Nearly One in Four Windows Users Surveyed Plan to Switch to Mac Within Next Six Months

[Quu]

Apple is a very aspirational brand. People aspire to have enough money to own their products just like people aspire to own BMW's or Mercedes vehicles.

So I am not surprised by the results especially that as people get poorer (as per the chart) they are more likely to say they will be switching. The reality of course is the switch rate will not be 1 in 4 Windows owners switching to Mac. More like 1/100th.

 

[BlargKing]

This goes against my own observations. In my college class of 16 students, 5 of them had MacBook Pros, and all except 1 were from 2014 or older at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year there were only 2 MBP users left, the rest had switched to PC's because their MacBooks were too old to keep up and the cost to performance of a new MacBook Pro was many times worse than a PC.

Additionally, the college I attend has been using Mac Pro's and iMacs for the last 20 years, but this summer they're replacing them with PCs because Apple no longer offers machines powerful enough to cope with the demands, and because the cost of a decent PC is half that of a Mac.

I don't see what incentive there is for someone already using a PC to switch to a Mac. Yesterdays performance at tomorrows prices doesn't seem that compelling.

 

[flat five]

their MacBooks were too old to keep up

doing what?
and with what software?

 

[BlargKing]

doing what?
and with what software?

Editing uncompressed 4K video footage in After Effects and Premiere. Rendering 3D scenes in Lightwave. Mid level GPUs from 3-4 years ago don't cut it.

Aside from the fact that a 1500$ PC is much more powerful than a 3000$ MacBook Pro, there was also the issue of connectivity, since the SSD caddy for our cameras interfaces with USB 3.1 type A, and our multimedia projectors use HDMI, and none of them wanted to carry around adapters for everything.

Oh and everything is handed out on USB flash drives using type A ports.

 

[Wonder Warthog]

Yeah, the grass is always greener... Apple is really good at making people want their products, for sure, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily better.

Though I don't like how bloated and laggy MacOS is becoming, not to mention their sad excuse for window management.

I find Windows to be incredibly fast even on very modest hardware. There's a few things I really dislike about it (such as forced updates) but the experience is actually really good overall.

Funny I recently installed Windows 10 on my 2016 MBPro just to play a few Win only game titles. I have been using Windows on and off over the years, so it's not like I'm not used to it, but I felt like the whole UI and everything was so 10 years ago on windows. Font rendering is still godawful, everything still take twice as many steps on Windows and it simply wasn't inspiring or fun. So I killed the Bootcamp partition after two months. And that was only in order to play games… Meanwhile productivity just soars on the macOS side. F**k all the naysayers, there still is no comparison.
[doublepost=1498711390][/doublepost]

Sounds to me like you need to set your active hours.

The fact that you NEED to change settings for sh*t that should "just work" without getting on your nerves speaks volumes…
[doublepost=1498711528][/doublepost]

Editing uncompressed 4K video footage in After Effects and Premiere. Rendering 3D scenes in Lightwave. Mid level GPUs from 3-4 years ago don't cut it.

Aside from the fact that a 1500$ PC is much more powerful than a 3000$ MacBook Pro, there was also the issue of connectivity, since the SSD caddy for our cameras interfaces with USB 3.1 type A, and our multimedia projectors use HDMI, and none of them wanted to carry around adapters for everything.

Oh and everything is handed out on USB flash drives using type A ports.

Well use FCP instead of Premiere and you'll be floored how much more optimised it is and how much faster it exports and edits 4k footage. And Lightwave? Wut? Newtek still exists? Talk about non optimised crappy ported software.

 

[FactVsOpinion]

6000 PC owners is not a very broad base for such a survey. Seen the totality of all Windows PC owners (I am one of those), 20 percent seems quite a bit too high for me. That would mean tens of millions more of mac books or iMacs sold over the next year... Time will tell. I have a brand new iPAD pro, but I will certainly not swich to Mac.

You misunderstand statistics. You could actually survey two orders of magnitude fewer than 6000 people if the sample was representative.

In addition, given these data, there was a greater than 80% chance you'd be somebody who says they wouldn't switch, so that's not at all surprising.

