Apple Now Selling Better Than One Laptop In Six 767
Lucas123 writes "Apple's share of the laptop market has grown over the past few years and the company is now beating Gateway in sales, according research firm NPD Group Inc. in Port Washington, NY. 'Their sales are continuing to grow faster than the rest of the marketplace,' the firm stated. In June Apple was responsible for 17.6% of laptops sold (at retail) in the US and is now in third place behind HP and Toshiba."
Lies, damned lies, and statistics (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Brand Synergy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:At retail... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, then you're not in Apple's target market. Personally, I'd buy an expensive laptop and run Linux or FreeBSD on it, since I value things like light weight, long battery life and fans that don't sound like a turbojet. If you factor in the hardware and include things like noise level, size, weight, build quality etc then Apple laptops aren't bad value in their price range.
Re:Brand Synergy (Score:4, Informative)
Re:But What of the Long Term? (Score:3, Informative)
I won't mod you as flamebait (no mod points today), but I will respond to this bit:
Macs crash just like a Windows computer. Macs experience hardware issues. Macs, if you use them heavily, need regular maintenance to keep them running smoothly.
You're one for three, in my experience. Hardware issues: yeah, I've had a few. But my Mac just never crashes. And I have no idea what you're talking about when you say that "heavy usage" implies "regular maintenance". My Mac runs smoothly all the time, and the only "maintenance" I do is backing it up regularly.
Re:College kids (Score:5, Informative)
Screwed? Hardly. Haven't you heard, mac's run on intel now. For a measly $100 bucks you can add an OEM Windows in a separate boot partition and run all your windows directx games. For another few bucks you can get Parallels or VMware Fusion and run most applications from inside windows on top of OSX, including some directx stuff.
You are hardly screwed.
I would have bought one myself if they didnt cost twice as much as they should.
Now, apple upgrade pricing is a scam, but you don't have to buy your 2nd stick of ram or hard drive upgrade from Apple.
Most of the price difference between Apple and PC is actually represented in the 2ndary specs, and build quality. If you were to spec a dell or asus that matches on all the 2ndary features, the price premium for apple is a pittance. (Now whether you want or care about those features is a separate issue.)
Instead I bought a ASUS laptop with 2GB of RAM, a 7200RPM HD, a Core 2 Duo 2 Ghz and a Nvidia Geforce 8600M GPU.
Good on you, for finding what you need. Is it a better deal than an apple? Hard to say.
You paid 1500 for it, and the 15-inch apple MBPro is 1999, or 30% more (hardly the twice you were moaning about). That gets you an 8600M GPU, 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, and 5400 rpm drive. Sounds about even for 499 more, right? Slight bump up on the cpu, but a hit on HD speed.
So... does the asus have firewire? (firewire 800 no less?) gigabit or just 10/100? a camera? bluetooth? a remote control? microphone? is it heavier or lighter? is it thinner or thicker? Does it have a remote? DVI out or only VGA? 802.11n or just a/b/g? is the keyboard backlit? Does it have a magnetic release on the power-cord? express-card slot?
Im sure the asus has at least some of those. But I doubt it has most of them. And if you add it all up, there is a good chunk of value in there, easily enough to justify the extra 400-500 for a lot of people.
And that's before we get into the ease of use, virus situation, unix under the hood, and other soft advantages of the Mac OS platform.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a mac fanboy, and I'm not saying a Mac is right for everyone. My last purchase was a 4GB RAM 3.1GHz (2.5GHz overclocked) Core2 Quad PC with Vista U x64 / Ubuntu Feisty x64 on separate 500GB drives, and an 8600GTS; I have no regrets; the iMac was worlds away from what I needed (hello PCI slots for testing medical video capture equipment). And a Mac Pro simply wasn't a good value for this unit. (That said, my next purchase is likely to be a Mac Book Pro 15".)
But I am defending Apples product and pricing as good value, because for what you get, it is. (upgrade pricing aside!) It might not be what YOU or I need, from a given system, but that's a separate issue.
That's what happens (Score:2, Informative)
RTFA, Lying with statistics... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple's share of U.S. [laptop] sales [is] 5.6%, far behind leaders HP (28.4%) and Dell (23.6%) but tied with Gateway.
In other words, Apple sells 1 laptop in 20 (in the USA; it's closer to 1 in 50 if you look at global numbers), not 1 in 6. Not quite as impressive as the summary or title make it appear, eh?
Re:College kids (Score:5, Informative)
There are also a lot of tools available in the command-line environment, as well as open source software that can be compiled for Mac OS X. I'll leave it to the user to hunt them down because I haven't used any of them for monitoring.
