back to article Apple US retail sales leap past PC par

Apple took 14 per cent of the US retail computer market last month - 25 per cent if you look at its share in terms of sales revenue - figures from market watcher NPD reveal. This time last year, NPD's numbers show Apple's unit and revenue retail shares were nine per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. Apple shifted 55 per cent …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. Gordon Crawford

    98se

    95 yuk {I stuck with dos}

    98 second edition works even on 166mhz systems

    xp home ,worst upgrade i did ,all for a new agp vid[going back 98se]

    redhat 9 ,slow on a 5oo system

    ubuntu , not working on anything I have yet

    pclinux , hay it loaded ,[bye bye ms][except 98se]

    use what works,[ and that you can get drivers for] I have had troubles with EVERY os. from drivers to customer services trying to support their sales people claims . If ms people are going to claim price of apple to thier ms systems , then they should be using a free linux . My niece is using an Apple at college and hears complaints all the time from vista users.[ not xp tho ]. Me , I do not like xp or 95 or ME , but love 98SE. to each his own..

  2. Ben
    Paris Hilton

    Re: More money than sense?

    "I've always been interested in that phrase........

    Tell me, how do we make the money in the first place, if we are such fools?"

    Paris because...well, it's obvious to everyone except her, right?;-)

  3. Greg

    @AC

    "You are the weakest Troll. Goodbye"

    Oh I dunno. Judging by the "@Greg" posts I'm currently grinning my way through, it wasn't that crap. :-)

    The MacBook Air fails because the Eee PC and similar devices exist for a fraction of the price. Nuff said, end of, game over.

  4. Greg

    @Dan Wilkinson

    Big quote coming up here....

    ______________

    The "more money than sense" argument just doesn't stack up. As with most other products in the world, people don't always want the cheapest product available. They want to feel that they are buying the best that they can afford, and to think that they are proud of their purchases.

    If this attitude was widespread in other sectors, no-one would buy BMW or Mercedes etc, because, on the face of it, what are you getting on a 3 series that you aren't getting in a Focus? More MPG? Probably not. Faster? Maybe, but not so as you would particularly notice on your rush hour crawl into work. No, you are paying for 2 things, 1) the increased quality - comfier seats, better design and materials etc, and 2) you are buying into the "superior product one-upmanship" that is prevalent in todays world.

    ___________

    Hate to tell you this, Dan....but for me, what you've just written is the very *definition* of more money than sense. his elitist attitude (not necessarily yours) keeps Starbucks et al in business, and to me it's simply shallow and pointless. It's a pity that attitude is so prevalent, but there you go.

    I *do* drive a small car, and I buy stuff that's good value for money, rather than being the big name brand. Note that I never said "cheap," simply "good value for money." I will pay a stinking fortune for a computer or phone if, technically, it's brilliant. If someone asked me to pay the same amount of money for something that was simply fashionable so that I could wave it around at people in a vain attempt to get vain respect, I'd tell them to stick said device up their arse. I paid good money for my Athena, and I'd pay the same for an Eee, but would I pay 6 times that amount for a device that does the same or even less, simply because it's the one on the TV ads? Not on your life, mate.

    And when I fill up my car for 15 nicker, tax and insure it for tiny amounts of money, and then hit 50mpg going in and out of the city, I take a quiet moment to chuckle at the Beamer driver sat behind me, because with the vast amounts of money he's spent on his car, I've done and bought far more interesting things.

  5. Ivan Headache

    @ greg & @ Hywel

    Geg

    "The MacBook Air fails because the Eee PC and similar devices exist for a fraction of the price. Nuff said, end of, game over."

    And the MBA sells - and obviously very well - I don't call that 'fails"

    I have to admit that in my recent travels I have only seen 1 MBA in the wild - but so far I have not seen a single Eee.

    Hywel

    You mentioned something I'd forgotten - Cameras - quite often when I go to sort someone out it's because they've loaded all those CDs. Once I've removed as much as I can find and get the thing set back to iPhoto they are staggered by how simple the whole thing is. I've had a couple of cameras lately though that haven't worked just by plugging in so I've just made sure they have a card reader and the problem has been solved.

  6. tempemeaty
    Heart

    MS's move to UDC sells...........................Apples.

    Microsoft moving to the UDC (User Data Collection) model for it's OS and software is killing the PC market and doing more to sell Apple products than ever before. Good job MS! ^o^

  7. Rick Leeming

    gah! fanboys!

    Why the arguments? We know all OSen suck. Doesn't matter if it's Windows, OSX, Linux, Unix or even BeOs. They are all a pain in the arse.

    Windows 98SE is actually perfectly acceptable for the majority of users out there. While most of us here are pretty tech-savvy, the average user doesn't care. They just want to turn the computer on, browse the web, shop and do their e-mails. Latest and Greatest doesn't come into it. Though to be fair, Macs aren't good value for money, even in a dim light if you squint. The newest laptop I bought (HP G6031EA, AMD TK-53, 2Gb RAM, GeForce Go6100) does everything I want of it, and then quite a bit more. It boots XP64 and 64Bit OpenSUSE. It "Just Works" once I got rid of the horribly bloated POS that is Vista.

    My desktop box is a home built AMD 6000+, 4Gb and an X1950XT. Decent spec for what I use it for (Mainly Browsing and some gaming). Again this boots XP64 and OpenSUSE. The Reason i mention those is that at both points in time I took a serious look at Macs as a possible option. Both times I've had to conceed that for what each of these machines cost me I wouldn't have been able to get a Mac, and still have the same grunt. The Lappy was £375, the desktop was £550 all in. I wouldn't have been able to get the MacPro that would have been essential to actually play games on (once I had installed Windows alongside OSX). price/performance on Macs is a great big fail, and some of us really do work things out like that. Hell, I wouldn't have been able to get a MacBook pro to get away from the horrible Intel graphics chips on the MacBook either, even when you take the combined price of the machines into account.

