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Apple Reaches 12% Market Share In U.S. Notebooks 377

Posted by Zonk from the growing-tree dept.
bonch writes "Apple's U.S. notebook market share has doubled to 12% after shipping 1.33 million Macs in the quarter. Apple also shipped 8.11 million iPods, topping analyst estimates, for a net income of $472 million. Remember when Apple was dying?" From the article: "The iPod shipments appeared to calm investors worried that growth in that red-hot business was slowing and Apple's results topped what analysts had said was a conservative forecast. Shares of Apple were down some 24 percent since early May. 'Apple looked good,' said Jane Snorek, technology analyst with First American Funds. 'The PC numbers were great, too.'"
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Apple Reaches 12% Market Share In U.S. Notebooks More

Apple Reaches 12% Market Share In U.S. Notebooks

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  • Good news for Apple, great news [slashdot.org] for ubuntu and of course Excellent news [sagags.com] for lovers of fried eggs :-)
    • I've got to say that when running Windows XP natively through Boot Camp, my Macbook Pro doesn't get as hot as it does under OS X.

      • Re:Good news everyone! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Drooling Iguana ( 61479 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @07:43PM (#15761113)
        Windows XP isn't constantly making use of your video card's 3D accelerator chip the way OSX does. That could be part of the reason for the difference in temperature.

  • Meanwhile, Dell blames economic woes (Score:4, Funny)

    by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @09:42AM (#15756705)
    Timber! [yahoo.com]

    They're blaming a "global economic slowdown" but it looks to me like Apple are eating Dell's lunch.

  • With apologies to Stephen Fry... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jtcedinburgh ( 626412 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @09:45AM (#15756742)
    Apple might only have 12% of the market share in US Notebooks, but it's the top 12% :)

    John

    • I know the parent's joking, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Doches ( 761288 ) <Doches&gmail,com> on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:09AM (#15756964)

      If you think about it, Apple's laptops really are the top 12%. I've gone through two laptops in twice as many years, and having worked on/with a ridiculous variety of brands & models, I've finally come to realize that all laptops are crap. Not only that, all laptop manufacturers are crap, too.

      Except, of course, Apple, and possibly IBM/Lenovo. Apple makes decent machines, only slightly overpriced, and when they break (as practically every laptop I've ever encountered has done within two years of use, some spectacularly so) Apple has a history of going to great lengths to fix their mistakes. Remember the iBooks with faulty motherboards? How many of those did Apple replace with newer models (models with double the RAM and disk space)?

      They have their faults, and their mistakes, but by-and-large I'd say Apple is one of the few laptop manufacturers whom I'd trust well enough to buy from.

      Oh, and those spectacular failures?
      • A Sony Vaio that spontaneously burst into smoke during class.
      • HP Pavilion sold as having 256mb of memory, when it clearly had a mere 128.
      • A Toshiba that would only charge while upside-down. Seriously.
      • An Acer Ferrari 3200 that killed two hard drives before going on to melt its power adapter. This one was mine -- that really hurt.
      • Apple hardware is great when it's good, but they must do close to zero testing at their end. Of all the apple hardware I've purchased (and seen purchased by friends) over the last 3 or 4 years, including all manner of laptops and iPods, only 2 iPods have not been replaced. The iBook I'm using to type this up is running perfectly, and without a hitch. Now that it's on its third motherboard. Girlfriend's Nano was DOA (wouldn't charge), and I've a mate who only ever uses apple, and he's not had a good laptop o

  • Shipped? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21, 2006 @09:51AM (#15756795)
    This is great news for Apple and all, and I want to see their market share increase as much as the next guy, but this estimate of marketshare is based on units *shipped*. Doesn't Sony use the same kind of logic when talking about PSP market share? Shouldn't we be looking at units *sold*?

    • Re:Shipped? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kyouteki ( 835576 ) <(kyouteki) (at) (gmail.com)> on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:01AM (#15756883) Homepage
      Apple keeps low stocks in their retail outlets and does a good deal of their business online, so I would imagine that the shipped numbers are closer to sold numbers than they are for most other consumer products.

    • Re:Shipped? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Enrique1218 ( 603187 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:04AM (#15756905) Journal
      You need to put that metric into context. Analysts see signs of the PC market slowing in growth [businessweek.com] . Yet, Apple has actually grown in sales. The conclusion is that Apple stole sales from Dell, Sony, HP and the like and that is significant.

