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More Software and Marketshare

templates

Begin rant...

Why do so many people want more templates? Sure, templates look nice and are easy to use. The drawback is that using a template makes your work look just like everyone else's work. When making a presentation (Keynote or PowerPoint, does not matter) is it really a good thing to have it look just like the one that some other peron gave last week?

If a little bit of time is taken, it is not that difficult to create your own personal template. Doing so makes it original and you don't need to sacrafice quality.

...end rant
 
Price...

It's simple. If apple wants to grow marketshare, the *must* compete on price. The only reason HP/Compaq can still pull any sales is because of thier corporate sales force and large scale deployment experience. Dell is eating into that monthly (I'm seeing it happen within my company).

Some individuals will care about the small aesthetic differences between macs and PC's. (I do.) But, functionally, macs and PC's are nearly equivilent. Your average user will notice large superficial differences between the mac and a windows boxen, but almost no functional difference. So, quite rationally, it comes down to cost.

Given how apple is currently dropping the ball on aggresively pushing the iPods market share, I don't hold out hight hopes. If apple were serious about being anything other than a botique player in the mp3 space, and in truly becoming the "walkman" of the digital age, they would have a model at ~$150. But, as usual, they shy away from high-volume low-margin markets.

The PC market is high-volume low-margin. Not sure what that means for apple.

Cheers,
prat
 
Tactics

We are in a depressed PC market. Have been since OS X came out, more or less. Apple has gained no traction within the market. Why? In a depressed market (a market of lower sales) it takes less sales (in $) to move up or down a percentage point of the market. If prices were cut 10% across the line, from emac to powermac to ipod, would Apple gain enough market share, and increased sales, to offset the lower margins? Should Apple sell more PC compatible parts? I am thinking LCD displays mainly (without an adaptor). We know they have $4bil USD in the bank. We know the margins are high enough. What we don't know is, why didn't this start 18 months ago?

Bear or Bull?
 
Originally posted by pretentious
The only percentages I would trust are from Google
Since any PC not used as a print server or a cash register but actually used as a Personal computer will be on the net, and if you are on the net you are probably going to use Google.
Click to expand...

In China, Google has been banned. Completely blocked off for most.
 
Everyone make sure to tell all your friends how great your mac is and how great all of the software is. I have many many windows friends who just hate windows, and as i tell them about macintosh, they get closer and closer to buying. We, the mac community, are part of this drive for market share as well.
 
Apple needs more

I think that it is great that Apple is creating their own software. That is just another reason for people to buy them. I think it also says that not enough people (developers) are showing faith in the Mac platform so Apple needs to make its own to make up the difference.
 
Do most of you know what a 2% increase in Marketshare would accomplish for Apple?

Even if you take yearly sales you would still be talking thousands of new Mac users. If you're talking Worldwide you're talking Millions.

Each represents a new upgrade revenue stream. Each represents a .mac opportunity.

Apple's goal is to hit 8 Million in revenue. Then they'll probably shoot for 10. You have to build up step by step. I'm encouraged by this news.
 
Originally posted by mac15
thats only 5% of marketshare sales , there is a still huge install base, so 5% is not so spot on. Ambitiouslemon.com has some figures but its not up now.
Click to expand...


The lemon actually got the numbers and the story from SpyMac. I know I know you are saying oh SpyMac it can't be right then. Just read the article and decide for yourself. I personally think his numbers stand up to scrutiny.

http://www.spymac.com/comments.php?id=P215_0_5_0_C
 
Originally posted by Le Big Mac
Good point. If you make crappy machines that last half as long, you can sell twice as many of them.
Click to expand...

You can also say that if you refresh your machines with faster components at the rate the wintel side does, you would sell twice as many of them as well. :rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by DeusOmnis
Everyone make sure to tell all your friends how great your mac is and how great all of the software is. I have many many windows friends who just hate windows, and as i tell them about macintosh, they get closer and closer to buying. We, the mac community, are part of this drive for market share as well.
Click to expand...

I agree! I used to tell my friends about Macs, but they didn't get that interested. It was only until a friend of mine started getting into making home movies on his DELL, and he started complaining that I told him to go play with iMovie.

He is now the happy owner of a 17" 800Mhz iMac :D
 
Re: templates

Originally posted by PensDevil
Begin rant...

