“Apple Computer’s switch to Intel chips puts the company that once promised to ‘think different’ in a tough spot: How different can it be? The company had little choice when it made the move earlier this year. Its previous reliance on PowerPC chips left it with increasingly uncompetitive hardware and dwindling market share,” Troy Wolverton writes for The Mercury News.
Wolverton writes, “The decision seems to have paid off; in recent quarters, Apple’s computer sales have vastly outpaced the overall PC market, and last quarter the company sold a record number of machines.More important, the move seems to have broadened Apple’s appeal. More than half the computers Apple sold last quarter in its stores were to customers who were new to Macs, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said in a conference call earlier this month.”
Wolverton writes, “But the move has alsoplaced Apple in a tough spot, putting it in the thick of the competitive PC market. For the first time, Apple’s customers can now directly compare the specifications of the company’s Macintosh computers — and their prices — with those offered by Dell or Hewlett-Packard.”
Wolverton spends scant time on the real difference that Apple offers, writing just that, “Apple will still have its distinctive operating system and software, always seen as key selling points. But playing the upgrade game while avoiding the risk of becoming just another PC maker could prove to be a dangerous challenge for Apple, analysts say.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A typical Wolverton-penned piece; much hand-wringing over nothing. Apple could still be putting PowerPC processors – or to exaggerate to make a point: hamsters running on wheels – in their Macs and we would still be buying them because the appeal of the Mac platform is the OS and the software, stupid.
Which Microsoft is addressing with Vista, Apple is running out of advantages really quick I say
Vista is an improvement over XP, but it’s going to be late 2007 at best before it gains any real traction. In the meantime, Leopard when released will fly off the shelves and make Vista look outdated again.
Fanboyism, or me just extrapolating forward from the history of previous releases? Apple move quicker than Microsoft. Whatever equivalence Vista establishes in people’s minds will quickly be removed by Apple. Vista is also going to need to be totally secure to withstand the attention it’s going to get from virus writers. Not because there’s more Windows users than Mac as often quoted, but because Microsoft are still percieved as evil by most hardcore techies and with Ballmer in charge that’s not going to change.
HAH! Every computer maker in the universe would give their grandmother’s pension to be in the “tough spot” Apple is in!
Edgeley Exile 18,
You’re right, Apple does move quicker than Microsoft. But you have to realize, Vista will be huge in relation to Leopard..
Think of it this way. Microsoft only needs to get 5% of Windows users to upgrade to Vista to match the sales of 100% of Mac users upgrading to Leopard..
It annoys me when the MDN take adds “,stupid” to their comment about how “it’s the operating system and software.” I mean, I agree, it is largely about the OS and software that the OS allows to run. Not just Apple software, but thirdparty Mac OS X apps often feel a lot like Apple apps. But, it’s also the simplicity of the hardware, and niceties like slot loading optical drives, and built in iSight cameras, and bluetooth, and maglock power. And power adaptors that have clips for coiling up the cord. I mean… there is a lot that distinguishes Apple. In only a few words, it’s “Attention to detail.” So, when they say, “It’s the OS and software, Stupid” I feel like MDN is calling me stupid for thinking that it’s More than just the OS and software. So, please, drop the “stupid” sha-gig.
@ HParker
Very true, and there’s no doubt which product will sell more. But I don’t see Vista derailing the current Mac revival, at least not during 2007. The Mac isn’t ever going to overtake Microsoft, but I can still see it reaching 10% US market share and 5% worldwide eventually. Such a huge increase in users is going to change the Mac experience for us all.
I don’t think the Windows fanboys get it. Most people don’t flip-flop operating systems. We humans adapt, but don’t move from New Jersey to Arizona and back every year just to adapt to something new. That’s not the way people work. They find something that works for them, until they find something better; at that point, they switch. They adapt to the new environment and stick with it. So come Vista, come Longhorn II, come whatever, a vast majority of Apple switchers will stay with Apple due to reasons of basic psychology.
Sheer numbers of sales don’t mean anything, because Windows’ sales are driven by the corporate market. You guys know this; don’t pretend there’s some equivalence between 100 individual users who choose to buy Macs and one corporate drone who buys 100 Lenovo PCs.
More promises of how great Vista will be burn even those who choose Windows, especially when they’ll have to get a new computer to install the thing. And frankly, as an ex-Windows user, I know those folks on the Windows raft have heard it all before. “We’ll fix Windows THIS TIME,” crows Billybo&co;. But they never do, and they haven’t this time, either.
What y’all have to say is nothing new; it wasn’t convincing in 2000, and it’s not convincing now. But I suppose you have to peddle bs on Mac boards when your product is part illusion, part PR, mostly bad GUI, and chock full of security holes. *sighs* I’d just give it up. How do you sleep at night?
Why is it that people, who could care less about whether the Mac stays or goes, are always writing articles bemoaning whether it will or not?
How do they make a living writing this stuff?
Or anything at all.
HParker,
True but then Apple can release 5 or 6 times between each update of Windoz. Plus all the new switchers coming into the fold will add more. Then theirs the upgrades of iLife and other Apple Apps, .Mac subscriptions etc. Granted Vista will be a big revenue stream for MS but I wonder if it will be profitable given the giant sums of money they have spent producing it?