 

[Feenician]

Even if many of the responders mistook “plan to” for “would prefer to”, it says it all really, doesn’t it. The “surveyed at the Apple Store” nonsense and concern trolling for other peoples budgets speak volume too.

 

[CrzyP]

I've been saying I'd switch for years but I'm still using Windows. Dropping that much cash on a computer is uncomfortable.

 

[Feenician]

The majority of those attacks are occurring on non-updated computers in places like Ukraine

Can you actually back this statement up? That a “majority of the attacks are occurring... in poor places”?

 

[Peperino]

"following the supposed "disappointment" of the 2016 MacBook Pro, particularly among professional users."

A complete product failure is called a disappointment now? The new MacBook Pro was one of the worst products ever created by Apple. Removed the mag Safe (one of best features), no USB, HDMI or Thunderbolt ports, only up to 16 mg of RAM, problems with battery, Battery is not replaceable. And to top it off a useless strip with an overpriced Macbook.

It took them 6 years to realize that the Mac Pro was a failure?
How many years will it take them to realize that the Macbook Pro was a disaster?

It is quite funny why no one is fired at Apple. Their arrogance has been going up in complete opposite to the hardware innovation.

Apple innovation has been limited to upgrades in internal components. How lame is that...?

 

[Karma*Police]

Interesting. I'm moving from Mac to PC, because, yeah. Um. Stoopid prices and nearly 10 years of ignoring pro users. And when they finally say "we haven't forgotten about you", even though 1 legit Mac Pro update in 10 years suggests otherwise, they throw a starting price for a $5,000 iMac Pro at us. LOL

I don't get it... you complain about "stoopid" prices and then mention the iMac Pro... you do realize that several publications tried to build an equivalent Windows machine at that price and failed?

 

[Tubamajuba]

"following the supposed "disappointment" of the 2016 MacBook Pro, particularly among professional users."

A complete product failure is called a disappointment now? The new MacBook Pro was one of the worst products ever created by Apple. Removed the mag Safe (one of best features), no USB, HDMI or Thunderbolt ports, only up to 16 mg of RAM, problems with battery, Battery is not replaceable. And to top it off a useless strip with an overpriced Macbook.

It took them 6 years to realize that the Mac Pro was a failure?
How many years will it take them to realize that the Macbook Pro was a disaster?

It is quite funny why no one is fired at Apple. Their arrogance has been going up in complete opposite to the hardware innovation.

Apple innovation has been limited to upgrades in internal components. How lame is that...?

That's your opinion. I love my 2016 MBP- it does everything I need in a sturdy, lightweight package and I haven't had any battery issues whatsoever. 8 GB is good enough for me for the foreseeable future, as I have a desktop that can be upgraded to 64GB of RAM in the event that I need to do RAM-intensive tasks in the future.

 

[pacalis]

the graph isn't a visual representation of "Nearly One in Four Windows Users Surveyed Plan to Switch to Mac"...

the graph takes the one-in-four people from that ^^ then breaks them down into incomes..
-or-

100% of the people represented in the graph say they'll switch to mac.. not 21%

I thought it might be that, but 100% of people represented in the graph add up to 115%. Graph has to be one or the other, but neither adds up.

 

[Wonder Warthog]

I don't get it... you complain about "stoopid" prices and then mention the iMac Pro... you do realize that several publications tried to build an equivalent Windows machine at that price and failed?

Yep. That's people who don't know the different between generic-hardware-game-box-I-cobbled–together and a workstation. I just checked on the HP site and their HP Z840 workstation with 32GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD with only 4 cores dual CPU (Xenon) is over $9000. With the Mac you even get a 5k wide gamut display thrown in which would take the HP workstation beyond 10k… But somehow Macs are overpriced. Go figure.

 

[StevieD100]

Grass is always greener... While I love OS X, iOS, and the Apple ecosystem, I am becoming fed up with Apple hardware.

