Whether we get to see it or not, you just made my point. People want it. The demand is there. Where there is demand, hopefully Apple will be smart enough to fill that demand. They have a very good position to take a nice bite out of Redmond right now and they should seize it in any way they can. The time is ripe.
I didn't make your point. By people, I was referring to some of the posters on this board. I assume they are posters, but I guess they could some very elaborate bots. If Apple feels there is a big enough market for it they will build it. I don't pretend to know what the demographics are for such a device but the stats on PC desktops slow a slight fall year over year while desktop Macs are up over 50% over last year with most of those being all-in-one iMacs.
As the Mac marketshare grows there will more opportunity for Apple to expand the product line into areas that were previous too small. The MBA is a prime example of that, and might be telling of things to come as I believe that MBA would probably sell less than a midrange headless Mac. However, the lack of upgrades to the MBA and the potential for more upgrades for this elusive Mac need to be considered when seeing it from Apple's POV. That said, I do hope all you people get this machine, though I fear there will be plenty of complaining about price, expandability, and other things i can't even imagine.
Forget all that! Like Tim Allen used to say, "More Power!"
I'm all for more power I'm just not all that excited about the use of more energy. Fortunately with computers we pretty much can have it both ways. As the chips get smaller, the performance goes up and the Watts go down.
As for Tim Allen well I don't know his personal point of view but I don't think much of his TV persona. More power would be fine if people would accept it in their backyards, that is rarely the case though. It would be far better to put his persona to work finding ways to live better with less power expended.
I'm all for more power I'm just not all that excited about the use of more energy. Fortunately with computers we pretty much can have it both ways. As the chips get smaller, the performance goes up and the Watts go down.
As for Tim Allen well I don't know his personal point of view but I don't think much of his TV persona. More power would be fine if people would accept it in their backyards, that is rarely the case though. It would be far better to put his persona to work finding ways to live better with less power expended.
Dave
His persona is a satire on that very thing. You must have known that.
Hold your horses. While those numbers are indeed good news, there are ONLY for the february month, ONLY for the US and ONLY for retail... That doesn't mean that Apple has 14% market share overall, even in the US.
Yes, that's right - it's the Feb 2008 US Retail numbers, as compared with the Feb 2007 numbers. I should have been more specific, but there's a fine line between brevity and pedantry, which I was trying to stay on the right side of.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjteix
If you had a clue about what the xMac is about you wouldn't have bring it to this thread about a very expensive quad-core cpu, even more expensive than the Xeon cpus in the Mac Pro.
A couple of things about that, firstly there's no need to be rude, and secondly I didn't bring it in, I was responding to Winterspan and ruel24.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjteix
IMO, the xMac is not about making a low-margins computer, or even a low-cost computer, it's about using the best technology available to make powerful yet non-workstation type computers. Desktops parts are less expensive than mobile ones (example snipped)
Absolutely, and many vendors do just that, although the desktop marketplace seems to differentiate almost purely on price, whereas that's not really the Apple way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjteix
What we can learn for the last two quarters of Apple, is that desktops are not dead yet, since Apple's desktops are responsible for the increase in Mac sales more than the notebooks (10% more in Q3 and 20% more in Q4, sequencially, where the notebooks had a 0% increase in number of sales in the last quarter).
Well, my feeling is that you can read the number to support either position, because *Apple's* desktops have done very well - predominantly iMac AIOs, whereas everyone elses desktops - predominantly exactly the sort of machine you're talking about have done very badly and are a shrinking market compared to notebooks of all types.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mjteix
While the desktop market and the notebook markets are indeed different, that doesn't prevent something similar to happen in the desktop market. The fact is, PC manufacturers are adding more form factors (mini-like or iMac-like) to a stagnant market anyway... and the desktop Mac segment is not stagnant at all.
I agree, and it would probably be somewhat profitable, however Apple's resources are finite (Leopard being late due to iPhone, for example). As a priority for the company how important should this be? Should it delay refreshes to the other Mac lines? To the iPods and iPhones?
