“It’s kind of a stretch to think that iPod users will buy Mac in volume. I don’t recall any studies discussing how Sony Walkman users moved right up to $2500 Sony LCD displays, for example,” Paul Thurrott writes for Windows IT Pro. “But it’s kind of sad how every little success at Apple renews talk of a Mac revival. First it was Mac OS X. Ok, well, they got that one wrong, maybe Jaguar will do it. Nope. Hmm. How about the iPod? No? Well, maybe Mac OS X Tiger will do it. Or the Mac mini. OK, seriously, how about…”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Okay, enough of fantasies, wishes, and the stuff that’s usually squeezed out of a Longhorn’s rear end. Now, let’s try facts and research: In March, Morgan Stanley drastically raised estimates on Apple Computer on the results of a survey by the research firm which showed that users of iPods had a 19% PC to Macintosh platform conversion rate compared with a street expectation of 10%. According to Morgan Stanley, the conversion rate of iPod customer base to the Macintosh platform from PC implies two points of global PC market share gain for Apple in 2005 and that the conversion rate for iPod owners could track closer to the 25% range going forward from 19%.
In January, IDC reported that “spillover business from the popularity of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s iPod music player helped boost Apple’s PC shipments more than 25 percent.” IDC also reported that Apple’s Mac shipments grow more than 25 percent, while the PC market as a whole grew at only 10 percent (Gartner) to 13.7 percent (IDC). Gartner research showed Apple Computer gaining share in 2004, attributed in part to its revamped iMac G5 all-in-one desktop computer. Also in January, CNET reported, “Mac sales rose significantly last quarter. The company sold 1,046,000 Macs, up 26 percent from last year. Analysts have been projecting a rise for the computer industry as a whole of about 10 percent, meaning Apple gained significant share during the quarter.””
While truly sad, Thurrott’s characterization of iPod as Apple’s “little success” speaks volumes. The fact that Microsoft can’t manage to ship an OS that can compare to even Apple’s Mac OS X Beta (circa Sept. 2000) must be driving him over a cliff.
Moo.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Microsoft dismisses threat of Apple’s ‘iPod Halo Effect’ – April 04, 2005
Thurrott: Mac OS X Tiger ‘will do absolutely nothing to change the Mac’s market share’ – April 01, 2005
Morgan Stanley: Apple’s ‘iPod Halo Effect’ is ‘roughly double what the market expects’ – March 18, 2005
‘iPod Halo Effect’ – sales of the iPod are spurring orders of other Apple products – February 24, 2005
Report: Best Buy to sell Mac mini, could accelerate ‘iPod Halo Effect’ – January 28, 2005
Apple shows strong Mac shipment growth, market share gains in fourth quarter 2004 – January 19, 2005
Apple execs now see ‘iPod Halo Effect’ clearly paying off with higher Macintosh sales – January 13, 2005
Report: Apple gained significant market share of computer industry during past quarter – January 12, 2005
Holy Halo Effect! Analyst predicts 100 million iPod sales by 2008 – Windows to Mac switchers coming? – November 24, 2004
Analyst: iPod ‘should spur sales of iMac, this is just the beginning of a ramp for Apple’ – November 23, 2004
Survey: 13% of iPod owners have switched, plan to switch to Mac from Windows within 12 months – November 22, 2004
When will MDN wake up and realize that acknowledging Thurott is a BAD idea?
The guy is almost completely ignored by the rest of the universe now, but Thurott always seems successful at pulling MDN’s chain.
Ignore him. Period.
The guy is irrelevant, and doesn’t deserve the links, traffic, or attention.
OK, I am a lifetime Mac user, and Thurrott has an obvious bias (I think he was bashing Linux this week, Thurrott is always looking for a way to defend Microsoft) but in this case, history is on Thurott’s side. Every big Mac development was seen by the Mac user base as utter salvation (see below), and in every case market share kept going down. How hard can it be to climb out of 2% or 3%? Yet Apple is still stuck there. Now Mac market share nowhere further down to go. The iPod may change things, but four generations of iPod later and it STILL remains to be seen.
