Last week, “Apple announced an incredible quarter with strong revenue growth being driven by the iPhone and, yes indeed, the Mac,” Sean Chandler writes for Seeking Alpha. “I believe that the Mac is a highly underestimated product at Apple, and previously, I have even written about the Mac’s potential in dominating the PC market. Mac revenue grew 13% annually and is now right on the iPad’s tail, as it trails around 6% lower, a figure that was 30% lower one year ago.”
“For Apple’s third quarter, fiscal year 2014, it announced that the Mac generated record June quarter sales with year-over-year unit sales and revenue growth in spite of the declining PC market,” Chandler writes. “For the quarter, Apple sold 4,413 [million] units, which includes the purchase of my very first Mac two months ago. Unit sales growth was up by an attractive 7% sequentially and 18% year-over-year, again, in spite of a soft PC market.”
“Apple’s unmatched ecosystem in addition to the incredible computers it makes are currently driving forces that will continue to drive future growth,” Chandler writes. “Despite being the starting core of Apple, the Mac is still in its adolescent stage, targeting an industry that’s in a steady decline. PCs are long-term investments that aren’t replaced at anywhere near the rate of cell phones and their two-year contracts. It will be a long-term journey faced with challenges, but at the rate it’s traveling, I believe that the Mac will unquestionably continue to grow, and maybe even dominate.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple’s Q314: Surging Mac defies a shrinking Windows PC market – July 24, 2014
“dominance” ???
When the majority of users can operate their Macs without a Windows emulator installed, then we can start the victory dance. Until then, let’s just enjoy the superior OS when we can and keep the hubris in check. Somebody here had statistics showing that the vast majority of Mac users have to run Windows software on our machines.
You’re right, some people are suck running Windows, they don’t really have an option, but what does that have to do with Mac sales?
Apple is a hardware company, and as such, I don’t think they care what OS is running; why do you think they created Boot Camp?
The significance here is the room for growth in potential PC sales. Many Windows using people are choosing MacBooks more and more these days. Not only does that mean more sales for Apple, but also means more people are exposed to OS X.
Imagine how many more sheeple would opt for the Mac if they didn’t allow themselves to be convinced that running a Windows emulator on their Mac must be slower, costlier, and more complicated. BECAUSE IT IS.
We all know people who have that one Windows program that they can’t live without. Apple needs to overcome this problem, and Boot Camp is a not a good answer. Apple needs to buy Crossover, put some serious resources behind it, and offer it inexpensively in the App Store as a painless way to run Windows native apps in the Mac without buying & installing Windows. That move alone would force VMWare and Parallels to become more cost effective and sell more Mac hardware. Native Crossover implementation could also be done in a way such that Apple forges more ties with Windows software developers — when Apple makes them aware of how many Mac users there are, these developers will find it worth their while to release superior Mac versions of their wares.
Apple needs to buy Crossover
NO! Have you actually counted the number of Windows applications actually, fully supported by Crossover? Here is their own number: 165. And be sure to look down the list and get the distinct concept that not a lot of people find the list impressive:
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?supported=1
Then add in the fact that because Crossover is a branch of the open source WINE project, all their WINE related code has to be freely contributed back into the WINE project. All you actually pay for when buying Crossover is a friendlier GUI than what you get with WINE.
As for the bizarro claim:
running a Windows emulator on their Mac must be slower, costlier, and more complicated. BECAUSE IT IS.
Have you actually USED Parallels or VMWare? I don’t think so!
1) Neither are ’emulators’ at all! They’re VIRTUALIZATION programs, meaning that they are HARDWARE enabled directly by the Intel CPU in the Mac.
2) The ‘costlier’ claim applies specifically to the cost of the virtualization software. $49 is the most I’ve ever paid for Parallels. I’m a crafty shopper that way.
3) ‘More complicated’ is baloney when using Parallels, because the Windows applications start up and run side by side with the Mac applications, if that’s what you’d like to do! You don’t even have to see the stupid, asinine Windows desktop GUI if you don’t want to!