There's also the other issues I mentioned previously:
Support costs of having many user-openable systems in the field
Sending customers to other vendors for screens (and potentially other bits)
I'm not saying you're wrong, there *is* a big gap in the product line there - they could make it and make money on it, but I think there's enough downsides, that with limited resources they're right to be doing other things instead.
Hold your horses. While those numbers are indeed good news, there are ONLY for the february month, ONLY for the US and ONLY for retail... That doesn't mean that Apple has 14% market share overall, even in the US.
Contrary to what you said, you just described what market share means. The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%. It's the percentage of what a company sold in a given time over how many were sold total. If you mean to say that they don't have 14% installed base, that's something different from market share.
Even if that was an outlier, Apple's market share and installed base has been steadily growing very quickly for the past four or so years.
A couple of things about that, firstly there's no need to be rude, and secondly I didn't bring it in, I was responding to Winterspan and ruel24.
Sorry about that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
Contrary to what you said, you just described what market share means. The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%. It's the percentage of what a company sold in a given time over how many were sold total. If you mean to say that they don't have 14% installed base, that's something different from market share.
Even if that was an outlier, Apple's market share and installed base has been steadily growing very quickly for the past four or so years.
Since those number don't account for all the sales (just RETAIL) you can't say:
Apple has 14% market share overall
or simply
Apple has 14% market share
or even
"The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%"
all are wrong because they are missing elements, in your case: RETAIL, which, again, doesn't account for ALL the sales of computer in the US for Feb '08.
But like I said those a good numbers, good news for Apple in general.
Since those number don't account for all the sales (just RETAIL) you can't say:
Apple has 14% market share overall
or simply
Apple has 14% market share
or even
"The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%"
all are wrong because they are missing elements, in your case: RETAIL, which, again, doesn't account for ALL the sales of computer in the US for Feb '08.
But like I said those a good numbers, good news for Apple in general.
It's that fine line I mentioned - you're right of course, in the original post I just left it ambiguous. It would certainly be nice to get overall figures, and a breakdown by type of Mac sold.
Contrary to what you said, you just described what market share means. The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%. It's the percentage of what a company sold in a given time over how many were sold total. If you mean to say that they don't have 14% installed base, that's something different from market share.
Even if that was an outlier, Apple's market share and installed base has been steadily growing very quickly for the past four or so years.
The problem Jeff, is that we don't know if this is close to the actual marketshare, as it's only retail. so, what would the actual marketshare be? Probably closer to 7%, possibly 8%. Im would be thrilled if itwere 9%.
But, this doesn't include most of Dell's sales, or the sales of any other large online company. Even though Apple sells a fair amount of their computers online themselves, or through others, it's not even close in percentage to what Dell does, which is likely 95% of their sales right now.
The only think that I'n really interested in is the 60% overall rise from las year, and the breakdown between the portable, and desktop models. Both of those were encouraging.
But, even there, we have to wonder what happened last month. I don't remember what the rise was in January, but this is much higher. Now, we have to see if it holds up for March.
This is important. If it drops to where it was in January, then it was an anomaly. If it holds up for March, then it could be very important.
Over the past few years, we have seen Apple's quarterly sales go from about a 5% rise per quarter (YoY), to about a 15%, to about 25%, to about 33%, to 40%, and now, possibly 55 to 65%, depending on what the actual figures were.
If March stays at that level, we then have to look at April. If Apple maintains this level for three months, then we can have some reason to think their sales rise is now 60% quarter to quarter YoY. That would be a new milestone.
Marketshare will take care of itself. We also don't know what the 14% means because it depends on how they are accounting for the PC market as a whole. That's not always easy to acertain without reding the actual report.
Some studies consider the overall PC market with Apple included. Others don't include Apple's sales. So that gives us a variation.
How does this report account for that? If Apple's numbers are also ther for the industry, it make those figures sightly higher than they would be without Apple's numbers. In a way, Apple's numbers would be competing with itself partly.
Without knowing that, the 14% could actually be 12% or 16%. So, thats another variable we don't know.
