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Hey John -- Keep on writing this kind of stuff in 2005, as it does so stimulate us Mac heads to enjoy our ranting and raving. Thanks for all the fun you've given us in 2004. Happy New Year!

Correction:
W3C stands for World Wide Web Consortium and is totally separate from W3Schools that MDN mentions in the article. W3C is an organization that sets the standard for web publishing.

The world would truly be a less interesting place if people like John weren't on it. Seriously, we need people like him because it's fun to know what he doesn't, and it really makes me laugh that he actually thinks he's right, when 'we' all know he couldn't be further from the truth...

The guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
"Much of the problem arises from the psychology created by the overpriced iPod. And Mac users who buy the players contribute to the problem by encouraging the company to maintain its high-margin death march. " Based on this sentence, he acts like only Mac users are purchasing iPod, which is completely off base. iPod isn't overpriced either, because if it was, it wouldn't be so popular.
The guy's logic is just wrong. He has an opinion and is trying to bend facts to make his opinion correct.

that would make it a growth of 150%. Not too shappy Apple! Just wait until they unleash the headless $499!!! I see that 2.7 turning into an 8 or 10 real quick!! Halleluiah!!! http://www.ebaumsworld.com/santabadger.html

More dribble from mindless Winblows lemmings. I hope he gets a virus.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...

Either Dvorak is monumentally stupid or he believes his readers are. I'll match my Apple stock against his portfolio over the last 2 years any time.

What do you think, John? Do people buy simple to use but "overpriced" iPods in spite of their perception that simplicity should be cheaper? Or do you suppose there's a problem with that theory?

Call me silly, but having to patch my OS daily, living in dread of the day I have to change a piece of hardware, and spending hours removing unwanted malware is not a signal to me that I've bought a superior product for which I should be willing to pay extra.

Unfortuantely Dovorak is right (even though he's a jerk.)

The Mac market share is stagnant. It's stagnant because IT people are largely stagnant and most companies defer technolgoy decisions to these people.

I don't know if Mac market share will ever really change that much. If it does it would take a very long time. Most large companies with hundreds or thousands of computers aren't simply going to go out, toss them in the trash, and buy all new iMac G5s over night. It isn't going to happen folks.

First of all, it would be insanely expensive, and for what? Should a company spend countless thousands or millions of dollars so the same secretary who can't type in Windows is allowed to demonstrate her equal incompetence on the Mac? The Mac won't make people smarter, even if smarter people tend to use Macs.

By far, most people do precious little with their computers. They read and write e-mail. They type memos. They create "databases" in Excel. They surf the web. They look at porn when the boss isn't looking.

Most people aren't out there making moives, managing large music libraries. editing HD content, sequencing DNA, etc.

Next, no matter how good the Mac gets, the IT world is 99% populated by Windows bleeding and breathing MCSE tech folks who have a large amont of time invested in becoming incompetent boobs with Windows. They aren't going to toss all that "training" in the trash to become complete utter morons with the Mac.

On these people, the sheere elegance of the Macintosh is lost. I've been an IT director for the last 15 years. I'm a consultant now because the last of the large Mac shops vanished long ago. Most of my clients have between 5 and 20 Macs. Once they're set up, they don't require a great deal of assistance, and most IT people rely on the problems with Windows for income, to make them seem necessary. Those folks aren't going to cut their own throats. "Gee, try a Mac, then you can fire me!"

Not gonna happen.

Apple is doing a fantastic job of building a much better computer than the typical Wintel computer, but all things considered, Dvorak is right. Marketshare is stagnant.

This might change over an extended period of time though. If Apple keeps pushing E D U C A T I O N. It is important that students become accustomed to Macs. They take their impressions out into the real world. Perhaps they will contest the stagnant opinions of IT people.

And no matter how you look at it, Macs are expensive. The cheapest new Mac goes for about $799.

I live and breathe Macintosh.

If I was about to go out and build, oh a dental office, I would use Macs because I know the difference.

The average Dentist is going to look at that cost and say, get $399 Dells. Those are good enough.

That's a tough nut to crack.

Finally, does market share even matter?