    • Re:Shipped? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      I really don't think it makes sense to suggest that somehow there are possibly several hundred thousand of these (or millions of PSPs) just collecting dust on store shelves. I don't think any retail store would accept it if they didn't think they could sell them in a reasonable period of time, it's too much money tied up and too much to lose if it's still sitting on the shelf when the model gets updated.
    • Good point. This reeks of a PR move to boost sagging stock. In today's economy, I think that having a low units shipped count for your sales indicates efficiency.

      • Re:Shipped? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by wkcole ( 644783 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @04:41PM (#15760243)
        That ignores a decade of specific facts about Apple and the norms of the industry.

        Everyone in the industry reports units shipped. The way independent retailers work, a manufacturer selling
        through them can't nail down a 'sold to end user' number for months with any solidity.

        Jobs' big concrete business contribution when he returned to Apple was to smash the old tempting retail pipeline that
        could get stuffed and which Apple *had* stuffed to their own delusion and eventual distress a few times in the early to
        mid 90's. Apple no longer has independent Apple dealers worth speaking of, and their own stores are kept very thin on
        inventory. The also sdell a large fraction of their systems directly through the online store, where 'shipped' is identical to 'sold'

        The original comparison to Sony stuffing the pipeline with PSP's points up a key reason that Apple can't play that trick
        any more: Apple's product cycle on the Mac side is too fast for a stuffing event to wind out before the stuffed hardware is
        discontinued.

  • Good Products = Success (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jgerry ( 14280 ) * <jason.gerry @ g m a il.com> on Friday July 21, 2006 @09:54AM (#15756824) Homepage
    Apple does a great job of making products people want to buy.

    With the iPods, they seem to be unstoppable. No matter what other companies offer, people want the iPod + iTunes more. With laptops, they make a sexier product than almost anyone else. Even the die-hard Windows folks I know are buying Apple laptops, running OS X + Windows via BootCamp [apple.com] or via Parallels [parallels.com].

    To top it off, they do all this with higher profit margins than any other company. It's no surprise that their market share, and their stock, are both on the rise.
    • Oops, I meant to say that their PROFITS are on the rise, not their stock. It's actually been down a bit lately.

      • Re:Good Products = Success (Score:5, Insightful)

        by b17bmbr ( 608864 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:50AM (#15757346)
        the stock market, since the 1990's at last, has been more about stock supply/demand rather than actually company performance. for far too long stocks were manipulated by companies who used them in 401k packages, stock options, etc. this is a problem with the market and the rules (SEC) and the nature of the stock market today. too many day traders amd individual investors are entering the market and since companies are not required to disperse dividends as they once were, stocks are now a modern form of keno rather than actual investment in a company.

    • Re:Good Products = Success (Score:5, Informative)

      by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) * <bittercode@gmail> on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:06AM (#15756936) Homepage Journal
      My team lead just replaced his ibm laptop with a mac running parallel. It is nice and he said when it comes time for me to replace my dell, I can get one too. And I think with IBM no longer being IBM, it shifts some of the perception of where high-end notebooks are to be found.
       
      Each time I walk by his desk and see one monitor with the OSX desktop and another with his win desktop up, I wish for the imminent doom of my dell.
       
      Years back this would never have been the case. The only place I ever saw macs before were the graphic design/advertising folks. And they couldn't run the apps we had to run.

      • Re:Good Products = Success (Score:5, Funny)

        by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:32AM (#15757172) Homepage
        Each time I walk by his desk and see one monitor with the OSX desktop and another with his win desktop up, I wish for the imminent doom of my dell.

        See that little fan in the back? Put a little screwdriver in there and run the laptop for a few hours. I "smell" a Macbook Pro in your future!

    • "With the iPods, they seem to be unstoppable"

      The classic sign of a top in a trend. Of course, it always seems that way just at the point of reversal. Now if only we could have a Business Week cover proclaiming that Apple is unstoppable, that would be a decisive indicator of a turn.

      What will happen to make it turn, and who will do it? No idea. Really no idea at all. But something will.

      • Re:Good Products = Success (Score:5, Interesting)

        by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75&yahoo,com> on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:50AM (#15757350)
        The classic sign of a top in a trend. Of course, it always seems that way just at the point of reversal. Now if only we could have a Business Week cover proclaiming that Apple is unstoppable, that would be a decisive indicator of a turn.

        You do realize that people have been saying this kind of thing since at least 2002?