Comments
Whether we get to see it or not, you just made my point. People want it. The demand is there. Where there is demand, hopefully Apple will be smart enough to fill that demand. They have a very good position to take a nice bite out of Redmond right now and they should seize it in any way they can. The time is ripe.
I didn't make your point. By people, I was referring to some of the posters on this board. I assume they are posters, but I guess they could some very elaborate bots. If Apple feels there is a big enough market for it they will build it. I don't pretend to know what the demographics are for such a device but the stats on PC desktops slow a slight fall year over year while desktop Macs are up over 50% over last year with most of those being all-in-one iMacs.
As the Mac marketshare grows there will more opportunity for Apple to expand the product line into areas that were previous too small. The MBA is a prime example of that, and might be telling of things to come as I believe that MBA would probably sell less than a midrange headless Mac. However, the lack of upgrades to the MBA and the potential for more upgrades for this elusive Mac need to be considered when seeing it from Apple's POV. That said, I do hope all you people get this machine, though I fear there will be plenty of complaining about price, expandability, and other things i can't even imagine.
Forget all that! Like Tim Allen used to say, "More Power!"
I'm all for more power I'm just not all that excited about the use of more energy. Fortunately with computers we pretty much can have it both ways. As the chips get smaller, the performance goes up and the Watts go down.
As for Tim Allen well I don't know his personal point of view but I don't think much of his TV persona. More power would be fine if people would accept it in their backyards, that is rarely the case though. It would be far better to put his persona to work finding ways to live better with less power expended.
Dave
I'm all for more power I'm just not all that excited about the use of more energy. Fortunately with computers we pretty much can have it both ways. As the chips get smaller, the performance goes up and the Watts go down.
As for Tim Allen well I don't know his personal point of view but I don't think much of his TV persona. More power would be fine if people would accept it in their backyards, that is rarely the case though. It would be far better to put his persona to work finding ways to live better with less power expended.
Dave
His persona is a satire on that very thing. You must have known that.
Hold your horses. While those numbers are indeed good news, there are ONLY for the february month, ONLY for the US and ONLY for retail... That doesn't mean that Apple has 14% market share overall, even in the US.
Yes, that's right - it's the Feb 2008 US Retail numbers, as compared with the Feb 2007 numbers. I should have been more specific, but there's a fine line between brevity and pedantry, which I was trying to stay on the right side of.
If you had a clue about what the xMac is about you wouldn't have bring it to this thread about a very expensive quad-core cpu, even more expensive than the Xeon cpus in the Mac Pro.
A couple of things about that, firstly there's no need to be rude, and secondly I didn't bring it in, I was responding to Winterspan and ruel24.
IMO, the xMac is not about making a low-margins computer, or even a low-cost computer, it's about using the best technology available to make powerful yet non-workstation type computers. Desktops parts are less expensive than mobile ones (example snipped)
Absolutely, and many vendors do just that, although the desktop marketplace seems to differentiate almost purely on price, whereas that's not really the Apple way.
What we can learn for the last two quarters of Apple, is that desktops are not dead yet, since Apple's desktops are responsible for the increase in Mac sales more than the notebooks (10% more in Q3 and 20% more in Q4, sequencially, where the notebooks had a 0% increase in number of sales in the last quarter).
Well, my feeling is that you can read the number to support either position, because *Apple's* desktops have done very well - predominantly iMac AIOs, whereas everyone elses desktops - predominantly exactly the sort of machine you're talking about have done very badly and are a shrinking market compared to notebooks of all types.
While the desktop market and the notebook markets are indeed different, that doesn't prevent something similar to happen in the desktop market. The fact is, PC manufacturers are adding more form factors (mini-like or iMac-like) to a stagnant market anyway... and the desktop Mac segment is not stagnant at all.
I agree, and it would probably be somewhat profitable, however Apple's resources are finite (Leopard being late due to iPhone, for example). As a priority for the company how important should this be? Should it delay refreshes to the other Mac lines? To the iPods and iPhones?
