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Apple's Marketshare Up to 5.6%

MikeTheC said:
You cannot take that as a workable concept when talking about any time up to approximately 1992-1994. Microsoft was in no better a position than Apple, and maybe even worse. Back then, Commodore (remember them?) and Tandy (remember them?) probably had as good a percentage as Apple or anyone else.
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The data does not agree with you. The PC achieved majority market share in 1985, and the vast majority of PCs shipped ran MS-DOS. And as we learned later about this time period, even the few PCs which were sold not loaded with MS-DOS put money into Microsoft's pocket. From the very start, Microsoft was better positioned. By 1992 they had achieved essentially total market control and were exploiting it for all it was worth.
 
A fine example of a Mac Elitist.


MikeTheC said:
Speaking strictly for myself, I think Apple is better off not having achieved a ridiculous percentage of market penetration, and especially a dominance in terms of having the most customers, and the reason for that is there's a *huge* number of potential users out there who are undesirable to have as customers. They are the "trailer trash" of the computer world, and should be avoided like the plague.

I like the fact that there's a certain bar of admittance. This, more than anything, helps to keep out the riff-raff and the garbage.

Anyone here who is (or has been) a computer tech -- or, for that matter, anyone here who's ever worked with the general public -- knows I speak the truth on this matter. I'd rather have a smaller user base comprised of the intelligent and savvy than a larger user base compromised by retarded, self-important ignoramouses.

Just my 2¢.
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Well then, the data is wrong.

In 1985, the Mac platform was barely a year old. The Apple II and Apple IIe were probably at their zenith of popularity and usage. Apple had just released the IIc and was then in the latter stages of development of the IIgs (which wouldn't come out until 1986/87 IIRC). Tandy Radio Shack was still hot to trot with their TRS-80 series and just beginning their Tandy computers. Commodore was still a major player with the C64, and I think had started to ship the C128. The Amiga joystick company, which was developing their own computer, got bought up by Commodore somewhere around this point. IMSAI was, I think, still in business, Sun and Apollo were both building systems, and I'm quite certain I'm missing a few others here.

Now, it's true that most all of these computers were running some kind of command line interface, and some even used the three letters "DOS" in the name of their OS, and most of them looked very similar to MS-DOS (heck, even CP/M looked something like MS-DOS). It's also true that Leading Edge, Compaq, IBM and a few others were putting out computers that ran MS-DOS, but they collectively were no bigger than any one other company's "platform".

And, frankly, Microsoft wasn't anything too special. They were just a software company in search of becoming top dog. However, all throughout high school (I graduated in 1990) you didn't hear anything significant about Microsoft's OS or computers which ran it. Now, clearly, BillG didn't just snap his fingers and -- poof -- in an instant became the majority player. The process started long before that, and Microsoft has the stupidity and lack of vision of other computer company leaders, as well as just dumb luck, to thank for it's position of dominance as it does anything else. All I'm saying is that somewhere around 1992-1994 is when the market kind of coalesced into the Microsoft/Apple universe that we know today. And after that period, the biggest single driving force for Microsoft was sheer tenacious inertia.

So don't believe what you read when you read data that tries to lead you to think Microsoft achieved some kind of dominance in the early to mid 1980s just because more than one brand of computer ran their OS. That's just historical revisionism hard at work. Heck, Apple had licensed the Apple II and IIe to Franklin, which made clones for a while. CP/M ran on multiple computers (and several could be retrofitted for compatibility, including the Apple II/IIe!) Microsoft at the time wasn't jack ****.
 
MikeTheC said:
So don't believe what you read when you read data that tries to lead you to think Microsoft achieved some kind of dominance in the early to mid 1980s just because more than one brand of computer ran their OS. That's just historical revisionism hard at work.
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I don't fully disagree with you, but i think you are missing the point.

The shift to a PC/Mac world happened much earlier than you remember for volume buys, which is why the numbers seem inconsistent with your recollection.

I don't think I ever saw a Commodore or Amiga "lab", much less a whole lot of Trash 80s.

During the time period you are referring to (between 1984 and 1990) when all these other computers had places in schools and homes, business had well adopted "PCs" and Lotus 1-2-3. I was in college a the time and there were two different labs on campus: Macs and PCs, well before 1990.The shift to PCs really started well before 1990. I even remember my high school introduced a lab of DOS-Compatible DEC Rainbows during my last year there. (Before that, we had labs of Apple ][s and a PDP-11).

This was the time period where I was a Mac user in the labs, but had a Commie at home.

