Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

Apple may soon have the premium-priced PC market all to itself, if reports by an NPD analyst are correct. Although research firm NPD Group hasn't issued an official release documenting its findings, an article from Betanews reports that NPD says that over 90 percent of every dollar spent on a PC listing for over $1,000 goes to …

[Hud Dunlap]

But what about the monitor

Yes I can buy a PC cheap. But then I have to buy a monitor. If I buy an iMac it comes with it.

I am in the market for a PC right now ( because it will run the software I need) and I really don't see anything as cheap as the article unless I buy Acer or Gateway. I didn't even realize that they were still around.

This is one of those articles that I would like to see more details on the comparison.

[Sclodion]

What about component builds?

Hmm, something tells me that the lions share of money spent on $1000+ computers is spent on components for self builds, not retail box sales.

Re run these figures taking account of high end self build systems and Apples market share is going to come way way down

[John 158]

That a comparison of hardware or OS and hardware.

When I upgrade my mac OS I will pay 25 quid for the full package, When I upgrade from XP I could pay anything upto £600.

Makes the whole extra premium less of an issue in my mind.

However I bet half those mac buyers are probably stupid enough to max out the ram and hard disks from apple, rather than go for the minimum and upgrade for 25% of the cost. I also bet half the pc buyers are stupid enough to buy a computer with 256mb of ram and expect windows to run happily.

Paris cause I can't choose the evil gates/evil jobs combo, she may very well be their love child.

[barth]

Congrats Apple

a few comments though:

- that figure must not take into account home-build PCs, which is how enthusiasts do it, and enthusiasts are the ones who spend more than $1.000 on a PC. I just shelled out $2.000 for various parts to build mine...

- honestly, I find XP pretty much bulletproof too nowadays. My PC runs weeks on end, crashes less than once a month... Viruses are still a problem I guess... except it's more of a user problem: I get one per year, when a friend brings me a contaminated media and I forget to scan it. I never got a virus through the net, and don't have an AV on my main PC.

- how are peripherals accounted for ? iMacs are sucky computers, screen included. does that make them premium vs sucky PCs + screen on the side, which are not ?

- to me, the benefit of Windows is that I know how to use it. My brother's mac keep getting in my face, bringing up a weird screen whenever I push the mouse to an out-of-the way corner, keeping apps open even though I closed them and the poor thing is clearly working at capacity, wasting oodles of screen space on an idiot task bar...

[barth]

re: Hud Dunlap

1- FYI, Acer is one of the top-5 PC makers. Worldwide, and in the US.

2- Yep, with PCs you can actually change the screen.. or the PC... without having to dump the other part, too.

3- If you do insist on that, you have options, though:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2032280010&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=10&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=all-in-one

[Joe 3]

Poor Sarah Bee

I bet the Moderatrix hates articles like this, for the torrent of guff that will no doubt ensue...

[windywoo]

But...

They still need a netbook to introduce more people to OSX and introduce some variety to the OSes being used on the internet. Its all very well having a secure and stable OS but if you restrict it to a limited set of hardware you're really just wasting its potential.

[John Ridley 1]

Monitor

Yes, and when you go to replace that iMac, you have to buy another new monitor.

Even with a monitor, a PC is still half the price of an iMac.

And I don't actually like machines where the monitor and the box are one unit. I know very few people who do, personally. They're horribly non-expandable. And to get into an expandable machine with Apple, you need to spend > $2000. For that kind of money I want 3 machines WITH monitors.

[Abdul Omar]

I am a Macbook Air

I just bought the latest Macbook Air (the SSD one not the cheaper one).

Cue derisive jeer from PC fanboys who assert I spent way too much for it.

The last Mac I bought was a 12 Powerbook G3 about 3 years ago second hand. The only thing I did to it was big up the HD. It was nearly the perfect computer in terms of reliability and productivity. I thrashed it near to death.

I laugh at the PC fanboys because I know most use their machines the way mechanics use cars – they grub about in their innards seeking to better their experience at the expense of their not so valuable time and maybe selling the knowledge gained thusly on to the PC sheeple.

Led by the fanboys, the poor PC sheeple attempt to drive the fucking things never realising what dismal clunkers they are entrusting their entire future to.

I, on the other hand, am the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency and use my computer in a myriad of elegant ways to measurably alter the perceptions of the sheeple.

And that's why I laugh at the PC fanboys. They don't know what they diss. They are slugs criticising the performance of swans.

[Qux]

Consumer sales only?

"90 percent of every dollar spent on a PC listing for over $1,000 goes to Cupertino"

Are NDP's figures limited to consumer sales? Given the $1000+ median price of business machines from Dell, HP, and Lenovo, it's hard to believe that this includes business sales (which remains heavily dominated by Windows).

[Adam White]

There's no such thing as a Windows Fanboy

Just people who hate Macs, people who can't afford a Mac and paid spokesmodels.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously

If you're into gaming to such a degree that you'd spend over $1000 on a computer, then the odds are you're going to build that computer yourself. It's the only way to guarantee the quality and type of components you need.

Yes there is Alien and a few other top end manufacturers, but as most of these have been bought out by the grey box makers not too many people trust them anymore.

But the important thing is that most of us can't afford that kind of money in one go. So we gradually assemble the parts until we can build the box we want. This also enables us to replace components we compromised on as we get paid another month's wages.

Over the course of those 2 or 3 years we'll probably spend much more than if we were able to buy it all at once, but we have no choice if we don't want to find the original purchases are obsolete by the time the thing is put together.

Because we didn't buy some shite Dell or HP PC, we know that once the PC is put together, we can now replace parts as we choose. Getting the best case meant that we don't have to worry about whether a new motherboard will fit without snapping all that cheap plastic these people use to hold the insides together.

Getting the best motherboard possible means we have about 2 - 3 years of life and the ability to radically upgrade things like processor / ram combos and video cards in $200-$400 stages - unless your timing is spectacularly bad and changes to the processor pin layout make your socket type incompatible with the latest version a month after you bought it. But you'd still be better off than if you bought a grey box even if that happened so there really isn't a down side in comparison.

So yeah, I agree with the premise that the only people spending $1000 or more on a whole computer these days are those buying Macs. That's not a for or against comment, it just seems to be the case.

