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journal: mac
The Best Laid Plans of Macs and Market Share
Quick, get the stake, and the cross. There be demons trying to posses this here Mac
Well, I have an Intel Mac and I’m a geek. So of course I now have a dual booting Intel Mac. As you probably have seen, the Mac world is split up into several groups with the 3 main ones being:
• The “We’re all gonna die” group - Bye bye developers, bye bye Mac
• The “Rejoice and embrace the light” group - Windows + Mac = more Mac market share
• The “I think I’m going to be sick” group - Quick, get the stake, and the cross. There be demons trying to posses this here Mac
I personally am in the rejoicing group. No, I’m not about to switch to Windows (and it seems as I gain one Microsoft product I get rid of another. Word, meet the trash) but I do see the advantage. Some people just have applications on their PCs that they rely one, otherwise known as games.
Now before I get onto the main subject I want to put the other two groups of people to rest. Those panicking about how the Mac developers are going to leave the Mac, remember that many Mac developers are there because they are devout Mac users, if anything these are the last people to move away from the Mac. And bigger companies such as Microsoft and Adobe wouldn’t get too far if they had Windows as one of the requirements for the Mac, in the same way that they wouldn’t have got to far by listing OS 9 as a requirement in the days of classic.
The people thinking that those who are wanting to run Windows on Macs are stupid my message to you is this… Please grow up. You are the zealots that give the Mac a bad name. It is the minority of you that act like the Mac is the one and only thing anybody should be using that cause the rest of us to get that image. Sure, encourage people to come to the Mac but don’t start attacking them because that generally doesn’t work.
OK, now onto the main point of this blog post. As you have probably gathered from the title this is about market share, or more specifically, that of the Mac. Back in the day (early March) market share was simple. OS market share and hardware market share of the Mac was pretty much the same. Sure you have a few people running linux on macs but these are in such a small minority. Why buy a Mac for the sole purpose of running linux? But you could see how the Mac was competing with Windows and how it was competing with Dell, HP, Gateway et al. from one number.
But now? Well there are a lot of people out there that would give the Mac a try if they had a safety net to help them in their move from Windows. So they might get a Mac and then get a copy of Windows to install said Mac. Now can you see a problem? Say there are 100 computers in the world. 2 are Macs, 98 are Windows PCs. Someone switches to a Mac and installs Windows on it. There are now 3 Macs and 99 Windows PCs. That comes out as the Mac having a 2.9% market share. But wait? In terms of hardware there are now 3 Macs and 97 Windows PCs? So now the Mac has a 3% market share. Now this is OK for such small numbers, but what if the Mac then gains another 5 users? Well that’s a simple 8% market share hardware wise but 7% OS wise. Factor in Linux and you can see a growing rift.
Sure it’s not a huge thing but it is significant. We could be at the beginning of the era where Mac and PC market share is different in the OS and hardware markets, something that has never happened before. So therefore it comes down to, what do we define as Mac market share? Is it the hardware or is it the OS? Do we go for what has the higher market share or what makes the Mac a Mac? Does the switch to Intel, and Apple adding BIOS support to EFI mean that Apple computers are just PCs now and now the emphasis is more on the Mac OS being what a Mac truly is?
Of course, this does work off the assumption that you will need a copy of Windows to use whatever is coming in Leopard, but I can see something along those lines happening. So if this whole blog post is based of an assumption then why am I writing this now? Partly because it makes an interesting idea and partly because I was playing a game in XP and it crashed and I couldn’t be bothered booting back into XP. Oh well, that’s Windows for you 
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thinkback
Sorry, but I have no desire to contaminate my Mac with Windows XP. Frankly, Ithe main advantage to Boot Camp is that people won’t be screwing up their Mac by hacking the firmware to run Windows and then sending it back under warranty. Otherwise, I don’t see how this helps the Mac. If you wanted to run Windows, why did you buy a Mac?
Were you a Mac user before OS X? Did you have lots of classic apps? Did you ever use classic while in OS X? Some people who switched from Windows to the Mac may not have wanted to contaminate their shiny new Mac with OS 9. Unfortunately this isn’t an ideal world where you can just forget windows exists. I have to use it at school and I’ll have to use it at Uni, many people have to use it at work. No matter how much time and effort Apple puts into making Macs compatible with Windows there will never be as much compatibility as being able to run Windows itself.
Plus the reason I bought a Mac? The interface, the application and the fact that I’ve used Macs all my life. The reason I’ve installed Windows? Games.
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| Apr. 12, 2006 | |
| 1:14 pm |
And there’s a fourth group of folks — the ABMers, of which I’m one.
These are ‘grown-ups’ that CHOOSE not to use Microsoft or Windows. Even if we could get them for ‘free’.
We’re not ‘against’ other OSes — Just Windows. Technically speaking, we are certain that Windows is the least technically sound.
We’re not against other OS providers — just MS. Ethically speaking, we are certain that Microsoft is the most unethical. We hold no illusions that Apple doesn’t ‘bend some rules’ — but standing next to MS, Apple looks like the corner store that only reports 95% of their income, while MS looks like the Mob.
Perhaps someone will accuse this post as being an emotional outburst. However, many people in the world can see that the defending of a twice convicted illegal monopolist and the products they sell, as being emotional before logical. Because, you know what? Windows just isn’t that good.
This must be where the term ‘Windows Apologist’ is borne from.
In any event, many folks currently see only two viable CHOICES in OSes. For now, I’m sticking with the Apple choice. If the Apple choice is removed, or I can no longer tolerate their technology, or ethics — I’ll CHOOSE a disro of Linux.
