“The Mac platform is essentially stagnant. That becomes obvious when you look at the declining market share numbers – not from research firms, but from the W3C [sic: W3Schools is the link Dvorak includes in his article: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp , W3C is a different entity altogether. Dvorak means W3Schools, as evidenced by his article’s link to their stats page.], which monitors online activity. As of December 2004, the Mac share as measured by online activity is 2.7 percent (Linux is 3.1), with all the rest going to various flavors of Windows. I’m now convinced that this stems mostly from Apple’s inability to make the Mac a commodity computer by pricing it to compete with PCs made inexpensively in China and selling with razor-thin margins,” John C. Dvorak writes for PC Magazine.
John then outline his reasons Apple can’t sustain its position. We’ll summarize:
– 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.” (Dvorak has always seemed to hate the fact that Mac users love their computing experience, while the most passion Windows users can muster is indifference at best or hate and pure frustration. However, Dvorak may have hit upon something here in sideways fashion: some Mac users write tech writers to correct inaccuracies about the Mac platform contained in their articles. This may dissuade some writers from tackling Mac-related subjects in the future – which may or may not be a good thing – but, it certainly costs Apple some measure of publicity. We do not believe that “Joe Sixpack” even really knows what a Mac is, much less considers Macs to be “The Computer for Crackpots.”)
– Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ “attention to the [Mac] has been eroded by the success of Pixar, and more recently, by the iPod and iTunes initiatives. None of these has anything to do with the Macintosh. Keeping it on track is a full-time task – Jobs cannot be in the computer business, the movie business, and the music business and make them all successful. You see the results. Market share for the Mac is crap,” Dvorak writes. (We’ll explore market share in the MDN Take below.)
– “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. Apple, seeing it can still use strong marketing to sell high-margin, high-status items, will continue to think it can do so with the Macintosh… 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,” Dvorak writes. (Dvorak doesn’t seem to realize that making the complex easy-to-use requires skill and attention to detail. The Mac is no more or less complex a machine than a Windows PC, it is the execution of the hardware and the OS that makes the Mac easier-to-use. Dvorak has it backwards. Anybody can throw together a bunch of stuff into a pot and call it edible (Wintel), but it takes a master chef to combine the same ingredients, but in proper amounts and properly-prepared to create fine cuisine (Macintosh). Making a complex thing like a personal computer easy-to-use takes a lot more work than not.)
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dvorak’s entire article is based on the W3Schools’ stats that, to him, show Mac market share to be “stagnant” and “crap.” Dvorak writes that he’s “been thinking (usually a dangerous thing for John to do) about this marketing dilemma ever since seeing those [W3Schools] numbers… at some point, declining [Mac] market share creates a relative lack of interest, and eventually, discontinuance. The Amiga fell prey to this.”
Let’s take a look at W3Schools. W3Schools is a website designed to teach people how to develop Web sites for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer using the the Microsoft ASP.NET framework. W3Schools statistics above are extracted from W3Schools’ log-files, and also include “monitoring other sources around the Internet” (W3Schools doesn’t disclose which sources or their weight in relation to their own logs). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that visitors to the W3Schools’ site would be using predominantly Windows and Internet Explorer. On the flip side, if you took a look at MacDailyNews’ logs, you’d conclude that Macs have 91.7% market share and Windows has less than 7%.
However, the real stat of importance, the stat Dvorak fails to mention (perhaps because it blows the foundation for his whole theory to pieces), ironically comes directly from W3Schools’ windows-slanted logs themselves: Mac market share in March 2003 was pegged at 1.8%. Mac market share in December 2004 was 2.7%. See for yourself here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Is Apple’s market share really that important? – October 18, 2004
Piper Jaffray: Mac market share shows potential to increase – October 04, 2004
Piper Jaffray: ‘Apple market share to grow over next two years’ – September 27, 2004
Mac market share primed to explode? If not now, when? – September 25, 2004
Apple Macintosh easily leads Linux in market share, installed base – August 09, 2004
10 percent of computer users use a Mac; 3 percent is Mac’s approximate quarterly market share – February 10, 2004
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!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
{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.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
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.
😀
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?