Vista's 100m sales mark said to hide disappointing results

[AppleInsider]

Although Microsoft's opening keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show outed record-setting Windows Vista sales figures, supplemental information suggests the software's debut may have been underwhelming in a larger context.

While outgoing company chief Bill Gates' announcement of Vista sales surpassing the 100 million benchmark was accurate, it doesn't tell the whole story, Electronista says in its analysis of the figures.

Citing Gartner Dataquest information, the report reveals that worldwide PC sales should tally up to about 255.7 million computers over the 12-month period, leaving Vista at just 39 percent of all new sales.

And as Windows XP was Microsoft's primary operating system until Vista's late January 2007 debut, the information suggests that the older OS has sold more copies over the course of the past year than its newer, more heavily promoted replacement -- by a margin of 50 percent or more, the article notes.

The CES update also provides an opportunity to dissect the Windows creator's sales numbers. Microsoft was initially quick to report that its Vista sales rate more than doubled XP's, selling about 20 million copies in one month. In the following months, however, initial enthusiasm for the OS has reportedly petered out, slowing down over the year to where only 12 million units of the Windows update were sold in the fall 2007 quarter.

Microsoft's sales figure, while the best ever for a Windows release, also belies the change in market conditions. While Vista's 100 million mark bests Windows XP's 89 million, the PC market has doubled in size since the earlier version's October 2001 launch, indicating that Vista accounts for a considerably smaller portion of the market than XP did in the past.

The discrepancy is chalked up primarily to a lack of enthusiasm about the OS. Some PC vendors, most notably Dell, brought XP back as an option after customers complained about having to buy new systems with Vista pre-installed.

Apple has taken advantage of this reaction in its Get a Mac ads, claiming that users are "giving up" on Vista in favor of XP.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[zunx]

How Microsoft with all the dollar power can do such crap, again and again, amazes me. The day people know about Mac OS X, Windows will be history. The same for Safari vs Internet Explorer and QuickTime vs Windows Media Player. Inertia and only that is maintaining Microsoft.

[GavinScrimgeour]

We have to remember Leopard is going to be better, as it is tailored round specific hardware, and Vista must suit the needs to a huge combination of non specific configurations of PC.

However, Apple have the last laugh as they are brough out their refined Bootcamp, which means, people can have a high quality machine, with a choice of Operating system (Vista/XP running natively).

Apple can't loose really.

[mrpiddly]

I use vista, but only for DX10. If DX10 were on xp, i would switch in an instant.

[Delfoniq]

Originally Posted by zunx

How Microsoft with all the dollar power can do such crap, again and again, amazes me. Inertia and only that is maintaining Microsoft.

My sentiments exactly, long gone are the days that Microsoft could enjoy its monopoly undisturbed. Maybe Mr Gates is very wisely abandoning a sinking ship. If they can't come up with something truly innovative their market share will very quickly evaporate.

Originally Posted by GavinScrimgeour

Apple can't loose really.

Numbers for new Linux and Mac OS X users are definitely going to be on the rise in the next months (maybe even years). Apple needs to continue innovating and improving its OS though, expectations are getting higher

[anantksundaram]

I am amongst a handful of Mac faithfuls in my organization. Two items of note: (1) More than a few colleagues have switched to a Mac in the past six months -- for their work; (2) The PC part of the organization -- which dominates -- has not switched to Vista yet. And, I have not seen any announced plans for the switch.

[OldMacGuy]

Not to say anything in favor of Vista or any other MS product, BUT MY copy of Leopard is still sitting on the shelf, uninstalled. Among other apps, SuperDuper! isn't Leo-compatible, and some of my other apps would require expensive upgrades to run under Leo. Since I'm retired and don't "need" most of my apps for very much, I just may stay with Tiger for a long time. I don't think that the Tiger > Leopard move was done well at all -- perhaps just as poorly as the XP > Vista move.

[ecking]

As much as I hate windows I gotta admit with time vista will become usable. Believe you me, it'll get there.

[SpamSandwich]

Vista's sales... disappointing? Steve Jobs would eat his own babies to have sales numbers like Microsoft.

[guinness]

Apple makes a great OS, but uses overpriced/weak hardware - that's their problem, and why they can't just increase their market share by more than a few points. It's

Leopard and Vista are both pretty good IMO, but there's nothing absolutely better about them, over Tiger and XP. Some largely useless eyecandy, a few system tweaks here and there, and mostly under the hood changes. And Apple doesn't have much room to talk, as what, they're on the verge of their second point update since Leopard's launch? Being punctual to fix bugs is one thing, but it just tells me, it was rushed.

