Looking 3-5 years down the road.. I see Apple with a 25%+ market share..

[patrick0brien]

-Shadowfax

Very true. They don't know, what they don't know.

Ignorance - to them - is bliss. They deal, and assume that computing is just like that.

This is why we Mac users get such a jazz out of seeing their astonishment to our "slow" "overpriced" hardware.

 

[rfgecko33]

Maybe I am some sort of computer idiot savant, or just damn lucky, but I have never had all of these problems with Windows XP that everyone is describing. For example:

B]"My best friend uses a PC running WinXP and it crashes on him like every 15 minutes.. and all he's doing is surfing the net and talking on AIM."[/B]

Ya know, OSX isn't magic. If your friend has this much trouble with XP, he's going to have problems with OSX.

I would say that my XP Desktop machine runs every bit well as my Jaguar Ibook. It actually ran better than the Ibook with 10.1

Meanwhile, back at the point of the thread:

If Apple actually wants to increase their market share they need to start advertising like it. Right now, they are advertising Macs to Mac users. Take those stupid switch commercials. Please
Do you really think that crap is going to convince Joe Lunchbox to get a Mac? All it did was join in on the Windows bashing that so many Mac enthusiasts love. Blue screen of death..blue screen of death..the camera wouldn't work...my paper on hemp as a natural resource disappeared...blah blah freakin blah. I've never had a blue screen of death in XP and why didn't the chick with the camera tell her Dad to read his ***** manual? Geez. And here's an idea, how about showing the product in the commercial.

It seems to me that Apple has painted itself into a corner with this image they have created. They have made themselves out to be this uber-hip elitist brand. That's all well and good if your desire is to be a niche supplier with 3% of the market. But if they want to actually compete they are going to have to go against the Wallmarts and Circuit Cities of the world. The eMac is not what a compooter is to John and Jane potential convert. There should be an entry level mid tower. 800 MHz G4 with keyboard and mouse that they could use their existing monitor with for $600. And if Steve Jobs wouldn't mind talking to a cow, it couldn't hurt.

Finally, while in practicality the megahertz myth is just that, perception carries a whole lot of weight in the computer market. A huge segment of buyers are always going to think that 3GHz must be a lot faster that 1.42GHz. Apple needs to find a way to address that. While it is not my favorite solution, they may want to consider the Cyrix/AMD practice of "Performance Rating". Call the 1.42GHz G4 a G4 2500.

Groovy

 

[GregA]

okay, I'm a little bored and should go to bed... but some stuff I read on IBMs OS/400s and iSeries got me thinking. Plus a totally unsubstatiated rumour about IBM working with Apple on cocoa & some office apps.

It goes like this...

IBM is about to start offering some low end PPC970 servers. Always, IBM has done lots of OS development and I don't think they'd go near OSX for their big machines - but IBMs OS/400s can load multiple OSes. They run AIX & Linux side by side, they could easily add OSX Servers at no risk, on some VERY serious hardware.

The unsubstatiated rumour was cocoa development - Cocoa on AIX and IBM's Linux. Could IBM be interested in bringing some of the Mac's (cocoa) offerings to their platforms? Or maybe looking for a shared code base for the Lotus desktop apps?

I'd like to play for a moment with the idea that IBM has decided it's time to break Microsoft's monopoly. The MS-OS has the mindshare, as does MS-Office.
So they start with a better Office product - They decide it must have perfect file compatibility, functionality, and it must run EVERYWHERE - it's the only way that it could gain popularity.

Then an OS desktop replacement. It has to be very easy to run, preferably work on old hardware, work great on new hardware, have lots of applications already available, and seemlessly work with Windows machines.

Apple has a lot to offer IBM.

The Mac OS desktop on IBM machines could be licensed - but how about the MacOS being on every 'terminal' of an OS/400? I guess IBM would have to make lots of virtual OS/Xes on the server, or Apple could make remote desktops part of OS (Or both). And an old (or new) PC can be a terminal to the OS/400.

And now cocoa - could IBM use cocoa to write applications once and run them everywhere? Rewriting their own compilers to work with cocoa, so developers could compile apps for many platforms.

