on 3/26/2002 3:31 PM, Greg Cook at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On 3/26/02 2:35 PM, "Glenn L. Austin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I appreciate the fact that MS wanted to wait for Palm to get their act >> together. However, I personally have some issues with the "market share" >> numbers that are thrown around, as those are based upon number of sales per >> year -- NOT the actual number of machines still in use. >> >> According to PC Magazine (a stalwart of Wintel mindshare), the average >> lifespan of a Macintosh computer is between three and four times (!) the >> average lifespan of a Wintel computer. Given that Apple has about a 5% >> *sales* share, and that the machines last 3-4 times longer in actual use, >> that means that the number of actual machines in use are higher than 10%, >> and probably closer to 20% than the "less than 5%" that a lot of people use >> for the Macintosh "market share." That 20% number jibes very closely with >> the proportion of Macintosh computers that access major web sites (as >> reported by web sites). The Macintosh isn't *quite* the underdog that some >> people would like it to be. >> >> Besides, do you think that Microsoft would *really* spend all the money on >> setting up the MacBU and marketing MacOffice if it wasn't extremely >> profitable to them? > > Yeah, but let's face it. There's no way I can put Office X on the powermac > 7600 that is sitting in the other room here! So, I think the market share > for sales DOES reflect pretty closely how many copies of new software will > be purchased. The MacBU team is very profitable to Microsoft because for > only 0.5% of the MS workforce, they can generate 5% or a little more of the > sales of office. The fact remains, that Mac's have very little presence in > the corporate world. You don't see MS providing programs like Access for the > Mac because people who use mac's probably won't use it. The demand is not > there. > > Since the MacBU team is really rather small, it is not surprising that very > little other than the main Office mainstays get developed.
Apple has changed how they are selling and supporting Macs -- it used to be that Apple took great pains to make sure that your old equipment (up to 12 years old!) still worked with newer system software. While this helped prolong the lifespan of Macintosh computers, once you had a Macintosh, you had little incentive to upgrade the hardware because everything still worked. Of course, now that you need at least a G3 or better to run Mac OS X, there are a lot of people upset because their investment in Macs isn't as long as it used to be. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Intel get together every year to define the minimum system, which is usually a machine that is less than 18 months old. This leads to developers not supporting machines because Windows doesn't support them. >From a developers' standpoint, what Microsoft and Intel have been trying to do is limit the testing matrix, which is a good thing -- it reduces testing costs, time, and complexity (especially when trying to support hardware that was hacked together to get it to work to begin with). What it also does is strongly encourage users to upgrade their equipment every year, leading to a false "marketshare" number -- very few, if any, of the new machines are *actually* new users, instead most of the machines are going to replace existing machines, which end up gathering dust in the corner, but are still counted towards "market share," since there is no way to *actually* tell how many personal computers are still in operation. -- Glenn L. Austin <>< <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Phone: (360) 281-5436 -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.letterrip.com/> old-archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/entourage-talk%40lists.boingo.com/>
