“It has been a bumper year for the California-based [Apple]. More than three billion songs had been bought through the iTunes music store since 2001, and that 110 million iPods have been sold worldwide,” The Telegraph reports.
“Apple sustained the momentum by increasing the capacity of its iPod range, giving it a facelift, adding a new selection of pastel-coloured iPod shuffles, and introducing video-playback to a thinner, squatter iPod nano. Oh, and it launched a mobile phone,” The Telegraph reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Not-so-minor omission: Apple also released the iPod touch.
The telegraph continues, “In all the brouhaha surrounding the iPhone launch, it would be easy to miss one of Apple’s biggest successes this year – the upsurge in sales of its computers. Apple shipped more than two million Macs between July and September this year alone, a 34 per cent increase on those months last year… If Apple’s rise continues, it may soon be able to think about posing a more serious threat to Microsoft’s dominance.”
“Bill Gates’s company seems to have been caught napping, failing to get to grips with a consumer demand for flair, innovation and beautiful design,” The Telegraph reports. “But more worrying for Microsoft will be the backlash against its latest operating system, Vista, released in January. Its snazzy new graphical interface wasn’t enough to win over many consumers. Vista makes heavy demands of computers, and lots of people found it sluggish and bloated. Such was the lack of interest that Dell began to offer computers preloaded with the older operating system, Windows XP, as an alternative.”
The Telegraph’s Best of 2007: Apple iPhone – While there is definitely room for improvement, its intuitive interface and stunning good looks have set the standard that all future mobile phones will be judged by.
The Telegraph’s Worst of 2007: Windows Vista – While it’s lovely to look at, this operating system can feel sluggish. It has perhaps shaken consumer confidence in the Microsoft brand, and goes some way towards explaining why Apple’s star is in the ascendancy.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Slowly they awaken.
What a great title… a double entendre on “Microsoft” as it wilts, becoming impotent….
Maybe it needs some of that Viagra that so many spams go on about, spams sent mostly by compromised Windows zombie machines.
I would like to know what the consumer market share is for OS’s.
Reviews often lump business and consumer market hare numbers together.
I bet Mac is making some important inroads in the consumer realm.
Business is too political and has different influences, cheap and works are simply what is wanted in IT.
At home you want something nice to work and play on.
Enjoying my blacbook, not going to be happy if an aluminum 13″ gunmetal, slim macbook is released in January, ARGGGH!
Innovation is not in M$ DNA. It will take years to change their corporate culture.
By the time any real changes emerge, AAPL will be light years ahead. This is truly the beginning of the downfall for M$.
The Telegraph can’t be serious. Another Apple puff piece for morons who don’t know any better.
The only thing they got right was to mention Windows Vista’s “snazzy new graphical interface” is “lovely to look at.” So true. Vista is a work of art and it belongs in a museum. I’m basking in the warm glow of Vista right now, rocking the Aero interface on a Dell and it’s fantastic—from the window and dialog box transparency to the drop shadows. Beautifully rendered stuff. You’d think Crapple with their “Pro” apps background could do the same with their OS. Microsoft is at the top of their game and Apple should be scared. Suck it, MAC sheep.
Your potential. Our passion.™
@ ZT
I bought you a hammer for Christmas. Where do I send it?
Yep microsoft is on a downward spiral.
Anyone remember the ‘origami’ device they launch such bombed bibig time? It was supposed to be the ultimate handheld device, well it sucked.
I just wish I bought Apple stock in the 1990s when Sj returned to Apple, it was selling for $24 a share.
MDN is also “sluggish and bloated”.
I still have not seen any good explanation of why the screen Steve put in the Touch is inferior to the one he put in the phone.
My conclusion is he believes it causes a potential Touch purchaser to buy a phone instead. Wouldn’t that be just like him to do that? And, I’m sure that still another genius marketing ploy has succeed as they always do.
Prediction: when the new gen phone is introduced next month, we will also hear a breathless announcement about the sudden, dramatic improvement in the resolution of the Touch screen. “Wow! Look what we’ve done for you. The new Touch ships tomorrow! And, if he’s honest will also say: “because we’ve had these things stored in our Chinese warehouses for months now and we need to get them to you.”
Result: lots of early adopters of Touch will then own two and paid more for them than the phone would have cost but instead of being turned off by the manipulation, they will just be pleased that Cupertino had a “breakthrough” in new technology and made the Touch look as good as the phone.
What suckers we all are.