Would these changes also benefit the small office? I don't know. But it would be interesting to see the cross platform development effects, and remote desktops.

I figure both Apple and IBM would gain from these changes. They involve a lot of IBM hardware and Apple OSes, and Apple hardware too. Could rewrite things. And boost Apple's market share.

And now back to my regular dreaming.

 

[dkeninitz]

Do you really think that crap is going to convince Joe Lunchbox to get a Mac? All it did was join in on the Windows bashing that so many Mac enthusiasts love. Blue screen of death..blue screen of death..

I've wondered about this myself. I've been using XP on a half-dozen machines since it was first introduced - both the Home and Professional versions -- and the only time I've seen this happen is when my kids are running one of their 1 gigabyte-resource hog-games on XP Pro (which is probably a bad platform for them).

I HAVE had individual apps crash under XP, but the system almost always remains stable after closing the offending app.

OTOH, I've had OS X programs crash with at least the same frequency as with XP, and I'm not running anything particularly demanding or out of the ordinary as far as I know. I'm running the latest version of OS X (think it's 10.2.6) on a 1ghz TiBook w/ 1 gig of RAM.

And I've discovered that OS X appears to have its own blue screen of death. I've found that after certain crashes where the operating system seems to have recovered, when I go to shut down the machine it freezes, with the circular arrow thingy giving the appearance something is happening when it's not (I've left it on for as long as an hour just to see).

Frankly, I haven't found OS X to be any more stable than XP, though I do like not having to fool around with the registry - it's certainly easier to get rid of programs on OS X than on XP.

I doubt the average Joe Lunchbox "switcher" would be impressed with the supposed stability of OS X over XP, and he's definitely not likely to care about the "elegance" of the interface.

 

[masmit]

Originally posted by LVzardoz

Advanced users who use computers for professional audio, music and video processing shouldn't be CPU-penalized and told that they should pay many times more for inferior CPU performance just because the Mac is more "elegant". That is elitist crap that unfortunately lets Apple get away with its less than competitive attitude. I don't see BMW or Lexus using an underpowered Ford or Hyundai motor. Regardless of the "image", nobody would buy one if they did.

I'm a music professional running a medium sized ProTools rig. Like many professional systems, it doesn't depend much on the speed of the host computer, most of the hard work being done by proprietary extra DSP hardware. In terms of the cost of the system, the price of the host computer is an irrelevance. A friend who uses a similar system (Soundscape) on a PC, found it worthwhile to get a specially designed 'music' PC that cost the same as a Mac, anyway.

To continue the motoring analogy, I'll bet BMWs biggest sellers are the low end of their range, (Minis and 3 series) which would be both slower and more expensive than some of Ford and Chryslers models. I don't particularly endorse the 'premium' product idea, BTW, I just like the machines, however Apple choose to present them.

In any case, I really fail to see how a company with 3% of the market could ever hope to compete with one that has 95%. In fact, I'd think it very foolish of them to even try. Could Morgan or TVR hope to take on Ford? However good their product? Apple have found (or ended up) with a niche market, and though it makes sense for them to try to grow that market, focussing on price (remember the debacle of non-apple clones?) won't do it. I don't doubt that they are doing what they can to up the speed of their computers, and in marketing terms they probably need to, but switching to intel would just open them up to a disastrous loss of hardware sales, turning them rapidly into another BE.

Cheers, Mark

'Opinions are like *ssholes, everyone's got one', and that's mine

 

[macdong]

Re: hm...

Originally posted by pfranzen
I run a company that has 4 businesses under it. About 2 years ago we put a Mac into one of those companies and found it to be great. We have since switched over all except 2 machines to Mac. We have no compatibility issues what so ever. I have to run our banking software through VirtualPC but thats a small sacrifice.

On the plus side we have much much less downtime and our staff can't open weird exe files anymore. Viruses worry us alot less. We have set up several wireless networks with NO trouble.

I have to say that before OSX we would never have concidered buying. The nex xservers are great...so easy to configure...

All senior management will be upgraded to 15.4" when they come out...

I hink apples marketshare will grow but not to 25%...

Have a nice one

Gee, i want to work in your company
Got any internship position for a student Cocoa programmer?