Re:Lies, damned lies, and statistics (Score:3, Informative)
Research firm IDC also has Apple in the third spot; data it released last month put Apple's share of U.S. sales at 5.6%, far behind leaders HP (28.4%) and Dell (23.6%) but tied with Gateway.
In other words, 1 laptop out of every 18, not out of every 5.
Re:But What of the Long Term? (Score:3, Informative)
I think the implications is the other way. Windows got better not Macs crashing a lot. My windows box has yet to crash. Haven't needed to reboot except for patches (adobe and windows update). Windows has made great strides from the frequent BSOD era of 95. If you don't do the stupid things your box tends not to be stupid regardless of what it is these days. If you do the stupid things Apple tends to make truly stupid harder.
Re:College kids (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't forget. (Score:3, Informative)
You do know that Apple sells family packs of the OS, right? For $120 or so you can load 5 computers with the latest and greatest.
And, no offense, calling each release of OS X a service pack is just
Re:More to Come (Score:3, Informative)
Well now that depends. I just checked the dell and apple websites and here is what I found: (canadian $)
dell xps 1330: $1729
# 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
# 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
# 160GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
# SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# intel gma 3100
black macbook (std build): $1649
# 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
# 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
# 160GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
# SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# intel gma 950
So for slightly less money, you get a machine with a slightly inferior graphics card, but arguably better software (I guess a moot point if you're going with linux). Anyways, my point is that for some configs, the price isn't that different between dell and apple at least.
Re:More to Come (Score:3, Informative)
dell Inspiron 1420: $1,159
# 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
# 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
# 160GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
# SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# intel gma 3100
black macbook (std build): $1649
# 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
# 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
# 160GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
# SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
# intel gma 950
YES! Now let it go, jackass! (Score:1, Informative)
All current desktop Macs (except the Mini, which doesn't include a mouse) ship with the Mighty Mouse, which acts as a one-button by default but can be configured to have separate right and left click behavior.
All current laptop Macs have trackpads that act as one-button by default but can be configured so that a click while two fingers are in contact with the trackpad is interpreted as a right-click.
(IMHO two-button trackpads SUCK, because I always have to be conscious of where my thumb is so I don't left click when I want to right click, or vice versa. With the Mac I just have to put a second finger on the trackpad and click, without worrying which half of the button area is under my thumb at that particular moment.)
Re:Please educate & inform me... (Score:5, Informative)
A question for you: What is it about OS X that makes it good for audio/video/graphic work? That's your assertion, so I assume you have at least of some reason to believe it.
If you're confused as to why some choose OS X then I would suggest doing some research into the features that made NEXTSTEP a compelling Unix Desktop and workstation in the 90s [google.ca]. For instance:
That's NEXTSTEP.
Now, say you chose NEXTSTEP as the basis for your perfect operating system and desktop environment. You get to keep all of the good design decisions, throw away or refactor all of the bad design decisions, and do it without any backward compatibility restrictions. What you end up with is OS X.
But why an Apple laptop? Here's why: I can open up a bunch of SSH and X11 sessions to a remote server over wi-fi, close the lid and throw it in my back-pack, go eat lunch, come back and open the lid, and all of my remote X11 apps and sessions are still alive. OS X just works damn well on Apple's laptop hardware.
Re Apple OS License (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has Mac OS license support subscription options for companies of all sizes.
You shouldn't complain on what you clearly don't know anything about.
Re:Linux on MacBook pro's (Score:2, Informative)
So now I can use OSX applications with a Gentoo machine compiling code in the background, with no human-noticeable slowdown (though I did have to find and turn on the option to use Intel's virtualization processor feature thingy).
Re:damned missing second button (Score:3, Informative)
Re:College kids (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Macs just work. (Score:1, Informative)
Vista is fucking useless.
Re:At retail... (Score:3, Informative)
When I upgraded my HD, all I had to do was copy the old drive to the new drive. No "reinstall the OS, run a bazillion updates, and then reinstall the apps and restore my files." A straight copy from the backup volume to the new drive was all it took, with no special ghosting software required.
And the granddaddy of them all..no activation or WGA validation.
Sleep on lid closure working? Check. Great battery life (4-6 hrs on a battery approaching 100 cycles)? Check. Maybe WinXP and Windows-running hardware has improved to meet these stats. I don't know, and I don't care. My MacBook does what I need it to do, with a feeling of reliability that I never had running Windows.