Only if people keep creating Microsoft only solutions. Technology vendors like Apple and Sun and others need to scream bloody murder everytime they find a major commercial or government website that is Windows only.

I have to go now. I'm going to deliver a new dual 2.5 G5 to a design/motion graphics company. First new computer they've bought in a year.

In 1984 he said the computer mouse would never catch on.

He's rarely been right since then. He's well past his prime.

Eric24601 is correct, W3C is different than W3Schools. But it is Dvorak that confuses the two, as he mentions "W3C" in his article, but then links it to the W3Schools statistics page. Whatever happened to fact-checking?

1.8% to 2.7% increase in 9 months.

That's a 50% increase. Even Dell can't match that.

What an idiot. He must really need the hits right now.

'John blames a "die-hard faction" of true Mac believers that "hurt the Mac community more than anyone by creating an unfair crackpot image that gets associated with the machine."'

I agree. You guys make me look bad.

Funny, I bet at least a third of the people who use safari or another Open source browser probably sppof using IE to get to moronic sites design for only IE. Tell me how that skews the numbers?

And I love how he thinks only Mac users are buying iPods, WOW, I numbers must be growing quick!

Based on the stats Dvorak referred to, the article might as well have been entitled:



Windows market share in slow but steady decline



since the stats clearly show it declining from 96% to 94.3% over the two years cited.

*pssst* When he refers to the devoted Mac base that gets associated with the Mac and puts it into a poor light... He means MDN... Making fun of this guy doesn't help at all. Personally, nobody ever mentions the Mac flaws on this website, and I think it's about time we began to pretend they existed.

2.7% - Few Mac users are going online.
Why? They still have those 5-20 year old macs that are basically worthless for going on the internet.
And so one wonders who is using all the "i" software that Apple produces that needs an internet connection???

it's not that the mac doesn't have problems, it's just not that significant to talk about. The average consumer & even corporations complain about virii, which is the major cause of downtime for both consumer & prosumer. The mac doesn't hvae the problems, so hence why the huge barage of complaints isn't on this site(check the apple support pages or help forums & and u'll find the complains you are looking for) but MDN is a NEWS! site. not a support page.

Should compare simplicity/complexity to using a shift stick and automatic. The automatic cost more (and is internally a more complex design), but is simpler to use.

Not everyone is hooked up to the internet.
Most PCs are not connected to the internet, therefore have no virus problems or concerns of them.

"Based on this sentence, he acts like only Mac users are purchasing iPod, which is completely off base"

Tyk,

a good point.

But like all propagandists, John Dvorak deals only in half-truths. (Goebels was good at this.) There are indeed crackpot Mac freaks. But the majority of Mac-users are not crackpot, and the majority of Wintel 'folk' (bless their cotton socks) don't have any particular opinion about anything, let alone Mac-users.
Those Wintel users who do think (a large minority) are increasingly potential switchers. In Germany (I live in Berlin), Apple's reputation is increasing (positively) in leaps and bounds.
This is happening in the rest of Europe.
Wait for the next quarterly results!
And don't forget that a half per cent increase in Apple's market share means many millions of new Mac users.
I believe that the 'halo' effect is turning into a 'snowball' effect, and that people like J. Dvorak are sensing it and getting worried.

I don’t know much about market share but I can tell you this past Christmas was remarkable in my small part of the world. Five of my PC friends moved to Macs. All of them purchased laptops (4 ibooks & 1 powerbook). All of them were fed up with virus issues. I have to think that my experience isn’t unique.

Apple – Now is the time to ADVERTISE!

The best quote, from the W3Schools site:

Statistics Are Often Misleading

You cannot - as a web developer - rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading.

I've got agree with "crackpot" quote. This site more than most does an awesome job of perpetuating that perception. Time to grow up like Apple is trying to do.

Kinda sad writing this with a "Bust Santa's Zit" annimation adjacent to the text box...

charko spewed: "John Dvorak deals only in half-truths. (Goebels was good at this.)"

Jesus F*cking Christ you unimaginative, dimwitted asshole. Out of all the possible people to note who tell half-truths (and there are many) you point to a Nazi. Go tell your mother to smack some sense into you.

