“The cult of Apple found new life in 2004. No longer just a company for devotees of its Mac line of computers, Apple was the hot tech stock last year thanks to its wildly successful iPod digital music player. Many users of PCs running on Microsoft’s Windows could be spotted wearing the iPod’s trademark white headphones,” Katie Benner reports for CNN/Money. “But there was more to the Apple story than the iPod. Apple’s fiscal 2004 sales grew in every one of its product categories, helping the company to consistently blow away earnings per share forecasts. It’s little wonder that Apple stock gained more than 200 percent last year, making it one of the best performers in the S&P 500.”
“Despite all the iPod hype, the Mac is still Apple’s bread and butter. So no matter how popular the iPod gets, Apple will need to post solid sales and profit gains from its computer business. But some analysts think the iPod could be the best advertisement for the Mac. In a recent survey conducted by Piper Jaffray, 6 percent of iPod users said they’d switched from PCs to Macs after buying the music player, and another 7 percent said they would make the switch in the next 12 months,” Benner reports. “Some Mac watchers also say mounting security problems that have hit computers running on Windows hard will leave consumers eager to purchase Macs, which have been relatively immune to worms and viruses.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For our Windows-only friends, information about smoothly adding a safe, secure, powerful, and fun Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal can be found here.
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Relatively inmune? How “relative” is the inmunity of an OS with NO viruses at all?
I guess everything is ‘relatively immune’ compared to Windows.
Or maybe they don’t want to admit how crappy Mac OS X makes Windows look.
I think it’s both.
Relatively good I guess
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Brought to you by the magic word “Trade”.
No way, I’m keeping my Mac!!
The operative word in this article is “some”, as in not very many.
I would guess just as many are switching from Pc to Mac as vice-versa.
Are the Mac software companies seeing lots of switches from PC to Mac version?
MDN – survey the software companies like Adobe, Macromedia and see how big a surge in new Mac version software there is…
“[…] survey the software companies like Adobe, Macromedia and see how big a surge in new Mac version software there is…”
I’m not sure you’d see it there–most of these switchers are consumers and, therefore, don’t buy professional products from Adobe or Macromedia. Most of them are probably quite happy with the bundle they get from Apple.
All of these reports are really just anecdotal. There is no really large migration to Macs. Most consumers, even with all the problems, are still happy with their PCs. If they weren’t they’d have moved to Macs in larger numbers in the past few years as viruses and malware attacked their computers. They have not. It makes for good reading for Mac fans but it isn’t the reality. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple I remember he said he wanted to get back into a 20% marketshare. Alas, Apple has gone in the other direction. Now I am a Mac fan and sing the praises of the platform to any PeeCeer who’ll listen (and some who won’t). But fact is fact and anybody thinking that Apple will reach those heights of marketshare again is suffering from SJ’s “distortion field”. Just my thoughts.
We were a Mac only family. We still have two macs, but in the meantime we have added 5 computers to our business and family- all PCs (2 laptops and 3 desktops – plus a PC my son built from scratch).
Why? Primarily cost and games.
We own two iPods (20Gb and mini -silver) which my wife and daughter enjoy very much. (They are both used on PCs.)
All computers are hooked in a network and to the web vis DSL.
We have no problems with adware, malware or viruses (ecspecially after switching to Firefox).
My next purchase of a computer will be a Mac – maybe the fictional cheap Mac people are rumoring about or the dual 3+Ghz whenever that comes out.
My parents used to own a Mac and they bought a new computer – a 3Ghz PC. They are very happy with it.
I have personally heard of no one switching from a PC to a Mac. Lots of friends and colleagues have iPods.
That darn list of links is getting pretty long.
To our windows friends: come on over�the grass IS greener.
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Cringly
I would guess just as many are switching from Pc to Mac as vice-versa.
I would guess that the center of Jupiter has an exact replica of Las Vegas, complete with duplicated lounge acts, live jazz bars, and plenty of slots.