Yep, it has the aesthetics too...I was in a conversation about that very subject earlier today. I've seen quite a few laptops that just have a very busy design; buttons and lights for all sorts of rarely-used functions everywhere, I/O ports scattered hither and yon, cooling vents everywhere...a general case design where the different parts and colors just added a lot of visual noise. My MacBook is a nice, clean white; it is visually quiet, with none of the extras that distract from the useful functions.
Sorry to sound like a fanboy--I believe that you use what gets the job done. If Windows is what gets your job done, then use it. If Linux makes you more productive, use it. For me, it's the Mac.
Re:Computers should last for more than a year. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a post that sums up a lot about twitter--posting it so that perhaps a few more people might be alerted to twitter's activities! http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=198321&cid=16
And just FWIW, I agree with you about XP. I use OSX almost exclusively now, but I've had some very solid XP installations, and at work our Win2003 server regularly matches our FreeBSD server for uptime (poor power being the main limiting factor)
Re:College kids (Score:5, Informative)
Let me counter with another anecdote: With the next patch release, the intel mac build of World of Warcraft will be able to record in-game video, filter out the UI, and encode to a variety of codecs and compression levels in the background. The PC version of the game will not be able to do so. Obviously, OSX offers something that Windows does not, correct?
Macs are great, until they aren't. (Score:1, Informative)
I got a Powerbook. The logic board broke twice. The second time it was just out of warranty, and I refused to buy the AppleCare extended warranty (which doesn't cover drops). Sometimes it recognizes its "apple memory" sometimes it didn't. It just became too flaky to use, so I got another iBook.
The iBook came to me out of the box bad (logic board). I sent it in for service and they replaced the board, but took my bluetooth out. In my first two months of owning it, it spent more time at Apple than on my lap. Earlier this year, I dropped it and broke the screen hinge.
Faced with replacing it, I switched back. For about a thousand dollars, I got a gateway with a 15.4" screen, an ATI graphics card (I can play games again!), plenty of RAM, HDD, and a SD slot. To get a comparable macbook (the pro) would have cost about 3x the price. I can boot anything I want (including osx86 if I feel like it) and if I need to replace a drive, ram, or wireless card, I dont end up with a ridiculous pile of screws and the anger of the "Apple Genius".
Add me to the ranks of the "One Less Mac [onelessmac.com]" crowd. I can take the glare of the hipsters at the coffee shop.
Re:Lies, damned lies, and statistics (Score:3, Informative)
"NPD, which collects its data primarily from retail sources and excludes most online and all direct sales, said Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops accounted for 17.6% of June's unit sales"
In other news, market research firm SJB, which collects its data primarily from Apple stores and excludes all other sources, said Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops accounted for 100% of unit sales.
Re:At retail... (Score:2, Informative)
Why? All Macs these days come with Wifi (b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.
Just up your overall mouse speed.
Use Quicksilver. http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/ [blacktree.com]
This isn't normal. It works fine with my machine and all my workmates.
Try Fink Commander. http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Hope this stuff helps!
Re:At retail... (Score:3, Informative)
You most likely will not have any luck here. There are many chipsets out there without (or only partial) Mac/Unix/Linux support. I'm guessing that you have an older G4 or G5 based Mac, because, if you were to purchase a new Mac, it would have wireless and bluetooth built-in ($79 option on the Mac Pro, standard on everything else), so in your case, this is a problem, but for most switchers, and for those buying a new Apple laptop (since that's what the story was about) this wouldn't be an issue.
I'm interpreting "mouse acceleration" to be "adjust the tracking speed". It's located in System Preferences. In the Keyboard and Mouse preference pane, click on the mouse tab, and, you'll see slider controls for tracking speed. In addition, you can adjust the scroll speed and the double click speed. If you mean something else, I apologize. I never touch the mouse settings on the Mac or in Windows.
You are correct here. There isn't a native way of doing this in Mac OS X. Ironically, I think you could do this in the older Mac Classic system. Anyway, I use a product called QuicKeys [startly.com] to do what you described. Comes in very handy. Some of this support must be lacking on the Windows side too, because they make a Windows version as well.
Yes, the scroll bar sometimes breaks in Firefox on the Mac. I've found quality control lacking on the Mac version of Firefox, in comparison to the Windows version. Usually quitting and re-launching Firefox restores it to normalcy. I haven't found a trigger yet for this misbehavior. It never happens in Safari.
I believe the folks at Mac Ports [macports.org] and Fink [finkproject.org] can help you with most of your open source software needs. Follow their documentation and you'll be up and running with open source software in no time.
