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Over 1 Million Windows to Mac Converts in 2005?

Even though all one million of these purchases may not be Switchers, a large majority of them definitely are. I am always reading about people switching to the Mac on these forums. Well what about all the other people in this world that do not post on these forums? We can only wonder. :)

Either way, it's a fact that the Mac is getting more and more popular by the day.
 
arn said:
Can you really assume that growth from last year to this is due to switchers?
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I bought a G5 PowerMac a couple of years ago. So that makes me a switcher. I bought a Mac mini earlier this year.
Am I still a switcher? for the second one?

P.S. my son bought an iBook.
 
bryanc said:
I'd say this looks very good for the future of the Mac platform.

A couple of nasty Vista Viruses should seal the deal.
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Seal the deal for what?! :confused:

Growing from 4% market share to 4.7%?

You are ALL displaying not only your dimwitted approach to a blind belief in the rediculous, as well as your pitiful complaints to the political system...

typical

Hey, news flash:

I hear some random person in North Dakota took a ***** and it came out looking like an imac...This must mean that Apple is about to overthrow Window's dominance in the home PC market as well as in the corporate environment...

this does more for me than this rediculous speculation
 
Some Windoze users will never change. He was arguing about an open architecture .... bla bla bla. In some ways Apple is more open than Windoze.

I guess some people are like deer in the headlights :)
 
bbyrdhouse said:
Just curious as to what you still need Windows for? It took me about 5 months to become totally Windows free. The biggest thing holding me back was program compareable to Microsoft Publisher. But a while back I came across a program from Belight called "Swift Publisher" and now I am no longer in need of Windows anything.

By the way I am one of the million as well.
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MS Publisher is a joke and an insult to the design industry:eek: , you could also try Adobe InDesign:)
 
Its always one or the other...

Its great that people are opening up for different OSes, but in my own opinion(not necessarily correct), that the people who switch are not 'converts', but people who were more logical and decided to use both operating systems.

I know a few people you call 'converts', but they just use the Mac as an alternative to Windows - not just ditching it. I'm sure there are people out there who are pure 'converts', but I deem that the majority of switchers will still use their PCs for some things. Although I do notice a lot of Mac users have been Mac users for their whole life. It was interesting watching my boss, a Mac user who has never seen Windows before, actually try and use it.

I have tried being a Mac Purist. But eventually logic kicks in, and one would realise that some things DO run better on windows - mainly because the code for a particular application is windows optimised originally, i.e. it uses Java (which the VM is crud on the Mac), or it wasn't available for Mac (alternatives are not always as good as the original application).

Windows is not a BAD operating system. It works for what its supposed to do.

Vista, in concept, could (and possibly will) superseed OSX in certain areas that XP doesn't - I do not have a doubt about that. We may see people with Macs still buy Vista. The OS design underneath is probably (again conceptwise) very efficient. The problem will more likely be bugs (since Microsoft like to reinvent the wheel) and the silly GUI which to me sounds like it will decrease productivity.
 
922 said:
Election Day 2004. Would be one of the best days of the year, but then Bush won... :(
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Geez, is this a switch thread or a bash Bush thread?

I happen to have voted for Bush ... considering the alternatives... I am glad I did. I fail to see what owning a Mac or WindowsPC has anything to do with ones political point of view.
 
Proud Switcher

I love computers. I always have and always will. For years I had contact with Macs here and there at school but was never really impressed. Over the last few years Apple impressed me over and over with beautiful looking computers that were fun to use. I ordered a Mac Mini the day they came out and the day it came it was like being reborn! Computing was FUN!!! My computer didn't crash and it JUST WORKED!!! It was how computing should have been all along! I can honestly say switching to a Mac was one of the smartest things I have ever done. I have many friends who have switched over the past year and even more who are going to switch when they get a new computer. I know the critics will always say Apple is going to continue to hold a small part of the PC market but I really think things are changing for them thanks to the iPod bringing attention to computers that have been amazing all along!
 
winmacguy said:
MS Publisher is a joke and an insult to the design industry:eek: , you could also try Adobe InDesign:)
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True, but I am not designing for "the industry" I used it to make bulletins for my church, forms, calenders, and brochures that I printed on my Okidata C5200 Laser printer, flyers and such, also for things for our school.
If I were a design professional I would surely force myself to learn Indesign. But I have found that the learning curve for Indesign was to sharp for me to make with the little time that I have available. I can sit down in Pup and in 1 hour do what would take me12 hours to do in Indesign because I would have to go to Tutorial sites and read help sections and call people that knew more about it than I and I just do not have the time to do that. One day I will be able to hire someone with more expertise in this area than I and I am sure that Indesign will be their app of choice. But for now I will stck with Swift, Pages, and Photoshop CS2 as they are more than capable of doing what I need.
 
I like the exclusivitiy.