        When a product becomes this popular, it is almost impossible to dislodge it, and it becomes self-perpetuating. I don't know where this idea started up that the more popular a product is, the less chance there is of its continued success - common sense should dictate that the opposite is true. Successful products tend to stay successful and build upon that success. That's the case with the iPod.

        I don't see any trends in the industry that would indicate any reversal of that success, and that includes MS's Zune. The iPod continues to define what a portable media player is and should be in the minds of consumers, and as long as everybody else is following Apple's lead, there will be no "reversal" of the iPod's fortunes.

        People don't stop buying products just because they're popular. In fact, the opposite is true. People stop buying products because better products become available at a cheaper price with a marketing message that appeals to them. How you define "better" becomes complicated when you're talking an entire ecosystem like the one that surrounds the iPod, but I think that you should listen to what consumers are saying by their actions, and what they're saying is that there is nothing better for them right now than the iPod.

        Long story short, you can expect iPod sales to continue accelerating, despite what the naysayers have been saying for at least the last four years.
    • Apple does a great job of making products people want to buy.

      That's true, i want to buy their products. But after seeing the problems the recent line of portables have (whine noises, overheating, etc) and even in not so new hardware (my september 2003 g4 laptop hard drive died) i don't think apple quality is higher than the models of other vendors.

      Their products STILL need more ram installed by default. A "Pro" machine shouldn't come with just 512MB of ram, especially when you have OSX, which eats ram like

  • Good (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @09:59AM (#15756872) Journal
    The bigger Apple's market share, the more we'll see:

    Competition. Microsoft has been lazy because they dominated the market for so long. If Apple becomes a serious competitor in the business world (where they're just really beginning to scratch the surface) then MS will feel the pinch and be forced to raise the quality of their product. We've seen nothing but good results from the CPU and video card races and price wars.

    Realism. As Apple becomes more mainstream and falls into the hands of less competent users, we're going to see a lot of the myths about Apple go away. Its vaunted security comes at the price of ease of use, and I think we'll be seeing a lot of people wondering why they can't do on their Mac what they could do on their Dell...the answer is because they shouldn't have done it on the Dell to begin with, but that's beside the point. I've long said that for Apple to make a play for market dominance they'll have to dumb down their OS the way Microsoft did, and that will make them vulnerable, the same as Microsoft.

    Less hypocrisy. Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS. If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software.

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by avalys ( 221114 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:12AM (#15756993)
      Its vaunted security comes at the price of ease of use, and I think we'll be seeing a lot of people wondering why they can't do on their Mac what they could do on their Dell...

      Could you provide an example of something, here? Because this really makes no sense. Give an example of something people can do on a Dell that they can't on a Mac, that is unavailable because of security restrictions in Mac OS (as opposed to the appropriate application simply not being ported yet).

      What ease of use has OS X given up for security? I can't think of anything. Have you ever used Mac OS, or are you just saying that because you think it sounds plausible?

      • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lally Singh ( 3427 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @12:18PM (#15758189) Journal
        He can't, because he's talking out of his ass. It's amazing how many PC users can't understand what good engineering really is. They can understand that an OS can be powerful because of Linux, or it can be easy to use because of Windows. The dichotomy of OSs to run makes them think that power & usability also form a dichotomy.

        They can't get how an OS can be easier to use than Windows and still at least as powerful as Linux (I'll argue moreso, because you don't spend 2 weeks setting up your OS for your hardware (wireless cards, 3D cards, I'm looking at you)). Or that having to know how to deal with mundane setup & maintenence tasks on computers is a fault of the _OS_ vendor. Computers are supposed to simplify our lives, not give us more shit to worry about.

        Seriously, why can't people understand this? Why can't they understand that whatever 'overpricedness' they feel macs have doesn't matter compared to the hours & days they save not putting up with the bullshit of Windows & Linux? Yes, I said & Linux.

        Hell, most Linux users still bitch about which 20 year old text editor's better: vi or emacs. Here's a hint: neither, they're both antiquidated pieces of shit. Mice are useful, _especially_ when text editing. They're response: write your own! Linux comes with dev tools and the shitty apps are open source! My response: fuck you! I've got real work to do, and I'm not wasting my time fixing brain-dead software that 'scratched the itch' of some jackass who jerks off on Lisp macros.