You know, one of the things I hate is the close-minded school of thought that no one can possibly choose Windows without being completely out of their mind. I have chosen Windows above Linux because of what I like. I’m not a gamer who suffers through Windows so I can play the latest games. I am fluent in Windows and I don’t plan to move anytime soon because it fills my needs quite well.
| Apr. 12, 2006 | |
| Liam | 4:34 pm |
You know, one of the things I hate is the close-minded school of thought that no one can possibly choose Windows without being completely out of their mind. I have chosen Windows above Linux because of what I like. I’m not a gamer who suffers through Windows so I can play the latest games. I am fluent in Windows and I don’t plan to move anytime soon because it fills my needs quite well.
It’s all about personal preference and what works best for you. Some can’t see that, though, for whatever reason.
At this point, the only thing to do is ignore those who can’t accept and respect your logical choice.
| Apr. 12, 2006 | ||
| 5:54 pm |
You know, one of the things I hate is the close-minded school of thought that no one can possibly choose Windows without being completely out of their mind. I have chosen Windows above Linux because of what I like. I’m not a gamer who suffers through Windows so I can play the latest games. I am fluent in Windows and I don’t plan to move anytime soon because it fills my needs quite well.
Seconded. The OB is quite a wank isn’t it?
You know, one of the things I hate is the close-minded school of thought that no one can possibly choose Windows without being completely out of their mind. I have chosen Windows above Linux because of what I like. I’m not a gamer who suffers through Windows so I can play the latest games. I am fluent in Windows and I don’t plan to move anytime soon because it fills my needs quite well.
You use Windows? Are you out of your mind??
| Nick | Apr. 13, 2006 | |
| 12:08 am |
So therefore it comes down to, what do we define as Mac market share? Is it the hardware or is it the OS? Do we go for what has the higher market share or what makes the Mac a Mac?
It’s always been hardware based. There have been a few cases where people have used web stats to show Linux usage or install base but ultimately the market share we always talk about is based on hardware sales. If it wasn’t then we would have to throw in all those pirated copies of Windows as part of the Windows base. Seeing as each version of Windows has had its time at the top of the “most pirated piece of software ever” list, I think that would skew the numbers even more in favor of Windows.
• The “Rejoice and embrace the light� group - Windows + Mac = more Mac market share
I think you guys are vastly overrating Apple’s ability to gain market share. Sure, this move might get a few fence sitters, who would have to be techies anyway just to even know about Boot Camp, but overall the effect it’s going to have is minimal. Business aren’t going to care to dual boot or even virtualize and joe sixpack doesn’t care about computers enough to know or care about such things. Also, Joe Sixpack would have to purchase another copy of Windows (because his old restore CD that came with his last PC won’t work)
Another problem, which probably caused your crash in XP, is that Apple’s support for XP is not very good. The drivers suck so much that XP actually runs faster in Paralells VM than natively with Bootcamp (courtesy of Anandtech). MBP’s still have one-button, isight doesn’t work, illuminated keyboard doesn’t work and the same goes for tons of other features. And on top of that you can’t read a NTFS drive from OS X or a HFS+ drive from Windows. I suspect the hard drive situation will be figured out with Leopard and Vista but the situation is still to clucnky to cause mass switching IMO.
It is good enough to get PPC Mac users to upgrade to Intel Macs despite having to run Rosetta for many things.
• The “We’re all gonna die� group - Bye bye developers, bye bye Mac
I do think the Mac gaming market is screwed now though. Since DirectX 10 has a bunch of great things that OpenGL will not it was already going to be pretty hard for people to not want to use it. No one is going to want to dumb down their game for cross-platform-ness when Mac and Linux users can just buy a copy of Vista Home Basic ($100 or less probably) and run their game. That would cut down on development costs dramtically as well as allowing them to focus on adding in some of DX10’s unquie features.
Cut down on development costs, cut down on sales too. If one developer offers a game that runs natively and another has a game with a requirement to buy Windows to run it then the native game is obviously going to Win. And Mac gaming is as doomed as people think. I mean, Blizzard have already committed to continuing native Mac development, Aspyr have said that they’re gonna keep porting games to the Mac as long as there’s money in it. The only thing that will really damage it is if Apple was to provide some sort of Windows compatibility layer that doesn’t require Windows.
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| Apr. 16, 2006 | |
| 4:25 am |
I really don’t think this is going to effect market share that much.
You’re not going to be drawing the hard core “techies” becuase they build their system form the ground up. They’re not going to want to be restrited by limited mac hardware options.
The average computer user (and business) wants a system that will let them do their basic work (e-mail, word processing etc.) and won’t break the bank. Price is ruling out macs here.
I think this is mainly attrective to two group. 1 -Mac Gamers since they’ll be able to use their Mac, but run the plethora of windows games and 2 - people in the film and recording industry (or similar industries) where they need Macs for certain aps and PCs for others. Unfortunatly these two groups don’t nessarilly translate to a higher market share since they were already buying macs and in some cases PC’s as well.
You could argue that since these people will only buy a mac now instead of a Mac and PC, the PC market share will decrease thus raising mac market share, but this won’t translate into a real increase in sales just a statistical aberation.
But who knows maybe I’m oversimplifying the types of computer buyers out there. That being said I’m planning on Upgrading my loley G4 for MacBook and enjoying the good ol world of windows gaming which I’ve kind of missed since becoming a die hard mac user 6 years ago.
| Apr. 18, 2006 | ||
| 11:53 am |
1.
Does that come with mushrooms and grilled onions?