“Apple will unleash [Mac OS X Version 10.4] Tiger Friday to the adoring fans who, I expect, will rush to snare the first copies,” Edward C. Baig reports for USA Today. “Much as I admire the new operating system, I’m not optimistic that Tiger will lift the Mac’s fortunes past its puny single-digit market share. Apple loyalists hate to hear it, but it’s true: Macs continue to be mauled in the software habitat by Microsoft, whose next major overhaul of Windows (dubbed Longhorn) is due out next year.”
“It’s a shame. Like its predecessors, Tiger more than earns its stripes, even if I find the single-user upgrade price of $129 a bit steep,” Baig writes. “In my experience, the Mac has proved itself more reliable and stable than its Windows-based counterparts; nothing in my few days evaluating Tiger suggests that won’t continue to be true.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Baig’s comments raise some questions: How “major” will Windows Longhorn actually be as it continues to shed features like a features like a Dandelion in Chicago? [Note: it seems that Longhorn’s “Sidebar” feature fell off just this week.] How much will Windows Longhorn (read: Windows XP SP3) cost Windows users? More than US$129, most-probably, so will Baig consider that “steeper?” What exactly isn’t a “steep” price for Baig?
We don’t want to blast Baig—read the full article as it contains some good information—we just don’t understand why a much more advanced, more reliable and secure, fuller-featured operating system that’s available tomorrow for the very reasonable price of $129 prompts Baig to compare it to Longhorn vapor while illogically tying the measure of its success to double-digit market share for the Mac platform.
Yeah, because if Apple only get 9% market share, it’ll be a disaster.
</sarcasm>
I’m not too optimistic about it either. Look, people – there’s a monopoly power running unfettered and amok in the marketplace, under (and around) a government without the cojones to do anything about it. All the greatest technology in the world can’t change that.
If Apple advertised their COMPUTERS and SOFTWARE more, maybe that won’t be the case this time. iPods are nice, but they will be not be able to sustain Apple for the long term. Apple has to let the world know about a killer app called Tiger.
The article is a good article, and although you might disagree with his opinion, it’s not that extreme to say that $129 might be steep. I think it’s a fair price, but he doesn’t slam Apple for it. He just thinks it’s a tad high. He also mentions that it’s a great upgrade.
He’s right about the marketshare. If history is any indication, the superior OS hasn’t increased marketshare by any significant amount. Perhaps the Mac mini might change it, but we all know that Jaguar and Panther didn’t get the job done. Why would Tiger?
JadisOne, I couldn’t agree more!!
As long as Apple musters enough to stay around, I frankly don’t care. I liked their stuff before they became “in” and will continue to do so.
Marketshare is fine and helps make things easier, yet let’s not forget that when Apple was “beleagured,” it still managed to remain profitable and technologically relavant.
So there.
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Apple DID increase 1 whole percent from a year ago.
3.6% from 2.6%. I got this news from http://www.appleinsider.com
And hopefully that does keep on improving – I don’t see it going into the double digits either anytime soon but atleast it’s goin’ up!
Micro$oftopoly’s going to rename Longhorn Unicorn and I want to sue.
Why Unicorn? It doesn’t exist, never did and nobody will ever see it.
Good point, JJ. Goin’ up is progress! Maybe we can get back to 5%…
Going from 2.3% market share last year to 4-5% this year, profitably, is a huge accomplishment. Now lets re-invest those profits in advertising the OS and upgrading the pro line.
May not be double-digits, but I haven’t heard “irrelevant” in awhile!
Longhorn may never be completed says Paul Thurrott who looks like he’s been got at by MS. Screenshots of Longhorn are taken down and… ‘Microsoft has handled this situation extremely poorly, and it’s not appreciated. Way to throttle back the enthusiasm even further, guys.’
He also now says his ‘makings of a train wreck’ comment referred to… ‘the Longhorn project itself, which is careening so wildly out of control that it may never successfully come to a conclusion’.
Bit depressing at Microsoft just now.
While over in Cupertino the party just goes on and on!
And I meant to say – 10% is looking a bit light. Apple is on the way bigtime.
Anyone who has ever done any extensive file management in iTunes involving frequent utilization of Search and Smart Playlists (read Smart Folders) understands that with the equivalent of those functions now being available system wide in Tiger, a wonderful new era of computing has arrived. These functions are just too splendid to go unnoticed and once their significance in revolutionizing file management is understood by the public at large … Macs will sell like crazy.
Forget the doomsayers. It’s happening.
Yeah I think this guy will be eating those words in about 2 years…the waves are coming….
You all hyperventilate over the OS too much….both wndoz and apple.
man, i spend my time in the programs.
Shucks, when im in firefox or photoshop or moho or quark i don´t give a whit about what´s showin on my desktop.