Or is this yet another comment from outside my space-time continuum? (Of which there are plenty today).
I totally agree with Derek here, but will go a step further…
Suppose Apple did buy Crossover and added magic to it so that it did run everything Windows. What then?
What would happen is that we’d find current cross-platform developers developing only for Windows since Mac users could just run the Crossover version.
If that’s what you want, then you might as well suggest that Apple become a PC vendor that simply puts a OS X theme on top of Windows.
I’m with Derek on this. Do you have any idea how Crossover software actually works (or more accurately, is supposed to work)?
It reverse engineers Window’s API’s – all of them – to translate them to equivalent Unix and Mac API’s. It’s a giant mess of hacks that AT IT’S BEST are almost as good as the Microsoft software it attempts to mimic, which is subject to change with every new Windows version or patch. It’s giant bag of hurt, that sucks for both the community trying to maintain it, and any poor end user expecting it to work. It’s about far away as possible anyone can get from Apple’s philosophy of designing complete vertically integrated systems that “just work” for end users.
The majority of users can ALREADY do this. Where the hell have you been? The only people who should actually need to run Windows on the Mac are those who have very specific needs such as web developers who need to test their work in Windows, or I.T. people like myself who need to also be able to test something in Windows. Lack of ceativity, and curiositiy about trying something new is what will keep a lot of people shackled to Windows. The Mac is quite capable of fufilling our needs without help from Windows.
Tell that to Bernina and Electric Quilt. I design my quilts and embroidery and the Mac is not supported. I have to use a Windows machine for what I do. Don’t assume it’s just corporations who force their users to use Windows — sometimes it comes down to software availability.
I hear you Barbara! But each of our individual world of needs doesn’t equate to the outrageous comment that there are:
statistics showing that the vast majority of Mac users have to run Windows software on our machines.
No there aren’t. That’s pure invention.
Howie said, “… are those who have a very specific need…” I would think that applies to Bernina and Electric Quilt.
I’ll try to stay out of a possible holy war just like I try to stay outside the quilt store, but my wife uses a Pfaff which was supported under Mac OS 9 🙂
Barbara – EQ7 is now native on Mac. Another option is Quilt-Pro.
Don’t assume that one off cases define the majority.
Sadly it is all about MS Office in most corporations and Microsoft has (I think on purpose) keeps the 2 version different enough. I am involved with advance Office based applications using macros across Office apps and SharePoint and the learning curve to switch to the mac version has not paid off so we are still using parallels – It also makes testing for end users more straight forward.
Bottom line, Apple makes better PCs than all the PC makers including Microsoft have been able to do.
It is not just Office. Most ERP and CRM systems do not support mac.
Sorry, but I need Windows to run Subtitle Edit, Subtitle Workshop or VobSub applications. If you can find anything close to those applications on OSX then please let me know. Plus, I have some old Omron Pedometer that requires Windows software to manage. OSX is still a second-class citizen in many instances. Until I can find every application that runs on Windows that will also run on OSX, I’m basically stuck with using either BootCamp or mainly VMWare Fusion Pro. I haven’t tried using Crossover with those applications as of yet but maybe they’ll work with it.
My use of windows via Parallels has more to do with my work environment than my own need.
These needs can be met using a MacBook Air.
Somebody here had statistics showing that the vast majority of Mac users have to run Windows software on our machines.
Is there a wormhole penetrating the space-time continuum between two alternative realities today? There AREN’T any statistics in MY world that show any but a minority of Mac users run Windows software on their machines! Maybe in YOUR alternative reality.
VERY bizarre day here at MDN.
I think it’s one winblows troll responsible for the above.
We need a new term for this. How about ‘Troll turfing’?
Damn. I just noticed your new avatar. Damn. Same old shit going on today. I was listening this morning to news about the state of the VA and wanted to hurl.
