Fun with Headlines: 4th of July Edition

If leopard is horribly broken what does that say about Vista? Beyond repair? Bit Snarky for a holiday aren't we Paul? Joe Dokes

paul didn't write the headlines or the articles (or did he....?). he's just having a little fun with the titles. lighten up, francis.

Thanks for the laughs, Paul! Though I'm sure you ruffle some feathers with these, I think they're hilarious.

ROFLMAO@the cocoa dig, Give Frucci props for coming out the iGizmodo fold and taking a position contrary to praising OSX-Gods Gift to 3% of the world.

"20% of Paul Thurrott's 'Supersite for Windows' articles are devoted to Apple and its 4% market share. Readers baffled." more like: "Jobs-worshipping Apple fanboy trolls still flock to WinSupersite.com, continue to take the beat-down by Windows users"

@Waethorn "beat-down" that comment speaks volumes about you brother. Paul throws out flame bait, towards the Apple community to attract readers. So far he has more pingbacks than readers. However it seems he has attracted the 6 or 7 Windows zealots that actually exist.

"Windows zealots" Get it right - it's "iPundit".

@Paul You do bitter better than you do funny. It doesn't help that everyone one of these semi-angry jokes targets someone other than Microsoft. It would help the credibility if you made fun of everyone and not just Apple, Linux and Firefox. Just sayin'

I just find it interesting that "silly and irreverent" always seems to amount to "tired and predictable jabs at Apple". That's fine. It's the supersite for windows. On it's face you'd expect to see these kinds of things. But as a long-time reader of Paul's I've come to expect more. Though I'm really not sure where that expectation came from, the more I think about it.

subzero... you're stealing my bit. I'm supposed to rant on and on while nobody listens. Paul's stuff is funny... if you're a biased Apple-basher. His digs above and elsewhere are pretty hackneyed, "wincabal" stuff. Focusing on global marketshare for example, instead of any of the actually meaningful benchmarks. Seriously. Laughing at Apple's 4% share even though they actually had half-a-BILLION dollar MORE profit than DELL last year is idiotic. But that's a Thurrott classic canard. Sure it's a "joke"... but like I said, only an Apple-basher would find that funny and not lame. Still, that's fine. It's the super for windows after all. Of course Apple bashing is gonna happen, right? Fair enough. All Paul needs to do is stop pretending to be "fair and balanced" and calling out comparably biased sites on the other side for being so. He's as fair and balanced as the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal... or the daily postings on macdailynews.com. They may be the "iCabal", but he then must be the grand wizard of the "WinCabal". That doesn't mean his criticisms are always wrong... just that there is a clear and obvious bias that he should stop trying to deny. Otherwise, whatever. But you really depart from reality here... "Now you guys are finally and I do mean FINALLY getting a taste of what us Windows guys go through every day" "FINALLY", huh? Give me a break, dude. Mac users and the platform have been dumped on at every turn for decades by the majority of PC dorks. How many neighbor geeks have told people "don't buy a mac, they're only for graphics" and snickered at Mac users? How many IT dorks have crapped on my computing preference to my face when seeing my powerbook and called it a toy or a joke, unsolicited? There's a hole lot of close-minded, blocked-headed, bigoted Waethorns out there, buddy. But great quotes from Jobs. He is an amazing CEO. Nobody can honestly deny that. Have a great holiday weekend and happy independence day!

"Why I Still Use Windows Despite the Peer Pressure You're not a trend-following lemming who can think for yourself?" But you are a trend-following Lemming who can't think for yourself. You are in the 90% of people who use the same OS. I don't think you know what a trend-following Lemming is. It's you and all you other Windows fanboys. You all have no taste. No style.

I forgot 'one more thing'. I like Vista so much that I am tempted to upgrade my older computers to Basic or Home Premium, but my kids may get comfused. Believe me, I am anxious to just buy new computers for them, but I will just wait as they may want laptops. I am not a big laptop fan, and they are kinda young right now. Why not Macbooks? School uses Windows, and I can buy 3 inexpensive Vista laptops for the price of two lower end Macs, even though the specs may be better on the Macs. It's just what they need, not what hardware spec that I would want. Cheaper stuff can be replaced at a lower cost when they drop them. Peace, Doc