After the Leopard launch, "It just works!" became the funny saying around work, and we use Windows XP/Vista and OSX. My own personal experience with upgrading to Leopard was poor.

The only reason Vista gets flak, is that it took 5 years (total) to deliver the end product, which really should have been a 2 years after XP sort of thing, and it requires a min. of 1 GB RAM. However, it wasn't until Service Pack 2 that XP became really, really sound.

But MS did right with Office 2007.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Vista's sales... disappointing? Steve Jobs would eat his own babies to have sales numbers like Microsoft.

Sure, but it marks a loosening grip that the Redmond Empire has. Microsoft's biggest competition is their own product, their 1 yr. old OS is still getting beaten by their 6 yr. old OS. If you're an MS shareholder, that would be disappointing, especially given how much money was spent to make Vista.

[MiMiC]

and i'm glad!

Apple will never dominate the market until they open their OS to be install on any PC and i hope they DON'T!

I LOVE the closed system and i'm willing to pay more for it. I like the fact that even though some of Leopard was buggy, it is still far and away better then anything else. Sure, we expect more, but i'm glad we can rather then to be forced to just except.

NO, there were no big killer, must have apps in Leopard, but i like the small ones and i think the under the hood changes were made for future Touch, FDD, and other tech that will roll out this year.

Do i pay more for my Mac? Sure, but i get soooooooo much more in return.

My .02

[Booga]

Originally Posted by anantksundaram

I am amongst a handful of Mac faithfuls in my organization. Two items of note: (1) More than a few colleagues have switched to a Mac in the past six months -- for their work; (2) The PC part of the organization -- which dominates -- has not switched to Vista yet. And, I have not seen any announced plans for the switch.

I work for a 10,000+ person defense contractor. Until some folks from my group started buying Macs, I don't think there was a single one in the company. However, our group develops almost 100% Java software, so now I think a lot of them are looking at how to get back to Windows. Life is much better in Windows for Java developers, alas.

I still wouldn't recommend anything but MacOS as a home machine, but MacOS seems to be getting further from, not closer to, what many enterprise folks need.

[Kolchak]

Originally Posted by guinness

Apple makes a great OS, but uses overpriced/weak hardware - that's their problem, and why they can't just increase their market share by more than a few points. It's

Uh, okay. That must be why PC World wrote that the Macbook Pro managed to be the fastest laptop they tested Vista on late last year. "Weak hardware." It's amazing that there are still people out there still spouting the "Macs cost more" myth. It's been debunked so many times by so many sources, but I guess some people will hold on dearly to their beliefs.

[Rot'nApple]

Originally Posted by Kolchak

Uh, okay. That must be why PC World wrote that the Macbook Pro managed to be the fastest laptop they tested Vista on late last year. "Weak hardware." It's amazing that there are still people out there still spouting the "Macs cost more" myth. It's been debunked so many times by so many sources, but I guess some people will hold on dearly to their beliefs.

Not to mention how those on the PC manufacturing side, seem to "copy" Apple's style when it becomes a hit.

Like the first "egg shape" iMac in colors. PC makers started adding colors. One PC manufacturer went as far as to produce a product that was a blatant rip on the iMac - "Apple today filed a complaint against eMachines, Inc. for illegally copying the industrial design of Apple's award-winning iMac computer."

Now Dell is coming out with their all in one reiteration of the 2007/2008 iMac, "If it didn’t have the Dell logo on it, the XPS One might be mistaken for a product of the PC industry’s design leaders, Apple..."

Funny, isn't it?

[Eriamjh]

Try buying Tiger now that Leopard is out? Not from Apple!

Vista is floundering because it is unnecessary for most apps. Is there anything that actually requires Vista? I think my company moved to XP in 2003 or 2004.

[SeaFox]

It's okay Microsoft. All you customers are disappointed in Vista, too.

[orange whip]

Originally Posted by Rot'nApple

Now Dell is coming out with their all in one reiteration of the 2007/2008 iMac, "If it didn’t have the Dell logo on it, the XPS One might be mistaken for a product of the PC industry’s design leaders, Apple..."

sorry.... but not a chance. I always find it odd when people say Sony produces great industrial design.....it's crap. I can't think on any CE or computer product that remotely approaches Apple's industrial design capabilities, or for that matter any other design ability they have.

In fact there are virtually no other products in the work that share Apple's approach to design. Lego as a product approaches but is certainly not on the same level.

Any Dell will always have a Dellness (dullness?) about it, just as a particular brands of cars have certain traits.