Whoa! Check out the THREE 1 star vote downs silverhawk1. We have a FLOCK of trolls here today. Either that or some worthless clown is repeatedly returning here using a FAKE ID every time, which of course is entirely possible. (WordPress is soooo wimpy at times).
Gotta LOVE how much we’re HATED by the asshats. It’s incredibly flattering!
HI HATER FANATICS! See you all tomorrow. <3 <3 XXOO
OH! Give it to me baby! 💋💋💋
Most Mac users don’t run Windows – are quite proud of that. You really don’t need to unless you do work in some particular industries. I run it only because I code websites have to test my code in all used computer environments with significant market share. The vast majority of Mac users, certainly most of the ones I know, aren’t in positions like that, and have no need or desire to run Window.
Some but hardly the vary majority indeed I know no mac user that uses emulation software and I have been a user for nearly 30 years
Ahem! Virtualization software.
(Windows’emulators’ are as dead as the dodo on Mac).
Emulation continues to be important to data archivists and game historians, to name a couple, count me amongst them. But true to the point you are making, those uses are marginal to ‘real work.’
Funny that. At one time ‘real work’ involved swinging a pickaxe and collecting pay in the form of rock salt. When I think of Microsoft I think of salt mines…it all makes sense now! I can quit the therapy at last!
😀 Yeah, but wait until you meet my therapist. She’s blowing my mind in wonderful new directions.
I still have the ‘SoftWindows’ emulator on one of my old Macs. But I have virtualization apps that run everything from Windows 95 on up. I kind of doubt I’d be desperate enough to have to run Windows 3.1.1. I count my blessings. 😉
What’s emoji for ‘jealousy’, I forget…
Hmm. I think it’s: 😡😡😡
Alternatively, I can’t find any Psycho knife emoji. Maybe this will do: 💣💣💣
Have a good night dear goddess.
And that someone who had statistics showing “the vast number of Mac users have to run Windows software on our Machines” was lying through his teeth. I’ve been running an office of Macs for over ten years with only one Mac with a virtual Windows install to run ONE (1), count it, one, non-Microsoft Windows app that was critical to determining patient insurance coverage. The claim that running Windows is necessary on a Mac for productivity is BS.
I believe Mac OS is the best product of Apple and also the most under marketed one. Until Apple offers Mac as an enterprise substitute to windows, Macs growth potential will stand curbed and limited. Mr. Cook – read my lips..
Perhaps IBM’s support for big corporate solutions which heavily involve iOS will help Macs. After all, the development tool for iOS tools are the same tools for Macs.
On the consumer side, Apple could cut their costs, lower prices, increase their design freedom and even possibly increase their margins with lower cost Apple processor versions of the MacBook Air for the many many people who do not specifically need Intel/Windows on Mac.
(They could continue selling Intel Macs for those who need Windows and the most power.)
This would grow Mac sales massively especially with happy iOS customers, and make Microsoft and Intel even more irrelevant.
The Mac and “dominance” could have been two words that actually belonged in the same sentence. When Steve Jobs declared the Mac a truck and drove it into the ditch, that foreclosed the possibility of that ever happening. And, of course, his useless successor has been able to do nothing more than ordinary updates and tweaks to the soft and hard products to support the mobile device company that is Apple today. One Mac Pro does nothing more than painfully remind us all of what might have been.
Example: yesterday a big truck (an actual truck) pulled up to the unloading dock at the university where I teach and proceeded to deliver a couple hundred boxes with DELL plastered all over them. Regardless of what else is happening, what is certainly not happening is trucks like that pulling up to professional, corporate, and government offices delivering a like number of boxes with the big apple missing a bite on them.
Sad, sad reality. AAPL today would be selling somewhere from $300 or maybe even $1000 were it not for the dual blunder of abandoning the world wide market for real computers and putting a weak leader in the CEO seat at Cupertino.