@drylight. It is funny, right? Making fun of Apple's tiny marketshare then in the same post claiming that mac users are lemmings for going along with everyone else around them. Heh. @DRWAM, My experience with Leopard has been somewhat mixed. It performs better than Tiger on my Mac Pro, but I have had the UI crash down on me while using spaces on more than one occasion. It also seems to get tripped up by lots of external drives on my system sometimes. On the other hand, my Macbook Pro is rock solid, so it might be a third party app on my tower causing the issues. I know Microsoft Office has been known to interfere with Spaces and is generally pretty bloated (though a nice suite overall). So yeah, there's some issues with Leopard. But on the whole it's pretty rock solid and .Mac sync within Leopard delivers today what Live Mesh promises to do "in the future". "In the future" seems to be Microsoft's favorite phrase and delivery date. Just thinking about Microsoft's CES demo's about the livingroom "of the future" make me want to barf ;) All that said, fair criticism of leopard is totally fine. Nothing is perfect and "Snow Leopard" is, in a sense, an admission that there's more work to be done... just like every new version of any software ever made. Making fun of Apple for 4% share is the stuff of winCabal Apple-bashing dorks. @Snakedoctor, I think your reaction is dead on. It will, of course, be ignored. Paul's line here is especially hysterical: "Maybe you should grab more than 1 percent of the cell phone market and 4 percent of the PC market before getting too excited about the next big thing. Just a thought." The really funny line would be: "Maybe Microsoft should learn how to turn a meaningful profit on ANYTHING that isn't a version of Windows or Office before they get too excited about the next big thing". The Mac, the iPod and the iPhone are all very very profitable, successful businesses and Apple doesn't enter new marketing willy-nilly, like, say... Microsoft. MSN, Zune, Xbox, Windows Mobile, Windows Live and the rest of Microsoft distractions and google/apple copy-cat efforts combined don't earn Microsoft as much money as the iPod (and maybe not even the iphone). But again, this is a tired Thurrott canard that the WinCabal just lap up like mindless lemmings. "Apple only has 4% marketshare worldwide! That means they suck! That means they're a failure! That means anyone that uses Apple is in the iCabal!" give me a break. Chasing marketshare above profitability has push Dell into the dump while Apple's market cap now triples them. 4% marketshare is earning Apple more money than Dell's 20% plus. That's the facts. But don't worry. It's all a "joke". It just happens to be a joke that Paul uses so often he clearly believes.

didn't i say to lighten up, francis(s)???

@johnpapola Snow Leopard is where Jobs wanted to go the moment he decided to go with intel. If he could have waved a magic wand he would have dumped PPC compatibility right away. I have no doubt that this intel only OS has been a hot topic in many project meetings with in the walls of Apple. Snow Leopard is the final transition off of PPC which will lead to optimizations to come. It also will incorporate full support for Exchange which will help Apple penetrate the corporate world. With more and more apps moving to a web browser, especially in a corporate world, good Exchange support is often the only thing holding back in use of OS X and Macs.

"With more and more apps moving to a web browser, especially in a corporate world, good Exchange support is often the only thing holding back in use of OS X and Macs." Again, I don't think Apple really cares about the enterprise and why should they? Considering that small business accounts for 70% of the businesses in the US (or something like that), focusing on small-scale usability is a much better fit for Apple. A small company with less than 50 people is much better served by ease of use on the server-side than a large, lumbering, legacy-based enterprise. Even so, I think the TCO argument for the Mac has always been very strong. But whatever. Let Apple stick to it's core competencies and continue being strong in the consumer. It's making them more money than Dell can make with the enterprise, after all. That should be a lesson for everyone here and in business in general.

Exchange is a great. My only problem wit it is, its totally proprietary system. Then again no one has produced open standard competitor except maybe.... http://www.zimbra.com/

But.....those 80,000 copies they have probably via a Enterprise agreement are counted in MS announcements as part of the 150 million. That is 300,000 I know of that are not in use. And I am sure Paul counts them as Windows WORLD WIDE market share:)

"But.....those 80,000 copies they have probably via a Enterprise agreement are counted in MS announcements as part of the 150 million. That is 300,000 I know of that are not in use." Actually volume license copies aren't counted. You wanna know why? Here's why: Windows licenses sold through volume licensing are sold as "Windows Client License". They aren't sold as "XP" or "Vista" licenses. Downgrade licenses are included with all volume licensing - you just buy the media kit for the actual version of Windows that you're running. It's been stated before that the count is for retail and OEM licenses (both direct OEM and channel purchases) only anyway.

"Xune is flying of the shelf" First of all, what is a Xune??? ;) Paul has been very critical of the Zune. But this is an interesting dichotomy. If the Mac makes great strides in marketshare, as it has, the news is screamed from the mountaintops. However, if the Zune makes some strides, and using iMath, it has made great strides (going from nothing to something), it is considered by those same people an also ran. And to requote what you have said: "Suffice of to say that there are Windows users who are just plain sick and tired of listening to the same crap from the Apple camp for years" "That is 300,000 I know of that are not in use." That's a pretty weak argument. That's only 0.2% of the total. John, way to bring up relatively old news vis-a-vis Intel. Proving once again why you gotta love Ed Bott, see his rebuttal, showing how the short term memory of journalists is a serious issue in the computer industry press. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=481 And for more fun: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=382

Dipsh t Admin said: "Xune is flying of the shelf" First of all, what is a Xune??? ;) Paul has been very critical of the Zune. Its a Zune running OS X of course. ;) Problem with the Zune is that it isn't making great strides. By the time MS gets their act together. If they ever do, the game in PMP will be up. MS is trying to execute where the market was 3 years ago. all the while offering nothing compelling in terms of the device itself. I'm a reader of several Zune sites and even there people are questioning why buy a Zune when you can get an iPhone for not that much more then an 8 Gig Zune?

