OS X is the best desktop OS ever. I'm on my first Mac (an original 12" powerbook), I've had it for over two years, reloaded it once, and this is by far the most reliable and most consistent operating environment I've ever used.
USB: Universal SERIAL Bus (Score:5, Informative)
If you need to interface with legacy serial ports using something like RS-232 with DB9 connectors, you can pick up a cheap Keyspan adapter [keyspan.com]. I use one of these things *all the time* with my Powerbook to console into routers, switches, and servers. Works like a charm!
Re:Impossible (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Impossible (Score:3, Informative)
All of which are available in USB. I can understand not wanting to replace functioning equipment, but saying a PC isn't suitable because it doesn't support your legacy equipment is ridiculous. Having said that, the Mini isn't a great solution for POS anyway.
BTW, you might want to check and make sure your 'UPC scanners' can support
Re:Serial ports in business (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been in smaller companies and really cant think of why you'd need serial or parallel ports.
- Printing is all either ethernet or usb.
- Scanning is usually usb.
- PIM synchronization is usually usb or bluetooth.
Nowadays i only see serial and parallel ports used for things like
- interfacing with lab/cam equipment
- programming door security systems and standalone card-readers
- interfacing with hardware products that are in the process of being develop
Re:Serial ports in business (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm trying... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup (Score:5, Funny)
Did you mean, "Add to your collection?"
Re:Yup (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, I found pretty easy instructions (two commands, edit the xinetd tftp file, then restart xinetd) on how to enable the TFTP server so I can update the firmware on my managed switch, the same two to turn it off. That switch has a built-in TFTP client, so having a server available was slick. The same instructions would have worked in Linux, but for som
I did the opposite (Score:3, Interesting)
Kudos to Apple, though, for getting more market share.
What's Interesting ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for the trend, though, whatever the reason.
No iPod (Score:5, Interesting)
The rise (again) of console gaming... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would go further and say that there may be a great deal of overlap between the people that switch to Macs and the people that primarily use consoles for gaming - total end users that like the simplicity of hooking a console to a TV, shoving in a game, and having it just work, and similarly like the simplicity of plopping down in front of their Mac and having it "just work."
The big question is whether the Mac's software library is up to the task. It has respectable Internet software available and there is Mac Office (IMHO the single most important application to the Mac platform).
Re:The rise (again) of console gaming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you take games out of the equation, the only thing that's really missing on the Mac side is narrow vertical business and hobby apps (which, admittedly, can suck if you really rely on one).
Why this is big (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why this is big (Score:3, Insightful)
How about QuickTime and FireWire, heavily adopted Apple technologies?
How about leading the march on all of the important new technologies? Who was the first PC vendor to popularize USB? To ship machines with integrated wireless networking? To ditch legacy ports and the floppy? To sell a computer with a GUI and mouse? To ship computers with integrated sound? To sell a laser printer for desktop use? Need I go on?
Apple spends a disproportionally huge amount of money on R
Pointing to research (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes: It's called OSX 10.3,
The simple fact is that Apple R&D seems to be going into helping users. For instance, coming out in Tiger we actually have what WinFS was trying to accomplish in Spotlight. Not just the searching abilities, but also the searching API that developers could hook document creation into which was so important to WinFS.
So look at the Tiger design docs a
Re:Why this is big (Score:5, Informative)
http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/defau
(I believe that list may only include the papers which Microsoft has copyright to freely distribute, as opposed to papers in refereed journals, of which Microsoft employees have many.)
They may be the "evil empire", but they do have a lot of smart people working for them.
Switching (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever been face-to-face with their 30" Cinema? It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
Rumors of.... (Score:5, Funny)
I give Apple six months before Jobs shuts the place down just to spite us all.
So 5% takes them back to... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple makes a great product, but I seriously doubt it will see double-digit market share any time soon.
Go ahead Apple zealots, mod me into oblivion for speaking heresy.