Look, I don't like Dvorak. I hardly ever read his crap. But your not so subtle attempt at contrasting him with a f*cking Nazi is the stupidest thing I've seen posted on this fruit loops site.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Mac market share. What does that mean? 2% (or so) of all PC's sold in the US, the whole wide world? Apple doesn't compete in a number of areas (cash registers, for example; except at Apple Stores) so why isn't the number "from 0% to 40% (in a segment where Apple does well)."

Server logs from a Windows-oriented web site can't be construed as accurate representation of the average "web user" whether Mac or Windows.

For example, on Mac360, our server logs show about 60% of users use Safari. That's Mac only. The same logs show the Mac platform hits the site 77% of the time vs. 21% for Windows vs. about 1% for Linux.

Wait? 21% for Windows on a Mac only web site? How can that be? Because many true Mac users have to use Windows at work. What do they do at work? Same as everyone else-- surf the web, including Mac sites.

The point is, even server log data can be misleading. If the average information neutral web site is getting 2% visitors from Macs and 95% from Windows, how many of those Windows PCs are really Mac users who are forced to use PCs at work (with high speed connections) and do their web browsing there?

Media folks like Dvorak are not too good at slicing and dicing numbers, or understanding complex issues. They try to keep it simple (because that's all they're good at) because most of their readers are Windows users, right?

So, let's keep it simple. Apple's profitable and the stock is doing well. The transition to the G5, though slower than we'd like, seems to be progressing and pick up the pace. The PowerMac G5, PowerBooks, iBooks, and new iMac G5 are selling like hot cakes.

The iPod is red hot and owns the market, lock stock and barrell (except for the low end-- that'll come in January).

Mac OS X is the darling of anyone who cares about an OS.

Market share? Steve Jobs said the desktop wars are over (years ago). Microsoft won. Get over it. The same thing holds true for market share. Apple lost that battle over a decade ago. Let's get over it and move on.

Great products that work well together will keep Apple prosperous. So long as we continue to buy them in numbers that keep the company profitable.

I own 3 iPods, 4 PowerMacs, an iMac (old), and a PowerBook.

I'm doing my share.

Tera Patricks
Mac360.com

Dvorak is nothing more than a mouthpiece for Bill Gates and Company. His credibility died in the 90's when he wouldn't tell the mindless, numb PC addicts about the risks and dangers of Windows. Now they live every day with hacks, pop-up windows, viruses and spyware.

John, you're an idiot and you probably need to retire. We're growing tired of your Mac based insults and stupidity..... I hear they have some nice swamp land in Florida where you can homestead.....

"Simply put, the ease-of-use and simplicity of the [Mac] platform is killing it, because people cannot perceive that simplicity is ever worth MORE than complexity. Simpler should be cheaper,"

The guy is right. Something simple to use intuitively should be cheaper. John is saying most folks are too stupid to understand that something that operates like it were magical is highly complex in the background.

MDN, throttle back the vitriol and look at the article in its whole. John isn't slamming the Mac, just examining the paradox of Apple's situation and showing his frustration. The fact Apple isn't exactly putting forth a concrete vision of the future with it's marketing of the Mac and how it relates to it's other products, doesn't help clarify anything for anyone. MDN is just validating John's "crackpot" swipe.

And market share climing from 1.8% to 2.7% may be a 50% increase between points, but it isn't exactly a real big increase overall.

Poor John. Sunk his life savings into Be OS thinking Apple would buy it and make him rich beyond his dreams.

Of course, Apple bought NeXt and got iCEO Steve in the bargain.

John has never forgiven Apple or Steve and it shows.

God, what a dufus this guy is.

Tera Patricks sez "our server logs show about 60% of users use Safari. That's Mac only. The same logs show the Mac platform hits the site 77% of the time vs. 21% for Windows vs. about 1% for Linux."

My server logs show 2.1% Mac share.

hey guys.. 2.7 right?

Now.. how many of you Mac users use Safari? (answer: A lot)

Since this is supposed to be an IE-related enterprise.. how many Safari users are looking at this thing..

