MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Yet another lie from MDN, everyone knows that Mac marketshare is -20% because Paul Thurrott tells us that is true.

Or maybe he's an asswipe who I notice has been less vocal about the Boston Red Sox this year.

Wow, what a trip down memory lane: I bought my first computer--a 128k Mac (the original, baby!) when I was a sophomore at Princeton. I guess there really are smart people there

Go tigers!

I want o say something inflammatory under a new name.

The Mac snowball is getting bigger and bigger. Wait until this time next year. Is that an avalanche I hear????

And the change begins. Not with a bang, but with a slow wave, gathering steam, year after year.

Soon, people are reluctant to admit that they ever used a PC with windows. "Who me??? Never!"



The beginning of the end.

N.

What can I say... My younger daughter (14) says "Why do we have to use Word at school Dad? – Word is such a pain!".

She'll be at the UK equivalent of Princeton in a few years time ho ho. And Daughter One now taking chemistry, albeit using my old Powerbook with a 10gb memory (that's TEN: seemed OK at the time!) - yet it's still cruisin', as is my old SE/30 and Powerbook 145b!

This campus trend is building a base for Apple's conquest of the enterprise when these now students become employees.

I would like to request that college student MDN readers write in to let us know the purchasing statistics at their schools – this year vs. previous years.

Snowball is correct. Once the train leaves the station it ain't goin' back. I'm betting in two years apple will have 35% or more world-wide. Ballmer will be Zuning in his pants.

Apple should sell Macs with windows preinstalled for those who want it and don't already have a Windows licence.

The Tipping Point is coming...

While Microsoft sees a light at the end of its tunnel as it nears the Vista release... but wait, that isn't a light, it's a train coming the other way!

lobo:

I would guess that most persons wanting to buy a Mac for Windows already have a copy of Windows at home. Diehard OS X users will purchase a Mac with OS X preinstalled and be glad not to install Windows.

Why does MDN link to such CRAPPY YouTube versions of the Apple Commercials? They are all readily available on Apple's site in Glorious QuickTime format.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

I agree, most people don't even KNOW what Windows is. They have no concept of operating system.

Thus the Microsoft Myth of Choice (MMC™) Is allowed to proliferate.

Put 10 PC's from different manufacturers behind a curtain with generic monitors and have people tell you which one is from which manufacturer.
They can't. They all run Windows. The choice is a myth.

Princeton has seemed to figure this out. Good for them.

When 45% is the global market share all will finally be alright in the world.

Oh, what the heck:

I had a bad experience once.

Apple should let the ignorant masses know about their computers, not ponce around with a dork and a elite prick in their ads. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

Sorry---an elite prick.

Ivy League elitists. The heartland will never give in to their secular ways.

I went to Cornell.

Therefore, I am inclined to hate Princeton.

Microsoft's about to get zuned.

I work for IT at one of the campuses for PSU and i don't think our spike is 45%, but there was a big increase in the number of macs on campus. Even with windows only engineering programs, there are multiple solutions with OS X as the answer. At least on our campus, there's remote desktop (for us PPC folks), Parallels, Boot Camp, and we even have a few Crossover Beta Testers on staff. It's nice to see a change. Oh yeah, I've had the chance to ask many a OS X user what made them pick that as their computing solution. It's normally a form of "OS X is better." "My parents bought it for me." "I like the design better." and so on. Many a windows user has seen my iBookG4 that i use for troubleshooting dorm connections (yes that's right, an OS X machine keeping a windows network running) and are always along the lines of "I wish I had a Mac" or for the more tech inclined "I want OS X and all it's features..."

Time for M$ to start thinking different..... as in lowered market share.

Among the faculty I interact with at Harvard Medical School and it's affiliated hospitals, and the biologists I know well at MIT, at least 50-60% use Macs. I don't know whether the percentage is increasing. It would be interesting to find out. The data should exist because many students and faculty buy their computers through the school, as they do at Princeton.

Why won't the chirping stop?

Life sciences folk have always been heavy Mac users, in particular because of a single program, NIH Image

The current java version runs fine on Windows and OS X (better on OS X, in fact, with it's superior Java performance) but for years this workhorse of an image processor was Mac Only.

MDN Word "Wrong" ...if this is wrong, I don't want to be right ....

ok I'll bite,

I had a bad experience last night!

It's because you bit that I had a bad experience last night!

That 45% is all Apple. The other 55% is shared with the Windows PC companies. That's pretty good, and it's only going to get better

...with Vista.

