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7/30/2008 2:21:52 PM

Quote :

"It doesn't matter what the slogan is, it wouldn't matter if they had sent machines home with 140 people for a month, people would claim the research invalid and biased and tainted."

yea, i'm sure some people would, but to me there is a clear-cut difference between an opinion on a presentation during a press conference and an opinion of people after using a product over time. if someone can't recognize the difference between seeing something and using something, they are incompetent.

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 2:35 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2008 2:35:10 PM

I am wondering if Noen is making these posts while at work or at home. Sounds like he's afraid someone is checking up on what he says about MS.

7/30/2008 4:29:27 PM

fuck vista

7/30/2008 4:32:55 PM

I think anyone who took this as some sort of research study rather than a piece of promotional material is retarded.

Next you guys will be bitching about how Justin Long isn't actually a Macintosh computer despite the fact that he says he is.

7/30/2008 6:43:16 PM

except for the fact that it's a promotional video portrayed as a research study, that's part of the problem.

and i even said in my first post, it's a promotional stunt.

7/30/2008 6:57:44 PM

Looking around the page from the OP's link, I don't even see how you could make an argument that it's portrayed as a research study.

7/30/2008 7:02:22 PM

There's not a single person in a lab coat.

Not one.

7/30/2008 7:32:44 PM

I own a lab coat. two actually.

7/30/2008 7:37:28 PM

^^^it's called market research, companies set these types of "informal discussions" up with the general public all the time, except when done right it's done as a blind test, so people are given a product, not given a name, and they give their opinion about the product.... that's what's so awful about how it's done, it's more like a "show & tell", then they go and post this -http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/facts/ which implies they did some sort of unbiased polling... (oh i forgot they called it "mohave")

^^oh, snap, you're absolutely right, how could i miss that, no lab coats

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 8:00 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2008 7:59:23 PM

I don't mind vista, but to me, I don't see the point in upgrading if XP works for my needs. Also main reason why I haven't upgraded is because work won't upgrade to Vista and requires XP only. Not to mention most of the machines at work are POS. My work computer is the fastest one there and its a dual core e4600 cheap $500 acer, runs pretty well.

I also love the OSX and Vista debates. Especially against all of the mac fanboys. Man, they are some ignorant sons of bitches when it comes to PC shit. You can thank apple brainwash marketing campaigns.

btw, take something old, call it innovative and revolutionary - 90% of the people would buy their shit. This is what apple does, and they do it well. I love how apple people try to be non-conformists. Oh irony.

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 11:44 PM. Reason : ]

7/30/2008 11:42:48 PM

you do realize that at this point most Mac users have come from using Windows for years, and many still use Windows at work or on a regular basis

7/30/2008 11:44:29 PM

mac core users have never touched PC's. My brother is one of them. He refuses to even be near a PC.

7/30/2008 11:48:30 PM

oh, ok then. your anecdotal evidence is all I need then. forget I brought it up!
come to think of it, my brother (tl) is exactly the same way - had macs the whole time since we were kids. So.... now we've established there are at least 2 "core mac users". let's extrapolate some!

but really - the explosive year over year growth in Mac sales for the past 3-4 years shows that people are clearly coming over in droves to Macs, from PCs. So the argument that "mac users are just brainwashed and don't know what they're talking about" just doesn't hold water anymore

7/30/2008 11:56:42 PM

not just any mac users. I'm talking about the fanboys, the mac core users. The ones that believes whatever apple says and buys whatever shit they throw out. The one thing that always pisses me off is their constant denial that OSX does crash and that there are bugs, while minor and not as many as Windows has, then never could understand the huge grasp of what windows has to do.

Forget the hybrid users like me or the many of people out there now who have switched over. I don't mind working on Apple or PC, I've been playing and working on both for so long that both just seems natural to me. If apple wasn't so damn expensive and could actually play real games (besides WOW or WC3), I'd probably switch over myself and have a dual boot xp/osx system, maybe vista in the mix too.

But really, you are paying the extra cost for their design and lifestyle (not to mention their brand and outrageous marketing bills). I don't care about their lifestyle. And let me build my own damn mac please.

7/31/2008 12:16:04 AM

Quote :

"but really - the explosive year over year growth "

From 6% to 8% WOOSH!!!!! EXPLOSIVE!

But honestly, it doesn't come as much of a shock that Apple market share went up the second they produced computers that could run Windows.