It's just stinks to high Heaven of slanted stats.. bleh.

7% windows users for MDN? I'm impressed!
Welcome windows users, please keep coming back!

Russell
nobody ever mentions the Mac flaws on this website

Quentin Tarantino, director of Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bob, starred in a lesser known film, "Four Room" and said:

"The less a man makes declarative statements, the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect."

I think this applies here.

Here we are with this dumbass market share argument again. Is Apple showing profit? Yes. Does Apple have a significant cash reserve? Yes. Is Apple showing growth? Yes. So what's the issue here? I don't care if 1% or 100% of the world uses Macintosh, as long as Apple keeps making quality products. Tech writers like Dvorak and Thurrott need to find something new to whine about, this market share thing is getting old.

The timing is hysterical given today's rumor about a 499 mac

simple1
MDN is a NEWS site. not a support page.

My mom recently had a problem with her earthlink email being bounced because they said her email box was "full" even though she had erased all incoming, outgoing, and trash email. This is a problem with her computer, but not Apple's fault. I've never posted about that here before...

My brother and sister in law had a cable-modem die on them, they have no internet while waiting for a replacement.

I occasionally have trouble having my PowerMac G5 recognize my 3rd party Kengsington mouse at startup (my computer wants to run the "Bluetooth mouse setup"), I just unplug it and replug it in, then it works fine. Should I post on here about that?

I have too much dust on my computer desk and my computer monitor, and I have crap stuck between the keys of my otherwise shiny white keyboard. Maybe someone wanted to hear about that? Oh, and I constantly have to clean crap off the bottom of my supposedly maintenance free optical mouse.

I've had "issues" with a Microtech scanner that I bought before OS X came out, their half baked drivers are flaky and annoying and I would not buy a Microtech scanner at this point. I suppose I could post here to keep someone else from buying from them?

Or just give people a link to look up info on Mac scanners for themselves:

http://macreviewzone.com/html/reviews/magazine/hardware/scanners.php

Oh, I also get a lot of annoying SPAM. Maybe someone wanted to hear about that? It keeps morphing and I have to keep training my filters to catch it.

--
In comparison, a friend I visited this summer has lost her computer completely due to hacking and viruses and spyware. She downloaded a program to help her with spyware and it ended up costing money and then annoying her every time she turned her computer on (this was back when her 3 year old PC still worked). Another friend doesn't go on the internet anymore, and another had some major problems with an email virus that trashed her windows box, my most tech savvy PC friend (he even used to build computers for a living) even had to reinstall everything after a virus trashed his system.

This is just a small sample of all the hell I've seen Windows cause the people I know.

I know of no Mac user (and there's plenty in my family and more I know outside it) that has problems remotely close to the listed Windows problems. They are more akin to the dust on the monitor, and crap in the keyboard and problems with 3rd parties such as Earthlink, etc.

Dvorak is a moron. He's a lazy-ass writer who doesn't check his facts and comes to his own warped conclusions. He's trying to push your buttons. Don't let him. Just ignore him.

Simplicity is about stripping the complexity and removing the unnecessary. That takes careful thinking and time. I'd definitely pay more for it.

And those Mac fans out there are not crackpots. It's called customer loyalty and many companies would be so lucky to have such devoted customers as Apple has. Nothing wrong with sharing your enthusiam for products you believe in.

I love the Mac community. You guys have great sense of humor and always make me laugh... esp. the smart-asses that make fun of microshaft and real!

{This post is brought to you by the magic words "from" (didn't work), "five" (didn't work) and "complete" (it works!)}

Reality Check
Most PCs are not connected to the internet, therefore have no virus problems or concerns of them.

I refer you to an earlier post of mine:

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/4568/

"2. It's hard to quantify how much security is bought through obscurity. OS X may have millions of users, but few Mac users are "hackers." Most of the people who enjoy hacking are PC users, or at least if they own a Mac they also own a PC. Before Mac OS X, the Mac did have a few viruses. There were about 72 or something close to that in the 18 or so years between 1984 and 2001 or 2002 when Mac OS 9 began to fade and be phased out. There are likely more Windows viruses written every single day, now, than the total number of viruses that the Mac has had in it's entire history. There were viruses even back before the spread of the Internet. I remember vividly spending time in a computer lab learning to type, on DOS based PCs, and having to scan my floppy for viruses, and still the lab had problems keeping up with the spread of them, computers were shut down, etc."