I hope my answers have helped you out.
Re:At retail... (Score:3, Informative)
I'll try to address these 1 by 1 and see if I can come up with some solutions for you.
1. I have some cheap usb hardware (wireless network dongle, bluetooth, etc). No drivers for mac. (I've spent hours searching mailing lists)
Unfortunately, you are pretty well screwed on USB unless the peripheral is of some standard device class that Apple supports (e.g. keyboard, mouse, hard drive, most cameras) or Apple has provided support for it. As far as I know, most Bluetooth adapters do work, particularly the Dlink ones. Look for an OS X logo on it, although what Mac did you buy recently that didn't have bluetooth built in? The networking situation is similar where most of the time the built-in gigabit and 802.11 support is sufficient for 99% of people. If you really need more network ports it's like any other system really, buy supported hardware.
2. I want to adjust mouse acceleration. I can't figure out how without buying an expensive 3rd party app.
There's a few different solutions. A google search for OS X mouse accelleration will get you to a couple of different macosxhints.com articles, one of which mentions MouseFix [knockknock.org.uk]. Another article mentions a rebuilt HID driver although I would do that at your own risk. Or you can pay the measly $20 for SteerMouse.
I might also make a suggestion that you may simply be using your mouse incorrectly or using a bad mouse. Apple's mice are designed very lightweight and are extremely easy to pick up when doing long drags. If you're just trying to flick across the screen quickly I don't have any trouble doing that by moving the mouse a mere inch or so to get it from one side of a 1920x1200 screen to the other although admittedly you have to do it extremely rapidly for it to work.
3. I want to be able to launch my apps with one or two-key keyboard shortcuts. I can't figure this one out either.
Most people who want this use QuickSilver [blacktree.com].
4. My scrollbar in firefox doesn't work right. Is this normal?
I have no idea. I am not very enthralled with Firefox on Mac. If you just want the Mozilla rendering engine you could try the sister project Camino. If you just want a browser then of course Safari is already there. Granted not all websites work with Safari but if it's something like a banking site I'll go use Camino or Firefox and then simply complain to the site that it should work in Safari. Did that to Verizon Wireless and what do you know, they fixed it.
5. Many open source apps that I love don't have standard maintained OS X distributions (gvim, pidgin, etc). I could try compiling myself, or I've found older versions that other people have built for them, but that's rather a step backwards instead of forwards.
There are basically two ways to get this. One way is to get Fink which is okay but I'm less than thrilled with the way they manage their port tree. Generally, Fink won't work with new OS X releases until a few weeks to a month after official release. The upside of Fink is that they have precompiled packages and use dpkg/apt plus some custom code (Python or PERL, can't remember which) to manage all of it.
The other way is to get MacPorts [macports.org] (formerly DarwinPorts). If on Tiger then download the Tiger binary dmg. If on Leopard, grab the source tarball then do the usual configure/make/make install. Either way will stick everything in a new /opt/local hierarchy. From there run sudo port -v selfupdate to make sure you are up to date and then if you want gvim the port is vim and you want either the athena variant or the gtk2 or gtk1 variant. The athena variant is obviously the most lightweight gvim you can build and if you can live with ugly menus and dialogs then I recommend it. Otherwise I'd suggest the gtk2 ve
Re:College kids (Score:2, Informative)
I really get the feeling you're comparing apple(hardware) to HP(hardware) to say that Apple(software) is better than windows(software). I know that my IBM laptop plugs into the VGA port of a projector, I press FN-F7 and the projector becomes the only monitor, FN-F7 again and I get both LCD and projector, once more and only LCD. Plain and easy.
The beauty of arguing on the side of Apple/Mac OS is the consistency, with windows you're always going to get so much junk that no one notices the gems. I guess that is a good thing in a consumer market though. Everyone wants an expectable level of quality from a product and unfortunately windows running on generic laptop X may not always give that.
Re:College kids (Score:3, Informative)
Old and busted (Score:3, Informative)
Equivilent WIndows desktops cost more, even when (or especially when) they make some with the same useful form factor.
they don't play games
Except of course for all the Windows games, via bootcamp. Or the fair and growing number of native games. Or the fact that you can just buy a console and play all the same games people are playing anyway.
and to upgrade, you throw them in the bin and buy a new one.
I suppose that might happen with my seven year old Powerbook when it dies some day in the distant future... How old are your Windows systems again?
Re:College kids (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mac + Parallels == best Windows system. (Score:4, Informative)
People really need to stop using Win9x arguments against WinNT.