Another reason why people buy $400 PCs these days is they think they're getting the same thing as someone who spent big while building their own. What isn't obvious to most people is that the poor quality components in combination with the way the system is designed to be cheaply manufactured means that what appears to be a kick ass computer rarely turns out that way. It is nearly always much slower and much less of an upgrade than you hoped for, despite what appears to be a high spec on the box.

[Martin Owens]

Control

I won't buy Apple because as a programmer what I really want is control.

Well also as an Ubuntu advocate I find myself converting Apple machines to Ubuntu, not just Windows machines. So OSX can't be that good at the end of the daym, it's still expensive for maintenance and expensive to supplement compared to a more standard computer with Free Software installed.

[Simon Buttress]

@Abdul Omar...ok, you've caught one, I'm gonna bite

Your attitude is typical of why people hate many Apple users without getting to know them first. I don't know you and I think you're a smug prick who's superiority complex makes me want to vomit in your face.

Stevie Devil as branding & marketing twats like Omar are teh spawn of satan.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said sir...

I was going to comment but then realised that AC already said everything needed to say.

My friend bought a grey box a while ago and the processor died because the included cooler wasn't strong enough. That says it all really.

And people wonder why they can't play Crysis on a grey box when it says "Games For Windows" on the case.

Grenade to blow up PC World that tried to recently sell me a "gaming PC" which was equipped with a Celeron and on board graphics. I responded with all the respect they deserved. I asked them to demonstrate FarCry 2 on it. For some reason they declined.

[Rob Moss.]

This quote is definitely off

I take issue with the quote: PC users cite ... "clarity of product roadmaps"..

I would never ever under any circumstances "cite clarity of product roadmaps" in relation to Windows roadmaps

Windows 2, 3, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7. Version, year, made up name, year, made up name, made up name, version. Where is the clear roadmap? I have never seen one

I grew up on a Mac Plus, Built a PC, ran Dos then Windows for 15 or so years on many Desktops and Laptops and now i'm ready to go back to Mac.

[Dustin 1]

I dont hate Macs, I just prefer rolling my own

A Mac Pro doesn't have enough PCIe slots without spending $1300 for an external chasis.

Abdul Omar....your a duchebag. Who are you calling sheeple? Pot meet Kettle. "Creative Director" In my experience, that means you do little to no actual work. How long do you spend away at lunch? How long are you in the gym when you should be working? How many inane, useless meetings do you create and attend? How much product do you output for how much you are paid?

[Anonymous Coward]

@ john 158

"evil gates/evil jobs combo, she may very well be their love child."

GAKK a Gates/Jobs love child - now I need to go pore salt on all of my paper cuts and rub onions in my eyes. Thanks for all of the pain.

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

Get a Mac!

That´s what I hear all day long from fanbuoys when one of my desktop machines happen to hang for a while... little do the fanbuoys realize that I am running ten times what I could get out of a middle range Gsomething, out of machines listed at 1/2 the price of an iMac. Which is roughly a 20x bang-for-buck ratio. Agreed, I know better than running windows, but the Apple fanbuoys need to understand that they are paying humongous amounts of perfectly good money for what is mostly glorified PDAs. Mind you, I have some stats, the latest MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles is, out of the box, about 1.5 times slower than my 3-yo Acer 5050 running debian. And a few hundred times less secure, too. I admittedly spent a couple hours bending said Debian to my needs, so it´s not exactly fair. Let´s take another example. I just bought an EeePC 901. My only ¨mod¨ was adding the stable Debian repositories to the apt source (so as to get the software I need. It should *slow* the damn thing down). It´s still noticeably faster than an equivalently old MacBook, despite having 1/3 the hardware specs and less than 1/5 of the price tag. (not to mention reliability. Only the folks who never had to worry about maintenance think that Macs are stable). Again, I didn´t go for the MSWindows version -had to wait a couple month, with daily calls to my retailer, which goes to prove that people really ¨want¨ the Windows version as it´s all they´ll be able to get anyway, what with the bribery and all that... I had to turn down crappy ¨offers that I couldn´t refuse¨ 17 times (no kidding) and finally go to another town to get a nice, reliable, MStax-free machine. With the SSD, on which no MS OS younger than W2K would fit. And I not even talking Vista or OSX...

Get a Mac, folks! I mean, you weren´t doing anything with that pile of cash anyway, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am a Macbook Air"

Is "sheeple" a technical term like "big up the HD"? its way beyond me!

[Christian Berger]

Data not very precise

I mean it doesn't take the different costs of software and OS licensing. I mean when you buy a PC or Mac for $1000, you're likely to have paid $900 in software alone. (If you can get a steep discount)

Linux customers, on the other hand, are often willing to spend $1000 on hardware alone.

[Mark 65]

@ElReg!comments!Pierre

Mind you I have some stats - you sir are the Windows cockboy to Omar's Mac cockboy. Both pricks coming from different aspects.

"Only the folks who never had to worry about maintenance think that Macs are stable"

Only the folks that don't have to run commercial software think that Debian will fulfill their needs.

People that buy Macs are probably sick of PCs and it's the only alternative for the software they *have to use*. They may well use Debian if they could but it's unlikely to be an option. They're certainly not going to "run it on Wine" as is often the /. suggestion.

As for the pile of cash comment I think you'll find that Mac owners are generally from a wealthier demographic (not snobbery, go Google it) so they really couldn't give a shit. It's like telling Paul Allan and Larry Ellison to go sailing in tinnies because they do the same job and cost so much less.

[tony trolle]

@Data not very precise

"Linux customers, on the other hand, are often willing to spend $1000 on hardware alone."

arrrrr more like $40 per system :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Match the need and the tool

I think the debate will never end. This kind of debate is the same as asking "which Linux distro is the best in the world?" and "which programming language is the best in the world?". It's actually very simple, just use the right tool for your need. If you need to play game, buy PC, if you need peace, buy Mac. I, in fact, use them all. I use uBuntu for my firewall because it is easy to configure, I use Windows for my file sharing server because it has it built in, and I use Mac for my personal use as I like to do my work with many saves and deletes with no need to defrag my harddisk.

