Curiously, that report broke down Apple's sales into Desktop vs Notebook, while this report is combined into one. So can't compare.
arn
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Apple's PC Marketshare up to 14 Percent for February 2008
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Curiously, that report broke down Apple's sales into Desktop vs Notebook, while this report is combined into one. So can't compare.
arn
How's that Windows Registry doing btw? Oh yeah... they can't get rid of it.
'fanbois'... aw isn't that cute. Trying to spell like the cool kids?
That'll be all thanks to the new MacBook Airs and Mac Pros then 
March should be good too, with the Penryn MacBooks and multi touch MBPs.
Maybe they have iMac and Mac Minis up their sleeve over the next two months to keep the momentum going
March should be good too, with the Penryn MacBooks and multi touch MBPs.
Maybe they have iMac and Mac Minis up their sleeve over the next two months to keep the momentum going
Count me in. Just ordered a midrange MB and Time Capsule. I plan for it to sit next to my iMac and *REPLACE* my WinXP PC tower I built in 2001. I refuse to waste any more of my life getting Windows and PC hardware to play nice. The $1200 is better spent on something that can do it all, and quietly. XP at home, Leopard on the road.
Now I just need to get the parents on board and I can stop doing tech support all together.
Now I just need to get the parents on board and I can stop doing tech support all together.
The Windows registry was considered an upgrade over what existing previously in the Windows arena and what still exists in Unix flavored OSs- flat files.
Personally, I prefer flat files to a central registry- but this is just a preference. There are pros and cons to both approaches. To say that "they can't get rid of it" implies that they want to get rid of it, which probably isn't the case since they consider it to be a superior solution.
Most users could care less whether their system uses a central registry or not. What they do care about is getting prompted every 60 seconds for permission to do something.
Try again... Market share has EVERYTHING to do with how secure it is.
When you are attacked daily, holes get found.
When a hacker wants to wreak havoc on the world, he goes after the biggest audience.
Apple having a minority share in the marketplace has kept it out of the cross hairs.
It's all about impact. You don't have it going after the "little" guys.
That simply is not true. The Registry, whatever its original purpose, has been a stability and security disaster. Most things I've seen indicated that MS has wanted to retire/move beyond it but have not been able to due to the large number of legacy apps that use it.
Quote for freakin' truth. The Mac has never had a market share above 15%. It was only the Apple ][ that dominated the market. But that did not translate into automatic market domination for the Mac.
During Steve Jobs' absence, Apple didn't put market share above all else: they put profits above all else and let the quality of their computers suffer. Apple created tons of different choices for consumers which just ended up confusing the hell out of everyone, and they had so many different side projects that never went anywhere and were just soaking up resources (Newton, Star Wars, Pippin, etc.).
Apple was losing money, yes, but they had tons of cash and Apple was never in danger of going bankrupt. Their hard-core Mac base stuck by them (including me) for most of the 90s as well. What almost put Apple out of business was that their products were just crappy, and the operating system was languishing while Windows gradually incorporated any advantages that the Mac OS had at that time.
When Steve Jobs came back, he focused the company's efforts on the Mac, simplified the product line to a simple product matrix, axed all side projects that weren't actually producing any results, and slowly built a comprehensive strategy for the future of the Mac OS. Today's Apple shows all the results.
The Mac mini and the iMac are still good computers, and offer pretty good bang for their buck. Just because Apple doesn't update them often doesn't mean they're not good. (In fact, it was the Mac Pro that was the most neglected computer until the most recent update -- it went for about a year and a half without any really significant updates.)
This is also completely false. System 7 and 8 didn't have tons of viruses and spyware. I remember only one virus (MBDF A, if I remember correctly) ever infecting a school of Classic Mac OS machines that I administered, and it was easily expunged by using the free Disinfectant tool.
The worst "viruses" that were ever on the Classic Mac OS were the Word macro viruses. But those can hardly be blamed on the OS. The Classic Mac OS was largely virus-free just like Mac OS X is today. (Although, funnily enough, as far as I know, Mac OS X has not had a single virus and only 3 or so highly publicized trojan horses that you ended up having to manually install yourself in order to "infect" your computer.)
Wow. Who are these people and when is their psych-evaluation?
Maybe I should put on my fanboy hat, but I'm still not impressed with Vista even after SP1. It's still buggy as hell on decent hardware and I keep running into problems with software that still doesn't work.