Until you have some facts to back up your guess, it’s no different from mine.
Own Mac and PC
My parents used to own a Mac and they bought a new computer – a 3Ghz PC. They are very happy with it.
Never would have recommended that purchase, that’s a lot of money to invest into Windows. Maybe there was a purpose for 3GHz for them, you didn’t specify.
I will say there are significant problems with Windows that “switching to Firefox” simply does not address.
A friend of mine works at a medical billing company, and she says that using the office computers is grounds for termination after one of the managers downloaded something that got emailed to the rest of the office and… (you know the rest).
There’s lots of other problems with PCs but you seem happy, so let me get to my other point…
I have personally heard of no one switching from a PC to a Mac. Lots of friends and colleagues have iPods.
You could be right, the number isn’t going to be showing up on a lot of people’s radar for awhile tho, even if Apple is making a significant comeback.
Let me lay out some numbers for you:
Let’s say Apple is selling 3% of the computers sold in the US. I know the global numbers are different but lets just keep this simple.
Wintel PCs are then about 97%. That number also includes Linux and other *nix OSes on PC hardware.
If you compare those numbers, you’d see that Apple sells less than 1 out of every 33 computers.
Apple could raise it’s marketshare to 4%, which would be a 30% increase for them, and you’d only see a shift from 1 in 33 to about 1 in 25. Apple hits 5% and you’d see about 1 in 20. You can see that shifts like that would be hard for the average person to notice. By the time Apple hits 7% marketshare they are selling 1 in 15 computers, you still may not notice this, but Apple would have more than doubled it’s marketshare by then and you’d hear a LOT about it in the press even tho most of your friends and family my still be using PCs.
using the office computers is grounds for termination
that should include “for accessing the internet”
To Own Mac and PC:
I switched to Mac in October of 2000 for the following reasons:
1) I heard that the upcoming OS X was going to be based on Unix with parts of the OS being open source.
2) I was looking for a good Windows alternative, and Linux wasn’t quite there yet on the desktop. Apple was, and the more I looked into it, the better the company and its products looked.
3) The movie “Godzilla 2000 Millennium” (“Godzilla 2000” in the US, and imho, Apple’s best switching commercial ever) left no doubt in my mind that if I didn’t switch, Godzilla was going to come stomp my house.
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To twilightmoon:
Not if you own the business. “Our family” … “Our business”… Get it?
Though they probably should be careful to not lump the purchase when doing their taxes.
[I]My next purchase of a computer will be a Mac – maybe the fictional cheap Mac people are rumoring about or the dual 3+Ghz whenever that comes out.[/I]
That’s quite the contrast. Either a base cheapo or top of the line… sounds fishy…
If half the rumored things for MWSF come to pass you will be seeing a significant gain in Market share WITH Apple retaining their profitability.
The stars couldn’t get much more in alignment. 2005 is it.
All you need to do is look at unit shipments for the year to realize that Apple has been shipping more and more Macs in 2004 quarters as compared to 2003. 2003 was a flat year in terms of market share for Apple.
While Apple won’t likley climb to 20% in the next year, they could easily up their units shipped quite a lot this year a folks get tired of Windows viruses & all the hassles.
Personally I know of at least 3 current PC users that are buying Macs because they simply do not want to be the “IT guy” for their homes. They do that all day long at work.
And, as stated in another post, if Apple went from shipping one in 33 new machines to 1 in 16 their market share has just doubled and they still are < 6% of all computers shipped. They could easily “sneak” up to 10% and no one ever see any more Macs now than they did before.
>Own Mac and PC: I have personally heard of no one
>switching from a PC to a Mac.
>
>twilightmoon replied: You could be right…
I personally agree, he’s probably right about his own opinion of his own experience. Good call.
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>Own Mac and PC: I have personally heard of no one
>switching from a PC to a Mac.
>
>twilightmoon replied: You could be right…
I personally agree, he’s probably right about his own opinion of his own experience. Good call.
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