I personally don't think that Mac is very very expensive compare to PCs; it is reasonably expensive. My friend just purchased an HP DV3, it cost about 1,300$ after discount with comparable configuration to 15" macbook pro 1,699$. The HP will provide you with smaller screen size, removable battery, glowing HP logo at the back, etc. The Apple will give you larger screen size (with not much different in weight), non-removable battery, glowing Apple logo at the back, etc. In short, if you like larger screen size, buy an Apple. If you want smaller screen size, buy HP. If you like glowing Apple logo, buy an Apple. If you want to advertise for HP, buy HP. If you want to remove your battery, buy HP. If you don't care about your laptop battery, buy an Apple. Isn't this simple?

In summary, if you need PC, buy a PC (don't buy an Apple). If you need Apple, buy an Apple (don't buy a PC). You are not paid by Apple or any of PC producers, why do you care to defend them?

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

@I am a macbook air

Yeah, some people never realize that you can also -and most incidently- get some *work* done out of a computer. What is your street address, so that the next batch of crayons can reach you alright?

[Tom 54]

I love my windows!

I see people talking about keeping machines up and running for a month without trouble.. man try half a year. I bought my lil sony laptop 3-4 years ago and then it was about 2 years old.. and though it's been battered here i am on it right now. So my 250 dollar investment... well worth it ... eat it apple boys... and btw I think mine is the prettier one! :P

[windywoo]

The majority of Apple's range...

are over $1000. The majority of PCs are under $800. Its not really surprising.

[Anton Ivanov]

Re: Get a Mac! #

Absobloodylutely right. I am still using P3 for a media center. I had to change the original P3 with a P3B/1400 due to recent "improvements" in vlc, but P3 none the less. Works with Debian with flying colours. Same for laptops - a 5 year old compaq nc4000 is still perfectly usable as long as you do not run Winhoze on it. It is about as fast as an iBook and cost much less even when new. And so on.

So from this perspective (answering Christian Berger) Linux customers are probably willing to spend 100 on hardware alone, not 1000. That 100 being mostly for RAM and disks :)

[Grumpytom]

its the dollars dummy

Apple profits rise, MS decline, all these semantics are pointless.

Users are voting with their wallets.

Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini all make more money than GM, you see there is always room at the top, losers chase the market down, winners push it up.

Stack 'em high sell 'em cheap never makes a good long term plan.

[Antony Curtis]

I choose due to the hardware,

As a computing professional, I have to put a concrete value as to how much my time is worth.

For the absence of headaches that Apple's laptops and operating system have given me over the years, I have chosen them because the extra cost to buy their stuff is less than the cost of the time I would have spent with machines and software from elsewhere.

In a nutshell: I choose Apple because it is cheaper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now listen Adbul Omar....

....I really like branding, but I bet you won't enjoy the pain and screaming as those irons burn into your flesh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

putting 2 and 2 together....

Sheeple-mesmeriser Abdul Omar advises PC World on product packages such as celeron-with-integrated-graphics gaming machines.

Makes sense, PC World is the nexus of computing and sheeple.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Abdul Omar

"I, on the other hand, am the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency and use my computer in a myriad of elegant ways to measurably alter the perceptions of the sheeple."

I doubt you use your 2Gb RAM, 13" powerhouse for anything more than OCD-style TweetDecking during interminable trans-Atlantic telecons with Cillit Bang's marketing department.

[Abdul Omar]

No wonder I laugh

I〙d like to thank all the slugtards who commented on my previous post.

Your static proves my point completely - that you are utterly unequipped to understand the benefits of a tool that doesn〙t require endless maintenance.

The fact is, whenever someone is doing anything productive like in filmmaking or design for example, the computer used is sure to be a Mac. PCs are for boring things like sequencing genes or calculating pi to the zillionth decimal to get rounder fractals or something... or playing ridiculous games that make you believe you〙re spacemen or soldiers or anything to to compensate for the fact that really you〙re just pathetic little slugs.

Ha ha Pathetically Cretinous little slugs, I〙ll be swanning off now.

[Hugh_Pym]

PC gamers aren't counted

Because they are such a tiny part of the market. As are home builds (and I include my self in that category) and serial upgraders (posibly the same thing). The mass market is what they are looking at people who go into PC world and like and look at something shiny and buy it or conversely businesses who buy on price and service. It's the same as the car market.; sure modders and custom builders aren't included in the sales figures. They are a small part of the market. Marketeers are only interested in what goes out of the showroom with a profit margin on it.

Similarly people buy an Audi because of kudos, build quality and enjoyment of ownership and residual value they could have bought a Ford which obstensibly does the same thing but choose not to.

Just thought does anyone look at residual value in the computer market. I note you can't get an 5 year old mac for less than a couple of hundred quid. A 5 year old old PC is just a door stop

[imposter]

I don't think the market will change that much

I don't even beleive those figures, they don't make sense. They clearly exclude self builds, and parts of business. Infact 90%? I'd only beleive that if it was "from a sample taken of apple employees".

If it is true, macs will not dominate. If you're spending over a grand on a PC, you are buying it for a specific purpose. And as such you have to have a certain OS. If it's sound work, macs win, but gaming rigs? You wouldn't save for a super rig and then buy apple, no matter how good, they can't run crysis. And coding, simulations, CAD whatever else you want done, some of it is best done on apple, some just won't work withouit windows. The market won't change because of those niches. Simple as.

I don't get why you'd spend $1000 on hardware for a linux PC. I guess you might want to compile code on it? Largley, though, it's got free applications which are fine if you're on a budget or not super serious, but less amazing than the real thing, and why spend a grand on a new PC and then run knock off software on it that lacks functionality or the like? (which to be honest is amazing for the price, but won't cut it against stuff done by a team of developers, with money. And yes, before you say it, note well that linux OSes themselves with *budgets* aren't unheard of, hell ubunut)And with linux footprint at 2bytes as most fanboys would say, running smoothly on a pocket calculator, surely that much hardware would be overkill?

[Joey]

Underachievers!

A number of people have said that they can't afford a Mac. Why not? It is perfectly obvious that they are wasting time tinkering with their hardware and OSs and 'playing games' fer fechsake. It is no wonder they haven't got any money! To make money you have to be productive. It also helps to have a bit of talent.