        People, including me, love macs because they leave you the fuck alone and let you get your work done. You don't have to make sacrifices. How hard is this for people to understand? It's my fault, really. Lots of people come to slashdot to jerk off on how much computer knowledge they have, and the idea that a computer doesn't need them to be experts destroys their purpose in life. I guess I should understand that.
        • I agree with most you - I don't want to spend my time making MY machine work how I want it to. I get to do it at work, but I really like when I finish getting my machine set up how I want it and then leaving it alone. I view my personal machines as my tools and I want my tools to function properly, without a lot of hassle. When I buy a wrench, I don't want to spend a day tweaking it so it is the right size and shape for the task - I buy the correct wrench for the job and I get to use it right away. I en

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:24AM (#15757092) Homepage Journal
      Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS. If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software.


      Last time I checked, Microsoft was convicted of being an illegal monopoly, Apple wasn't. Different rules apply to each category.
      • Last time I checked, Microsoft was convicted of being an illegal monopoly, Apple wasn't. Different rules apply to each category.

        The grandparent didn't suggest this at all. There's a difference between being it being LEGAL to do something and it being RIGHT to do something.

        It would be RIGHT (in an idealistic sense) for Apple to sell their computers witout OS X. Consumers could then chose their own operating system (OS X, Windows, Linux) and put it on. The price would be lower than the normal price beca

        • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

          by soft_guy ( 534437 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @02:03PM (#15759112)
          There's a difference between being it being LEGAL to do something and it being RIGHT to do something.

          When someone goes to court and testifies that Apple intentionally made tweaks to their OS specifically to break Adobe Photoshop so they can sell more copies of Aperature, then we'll talk.

          I'm referring to the "DOS isn't done until 1..2..3 won't run." saying that came out during the Microsoft anti-trust trial.

          Also, when Apple steals some else's code to put in their own product we'll talk.

          I'm referring to the incident where a consultant who had access to QuickTime For Windows was caught giving that source code to Microsoft where it ended up as part of their "Video for Windows" product. The related lawsuit was only dropped when Microsoft threatened to cancel Office for Mac.

          I can't think of any incident where Apple has mis-treated third party vendors. The closest one I can think of is the guy who created Frontier(I think I'm remebering it right) which was a thing that was similar to AppleScript in some ways. He released it right before Apple introduced AppleScript which of course killed his potential market and he crief foul. The thing was that obviously Apple had spent years on AppleScript and it was a superior solution to Frontier, so despite his claim I don't think they stole his idea. It was just bad timing (for him).

          Even when they were starting iTunes, Apple approached the various small 3rd party vendors who were doing stuff with MP3 and offered to buy them and given them jobs at Apple. The ones who didn't accept the offer got steamrolled by iTunes, but how is that Apple's fault?

    • Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)

      by timchampion ( 940519 )
      The difference here being that Microsoft Internet explorer is an integrated part of Windows, and is inseparable from the operating system, while Safari (if you want to compare apples to apples) is "just another app" within OS X. As far as I know, you can remove Safari from OS X with no adverse affects on the operating system as a whole.

      If you want to talk about bundling the OS with the hardware, there's a big difference there, in that Apple makes both the hardware and the software (I know that Apple doesn'

      • Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TheGreek ( 2403 )
        As far as I know, you can remove Safari from OS X with no adverse affects on the operating system as a whole.
        Ah, but can you remove WebKit without any adverse affects?
        • No, but webkit is a published framework that third party developers can link against.
          • No, but webkit is a published framework that third party developers can link against.
            What the hell do you think MSHTML is?
            • what the hell do you think this has to do with the question that was asked?

              • Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)

                by TheGreek ( 2403 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @12:00PM (#15758018)
                what the hell do you think this has to do with the question that was asked?
                As somebody who quite likes Mac OS X, I cringe everytime I read something like, "Internet Explorer can't be removed from Windows, but Safari can be removed from Mac OS X without hurting anything!!! Furthermore, WebKit's better because you can embed it in other applications through a well-defined API!!!"

                Some facts:
                • Both OSes use their respective rendering engines quite a bit in the core OS.
                • Just like you can't really remove MSHTML and have a useable Windows (since Windows 98), you cannot remove WebKit and have a useable Mac OS X (since Panther).
                • MSHTML is a well-documented API that can be used to develop applications.
      • The real difference is that Apple doesn't have the marketshare that MS had. MS used their monopoly for evil by not only bundling their browser but also making it difficult to uninstall and using it's ubiquity to force websites to code for it, often making them incompatible with standards.