B
 
MikeTheC said:
Well then, the data is wrong.
[...]
So don't believe what you read when you read data that tries to lead you to think Microsoft achieved some kind of dominance in the early to mid 1980s just because more than one brand of computer ran their OS. That's just historical revisionism hard at work. Heck, Apple had licensed the Apple II and IIe to Franklin, which made clones for a while. CP/M ran on multiple computers (and several could be retrofitted for compatibility, including the Apple II/IIe!) Microsoft at the time wasn't jack ****.
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balamw is right, MikeTheC, you need to read this:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-share.ars/6
The PC clones dominated the market from 1987 onwards. Your perspective is probably colored by the fact that Commodores, Ataris and Apples were more common in the consumer market, but businesses and institutions bought a lot more computers and they were overwhelmingly IBM clones running MS-DOS.

As for your Franklin clone remark, Apple did not license anything. Franklin tried to pull a Compaq on Apple but messed up, which resulted in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_v._Franklin
 
MikeTheC said:
Sorry, second post on this here, but I just found another thread here on MacRumors.com which is evidence of just the sort of thing I was talking about before: What CANT you do with an iMac?

I rest my case.
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There's a few things you can't do with a Mac ( read: OS/X ) that you can do with Windows ( and of course, vice versa ) - quite simply because the software isn't available. Mac is not a silver bullet - just like windows.

Going back to your previous post -

Quote: " for that is there's a *huge* number of potential users out there who are undesirable to have as customers. They are the "trailer trash" of the computer world, and should be avoided like the plague.

I like the fact that there's a certain bar of admittance. This, more than anything, helps to keep out the riff-raff and the garbage."

Why do you even care about who buys Macs? That totally sounds like elitism.
 
MikeTheC said:
Well then, the data is wrong.
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Not to repeat all of the other responses, but if you're going to argue that the data is wrong, then you'd better come up with some of your own. This data looks perfectly plausible to me and conforms to my memory of the period.

The IBM-PC took off in a big way immediately after Compaq figured out how to clone the hardware platform and withstand IBM's lawsuits. This was in 1983. And of course Microsoft was free to license DOS to any comer. But they went one step further, which was to charge licensees an OS license fee for every computer they sold, whether DOS was loaded on it or not (AKA, the notorious "CPU tax"). This is just one of the anticompetitive techniques Microsoft was using to consolidate the PC market during the '80s, long before the release of the first popular version of Windows.

The Mac was released into a tremendous headwind, which by the mid-80s had turned into a hurricane. Mac sales actually plummeted in 1985, which is one of the reasons Steve Jobs hired John Scully that year. Apple was in a pretty much impossible situation. It's almost a miracle that they were able to build the Mac's market share to 10%+ by 1990. The often abused Scully actually deserves some credit for this.

Apple did fail to respond adequately to Windows 3.0 and even more so to Windows 95. These were costly strategic errors. But the nails were being driven well before the early '90s.
 
There's an old joke about how 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name. That, in very broad brushstrokes, is how I feel about the demographic of the computer user base out there. Now, I've left the computer industry, and I no longer do tech support for anyone but a very few of my very closest friends, so in a sense I suppose one could argue that, whatever the composition of computerdom out there, it doesn't have an opportunity to affect me any longer.

And I'd probably agree with that assertion, generally speaking, for the most part. However, much like in big business or politics or other similar fields of endeavor, what goes on and what is allowed to go on can and does affect us all. Most of the "really bad" stuff you have heard about going on that, fortunately, got stopped, was stopped in 11th hour actions by a few who were well-informed enough, opinionated enough and could rally enough force or momentum to their cause. A savvy and interested user base would likely not have allowed these things to have been potentially successful.

As blessed with brains and the capacity for individual initiative as we are, the sad truth is that most people out there (and again, this applies to many areas of endeavor) don't bother to do anything, or don't care, and so things like Net Neutrality, broadcast flags and (almost) root kits on music CDs get by us. These are things which I object to and refuse to go along with or participate in the usage thereof; and yes, for those who don't mind and/or don't care, in addition to all the other idioting that goes on ("Do I format my hard drive to get my Word file?", etc.) I hold a rather dim view of my fellow computer user.

There are plenty of savvy Windows users out there, and there are plenty of dumb Mac users out there. It's true, the hardware hardly makes the man (please forgive the mixed metaphor), but in my experience people buy Macs because they are savvy enough to know better (that is, that there's more to computers than just "Computers running Microsoft"), and people who buy Windows-based PCs do so because, well, it's what people buy (read: "Don't all computers use Microsoft?")

If anything, it may be arguable that the "truly savvy" out there run Linux, but that's another kettle of fish for another day.

Now, you can agree with me or not -- hey, it's a free country -- but that really isn't the point. You asked me to defend my position, and I have now done so.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Not insofar as I can see. It was an interesting rant, though. ;)
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*points to Stella's post above yours*

That's the one I was responding to, not yours.

