Apple's iMac, MacBook Pro top U.S. October PC sales - Page 2

I've heard good things about Moshi iVisor AG for MB/MBP. Skim through this video. It looks easy to install and it is less than $50.

[QUOTE=solipsism;1530518]

2. Then again they change model numbers as often as Teckstud changes what he meant to say.

ROFLMAO

"Heh heh, you said pole."

"Heh heh, yeah pole..."

Thanks for the polite way of pointing out my spelling mistake.

Another sign that either hell has frozen over or that Mac really has some strong momentum. My Dad is interested in buying a Mac. I've been trying to convince my Dad to get a Mac for the past 10 years, he absolutely refused.

Once my Dad has something he likes he's loyal to it forever. Every car he's bought for nearly the last 40 years has been a Pontiac. The only reason he won't continue to purchase Pontiac cars is because GM has shut the division down.

I was totally astonished that he is now asking me for information about buying a Mac.

Oh, I actually didn't notice the spelling error, I was just making a joke,

That is interesting in that I know a lot of people who were set in their ways moving to or considering Macs and many others who have gotten iPhones as their first smartphone and are fine with paying the additional data fee to get it.

Im still surprised that my dad even got a cellphone but since my mom got an iPhone he is warming up to it. Him getting one will make the number of iPhones in my family 10, with over a dozen Macs as an installed base and with who knows how many iPods. That is out of about 15 to 20 people. There arent too many technologies that can grab so much mindshare. I think Ill hold onto my AAPL for awhile longer.

Except that Microsoft doesn't sell PCs. They really can't care very much where the units come from in the PC market -- pays them either way. It's the OEMs that take it in the chops.


This is technical factors trading, don't worry about it. The big institutional traders use charts to decide when to buy and sell. It's got little to nothing to do with the valuation of the company's business prospects.

I'm not saying I disgree with you, but MS' image is now synonymous with bargain-basement. The Premium market is what makes your brand desirable. Premium-end customers are what builds your brand.

I thought you probably meant something like that, but the implication was that Microsoft makes PCs, and/or that they care if the OEM industry's margins are paltry. Since it's pretty much always been that way, and the arrangement has worked so well for Microsoft in the past, I think they care very little.

While this is true in spirit. It is important for MS OS vendors to be profitable. As the web chips away at the importance of the OS, Windows becomes more vulnerable to alternative choices.

At some point the OEM are going to be forced to seek alternative options to remain profitable. Chrome OS can potentially provide an attractive (and free) alternative to Windows for OEMs on the cheap side of PC sales.

It's never been important to Microsoft in the past. The way this dysfunctional industry works has always been advantageous to Microsoft. They've been able to play the OEMs off against each other. If one OEM goes under, another takes its place. Why should they care?


Or the industry could continue to consolidate, as it has been doing for the last ten years or so. Chrome could become an alternative, but it's far too soon to put any stock in it. If it's any indication, the industry has had Linux available for decades but it has so far failed to give the OEMs a significant alternative to Windows to sell to their customers.

But for the OEMs, even a free alternative to Windows isn't their ticket out of their bind. They'd still be making and selling commodity hardware, able to distinguish themselves from the competition mainly on price, which is what has always fueled the race to the bottom. By contrast, Apple has the opportunity to describe how the entire product works -- this is Apple's advantage. This is how they get value added. The OEMs can't duplicate it.

The Windows OEM business has always stunk. In the past, the basic problem with the industry was papered over by many years of double digit unit growth. No more, maybe never again. Now everybody knows that the Windows OEM business stinks.

I don't think this is true. MS saw the threat of the web 15 years ago and is the reason they shut down Netscape. The web is platform agnostic and MS wants the consumer electronics industry to revolve around Windows. Once Internet Explorer controlled over 90% of the web, MS essentially went to sleep on further advancement of the web.

I don't believe MS is that detached from the OEMs. If HP or Dell goes out of business could have a huge impact on MS sales. What other business can you think of that doesn't care if its clients go out of business or not.


The industry has consolidated because there has been no viable alternative to Windows. Once an OEM hit rock bottom in selling cheap PC's, their was no where else for it to go. This can only last for so long. Eventually some OEM is going to be smart enough to not follow the PC death spiral of its predecessors, and figure out an alternative.

Chrome OS is coming at the problem from an entirely different direction, Google isn't making the same mistakes that Linux has made. Whether Chrome OS is going to work or not remains to be seen. But it is finding the relationship between MS and its vendors at a fairly vulnerable time.


