Mac Marketshare at Universities Booming?

[matthewHUB]

Sleep function

I think one of the great things for college students is that you can just close the screen in-between lectures and let the mac sleep. Hibernating or sleeping on a PC just makes me itch. it's crap.

 

[Eidorian]

I think one of the great things for college students is that you can just close the screen in-between lectures and let the mac sleep. Hibernating or sleeping on a PC just makes me itch. it's crap.

It works just fine for me in Windows and OS X.

Hibernation in OS X is another story.

 

[SiliconAddict]

I like books too. Even though about half of our weekly readings are currently distrubted online, I still print them out and read them. Something about good old fashioned paper and ink just makes reading easier.

There will always be books, like there will always be an affinity for records. However the benefits now that e-ink is here far outweigh the cons. as far as I'm concerned the advent of e-books really taking off will be as big as the Gutenberg's Printing Press. And for the one big reason: Once e-books hit a critical mass writers no longer have to go through a publisher to get their wares to the masses. As cheap as binding a book is now a days, and god knows it HAS come down in price, its still far an away much more expensive then distributing a PDF or e-book on the net.
There are some really good web based literature out there that can only be viewed via the net. The problem is there is no good device for viewing such content. A laptop monitor? I think not. A PDA? Close but too small (My iPaq 4700 4" VGA screen is good, yet it still is cramped.
No Apple NEEDS to jump into this market. The big problem though as I see it is the publishers. They are just as bad as the RIAA. Go to most e-book sites. Their wares are almost as expensive as their paper counterpart which IMHO is a load of crap.

PS- And imagine libraries. A certain segment can do it all online. No longer do you need to drive somewhere to get a book. Open up iTMS, enter your library card which will take you to your local library where you can rent books, and audio books (Did I forget to mention the iText will have a 512MB internal storage that has a slider in iTunes that you can divvy up between audio books and e-books.?
I kid you not. I would get down on my hands and knees and lick Steve Jobs's shoes for a e-reader ecosystem from them. *does the whole phone hand gesture thing* Steve. Call me. We can schedule a time and date.

 

[cdj948]

I think one of the great things for college students is that you can just close the screen in-between lectures and let the mac sleep. Hibernating or sleeping on a PC just makes me itch. it's crap.

I couldn't agree more! I attend University, and thats all i do between classes... open it up when your at your next class and everything is just as you left it with no wait what so ever.

 

[SiliconAddict]

I think one of the great things for college students is that you can just close the screen in-between lectures and let the mac sleep. Hibernating or sleeping on a PC just makes me itch. it's crap.

*sighs* No it doesn't. As long as you have the correct drivers, updated firmware, etc its fine. My Thinkpad had all kinds of problems with hibernating (I loath suspend. Waste of power. ARE YOU LISTENING APPLE! IMPLEMENT HIBERNATION AS A USER ACCESSIBLE FEATURE!) Until I went with a centrino solution for WIFI. Since then its been flawless. Its all about the drivers. as long as you are geek enough you generally won't have any problems. And its even better in Vista. hibernating or Standby is faster then even OS X and this is on a MBP I'm measuring the performance.

 

[CalBoy]

There will always be books, like there will always be an affinity for records. However the benefits now that e-ink is here far outweigh the cons. as far as I'm concerned the advent of e-books really taking off will be as big as the Gutenberg's Printing Press. And for the one big reason: Once e-books hit a critical mass writers no longer have to go through a publisher to get their wares to the masses. As cheap as binding a book is now a days, and god knows it HAS come down in price, its still far an away much more expensive then distributing a PDF or e-book on the net.
There are some really good web based literature out there that can only be viewed via the net. The problem is there is no good device for viewing such content. A laptop monitor? I think not. A PDA? Close but too small (My iPaq 4700 4" VGA screen is good, yet it still is cramped.
No Apple NEEDS to jump into this market. The big problem though as I see it is the publishers. They are just as bad as the RIAA. Go to most e-book sites. Their wares are almost as expensive as their paper counterpart which IMHO is a load of crap.

PS- And imagine libraries. A certain segment can do it all online. No longer do you need to drive somewhere to get a book. Open up iTMS, enter your library card which will take you to your local library where you can rent books, and audio books (Did I forget to mention the iText will have a 512MB internal storage that has a slider in iTunes that you can divvy up between audio books and e-books.?
I kid you not. I would get down on my hands and knees and lick Steve Jobs's shoes for a e-reader ecosystem from them. *does the whole phone hand gesture thing* Steve. Call me. We can schedule a time and date.