I have no data points to use or point to, IJ Reilly, which I can independently verify, and so therefore I will not bother. However, during the latter half of the 1980s, most businesses IIRC didn't even use computers, and of those which did, to the best of my recollection, they were using a mix of Apple IIe/IIc hardware, Tandy computers (a very few were "TRS-80" units), and some were using PCs which ran MS-DOS.

Heck, I can recall going up to Cleveland on a vacation circa 1994 and found several businesses weren't using computers at all, or were running then-aging computers compared to where I live (S.W. Florida).

I don't think I really saw what you'd call a significant penetration into the business market around here until about 1994; and yes, by then, they were all by-and-large running Win3.1/DOS 6.22 boxen.

EDIT: I think it's telling, and I sometimes wonder if it wasn't just as much a matter of waiting for standards to settle out of the maelstrom of the 1980s as it was business owners starting to become savvy enough to realize the benefits of technology to their companies.
 
MikeTheC said:
*points to Stella's post above yours*

That's the one I was responding to, not yours.
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Helps to use the quote-back. Then we know. ;)

I have no data points to use or point to, IJ Reilly, which I can independently verify, and so therefore I will not bother. However, during the latter half of the 1980s, most businesses IIRC didn't even use computers, and of those which did, to the best of my recollection, they were using a mix of Apple IIe/IIc hardware, Tandy computers (a very few were "TRS-80" units), and some were using PCs which ran MS-DOS.

Heck, I can recall going up to Cleveland on a vacation circa 1994 and found several businesses weren't using computers at all, or were running then-aging computers compared to where I live (S.W. Florida).

I don't think I really saw what you'd call a significant penetration into the business market around here until about 1994; and yes, by then, they were all by-and-large running Win3.1/DOS 6.22 boxen.

EDIT: I think it's telling, and I sometimes wonder if it wasn't just as much a matter of waiting for standards to settle out of the maelstrom of the 1980s as it was business owners starting to become savvy enough to realize the benefits of technology to their companies.
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I apparently have the advantage of nearly 20 additional years of personal experience on you. I don't recall ever witnessing a Tandy in a business environment and rarely saw an Apple II outside of a home or school. The Apple III was marketed as a business computer, but of course that machine was a complete flop. I can remember seeing a grand total of one Apple III. Offices where I worked during the 1980s did have computers (not one for every desk, but computers nonetheless). Virtually all of them (with the notable exception of the Mac I insisted on bringing in for my own use :)) were PC-clones running DOS. It was nearly impossible to get the purchase of anything else approved.

The debate during the '80s was all about "standards." The conventional and even professional wisdom of the decade was that only one hardware and software platform was necessary or even desirable -- and that it should be the PC running DOS.

The fact that the number of computers sold jumped substantially during the '90s doesn't change the market share question we are discussing. When that big decade for computer sales arrived, Microsoft was already positioned as the clear market-leader and Apple was widely regarded as an also-ran, not to be taken seriously by people who bought "real" computers.
 
IJ Reilly said:
I don't recall ever witnessing a Tandy in a business environment and rarely saw an Apple II outside of a home or school.
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FWIW I did some early programming for a stock forecasting program (UI only) on an Apple ][, back in ~1982 and saw them in various offices around that time. By 1984 the system was being replaced by PC based solutions.

B
 
balamw said:
FWIW I did some early programming for a stock forecasting program (UI only) on an Apple ][, back in ~1982 and saw them in various offices around that time. By 1984 the system was being replaced by PC based solutions.

B
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I know they were in use outside of education and homes. VisiCalc made the Apple II appealing in some situations. Still, the trust level for Apple (then only a few years old as a company and run by a bunch of hippies) was low and very few people, especially in business, took desktop computing seriously until IBM came out with the PC. They put a white shirt and a tie on desktop computers.
 
I was going through school (primary education upper half) and then high school just at the very beginning of the technology wave here. The private school I attended down here (they were K-12, but I transferred to this school after having completed 4th grade up north) got a batch of Apple IIc units over the summer between grades 6 and 7, so I started using them in 7th grade.

When I started high school, I went to a public school, and as I recall they had maybe a dozen Apple IIe computers or so, and something like 10 or 15 TRS-80s (two were Model I keyboard units, not sure if they had any Model IIs, but all the rest were definitely IIIs and IVs). Going from 9th to 10th grade, the newspaper class bought a Mac SE (and then subsequently a second SE and eventually a IIcx and a LaserWriter.) And, now that I think about it, they had an IBM PS/2 computer sitting in the school yearbook office.