Mac developments that many Mac users said should lead to world domination and the death of Windows but did not:
HyperCard
The DEC alliance
The IBM alliance
The PowerPC
The G3 Pentium-killer
The iMac
The G4 Pentium-killer so fast Apple made that ad about how the US Gov’t banned its export as a weapon
Mac OS X
The G5
The dual G5 tower
Instead, Mac share kept dropping. Thurrott may be wrong most of the time, but here history is on Thurrott’s side, folks.
Apple is not in the business of capturing market share, they are in the business of selling computer hardware and software…period. The next round of sales figures will show Apple doing very well compared to their historical sales numbers. It is well reported that Apple has seen significant gains in a number of markets that they have previously had little or no presence in as the FreeBSD UNIX base of the OS combined with a full suite of mainstream applications (read MS Office) have made the Mac a good choice in science and research.
The word is out in academia- the PowerMac G5 is a first class tool for UNIX computing and Mac OS X now has the largest UNIX distro base. Even Linus Torvalds is running LINUX on a PowerMac G5. The 970 is a floating point monster (who cares about FPS frame rates- get an X-box) and is can hold it’s own on a cost/performance basis in these markets.
All ranting and bias aside, Mac OS X has a large enough base to support continued development and continues to pick up quality apps in specialized pro markets that will drive future sales. Apple is not going to play in the bottom-end market and is getting increased sales numbers at the mid to high end of desktop systems. Do I expect Apple to topple MS Windows as the dominant OS? No. What I expect to see is a slow and steady increase in the size of the installed base and a market share that will slowly rise in a rapidly expanding market.
Thurrot has been saying things like this for years now, and will continue to do so for probably as long as someone sees his work as fit to publish.
What we need to recognize, though, is that he is bringing up Apple much more frequently than in the past. That means that there is enough going on, both at Apple and in the public mind, that makes it worth it to him to keep stirring the pot. His coverage frequency basically disproves most of his points and reaffirms all of the positive coverage.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/04/07/apple.in.fobes.2000/
While Microsoft on the other hand dropped! This is a sign of desperation folks.
how can he compare the walkman and $2500 LCD screens with ipods and $500 computers (which are way more functional than a screen). gah….he makes me mad.
It’s kind of sad how the so-called insignificance of Apple still gets under the skins of every Microsoft Fanboy Warrior such as Paul Thurrott and Rob Enderle.
Thurrot is an anal sphincter
please quit telling us what thurrot has to say. It makes him sound like a credible source for news, which he definitly is not.
What is truly sad is how consistently Thurrott comes out with idiotic statements and predictions.
“please quit telling us what thurrot has to say. It makes him sound like a credible source for news, which he definitly is not.”
I totally agree! How many times has MDN featured a Thurott rant in the last 2 weeks? Does he really deserve that kind of attention?
I rarely see other sites like OSNews, Slashdot, ArsTechnica, and Anandtech link to anything from Thurott these days, but why does MDN keep subjecting us to Thurott’s nonsense? We already knew Thurott was nonsense, but he’s swerved into the land of the absurd for a while now, so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop saying “Oh, look what an idiot he is!” and then jumping whenever Thurott says “Dance, MDN!”
Who is playing who for a fool now? Everytime MDN links to a Thurott piece, it says something about how easily a moron like Thurott can manipulate the editors of MDN. That’s not cool.
The reason MDN post Thurrot articles is the same reason many give for Thurrot writing them, the response. The boards go crazy. If you’re tired of reading Thurrot articles, don’t click on them. Simple as that.
Bunch of damn democrat liberal Mac users. Dubya would never go Mac – he’s my man.
“The reason MDN post Thurrot articles is the same reason many give for Thurrot writing them, the response.”
Okay, so I guess principles and standards don’t count for squat in journalism, only the response? Or are your arguing MDN should relegate itself to being a traffic whore, because the response justifies coverage?