Why do so many people want more templates? Sure, templates look nice and are easy to use. The drawback is that using a template makes your work look just like everyone else's work. When making a presentation (Keynote or PowerPoint, does not matter) is it really a good thing to have it look just like the one that some other peron gave last week?

If a little bit of time is taken, it is not that difficult to create your own personal template. Doing so makes it original and you don't need to sacrafice quality.

...end rant
Click to expand...

While this seems logical, it just doesn't happen that much. With 12, I'm sure it might. But with the "main" focus always being the content unless your audience has just received a presentation with the template, they'll never know. If audience is external, chances are slim the template will be recognized as a duplicate, if it's internal you just want it to look good. You want time spent on content and delivery, not creating a consistent theme. IME/O, you can't have enough templates, unless your job is to "create templates."

The more users you have, the more templates you will need just to address personal style and taste as well. While we may disagree that more templates are needed, we probably both agree that the 12 in Keynote and much more polished than any 12 in PowerPoint.

That's presentation software, of course the need for as many word processing templates should be self-evident. For large and small businesses.
 
Re: Price...

Originally posted by praetorian_x
It's simple. If apple wants to grow marketshare, the *must* compete on price. The only reason HP/Compaq can still pull any sales is because of thier corporate sales force and large scale deployment experience. Dell is eating into that monthly (I'm seeing it happen within my company).

Some individuals will care about the small aesthetic differences between macs and PC's. (I do.) But, functionally, macs and PC's are nearly equivilent. Your average user will notice large superficial differences between the mac and a windows boxen, but almost no functional difference. So, quite rationally, it comes down to cost.

Given how apple is currently dropping the ball on aggresively pushing the iPods market share, I don't hold out hight hopes. If apple were serious about being anything other than a botique player in the mp3 space, and in truly becoming the "walkman" of the digital age, they would have a model at ~$150. But, as usual, they shy away from high-volume low-margin markets.

The PC market is high-volume low-margin. Not sure what that means for apple.

Cheers,
prat
Click to expand...

Apple may never compete at the low-margin. Actually, PC Makers can't make any money there either. Only Microsoft and software developers benefit. But there is a high-end PC market. People who actually pay for Office and the latest 3D hardware and CPU.

Apple needs to improve it's Price/Performance and add much more value for the premium. (i.e. don't gouge RAM prices, free .Mac, templates and software add-ons.)
 
Also keep in mind that market share figures includes EVERY type of computer running a form of windows. So all those thousands of computer/registers in resturants, cash registers in Wla-Mart and various other stores, etc are factored into that figure. So it's a tad disproportionate.

As for the article, I'm surprised no one is discussing the software.

We have Appleworks, that if seperate could become 2 apps. A music app had been rumored for a while now, high end pro app based on Shake.

What else could they release?
 
Re: Price...

Originally posted by praetorian_x

Given how apple is currently dropping the ball on aggresively pushing the iPods market share, I don't hold out hight hopes. If apple were serious about being anything other than a botique player in the mp3 space, and in truly becoming the "walkman" of the digital age, they would have a model at ~$150. But, as usual, they shy away from high-volume low-margin markets.

The PC market is high-volume low-margin. Not sure what that means for apple.

Cheers,
prat
Click to expand...

Agreed. Apple's pricing structure from .Mac to the iPod makes me believe that they think everyone out there is making $80K/yr with oodles of discretionary income. Perhaps the most compelling reason for holding an East Coast MacWorld is so that Mr. Jobs has to at least fly over the masses of America if not acknowledge that they exist... - j
 
Re: Re: Price...

Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Agreed. Apple's pricing structure from .Mac to the iPod makes me believe that they think everyone out there is making $80K/yr with oodles of discretionary income. Perhaps the most compelling reason for holding an East Coast MacWorld is so that Mr. Jobs has to at least fly over the masses of America if not acknowledge that they exist... - j
Click to expand...

Which leads to an interesting question I've always pondered... Has anyone ever seen demo information on the typical Apple user? Age, income, education, profession, etc... I'm sure Apple has this information internally, but has anyone ever come accross it otherwise. I think it might paint an intereting picture.
 
Re: Re: Price...

Originally posted by jayscheuerle
Agreed. Apple's pricing structure from .Mac to the iPod makes me believe that they think everyone out there is making $80K/yr with oodles of discretionary income. Perhaps the most compelling reason for holding an East Coast MacWorld is so that Mr. Jobs has to at least fly over the masses of America if not acknowledge that they exist... - j
Click to expand...