Note that? That was before the internet even existed, or at least anyone in the public was aware of it.

Same antiMac garbage as usual. Garbage in and garbage out from him. Nothing new here. He was antiMac on Techtv when he had a job. He was one of those great predictors that Apple would be out of business oh about 4 years ago. As all of those people have found out and were told several times THEY WERE WRONG!
But they keep trying I guess hoping it will happen when they say so to get some sort of great publicity or something. Apple is far to strong and organized for any of them to see the end of Apple. With Microsoft barely treading water in the sea of viruses, trojans, and spyware. Not to mention no new operating system for the next two years I think Apple will make a big dent in marketshare. The only system they will come out with is another version of XP as they have cut longhorns horns off at the knees.

Well I think that has changed and were all talking about the present not the past. OSX gets attacked just as much as PC's do by hackers. OSX has one BIG difference in security. You must have admin rights in order to install anything or change anything. When something gets installed or changed the system will automatically ask for a username and password. Windows simply does not do this and let's whatever in whenever it wants. That is why OSX is more secure and until Microsoft corrects that problem Windows will always be compromised time and time again as it has been proven. The obscurity boloney just doesn't jive with the facts. Experts in security say stay away from IE and Outlook. Not just a few either were talking many including the U.S. government and europeon governments.

twilightmoon "Note that? That was before the internet even existed, or at least anyone in the public was aware of it."

My parent´s windows computer and their neighbors, which are NOT hooked up to the internet, will never get a virus of any kind...unless you come and put them there.

The truth is the only thing that remains stagnant is Dvork's career. He is a mediocre writer with pathetic analytical ability who relies on constant Mac bashing to pay his bills.

Back in the days when I use to write for a Mac website, I used to let Dvork's inane comments get to me and I would write long articles in rebuttal. Looking back, it was an exercise in futility.

5 years later, I have become a physician and am now busy practicing medicine. Though much has changed, two things remains constant. I still love Apple and the Mac... and Dvork is still talking out of his ass.

The man has lost his mind.

Hi

I never heard of macs that exist unless my penpal suggested me to try out the older mac to experimenting it and was facinated about it. I was actually a pc user with pc but now I heard a lot of sickening viruses, spyware that I hardly get rid of it and it does slow down my pc performance unless I saved enough money for G4 Cube 450mhz and running today with Panther OSX from OS9. Do you know how many I owned now which are 3 desktop macs and ibook. I discarded my sister's pc and replace with biege mac is all she needed for basic everyday needs. But now I'm going to upgrade my sister's beige to G3 Blue & White Tower. Macs is amazing! Every day I swtiched on, there's no more swearing or rolling eyes to viruses or spams or spyware. It felt like a freedom!

Wintel users are whiners, alright.

What is really wrong with macs?? They not for kids but for everybody for everyday needs.

Regards

Here's a puzzle for you.

Take the name D V O R A K,

Drop 3 letter to find out to which species Dvorak belongs.

Hint: Drop all letter except for the D, O, R, and K

Is it V A??


Not sure what you mean?

Regards

I'm HOT for you Tera Patricks!

You combine the sex appeal of a Mac with a hot chick.

Show some skin and I'll get your site Slashdotted in a hurry.

:D

As noted many times, "Referer" HTTP headers are almost meaningless for determining "market share". Add to that - as noted above - that many people surf at work where they have a high-speed connection versus dialup at home. Workplaces have a greater tendency to be Wintel-centric.

A better, but far from perfect, metric would be to look at X-Mailer headers from a large, topic-neutral mailing list (or many such lists), or similarly for USENET posts in, say, alt.talk, rec.games or some other non-work platform-agnostic newsgroup. Filter out the spam from compromised Windows boxes, though.

Anyone know of any such studies?