This is a call for STANDARDS. The argument, “Don’t click on it if you don’t like it” is a self-serving lazy-ass excuse for whoring, because why should newspapers, magazines, or websites have editors at all then? Maybe we should get rid of the letters pages, too, while we’re at it, if readers shouldn’t write about what they feel is bad reporting/coverage, since the obvious “solution” is to tell people to bug off and ignore the stuff they don’t like?
Anybody can write, “Apple sucks HAHAHA!” but does that mean MDN should go link crazy because it “generates a good response?” Because that’s what you are arguing for, and MDN is better than that.
MDN is single-handedly keeping Thurott relevant, since he has nothing more on Longhorn he can write about for the next 2 years, except how Microsoft has announced another delay or cut out another feature. Yep, keeping Thurott from disappearing off the web is worth the $4.57 in extra traffic revenues….
You know, if you never mentioned that idiot again at MDN, several things would happpen:
1: Mac jihadists wouldn’t go to his site and make fools of themselves, thus dispelling the myth that most Mac users are idiots.
2: We wouldn’t get our blood pressure up over an idiot who hasn’t got a story about Apple correct in his life.
3: He would get muss less attention, and people would see he’s incompetent in the area of Windows. As long as Mac users attack him, that draws attention away from what an incompetent boob he is on the Windows side.
4: I said to.
Alzo Sprach Jobs.
stock triples? small success i guess.. pffft
iPod has a 92% marketshare for HD players.. pfft small success…
Mac sales up 25% year over year.. pfft small success..
Thurrott even rationalized why the mac marketshare was going up… eventually when it goes down so low, it has to go up at some point!.. why? WHY? Why wouldn’t the company just go right out of business (comp. line)?? His childish views of how businesses run totally undermines what thurrot could actually be: a MS stooge who gives you inside information on the richest plagiarists in history.
When has he been right about apple.. his biggest pet peeve is that this company.. who apparently no one cares about.. sells out everything.. EVERYTHING.. and he blames apple for deliberately short supplying to get press… HE CONSIDERS IT A FAULT THAT THEY SELL OUT!! WTF!
His favorite company, MS, makes SOFTWARE.. so they never have to think about supply issues… sure.. let’s compare the two industries just to make apple look like an amateur when it comes to logistics.. pfft.. what a predictable sack of shit..
“Does that mean MDN should go link crazy because it “generates a good response?” Because that’s what you are arguing for, and MDN is better than that. “
No, actually, MDN really isn’t better than that. Even the site name is a practical rip-off of MacWorld Daily News.
But it does do a decent job of scouring the other Mac sites for articles and making them convenient in one location.
I hate it when people say “market share” but really mean “percent of total computer industry sales”. This number is incredibly useless. It is like comparing Honda sales with all transportation sales including trucks and busses.
Now, if the over all transportation industry’s vehicles last 4 years before replacement, and Honda produces a car that lasts 8 years, then Honda’s market sales share will drop significantly, but that does not mean that fewer people own Hondas. In fact, just as Apple has proven, the total USER BASE in their market SECTOR can rise rapidly.
Why people use “percent of total computer industry sales” as any sort of barometer is complete nonsense!!
zuppy,
MacDailyNews came before “MacWorld Daily News.” It’s a chronological order thing.
Nobody in the real world knows Thurrot.
Who is that guy? Where did come from??
Chronossy,
I beg to differ: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?home&NewsID=100
Like you said, it’s a chronological order thing…
This guy’s obviously nervous…
He’d be calmer with less rhetoric if he really had confidence in his opinions.
He’s nothing but a FUD dispensing shill….
I see Paul is back to his usual ways. Sad….
MORE FUD FROM BILL GATES’S GAY LOVER.
HOPE YOU’VE HAD AN AIDS TEST BILL AS PUAL TURD-ROT IS A WHORE!
The sad thing is that the quality of both OS’s is reversed proportional to their marketshare.