That's ridiculous.. show me a better mp3 player for the price.
 
Re: Re: Re: Price...

Originally posted by springscansing
That's ridiculous.. show me a better mp3 player for the price.
Click to expand...

For the price, you can do better. Better low end sound, more formats, recording.

What you may not be able to do is find something "nicer to own" for the price.

I have a 5GB and even though I can find better sound, it's not enough to tear me away from the iPod. But I won't upgrade without more sound control, better low end, and on-the-fly playlists.
 
Agreed. Apple's pricing structure from .Mac to the iPod makes me believe that they think everyone out there is making $80K/yr with oodles of discretionary income. Perhaps the most compelling reason for holding an East Coast MacWorld is so that Mr. Jobs has to at least fly over the masses of America if not acknowledge that they exist... - j
Click to expand...


I think you're wrong.

.Mac $8.25 per Month.

Monthly charges.
Line6 Guitarport Online- $ 7.99
XM Radio- $9.95
Sirius- $12.95
Bank Online banking Key-$6.95 per month.
Tivo- $12.95


Just a brief smattering. Running just about any service entails a small charge. .mac Is very affordable compared to many a service.

You don't need 80k to purchase Apple. This is a tired subject that's been beat to death. Apple has an acceptable price range that will only get better in the future.
 
Originally posted by Mr. MacPhisto
Maybe OS/2. It still has a small, active community supporting it - and runs pretty much all the airports in the country. IBM has not officially killed it yet because there is a user base.
Click to expand...
What part of Airports? Operations? Airline use?
 
I've found this as the time to put in my $0.02...

Does anybody else think that Apple having a user base as large (or small, most would say) as it is, that this is actually allowing them to make better products? The fact that they only have to make products for 5% of the market allows them to focus their efforts more effectively on the people that are using their products. There are definately more common denominators between 5% of the market than 90% of the market where Apple would have to cater to many different aspects of computing, personal and business...

Apple's projected direction into the digital hub, digital lifestyle and renovated personal computing experience is amazing, and they are doing it quite well, but I have noticed more and more that the people that I know who use their Apple machines for their business (using programs such as ProTools and Quark) have become alittle ticked at apple lately. It seems as if they feel like they are being left behind so that apple can pursue this new market of average computer users and that their high-end operations are now being overshadowed, even though they have been the ones throwing down thousands upon thousands of dollars for the top of the line equipment year after year...

Not all of this is attributed to apple, and i am not sure if there are more professionals out there who remember the day of the dignified macintosh but are finding themselves wondering where their breathtaking power and full-scale support has gone. Like i said before, i'm just calling it as I see it and maybe my perspective has gone awry and definately correct me if i am wrong.

Apple always has been and hopefully always will be the professionals computer for things such as movie editing, music production and especially graphic arts. Hopefully their pursuit of a larger user base will not dilute their aspect of the high end user!! In apple I trust!
 
I suspect that an iTunes update would be the logical time for an iPod update too. So if there isn't likely to be an update to iTunes until April, I guess there may not be an iPod update untill then either. bummer.
 
Re: Re: Re: Price...

Originally posted by springscansing
That's ridiculous.. show me a better mp3 player for the price.
Click to expand...

The question is whether a glorified Walkman should be $250+... I guess someone has to be an industry leader, but these things we'll have reached an appropriate price point when they fall below $100...

Show you a better one for what price? Are any other players out there nearly as expensive?

I'm guessing that Apple can retain their marketshare if they keep targeting the people that are born every minute...
 
Re: Re: Re: Price...

Originally posted by Foxer
Which leads to an interesting question I've always pondered... Has anyone ever seen demo information on the typical Apple user? Age, income, education, profession, etc... I'm sure Apple has this information internally, but has anyone ever come accross it otherwise. I think it might paint an intereting picture.
Click to expand...

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-943519.html

I don't like the way they use "Smarter", smarter to make the choice to use Mac, not smarter because of any other factors (income, education, etc.)
 
Originally posted by nuckinfutz

You don't need 80k to purchase Apple. This is a tired subject that's been beat to death. Apple has an acceptable price range that will only get better in the future.
Click to expand...

Get better than what? It's acceptable now isn't it?
 
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