[RightFighter]

Actually, Apple would have to have an increase in their sales figures in order for it to be any indication that people are switching - if you give credence to my argument that PC users were waiting for Vista. In other words - if a large number of PC users were waiting for Vista - these are people who normally buy PCs, so they should only result in a decrease in sales of PCs. But, if some of those people get tired of waiting and switch and buy a Mac, that is a new sale for Apple, and it should be reflected in an overall INCREASE for Mac sales. I think it's important not to look at a single quarter to determine whether market share is shrinking or growing when that quarter is right before the release of a major new operating system like Vista.

I am not an Apple basher - they make an interesting product, although from a usability standpoint, I much prefer XP/Vista, especially when you consider that I am free to build myself a new machine with whatever hardware components I like without having to hand Mr. Jobs a couple of mortgage payments for a new tower.

The thing that pisses me off about Apple is that they act as if they want the world to switch from PC, but if they really did, they'd license their OS to hardware manufacturers and let it go head-to-head with Vista. This is because Apple doesn't really care that much about the OS - they make their money selling overpriced hardware. From Wikipedia:

Official Macintosh clone program

By 1995, Apple Macintosh computers accounted for about 7% of the worldwide desktop computer market. Apple executives decided to launch an official clone program in order to expand Macintosh market penetration. Apple's clone program entailed the licensing of the Macintosh ROMs and system software to other manufacturers, each of which agreed to pay a royalty for each clone computer they sold. From early 1995 through mid-1997, it was possible to buy PowerPC-based clone computers running Mac OS, most notably from Power Computing. Other licensees were Motorola, Radius, APS Technologies, DayStar Digital, and UMAX. In terms of exterior styling, Mac clones often more closely resembled generic PCs than their Macintosh counterparts, but they frequently offered better performance at a lower price than true Macs.

Jobs ends the official program

Soon after Steve Jobs' return to Apple, he attempted to re-negotiate the clone manufacturers' license agreements to raise Apple's royalty. Jobs proposed to raise the per-computer royalty by an amount that would render all the clones unable to compete on price. When the clone makers refused, Jobs in turn refused to license later versions of Apple hardware and operating system software to the clone vendors. The initial OS license was valid only for the 7.x series of the Mac OS; at the time these contracts were signed, Mac OS 8.0 was expected to be the next-generation Copland OS. Jobs exploited this loophole by declaring the imminent version of the Mac OS (which would otherwise have been numbered something like 7.7) to be 8.0, leaving the clone manufacturers without the ability to ship a current Mac OS version and effectively ending the cloning program.

Jobs publicly stated that the program was ill-conceived and had been a result of "institutional guilt," meaning that for years, there had been a widely held belief at Apple that had the company aggressively pursued a legal cloning program early in the history of the Macintosh, consumers might have turned to low-priced Macintosh clones rather than low-priced IBM/PC-compatible computers. Had it pursued a clone program in the 1980s, in this view, Apple might have ended up in the position currently occupied by Microsoft—an extremely powerful company with high profit margins and a wide base of consumers perpetually dependent on its system software products. Jobs claimed it was now too late for this to happen, that the Mac clone program was doomed to failure from the start, and since Apple made money primarily by selling computer hardware, it ought not engage in a licensing program that would reduce its hardware sales.

Prospects for official Mac clones

Since Apple transitioned the Macintosh to an Intel platform in 2006, and subsequent to a major increase in visibility (if not in computer market share) for Apple with the success of the iPod, large computer system manufacturers such as Dell have expressed renewed interest in creating Macintosh clones. Mac OS X is currently widely perceived to be free of the viruses and other security threats that afflict computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems, and also includes consumer-oriented "lifestyle" software (such as the iLife suite) that is thought to be attractive to home users. While various industry executives have stated publicly in 2006 that they would like to sell Macintosh-compatible computers, Apple VP Phil Schiller said the company does not plan to let people run Mac OS X on other computer makers' hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.^[4]

[HAL9000]

By definition, market share takes a view of the whole market. If Apple's unit sales remain constant while others are declining, Apple's percentage of market share will increase. Apple is also doing well in another metric - rising share of installed base. In January, the percentage of installed base for Windows XP declined for the first time - and it obviously wasn't due to cannibalization from Vista.

Windows unit sales ought to increase now that Vista has been released. But Microsoft has chosen the worst time of the year to release it - in the dead of winter. They missed a huge selling opportunity for Christmas 2006, and that could affect their long-term market share.

When Christmas 2007 arrives, Apple will have several new products on the market, including Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple TV, new Macs, the iPhone, new iPods, and some other undisclosed products that will enhance the Mac environment. Vista may look rather stale by then.