There's also the other issues I mentioned previously:
Support costs of having many user-openable systems in the field
Sending customers to other vendors for screens (and potentially other bits)
I'm not saying you're wrong, there *is* a big gap in the product line there - they could make it and make money on it, but I think there's enough downsides, that with limited resources they're right to be doing other things instead.
All the best,
Martin.
Hold your horses. While those numbers are indeed good news, there are ONLY for the february month, ONLY for the US and ONLY for retail... That doesn't mean that Apple has 14% market share overall, even in the US.
Contrary to what you said, you just described what market share means. The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%. It's the percentage of what a company sold in a given time over how many were sold total. If you mean to say that they don't have 14% installed base, that's something different from market share.
Even if that was an outlier, Apple's market share and installed base has been steadily growing very quickly for the past four or so years.
A couple of things about that, firstly there's no need to be rude, and secondly I didn't bring it in, I was responding to Winterspan and ruel24.
Sorry about that.
Contrary to what you said, you just described what market share means. The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%. It's the percentage of what a company sold in a given time over how many were sold total. If you mean to say that they don't have 14% installed base, that's something different from market share.
Even if that was an outlier, Apple's market share and installed base has been steadily growing very quickly for the past four or so years.
Since those number don't account for all the sales (just RETAIL) you can't say:
Apple has 14% market share overall
or simply
Apple has 14% market share
or even
"The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%"
all are wrong because they are missing elements, in your case: RETAIL, which, again, doesn't account for ALL the sales of computer in the US for Feb '08.
But like I said those a good numbers, good news for Apple in general.
Sorry about that.
Thanks, no worries.
Since those number don't account for all the sales (just RETAIL) you can't say:
Apple has 14% market share overall
or simply
Apple has 14% market share
or even
"The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%"
all are wrong because they are missing elements, in your case: RETAIL, which, again, doesn't account for ALL the sales of computer in the US for Feb '08.
But like I said those a good numbers, good news for Apple in general.
It's that fine line I mentioned - you're right of course, in the original post I just left it ambiguous. It would certainly be nice to get overall figures, and a breakdown by type of Mac sold.
Cheers,
Martin.
Contrary to what you said, you just described what market share means. The market share in the US for Feb '08 is 14%. It's the percentage of what a company sold in a given time over how many were sold total. If you mean to say that they don't have 14% installed base, that's something different from market share.
Even if that was an outlier, Apple's market share and installed base has been steadily growing very quickly for the past four or so years.
The problem Jeff, is that we don't know if this is close to the actual marketshare, as it's only retail. so, what would the actual marketshare be? Probably closer to 7%, possibly 8%. Im would be thrilled if itwere 9%.
But, this doesn't include most of Dell's sales, or the sales of any other large online company. Even though Apple sells a fair amount of their computers online themselves, or through others, it's not even close in percentage to what Dell does, which is likely 95% of their sales right now.
The only think that I'n really interested in is the 60% overall rise from las year, and the breakdown between the portable, and desktop models. Both of those were encouraging.
But, even there, we have to wonder what happened last month. I don't remember what the rise was in January, but this is much higher. Now, we have to see if it holds up for March.
This is important. If it drops to where it was in January, then it was an anomaly. If it holds up for March, then it could be very important.
Over the past few years, we have seen Apple's quarterly sales go from about a 5% rise per quarter (YoY), to about a 15%, to about 25%, to about 33%, to 40%, and now, possibly 55 to 65%, depending on what the actual figures were.
If March stays at that level, we then have to look at April. If Apple maintains this level for three months, then we can have some reason to think their sales rise is now 60% quarter to quarter YoY. That would be a new milestone.
Marketshare will take care of itself. We also don't know what the 14% means because it depends on how they are accounting for the PC market as a whole. That's not always easy to acertain without reding the actual report.
Some studies consider the overall PC market with Apple included. Others don't include Apple's sales. So that gives us a variation.
How does this report account for that? If Apple's numbers are also ther for the industry, it make those figures sightly higher than they would be without Apple's numbers. In a way, Apple's numbers would be competing with itself partly.
Without knowing that, the 14% could actually be 12% or 16%. So, thats another variable we don't know.