7/31/2008 12:16:18 AM

^yeah, please. Most people see it as the best of both worlds. I wouldn't mind having a macbook pro laptop and a mac pro desktop, but I'm not paying 3g's for a laptop or 4g's for a desktop. Seriously. Considering I build my e6600 desktop 2 years ago for an original cost of 830. Or my dell e1705 laptop that out specs my bro's macbook pro for 1/3 the price and it runs cs3 faster.

They are what? the 3rd largest pc manufacturer now?

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 12:20 AM. Reason : ]

7/31/2008 12:18:46 AM

10% worldwide marketshare as of April according to Fortune, so if they are third it's an embarassing third place.

Don't get me wrong though, it was nice of them to switch to Intel so that there customers wouldn't be stuck with outrageous hardware costs and a niche operating system.

Quote :

"Second, he goes on and on about the visual inconsistency of Windows applications as if it's an inherently bad thing for different applications that do different things to, well, look different."

It's especially ironic given the fact that you know he's 100% fine with it when allows Apple Windows software to look like Apple OSX software.

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 12:31 AM. Reason : .]

7/31/2008 12:21:47 AM

they still are just as expensive... but at least now they are fast as a regular windows pc.

7/31/2008 12:30:32 AM

This is a subject I have some strong opinions on, having actually been a Windows developer for most of my professional career (and then some, over 10 years now).

First of all, I absolutely refuse to use Windows Vista; it's absolutely horrendous and the product of an insane bureaucracy. When I use it, I feel as though someone ported ClearCase to my desktop and put it in charge of Windows Explorer. It violates very many good principles of UI design, many of which Microsoft themselves paid hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions to learn the hard way.

Getting specific here -- you copy a folder and it has the most insanely verbose dialogs with nonsense about "merging" folders. In that alone they violated a few basic rules of UI design:

* Users don't read anything
* Stay consistent with what's there already (i.e. the copy dialog that's been around for decades)
* Introducing new terminology and icons that don't necessarily make sense to anyone (choices = headaches)

I'm sure there are more. Spolsky has a great rant about the shutdown button in Vista, well worth reading:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

Having said all that, I would agree that Microsoft has historically made very good development tools. And they continue to -- for whatever that's worth. I'm the last person on Earth, having suffered with it enough, to proselytize Xcode.

But that's minor -- Microsoft is a glorified phone company at the end of the day. I really want, more than anything, a consistent, reliable, and usable platform. Piling Anders Hejlsberg's wet dreams into the core development tools doesn't make up for the massive degradation in usability.

They screwed the pooch with Vista; they need to unscrew it, and fast. OS X is not their competition, their competition is non-consumption (ie status quo). XP was a fine OS and it would've been best served by incremental improvement, not an explosion of misguided creativity and bureaucracy.

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 12:43 AM. Reason : foo]

7/31/2008 12:40:21 AM

On a side note --

Did anyone notice that the Mojave site uses Flash instead of Silverlight? What are they smoking? Yeesh

(Noen says it's Silverlight above, but on my system at least it's showing up as Flash Player -- which doesn't make sense because I have SL installed)

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 1:15 AM. Reason : foo]

7/31/2008 1:07:12 AM

Haha, that's kind of funny. It explains why it actually loaded up on my EEEPC just now.

7/31/2008 1:22:31 AM

Quote :

"From 6% to 8% WOOSH!!!!! EXPLOSIVE!"

ummm, yeah - that would be a 33% increase. Just because they're starting with a small number and going to a somewhat bigger number doesn't mean the growth isn't huge. It doesn't look impressive on a worldwide marketshare basis because of the gigantic base of Windows users (which, of course, is made up of dozens of companies selling PCs, where Mac is just one company).

Show me one PC company who wouldn't be happy with doubling their units sold in < 2 years


Plus, if you go by computer manufacturer, and not OS, Apple is solidly in #3 in the US right now and growing 3 times faster than anyone else

7/31/2008 6:28:21 AM

Like I said: "it doesn't come as much of a shock that Apple market share went up the second they produced computers that could run Windows."

And that's all well and good that they've had this massive 33% sales spike. Too bad it equates to a grand total of 2% of a market.

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 7:17 AM. Reason : .]

7/31/2008 7:17:34 AM

.... too bad for who? i don't think you'll hear Steve Jobs complaining about it, with his billion dollar profit quarters and $141B market cap (compared to $48B for Dell and $111B for HP)

7/31/2008 7:27:16 AM

It's a shame that all the money in the world thanks to their iPod/iPhone line hasn't made their computer prices reasonable.

Or are you just saying that now they've got enough money to jump 3% in global marketshare within the next year?

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 7:46 AM. Reason : .]