Your anecdotal evidence at one university on one day is not statistically significant, sorry. 18% real growth in a declining market is a huge achievement.
You. Teach. ?
Well, sir, in your concluding paragraph you lament the position Apple could be if it were selling to the same customers and in the same quantities as Dell, because to do so would translate into a stock price of $300-$1000.
Because that customer base and marketshare has taken Dell to such lofty stock prices that… oh wait… no… Dell kind of failed and is now private so there is no stock price associated with their “success.”
I ask you again the question you never reply to: What did Apple do to you that has caused you to hate them so?
I can’t answer for Jay but from what I’ve seen he jumped on the “fire Tim Cook” bandwagon from the very start and has maintained a steady dietribe on the topic.
How about this: Jay teaches about the primacy of the PC in the shaping of modern society. ? Maybe that’s why that truckload of Dells showed up in the first place. He’s unable to inspire department heads to pay for a real computer, so his budget only allows him to buy the cheap stuff.
Hey, thanks for the follow up, wasn’t expecting one from Jay of course but what a lovely mud slinging anecdote and bonus, it’s not headed my way.
The real thank you though comes from giving me a reason to further twist and convolute Jay’s redundant diatribe of “firing Tim Cook.”
2010 by my guestimation: Jobs compared traditional computers and tablets to cars and trucks by saying most people will eventually only need tablets while some would still need the added utility of a PC.
Now a few years prior to this (2007) the iPhone is released, and that of course was a result of a few years work, built of the iPod built on the Newton, hopefully you get the idea.
The point is that at some point Steve Jobs made that realization and as Jay puts it, ” drove it into the ditch”. I can’t recall at that point reading anything Jay put out about firing Steve Jobs strangely enough.
Putting the massive bullshi#t shovel Jay that carries about the new Mac “Jay can’t see innovation for his ass” Pro aside there is the insight as to what would have happened if Steve Jobs never had come to that realization, in other words, forget these iPod iPhone toys, get those Macs into the Enterprise, forge an alliance with IBM if we have to. One Mac Pro developed years before now, no iPhones.
I wonder what the stock price would be if that were the situation. Of course, I’d be able to check it out on a brand new Nokia with more bigger and better buttons, running a Windows flavored operating of the month…and of course, a 2 inch monitor for extra viewing.
I guess around two cents.
So I’m quite grateful to see where Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have taken Apple in many regards, and more than happy to donate that two cents to Jay’s thoughts.
You wrote a while back:
““Apple CEO Tim Cook is ‘uninspiring’ [NYT] and making Apple ‘more like most other companies,’ [WSJ] … Exactly. When these national media – almost never agreeing with each other – reach this conclusion, why-o-why it is so hard for MDN and it’s minions of lemmings here to admit it? Seriously, why?”
There were several answers posted to your comment, some serious some not so serious and no reply from you at all. It leads me to believe that you aren’t serious, just here to whine.
Your dismissive comment about the Mac Pro, stock market estimates that would make a Wall Street analyst drool leads me to the conclusion that only one thing in this regard that will make you happy. Jay, one day Tim Cook will die or retire. Oh and I don’t know what the price of an original Mac stock would be worth today but I think it is beyond that number. I could be wrong.
Meanwhile, try to maintain the jargon of your profession. You teach in high school, you lecture and publish at a University. Pedagogy at University is an option. My apologies if you teach the janitorial staff how to do their job.
A truck full of Dells at your University says volumes. Takes a lot of trucks to deliver rocks, less to deliver diamonds.
You can post other stuff, I’ve seen you do it. So do it.