The wheels of justice turn slowly.
But for Microsoft getting its just desserts, the wheels are certainly turning.
The end of MS dominance is inexorable.
Die Microsoft, die.
“Innovation is not in M$ DNA”
DNA. As in ‘Does Not Apply’.
They mentioned “Joost”
as an AppleTV owner, I would love to see that offered, they have a lot of good stuff on Joost, but I want to watch on my television, not my iMac
If Vista shook the confidence in Microsoft’s brand, what did millions of Windows XP virus infections do?
How about well over 1/3 of all Xbox 360s dying on eager gamers? Did that hurt the Microsoft brand?
How about Microsoft being a convicted monopolist? Did that take any shine off?
There are many reasons we are Apple fan-boys. The biggest one is Microsoft’s incompetence.
@ Wang-A-Lang-A-Ding-Dong
You like dudes?
If Vista shook the confidence in Microsoft’s brand, what did millions of Windows XP virus infections do?
Remember, Vista was supposed to fix everything, MS’s golden “we finally got it right” OS. MS failed to deliver, spectacularly. That’s the Magnitude 10 shake in confidence, the final straw.
MS’s announcement that they’re already working on Vista’s successor, Vienna, is almost as bad as Vista itself. The market isn’t going to wait for another pipe dream of empty promises.
To those who watch, this has been apparent for years.
Innovation is in Apple’s DNA… from their first home-built computer, to the Macintosh, to the iPhone. Apple had ups and downs, but they ALWAYS innovated.
Microsoft grew out of a combination of craftiness and ruthlessness. To WIN was their goal. Winning above ALL.
You can’t win forever.
The Mac and Mac OS was ALWAYS years ahead of anything churned out by MS. When I read comments about how crappy Mac OS 9 was… compared to what? Tiger? Okay. But Windows 95 or 98 or XP? LOL! Sure, OS 9 could be a bit finnicky, but it worked well. CLEARLY these are people who didn’t or NEVER used it.
There’s one thing that’s forgotten. Steve Jobs lost a few times… being booted out of Apple, the failure of NeXT in the marketplace… and he LEARNED from it.
Microsoft never lost. But then, after they signed that first contract with IBM they never really learned to compete and certainly not on level ground.
Crush or starve the competition? Sure.
Strong arm your “partners”? Sure.
Keep products afloat on rivers of cash? Sure. But is that competing.?
os 9… compared to win9x? realistically, that’s a bit tough. os 9 from my experience was much more stable than 9x, but 9x had one thing going for it that os 9 didn’t – real multitasking. it also had better developer support (firefox 2 still runs on windows 98, and even win95 with a few updates – and i realize this isn’t an inherit flaw with the os itself, but it still matters at the user end that i’d be stuck with netscape 7 or ie 5), and os 9 didn’t have the option of opening folders within the same window unless you were in list view. even so, os 9 looked a lot nicer and was quite a bit more stable… but that wouldn’t have been enough to switch me back then. os x came around and changed everything, and i haven’t looked back since. just thought i’d throw my experience with the two out there. =)
I never thought small and flaccid was a good name for a company.
Hey ZT,
Even Windows users hate Vista. Read about this “upgrade.”
Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP
Also from that article: “…the iTunes store has only a limited range of TV shows and films – and they’re over-priced.”
Huh? I thought NBC/Universal et al said they were too cheap!
Who’s the greedy one, eh?
So glad to see you back!
Signed,
A fellow Mac lover.
It’s not Microsoft’s “failing to get to grips with a consumer demand for flair, innovation and beautiful design,” it’s their TOTAL inability—at the highest levels—of truly appreciating class and style and being able to recognize it when it’s staring them in the face. If a technical company doesn’t have strong leadership that “knows” class and demands it of everyone who helps develop their technology, then their products quickly suffer from “too many chefs in the kitchen”-syndrome.
Microsoft sucks because Bill Gates (in my opinion) is more ruthless than creative, and Steve Ballmer is nothing more than Europeans’ stereotype of your typical, semi-educated, has-no-class, ultra-aggressive, neanderthal U.S. CEO (in my opinion).
And after reading this story, the Microsoft execs are crying all the way to the bank.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
I guess that is not one remark to be welcomed at the Redmond campus this Christmas!!!
Thanks Realist. I was walking around in a blind daze before you showed up. Thanks for showing me the light.
I’ll be spending the rest of my day smashing all my Apple products and creating anti-Apple websites.