“In the battle for the computer market share between Apple Computer and Microsoft, clearly Microsoft has come out on top. Despite its second-place finish in the operating-system war, however, Apple continues to fight and win the popularity battles on the secondary hardware and music fronts,” Walaika K. Haskins writes for CIO Today.
“To its credit, Apple continues to defy analysts’ predictions that it will fail. Apple has set the industry standard for music downloads and portable music players. Apple has garnered some US$500 million in music downloads sold via the iTunes music store. Apple sold more than 6 million iPods in the third quarter,” Haskins writes. “With analysts estimating that as many as 400,000 Windows users have switched to Apple under what they call the iPod halo effect, the reports of Apple’s demise clearly have been overstated.”
Haskins writes, “The major difference between Apple and Microsoft is the type of consumer that each company perceives its users to be. That distinction shouts volumes. Microsoft pursued the wrong perception in appealing to its view of the common man. ‘It’s almost like Microsoft is designing [software] for geeks and Apple is designing for real people,’ said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research. ‘Microsoft’s common man approach is centered on the price [of their software].’ Wilcox said that in terms of functionality, Microsoft’s approach to the common man is too complicated and requires a ‘walk-him-through-it process.’ The user has to plug in something that launches the wizard. Then the user has to go through six or seven steps to get the device to complete a first-time configuration. ‘Whereas Apple’s common-man approach is you plug it in and it works,’ said Wilcox.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft’s high point in operating system market share is in the past, not the future. Geeks don’t use Windows’ wizards to help them through and those same wizards often fail for your average personal computer user; the vast majority of whom would be far better off on a Mac OS X machine than a Windows PC. To paraphrase Nigel Kendall, Windows PCs are designed by people who know a lot about computers and Apple Macs are designed by people who know a lot about people. Get a Mac, it just works.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Microsoft’s Windows ‘Vista’ too little, too late; could be rough times ahead for Redmond – July 28, 2005
16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs – June 15, 2005
Viruses don’t have to be a fact of life; there are no viruses on Apple’s Mac OS X – not a single one – April 21, 2005
Mossberg: ‘consider dumping Windows altogether and switching to Apple’s Macintosh’ – April 18, 2005
Apple touts Mac OS X security advantages over Windows – April 13, 2005
97,467 Microsoft Windows viruses vs. zero for Apple Mac’s OS X – April 05, 2005
Apple’s Mac OS X is virus-free – March 18, 2005
68,736 Microsoft Windows viruses vs. zero for Apple Mac’s OS X – March 12, 2005
Microsoft tries to turn its own security flaw into commercial gain – February 25, 2005
Cybersecurity advisor Clarke questions why anybody would buy from Microsoft – February 18, 2005
Microsoft: The safest way to run Windows is on your Mac – October 08, 2004
Mossberg: Apple iMac G5 ‘powerful, affordable, virus-free with better, more modern OS than Windows XP’ – September 23, 2004
Mossberg: Dump your Windows machine and get an Apple Macintosh to free yourself of spyware – August 25, 2004
Tired of patching patches to patch Windows patches? Writer suggests getting a Mac – August 03, 2004
SmartMoney: Long-suffering Windows users can only dare to dream of Mac’s ease-of-use – February 12, 2004
First – I prefer my Mac for numerous reasons.
That said, my Windows boxes at work (doing engineering tasks) have crashed less often than OS X. I occasionally get kernel panics with USB or FireWire device insertion or removal. When examining the core dumps, it is usually a third party software that is the culprit. OS X is a clean install on my system.
Now Windows has far more 3rd party software that intrudes on the system than OS X, yet has become orders of magnitude more stable over the years from prevous Windows versions. I think Microsoft is being slammed a bit more than necessary in this regard.
However, there really is no excuse for the security vulnerabilites in Windows. For that, Microsoft deserves a full broadside of criticism.
Mac OS X is designed for people to use. Windows XP is designed for IT drones to specify, not geeks.
MW over: Windows is over the hill.