“We may be watching the demise of Apple as a PC company and its rebirth as a cross-platform multimedia company. This has been going on for some time, but it just became obvious to me when I had a chance to review Apple’s latest financials. The PC market grew at a good rate — at least compared with previous years — with 16 to 20 percent growth, depending on who provided the numbers. Apple grew its PC business at a near-flat 5 percent and lost share, again,” Rob Enderle writes for TechNewsWorld.
“On the other hand, the MP3 player business grew an impressive 87 percent. Now this is a hot market. Apple grew its MP3 player business better than 900 percent. That’s a nine followed by two zeroes. I’d love to see anyone argue that Apple isn’t kicking the proverbial butts of the other player makers, including old stalwarts like Creative Labs and Sonic Blue as well as giants like Phillips, Thompson Electronics, GE and Samsung,’ Enderle writes.
“Next time you are watching an Apple ad or looking at an Apple billboard, see if you even can find a personal computer. The ads are almost all about the iPod or iTunes. Head-to-head comparisons between Apple and Napster, RealNetworks and MusicMatch almost always favor Apple as number one. And, clearly, the iPod has taken all comers, slapped them around and spit them out. While the new mini-iPod has had some initial issues, it remains one of the hottest retail products on the market as well, making kicking butt a new Apple tradition,” Enderle writes.
“If you think about it, on the PC side, Apple really is little more than a brand and some nice shells. The company, like most other PC makers, has gone to offshore manufacturers for most of its products. Underneath, the hardware is mostly IBM now, and the software is based on an open-source version of Unix developed by others, called FreeBSD. The actual intellectual capital invested by Apple in the platform itself seems to be in decline, and, as much as I personally like FreeBSD, the hot alternative to Microsoft these days is Linux,” Enderle writes.
“For years, I’ve pointed out that I think Apple could do very well in the Wintel market, but it wasn’t until the iPod was released that I could prove it. iPod sales have been phenomenal and mostly on Wintel hardware and against entrenched Wintel vendors like Creative Labs, which showcases just how powerful Apple’s advantages are in this market… Apple is on the cusp of an important decision that either will take it to a position of dominance or will doom it to the declining niche of companies that could have been contenders. The iPod has shown the way, and my bet is Apple will eventually follow,” Enderle writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Has Apple forsaken the Macintosh? Unless we see something from Apple on the Mac side soon, we’d be hard pressed to say, “no way!” Lately, it seems Apple had forsaken the Mac. iPod, iTunes, iPod, iTunes, iPod, iTunes, ad infinitum, it seems are the Apple news of the day. Apple had better watch out. We love Apple the company because of the Macintosh platform. The iPod is nice. iTunes is nice. The Mac is insanely great. Do not forget that, Mr. Jobs.
Joe
I think Apple missed an opportunity to sell a lot of computers to first time mac owners by not having an attractive entry level model
How cheap would it have to get?
The 12′ iBook is Way cheaper than it’s PC rivals…wait don’t believe me?
Spec me a 12″ 1Ghz ish 4.5lb PC laptop for $1000 and supply the link.
No, people don’t buy Apple because they like to “stick” with what they Know.
And what they Know is Cheap ($300-$500) rubbish with XP on it unless it has those two things going for it it’ll remain a small market (which is good because you can keep your cheap PCs and shove them up….)
Apple has great entry level machines. They just don’t have cheapo cheapo crap level machines. Anytime you spec out a Mac against a similiar product from another maker there is very little difference in price. AND if you add in the insanely great software included it is cheaper. PLUS, no virus/security headaches.
Now now Mark.
Apples ibooks compete on price really well with pc’s, and that is why they sell a lot of them.
Apple’s desktops don’t, and they don’t.
Thanks for proving my point.
Joe
Yep, we got a point there, and Chesterfield and Rushden both lost, so it is now impossible for us to go down. More importantly, we have just gone 12 games unbeaten, and it’s the first time I can remember Stockport doing that. Gives me a good feeling for next season.
Back on thread, hasn’t anyone been watching Apple lately? They just updated the entire low end, plus the PowerBooks. The product matrix has been squeezed together, and the iMac update is now obviously being held back for something. Apple is just waiting for IBM to get updated G5s out the door so a G5 iMac doesn’t pull sales off the PowerMacs.
Whether I’m right or not, I just hope that once the updates appear, we get a lot more Mac advertising. Something along the scale of the fruit iMacs.
Wow, there are some skeptics amongst us out there…it was only about four months ago that we got a seriously updated iLife with GarageBand, a totally new app that has received universal praise even from the most hardened PC heads. And it’s less than a month ago that we saw the video editing enhancements and a brand new app (Motion) that took the crowd’s breath away at NAB. I find it hard to believe (unless I’m missing some sarcasm) that the Mac OS is somehow “doomed” or in trouble in any significant way…
Cool Dave, that is an impressive streak, although ties are so kissing your sisterish.