Re:So 5% takes them back to... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's ok, they already know; Mercedes merged with Diamler Chrysler to survive. Ferrari was bought out by Fiat. BMW bought Cooper to attempt to draw new blood into their product line. So yeah, they've seen their impending doom and are doing everything they can to survive.
Re:So 5% takes them back to... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So 5% takes them back to... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong! Mercedes bought Chrysler outright. There was no merger, and Chrysler did not buy Mercedes.
Re:So 5% takes them back to... (Score:3, Informative)
Switch (Score:3, Insightful)
OSX was the workhorse that sold me on Apple... the iPod's just a toy for long car trips and lugging data files around.
Wrong Crowd (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Crowd (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to enjoy building systems for friends and family until I realized that they had this mysterious idea that I would be providing free tech support for the next decade.
But, I know Apple makes cash off of very expensive hardware,
No way. It always costs me $700 to build a computer. Always. This has been true since about '96. By the time I research the specs and assemble a parts list, it comes out to be with
Re:Wrong Crowd (Score:3, Informative)
Linux people switching (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been consulting for a large Linux shop the last few months and was surprised at the number of people running Mac laptops. The company itself provides Linux desktops for everyone, and Windows laptops for the suits, but a lot of the developers and other IT people use Mac laptops for their personal computers. I have to say I have been pretty impressed with what I have seen in terms of performance. Besides Mac just give you that extra little "Wow!" factor. Of course it is BSD under the hood, so it is a real OS. They really are slick machines. I do not think that the Ipod is the influencing factor here though.
Re:Linux people switching (Score:4, Interesting)
People keep excluding Windows as a "real OS". I've worked with a group of _really_ really good server application people. I mean "walk on water" good.
Their product runs under Solaris, HP-UX, VMS, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and AIX. So one would think that they know what they are talking about when comparing operating systems.
They didn't like Microsoft, but they did grudginly admit that the Windows API was better and more efficient than the UNIX API for server applications (at least the type they were working on).
Please give Windows some credit. Don't discredit it with a herd mentality because you don't like Microsoft.
Big-S Switchers (Score:3, Informative)
Now I've started porting my commercail applications to OS-X.
I guess the ole' Reality Distortion Field really DOES work, eh? :D
My dealings with Apples and Macs (Score:3, Informative)
Switch? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is what Apple finally realized with the Mac Mini. They'll never get people en masse to go to the Mac cold turkey, but by giving them an affordable option, there's a lot of people who might try it since there's a way out (they can just write off the $500).
I guess the better question is - what percentage of Mac Mini purchasers continue to use it actively and don't eventually write it off as a bad investment? And how many of them swear off Windows?
Re:Switch? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Switch? (Score:4, Funny)
Swear off Windows, or swear at Windows. There is no third choice.
Re:Switch? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm an "adder" (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I also upgraded my desktop system the same week, it's now an overclocked Athlon64 system with an SLI motherboard and a GF6800 (only one for now). It runs windows XP. So I certainly didn't "switch" to the mac.
I use the Athlon box for games, and as a digital audio workstation. But now with the mini
I switched... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only was it great for some simple hosting, utter silence and low power consumption, but I found that I even preferred to do casual browsing on it -- despite being so remarkably slow (OS X - Quartz Extreme = Windows on a 486). It's just so comfortable.
As others have pointed out in this thread, there won't be as many Slashdot "switchers" as there will be "adders," and that probably counts for the larger population as well (why throw out the old computer when you can keep it for the dog to use?). But I bet many will follow the cheap Mac they bought on a lark to a shiny new Powerbook, just like I did.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Ack! Beleagured Apple... (Score:3, Funny)
Do us recent switchers count? (Score:4, Interesting)
For me it wasn't the iPod. It was iTunes. I was using iTuines for six months before I got my iPod and it was my experience with iTunes that made me look at the Mac for the first time in five years. I had not liked OS 9 and below and I used to consider Macs to be a joke back when they first came out.