I'm probably the only Mac User here who doesn't want Apple to have more than a 5% market share :). We all have our Macs, Apple is selling us GOOD products. Why change anything?

Reasons:
- Lets reverse the situation, if apple had 90% user market, and windows 5%.
We would be dissing windows like hell, and there would be some windows users claiming that apple is crap. Microsoft would have the abillity to be innovative, and develop the *cool* stuff.
I'm quite sure if apple had 90% user market, viruses will exist for Mac - Mac is not exempt from viruses just because of some magic thing that Apple does.

- I feel nice knowing that I'm part of an exclusive group of people, who are more likely going to understand why people use OSX, and not diss Apples when they haven't touched one since the early 90's. That said, I know people who don't like Apples even after using them for month... we'll we can't convert everyone :).

- I do not want Apple to be another Microsoft. Apple have been innovative over the years because they could be without too much impact. Apple wants to not make OSX compatible with OS9, then they do it, and we really didn't really put up much of a fight -> cos we trust Apple.
The last few Microsoft OS releases have been backwards compatible with win95 in some functionality - thus limiting their potentials. Microsoft can't just claim non-backwards compatibility and walk away scratch-free like Apple can.

- Also if Apple were as big as Microsoft, PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT would be their goal, not INNOVATION INNOVATION INNOVATION
 
I'm a switcher of this year, had a little issue with the HDD and Logic Board failing, though I still love this thing and I do know things just screw up and its unstoppable (Looks at PS2).
Next year I plan to get a Intel iBook for my next step in education.
 
wleung said:
I'm probably the only Mac User here who doesn't want Apple to have more than a 5% market share :). We all have our Macs, Apple is selling us GOOD products. Why change anything?
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Your argument (the details of which I deleted) is largely valid. I agree that if Apple were in Microsoft's dominant position, they wouldn't have the freedom to innovate, or abandon legacy cruft that was holding them back. Moreover, given Apple's current forays into the entertainment industry and DRM (especially the directions they may be going with Intel's TPM chips), I'm rather worried that they may be just as bad as Microsoft if they are allowed to get into a position where they can really abuse their monopoly. We accept things from Apple that no one in their right mind would accept from Microsoft... perhaps because they're the underdogs, or perhaps because they're the hippie, sandal-wearing good-guys rather than the corporate suits. But, in the final analysis, Apple is a corporation who's only legal responsibility is to make money for their share-holders.

That being said, I'd like to see Apple get up into the solid mid-teens, and I'd like to see a big increase in the adoption of Linux (especially by corporations and governments). I think a healthy ecology would look something like:

OS X: 20%
Linux/FreeBSD/other Open Source OS: 35%
Windows: 25%
Other niche OSes: 20%

In a world like that, everyone would have to comply to open standards, nobody would be able to strong-arm OEMs into not allowing other OSes on their platforms, IT people would have to have functioning brains to make a living, and malware would be rare if not nonexistent.

Cheers
 
solvs said:
Yes.
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You mean... NO. It's a huge statistical error to make that assumption. It's like projecting a future global population but assuming no one is going to die. I'm sure a healthy percent is due to switchers, but come on you can't assume that there is 0 growth among the current mac userbase. What about they guy who's been a life-long Mac user and got his kid an iBook for college this year? Or the girl who decided to pick up a mini to hook up to her tv? I mean Apple has come out with a lot of great products this year and I can imagine that many who've been waiting for a while finally got what they've been waiting for e.g. the rev B. iMacs that came out this summer where an awesome bargin for the features at the time (and the newest ones are even better). As for marketshare picking up, well I do think it's slowly starting to happen, and maybe once we get some Mactels on the shelfs with ADVERTISING to boot, we may soon see double didget marketshare numbers!
 
wleung said:
Windows is not a BAD operating system. It works for what its supposed to do.

Vista, in concept, could (and possibly will) superseed OSX in certain areas that XP doesn't - I do not have a doubt about that. We may see people with Macs still buy Vista.
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1 - Windows IS a bad operating system...I am obliged to use it right now at work...and it sucks HARD. Design is dismal, malware is everywhere, pop-ups ALL the time concerning AV and ASpyware software...apart from the slow-to-molasses PDF handling and simply horrible virtual memory scheme...and yeah, I am using fairly new Dell machines;

2 - as for people with Macs potentially buying Vista (Longhorn, Deer, GoatOS etc.), I am gonna have to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi on this: "I don't think so!"
 
ZoomZoomZoom said:
I'm one in a million :)

There are a thousand of me in China.
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Nihao! I was surprised to see how many Apple shops are popping up around Shanghai. They seem to be doing quite well in China. I presume that like Haagen-Dasz and other luxury-companies, their success is based on the growing segment of wealthy Chinese people, who typically like to set themselves apart through status symbols.

So far I haven't seen that many Macs in China yet, very much unlike the iPod, which seems to be very popular.
 
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