Granted, electronic publishing makes life easier in a lot of ways, and also increases efficiency, but what about the ease of reading? Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I prefer a book made of paper. I haven't see one of the new "e-ink" readers yet (well that's not true, a guy on BART had one the other day) in order to judge how easy they are to read. If they can match a piece of paper, I'll take it. If not, I'll waste my time and drive to the library.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Granted, electronic publishing makes life easier in a lot of ways, and also increases efficiency, but what about the ease of reading? Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I prefer a book made of paper. I haven't see one of the new "e-ink" readers yet (well that's not true, a guy on BART had one the other day) in order to judge how easy they are to read. If they can match a piece of paper, I'll take it. If not, I'll waste my time and drive to the library.

I've seen a couple. Its close to paper. Very close. Not perfect. I'd say 80-90%. But e-ink is a tech. Its implementation that brings how close it is to paper. So you cant based the tech on on company's implementation of it.
Sony's latest e-reader (Literally one that launched this last week.) is suppose to be very close to paper. Now imagine a reader that doesn't use a dang button to change pages but your finger across the page. (Sound familiar?) And before someone brings up battery life. Battery life is measured in weeks not days with e-ink based readers. Expect that to get up to months in the coming years as the tech matures.

 

[CalBoy]

I've seen a couple. Its close to paper. Very close. Not perfect. I'd say 80-90%. But e-ink is a tech. Its implementation that brings how close it is to paper. So you cant based the tech on on company's implementation of it.
Sony's latest e-reader (Literally one that launched this last week.) is suppose to be very close to paper. Now imagine a reader that doesn't use a dang button to change pages but your finger across the page. (Sound familiar?) And before someone brings up battery life. Battery life is measured in weeks not days with e-ink based readers. Expect that to get up to months in the coming years as the tech matures.

Like I said, I'll check it out (because it does sound like it has very good potential) but I'll be a fairly harsh critic. However, if it comes to muster, I'll get one.

On a side note, has anyone with one of these things noticed more eye strain with it than regular paper? This is one of the factors that would go into my decision making process, as law school would not be fun if eye strain was a constant problem.

 

[Kashchei]

To anyone in academia: it is exceedingly easy to persuasively argue that dual-boot machines need to be bought using grant money. Two machines for the price of one (or the price of Parallels if you want to go that route). I just successfully did this for my department and we are now the proud owners of 36 new 20" iMacs. The best part: these machines replace our old Dell machines. Some of our students have already complained that they have never used Macs and don't want to have to even try something new. This is the audience we need to reach, the ones who know little to nothing about computers and aren't willing to expand their horizons. Once they get some perspective on how much better OS X is from Windows, they'll be converts.

If more schools are able to do something similar, Apple could easily continue to increase their market share.

 

[mrplow]

Kind of surprised that Carnegie Mellon University, ranked #1 for CS, wasn't mentioned... Macs absolutely dominate the campus.

 

[mamabigdog503]

20 year old marketing strategy now bearing fruit

These numbers are actually the results of a plan Apple put in place 20 years ago. Apple has been the primary choice for many, many schools and school districts for years. These kids are the product of learning in a Mac environment from Day 1. As these kids age and move into college, staying with Apple is the most natural thing in the world. Why would they go to another product, when the one they've been so familiar with all their lives is right there, and so much cooler than those other ugly boxes with stuff they don't have history with.

It's a brilliant plan, actually. Get them hooked while they're young, keep it relevant as they grow up, and they will drive the bigger market someday.

Expect to see these numbers continue to rise as this generation ages. Apple hasn't even gotten started yet.

MBD

 

[Eidorian]

*sighs* No it doesn't. As long as you have the correct drivers, updated firmware, etc its fine. My Thinkpad had all kinds of problems with hibernating (I loath suspend. Waste of power. ARE YOU LISTENING APPLE! IMPLEMENT HIBERNATION AS A USER ACCESSIBLE FEATURE!) Until I went with a centrino solution for WIFI. Since then its been flawless. Its all about the drivers. as long as you are geek enough you generally won't have any problems. And its even better in Vista. hibernating or Standby is faster then even OS X and this is on a MBP I'm measuring the performance.