And yes, I did give Linux a try. Several, as a matter of fact, starting with SLS 1.0 back in 1993/1994 and the last time with Suse 9 last year. I never got along with Linux very well. I figured that if I tried it out seven times in ten years and never got comfortable with it it probably wasn't for me. But I did give it an honest try.
The Mac, well, OS X, I got along with from Day One and am quite happy with. A++ Would do it again.
20%!?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ipod sales are predicted at 13.3 millioin units for 2005 [ipodlounge.com], but I find it hard to believe that one out of five (2.66 million) will convert soley due to their experience with the ipod (sure there is windows based frustration).
It would make sense that many people would say they plan to switch to the platform, but how many really follow through with that is going to be lower once they find the sticker shock on their standard systems. If they can gain a market foothold with the mac mini [apple.com] will may work. There is also the question of being retrained on a new system. There certainly is something to be said for the status quo.
I switched (Score:3, Interesting)
But recently, I got tired of Linux. The endless quest for a better desktop or a more compatible distribution. You've just upgraded? Congratulations, now go and recompile all your multi-media apps (like DVD playing). Want to plug in a device that's been on the market for a couple of years but no one in kernel land has? Good luck and plug it into your partner's mac to use instead.
For me the final straw was buying a G4 iPod, and deliberately setting up a Windows machine so that I could make sure it was formatted VFAT rather than HFS so that it would definitely be able to be used with my Linux system. And viola, it too didn't work! So, goodbye Linux, hello Mac. Sold my Linux custom-built workstation for $500 AU, bought an eMac, and have never looked back. I'm more productive, significantly more compatible with any device I want to buy and the interface is about
I still use Linux, I think it's a great server platform, but for the desktop, nah. I'm even going to be buying myself a bright shiny new 17" PowerBook soon out of my own money rather than continue to use Linux as my laptop OS for work.
Mac OS X - what Linux could have been, and what Solaris should have been.
I did it the other way around (Score:5, Interesting)
A year later, my ipod's with me daily, and serves up more than just music, via the amazing Pod2Go [pod2go.com] software. The only regret I have is not taking the plunge earlier than I did!
I went from hours and hours of tweaking, and modding my systems to behave in a somewhat intelligent manner, to just having a computer work the way I want it to. Someone in a different thread once put it best: "If I want to tweak and play, I can do so, but when I need to knuckle down and do real work, it just works, no tweaking needed". I couldn't have said it better myself.
Getting people into the Apple store (Score:3, Interesting)
Running a Mac Mini (Score:3, Interesting)
I got a Mac Mini last week, and from my experiences so far - I'll never go back to Windows on my personal computer.
I did (Score:4, Interesting)
Bought an iPod July 2003. Bought an iMac February 2004. Bought two more iPods. Buying a Powerbook any week now.
So yes, it works.
Games (Score:5, Insightful)
First, if a game is decent, chances are, it exists for the Mac. Nearly all major games (Warcraft (I-WoW), Call to Duty, NWN, SW KotOR, Sims, etc.) have Mac versions that equal their Windows counterparts (not emulation). Second, who is running away from Linux because of the lack of games?
In all fairness to people buying these computers, it is about user experience. If the Macintosh delivers a better user experience, people will switch. The halo effect of the iPod is to show people what a well-designed machine feels like. Since (IMHO) the Macintosh has a much better experience, along with all of the accoutrements of a *nix under the hood, I had very little heartburn over switching.
Incidentally, the main use of my Mac is collision modelling in FORTRAN. Thank goodness for gfortran. The POSIX-compliant version is much more stable than its Windows counterpart and neither it nor g95 require MinGW on Darwin (obviously).
Finally, Darwin has the ability to compile the *nix OSS that we have all come to love. I keep a recent build of Apple's X11 on my machine and have yet to run into a tgz that didn't compile cleanly or with minimum tweaking. For those who love their OSS but don't like to work their own code, there are a couple decent package managers for the Mac as well (i-Installer [www.rna.nl], Fink [sourceforge.net], etc).