Using a computer should be a transparent experience like using a pen, you should not have to think about it never mind having to 'work' to make it work. Computers are a means to an end. It is what you do with them that counts - and if you do something of value, you will be paid. It doesn't matter if they don't have the fastest processors or the most memory, unless that impacts on the speed you can do you work.

I will happily pay a premium for a computer that does not impede my ability to make more money!

[Anonymous Coward]

How much???

All my cash goes on hardware, I built a quad core Q6600 with 8GB RAM, 4 x 500GB HDDs in RAID 10. It costs peanuts compared to a MAC of similar performance.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Simon Buttress

Abdul Omar was either trolling or is a bit of a tit (OK, a lot). The clue in the post was '...I bought was a 12 Powerbook G3 about 3 years ago second hand...' and 'I, on the other hand, am the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency...' Riiiight. Not all Apple users are like that. I've seen as many, if not more, Windows and Linux 'evangelists' on these pages spout the same sort of shite (see ElReg!comments!Pierre - if you can be arsed to read it!).

[Gareth Gouldstone]

@Barth

>"bringing up a weird screen whenever I push the mouse to an out-of-the way corner"

He chose to configure his mouse (screen) corners to show open window thumbnails.

>"keeping apps open even though I closed them"

In other words you closed an application window, not quit the application. Many applications may keep open multiple windows.

>"wasting oodles of screen space on an idiot task bar"

It's called the Dock and Windows 7 has adopted the idea.

Why not accept that each OS has similarities and differences, and that you might need to learn just a little about each before you compare them?

[Grant]

@barth

"- honestly, I find XP pretty much bulletproof too nowadays. My PC runs weeks on end, crashes less than once a month... "

Nothing personal Barth your expectations are a product of your experiance with the piece of shit standards set by consumer OSes (that includes OS X which I use), but it almost makes me cry to read "pretty much bulletproof .... crashes less than once a month"

QNX runs for years without crashing and that can include complete OS upgrades without shutting down.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Adam White

"paid spokesmodels" - you really think that?! You are in a bad way.

I just sold my mac mini, next the MBP laptop. I tried it for a few years and it's shit.

[Jonathan 17]

Shock! Horror!

A computer and operating system manufacturer that has positioned its products at the higher end of the market, and currently manufacturers no entry level or low cost systems has a higher average selling price than... welll everything else.

This just in - Lamborghini's have higher average selling prices than Toyotas! No really its true.

Really, irrespective of your brand preference, that Apple would have a higher ASP is really is bloody obvious I wonder who's retarted idea it was to report that. Part of the article is more interesting - that among those who want to pay more, they generally choose Apple - but the rest is not.

[Eponymous Cowherd]

Re: I am a Macbook Air

***"And that's why I laugh at the PC fanboys. They don't know what they diss. They are slugs criticising the performance of swans."***

Have you *seen* a swan trying to get into the air? You call that performance?

The last time I saw a swan attempting take-off, it crashed into a sea wall.

[sandman]

Spend money - get a working system

I usually buy machines built by one of the UK box makers and make sure they're specced up for graphics work and gaming. Average price around £1700 - £2000. Because of the software I use (not to mention the legacy stuff) I run Windows. Oddly I've found that if you have decent quality innards in your machine, built by reputable companies who provide good drivers, even Vista will run for ever without crashing. Spend to Mac levels and get Mac quality...

[Doug Glass]

"Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing"

Oh yeah right, 90% of 5% of the market is just not a sales position to be proud of, or whatever the market share is for $1,000 units.. But the 90% figure looks good in board meetings and this tact has been used for years by marketing people to make themselves look good.

"Why yes sir, we've cornered the market on fly paper sales in Northern Alaska. And we're soon to achieve a 92.3% market share for sales of baseball bats in Outer Mongolia."

[Dan Wilkinson]

Clarity of product roadmap?

What are there, something like 20 versions of Windows 7 coming out, when you include the EU ones without I.E., and another full set without a media player? And how many versions of Vista are there? And really, can you explain the differences between them adequately to someone who isn't some sorm of nerd like us, say your mum, without them being dumbstruck about the pointlessness of it all? It's worse than Linux kernel numbers...

[Stan 2]

@Christian Berger

Yup, 1500 quids worth of hardware here, the equivalent dell/HP box would be over 2000. But running gentoo, to get something with the same kind of performance it would be more like 3 grand and still wouldn't match the performance of software compiled to match the hardware.On top of that I get to run a damn sight more games using wine than 64bit windows can run stably, plus they get to use all 4 cores :)

Still, nice to see the smart money is going to the lesser of two evils. Who said mac's are glorified PDA's? Your getting your acronyms mixed up, it's BSD. BSD != PDA*1e10

[Bilgepipe]

@barth

<quote>- to me, the benefit of Windows is that I know how to use it. My brother's mac keep getting in my face, bringing up a weird screen whenever I push the mouse to an out-of-the way corner, keeping apps open even though I closed them and the poor thing is clearly working at capacity, wasting oodles of screen space on an idiot task bar...</quote>

- The "weird screen" is probably Expose or Spaces, which can be configured not to appear via the mouse

- If apps are open after you closed them, you clearly didn't close them

- idiot task bar? You know you can hide it, right?

Sounds like you should spend a few minutes learning about it instead of moaning about it. As for getting in your face, Windows has far more crud getting in my face than OSX. I've grown to hate those yellow balloons with a fury that burns like a thousand suns...

[Ascylto]

@ Simon Buttress

Oh dear. You just don't get it, do you?

We Mac people ARE superior in ALL respects. We buy expensive machine because we CAN. We earn more because we are CLEVERER. We appreciate good design as we would a fine wine. We fanbois snigger behind PC owners backs. The real sheeple are the hordes of PC owners who are too thick to get out of the Windows fold. They build their own PCs because they try to impress their girlfriends (or boyfriends) with knowledge of the interiors of their computers whereas we Apple owners have merely to flash the Apple symbol.

We ARE smug. Deservedly so, and your vomit will serve only to underline our superiority as we would not stoop to such low levels.

[Chris Parsons]

Use of English

@DeFex - I'm with you on that! It baffles me. I presume it's something they heard on the tv and think it makes them sound like gangsters.

I run an IT support company. I have the lot, Windows (all flavours), Linux and a couple of Macs.