Furthermore, I think that Apple is doing well not because of Vista's faults or successes, but because Apple has designed an OS and hardware that people like. By lowering the barriers of adoption with Intel chips and Bootcamp, Apple has finally succeeded in selling itself to a wider public. The idea that there's a zero-sum game between OSX and Windows isn't widely accepted and thus Vista has to be so good as to bring users, previously burned by XP and Vista Beta
, back into the fold. And, Vista SP1 just isn't that impressive. One more thing about the fanboy remark, it's become a pet-peeve of mine. It's an ad hominem attack, one that doesn't direct the conversation in any meaningful way. Sometimes it may be true, but the same claim could easily be directed towards you and thus negate your valuable input.
Actually it doesn't. That is the usual knee jerk reactionary thinking response that market share equals security holes. This theory has been proven wrong for years by taking a look at Apache vs IIS. Apache dominates the market yet has fewer holes each year. So the argument market share equals security holes is nonsense. It comes down to the quality of your software engineers and the desire to Do The Right Thing(tm) when developing. A luxury many commercial shops do not have. Don't write hurried crap code that isn't peer reviewed and you will have far fewer security issues regardless of market share.
Chris
Yep. It goes down to the old adage: correlation does not imply causation.
There's no linear relationship between market-share and security holes. I wish that particular meme would go away.
I have to agree. Since visiting this site over the past 5 years I'm seeing more and more of that label. Two things - first it sounds like were in a school yard and not on a forum discussing a company who's products most of us use. And second, this is a site dedicated to Apple. For anyone to be on this site and not like or respect the products that Apple makes seems a bit of a waste of time for them. Isn't there a dellrumors.com out there?
I would be interested to here what the security disaster is with the registry, and also what stability problems exist that wouldn't exist with flat .ini files scattered all over the file system.
The only argument I can think of is that having all the data in one place (the registry) introduces a single point of failure. But, it also introduces a single place to do a complete backup of this type of data.
Most Mac software "installs" via a simple .dmg. Therefore, it doesn't come with an uninstaller. This leads to orphaned config files created by the application if you ever decided to "uninstall" the app by deleting the .app bundle. This isn't much different than the registry problem on Windows. In both cases it is an application problem because the apps don't come with a proper uninstaller that can remove everything they created.
I've also had to manually rebuild my LaunchServices database on OS X via the command line, which really isn't much different than our Windows buddies having to run some sort of registry mechanic or clean up the registry by hand.
Actually, SA has a good point about Vista and SP1 and that's why the comment bothers me. It makes the inference that any response or argument is from a fanboy and thus should not have value. It's a rhetorical trick.
I like the PC fans who have something to say, rare as they are sometimes, about Apple. Their POV is often interesting and informative, even if I still disagree with them.
Well store of sure market share means propagation opportunities.
But that is about as far as it goes. The Difference between an attack that can spread to 40% of Contacts to one that can spread to 20% is a factor of 10 after 5 degrees of separation, and a factor of 1000 compared with one that has 5% infection rate.
Really though as Apple grows are we really likely to ever see anyone with marketshare like mircosoft, the targets are going to things like Google Apps to enough computers to really spread.
Still no excuse not to build a more secure system.
I agree to the best of my memory the peak was close to this number, maybe 16%. If data exists to the contrary I would happily say I am wrong, but I doubt it.
well, I did say I believed that was the market share. Not that it was fact.
However, yes, the market share strategy was one of the major factors that hurt Apple. There were a lot of factors, but the quest for market share was one of them. I was lucky enough to not really use Performas. However, on the occasion I did sit at one, they were pretty awful. One of the reasons they were awful was that Amelio and Sculley released far too many models in an attempt for market share. They tried to have a model for everyone. Back then Apple attempted to compete directly with the Dells and Compaqs of the world. Additionally, they did begin to cut corners, decreasing quality. Throw in the disaster that was Copland and the fact that Apple was spread far too thin, making stuff like cameras.
It wasn't a neglect of the consumer line up. It was the fact that they were inherently lame computers with cut corners and a creaking operating system. And the "high end" computers weren't much better. The PowerBooks of that time were pretty awful (5300 anyone?) as were many of the PowerPC towers. Much of the problems, at least with the Power Macs, were due to the OS. Not to mention other poor products like some of their monitors.
I'm slightly worried - the more popular OS X becomes then the more enticing it will look to hackers, fraudsters etc.
UNIX or no UNIX, OS X isn't indestructible, and look at all the iPhone hacks there are, purely because it's a very popular device.
I'm a lil scared
UNIX or no UNIX, OS X isn't indestructible, and look at all the iPhone hacks there are, purely because it's a very popular device.
I'm a lil scared