> MBA 11" dead after 3 yrs (bricked).
> Mac 27" dead after 2.5 yrs (all ports dead)
> Mac Mini life span = max 24 mos after two tries
> MacBook Pro (super slow after 18 months, even after clean wipe and reinstall)
> iPhone 7 Plus - haptic home button has become laggy and slow to respond
> iPad Pro 9.7 - touch disease (very frequently, several swipes or touches are required to get a response)

This is expensive stuff! I still suspect Apple has a secret hardware deceleration and self-destruct button in the HQ basement! My MBP took a major performance dive about a week after WWDC this year.

Two questions
1) Why didn't you get applecare for the iMac? Then the problem would have been Apple's and not yours
2) When are you filing your class action against Apple. Clearly you have a problem with the hardware and you can't be alone in suffering like that?

 

[Wonder Warthog]

The new MacBook Pro was one of the worst products ever created by Apple. Removed the mag Safe (one of best features), no USB, HDMI or Thunderbolt ports, only up to 16 mg of RAM, problems with battery, Battery is not replaceable.

I first thought not having the MagSafe is a big issue, but since my kids aren't that little anymore, I noticed it was a nice feature that only helped, when the kids were still running around the living room a lot. They're much calmer know that we've chained them to their desks. ;-)

No USB or Thunderbolt ports? Wut? Th… w… srlsy? It's got 4 THUNDERBOLT 3 PORTS. All at full speed. They can also be used as USB ports. And NO, you don't need dongles. Just get cables. As you need for any other modern piece of hardware you'd connect to your legacy USB ports. Most modern hardware either has Micro USB, or USB 3 highspeed (the thin wider ones) or USB-C plugs, and I'm sure you needed cables to connect those to your older Macs. You can get nice USB-C to HDMI cables, and USB-C to Micro-USB cables. It's exactly the same as the cables you needed to buy when you got your previous USB devices.

Coolest thing about Thunderbolt/USB-C: never ever need to worry about what side is "up" on the plug. Also, if you want to plug the power in just plug it in. Anywhere. On either side of your Mac. I think it's a vast improvement over the previous machines, actually.

16 Gigs of RAM, well in a few years that might not be really plenty, but for now even 8GB is just fine for most stuff. And battery problems? That's why you have a warranty. So either it's broken and you should get a replacement, or it's not. Then shut up. I had no problems with the battery of my 2016 MBPro and it's a fine machine. And the touchbar is a pointless gimmick, I give you that. Then again, touch ID is super nice and I loathe having to type my password in older apps.
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Two questions
1) Why didn't you get applecare for the iMac? Then the problem would have been Apple's and not yours
2) When are you filing your class action against Apple. Clearly you have a problem with the hardware and you can't be alone in suffering like that?

Or it might have to do with how he uses them? Tips: Do not throw your hardware. Booting doesn't mean you're supposed to kick the box. When watching P*rnhub, spilled liquids can ruin your Macs internals…

 

[lobo1978]

I will copy-paste this to every post from crypto-Dell lovers/reps at this forum. You add IBM case on top of it and basically discussion is over.
At the end of the day, computers (hardware + software) are tools to create/earn/learn - you cannot put a price on reliability and user friendly/bulletproof OS.

More ransomware attacks more Mac customers... Recent attack in Europe might force government to switch to more reliable operating system.

 

[vmistery]

Well we can always hope for some extra conversions. Until something drastically changes though I will continue to have a Windows desktop for gaming and working from home and a MacBook for being out and about / itunes / sitting on the sofa.

 

[zen]

I'm not even sure 20% of Windows users even know that Apple still makes computers and not just iPhones and iPads, let alone want to switch to the Mac.

Certainly in my own experience - a vastly smaller sample size! - it is more likely that 20% of Mac users are planning to switch to Windows.
[doublepost=1498718465][/doublepost]

I will copy-paste this to every post from crypto-Dell lovers/reps at this forum. You add IBM case on top of it and basically discussion is over.
At the end of the day, computers (hardware + software) are tools to create/earn/learn - you cannot put a price on reliability and user friendly/bulletproof OS.

More ransomware attacks more Mac customers... Recent attack in Europe might force government to switch to more reliable operating system.

I'm not sure what you are basing reliability on. My two Macs running Sierra are way, way, WAY more unstable than my Windows 10 machine.