I really have to agree here. I closed my Dell laptop from work running Windows XP while on the bus today after starting some work. I fell asleep and didn't wake up for an hour. I was freaking out that my battery was dead and I wouldn't be able to save anything. I just open my laptop and it restores from hibernation and Access 2007 is there just like I left it. My battery only dropped from 87% to 81%. As much as I love OS X, this clunky old Dell knew what to do and all that I did was enable hibernation in the Power Management Control Panel.

Dear Apple,

Enable hibernation for us weary travelers that don't want a dead battery if we forget to shut off our closed laptops.

 

[Westside guy]

I really have to agree here. I closed my Dell laptop from work running Windows XP while on the bus today after starting some work. I fell asleep and didn't wake up for an hour. I was freaking out that my battery was dead and I wouldn't be able to save anything. I just open my laptop and it restores from hibernation and Access 2007 is there just like I left it. My battery only dropped from 87% to 81%. As much as I love OS X, this clunky old Dell knew what to do and all that I did was enable hibernation in the Power Management Control Panel.

Hibernation shouldn't be using the battery at all - that's the whole point of hibernation versus sleep/suspend. Hibernation writes the existing state of the computer, including the contents of RAM, to a file on the hard disk - then it shuts down completely. There's no power draw during hibernation, so your battery shouldn't drop no matter how long the machine hibernates.

I prefer sleep/suspend mode (and have turned off "safe sleep" so the disk image isn't written at all), and preferred it even back when I owned a clunky old Dell Inspiron. MUCH faster recovery when powering back up; plus from a practical point of view you'd have to leave your laptop asleep for several days before you'd have to worry about the battery dying.

 

[Eidorian]

Hibernation shouldn't be using the battery at all - that's the whole point of hibernation versus sleep/suspend. Hibernation writes the existing state of the computer, including the contents of RAM, to a file on the hard disk - then it shuts down completely. There's no power draw during hibernation, so your battery shouldn't drop no matter how long the machine hibernates.

I prefer sleep/suspend mode (and have turned off "safe sleep" so the disk image isn't written at all), and preferred it even back when I owned a clunky old Dell Inspiron. MUCH faster recovery when powering back up; plus from a practical point of view you'd have to leave your laptop asleep for several days before you'd have to worry about the battery dying.

I understand how hibernation works.

My laptop went to sleep when I closed it and then it hibernated itself automatically. The sleep light was flashing before I nodded off and I woke to see that it wasn't doing so anymore.

The battery life in sleep mode is remarkable but I'd rather hibernate my machine.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Hibernation shouldn't be using the battery at all - that's the whole point of hibernation versus sleep/suspend. Hibernation writes the existing state of the computer, including the contents of RAM, to a file on the hard disk - then it shuts down completely. There's no power draw during hibernation, so your battery shouldn't drop no matter how long the machine hibernates.

I prefer sleep/suspend mode (and have turned off "safe sleep" so the disk image isn't written at all), and preferred it even back when I owned a clunky old Dell Inspiron. MUCH faster recovery when powering back up; plus from a practical point of view you'd have to leave your laptop asleep for several days before you'd have to worry about the battery dying.

Umm not really. Even overnight it drops at least 5% for me if not more. I've never timed it but it NOT a trivial amount. There have been instances where I get up in the morning and I may have at most a couple minutes of battery life remaining, instead of the half hour I had the previous night. So I need to trudge out to my car and grab my adapter all because Apple doesn't allow you to define when to hibernate after X amount of time, something that Windows has done for years.
My ThinkPad is set to go into suspend after 15 minutes of nonuse on battery (1 hour on external power.) and then hibernate after 1 hour on battery. (3 on external power.) What you are suggesting is you aren't a fan of flexibility. Something that MS and XP\Vista's power management has and sadly OS X doesn't because of the insane need to adhere to K.I.S.S. I wish there was a command line switch to turn on hidden advanced features in OS X. Because frankly the OS frusterates me in the way it treats everyone like a child noob who has never touched a computer. Would it kill Apple to place a slider to control the fan speed on your laptop to keep it cool? (Simple slider where it shows on one side cool, lower battery life, and noisy and on the other hot, extended battery life, and quiet.) Or advanced power mgmt features?
Windows biggest PITA's is the fact that it has so many settings that it confuses nontechy people. This is a blessing and a curse depending on the person. I wish someone would come out with an OS that during setup will ask you how comfortable you are with computers (Novice, intermediate, professional, 1337!) and customize the UI and its settings based on your choice. But hey. Why would we ever want choice.

