Vista Taking a Nibble Out of Apple in OS Wars?

Apple Slashdot ^ | april 6,2007 | zonk?

[Old_Mil]

'The share of PowerPC-based Macs fell ... from 4.29% in February to 3.94% in March. That dip was not fully offset by an increase in Intel-based Mac hardware,

Just looking at the way this is phrased, and the numbers involved, I'm guessing that far too much massaging of the statistics had to be engaged in to come with this result. Sales figures are far more accurate than market share as there's less work to be done to arrive at them, and Mac sales growth is 5x that of PC sales growth. Given the change in processors, one would expect a continuing decline in PPC market share as these machines age.

[aft_lizard]

Thats funny because the company I worked for turned over their PC’s only when needed, IE: Hardware died, software updates wouldn’t work on the PC etc. The computer I used was a 7 year old pentium three w/ 256 mb’s of ram I used access, office and Act! without a hitch until the hard drive brokedown, which of course we had networked drives to a Windows Server 2000 neatly tucked away, only one service call the entire time I was there for the server and since the machines were ending their use cycle a few machine hardware was dropping, but never once did anybody ask on how to use the software, a monkey can use office or act.

[aft_lizard]

Ummm provide proof that it is “5x the growth”, one can always make statistic favor you. Is this from NPD, worldwide , localized, New York City or Beijing?

[aft_lizard]

I just googled and it is from February(my stats from from March) and the stats come from NPD which is only localized in North America, doesnt even take into contention the entire world. Also for your theory to work that would mean this 5x growth factor would be unique owners who don’t get rid of there old machines(which my stats show they are in fact getting rid of there old machines)it’s all well and good to sale at a healthy rate but if it’s just for replacement your total share won’t expand with it.

[Terpfen]

But what beyond that (and video games) needs incredible horsepower at the consumer level?

1080p video.

[coconutt2000]

You do realize that the site being used isnt going by sales but rather how many computers are actually being used?

As I pointed out, web analytics can be used to show that the sites surveyed are visited predominately by Windows users, but to extrapolate that to stating that they can figure out the install base from those statistics is disingenuous.

And as I also pointed out, the author erroneously confuses the conclusions of the survey regarding install base with market share. The two are very different.

[N3WBI3]

I can get a Mac of equivelant hardware for within 10% of the price of a PC, now what exactly makes Mac’s crap?

[Porterville]

You can... well most people can’t get a mac for 360 dollars so you are special.

[N3WBI3]

There was that whole part about equivalent hardware. You cant get a decent car for a few grand but just because a yugo will run you that does not mean a cavalier is overpriced just that the yugo is crap..

[Porterville]

BS you can not get a mac equivallent for the same price. No way. The software sucks too.

[N3WBI3]

Youre right, because apple does not produce a system *that* low end. So lets take the Mini, iMac, iBook, MacBook, etc... stack up the equivalent dell systems and compare.

Dell Makes some nice systems, but they also make yugo’s. Apple does not make Yugo’s. I like dell and before I cut over to Apple a few years ago I bought my systems from them (though I dropped Linux on them afterwords) but to say apple is crap because

(1) People dont use them
(2) Apple does not make ultra low end systems

Is a terrible and argument.