 

[Mildredop]

Funny. I recently switched to a Windows machine after nearly 18 years on Mac, both professionally and privately. Still an Apple fan, but haven’t looked back. New machine screams and Windows is much more enjoyable than expected.

But is it more enjoyable than Mac OS?

 

[mw360]

The entertainment of the logic pretzels being twisted here is so awesome.



Did you read the story past the point where you thought, “Gotcha”?



Highest likelihood, not overall percentage. The overall percentage across all income levels was 21%. Maybe the problem lies in a misunderstanding of how percentages work.

Hi there, you seem to be one of the few in the thread that has properly read and understood the statistics. Can you explain how they come up with 21% and 25% of all respondents planning to switch, when all of the income groups individually are 20% or less?

One person claims the graph is a breakdown of switchers only, so 20% of switchers are high-income etc. but that's contradicted by the fact those percentages add up to 115%, and in the source article they specifically state 20% of high income respondents plan to switch and 14% of low income respondents plan to switch.

I'm not trying to call anybody out, I've just read it all twice and I don't get it.

The complete text from the survey:

According to the results of the Verto Smart Poll, nearly all (98% or more) current Mac owners intend to stay with Macs as their next computer. However, nearly 21% of current Windows laptop owners and 25% of current Windows desktop owners responded that they intend to switch to a Mac within the next six months. And of those current Windows owners, consumers in the upper income bracket (those with an average income of $150,000 or more) showed the highest likelihood of switching to a Mac: 20% of respondents intended to switch. Lower income groups (those making $20,000 or less annually) also report higher probability of switching to Mac: about 14% of these respondents intended to switch. However, a further drilldown shows that these lower income respondents are also in their teens or twenties, suggesting parental assistance.

 

[zen]

But is it more enjoyable than Mac OS?

I'm not the person you are asking, but I have actually been weighing this very question up for a while now. It kinda comes back to return on investment (not strictly financial, but also in terms of usability, reliability, and enjoyment).

I think that macOS is better than Windows. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a fact. macOS is more enjoyable to use, is easier to use, and it looks nicer. Windows 10 is inferior to macOS.

But... it is not inferior to the same degree as previous version of Windows, compared to previous versions of macOS. The gap between the two OSes used to be vast. There was no question that buying a Mac was the best computer purchase decision.

Today, with the gap between macOS and Windows 10 being far smaller, buying a Mac is no longer an automatic choice. Yes, macOS is better... but is it ten times better? Twice as good? With PC hardware being cheaper than Mac hardware (and yes, you can find desktop PCs and laptops with the same level of aesthetic industrial design as Macs), and with Windows 10 being not-quite-as-good-as-macOS-but-not-actually-too-bad-at-all, you have to make your own calculation. Is the incremental benefit of using macOS versus Windows 10 enough to justify spending twice as much for the computer?

Of course it does all go back to use. If you want gaming you still need a PC, regardless. I'm typing this on a MBP which is perfectly fine for light casual use. I'm shifting my desktop to a PC because as a professional writer I need the speed and reliability of the Windows version of MS Word.

 

[truthertech]

Why do you care what other people use as their personal computer?

Huh? I think you've posted in the wrong area

 

[57004]

You have to admit that your requirements are outside the norm. Moving to Linux sounds like the right move for you. I don't like it when companies try to be everything to everyone, Apple certainly is not.

Oh yes I'm not saying my use cases are common.

However I'm just a bit sad that I had to do this because I enjoyed OS X a lot in the past.

Apple made a big deal of their POSIX compatibility in the past (especially when they were still trying to get into the corporate market) and I think it's a bit sad that they let it slide. As for a while it fit my niche brilliantly. Some recent developments like APFS give me some hope they are focusing less on the superficial details again.

I also think it is important if they want the Mac to really grow. As long as Windows has a stranglehold over the enterprise market, Mac users are going to be something different at home than at work. Now that the iPod is basically gone and the iPhone is no longer the supreme king of smartphones, I hope they will have more time to focus on the Mac.

 

[quietstormSD]

Honestly I would be surprised with 20% of pc owners even intending on buying a windows or mac pc in the next 6 months