I agree even if Chrome OS does become a viable alternative OEMs will still have to work to distinguish themselves from other OEMs. But that's the same case with any competitors who offer the same product.

But my main point was that MS does care if its vendors are profitable. Because if they are not they will either go out of business or will be forced to find an alternative. Neither situation is good for MS.


Well double digit group was all they needed when most people didn't yet own computers. Now that the computer market is quickly becoming saturated, they will have to innovate a new business model. Which is my point a new business model likely would not include Windows.

As opposed to the windows 7 fanboys and stockholders, who never do that, right?

if you say matte once more i will send mactripper to your house to live ...


agreed apple is shiny



msft has also lost control of the sub 300 market with free linux finally getting decent OS's
MSFT is getting sqUeezed and squeezed
someday a 14 tr old kid will one day invent a new simple code OS that will forever kill off the low end market with a write/install you own OS kit for 59 bucks / the $149 p/cs will need that.

or the low end machines will birth with no OS and the CLOUD will install mini os 's for what ever you do at that moment



the fanboys see that each mac SOLD adds to an ever growing permanent USER BASE
which includes itunes iphones ipods and such ...

%50 of all mac sales are new to the apple world .
and OF course WIN7 should SELL very well after a NINE YEAR wait !!

but that sale is just a sale .
NO extra funds come to MSFT except for virus blood money //

Each mac sales means extra funds for yrs to APPLE coffers

and win7 still sucks bad its just A VISTA stripped ..

baa humbug dude

That's an interesting idea . . .

Microsoft saw Netscape as a threat to their OS business, not the PC hardware business (which they are not in). So you have bolstered my point with this example.

Microsoft obviously isn't "detached" from the OEM business, they just have no investment in which companies succeed and which ones fail. They aren't going to see companies like Dell go out of business, but they are going to continue to see mergers such as HP and Compaq (the latter being the inventor of the PC clone industry, lest we forget), Gateway and Acer, and IBM's sale of its PC business to Lenovo (the former being the inventor of the PC, lest we forget).

None of this really matters to Microsoft so long as they sell more and more copies of Windows. To whom is of no consequence to them. Further, if you follow the history of Microsoft and the OEM industry, and particularly the antitrust case against Microsoft, you will see vividly illustrated how Microsoft has been aggressively playing off the OEMs off against each other since the 1980s.

The industry has consolidated because the unit growth rate has slowed (now in the low single digits). This growth rate, together with poor margins on the hardware, can no longer support a broad range of competitors. The only way the OEMs can break out of this trap is for one or more of them to develop their own OS. This would allow them to begin selling computers which are distinguished on something other than price.

Good luck with that. Even mighty IBM failed miserably when they tried, and subsequently stopped making PCs entirely. Nobody else in the PC clone industry is even remotely as well equipped to tackle this task.

In my point about Netscape I clearly state that it was a threat to Windows. I have no idea where you get it as being a threat to hardware. I said no such thing.


I agree with you that they have no direct investments in which one wins and which one looses. But at the same time MS doesn't want to set up a situation where any of them adopt and give strength to a competitor to Windows. That is ultimately what an OEM would have to do when selling Windows isn't working anymore.

There is no absolute guarantee that Dell won't go out of business. Large companies implode all the time.


That was then, MS doesn't have that same type of power today for a number of reasons. One primary reason being the internet. The other reason is that the electronics industry doesn't revolve around the computer the way it did 10 years ago.



Someone is going to figure it out. They will be forced to because Windows dominance is not going to last forever.

I responded to this point because you brought it up, and I thought it was a non-sequitur for the reasons I stated. We were talking about the PC hardware business, right?

I believe the Windows OEM industry is trapped in a box with no obvious exit. As growth rates and margins decline, they will be forced to consolidate. I don't think this is a wild or unsupportable theory, since this is precisely what has been going on for ten years now. I also would not be at all surprised to see PC makers for whom the PC business is a sideline (such as Sony, Toshiba) get out of the business entirely, just as IBM did.

As for companies such as Dell, which are lashed to Microsoft, they will continue to attempt to find other markets. Dell has tried with little success. For their PC business, Google might give them another opportunity but it would be a step from one box into another. Not progress, really.

Of the PC hardware companies, which one has the expertise to develop their own OS? None, so far as I can see. And even if they could, how would they build consumer acceptance, or find developers of software for it? Would this be any easier than the task that Apple has faced, and likely even a lot more difficult?

I don't see it, but maybe you see evidence to the contrary? If so, what is it?