I never pursued higher education after high school, so I can't vouch for what the local Community College had on it's campus. I can tell you, however, from what I've seen of businesses in this area, they were none of them any too fast to jump on the computer bandwagon. Maybe major corporations had standardized (I won't argue that point since there weren't any around here, and even now-a-days there's barely any) but regular businesses hadn't. That's probably down to the fact that none of them had what you'd call an "IT staff" and were either dependent upon being solicited by a local computer business or the ownership's own personal initiative.

Actually, the earliest adopters of technology around here, in any significant sense, were the newspapers, particularly post-photo typesetter. They had to have something for their reporters to do data entry on, and they had to have something to do page layouts with. Anyhow...
 
Apple, Commodore, Atari, etc. may have been more visible in homes, K-12 and small shops in the late 80s and early 90s, but in terms of total sales they were all dwarfed by IBM clones running MS-DOS after circa 1987 (see the link I provided earlier).

If you go by personal experience, you can get a rather biased POV. If I lived at a Californian university campus and only hung around local coffeeshops in my spare time I might get the impression that half the world uses Macs, but on a global scale Windows is absolutely dominant.
 
I was interested in your thoughts / reasons. Thanks for sharing them.

Certainly in the past, overall, compared to windows, a 'savvy' user would choose Macs over windows - and being so, they could tell you exactly why.

As you alluded to - tying up this post I' replying to with your previous one - the more mass market Macs become, the less thought people are going to put into the reasons of buying a Mac over windows.

Both our respective countries are free.. and so should Macrumors!

MikeTheC said:
There are plenty of savvy Windows users out there, and there are plenty of dumb Mac users out there.

Now, you can agree with me or not -- hey, it's a free country -- but that really isn't the point. You asked me to defend my position, and I have now done so.
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How many PC factories are there in the Far East? How many boxes can Foxxconn make?

What gets me is fanboys first say #1) hey we got a bigger market share HERE WE GO and then #2) we don't want to be a big market share anyway.

OK so someday Apple has 95% of the market. Apple own or control most PC factories in the Far East (or wherever they move to keep costs down). Is that what you want?

Isn't that the same thing as Microsoft had yesterday?
 
Fairly said:
What gets me is fanboys first say #1) hey we got a bigger market share HERE WE GO and then #2) we don't want to be a big market share anyway.
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Not the same people, methinks. Two sides of a different coin. Most of us probably want to see Apple achieve a market share which is sufficient to sustain a healthy alternative to Windows, one that's taken seriously by computers purchasers, software developers, and the media, but don't otherwise care about the numbers. Beyond that, I don't much care about the numbers except as an investor who likes to see his dollars grow.

Oddly, I think Apple has more or less gotten to this place with 5-6% of the market today, when twice as much wasn't enough to be taken very seriously 15 years ago.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Oddly, I think Apple has more or less gotten to this place with 5-6% of the market today, when twice as much wasn't enough to be taken very seriously 15 years ago.
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Well, of course, that's because there's a larger total number of people today who either own or are likely to buy a computer than there were 15 years ago. Just to completely pull this out of the air, 5% 15 years ago might have meant 5 million people, but today it now might mean 30 million people.

The other thing is that Microsoft has had enough rope now to hang itself in the public square, whereas 15 years ago there weren't enough complaints, and there weren't enough tech-savvy members of the general public, and individual computer ownership was relegated more or less to computer enthusiasts/hobbiests market, to businesses and certain types of professionals. Now that "mere mortals" own computers, and a super-abundance of the general public is comprised of computer owners, what Microsoft does affects the world to such an extent that their "evil ways" can no longer be ignored by any but the most casual of computer users.

Whole different ball game now, bub.
 
MikeTheC said:
Well, of course, that's because there's a larger total number of people today who either own or are likely to buy a computer than there were 15 years ago. Just to completely pull this out of the air, 5% 15 years ago might have meant 5 million people, but today it now might mean 30 million people.

The other thing is that Microsoft has had enough rope now to hang itself in the public square, whereas 15 years ago there weren't enough complaints, and there weren't enough tech-savvy members of the general public, and individual computer ownership was relegated more or less to computer enthusiasts/hobbiests market, to businesses and certain types of professionals. Now that "mere mortals" own computers, and a super-abundance of the general public is comprised of computer owners, what Microsoft does affects the world to such an extent that their "evil ways" can no longer be ignored by any but the most casual of computer users.

Whole different ball game now, bub.
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True. But I'd add a couple more factors. For one, back in the '80s and '90s, the tech media as a whole promoted the preposterous idea that a battle for standards was underway, which only one company could win. They managed to persuade the vast majority of consumers that they really were better off with a monopoly. Some still talk this way, but fewer and fewer, partly as you say, due to Microsoft's steadily eroding image.

Second, Apple's image is much revitalized, due mainly to the iPod. It shouldn't matter, but consumers are always more comfortable buying from a company they perceive as a "winner."
 
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