The Macs are fine, not especially fast, a bit quirky if you're not used to them, certainly not good value for money. Nice screen on the iMac, but as someone said, you have to replace the whole item when you upgrade, and any small upgrades such as a larger disk are a nightmare. Definitely form over function.

I always puzzle over the usual comment from Mac aficionados about the unreliability of Windows - my main machine, the much-despised Vista, just never goes wrong. I am equally baffled what exactly it is that 'creatives' can only do on a Mac, but there you go, it's my age, I suppose.

I still like Linux the best, but can fully understand why it is not mainstream.

[Ian 11]

Flawed.

Anyone buying a PC over $1000 is almost certainly a gamer as any non-gamer would realise they don't need to spend that much on a PC, or in fact, even half that much for what they would want to do.

Gamers for the most part build their own PCs, and so wouldn't be included in the NPD stats.

It's dishonest to say that Apple has 90% of the premium PC market then, using stats that don't take into account 99% of premium PCs because they're bought as individual components and assembled by the user.

It should come as no suprise that of high end machines that are bought outright are Macs, because only a Mac user would spend that on a machine they wont use for gaming. The extortionate cost of Macs artificially changes the category the systems belong in. They're still used outside the premium/gaming category, but end up artificially in the premium/gaming category based on price alone.

But of course, this is the problem with categorising on irrelevant factors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac's are great...

..for cataloguing your friends in iLife.

Apple - for people who cannot install a driver without a support call.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively

Run OS X on generic Intel hardware. Installed it a couple of days ago on a Dell Precision and honestly I've had worse Windows installs, only real problem was getting the sound working and that was mostly because it wasn't easy to work out what chip it was using.

In use it is very quick, boot time excluding POST is ~30s. Now I can run Lightroom with decent colour management on a good display for 1/3 the cost of a Mac Pro which would be overkill for an amateur photographer anyway. The main thing missing in Apple's line up (apart from a real 12" iBook/PowerBook replacement- 13" ones are still too big) is some sort of semi-pro tower with expansion potential and the ability to choose your own screen. They could use the Pro chassis to keep the costs down but base it around Core 2 or i5 chips instead of i7. Now if I could only find a Mini9 with a 32GB SSD...

[Nick G]

@Rob Moss

And Puma, Cheetah, Leopard etc is clearer because...?

[ThomH]

People seem to be missing the point of the story

Which is mainly that the commoditised PC market doesn't lend itself to the production of premium products. So when people decide that they want to spend more money on a computer as a lifestyle/design decision (you know, or whatever tenuous reasons people use to justify buying more expensive equivalents of products), all they find that appeals is from Apple. Since companies like Sony do make some very nice products in that niche, I can only assume that the moral of the story is that people like simple categorisation of products. A lot of the other manufacturers hobble themselves with overlapping lines of products and confused price tiering.

I guess some of the result is also because people that have decided they must buy Apple end up segmenting themselves into a discrete category for the purposes of this particular survey.

OS X doesn't really need to be better than Windows for this story to work — all it needs is that enough suppliers at the very cheap end are making enough hardware and software mistakes (flakey hardware and loading the thing up with trialware will do) that they create the perception amongst casual consumers that computers are differentiated by price. Following that you get some people who become willing to spend more, and once they're spending more they're attracted by pretty things.

And, of course, Apple's apparent share is further amplified by this being a retail-only survey. I don't know what segment of the Windows/Linux markets consists of people building their own kit or of industry buying in bulk, but I'd imagine it's substantial.

[N2]

Prefer Macs because...

They are cheaper, since changing to Mac all the un paid admin has long gone, I no longer hear things like:

Why cant I connect to the wireless network? when its working perfectly well

Oh, why has this happened, Ive not seen this before? when some random BSOD occurred

& so on, If I billed MS £1.00 an hour for the wasted effort, created by failed software patches, un-ruly device drivers & this wont work with that because you need to... Id be quite well off thank you.

Anyway, all that is a thing of the past, If I need windows I run it under VMWare, when it croaks, I recover in about a minute.

I wish my PC was half as good as my Mac, so perhaps thats why Macs are dearer.

[magnetik]

@Chris Parsons

"Nice screen on the iMac, but as someone said, you have to replace the whole item when you upgrade, and any small upgrades such as a larger disk are a nightmare. Definitely form over function."

Form over function? What a load of bollocks. How often does the average user upgrade their disks? It's a trivial thing to plug in an external USB / Firewire drive should you ever need more disk space and, let's face it, storage for the typical home user is becoming more and more network bound anyway (NAS anyone?)

[Chris Parsons]

@ThomH

Yes, you're absolutely right...never really thought of it from that perspective An astute observation.

[Justin Case]

Reliable Macs?

I've never seen one. Mine -dual processor G5 - rapidly lost its screen, keyboard, mouse and built in DVD drive. Now it runs for perhaps 5 mins before collapsing. And its not just me. All over Mac people are having to have new "logic" boards and considering it perfectly normal.

Well let me tell you Mac Boiz, EVERY PC I have owned since time began has been 100% hardware reliable. The Operating System? Well that;s a different story - remedied by inserting a penguin flavoured disk in the appropriate orifice.

[magnetik]

@Nick G

"And Puma, Cheetah, Leopard etc is clearer because...?"

.. because they're *consistent* code names for 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 etc, not to mention the fact that you'll never see a stupid number of editions of each such as "OS X Home Premium x64"

[Paul 128]

Sensible people just use whatever does the job best...

I'm typing this on a macbook (a black one which is a couple of years old). It is running Leopard. It has a virtualised Windows XP installation running happily under Parallels. I'm using it to connect (using the PC version of Citrix client because it's better) to my office as I sit here at home doing work. At the office I have two XP boxes, which are used for everything from documentation to software development in various languages. The database servers at work are running Oracle on some flavour of Linux. All of this is perfectly simple to deal with. I used to use a WinXP laptop (which was 5 years old when I retired it) and the major reason for moving to a mac was that at the time Vista had just arrived and I just didn't want to waste large chunks of my precious time dealing with the sort of hideous messes which were being reported with Vista. Life is just too short.