7/31/2008 7:45:48 AM

no, i'm saying I don't understand what your point is. They're making money and have steady growth. What more would they want? You think they should start selling crapware PCs at $350 each on razor thin margins? why the hell would they start doing that?

the "their computers are just overpriced" argument is old and worn out, and no longer valid. Over the past 2-3 years, comparison after comparison have shown that most Macs are comparable in price to an equivalently speced PC. It is well known that if you want to buy a $400 computer, then Apple won't sell you one. But then again, like I said, why would they want to? Is raising market share more important than making money for a publicly traded company? But if you want to spend $1000-2000 on a computer, then you can get a Mac or PC with pretty much the same price/performance. This is all, of course, ignoring the difference in OS and software, which is an intangible benefit/difference in buying a Mac

7/31/2008 7:55:16 AM

I would think Apple would want to sell products and increase marketshare regardless of how much they were able to fleece their customers.

But then again, I've never really gotten the Apple mentality.

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 8:25 AM. Reason : .]

7/31/2008 8:24:41 AM

Quote :

"I would think Apple would want to sell products and increase marketshare"

that's where you're wrong. What good is marketshare if you're not making any money?

here, try this (should be valid for any publicly traded company)

Quote :

"I would think Apple would want to sell products make large profits"

Dell clearly has a lead in marketshare, but their stock is down 40%+ this decade and they are making half as much money as Apple, regardless of selling 10x more computers

7/31/2008 8:48:05 AM

So let me get this straight, you're arguing that Apple is making their profits hand over fist on their computers alone and completely ignoring the iPod/iPhone and iTunes?

Because that'd be about the only way you could logically compare them to Dell.

7/31/2008 9:02:30 AM

their computer division has higher margins than the iPod division, i think.
of course iTunes is just a cash cow, which barely costs them anything to run.

i still don't see what your problem is, though.
You know, the only thing worse than Apple fanboys are Apple haters. What's so hard about saying "you know, they are a well run company who have made very strong strategic decisions in the past decade. Personally, I prefer to run their competitors products, but there's no denying that Apple is a company on the rise."

7/31/2008 9:06:51 AM

I never denied they were on the rise, but I took issue with the fact that you were saying they were experiencing "explosive" growth.

Which, again, is only really "explosive" when compared to how piss-poor their marketshare was in the first place.

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 9:42 AM. Reason : .]

7/31/2008 9:42:19 AM

Even if you think going from 6 to 8% is insignificant, by all accounts, it would still qualify as "explosive" since it represents a 30%+ overall increase.
Everything is relative, and doubling sales of high margin products in 1.5 years for any company is significant for them, even if it barely makes a dent in the overall market.

7/31/2008 10:26:14 AM

Quote :

"their computer division has higher margins than the iPod division, i think. of course iTunes is just a cash cow, which barely costs them anything to run. i still don't see what your problem is, though. You know, the only thing worse than Apple fanboys are Apple haters. What's so hard about saying "you know, they are a well run company who have made very strong strategic decisions in the past decade. Personally, I prefer to run their competitors products, but there's no denying that Apple is a company on the rise.""

First of all, their computer division makes almost nothing. iPod sales pre-iPhone accounted for something like 80-85% of profit. I'd have to check the 07 annual report to see how much the iPhone cut in, but their margins on pc hardware are terrible.

margin on iPod/iPhone is close to 50%. Margin on the laptops/desktops is 5-7% (based on their 05 numbers).

Second, 33% growth doesn't mean shit. It's the RAW numbers that count. They shipped 2 million more units. In the same time Dell shipped more than quadruple that in NEW sales. Growth percentage is only relevent when you are IN CONTENTION. They aren't 3rd. They are 4th in the US market only. Overseas in Europe and Asia I doubt they are even in the top ten.

The company sells pc hardware to supplement the iPod and iPhone. Don't kid yourself. If they STOPPED mobile device sales overnight, the company would be bankrupt again in a year (just like the last two or three times)

[Edited on July 31, 2008 at 11:16 AM. Reason : .]

7/31/2008 11:14:37 AM

Meh, I won't wade into this argument, but when sales to college students at the bookstore went from .4% to 2% to 10% to now 46% for incoming freshmen, it made me glad I bought some apple stock back when it was about $33 a share.

8/3/2008 9:07:08 PM

It makes me wish I had Microsoft stock, because MS gets paid a hella lot more from people buying a boxed copy of Windows for their Mac, than from an OEM pc.

8/4/2008 3:45:38 AM

Sure, but in the same time frame (since 2005) Microsoft stock has gone from $26.67 to $25.44; Apple stock has gone from $34.20 to $156.66.

8/4/2008 8:54:45 AM