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Is Windows for cheapskates, and do Macs rule the US?

businessreviewonline.com — You would think that Steve Jobs won the battle for the desktop, the way some news outlets have reported the most recent market share figures. What is the truth behind the numbers?

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robbyyy 40 days ago

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smcl1985, on 07/21/2008, -0/+7It's more than just the US. Nearly everyone I know in the UK is switching later in the year, is considering it, or already has.
- zeabu, on 07/21/2008, -0/+2I was about to switch too, but after using a fully working hackintosh for more than 7 months, I just don't know anymore..
  I don't like the hierarchy of OSx, I don't like HFS/HFS+, I don't like the many restrictions (soft and hardware). Apple au fond, is just Microsoft all over again. I don't run from one bitch to end up with another one.
  I'm looking into linux, but it doesn't convince me 100% neither (althought it's improving fast lately, so I'll keep on looking), but my biggest interest goes to ReactOS and E/OS.
  I really think more programmers should get into ReactOS, fuse it with linux.
  - jsebrech, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1Reactos is a custom kernel with wine on top. If you want that, get ubuntu and install wine (or buy crossover's products, which should get you better compability).
  - zeabu, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1jsebrech: It is not. Although there is a symbiose between Wine and ReactOS, the latter is not just "a custom kernel with wine on top".
    ReactOS is reversed engineering to make a GNU windows, that acts in every aspect like WinNT, in that way that you can use Windows drivers in ReactOS.
    Their goal is to rewrite Win2k, without using propietary code.
robbyyy, on 07/21/2008, -1/+2...we can but hope :-)
pyrates, on 07/21/2008, -1/+2Well done article. Takes the spin out of the other articles on Apple and just tells you the truth.

Although that growth of 38.1 percent compared to 4.2 percent is understandable but misleading. Of course a smaller market share is going to have more growth compared to a larger market share. How about we compare number of units sold instead? Would Apple look nearly as good then?

Let's compare it then. Lets say Apple has sold 2.5 million macs and has 8.5 percent. That means for 38.1 percent growth, it would have sold 0.68 million more mac's then the previous quarter.

For PC's since Apple has 8.5 percent of the market, that means PC's sold 29.4 million. That means for 4.2 percent growth, it would have sold 1.18 million more pc's then the previous quarter.

Do mac's look nearly as good now? Nope.
iddybiddy, on 07/21/2008, -2/+1"But as Asay also pointed out, globally Windows growth was up 16%, while Apple only managed 3.2% growth outside the US. "

Apples international pricing is a joke, its seems a lot of U.S consumers have issues with apples pricing but its nothing compared to the 22-30% premium we pay above U.S prices. Whilst apple are free to set their margins as they choose shareholders must really wonder what the long term agenda is considering the slow down in the States. There's a lot of fruit to be picked elsewhere if they play fair.
wonderchemist, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1I'm pretty sure the real cheapskates don't buy a preboxed computer regardless of the OS. I know a few who still move their old 800 MB HDs into a new rig cause the drive is still good!
clak, on 07/22/2008, -0/+1These articles always ignore the fact that, despite Apple's low marketshare, Apple is bigger than both HP and Dell. Apple's market cap is 146 billion right now. HP's market cap is 107 billion. Dell's market cap is 48 billion. That means Apple is almost as big as Dell and HP combined.

Apple has 66 percent of the high end computer market. That's where they excel and that's exactly what they want. Apple is after high margin profits. If Apple really wanted market share, they would just release this mythical xMac that everyone seems to want, a Mac Pro priced like an iMac.

Of course, releasing the mythical xMac would kill their product segmentation. Think about it. Who would buy an iMac or a Mac Pro when you could get something in between? No one really needs those octocore processors featured in the Mac Pro. The current version of OS X isn't even optimized to support it. And there are many people would rather have a tower instead of an all-in-one like the iMac.

But Apple doesn't want to be Dell, making a slim 200 dollars on every purchase or even Microsoft, who makes 20 per unit licensing copies of Windows. Apple wants to be BMW. If people could just understand the concepts above, they would stop talking about market share.
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Is Windows for cheapskates, and do Macs rule the US?

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