Since moving to a mac I've found that it really is (in my opinion anyway) a slicker system to use, with very few of the annoyances that Windows inflicts. But I can get work done with either, just as in previous stages of my life I've got work done on everything from CP/M machines, through various flavours of DOS, Windows from 3.0 onwards, real computers running flavours of Unix, PDP-11s running all sorts of weird OSs, VAXen running VMS, etc etc. At the moment the setup I described above gives me the most flexible, irritation-free computing environment which fits my needs, and for that reason I'm perfectly happy that I spent something like £1300 on the macbook a couple of years ago instead of going for a cheaper PC laptop.

As for people who build their own PCs... In my youth I used to get involved in a bit of car maintenance - I know how to adjust the valve clearances on a BMW small six engine, or adjust the idle speed on a stromberg carburettor. Now? Life is just too short - I take the car to the garage and get someone to service it and pay them some money in exchange for doing so, because I am no longer interested in the nuts and bolts - I just want a machine with 4 wheels which gets me where I want to go with a minimum of fuss. It's the same with computers.

People need to get over their prejudices and just use what they find most comfortable. If that involves spending a bit more money to get a better experience then it's down to personal choice.

[Dan Wilkinson]

@Nick G

>And Puma, Cheetah, Leopard etc is clearer because...?

Because they are nicknames that you don't need to use. Let me provide a brief rundown of say the last 8 major Mac OS revisions...

Mac OS 8

Mac OS 9

Max OS X (or "Ten", if you insist)

Max OS X 10.1 (Cheetah, why not)

Max OS X 10.2 (Jaguar, between friends)

Max OS X 10.3 (Panther, if you feel the need)

Max OS X 10.4 (Tiger, if you must)

Max OS X 10.5 (Leopard, if you insist)

Max OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard, if you insist)

No premium editions, home editions, pro editions, versions without a browser, versions without a media player, versions that are only available on netbooks, versions that restrict functionality based on how much you spent merely by using a registry key to stop you using software that is included but turned off, etc, no seperate 64 bit versions, no concurrently available versions based on entirely seperate kernels - I think you get the point. Surely?

[Anonymous Coward]

From an ex_HP bod

@Alexander Stanza said:

"If you want to advertise for HP, buy HP"

"When hell freezes over" is my reply. Let's just say I don't like the company any more.

My current Mac does almost everything I want it to do and is now 7 years old. It was 50% more expensive than a roughly equivalent Compaq at the time, but still cheaper than a ThinkPad or Sony Vaio. The only reason for me to upgrade is to get a machine which can run Snow Leopard when that arrives. If that lasts another 7 or so years, I'll be well happy.

TCO? Far less than I would have spent on Windows alternatives, and the development tools are included in the price of the OS. There's also all that *nix freeware out there which is usually just a compile away.

[Morten Bjoernsvik]

What about DIY

komplett.no sells 180K motherboards/year.

Real enthusiasts/fanboys build their own high end pcs, no statistics on those.

[Neil Alexander]

I use a Mac

... and I use a Mac because I like it. It's user interface just makes more sense to me. It's not about security (after all, a computer is only as secure as it's owner), nor is it about speed. It just does what I want it to.

PC users who are calling Mac users "fanboys" are just as bad as the pretentious over-bearing Mac users out there. It must be jealousy or something. I can't think of any other reason why you'd get so screwed up about it.

[Anonymous Coward]

@abdul

i know he prolly wants the abuse but LOL

PCs are for boring things like sequencing genes or calculating pi to the zillionth decimal to get rounder fractals or something...

Yeah real boring life saving stuff

understanding the universe etc

Gaming I love it, im guessing your prolly one of those noobs who always got pwned instantly

jeezus this guy is in charge of a marketing firm

Funnily enough google just brings up his linkedin page so yeah im guessing its not somebody with a shitty second hand old mac whos trying to make it, and bought the thing to try and prove he a big man, prolly got a fake rolex and all !!!

vice president comming out of school Yeah right like his CV isnt a crock of shite

Hey abdul do you want me to send you a BMW badge to stick on your 1998 mazda ????

AC cause this post is to nasty to be me :D

[bex]

1 and 1 equals 3 ?

Sounds like someone can't add up to me.

As for bringing windows versions into it , yes Microsoft dropped the ball with windows but are more on course with 7.

You have Home Premium if you are don't want to be on a domain or you pay microsoft's domain tax and get The pro edition of you are on a Domain. Now that professional has the media center the so called Ultimate can be safely ignored

[Daniel Pimley]

@barth

"...keeping apps open even though I closed them."

cmd-Q is your friend. Alternatively click on the application menu and select Quit. A little RTFM never hurts.

[Stuart Castle]

My experiences of Apple.

I am an Apple fan, but am happy to accept that both platforms have strengths, and both have weaknesses.

I've owned two laptops. They both cost are £700.. One was a PC, and one a Mac.

The PC was a Vaio. God awful 17inch thing that wieghed a few kilos, had a 40 gig HDD and (when I stopped using it) 1 Gig of RAM and a 3GHz Pentium CPU. More than powerful enough to run XP at a reasonable speed.

After about 18 months, I was getting minutes of life out of the battery, and after the initial run of patches, XP slowed to the point where it was unusable. Never found out which patch caused the problem.

Compare that with my Mac. OK, it *is* a faster machine (Core 2 based) and does have more ram (upgraded to 2 gig), but after two years use, it is still more than fast enough for what I need (as would the Viao be if it didn't' slow down), but, more importantly, using the same battery maintenance regime I did on the Viao (regular discharges/charges), I still get around 3 to 3.5 hours battery life. Oh, and it's consderably lighter.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Nick G

10.0 = Cheetah. 10.1 = Puma. 10.5 = Leopard. Not really that hard to grasp. The big cat names are development code names, like "Longhorn" and "Project Natal". Not rocket science from where I'm sitting, and far clearer than the Windows model, illustrated above.

[Mark 65]

Dickwads

"Oh yeah right, 90% of 5% of the market is just not a sales position to be proud of, or whatever the market share is for $1,000 units.. But the 90% figure looks good in board meetings and this tact has been used for years by marketing people to make themselves look good."

Compare Apple's profits to Dell's, Gateway's etc and see what's happening - about 15% up year on year in the biggest downturn since about 1930 or so. I guess there is a market for overpriced hardware after all eh? Alternatively you could be Acer etc in 2nd place trading on fuck-all margin and high volume, hurrah!