    Macs don't always "Just Work" either. They are just as bad as PCs for perferal hardware compatability. I picked up a cheap Samsung laser printer a few years back, and it refused to be recognised by either my G3 when I bought it, or my mate's Macbook about a month back. They are less prone to hardware conflicts and annoying driver issues essentially because Apple have such a tight level of control over the hardware, but they do still suffer with external devices.

    Before I get accused of being a "Mac Hater" i'm not. Until recently I was still using a G3 that was sat under my desk, but after many years faithful service it finally let The Magic Smoke escape, and it's gone to the great recycler in the sky. I used Macs from System 6 onwards, running through various machines including a Powerbook 100, early Powerbook Duos (Now THAT was a snazzy idea), Quadra 630 DOS (shiny P90 card If my memory serves), PowerMac 6500 and eventually the rather awesome and uber reliable G3 (by way of a few other machines as well, including a few Power Computer servers we had at a place I was working). I've also pretty much always had a Windows/Linux box as well because of games, and software availability.

    Now please, quit the bickering, it's like being in a playground.

    ouchies, i just wrote an essay, nightshift is getting to me I think.

  8. Carniphage
    Jobs Halo

    Here's the reason....

    ...Buy a PC - and and someone has pooed in the box.

    It's not just Vista.

    Every beige box sold is filled to-the-brim with third-party crippleware.

    Each and every one of these programs loads itself into the system and leaves its hooks in deep. They nag you to buy them. And you know, deep down that when something goes wrong, one of these pieces of crap is to blame.

    They'll be a half-functional virus checker that slows the system to a crawl.

    There'll be some fancy 5.1 sound driver, that has to proclaim itself at every boot with a fancy splash screen.

    And there'll be a half-dozen others. Crammed in by the box-shifter because the software companies have paid for them to be there. Sometimes they don't even work together.

    Half of them don't even follow Windows user-interface rules. And if you want to hose them out, good luck.

    It could be hours before you get on the internet, and when you do, each of them will want to start downloading updates.

    Who would want this? How did the PC market get into such a state where respect for the customer counts for nothing?

    The reason Apple is doing well is because it respects paying customers enough to not shit in the box.

    C.

  9. Mage Silver badge
    Flame

    Re: The reason is obvious

    yes.

    Vista is terrible.

    Linux and OS X are based on a 32 year old OS and XP/Vista based on a nearly 20 year old OS.

    The Gold plated Bloat problem. It's bad on Linux & OS X, but just not as broken yet.

    However as Linux tries hard to be be more Windows like, it gets worse and as MAC OS tries to be cool it gets sillier. Did the last non-UNIX based Mac OS die with OS 9?

    Apple does well due to cool Marketing and the bad performance of others. Not because of usability, price or reliability.

    If people boycotted Chinese products over Dafur, Tibet & etc, not many US tech gadgets and no Apple ones would be bought.

  10. Nameless Faceless Computer User
    Gates Horns

    re: Parallels

    I switched from PC to Mac after over 20 years of faithful following. I wish I could say the Mac doesn't have flaws and quirks. Yet, I've only spend about 1 hour a year fixing mac fonts, file permissions, and cranky printer drivers whereas Windoh's has destroyed entire weekends.

    Parallels demotes Windows to an application loader, where it should be - quietly sitting in the background where it can do no harm. If Windows gives the Blue Screen Of Death, I can restore it with a few mouse clicks and 15 minutes of backup recovery. Sweet.

    The AirBook is flawed in that features were removed to make it thin and lightweight.

  11. Graham Anderson

    re: Toyota vs Lexus

    Darryl - my point is more that to a significant section of the market, the cash money price differential is not so big that it will stop them buying the machine they want, rather than the Dell compromise.

    People who have to lug around their computer up and down the country to meetings, given the choice, are likely to plump for the machine that is not going to turn them in to Quasimodo. Hence the popularity of the small form factor Vaios and their ilk. In particular, all the female execs I have worked with have always lusted after the Vaios and the small Toshibas because of the small weight. But with these machines the tradeoff is in screen size - escape the tyranny of backache only to end up with eye strain squinting at a tiny screen.

    With MBA, you get the light weight, and a full size screen and keyboard. The tradeoff is that some of the connectivity options are not there - which as I've already pointed out, a chunk of people do not in practice use.

    Will cost-conscious corporate IT departments flock to the MBA as a buffer against employee claims of back pain caused by lugging 2 kilos of Dell around in a badly designed freebie laptop bag? No. But someone who is self employed now has a choice as to whether or not they pay the extra few hundreds of pounds in order to get a balanced compromise laptop. Where the Lenovo X300 has gone before, I'm sure other Wintel manufacturers will follow - which can only be good for all of us.

  12. heystoopid
    Paris Hilton

    Hmmm

    Hmmm there be lies , damned lies and statistics !

    Meanwhile back in the real world of sales of real computers , those branded with the official Apple logo barely sell one in twenty five new machines with it's lifted not so original BSD Unix/Linux at the core of it's OS !

    Choices , it would appear all those evil p2p dudes and terrorists the very same ones that RIAA/MPAA want to kill very dead , are in reality spreading both the Apple OS far and wide for free with both "Bootcamp" and "Parallels" allowing all the knowledgeable Intel clone machine customers to play around with it , very much like a cat playing with a mouse so as to speak !

    This 21st century false propaganda truly flies very high indeed !

    PH knows a lot about false propaganda one suspects !

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like