“I just love my new apple!”
Even though we’re in the middle of iPhone madness, Apple has some good news coming out of its Mac department: market share went up last month.
According to NPD, Mac market share increased from 11.6 percent of the market in April to 13 percent of the market in May. Note that NPD tracks only the U.S. retail industry; those numbers include PC sales at places like Best Buy and Circuit City, but they don’t include direct sales, meaning that Dell’s totals are excluded.
Still, better to be going up than going down. Apple’s notebook share is now 14.3 percent, up from 12.5 percent of the market in April. Desktop share was only up a fraction, to 10.4 percent from 10.2 percent in April.
I couldn’t decide which picture to post, so I decided to post both. I doubt if I’ll have any complaints.
Yeesh!
From post #1 it starts. What is _with_ you folks? Just sit around all day spoiling for a fight?
Heck of a way to live….
Personally, I’m quite pleased that Apples are selling well. Since there are no more Amigas, NEXTs, etc., they’re the only alternative to M$.
When this ten year collection of software I actually use on my pc’s , will run on an Apple, I might switch… To a Linux box.
#31 It would make many people happy if MS was the only game in town. Who needs apple they don’t give you any choice.
#31
Whaaat???
And spoil a good food fight? Never. That’s why DU has this Apple posts.
Anyway, today I’m not in the mood.
#31
Darwin award for computers: if Amigas died and Next died there’s a reason.
With Amigas was bad marketing. Next was overpricing.
But you’re missing one thing:
Next didn’t died.
The Macintosh did. Next is living under the alias of OSX.
Well, actually the modern Mac is a merger of the best aspects of the Mac, the PeeCee AND the NeXT…
Hi Lauren. No stress today.
A little history for the younger gen…
OSX is a direct evolution of the NeXT os.
NeXT was a UNIX-like OS (really don’t remember if it used FreeBSD then) that Jobs created right after being kicked from Apple. They developed the best GUI (for the time) available called NeXT Step. The hardware was 68030 based. One of the big promises of NeXT Step was to be Display Postscrip. But the hardware of the time was too weeny for that. The NeXT cube was also one of the coolest boxes.
Sadly It was even more expensive than the Mac at the time, so it failed to attract enough developers. NeXT step lived on as a software only OS, recompiled to x86.
Apple bought NeXTstep, lock stock and barrel. Jobs was part of the package too. At the time he was nominated “interim CEO”, as he didn’t wanted to be at the helm of Apple. He promptly killed the clones and started to re-focus the Apple lineup. The iMac was created. He also scraped the Pink OS that was being developed to replace the Mac System 7 or 8. Transformed NeXT step to accept an emulation layer for older Mac systems and developed Acqua. And that’s what is OSX currently.
The hardware side of the Mac was born as being completely different of the PC hardware, but over time and gradually adopted Industry standards from the PC. This started much earlier than the second coming of Jobs. More or less when the infamous Power PC alliance was created. (Apple, IBM and Motorola).
OK, that’s all from memory, so please people,look it up and bash me for incoherences if you find them…
João
Sorry, correction:
NeXT was a machine Jobs et al. created, not an OS. NeXT Step was the OS…
#37,
You forgot that in the 90’s apple was doing their own thing, and trying to run computers on CPU’s that were designed to be the rendering engines for laser printers.
Because of that, Apple was disasterously Microsoft behind in areas of preemptive multitasking and protected memory, a situation that persisted throughout the 90’s.
In the early 90’s businesses were migrating from mini-computers to personal computers and some type of LAN architecture (tcpip won that one to the chagrin of both Apple and Microsoft, only Microsoft had the foresight to realize when they were beat while Apple persisted with apple talk until OSX) The Operating system that finally let businesses migrate to a PC architecture was Windows NT, which was light years ahead of everyone else at the time. Although Microsoft still didn’t get some aspects of the coming revolution(client server computing, you can see its legacy in Foxpro, and with Vista MS seems to be depreciating the domain model of security).
Windows 95 (a consumer operating system) shipped without a web browser. Starting right after 95, Microsoft turned their focus around on a dime, and started to become an Internet company. In the following 5 years they crushed any and all comers to the computer/Internet business by providing better products.
Whiny west coast liberal complainers resulted in microsoft’s innovation in the PC business being sued out of them. Microsoft even warned you guys what was gonna happen(remember freedom to innovate web page circa 1999?). The result is over the last half decade innovation in the computer business has basically screeched to a halt.
Apple has been smart enough to capitalize on Microsoft’s legalistically crushed innovative spirit. However those restrictions end this fall. After those restrictions end, expect apple (computer) to be crushed the rest of the way out of existence.
It seems you can’t talk about the current state of Windows with out talking about the lawsuits that basically forbade Microsoft from innovating. Anytime any company feels even somewhat threatened by Microsoft all they have to do is go to court and scream Monopoly. When every action Microsoft takes has to be made in regard to that lawsuit settlement, of course it has squashed their innovation.
For proof of what is happening witness the recent Google debacle (when they removed all doubt that they had become Evil) where they sued Microsoft over desktop search.
Now that Microsoft is no longer a monopoly, and the legal shackles are about to be removed, get ready MS haters, your heads are about to spin. They will spin so hard you won’t even notice the giant boot coming down upon you. You might even welcome it.
#19 – No kidding. Maybe they’ll let the Linux community steal a few ideas to see if they work.