RW: I’ll follow up with you anytime – but I waste my time on this board anyway so sometimes I just go away. But, return because it’s so compelling to witness the blind following regardless of the reality – you know, the whooping and hollering at every appearance of Tim Cook & Co., even though there is absolutely nothing deserving such adulation. The point of my post above is to emphasize the historic blunder of abandoning the world wide, unlimited and ever growing professional, corporate, and government markets for real computers. Instead we have a mobile device company subject to the whim of a pop culture market – hugely profitable for the moment but destined for a peak which may have already been reached. In the meantime, shipments of real computers running Windows and Windows only are arriving at customers’ doorsteps every day. Apple could have owned those markets, instead Steve veered off course in favor of phones, pads, and pods. Terrible mistake and topped only by the installation of Tim Cook who has done absolutely nothing to make anyone think he has an innovative bone in his body. Just ride the wave of temporary success with temporary products. If the Mac Pro, in multiple configurations and aggressively marketed to that growing, world wide market I mention above, had been pursued upon his taking the seat at the head of the table then he would have deserved the recognition he gets for doing almost nothing but riding that wave. Instead we still believe the fiction of “great new products in the pipeline” which amount to no more that ordinary updates, tweaks, and thinner of things that are not only not new but no where near the definition of innovative.
Thanks for asking.
oh, i dunno, you might be right, about mr. apple missing out on quickly owning the enterprise and government markets, but then again maybe steve was more interested in playing the long game – getting there but getting there on his own schedule.
i bought in when i saw the combination of apple moving away from their proprietary chips to intel and going with unix based system x. there was no other possible reading of the tea leaves than he was moving towards the enterprise market.
but… he always more focused on personal computers for the rest of us. so the best, sneakiest and yes slowest, way of taking over enterprise was making amazing computers, and not only defining but also seizing and owning the mobile market, all of which continues to bring new users into the apple fold.
the superiority of design, reliability, ease of use and durability of apple products will win out in the end, it is just going to take longer than you might like. there is a long way to go, but the foundation has been laid, and the digital revolution is not about to go into reverse.
as for mr. cook,i think the jury is still out. i have been something of a skeptic over the past year or two, but am slowly growing a bit more confident in his abilities and judgement (despite the beats thing) only time will tell about him, but i have no doubts about apple. they will prevail – on their own schedule.
Great post there dr. sparemachinery, and it certainly echoes a lot of my sentiments.
I’m less worried about Tim Cook than I am about Apple. If the corporate environment maintains the Steve Jobs flavor and keeps pumping out insanely great machines that’s fine with me. That spirit and resilience will overcome the speed bumps on the road ahead.
Enjoy.
Hey Jay,
Many thanks for your post.
I don’t think you are wasting my time on this board. I read what you have to say, and reply to it at times. Don’t get distracted by the name calling, I do think you have valid points.
Any CEO will fuck up, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook are no exception. Gil Amelio was really fucking up Apple, but he did one good thing, he brought Steve Jobs back to Apple and the rest was history.
You are no doubt more than right about the lemmings, and you may be aware of social herding and the us vs. them. It’s not just here, western society is polarized; Ford vs. GM, Demoncrats vs. Repubicans, christians vs. non-christians, blue eyed people vs. brown eyes.
I hope that you are aware of the story of the Emperor having no clothes, where in the fairy tale everyone looked at the Emperor being naked and laughed because they finally saw reality through the eyes of a child. It doesn’t work that way these days, evoking a simple crystal clear idea will get the mob turning on the child. I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it. The point is that there are ways to present information, and if you are looking for a fight, to be called a variety of names well keep on going.
There is more to it than that from you, mostly cause I’m a optimist.
You have a very valid point(s) but the areas you describe simply don’t fit this corporate culture of Apple. I’ve seen a situation where an entire IT department (save for one guy) was essentially let go when they replaced them with Macs and the one guy remaining basically had nothing to do but trouble shoot printers every now and then. I set up a network of Macs for a small business once, I came back years later and the owner told me that he never had a problem with it, worked as good as the day I installed it. This is not what IT professionals want, they are empire builders so the Macs will be badmouthed at every time for the most ludicrous reasons and they are lemmings in their own right. Still that’s Steve Jobs doing, maybe the Apple-IBM partnership will make inroads into corporate but I doubt it. Nonetheless the Macs have found a niche and are doing relatively well.