Come the big financial shitstorms tell me how does Ford/GM fare compared to Porsche/Audi/BMW? Guess what, rich people are still rich whatever happens, that's why Apple targets the market it does. Qu'elle fucking surprise!

[Chris Parsons]

@magnetik

"Form over function? What a load of bollocks."

"How often does the average user upgrade their disks?".

Being in the IT support business, I can assure you, fairly often. As most laptops make it easy to upgrade a disk without taking the whole thing apart, I would have thought it not beyond the wit of Apple to do the same. External disks are fine, but they are slower and less robust than internal, as I am sure you know. So, I repeat, form over function, whether you like it or not.

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

@Abdul Omar

"The fact is, whenever someone is doing anything productive like in filmmaking or design for example, the computer used is sure to be a Mac."

I ask you sir, to back that statement up with something other than what the Apple Marketing dept. shove into your amoeba-like brain.

I know that Apple would love you to believe that they are better for this sort of thing, but my experience is that the Intel/PC architecture running Avid or Premiere is still the weapon of choice for the masses.

Go on, admit it... you're only 14 years of age aren't you?

[Paper]

Ha!

Macs do look and preform very well, but for the price of £1000 I could buy three PC's, each with a large screen. I just can't warrant spending that much for one single computer.

I can just as easily get a PC for a third of the price and install Linux. I've got stability, much better security than mac OSX or windows, and all the same flashy effects and more on a less powerful graphics processor. If I need I can also dual boot windows for the rare occasion that I might need it. Macs really are just for those who are too lazy to read documentation.

[Aaron 10]

Apples to Oranges

It's VERY difficult comparing Macs and PCs. Yes, you can compare the processors now that Apple is using Intel processors, but things like the quality of the LCDs used in the computers is something that is not rated.

At my desk here at work, I have a 17" Dell LCD monitor with 90 degree swivel capability to use it in portrait aspect mode. Unfortunately, the quality of the LCD is so poor that, when you swivel the monitor, the picture is nearly unusable. You have to precisely angle the monitor to see an image with decent contrast. The colors on this monitor are incredibly muted as well. Fortunately, I'm just using this system as a document creation system, not a graphic design computer.

When I take a photograph and display it on my 24" iMac at home, the colors are clear and crisp. I don't have to worry about angling my iMac so accurately to eliminate brightness drop-off.

It's the same with laptops. My friend purchased a 17" HP laptop. The picture quality was HORRIBLE. I brought in my MacBook Pro the following day and he was amazed at how much better the picture was.

Apple cuts fewer corners with their computers, which is why they're more expensive. It also tends to even the cost when you figure in yearly anti-virus updates and software that approximates the iLife suite of programs. (Yes, they're really quite good!)

Could Apple make a cheap, shitty machine with no extra software? Of course. They choose not to.

[Mectron]

This mean?

the more someone as money, the more morronic he is.

90% of revenue for PC over 1000$ is generated by clueless idiots)

[Chris iverson]

now now lets try to be objective about this

Please forgive me for I am attempting to take a pragmatic approach to this article however I am human.

Hardware wise the Mac and PC are not different considering they are both x86 64 bit systems these days save a few examples(certain netbooks and specialty hardware and the like). The question really comes down to the OS. Now having used various flavors of OS whatever, Windows whatever, and a few flavors of *nix, they all perform the same task and a lot of it depends on various software available to perform said task

Mac has Ilife which in and of itself is a fine suite of tools for doing base level movie, music, photos, and general web2.orhea production Windows has several tools available to, some free and some at a cost(so does Mac), to perform the same tasks. As for *nix if you can dream it and code it then there you have it or someone has done something similar to what you are trying to do.

So what is the big deal? Artsy's like Macs, Beancounters like PC's. To be honest70-80% of the user base could get by using a netbook attached to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Most don't want to record an album or stare at spreadsheets at home. They just want to check email, maybe IM, check bank balances, etc and don't care who the brand is on the OS or the box.

The enthusiasts will always be trying to squeeze that extra bit of performance out of their machine. A branded machine will never do well enough for them. Yes it is the mechanics approach to computing but they will always be there. Those are the guys that take their machines to point the OEM's didn't think could be reached. Same as a guy who takes a base Ford Mustang and modifies is to a point where it is a threat to a Ferrari. Yes yes I know perish the thought and all that. Sure maybe he could buy a Ferrari....but whats the fun in that.

Now for myself I am a fan of the Mac screens but Im happy with a Samsung for price vs performance metric. I have an Acer Aspire that I purged Windows from and installed Slackware since I like control and a command line. Desktop is a home built system where the last upgrades cost me $600 for a new motherboard, processor, and 4 gigs of RAM. most everything else was recycled from the older system. It runs XP, Win 7, and Slackware triple booted(just for the record I mainly game on this system). When OS X came out I put it on to try it out. looks nice and Im sure its very capable but just not my cup of tea.

So please all of us out there in thar interwebs. Please let us all join together and get along and push out the lunatic fringe for all parties involved.

P.S. Sorry for the book

Cheers, off to the bar, pub, drinking establishment

[Watashi]

Badge of honour

Thought experiment:

Take a brand new Macbook and tell a typical Apple target consumer that they can have the Macbook for half the normal price, but only if they stick a Dell badge over the Apple logo and have to promise (honestly) that they will not tell people they own a Mac.

Pound to a penny that 90% of would-be Mac owners would turn you down.

Of course, I'm not saying that 90% of MS owners would rather not run Windows (especially Vista), but the Apple badge is as least as big a selling point as the hardware and OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever works for you

I've come close twice to switching to PCs when I've needed a new machine and going through a period when I'm not exactly holding folding. The reasons for switching are obvious and all involve cost; cheap kit, cheap (really filthy cheap!) games etc etc. On the first occasion 10 years ago I decided not to largely because I just found windows unusable for the type of work I do (photography/graphics), just bit the bullet, shelled out and when the new machine was up and running breathed a sigh of relief at a near miss.