 

[Fortimir]

Of course, lest we forget, when you get to a college/university level... many many colleges not only have only Macs on campus and recommend Macs to students...

...several colleges REQUIRE incoming freshmen to purchase Macs.

I'm not saying colleges don't do the same with PCs, but that is going to skew mac numbers in that level of education.

 

[Westside guy]

Umm not really. Even overnight it drops at least 5% for me if not more. I've never timed it but it NOT a trivial amount.

On more than one occasion I've (accidentally) left both my Dell - back in the bad old days - and my Powerbook asleep instead of powered down for periods greater than 2 days. The battery certainly dropped, but in both cases the charge left was still well over 50%.

Of course I am working plugged-in much of the time; so dropping 30-40% over a few days wasn't problematic. If you're already starting with a drained battery then you do have to worry about losing unsaved work.

 

[Quiara]

Umm not really. Even overnight it drops at least 5% for me if not more. I've never timed it but it NOT a trivial amount. There have been instances where I get up in the morning and I may have at most a couple minutes of battery life remaining, instead of the half hour I had the previous night. So I need to trudge out to my car and grab my adapter all because Apple doesn't allow you to define when to hibernate after X amount of time, something that Windows has done for years.

Wow, weird. I sleep mine overnight all the time and it's never down more than 2% - 3% the next morning.

Hibernation is a good option, though, that I wish we as Mac users had. But sleep ain't bad. ^_^

 

[Westside guy]

I understand how hibernation works.

My laptop went to sleep when I closed it and then it hibernated itself automatically. The sleep light was flashing before I nodded off and I woke to see that it wasn't doing so anymore.

Ah, that makes sense. I mistakenly assumed you were putting it directly into hibernate mode.

I think one of the factors that swayed me against hibernation was (in my pre-Mac days) I routinely dual-booted my machines between Red Hat Linux and Windows. Managing hibernation in that sort of setup requires some user intervention because the machine has to go through the boot process prior to recovering the system state from the hibernation file. Unlike sleep, hibernation is managed in an OS-specific manner - so Windows, for example, expects the NT loader to manage the start of the system state recovery. It's too bad the various OSes haven't worked out a method that would be more generic; but I suppose for the vast majority of people it doesn't matter (since they only ever use one OS), so the incentive is pretty low.

 

[plumosa]

These numbers are actually the results of a plan Apple put in place 20 years ago. Apple has been the primary choice for many, many schools and school districts for years. These kids are the product of learning in a Mac environment from Day 1. As these kids age and move into college, staying with Apple is the most natural thing in the world. Why would they go to another product, when the one they've been so familiar with all their lives is right there, and so much cooler than those other ugly boxes with stuff they don't have history with.

It's a brilliant plan, actually. Get them hooked while they're young, keep it relevant as they grow up, and they will drive the bigger market someday.

Expect to see these numbers continue to rise as this generation ages. Apple hasn't even gotten started yet.

MBD

I don't find this to be very accurate. I'm 25 and the first computer I used that didn't just play games (hello COMPAQ Portable) was a Mac Classic and we used Apple II's in school for the first few years.


HOWEVER, by the time we actually were using the internet at school, it was all switched to PCs. To me, macs were something to play Oregon Trail and maybe write a paragraph or two.

Fast forward 15 years and I've come back to mac, not because I used them as a child, but because I was sick of PCs breaking down and windows crapping out all the time. Most people stay with PCs because "they're the most comfortable thing" because that's what most people used growing up with the internet age, not mac. This trend of switching is based on a superior product.

 

[Quiara]

I agree. I'm 28 and in high school, we were all PC. And even when I was a freshman at uni in 97, we were all PC, with a few departments being Mac-centric. I really think that if there was some "master plan" by Apple reaching back 20 years ago . . . it kind of failed. The late interest in Macintosh computers and the OS are due to recent innovation - not some secret seeds of revolt planted in the children of the 80s.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

Apple will never be Microsoft (prediction)

Imagine what will happen if 92% of the world’s personal computer population consists of Apple machines. Will a similar problem as in the Windows world emerge? Will Apple fall victim to the same lame practices? In other words; is this a blessing or potential curse?

Apple will never be on 92% of the World's computers.