To answer the original question, I would argue that the Intel move has opened a lot more avenues for Apple since they offer a greater variety of processors.
With IBM and Moto – Apple had two choices G5 and G4. Eventually dual cores turned up but that took years.
Now with Intel, Apple has multiple choices: Core Solo and Duo, Core 2 Duo, Xeon with multiple cores, plus a host of low cost low powered processors for a variety of devices.
This makes it possible to have server dedicated processors, high end professional machines and mid range consumer PCs, each using a difference type of CPU that is ideal for the application.
Who knows what is in the new iTV. Could be a core processor or something completely different.
Plus add to that all of Intel’s resources for chipset support and board design. It’s a win-win for Apple and they are gonna to come out with some very special products next year that will leave everyone else way behind.
Yes, the funny thing is that in spite of the fact that Apple is using the “same” components as everyone else, their computers still put the rest to shame. One would have thot that someone else could come up with an iMac knock-off now that the heat/power issues are the same, but I haven’t seem anything like it, anywhere. Also, Apple has seemingly eliminated the need for wires inside it’s Mac Pro, and the slide-in drive bays are genius. Is Dell or anyone else doing this kind of stuff?
Don’t you ever wonder how Apple and the fanboys on his forum managed to keep a straight face when suddenly claiming a 5x improvement in speed after switching to Intel, when previously the 64-bit G5 was supposedly “screaming” and faster than all competition? I didn’t hear the PC press claim a 5x improvement with the move to Intel Core Duo processors. Makes you realise what a load of bullshit Apple’s marketing department produces … and how much of it Apple fans swallow.
Cubert :
Shouldn’t that hamster be ‘in’ the wheel? I had a hamster when I was a kid. Horniest little bugger I ever did see. I fed him fried chicken and mashed potatoes. He got fatter than a hog and keeled over dead. He was an American hamster.
@Reality Check
The 5x claim was never made for G5 machines, only for machines going from G4 to Core Duo. When the iMac went Intel, Apple advertised it as a 2-3x speed increase, and considering that machine was going from single to dual core, most of the jump can be explained easily.
Revisionist history appears to be a two-way thing when you’re around
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Oh yeah, and don’t forget a single processor PowerMac G5 was even quicker, despite being an older machine.
“Apple could still be putting PowerPC processors – or to exaggerate to make a point: hamsters running on wheels – in their Macs and we would still be buying them”
Says more about your gullibility than anything else.
Richard Gere should be making an appearance in this thread before long.
totally moronic article
Wrong, MDN – it’s not just the software. The troll who wrote the article was suggesting that Macs are special only because they are “different”, which is a classic straw man argument used against Macs. What a laugh.
It’s the way that the hardware, industrial design and software work together that makes a Mac great. Using the fastest hardware available is a good thing. Mac portables used to be pathetic (G4), now they are the best (Core 2 Duo). Mac G5 workstations used to be the best, until they were overtaken by the new Mac Core 2 Duo workstations. Nothing but good news, people. =)
“Using the fastest hardware available is a good thing. “
Then presumably you’ll be ditching your Macbooks for the fastest available hardware.
Hamster:
“presumably you’ll be ditching your Macbooks for the fastest available hardware.”
Did I say I had multiple MacBooks? Are you on drugs?
“Did I say I had multiple MacBooks? Are you on drugs?”
No, but sounds like you need them if you don’t recognise that a Macbook Pro is far from the fastest notebook out there, and a Macbook is about as basic as they come.
“True but then Apple can release 5 or 6 times between each update of Windoz”
This is because an Apple “Full Release” doesn’t add much functionality. Microsoft understands their mistake this time in doing one huge update (and thereby getting only on upgrade fee) compared to the Apple model of doing a stream of tiny updates and getting a bunch of upgrade fees per customer for the same time period.
Also if you look at the Microsoft OS release list since XP was released we have:
Media Center edition (3 versions)
XP Embedded
XP Tablet edition
XP service pack 2
XP 64 bit edition
Server 2003
Apple would have called each of these a new “Version” and they all include at least as many “New” features as you get in an Apple OS X release.
“No, but sounds like you need them if you don’t recognise that a Macbook Pro is far from the fastest notebook out there”
Hamster, give me a link to a laptop that has something better than a 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo, since that what the MacBook Pro has.
“Hamster, give me a link to a laptop that has something better than a 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo, since that what the MacBook Pro has.”
Think balance. It’s not all CPU speed these days (Which of course dozens of notebooks match the Mac on). Think about notebooks with raid 0 hard disks and fast (rather than pathetic X1600) graphics. The Macbook has neither There’s a lot of machines which will outperform it.
In otherwords, no, there is no faster laptop than a MacBook Pro. Thank you for confirming that.
RAID-0, that’s the worst idea ever for a laptop user. When you use RAID-0, you multiply the chance of hard drive failure by each of your two hard drives, and the only speed increase you get is throughput – when latency is what makes the system snappier. If you really need fast hard drive performance, you’ll have to plug in an external hard drive RAID into the FireWire 800 port that no PC laptops have.
The only laptop graphics options faster than the x1600 are only available in bulky 17″ models. The “pathetic” x1600 is the fastest available in 15″ laptops. Please correct me if I’m wrong. =)