The dangers you point out about the pop culture are real, no denying that. Are tablets and iPhones a fad? Frankly I don’t know, I see a lot of them in the wild, but for now they are a cash cow. Apple resting on their laurels will bring disaster. This is where it comes to Tim Cook and the future of Apple.
Tim Cook does not strike me as innovative, so there I agree with you. However, Tim Cook does strike me as someone who realizes the value of innovative people and if he keeps the corporate culture of Apple like that, Apple will continue to flourish. The Captain of a ship depends on a crew to clean the decks, set the sails so that the course can be charted. That does not mean that the Captain needs to be a deck cleaner or sail expert.
Personally I’d rather see a keynote presentation from Jobs than Cook but overall it’s what is going on behind the scenes and the products and services coming out that interest me, although I do enjoy the stock dividends.
Now certainly a valid point as well are these fictional products in the pipeline but some of these are starting to add up.
The 64 bit phone is not just a tweak, neither is the Mac Pro, neither is the Swift language. I’ve pointed out a while ago to you (or maybe ppetterson who made similar postings) that patience is required, even after these pipeline products make it past fiction for no doubt they will be dismissed by jouranalists and analysts, another set of lemmings
Tim Cook does not impress you fine.
– He’s not innovative, that’s not going to change.
– He’s not into the corporate market, Steve did that. Tim looks like he’s taking a step to change that. You haven’t commented on the Apple-IBM alliance and this is exactly where your leadership needs to be, this is where you input is important. This could be what you are looking for, a solution. Heck I’d love Macs to be in corporations, but it’s a challenge. I’ve seen Apple crash and burn in that market lots. If Tim can pull off something serious in that area, more power to him. Follow up on it, tell us what’s going on, objectively of course that helps. That’s a way to get our community to listen to you.
– He’s moved to the pop culture. Yup it might not be a good long time strategy, but music has been around a long long time, in fact a couple of sticks to hold a beat was probably around the time of the wheel and fire. That’s an area that Apple is doing well and obviously wants to continue.
– The Mac Pro is innovative, embrace that as a potential step. I think Swift, and the 64 bit phone also have a degree of innovation.
The products of this so called pipeline, I’m holding off until I see them but I’m not predisposed one way or the other. I doubt these will be innovations that move Apple into the corporate world, if you are looking for that, well you’ll continue with your commentary and that’s fine, there are many opinions here even in the fan world of lemmings.
One final things, and that has been brought up before, is a viable solution. It’s one thing to mutiny and get rid of the Captain of a ship, but unless there is a replacement anarchy will ensue. You would be, in my opinion much better rewarded if you put forth viable alternatives to Tim Cook. Frankly I don’t know who they would be, my guess is that they are cooking up something special in a garage some where and have the talent to be more than a one hit wonder.
Don’t sweat the lemmings, you have to go through a lot of mud to find diamonds.
Thanks again for your post, and for being involved at this forum.
War and Peace.
Actually, Jay, please, PLEASE, P-L-E-A-S-E do not post other stuff ! Go home.
If you teach, you are why most of us hated school; we were bored to death by morons with advanced degrees slinging their biased views.
Thank you.
All The Rest of Us
And my wife’s university recently dropped Windows based PCs from the options available to incoming freshmen. The school is now entirely Mac, with all incoming freshmen being provided a Mac.
the Mac is still in its adolescent stage
LOTS of spooky strange statements in the news today. Like hell the Mac is in any ‘adolescent stage’. Seeing as OS X is THE most matured OS on the planet…
Does anyone comprehend what he’s going on about?! Does he?? Or is this just another one of those twisted ‘market share’ arguments that only twisted marketing executives comprehend?
Thank you for pointing that out. I remembered upon reading it that this sucker punch feeling I got the first time I read it was still in need of medical attention.