I spend about .0001% of my time in the os -fiddlin with files and doo-dads. turn it on and im in the program im working with.
osx video conferncing – 4get it unless you got one barnburnin´ mac.
spotlight….yeah, i am sure to use that…about never. what % of yr time is spent looking for old emails or files?…about zip. are you a library or a gamer?
and all them gadget and eye candy clocks and stock checkers (who owns stocks?), and the temperature in bumsquat, louisiana (both Fahren and Cels)…may impress the nerds out there, but its like who wants that crap?
Flame on brothers!
See ya at the genius bar!
I think Apple is playing it smart. Investing too much into growth and expanding too quickly could spell disaster. You have to nurture the platforms growth. You don’t want you children to be 6′ 1″ and job hunting at age 5 (though a little extra income never hurt anybody)!!
Let the masses realize the errs of M$’s ways and the reality that OS X is everything that a modern computer user needs, and more… M$ is already doing a pretty good job at advertising their decline and inability to compete in the new market. They can’t seem to buy there way out of this one just yet.
Who knows, maybe Bono will hold a charity concert to benefit the former employees of the former monopolizers that is M$!!
Even a little bit of TV advertising would go a long way. They don’t need to run as many ads as they do for the iPod even, but a few would be nice…
Queezie, your apps owe there lives to the OS. It’s their atmosphere. Without a crisp OS for the apps to live in, they’ll crash and burn. Think of the previous OSes as methane atmospheres trying to support oxygen breathing creatures. Crashes were normal. As the OSes mature, the apps live better and have room to evolve. You spend more time in your OS than you think…
No sidebar!!!??? Thats about the ONLY feature I was looking forward to in Longhorn. Fscking Microsoft. I won’t be buying Longhorn then, not until I have to anyways. The sidebar is just a dashboard to the side anyways, and interferes with your screen realestate.
I don’t remember anyone saying that Tiger would push Apple to the 10% market share.
Apple and Tiger are largely unknown to the masses. The people I work with have no real idea what Tiger is all about. They are too busy defragging, reinstalling, and downloading virus software to ever understand what else is out there. I suspect that most of the population is like this. When I show someone the elegance of my PowerBook, they are quite impressed.
Apple is still thought of largely as a computer for schools.
I really don’t think Baig has much of a clue. It would seem that Apple’s market share is already increasing as the word gets out that Microsoft’s operating system is not secure and getting worse by the day. And now the stories are coming out that Longhorn is not going to be much of an upgrade after all. Not to mention users will have to wait a year and a half before they will see it come out. Apple’s products get better and better and now the speed is there to match anything Wintel has to offer.
With Tiger being a true 64bit operating system and the PowerPC able to switch to 32bit with older systems Apple will get more market share and so what if it doesn’t reach 10% or more. Many car manufacturers work with less and still make plenty of money. Apple has already proven that itself with 9 Billion dollars in the bank and no debt.
Baig is, sadly, dead on. Why is Tiger going to have any greater impact that Jaguar or Panther? Both were more secure than their Windows counterpart, both had slicker UIs, both were less crash-prone. It is almost immaterial that Tiger is a better OS–Microsoft has done such a good job of cornering the market that it’s going to take more than just a good OS to make significant inroads.
People do *not* get excited about operating system! Mac nerds like us do, but we are a *very* small minority.
iTunes can change minds, the Mac Mini could change minds, and perhaps their upcoming iFlicks (or whatever) offering can change minds, but I just don’t see any OS getting joe user excited. I’d love to be wrong, but I’m not.
HuskerMac observes that Apple and Tiger are largely unknown to the masses.
Well … yes and no. Microsoft now has an iTunes in it’s womb and gestation is nearing full term. There won’t be much need to say ‘Who’s yer daddy?’ when the children arrive. It’s going to be pretty clear.
I don’t think that anyone believes that Apple will suddenly have a 10% marketshare just due to Tiger. What I do believe is that Tiger, coupled with the Mac Mini and other bleeding edge technologies, should be able to continue to gain marketshare. It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen with one OS upgrade. It will happen, though.
Y’know, if he wasn’t such a putz, I’d almost feel sorry for Thurrott. For years he’s trumpeted the benefits of MS technologies. He’s now at a crossroads that he doesn’t want to see; he’s actually liking Apple technologies more. Were the tables turned and we Mac lovers were to see MS as better, how would it feel. That’s right… it would suck!
9% of the paper hat business would be sad. Every % point added by Apple is about $2 BILLION dollars per so the only crying at 9% will be people who didn’t buy Apple stock.
GUess $10 to $20 billion revenue is not going to be good enough for this guy but then since he believes LONGHORN will be out and stable in its first release … he’s the same sort of person who votes for Dell as one of the most admired companies.