#39 GregA
Not sure if I agree with U. First of all the 68K architecture was very ahead of its time when Apple created the Lisa and Ultimately the Mac. Motorola was a household name in the business while Intel was an upstart. I still remember my MacFX days when the FX was the fastest thing on a desktop. Of course as soon as Intel brought out the 486, the playing field was never the same. And the Pentium, flimsy as it was, put the screws on them: Apple had to change their architecture. They went Power PC (again choosing IBM’s respectability instead of Intel’s). That proved to be a blunder. The other partners of the alliance wanted something much different than desktop supremacy. Had Apple stayed with the 68K family things could be much different today (for one Amigas might still be in existence…)
As of Microsofts’s Innovation track record, although they have top notch programmers, they are a business oriented company, much more interested into buying solutions or crushing competition than to innovate. If they had more balls, and integrity, we wouldn’t be having Apple wars today because Apple would be extinct…
#41,
Look at the date of the Apple turn around. Look at the date of the first netscape settlement.
EOM
SN – That girl’s eating a peach.
Apple people – I would hate having to use a one button mouse.
hhopper
You’re right – that’s why i have a 7 button mouse
love
applepeople
43. “That girl’s eating a peach.”
1. It looks like an apple to me.
2. I found it on a google image search for teen apple.
3. The website which originally posted the pictures claims that Denisa is eating an apple.
4. Who gives a flying frick, she’s hot! 😉
#45,
I have to agree, it may be a granny smith apple she is eating, but it does look like a peach. Are you sure you were not searching for pie?
#41,
Wow, i Posted EOM, and I should have posted QED. The wiki article on the 68k CONFIRMS IT!!! the 68K is a printer cpu.
I also have to admit. I am just a litte bit bitter right now as I am a victim of my own success… Right now everyone in the office is off to market having fun, etc etc… and I am here because I can remote access into the field computers with pervasive interet….
Someone slap me on the back of the head…
#47 GregA
a link perhaps…
#43 and all the rest:
That girls is definitely not eating a peach…
She’s licking an Apple…
Where’s your libido folks? Do you prefer bites ???
#49
On the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000
scroll down to applications and read the third paragraph.
50. “That girls is definitely not eating a peach… She’s licking an Apple…”
If we’re talking about our libidos, can’t we compromise and say she’s licking a peach?!
4. Who gives a flying frick, she’s hot! 😉
You are correct, sir!
The 680×0 line had humble beginnings, sure – but the lineage of the x86 line goes back all the 4004 industrial microcontroller.
At any given point in time there, Apple’s top CPU, beit the 6809, the 68000, the 68030 – was ahead of Intel’s best…
Joao, you’re right as far as that goes, but the reason they didn’t proceed onward with the CISC 68040, 68060, &c, was choosing to get the jump on IBM-compats by adopting RISC, which a lot of people at the time thought would soon render CISC obsolete.
Intel, as I recall (I’m not checking Wikipedia on this, just memory) had their own RISC chip, the i860, which no commerical computer manufacturer seemed to get very excited over…
Even now, many serious designers feel the PowerPC is a superior architecture to the Intel, but there’s just that power-dissipation / speed brick wall in the way.
(Notice that the current recordholding supercomputers – IBM Blue Gene series – are PowerPC-based…)
Or maybe I’m thinking of something else…? 🙂
#54,
Bluegene is Cell based, which is even more superscalar than x86.
Risc is dead… I couldn’t find the confirmation, but google reveals that HP released the last risc based processor about three years ago.
Ummm, excuse me…
“Each Compute or IO node is a single ASIC with associated DRAM memory chips. The ASIC integrates two 700 MHz PowerPC 440 embedded processors, each with a double-pipeline-double-precision Floating Point Unit (FPU), a cache sub-system with built-in DRAM controller and the logic to support multiple communication sub-systems. The dual FPUs give each BlueGene/L node a theoretical peak performance of 5.6 GFLOPS. Node CPUs are not cache coherent with one another.”
I’m sorry, you were saying…?
#52 Ditto… Loicking peach does fine for me…
#54 Lauren. Just some “fine tunnings”
68K didn’t had “humble beginnings”…It was a major microprocessor advance from Motorola. That’s why Apple picked it up. The processor of the Apple I and II wasn’t the 6809 but the 6509. Not 68K family.
Also Apple did used 68040 (remember the Quadra line of Macs…) But never used 68060.
Newer blue gene IBM computers use Power architecture, and the newest uses a dual processor per node with power architecture and a Cell (wich also has a powerPC core)
Please, someone check this baloney I’m venting, this is straight from memory and I’m afraid some bits may not check out…
Back to you Lauren and Greg…
Loicking????
Licking !
Joao –
Ya, I should’ve better said ‘relatively’ humble beginnings; the designers originally had (such is my understanding / recollection) more mundane goals in mind for their work, as microcontrollers and such, albeit advanced ones.
Of course, Macs had ‘040s, how quickly we forget… or at least me.
But I stand by my earlier statement, which no one has seen fit to take issue with, that Macs were always a step or two ahead of the PC world – processorwise and otherwise.
Where you say the Mac “over time and gradually adopted Industry standards from the PC,” you’re right, but there’s more to it than that, it also goes the other direction, maybe moreso. Mac firsts, besides the obvious – bitmapped display, windowed GUI, mouse – include the 3.5″ microfloppy, developed by Sony at Apple’s request – and Apple was the first to drop the inclusion of floppy drives; IEEE1394, FireWire, an Apple invention; first with USB and multiple-monitor support; first laser printer, first with PostScript – it’s forgotten now, but the entire concept of ‘desktop publishing’ was built around the Mac –
it’s too easy to give the impression that it’s been a one-way street instead of cross-fertilization…
Loicking??
Loicking is priceless…