Really? Personally, it never fails to amuse me how Mac people are so insecure in their choice that they feel compelled to rationalize their choice with blatant lies and falsehoods. I don't challenge the choice, just the BS.
Posted on 03/04/2005 9:58:04 PM PST by Swordmaker
Sidebar: The iPod Factor
FEBRUARY 28, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Apple's recent emphasis on consumer gadgets and services such as the iPod and iTunes are boosting its position in the home computing market. According to research by Minneapolis-based financial services firm Piper Jaffray & Co., 6% of Windows users who bought iPods have switched to Macs, and 7% more plan to make the jump.
Kim Vichitrananda, a desktop support engineer at The Dallas Morning News, says the iPod helps Apple not only in the market, but with its bottom line, as it did in the most recent quarter, when Apple reported record profits. "It does tremendous things for name recognition [among] users of both platforms," she says.
And, says Stuart Wilkes, technical director of Iscentia Ltd., a Fortune 500 consultancy in Worcestershire, England, Apple's sound finances mean that "the Mac is not a risky investment anymore."
And then maybe I'll learn how to speak English, lol.
And I am 100% certain you just made that up.
Ain't statistics wunnerful?
Me..............
Your certainty is admirable, but misplaced in this case. It's purely a numbers thing. The survey had a sample size of 200 respondents. Wonderful, but with a sample size of 200 and a confidence level of 95%, the margin of error is +/- 7%, which means that the result everyone's touting is pretty much worthless. Give me the same results with a sample size of 1100, and we'll talk - until then, discussion is basically a waste of valuable electrons.
See... already its not 100%. :^)
LOL - any port in a storm, eh? ;)
It never fails to amuse me how PC people get so annoyed that others actually use and LIKE Macs. What is their problem? I don't give a whit if they use PC's.
Macintosh - when you're tired of playing games.
Really? Personally, it never fails to amuse me how Mac people are so insecure in their choice that they feel compelled to rationalize their choice with blatant lies and falsehoods. I don't challenge the choice, just the BS.
" Macintosh - when you're tired of playing games."
How about this one: Sony Playstation - when you get tired of your gaming PC crashing during the game. ;)
Who's insecure? I like my Mac. It does everything I want it to do and does it well. It's never crashed nor gotten a virus. Those aren't blatant lies and falsehood nor rationalization. That's the truth based on my personal experience.
In that case, I wasn't talking about you.
General, This study is a report from a company that evaluates stocks and other investments. They are not in the business of selling Macs... or iPods. They are in the business of providing useful information and indicators to their subscribers and investors.
From what I can tell, they are not affiliated with Apple in any way nor do they have a financial motive other than advice to investors. I doubt that they provided their subscribers and investors with this information because it was "100% worthless." In fact, if their information and trend analysis was worthless, they would soon have no subscribers or investors left.
It is certainly not "lies and falsehoods". It is a survey done of a random sample of 200 purchasers of iPods... which found that 6% had then switched to a Mac and that an additional 7% were considering the change. Whether YOU think that sample size is sufficient or not among the much smaller universe of iPod purchasers (than the total population of the country - which usually requires a sample of 1000 or more) does not make the information "100% worthless", nor does it make that information "lies and falsehoods."
Lots of mac news this weekend, and you're busy!
I just got my iPod Shuffle and it's great!
Easy to use, and has a huge memory for such a little critter.
thanks for the ping!
general_re wrote:
Really? Personally, it never fails to amuse me how Mac people are so insecure in their choice that they feel compelled to rationalize their choice with blatant lies and falsehoods. I don't challenge the choice, just the BS.
randita wrote:
Who's insecure? I like my Mac. It does everything I want it to do and does it well. It's never crashed nor gotten a virus. Those aren't blatant lies and falsehood nor rationalization. That's the truth based on my personal experience.
Honestly, that is why Macs can't catch up with Windows. Most high end systems are purchased by gamers, who may or may not need to do work with them. Why pay more for a Mac, regardless of stylishness, stability, and quality, if there aren't any decent games that will run on it?
We have Windows XP Pro running side by side with Mac OSX. It works terrific.
" Honestly, that is why Macs can't catch up with Windows."
Just what are you asking here? Your comparing hardware to an OS. If you mean OS X to XP then you are mistaken. OS X is far more advanced than XP. If you are comparing hardware then you have not seen the G5's. Dual 2.5 ghz 64-bit IBM processors that are liquid cooled with a system bus that runs at half the processor speed. That is a 1.25ghz sytem bus. These are the some of the most advanced processors out there. Try putting 8 gigs of ram in a windows machine. There is no catching up needed.
The only valid argument a windows user has anymore is games. Yes there are more games for windows. But for the price of a good gaming PC, I can have an Xbox, a playstation and a game cube and be in gamers heaven. I use my mac for video editing not games. Video editing on a windows machine stinks.
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics." This is not my "opinion", this is basic Stats 101. Once you get above a population of 20,000 or so, the population size really doesn't matter much in terms of the sample required - and with 4,000,000+ iPod buyers, we're way beyond that point. Thus, the margin of error exceeds the result obtained. The only sensible conclusion one could draw from this survey is that there is a 95% chance that between 0 and 13% of iPod buyers switched to Macs after buying their iPods. Well, hell - I don't know about you, but you really don't even need a survey to tell you that. With that kind of margin, I could ballpark you a number straight out of thin air and be pretty sure I was in the right neighborhood.
Now, if and when a study with a decent sample size comes out, we can talk, but until then, this survey doesn't tell anyone anything that isn't basic common sense. Although it does have the virtue of lending false precision to the faithful, so I guess it isn't all bad.
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