In 10 years since I've used windows a lot more, mainly troubleshooting for those who can't do it for themselves, and still never really got to like it. Six months ago I decided my 6 year old powerbook really was too long in the tooth, but lacked the wonga to replace it with another mac. I bought a decent PC laptop for a fraction of the price, really to use for web work, configuring various systems for clients who use PCs and configuring/flashing the seemingly endless number of devices that require windows for such things. The machine has Vista, which seems at first sight to be a great improvement on its predecessors - I say at first, because it quickly becomes clear that it's a thin skin putting a largely cosmetic gloss on the usual pet hates about windows that remain seething below the surface.

But I bought a shed-load of games for it which it runs very well, it does the work related stuff well enough and doesn't seem to throw inexplicable fits too often. So once more I started thinking of throwing the Mac money I didn't have at a much more capable PC as a primary tool to replace the Mac, and almost managed to convince myself I was happy with the idea.

Then a plump little job turned up and poverty (relatively) disappeared; within 24 hours I was the owner of a Macbook pro and continually giggling rather manically at how close I got to serious PC ownership. With an honest appraisal, there really is just no comparison if you just want to get on with it, without having the OS pepper you with either patronising or inexplicable error messages that end in ".dll", and have no serious interest in learning what the fuck a registry is or why you should spend so much time on it. But really it's the simple things; creating a new folder with an easy to remember shortcut, having external drives mount intuitively on the desktop, opening a link in a new tab Firefox without having to right click. The Leopard OS is simply more pleasant and intuitive to use and just looks better.

Going on past experience the Macbook will far outlast the PC, although in cost terms it would probably be an even match. Upgrading the OS costs far less on a Mac and most of the apps are the same price on each platform. I'd like to give Linux a go if it wasn't so much of a fiddle, and I am certainly not wedded to the apple logo on the hardware; if you could run Leopard on PC hardware without the grief, I'd happily save the cash. But you can't. And I still have the PC for games and other PC stuff.

It comes down to using what works for you; if you're used to using windows, you probably get more out of it that you would a Mac, and kudos to you. I have no idea what goes on in my system folder, by and large, and have no real need to which works well for me since I just want to get on with other things without HAVING to know. 90 percent of those I know in my industry also use Macs for much the same reason - you don't need "you can't do that but I'm not going to tell you why" messages with a deadline an hour away.

@Abdul Omar - PC users may well hate Mac users, but we all unite with Linux users to despise creative directors (parasites) "branding and marketing communications agencies" (collectives of parasites) and those who describe themselves as pieces of computer hardware (brainless parasites) all of whom are definitely "ark B" material. Our perceptions of you are indeed measurable, but I very much doubt you could alter them, except perhaps in a direction that might cause an uncomfortable itch in your goatee.

Paris - way more brains than any creative director.

on the other hand, am the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency and

[magnetik]

@Chris Parsons

Bollocks again I say. Upgrading the internal disk means backing up data to an external drive before installing, in which case you may as well save the bother and just plug in an external disk. Sure, they're slower but perfectly fine for the average person who wants to store their music, photos and home videos.

Besides, replacing the internal disk isn't the nightmare you make out. With the right tools you should easily be able to do it in ten minutes. People tend to replace their iMacs every four to five years, and I can't imagine the average user would want to upgrade their disks more than once in that time. Is ten minutes of effort once in the lifetime of a machine such a big deal?

That you can label a whole machine as "designed for form over function" for such a trivial issue is quite pathetic.

[Sam Radford]

Built In Monitor?

I'd just like to point out that the Mac Mini doesn't come with a built-in monitor. I paid £200 for my (used) Mac Mini, £110 for a half decent 19" monitor, £20 for a keyboard and £5 for a mouse. I probably don't show up in any statistics and I'm not alone. Take a look at how many Macs are selling on eBay. BTW I upgraded my first Mac Mini with a larger capacity HDD, memory and a Superdrive, plus a Firewire backup drive. Special tools required: 1 penknife and a X-head screwdriver.

[Nathan 11]

Windows Versions

Windows 1.0

Windows 2.0

Win 3.0

Win 95 aka Win 4.0 aka Win NT 4.0

Win 98 aka Win 4.10

Win ME aka Win 4.90

Win 2k aka Win 5.0 aka Win NT 5.0

Win XP aka Win 5.1

Win Vista aka Win 6.0

Hence

Windows 7

[Adam White]

RE: @Adam White

Well what term would you use to describe IT Professionals such as Paul Thurott and he ilk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Engage your brains gents.

@Doug Glass - Explain Apple's last 2 quarters then. Much better than the likes of HP and Dell I'd say. If that's nothing, I'd gladly take 3% of it!

@Aristoles... - iMovie is an order of magnitude better than all of the consumer level video editing apps on the market, especially the rubbish like Windows Movie Maker. Premier is a 'Prosumer' editor much like Final Cut Express, Avid is a non-linear professional level editor like Final Cut Pro. In both instances, Final Cut is generally regarded as the better product by professionals and used by editors. Who are the 'masses' that you refer to? Your file-sharing buddies?

@Watashi - No. Nothing 'scientific' there. Conjecture based on narrow minded prejudice which you have tried to disguise as fact. Try harder next time.

@Nathan 11 - Nice try. They are kernel versions and isn't Windows 7 actually 6.1? You have just linked the kernel version to the product version. The original point stands. Microsoft do not have a coherant versioning system in place for Windows.

@Adam White - Thurrott is the very definition of a Windows fanboi!

[Adam White]

RE: Engage your brains gents.

Except he gets paid to love Windows, a true fanboy does it for free

[Anonymous Coward]

@Adam White

Fair point!

[The other Ross]

@ Abdul Omar

Right, wasn't gonna comment, but I'm getting tired of this tosser.

"the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency"

Says it all really. And no, what it does say is not good.

"The fact is, whenever someone is doing anything productive like in filmmaking or design for example, the computer used is sure to be a Mac. PCs are for boring things like sequencing genes or calculating pi to the zillionth decimal to get rounder fractals or something..."

Translation - The coloured pencil department likes their shiny, pretty toys and get mesmerised by flashing lights. If, however, you want to do important work, stuff that matters, stuff that involves the kind of maths that gives flighty arty types a migraine just looking at, then use a computer instead. Don't care what branding is on the box, so long as it crunches numbers rather than wastes CPU cycles on trying to look pretty.

Fire cos all marketing types should be thrown on top of one to make more room in the world for people that actually do something real with their lives.