I did it backwards... (Score:4, Informative)
Switch?? (Score:4, Funny)
Switching? Slashdotters don't switch hardware. We aggregate and incorporate. Why would I ever dispose of anything that could generate a couple more SETI@home points per month, while also filling in as my firewall, e-mail, and/or MAME and streaming media server? And that's just my 8088! You hipsters with your disposable hardware. Makes me sick.
Why I haven't switched (Score:3, Interesting)
I like the look of OSX. No, I LOVE the look. Everything is so refreshingly appealing to the eye. I like the built-in capability of 128px icons. I like the dock. However, I can get icon sets and other nice, colorful, appeasing items for XP Prof. Hell, I can get OSX imitation themes for it.
I work with a bunch of designers (I'm a devloper), and I am on a Mac probably 2 times a week for a few hours. I don't feel overwhelmed enough by OSX to actually switch to Apple. I use an XP Prof. machine, and I NEVER have any problems with it. It has failed on me maybe 1 time in the past 6 months. Maybe. My coworker has a Mac, and it freezes on him probably 2 times a week. Freezes in a manner than doesn't allow him to do anything besides restart. I just sorta laugh to myself, and continue working.
Maybe I'll switch in the future, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend 2500 on a 15" Powerbook when the only thing that I admire about OSX is the "prettiness". I spent 1700 on a HP zt3000, and got pretty much all of the same features for, oh, about 800 less.
Just my 2 cents. I really don't have anything against Apple, and I'm glad that they're taking market share from Microsoft. But when I have a perfectly good AND CLEAN XP OS, I can't bring myself to fork over the extra "style" money required to use an Apple.
Another reason why my next desktop won't be a PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Now AMD has something like 3 (or more) adding up to 9 or 10 different PC CPU sockets. Add in the bazillion variants of RAM clockings, HDD (SATA, EIDE (3 different speeds), SCSI (god know how many different types, etc.) conection standards etc. and even for a hardwarefreak like me things are getting very confusing.
I don't have the time for this anymore. And since configuring a PC with good hardware and a good OS (Linux) takes lots of time, in the end a Mac is cheaper. Much cheaper.
Linux will be the future workhorse OS, OS X will be the appliance OS.
Apple has gotten things just right for quite some time now, they deserve the market share they are just gaining.
My prediction (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that spyware is such a huge honking problem and people are buying new PCs just to get away from it, I imagine it'll drive a bunch of people to switch. Honestly, if it weren't for spyware, I'd still go either way. All else being equal, PCs are still cheaper for low-end use. But with spyware being as bad as it is, I think Apple can really make a dent.
It'll happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Ya, I've been down this path. iPod Jul 2003, PowerBook Jul 2004.
I used to build PC's and it was fun and you'd get more bang for the buck, but I got ever sick of dealing with flaky drivers and Windows problems. But until the Mac Mini there wasn't an affordable Mac for most people.
I do almost all work and personal stuff on the Mac now. Only time I tend to go back to WinXP is for Visio (which doesn't seem to quite work right under VirtualPC). I'm hopeful that one-day Visio will be produced for the Mac.
Fedora Core is also used, but primarily as a server platform in my small business.
We've got a number of Toshiba WinXP laptops and all of my users have trouble every single day with Windows Wireless networking. They have to repair their connections 2-3 times a day. My PowerBook has no troubles at all with connections. Hibernation of laptops is another - try going a week with hibernating Windows - it becomes so flakey. Now the PowerBook only gets a reboot when an OS update needs it. Otherwise hibernation just works - currently at 24 days with hibernation only - no reboots! All off my work colleagues reboot their WinXP laptop daily.
I have been providing tech support for family and friends in the past, but now with the Mac Mini I'm going to provide them with a subtle and a not-so-subtle hint - "Check out the Mac Mini!" and I'm no longer providing support for Windows.
