According to the Gartner group, “Sales of Apple’s Macintosh computers over the past twelve month’s have grown faster than any other major PC manufacturer, boosting the company’s share of the U.S. PC market to 6.1 percent.” Meanwhile the iPod bubble seems finally to have burst. I’m sure there are many factors that account for the rising marketshare, but wonder whether the iPod actually has functioned as a gateway drug (as planned), its user experience seducing new computer buyers to try a Mac?
Music: Pere Ubu :: Crush This Horn
Actually, I wouldn’t put too much faith in that analysts findings (which were from May). From AppleInsider:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2159
If I listened to everything analysts like Gartner say, I’d be mighty confused:
Apple Should License the Mac to Dell
17 October 2006
Mark Stahlman Charles Smulders
Gartner Invest believes that it is time for Apple to license the Macintosh, and that Dell would be the best partner. Apple would benefit from expanded distribution, Dell would benefit from the differentiated products, and Intel would benefit from wider sales of a non-AMD platform.
So … they should (effectively) get out of the hardware business while their desktop hardware marketshare is increasing?
And while on my morning read of /. I found they’re confused, too.
The Mac gaining market share ? I can see it. They’ve got one of the nicest *nix environments avail, esp. for “novices.” The hardware, while just a tad on the expensive side, is very nicely designed. And no one, IMHO, groks the whole “user experience” thing better than Apple.
Also, now that they’re Intel-based, you can run the occasional bit of Windows software in several ways, too. This is what will help me sell the idea to my wife ;) And I won’t have to throw away my favorite Windows games and buy ’em again in a Mac-compatible format. It’s all good.
David (who’s saving up for a 20″ iMac :)
Now, just to set the record straight, and to give credit where it’s due to the company mnep works for, I also run (K)Ubuntu Linux both at home and at work.
Lovely distribution, like it a great deal. And while it’s great for an experienced Unix user like me, I wouldn’t give it to my wife or mother. Still requires* too much “fiddling” to get everything working, and the user experience can still be a bit iffy (tho’ KDE keeps getting better all the time, and is better than WinXP as far as I’m concerned).
*note: to be fair, Ubuntu is farther along in this regard vs. Fedora, SuSE and such.
mnep: You’re right, that’s pretty schizophrenic. Though one thing is just reporting pure numbers while the other is a recommendation, probably coming from very different parts of the company, etc. But still.