Are “fixtures” the playoffs?
the reason Apple doesn’t have an entry level model is because it would be “good enough” for most mac users….it would cannibalize sales of their more expensive models.
Open the refrigerator and chill for a minute. This year we have a screaming iPhoto and an even more incredible Garageband. IBM just released a Power 5 server today, and we know they are first in line to get the ice cream and it will eventually make its way into the iMac and later Powerbook, etc. I still believe Jobs wouldn’t say dual 3 ghz unless it was feasible. Toshiba showed a 2gig hard drive the size of a postage stamp, so we can expect an even smaller iPod minimini. I also think Apple knows and has the most push on Tiger in order to make inroads to spread the gap before LongCow arrives. Apple gives us so much that we expect and demand so much and we all want it now. Enderle is writing an aticle like this, stirring everybody up without noting Apple has posted profitable quarters how many times in a row now?
No Joe, the fixtures section is normally much longer, but there is only one more game now before the season ends. If you take a look at the Division 2 table, the top two clubs are promoted to Division 1 automatically. The next four go into playoffs for one more promotion place. The bottom four go down to Division 3.
The big money to gain is for the clubs who go up from Division 1. They get promoted to the Premiership, where clubs such as Arsenal and Manchester United reside. Although County as a business has merged with the Sale Sharks rugby team, so the clubs’ ground is bringing in twice as much money, I think we have a long way to go before we can challenge for one of those places.
And I know ties are a poor second best, but if you take the winning streak in total, six of those were wins. If we can replicate the same form next season, we might even get one of those elusive automatic promotion spots.
Reading through all that above, it’s probably too much information in a small space. Sorry.
Your excitement is catching, Dave. Congrats on being a true fan(atic)!
That argument is ridiculous. I love my iPod, but can it run iPhoto? No. Can it run iMovie? No. How about GarageBand? No. Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive? Nope. Can it run OS X? No. The Macintosh is probably one of the most amazing inventions of the last century. There’s now way they’d ditch it. They’d make it Intel compatible before that happened. As others have said, once the G5 gets worked out they’ll start pushing it again, but I really hope they work on their advertising. I think they need to have ads that address the myths/misconceptions that people have about the Mac. A friend of mine heard a non-Apple CompUSA employee tell a customer not to even bother to look at a Mac because Macs can’t connect to the internet. This is the type of ignorance Apple is up against. They really need to focus on that.
County zealot
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Now now Mark.
Apples ibooks compete on price really well with pc’s, and that is why they sell a lot of them.
Apple’s desktops don’t, and they don’t.
Thanks for proving my point.
Your point was Apple doesn’t and I quote you directly here “not having an attractive entry level model”.
Nowhere did you Say “desktop”
As you don’t own an Apple at all do you have a point?
NO you still haven’t answered my question what sort of cheap ass are you?
how cheap will Apple have to go before YOU Joe lays down your cash.
People take a look around…
1.
IBM announced new servers today: a 4 chip Power5 version (90nm?). I think the problem with IBM is IBM; their is no reason to support Apple, lack of sales for G5 and direct competition in the server market place. IBM answers to the needs of their board – not the needs or wants of us lowly Mac users…
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oh and a $799 dell 2.4GHz
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/featured_notebook1?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
Joe, I agree with you wholly (for once
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />. It is a complete mystery to me why Apple hasn’t put out a lower priced headless Mac to attract new customers. It’s really, really lame…
Mark, take stingerman’s advice in his 10:25.
G-spank is aquainted with the many threads that have discussed alternatives to the emac. I have put my 2 bits worth of opinion many times, and it is too nice outside to rehash it now, especially with a an overexcitable boy like yourself, who, I am sure, cares nothing about my opinion anyway.
Actually, you are wrong about me caring about your opinion, though I could do without the disparaging remarks. I think that in fact you are a pretty smart guy, who often has a completely different take on things than I do. I dig that, because it helps me to think of things from a different agle. Though I may not change my mind it’s still a positive thing.
So what’s deal anyway, do you like Macs or not? It seams to me that you want to not like them, that you kind of hold the Mac community in a little bit of contempt, but that somewhere deep inside you also think that they are pretty cool computers, and that maybe if you won the lottery you’d pick one up…
No I’m serious Joe i’ve only just recently switched to Mac (well 18 months ago) after a loooonnggg time with windows since 3.11 for workgroups on a 486 SX 50.
I don’t find them (Macs) expensive at all, In fact the G5 is one of the biggest bargains around today, far cheaper than the dual Xeon that replaced it in my bussiness.