It will be the master of disaster.

I'm a grad student at Saint Louis University and a good half my classmates use Macs. Our GIS software is Windows only, though.

I would like to request that college student MDN readers write in to let us know the purchasing statistics at their schools – this year vs. previous years.

Unfortunately, my school is 111% Microshit. Out IT idiots think thatthe sun rises from Bill Gates' ass, and sets in steve Ballmer. On the other hand, our IT director makes Steve Ballmer look like a freakin genius. They actively discourage Macs in the literature they send out to incoming students.

On the other hand, I am on the local volunteer fire department. Every now and then, someone invites us in to search every room in their dorm, by falsely setting off a fire alarm. I'm noticing more and more Macs in the dorm rooms the past few years.

When the people lead, the leaders will follow.

Hey god....what couldn't get into Princeton? It helps if your dad is an important person or if you have high marks and have done community service.

If you write your programs properly, porting them from c for win to c for mac os x is not a bit deal, fucking lazy piece of shit programmers!

In August I got talking to a personable, young American student from Berkeley here in Berlin.
He had a Dell laptop and there was a bit of Mac vs. MS rivalry between us - but all very pleasant - and then I asked what propotion of his fellow students had Macs.
I was hoping to hear something like 30% or even 35% and was quite stunned when he answered: 'Oh, about half of them'.

lobo said: "Apple should sell Macs with windows preinstalled for those who want it and don't already have a Windows licence".

I think this would send out the wrong message - far better for Apple to include Crossover Mac, so that a copy of Windows isn't required. Or, one of the long-standing rumours about Leopard is that Windows applications will be able to run on Macintosh computers without a copy of Windows being present.

Now, that's what I call embrace and extinguish.

There is one, overwhelmingly obvious reason why Macs do well at Universities. Large campuses generally strive to have nearly completely open networks that are relatively poorly protected by firewalls and overworked IT staff, etc compared to corporate environments. As a consequence, there is a constant flow of viruses coming from hundreds (thousands) of poorly-protected computers that become drones, trying to infect all the other computers on the network. The IT staff try their best, but if a PC gets infected their solution is just to "image it" - completely erase the hard drive and re-install Windows plus a standard collection of software packages they support. They just don't have the staff or time necessary to do anything else.

Students and Faculty can't put up with having their computers "imaged", since all their data would get lost. The best alternative solution is to get a Mac and avoid all the security problems. As more and more people figure that out, Macs spread and there is a snowball effect.

___________________________
Sent from my virus-free Mac running OS X

But that technical instistute in Texas that claimed that no one uses Macs anymore! I guess the Ivy League didn't get the memo. Maybe they should give them a call.

w00t!! go tigers

Happy to say that while at Princeton I both worked for OIT, and converted 5-10 friends to Mac, hehe. On top of that, many friends plan on buying Macs when they are up for a new pc :D

OIT was pretty Mac friendly when I was there as well, and I'm sure it's only improved with the number of students buying Macs.

It should be noted that all computers sold by Princeton are laptops.

Mac users breed more Mac users. Think about it: Weren't all of us turned onto Mac users by friends? My circle started out with one Mac user. Now there's six (pretty much all of them, I think). This phenomenon should result in a steady acceleration of the upward movement of the market share, a little bit faster every year. The tipping point will be when the mainstream media takes full notice, and the upsurge in Mac sales becomes big news. Then every Tom, Dick, & Harry will want one, whether or not they have a Mac-using friend.

Apple has some cure computers but they are unreliable in enterprise environment. I'm the director of IT for a school like princeton and we have had major problems with Macs login into network, crashing, slow(network home folders suck!!) and cross platform compatability issues with Word/Entourage. We met face to face with Apple engineer who confirmed what we discovered: a) OS has major flaws; memory manager, DNS lookup service b) Windows Active Directory Integration is a joke - Crashes all the time, looses binding, sends wrong username to server (Apple can't figure out why). c) Work group Manager can not handle more than 1000 users d) Apple Remote Desktop crashes, freezes frequently.

I challenge anyone to make our networked Macs work correctly!!

Overall, it's a cute toy for making movies and music. You want to get work done and centrally manage your system in large IT environment.

"Mac users breed more Mac users. Think about it:"

The diving market share over the last decade from a high of 15% or so to the current low of 2% shows the opposite, Mac users breed less Mac users.

There is a tipping point, but that tipping point will be when most Mac users run their Mac as a Windows PC. Great for Apple, not so great for Mac OS X devotees.