        Apple doesn't have the marketshare to be a monopoly, makes Safari just as easy to remove as anything else (yes, webkit stays, but the app is no problem whereas Windows used to get very perturbed at me for deleted iexplore.
    • "If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software."

      If I wanted some random PC components without worrying about software, I'd buy some random PC laptop or the nice, naked Linux laptops that are out there. Apple's software is the value-add that makes the laptop worth buying. I'd never submit to having a Linux or a Windows laptop becau

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MoneyT ( 548795 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @11:20AM (#15757628) Journal
      Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS. If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software.

      I never understood this. What is wrong with bundling software? Here's a hint for you, if windows didn't come with IE or [Other Bundled Browser] people would find it awfuly hard to go dowload the latest version of firefox. Budling software is not wrong, evil or bad. Making the bundled software hard or impossible to remove IS. And please note there is a distiction between the bundled software, and the actual back end technologies (i.e. Safari != WebKit)

      • Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @11:51AM (#15757933)

        I never understood this. What is wrong with bundling software? Here's a hint for you, if windows didn't come with IE or [Other Bundled Browser] people would find it awfuly hard to go dowload the latest version of firefox.

        You're mistaken. The law makes it illegal for Microsoft to bundle a browser with their OS. It is not illegal for Dell or Gateway or HP to bundle Windows and IE or Windows and Firefox or Linux and Opera. End users don't have to download anything.

        Taking that choice away from Dell and HP and Gateway or in any way using their monopoly to make sure IE is the one they choose over better alternatives is what is illegal.

        Budling software is not wrong, evil or bad.

        Assuming one of the bundled products is a monopoly, then yes bundling is bad. It bypasses the free market and the advantages it brings. Have you ever noticed that most people use IE, even though it has long been inferior in many obvious ways to Firefox? This is because IE is bundled. Thus most people never have a chance to vote with their dollars for the best browser. Now if each computer manufacturer had to choose on even footing which one to pre-install, what would happen? Some would choose one browser and some a different browser. Say Gateway decided to bill their machines as "more secure than Dell" because they pre-installed Firefox. At this point consumers buy computers and tell others and eventually the market decides which is better for different parts of that market. And here's the important part. Because consumers are making this decision, both the Firefox team and the IE team are motivated to make a better product to compete. Consumers gain choice and innovation.

        When a monopoly bundles something with that monopoly, capitalism breaks. All the economic models show consolidation of sales, rising prices, and falling quality. If you have no competition why lower prices or work to improve? For this reason it is illegal.

    • Less hypocrisy. Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS.

      Please do some research into anti-trust law and monopolies. Bundling something with a monopolized product bypasses the free market forces. Bundling something with something not monopolized, dissuades some buyers and otherwise evens out the difference. For some simple math, if yo

  • Not that surprised (Score:2, Interesting)

    by KSobby ( 833882 )
    Laptops have always been something that Apple has done well. They are sleek, fast as hell and other than the heat issues with the current crop (I'm running a MacBook Pro right now and cooking breakfast) as stable or more so than most other offerings. Will this thread start a flame war? Probably. But for crying out loud, they are tools, not a religion. I'm running both XP and OS X through Boot Camp. I wouldn't have gotten a mac laptop if that weren't possible. Their sales will go up because of this, but prob
  • ...but it will take time.

    And, Apple will always be a niche competitor. To me, that's a good thing...it will keep them more nimble and focused on innovation. If Apple;s marketshare culd top out around 10%, it'd be prefect. Large enough that software developers would be hesitant to ignore the market, but small enough so Apple could keep up the pace of improving the OS's foundation rather than focusing as much on backward compatibility as Microsoft.

    It seems like everyone wants this iPod "halo effect" to hap

    • If Apple;s marketshare culd top out around 10%, it'd be prefect. Large enough that software developers would be hesitant to ignore the market, but small enough so Apple could keep up the pace of improving the OS's foundation rather than focusing as much on backward compatibility as Microsoft.

      Or, they could innovate a way to retain backwards compatibility while still providing innovation for those who want to move forward. I'd be happy if they grabbed about 30% of the market. While Windows dropped to abou

  • Apple Dell (Score:5, Funny)

    by csoto ( 220540 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:29AM (#15757151)
    As of this morning, Apple was at $52B to Dell's $50B. Right now, Dells down to $43B. Dell should sell off the company's assets and divide the proceeds amongst shareholders ;)

  • Keyword == RETAIL (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:32AM (#15757166) Homepage Journal
    Retail does NOT include corporate or contract sales.