Here’s my new theory – I think it’ll resonate with you this day:
When Steve Jobs died, his Reality Distortion Field blew up and has settled in over most journalists and analysts, only where with Steve it was facing outward, the explosion has caused it to invert as it surrounds these poor folks.
Somebody said that? Whack him with a stick for the luck o’ tripping into County Bliss, as my aunt used to say.
The Mac is so advanced that I use it to compose; all other systems I encounter, the operation is to decompose.
I think he meant adolescent sales growth-wise, not developmentally. He was doing nothing but praising the Mac that it’s sales are increasing at a time when PCs are decreasing. That’s how I understood the comment, anyways.
Actually, I would love to see someone break out the percentage of Macs in the consumer & business markets versus the industrial market. Industry uses PCs in all kinds of places (included embedded Windows devices like ATMs and oscilloscopes). It would be really interesting to see the Mac’s share of homes (e.g., consumers), businesses (like law firms, etc.) and industry. I bet the consumer market share of the Mac is very high (while the market share of the Mac in industry is essentially zero).
An iOS device is a mac… Think about it for a sec..
The Macintosh is Apple’s all in one machine.. CPU, screen, keyboard.. Sounds like an iPhone and an iPad.
Someday in the not do distant future your iOS device will also run osx..
iOS and OS X have always been just two variants of the same OS, each optimized for the device they ship on.
Yes, the Mac is on a resurgence.
But let’s talk realities. Mac has never exceed about 12% market share — even back in its pre dark days heyday. (Back at Apple’s 19.2% market share peak the mix included various flavors of Apple ][ systems.)
Apple Macs, worldwide are under 10% in both market share and installed base.
Windows, at one time, was between 85% and 98% installed based (depending upon whose numbers you believe).
Even if the Mac installed base grows at the stated 13% every year for the next 14 years it will just break the 50% installed base share. Even if the installed base grows at 25% every year it will be 2022 before Macs are more than 50% of the installed base.
Very likely, if that growth were to continue unabated until 2022, Windows (or whatever is the derivative of Windows at that time) will likely have 40% or more. Linux users have been claiming Linux to be the OS of the future, but the Linux true believers’ future never seems to arrive.
I would not describe Mac having a 51% market share and Windows having a 40% market share as the Mac “dominating” the market.
Yes, I believe that the Mac is a much better platform. You only have to install a network of technically based Macs and a separate network of technically based Windows systems to see the inherent difference in the two (starting with bare hardware and working your way up to fully functional systems and networks) — and the Mac is better BY FAR.
But the Windows world is not going to dissolve soon. Macs are likely never going to have the 85+% installed base that Windows had. The “post PC” world will arrive long before that ever happens.
I don’t think the Mac needs to win. I kind of don’t think it ever will unless Apple’s interest wanes to the point where they allow cheap box makers to ship with OS X. But so long as Macs continue trending towards dominating the profitable range, those selling boxes in the cheaper range will feel the pressure and fade away.
In your analysis of growth and decline through the years were you including the declining sales of PCs over the past several years and continuing on (projected) into the future? As long as that trend continues downward and Mac continues upward, the flip occurs much sooner than I think you were illustrating.
Don’t worry. The tipping point is coming.
http://www.macwindows.com/
Would this excellent site exist if every Windows program had an equally capable Mac OS X equivalent?
I would like to see Apple spend more energy remaking Boot Camp a real-time emulator instead of just a partition selector.
Are these analysts still counting every device with an embedded PC (elevators, cash registers, kiosks) as 1 for 1 against full Macintosh computers? Probably.
I don’t think it matters whether Apple dominates by way of market share or not. As long as Apple manages to sell their 4-5 million Macs a quarter, I’d consider that a victory. In 99 out of 100 cases, the cheapest product always gets the major market share. The way I see it, cheap junk is OK for consumers as long as it is cheap. The only exception to that rule that I know of was the iPod.
As I have been saying since 1984, I have done more accidentally on a Mac than I ever did on purpose with a PC.