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Mac Marketshare at Universities Booming?

Evangelion said:
Linux has wide selection of professional software. It might be software that you do not use, but they are there. Hell, the software you recommended, Eclipse, runs on Linux!
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I meant 'professional' in the sense of payed-for, close-source software. I think the open-source scene is really amazing. However, I like the support that OSX has from the professional software developers, something that simply has not yet occured in the Linux arena.:(

That's why I said I like OSX, because I can use Eclipse, Gimp and any other open-source software and at the same time run Photoshop if I need to...
 
Why do some of you insist we buy Mac to look cool???

offwidafairies and MacBsct, specifically post that students buy Macs to look cool. Hmm.... that is probably not the reason at all... Have you guys ever owned a Mac or used one for any length of time? 'Cool' has nothing to do with it. It's because of the software!!!

Do you think the iPod put MP3 players on the map because they looked cool? NO! It's the software! There were loads of MP3 players before the iPod.. they usually ended up in the junk drawers of the purchaser. I know I bought a few.. never used them... I use my iPhone/Nano daily... The Nano, I move between the car stereo.. or working out with Nike+ and the iPhone for everything else. Could I get away with just owning the iPhone... Of course, but I buy the products I like. I buy the products which are designed well.

Same with the iPhone... it's the software... and wait until Leopard hits the iPhone... omg!!!

My latest Mac convert said after only one day of owning a Macbook, " I can't believe I didn't switch sooner, this thing is amazing". I am sure that is a common quote from those that are just switching to the OS X platform.
 
Definitely a noticeable increase in Macs on my campus. I go to WPI (an engineering school in Massachusetts) so we certainly have our share of Windows/Linux geeks but I'm seeing a lot more Mac laptops. I walked into someone's room the other day and he had a Mac Pro, Cinema display (20 or 23") and a Macbook Pro on his desk. I was like, seriously? Oh well, I for one welcome our new Apple overlords.
 
Market Share versus "Fleet Sales"

On MacBreak Weekly a few weeks ago, Merlin Mann made a very interesting observation. What would be the Mac's market share if we looked only at personal (rather than business) computers? In other words, people who buy the computer they want to use, versus what is on their desk at the office. The analogy he made was leading car figures (Ford leading in overall sales, versus Toyota leading for family car (i.e. taking out fleet sales, rentals, etc.).

It sounds as though the college figure probably reflects a population that has to buy their ow hardware. Provided they meet some base criteria (MS Word Documents and a browser, perhaps), they can buy whatever they want. And, the market has spoken.

("Wait," you say. "Macs are more expensive. These college kids get cool discounts" Though they don't have the ultra low end (older Intel procs, for instance), when you compare apples to apples, Macs cost about the same as a Dell.)
 
innhitman said:
offwidafairies and MacBsct, specifically post that students buy Macs to look cool. Hmm.... that is probably not the reason at all... Have you guys ever owned a Mac or used one for any length of time? 'Cool' has nothing to do with it. It's because of the software!!!

Do you think the iPod put MP3 players on the map because they looked cool? NO! It's the software! There were loads of MP3 players before the iPod.. they usually ended up in the junk drawers of the purchaser. I know I bought a few.. never used them... I use my iPhone/Nano daily... The Nano, I move between the car stereo.. or working out with Nike+ and the iPhone for everything else. Could I get away with just owning the iPhone... Of course, but I buy the products I like. I buy the products which are designed well.

Same with the iPhone... it's the software... and wait until Leopard hits the iPhone... omg!!!

My latest Mac convert said after only one day of owning a Macbook, " I can't believe I didn't switch sooner, this thing is amazing". I am sure that is a common quote from those that are just switching to the OS X platform.
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well i bought my first mac in 2000 because it looked nice! you could say i thought i looked cool. and none of the alternatives were at all pleasant looking. i discovered all the other good things afterwards.
 
innhitman said:
offwidafairies and MacBsct, specifically post that students buy Macs to look cool. Hmm.... that is probably not the reason at all... Have you guys ever owned a Mac or used one for any length of time? 'Cool' has nothing to do with it. It's because of the software!!!.
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Yes, I have two Macs, but use Windows professionally and I entirely agree with you. However maybe I'm just a little cynical...

Notice in that picture that all those students have powerbooks/mac pro's? Wouldn't a MacBook be sufficient for taking the odd note in lectures? All I'm saying is there seems to be a little more money around these days - jealousy I'm sure... ;)
 
Detektiv-Pinky said:
I meant 'professional' in the sense of payed-for, close-source software. I think the open-source scene is really amazing. However, I like the support that OSX has from the professional software developers, something that simply has not yet occured in the Linux arena.:(

That's why I said I like OSX, because I can use Eclipse, Gimp and any other open-source software and at the same time run Photoshop if I need to...
Click to expand...

OSX is a great development platform, out of the box - with XCode. You can *nix stuff.