    12% of Retail sales is impressive, but Apple also had the advantage of all new products.

    Lets see what it looks like this time next year.
  • Problem is, computer sales themselve are way down. I beleive this is a fad shift. Don't get me wrong. Apple makes a beautiful desktop, but the hype around iPod and the hype the music/movie industry is giving Apple is really giving them a boost. Software wise it's still lacking desktop wise to Windows and server wise is lacks to both Windows and Unix/Linux. It is beautiful and what it does it does well. I just find that it doesn't do enough. Then again, thats just me and why I dual boot Linux and Wind

    • Then again, thats just me and why I dual boot Linux and Windows. (actually virualize these days)

      "Virualize eh? Yeah, that sounds like something Windows does :)

    • No, can't see it. The Mac Guy is a bit annoying, but Dude! Guy made me want to go out and stab people.
    • That's because you're a geek, by contrast I meet people every day who think the new commercials are spot on and very funny and entertaining. But these people aren't geeks. Their everyone else. The ones that don't know how to get rid of MSN Messenger on a default windows install. The ones that don't even know how to do a default install. They're the ones that think that burning a CD by nessesity must be a 14 step process. These are the folks that the ads are targeted at, not you or me.
    • Lacking desktop wise? What, running Windows in OS X, or Windows on a Mac isn't enough for you?

      I mean, you already grok virtualization. With a Mac you can run Mac OS X, Windows AND Linux at the same time, and in a portable 5 pound laptop.

  • good for everone, especially linux! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @10:47AM (#15757314) Homepage
    The more people use macs the less we'll see fewer and fewer "internet explorer" only web sites. This has been a good trend.

    With firefox and the fact that most people use the web alot for everything, it makes a transition from windows to linux on the desktop easier.

  • *Retail* Marketshare (Score:5, Interesting)

    by camt ( 162536 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @11:03AM (#15757479) Homepage
    Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, said in an interview that the company had a "fantastic quarter," adding that its share of the U.S. retail notebook market had doubled to 12 percent as measured by units in June from January.

    What Mr. CFO did not do, was define exactly what the bold-faced phrase in his quote actually means. I accuse him of jockying with the statistics. I suspect that the "U.S. retail notebook market" excludes Internet-direct sellers, like Dell, and probably corporate sales as well. I would imagine this is looking at only brick-and-mortar (or glass in Apples' case) retail stores.
    • I doubt that. Apple also sells on the web direct to consumers and businesses. So, excluding those numbers would make no sense.

    • Re:*Retail* Marketshare (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PMuse ( 320639 )
      So that's what they're up to. "12% of the notebook market" would have been a real coup. Instead, what they have here is just modestly good news.

      2005 World Notebook Market Share (estimate [digitimes.com])
      1. Dell (18.3%)
      2. HP (16.3%)
      3. Toshiba (11.5%)
      4. Acer (10.9%)
      5. Lenovo (9.6%)
      6. Others (33.4%)

  • Apple Still makes computers? (Score:3, Funny)

    by lawnboy5-O ( 772026 ) on Friday July 21, 2006 @11:14AM (#15757582)
    you mean i can stop upgrading my powerbook 1400?

  • market share (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aoty ( 533561 ) <aoty AT yahoo DOT com> on Friday July 21, 2006 @02:01PM (#15759101)
    I recently bought my first Mac, a 2.0 Ghz MacBook. I've admired OS X from afar and during visits to the nearest Apple retail store for a couple of years, but I finally took the plunge. Why'd I finally do it? 1) Intel chips are fast enough that a Mac is performance/price competitive 2) I can dual boot to Windows or run Parallels Desktop if I want to 3) I'm sick of Microsoft's B.S.
    So now that I've logged some time on a Mac, doing the types of things I used to do on my windows box, I can honestly say it was worth every penny of the "premium" to own an Apple machine vs. a Dell/HP/Compaq. The hardware is beautifully designed, the included software is actually USEFUL, and OS X is to die for (a geek's dream come true).
    While I'm head and shoulders above the "average computer user" (read: drooling moron), I'm a fairly typical Slashdot reader. If the Mac lineup is compelling enough to make me switch, there has to be hundreds of people reading this that are thinking of switching too. My advice... do it, you won't be sorry.

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