I just don’t have time to waste on Windows XP any more, my computers are used to earn the money to put food on my families plates.
Sure you can buy a cheap rubbish Dell with integrated graphics a 2.6ghz celeron where the cache is so small that it can’t keep the processors deep pipelines fed, so a massive performance hit is incurred.
Then put up with sub-standard software (XP home) that is a “castrated version” of Xp pro which in turn ships with 5 ports “open” by default and is plagued by pop-ups spy ware malware, viruses etc
Or you can buy a Mac for a couple of hundred more with iLife, a fully featured OS (the same as ships on the top workstation) has NO pop-up malware or viruses to date.
It a no brainer really Joe trust me!
BTW why do you come here?? Bi curious?
To clarify, the overexcitable boy I was referring to was Mark, not g-spank. Obviously I bolluxed up the meaning of all that, sorry.
Man Mark it almost sounds like you took a pill
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What I do Mark is daytrade stocks and futures with a couple employees in an office attached to my house. My wife teaches and has her office in the same room. We all have wintel boxes that I built running windows 2000. Our linksys router seems to do a good job of firewalling stuff, and I admit I don’t know how all that stuff works, but when the world is going nutz because of virii and stuff we just motor along, taking a couple minutes every day to download patches, updates, etc. etc., all of which is not a big pain but certainly is an MS disadvantage.
I think a g5 might be fine someday, running vpc so that our charts work, but for now what we have is “good enough” and even rather cool. We have tv cards, nice sound, and for desk jobs, are pretty happy.
I don’t “waste” money on fancy stuff other than vacations and my kids colleges. It would be a change for me to spend 2k on a g5 that I could build, on the wintel platform, for $800. Like many here know my two sons both are in the graphics biz, and both have g5’s. I helped them shop for them and they are very satisfied. I offered to build boxes for them but they quite sensibly figured their investment in software should keep them Macced up. More………….
I don’t jiggley about osX like some of you do, but appreciate that Apple has a better os than Ms, and it might produce a marginally better experience.
What I am thinking of when I say the low end mac DESKTOP is not a satisfactory offering is that a)it is priced higher than the AVERAGE pc sold; b)is slow; c)has almost no expandability. What I think would be ideal is a small computer, some what like the boxes that Shuttle
http://www.spacewalker.com/index7.html
produces, with at least a 1.5 ghz g4, 512 ram, combodrive, and a dual head video card, a feature that every ATI card has now.
I would pay $800 for that box, right now, and replace my wife’s computer with it. That is exactly how cheapass I am. But don’t want an emac. Steve just has to get over that, and produce what I want, instead of what he thinks I need.
Thanks for the reply, but here it the UK only the insane would build their own computer for business use (they are 100% deductible against tax)
I would dearly love to see the “G5” equivalent PC you could build for $800 !!!I’ve been building PCs since 1981 (based on a Zilog Z80 16k) and don’t think I could mange that.
I’ve built a couple of Amd 64s recently, and while they are a lovely chip they have the huge disadvantage of running windows (32 bit) things should get better soon(apart from the OS will still be XP) and they are about the same in cost as a G5
After 18 months of Mac use I could NEVER go back to PCs (I still have a couple). Until owning Macs I had no idea of the frustrations I put up with on a daily basis as “Normal”
The last straw was a job I did for a client where my Dell laptop refused to “mount” my card reader even after repeated re-boots, only to have him hand me his iBook “download them onto this” and “then burn them to this CD”
I felt about 1″ tall when I left that place cursing the Dell and bought an ibook that afternoon.
I can honestly say I don’t miss the “will it work” or “wheres my CD drive icon”
sick feeling in the pit of my gut, when working under pressure you gotta have reliable tools,I could lose my hard earned reputation (19 yrs) with just a few let down clients.
…”What I am thinking of when I say the low end mac DESKTOP is not a satisfactory offering is that a)it is priced higher than the AVERAGE pc sold; b)is slow; c)has almost no expandability. What I think would be ideal is a small computer, some what like the boxes that Shuttle”…
Hmmm… I hate to debunk this claim, but I myself maintain a computer lab full of eMacs, I also maintain various PCs (beyond my own) for friends and family; I can definitely tell you that the eMac IS NOT SLOW compared to an equivalently priced/configured PC!
Oh and Sputnik that Dell won’t do here is my requirements.
12″ screen
5lbs Max weight
1ghz chip
and preferably firewire( to tether my cameras)
No “integrated” graphics cards or “crippled’ celerons need apply
the 2.6ghz celeron you posted is way slower than a 800 G3 ibook let alone a G4 ( I know I have a Celeron Dell) and Celerons will not run Photoshop CS