[SpinDrift]

Originally Posted by mrpiddly

I use vista, but only for DX10. If DX10 were on xp, i would switch in an instant.

Do you find it worth the hassle though? I had so many in game crashes under Vista that I switched back to XP DX 9C anyway!

[ascii]

Originally Posted by Delfoniq

Apple needs to continue innovating and improving its OS though

I agree. There are a lot of good ideas in Plan9 they could bring across. I'm sure there are other minor OSes they could pinch ideas from too.

[Wings]

Originally Posted by OldMacGuy

Not to say anything in favor of Vista or any other MS product, BUT MY copy of Leopard is still sitting on the shelf, uninstalled. Among other apps, SuperDuper! isn't Leo-compatible, and some of my other apps would require expensive upgrades to run under Leo. Since I'm retired and don't "need" most of my apps for very much, I just may stay with Tiger for a long time. I don't think that the Tiger > Leopard move was done well at all -- perhaps just as poorly as the XP > Vista move.

I used SuperDuper when I had Tiger. I liked it. It worked well and did its thing quietly in the background like a good lil boy.

As soon as I switched to Leopard I started using that backup firewire drive as my Time Machine backup. It is SO much better than just doing a regular old backup that SD was doing. It's saved my a** once already - getting a month-old copy of a file I had deleted and HAD to get back.

Try it. You'll like it.

[irnchriz]

Originally Posted by OldMacGuy

Not to say anything in favor of Vista or any other MS product, BUT MY copy of Leopard is still sitting on the shelf, uninstalled. Among other apps, SuperDuper! isn't Leo-compatible, and some of my other apps would require expensive upgrades to run under Leo. Since I'm retired and don't "need" most of my apps for very much, I just may stay with Tiger for a long time. I don't think that the Tiger > Leopard move was done well at all -- perhaps just as poorly as the XP > Vista move.

Having tested Leopard prior to release i upgraded to leopard on the 26th of October.

On my work iMac I run:

Mail
iCal
Office 2004
Skype
iChat
Toast
Adobe CS3 (Mostly for Photoshop and Dreamweaver for website design)
parallels Desktop (Runs Windows XP Pro)

My system runs 24/7 and has only been restarted a couple of times since upgrading to leopard. I would not go back to Tiger, as I use my Mac for work everyday the increased performance is
very noticeable and I make full use of stacks and Spaces.

I think that the leopard upgrade went very well if applications don't fully support leopard you can't blame apple as they provided developers with all the tools and development libraries that they would have required to make their applications work.

[taojones]

i have a copy of vista i was advised not to install by the software company that makes the cad program(rhino) that i need to run on a wintel box next to my mac. its not hard to sell an operating system that comes with a computer. how many people queued up to buy the upgrade ? bill, Melinda and Steve and then maybe George Bush… lets see my vista calculator adds that up as 5 people in a row!!

[groverat]

This is bad for Microsoft somehow, that an OS they already made/marketed is selling better than their new one? If they were losing out to a rival I could see this as bad, but they are losing to themselves.

[zanshin]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Vista's sales... disappointing? Steve Jobs would eat his own babies to have sales numbers like Microsoft.

Steve doesn't have to have a special lunch on his offspring to get Microsoft-esque numbers -- Apple would just have to abandon their OS and dive into the PC party.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by zanshin

Steve doesn't have to have a special lunch on his offspring to get Microsoft-esque numbers -- Apple would just have to abandon their OS and dive into the PC party.

I don't think that makes any sense. There's not much profit to be had in the Windows computer market. Apple nets almost as much as HP or Dell does.

I don't think a whole lot of Apple buyers are buying Apple just because of the hardware design.

[groverat]

I don't think a whole lot of Apple buyers are buying Apple just because of the hardware design.

Perhaps not "just" because. I would say that a great deal of Apple buyers buy Macs "largely" because of the aesthetic appeal.

[Bancho]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

I don't think that makes any sense. There's not much profit to be had in the Windows computer market. Apple nets almost as much as HP or Dell does.

I don't think a whole lot of Apple buyers are buying Apple just because of the hardware design.

The only real compelling feature to Vista is DX10 and that's only from a gaming perspective. I've yet to hear of any other real advancements or "must have" features and that's unfortunate. People where I work received new laptops during a refresh and clamored to get XP installed as Vista was causing too many problems in the course of their work. A number of them even switched to Linux as a result.

I'm the lone rebel here with my 1st gen black Macbook (I chose the black to blend in better).