Eclipse is a good IDE ( with a dire UI ) - but there is still the AWT-SWT bug that cripples a lot of otherwise good plugins, such as MyEclipse.

I'd take OSX over windows for development any day of the week ( unless it was of course, dependent on windows ). The windows command line is hard work and inflexible compared to that of the terminal. Cygwin under windows just isn't the same.

Now can these students afford Macs in the first place?!!
 
MacBiscuit said:
Yes, I have two Macs, but use Windows professionally and I entirely agree with you. However maybe I'm just a little cynical...

Notice in that picture that all those students have powerbooks/mac pro's? Wouldn't a MacBook be sufficient for taking the odd note in lectures? All I'm saying is there seems to be a little more money around these days - jealousy I'm sure... ;)
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I've found that MacBook Pros tend to be a graduation gift for incoming freshman. The majority of us older PowerPC users tend to migrate to the MacBook as our iBooks and PowerBooks get older.

I remember when I was lucky to find someone with a Mac laptop or even in a lab. Now Mac users are everywhere and the labs are getting packed.
 
bigandy said:
there's been a big increase here too. if only the unis would embrace them. :
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Yeah, this is good news but only a trickle. I went to Stanford and started in 1989. Basically the entire campus was mac, and the first thing you did as a freshman was, money permitting, place your order for an SE/30. One wacko in our dorm set up a PC in his room (don't think it was even windows at the time) . . . oh how we laughed. Everybody else could hookup to printers and the network using appletalk, and he was just geeking away with his DOS commands.

Well, pretty sure that mac market share has declined both at Stanford and in the world since then. It's all about what's supported in the community--if everybody has macs, then there's an incentive to have one as well. (Because, well, software is less expensive)
 
At my school (a Seminary), there was one Mac when I entered (my old iBook G4). Today, after only three and a half years, there are more than 20 - that's about 15% Macs, 85% PCs. And there are already four other guys I've convinced to buy a Mac when their PCs are dead.
 
This has also been my experience, in our department anyway, at the University of Washington. Our computing group manager is adamant that we will NOT support Macs; even so, faculty and students (especially grad students) are buying Macs - usually laptops - when it comes time to replace their personal computers (as well as work computers purchased with research funds).

With the folks I've talked to (which is a small subset I realize), the iPod has nothing to do with it. Many of them buy the Mac before the iPod, if they ever buy an iPod at all. For some it's been the advantages of having a great interface on top of Unix. For others - including a new emeritus professor that I was talking to yesterday - it's the reputation of the Mac being safer (and lower maintenance) than a Windows PC, sometimes combined with bad experiences with Windows laptops. I personally think a lot of it is because people seen as "tech savvy" at our university have adopted Macs at a significantly higher rate over the past several years - people tend to be swayed by this over time when they make their own decisions (a large percentage of Unix folks seem to own a Mac laptop for their own use nowadays, although far fewer seem to be inclined towards switching their servers away from Linux/BSD).

BTW the switch to Intel has proven itself to be a stroke of genius. Almost every switcher I know has said they've had their eye on a Mac for quite some time, but the need to run "Windows Application X" had prevented them before.
 
I'm glad we're all so happy that marketshare is going up. I am also happy that it is young people who are getting their hands on these computers. Hopefully these young people will become a little curious and try to break them the way Windows machines have been broken, necessitating anti-virus, firewalls and update Tuesday.

MacBiscuit said:
I really don't think this has much to do with the superiority of Apple. It's about fashion pure and simple. Macs are cool. PCs are a bit geeky. Plus Macs are more expensive so they also have the premium 'cachet'.

I notice this survey is of the top colleges where students tend to be a little more affluent. I wonder what those on lower incomes are using?
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innhitman said:
offwidafairies and MacBsct, specifically post that students buy Macs to look cool. Hmm.... that is probably not the reason at all... Have you guys ever owned a Mac or used one for any length of time? 'Cool' has nothing to do with it. It's because of the software!!!

Do you think the iPod put MP3 players on the map because they looked cool? NO! It's the software! There were loads of MP3 players before the iPod.. they usually ended up in the junk drawers of the purchaser. I know I bought a few.. never used them... I use my iPhone/Nano daily... The Nano, I move between the car stereo.. or working out with Nike+ and the iPhone for everything else. Could I get away with just owning the iPhone... Of course, but I buy the products I like. I buy the products which are designed well.

Same with the iPhone... it's the software... and wait until Leopard hits the iPhone... omg!!!

My latest Mac convert said after only one day of owning a Macbook, " I can't believe I didn't switch sooner, this thing is amazing". I am sure that is a common quote from those that are just switching to the OS X platform.
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I'm going with MacBiscuit. If you don't think Apple has saturated the market with an expectation of user experience from using their products you're wrong. If you don't think there's a certain amount of ego boost from using a Mac instead of a PC just read any number of member signatures on this board. And if there is one thing people love to feel its better/superior/smarter (take your pick) than other people.