More likely, what will happen is a continuation of the historical trends already happening now.

1. Microsoft will likely try to copy Apple again and re-write windows to be on top of a BSD foundation.
2. Microsoft will get closer and closer to OS software. More and more parts of Windows will become open source.
3. Open source will get closer to Microsoft. OS communities will continue to imitate Windows in hopes of getting market share.
4. Microsoft will continue to execute very poorly. Balmer is so "almost fired" already.

So it's likely that Microsoft will continue to do poorly, and lose market share both to Linux and OS-X. Eventually, it will have to slice off it's "negative revenue" parts as the market gets tighter. This means Microsoft will have to get out of X-Box, games, advertising, media sales, and ditch it's failed executives. "Lean and mean" will be the order of the day and this is the point at which Balmer get's fired in the resulting re-organisation. Yay!

Eventually, eventually...

even this re-organisation will fail and Windows will gracefully (and almost un-noticed), slide into "freeware."

They will still (together with Linux and other freeware), command something like 75% of the market, and Apple will make the only computers that people are willing to pay for even though they will be a lot cheaper than they are today. People will be willing to do this because they will get a computer that "just works" and needs no setup. This will still be about 25% of the market only.

Apple will, on the other hand have much bigger slices of various consumer electronics markets and will be bigger than Sony is now. The iPhone will be so ubiquitous it will be just called a "phone," and probably your TV/Stereo and some of your robotics will be made by Apple.

 

[Westside guy]

1. Microsoft will likely try to copy Apple again and re-write windows to be on top of a BSD foundation.

This seems extremely unlikely. Microsoft has always tried to stress that its kernel is superior to the *nixes. With Vista, they rewrote their own IP stack largely to get rid of the one they'd borrowed from BSD years ago (and, incidentally, somehow managed to forget many of the security problems from the past decade, so they got bit with them again during the beta cycle).

I'm not saying they wouldn't be smart to use a Linux or BSD foundation; but I can't see them doing it.

 

[GoodWatch]

Apple will never be on 92% of the World's computers.

More likely, what will happen is a continuation of the historical trends already happening now.

1. Microsoft will likely try to copy Apple again and re-write windows to be on top of a BSD foundation.

Thank you for taking the time to give such an extensive answer. I’ve thought about your first point often but in hindsight. Windows, as desktop OS, is still Microsoft’s biggest cash cow with the largest margin. They have lost 1.9 billion on the X-Box so far and are losing on the Zune as well. But still they have mind boggling turnover and profit figures. I think the EU is going to push for the consumer’s right to buy every computer without an OS. For people who are uncomfortable installing and configuring an OS this will make no difference and if I guestimate, a lot of those don’t live in ‘nerd town’. If they buy a car, it must come with an engine and not with an engine of their choice in a crate. The whole Vista project has become so immense, like a super tanker, that it will be very difficult to steer it in a different direction. MS have pockets deep enough to start from scratch, learn from their own and other’s mistakes and come up with a whole new OS. But if it is not 100% backward compatible (with all the consequences) with the former Windows, it will die with grace very soon. That is the inevitable Catch-22 if there is an installed base worth billions of Dollars, Euros and Yen, etc. Apple made a very, very smart move. It could not have done so if they had 92% of the market.

But that steady and easy flow of income will become less in the future. No, let me rephrase this, MS can’t take this steady flow for granted anymore. But all of this is only amounts to ‘crystal ball gazing’. I have already taken the decision to switch. I’ve been contemplating this over a year and started to read magazines, sites and bought an OS X 10.4 book. In my household are already 3 iPods although that wasn’t the main reason.

 

[Westside guy]

I’ve thought about your first point often but in hindsight. Windows, as desktop OS, is still Microsoft’s biggest cash cow with the largest margin.

I don't believe you're right about this. I think Microsoft Office is, by far, their biggest cash cow. I've heard this from a lot of sources, but the only direct evidence I can provide is this...

Microsoft donates a LOT of software to the university where I work (I'm a web/IT person) through MSDN. They provide virtually all of their software to students, staff, and faculty - for free. Windows XP and Vista, Visual Studio, Sharepoint Server (pretty much all of their server offerings), etc.; there's something like 150 different packages available. But you know what's NOT there? Microsoft Office. People can buy it for a discount through MSDN; but Microsoft is adamantly opposed to giving Office away.