[a_greer]

Companies who buy volume licenses are included in the stat and that is bogus: sure, any company with a VL and Software Assurance automaticly got a 1-for-1 upgrade right from XP but no one is using it, outside of a few developers who have to test their companies commercial apps in it

[a_greer]

Originally Posted by groverat

Perhaps not "just" because. I would say that a great deal of Apple buyers buy Macs "largely" because of the aesthetic appeal.

It isnt asthetic, it is the fact that
A vista sucks
B XP is about 8 years old
C people dont want to have to deal with the shit on windows by default from OEMs and largely dont have the know how to rid themselves of it
and
D the Mac is the only other option

Yes it kicks windows' ass, but mac is the only other player for non-geeks, so it is a natural migration from the worse to the better.

[talksense101]

DX10 is not supported by most of the games out there. Few new titles like Crysis support DX10, but if you look at the comparative screenshots, I say bleh. Again, look at the hardware requirements for running Crysis under Vista as opposed to XP.

In the meanwhile, DX10.1 coming up soon and requires hardware and software support...

[ashawley]

Originally Posted by guinness

But MS did right with Office 2007.

Er, really? Ya think so? Not me..

Just like vista: it's a memory hog and they redesigned something that worked into something ugly that doesn't work (i.e. the "Ribbon").

I mean that darned Ribbon is HUGE..and the first thing you're told when you search for help on customizing it is "Things you can't customize on the toolbar".

Gotta love that...

Oh, and don't even get me started on the new file formats! I mean, the last time we had that was 7 years ago wasn't it? Didn't they learn anything from that? ARGH....why, why, why....

[guinness]

Originally Posted by Kolchak

Uh, okay. That must be why PC World wrote that the Macbook Pro managed to be the fastest laptop they tested Vista on late last year. "Weak hardware." It's amazing that there are still people out there still spouting the "Macs cost more" myth. It's been debunked so many times by so many sources, but I guess some people will hold on dearly to their beliefs.

I don't care about PC World - they tested a $2400 laptop, against a bunch of Windows laptops, and beat the 2nd fastest one (a Gateway), by a single benchmark point, and the Gateway was still $2100. But so what, their both use similar HW, and I don't think most people spend that much on laptops, or will notice one point in speed difference in some benchmark that most people have never heard of.

The MBP is pretty fair value, on the higher end for a laptop that has an 8600, but it is small and light, so I can see the added cost in that. They run a bit hot from my experience, but most laptops aren't the coolest to begin with.

But I have a Mac Mini with Leopard - I like it a lot, but the OS more than the machine.

The OS is great, but the HW is lame, and overpriced. For $600 it really should have a DVD burner, and a bigger HD (only 80 GB). Whereas the Macbook, even the $1100 model, should have a DVD burner. It's little things that Apple skimps on. And for the money, the MB should probably have an Nvidia 8400, or some other form of discrete GPU.

The "added value" of iLife '08 I have a hard time seeing, as they are OK apps, but bloated. I don't like iPhoto, I don't the fact that it has it's own bloated DB structure, iTunes is bloated beyond need (better than the Windows version, but still needs some trimming), I don't use iMovie or iDVD, but I like iWeb quite a bit, and Garageband is pretty good too.

The Mini is the worst offender out of Apple's lot though - good OS, poor HW. If I didn't want to use OSX (legitimately), and if it wasn't the only headless Mac under $2500, I wouldn't have gotten the Mini, and I already have a laptop that I bought in the summer.

[mrpiddly]

Originally Posted by guinness

The Mini is the worst offender out of Apple's lot though - good OS, poor HW. If I didn't want to use OSX (legitimately), and if it wasn't the only headless Mac under $2500, I wouldn't have gotten the Mini, and I already have a laptop that I bought in the summer.

I think apple just stopped caring about the mini after the release. The original release was a good idea, but then all the updates seemed like last minute ideas.

I believe that about a day before a new release, some intern would inform steve jobs that the mini actually existed. Then steve jobs would then order a new mini with higher specs to be designed within the next 5 hours using parts from the laptops.




I did enjoy some of the mods though.

[Cru Jones]

I know this would be near impossible to track, but what about users who bought PC's loaded with Vista (which bolstered Microsoft's sales numbers) but have since downgraded to XP Pro. I'm a computer consultant and in my small corner of the country, I've downgraded quite a few PC's whose owners were suckered into buying their PC's preloaded with Vista only to find out their new, speedy computer is a dog with Vista loaded.

[Amorph]

Originally Posted by ascii

I agree. There are a lot of good ideas in Plan9 they could bring across. I'm sure there are other minor OSes they could pinch ideas from too.

I would love to see Inferno merged with Objective-C. That Dennis Ritchie guy knows a thing or two. Heck, maybe Apple can poach him?