The Mac operating system and application platform is great. iLife (haven't touched Garageband) is a really great suite of software and the integration works really well. I'm going to be suggesting to family that they should switch just because of the improvements they will have in being able to manage their digital photos etc. And having it all on *nix underpinning is nice - its great for me being able to crank open terminal.
I had an Apple ][ many years ago - ah Castle Wolfenstein ;) but hardly touched pre-OSX because it was and still is crap. I did get a dual-CPU Mac once but promptly installed BeOS instead.
Re:Stock (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stock (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stock (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple stock has split three times total with the last two being last February 28th and June 21st 2000. The first split was back in 1987, so in terms of stock splits it has not been the best investment. However, I am quite happy with the investments and additional purchases I made a couple of years ago with Apple. The iPod and iTunes have certainly been a driving force for the increase in stock value as well as the halo effect that everybody is talking about. However, I see another big spike in the number of Mac users as they get out of universities. Specifically, Apple has been making huge strides in getting higher education users back into the Apple fold with many folks making the switch. From my perspective, I know that there have been at least a dozen folks who have started using Macintosh computers after coming through our lab in the last two years who previously were Windows users.
Re:Stock (Score:3, Insightful)
My broker advised against it, but I figured someone was going to buy Apple or Steve Jobs was going to make it profitable again. A company ain't going to drop off the face of the earth if it has tons of valuable intellectual property and a fanatic evangelistic install base.
Re:Stock (Score:3, Funny)
Bad troll. No cookie. (Score:5, Insightful)
Closed desktop environment. Free IDE.
Tell me why you're not happy about this again? You could always run X11 and use KDE or Gnome or whatever. I personally feel that Aqua is worth every penny.
Re:Bad troll. No cookie. (Score:5, Informative)
Darwin maintains BSD compatibility but impliments a number of different approachs to core systems. For instance, the driver subsystem in Darwin is IOKit, an object-oriented system that allows for dynamic loading and unloading of device drivers (indeed, whole classes of drivers). BSD currently lacks this ability. Try coding a new driver for BSD and you will find yourself re-coding whole sections of pre-existant code that must then be loaded into the kernel side-by-side, increasing memory usage unnecessarily.
Consider as well that Darwin is not a pure microkernel system. A number of subsystems are loaded into Mach, which allows for faster communication between the components.
I would not claim that one system is arbitrarily better than the other but to claim that they are the same is pure garbage. You appear to just be quoting some equally uninformed /. poster.
Re:Apple = Proprietary (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Apple = Proprietary (Score:3, Informative)
Next.
Re:Apple = Proprietary (Score:3, Interesting)
Because they are not (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has a partical closed/partial open. Their foundation is actually opened based on BSD API. From there, they added in their old stuff with enhancements.
In addition, Apple does not typically use their system to try and lock out competitors. The IPOD is new behavior for them. Hopefully, they will consider how to approach things. The reason why OSS software is popping up around ipod is because Apple has not ported to Linux/BSD. Once they do (even closed), I suspect that we will see a lot fewer attempts to circumvent them.
OTH, MS uses their OS and Office as a way of controlling the end user WRT everything. If it was not for OSS, I have no doubt that MS would have been far worse than they are today.
Re:Because they are not (Score:3, Informative)
Huh?!? Tell that to the former clone makers who no longer are able to make mac clones. Their behavior with regard to iPod is standard operating procedure for Apple. If they weren't trying to lock out competition, why is there not an z86 port of MacOS?
Re:20% switching? No way. (Score:4, Insightful)
whilst certainly a concearn to some, one could look at what is available [apple.com], and determine if that will be enough to satiate their needs.
maybe though, the 20% have already taken the games and whatever into account, and still plan on switching, whereas the 80% decided they couldn't do without them, or the ones which are available.
of course its probably neither.