As for the iPod, yes, it looked cool. 5 gigs of music in the palm of your hand. Are you forgetting what mp3 players with that capacity looked like before the iPod? Or the capacity of mp3 players that could rival the iPods size when it first came out? And what about the mini/nano? It was the size and colors more than the software that made that success. The iPod had the same software and was only $50 more than the mini when it first came out for more than 4 times the capacity. But it's the minis that sellout. Software, right.

$156 per share, that sounds a little over valued all things considered including a look at the tech industry as a whole (which are all trading at less than $60 including tech companies that aren't going anywhere, ie: Microsoft, Intel). If you don't think there is a 'cool' factor driving the share price and consumers you're being naive. I'm not saying it's all there is but it is there and Apple is reaping the whirlwind.
 
I certainly noticed a dramatic increase in the number of Macs I saw around campus over the tenure of my time at university. I'll bet there are even more around now.:)
 
Detektiv-Pinky said:
I meant 'professional' in the sense of payed-for, close-source software.
Click to expand...

Well, I fail to see why that software would be better than free, open-source software. It CAN be of course, but being closed does not automatically mean that it's better.

That said, there are LOTS of closed, paid-for professional software for Linux.

That's why I said I like OSX, because I can use Eclipse, Gimp and any other open-source software and at the same time run Photoshop if I need to...
Click to expand...

Well, there are other pieces of pro-software besides Photoshop, and I fail to see why everyone keeps on bringing up Photoshop.
 
UNC-CH offers reasonable support for macs with respect to software, but the "campus computing initiative" still pushes thinkpads on incoming students.

ECU, on the other hand, had macbooks as part of their "recommended laptop" selection.

Shame on you, UNC IT dept!
 
Detektiv-Pinky said:
I have learned to touch-type a long time ago and expect keys to be on certain places on the keyboard.
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I have learned to touch-type about 10 years ago. In the beginning I typed most on Solaris machines then Windows at my university but also on my non-internet connected Mac at home. I quickly started to switch to the English layout as I found it more convenient for programming (brackets etc.). Over the last six years I mainly typed on a Mac.

My biggest beef with the Windows keyboard layout is the use of ctrl instead of cmd. The cmd key is always directly below my thumbs, the ctrl key is mostly too far out.

I constantly switch between the German layout and the English one, the keyboard I am using has the Swiss German layout printed on it. I don't know all special characters, particular those accessible via alt, by heart. In OS X, I simply open the keyboard viewer whenever I cannot find a character or if I need a character more easily accessible in German layout I quickly switch to it.

There might be a keyboard viewer in Windows as well but it must be well hidden as none of my Windows using colleagues was able to show it to me. Switching layouts is not as reliable in Windows neither. Sometimes I switch but it keeps typing in the old layout. Or I switch programs and it switches the layout (this might be a feature but I find it most annoying).

Just select (or build) a keyboard layout you like and use it on all computers.
 
Back in the day Apple gave hefty student discounts. Are they still giving deep discounts to students?
 
I've been out of school for a few years now, but I live in a large college town. The big shift to Macs has been clear, based on what I see kids are using in cafes and coffee places. The obvious reason is Intel/Bootcamp/XP. For students (and parents especially) compatibility with the standard business software is a must. The Intel chips allow the style and hipness of Apple hardware, with total compatibility if needed.

The photo of a almost completely Apple classroom is somewhat misleading. The Journalism department at that school requires Macs and this is one of their classes. Still, the fact that they are required by a department is just as interesting.
 
Braz0s said:
Back in the day Apple gave hefty student discounts. Are they still giving deep discounts to students?
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Not so much anymore. About $100. The discount also applies to faculty and staff.

As for how students afford Macs, at least at Princeton when I was an undergrad, if you were on financial aid (and FYI, many students here are not affluent and on financial aid), you automatically qualified for a loan to buy a machine. However they are getting them, they are all over the place. I currently work at the IT department for Princeton and right outside my door is one of the students' favored study areas. I have seen that little Apple logo multiply over the years like a bunny.

Now, whether that actually impacts marketshare down the line, who knows. When I was a student, the campus was practically 100% mac and it is one of the reasons I have always owned one. Of course, the dark days of Apple kind of squandered that advantage for many. The advent of Intel chips might prevent that now in that you can always have your Mac run Windows apps if you need them. No need to convert and join the dark side.
 
ive only seen about 5 macs at uni including mine. the whole uni is so "pc". we've got a mac lab with about 20 imac core duos but you have to be a computer science student to login... which im not! :(

when i switched last year i didnt know how to connect to the uni's wireless (had to connect to vpn using internet connect) the tech guy was like oh a mac? we dont support them... and im like what? then another techie came to help me and was like macs, yeh there easy!
 
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