Re:20% switching? No way. (Score:3, Insightful)
Each of these possibilities are imaginable, so I think "Never happen" might be
Re:20% switching? No way. (Score:3, Informative)
Im being given a mac myself (for web testing) and I was under the same impression until I saw the selection. WoW on a mac-mini? Going to have that thing plugged into my TV
Let's take a look at the list (Score:5, Informative)
Quake 3
Doom 3
Black & White
The Sims
The Sims 2
SimCity 4
All the Myst games
All the Warcraft games
All the Diablo games
RTCW
All the Unreal Tournaments
I could go on and on here. Not to mention, I use emulators anyway, so there are all those games too.
Re:Let's take a look at the list (Score:5, Informative)
It was out on pc when? Last august? Same for the other games, they are older and were released on mac a few months (at the very least) after the pc version. Take a look at the top 10 upcoming games for pc at gamespot [gamespot.com], and tell how many of those will be available for macs. 2 out of 10? 3 out of 10? Even 5 out of 10 wouldn't be enough.
Not good enough for even a mild cored gamer. And for the record, I wish 10/10 of these games were playable on linux, so I wouldn't have to send one cent to either MS or apple to play the games I want.
20% sounds plausible (Score:3, Interesting)
" As soon as that 20% realizes there's no games for that shiny Mac in the store window, they'll stay right where they are."
Maybe, maybe not. Around our house we realized that for the price of one good gaming PC system, you can pick up a trio of dedicated network-capable gaming consoles, each with their own small TV. Makes a fine gaming LAN.
So the Winboxen are in the process of being replaced by Web-surfing Macs, plus a Linux box running an glue layer for the odd Windows game.
And I'll be worrying a
Re:Why not (Score:5, Funny)
No. It's basically BSD, which is, of course, dying .
Re:OSX for x86 (Score:3, Informative)
I can't speak for anyone else, but (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear PC gamers fretting all the time about whether their graphics cards are up to snuff, whether they're going to be able to run the hot new game coming out in two weeks... I never have to worry about any of that. My computer can't run any games at all (except World of Warcraft, which I don't really want), but I know I can go down to walmart and there's more games there than I've got money to buy or time to play, and all I have to do is put a disc in a machine and switch it on. I don't even have to sign off AIM or Skype.
Okay, if your conception of "games" is "first person shooters" then the PC is where it's at and what I'm saying is worthless, but as far as I'm concerned, my lifetime needs as far as first person shooters go was sated completely in 1998. And if first person shooters aren't your thing then commercial PC gaming probably isn't going to do much at all for you right now. There's some interesting stuff coming out of the PC shareware game community, but when was the last commercial PC gaming got a game like Katamari Damacy, or Wario Ware? There was a time in the past where the pc games lineup made being a mac user a bit depressing but at this point, pc gaming seems like it wouldn't be worth the bother even if my computer could run it. I've got all the games I want and then some.
Re:Didn't need an iPod to get me to switch (Score:5, Interesting)
The complexity of windows is baffeling. I was amazed that something that works so easely on Mac could be so incredibly complicated on another platform. The nearest thing I had to WiFi network problems befor was my GFs iBook that had to enter a WPA-PSK password on every boot, but it was solved after some consulting on the Apple site forum.
I sweated, wept and toiled and yet I had to leave the installation half finished because I only had two hours available. Depressed and alone i reached out to grab the Old Friend that never disappoints, Jack Daniels. Suddenly, a light came on in the corner. It was my alu PowerBook, that woke up upon registering that my Bluetooth cellphone was nearby. As it changed the "away" message in Aduim to At home and available, and automatically synced the phone with adressbook, I realized. I don't need booze to drown my Windows memories. I only need the comforting white light of an Apple.
Ok, so it wasn't that bad. But the installation didn't work as planned and I have to go back tomoroow and that sucks.
Re:Not Me (Score:3, Insightful)
if the idea of having a computer for you is to tweak it and play with it then a Mac isn't for you. If you just want it to "work" and don't have to worry about, then I really suggest you get one.