@Dipsht, Ed Bott is a very good tech journalist. Gotta love him. I was just posting that headline in the spirit of Paul's silly Apple jabs. After all, he's claiming that Leopard is "horribly broken"... a statement of sheer biased lunacy. I mean, look at this. Out of 12 headlines... 6 of them are about Apple and 5 of them are either mocking Leopard as being unstable or mocking the Mac platform for being tiny. "Thinking Like a Cocoa Programmer -
Just think, I'm going to sell 6 copies of this application!" This is comedy? Okay... That's why Microsoft makes hundreds of millions on Office for Mac. You know, comedy usually works when it's either absurd or based on honest human interest. The former is the tool of "Family Guy" the latter is the tool of "Seinfeld". But when "comedy" is based wrong-headed stereotypes for a niche audience of fanboys... I guess you'd just call it lame in-jokes for the delusional. Often, this kind of comedy is just called bigotry. Seriously. This is a tired, pathetic routine here people. Is there honestly nothing better to talk about at the "Supersite for Windows", the platform with 95% of the market, then to make fun of Apple and it's tiny community? Oh that's right... those PC vs. Mac ads are SO offensive. Heh. Oh yeah... and the iCabal. Someone has to stand up to them! Right? But that's fine. This is what passes for a "joke" on the supersite for windows(cabalists). Paul thinks it's funny because he's biased. We get it. But by repeating tired BS he just sounds like an ignorant fanboy. I don't think he is... but that's how these kinds of posts play out. Paul has some weird, thin-skinned axe to grind and I just think that's childish. Even so, Intel is the perfect example of why Apple is smart to absolutely ignore the enterprise. Innovation and the enterprise are totally in opposition with each other. If even a tech giant like Intel won't stay remotely current, why should an innovator like Apple shackle themselves with the demands of such a market? I'm happy that Microsoft serves them and that Apple is kicking butt in the consumer space (and other small business niches) where it has always put it's focus. Success means achieving what you set out to achieve, not what other's expect you to achieve. Zune is a failure for many reasons, none of which are technical. It gutted playsforsure and sold Microsoft's partners down the river while not making even a subtle dent in the dominance of the iPod/iPhone. That was the point of the Zune. Microsoft believed they could compete better and innovate faster than their partners. They claimed they could bring something new to the table. They haven't done any of that. That's failure. Oh... and I don't think it makes them very much money either. It's a nice player, but to date... it's a pretty indisputable failure. But clearly, there's room for Microsoft and Apple to be wildly successful together. Obviously the hundreds of millions that Microsoft makes selling Office to Apple users is more than enough proof of that. Office is a great product. Very rich. Very powerful. And the latest versions have been bold improvements in interface. Bravo Microsoft. But to anyone that tries to marginalize the value or success of Apple because of their worldwide market share... you are just acting like an intellectually lazy winCabal hack. Sorry. That's just the way it is. Of course, my massive screed here will just be looked at as another rant from the iCabal. So be it. I like to debate. It's a geek outlet for me. When Paul's articles drop below 50% Apple content I ignore them.

@subzero, You're not a zealot like Waethorn, so I respect your posts. First, I'm not sure what conclusion you are trying to draw or present. It appears you are saying that Windows is "better" than the Mac because of it's marketshare. Right? I guess. Or are you just trying to say that "marketshare does matter" but not actually explain HOW IT MATTERS. The HOW is the key. The HOW and WHY is what Paul has NEVER provided the thousands of times he's referred to the statistics. And by not addressing the HOW or WHY, you both fail. So, regarding how and why marketshare matter (for the billionth time)... #1. Get educated. Read this Wharton Business School study on marketshare: http://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/ideas/pdf/Armstrong/myth_of_market_sh... To paraphrase the paper: pursuing market share at the expense of profitability has killed many businesses for no good reason other than an essentially meaningless pissing contest benchmark. Profit is the aim of business, not marketshare... unless marketshare leads to more profit. Take a look at which car makers are earning more PROFIT before you use that example again. Just look at Dell. Apple earns more profit than Dell. Dell raced to the bottom by commodity pricing and zero differentiation and now they're hurting. Apple focused on differentiation and their stock is trading at 40 times it's price when Jobs came back in 1997. That's it. Period. Done. End of discussion regarding market share as a business objective. Lesson #1: strictly from a business health and shareholder value standpoint, marketshare only matters if it leads to more profit. Profit trumps Marketshare. Apple has more profit then one of the top PC makers, therefore marketshare doesn't matter for Apple shareholders. #2. In computing, marketshare can create network effects that strengthen the platform. Microsoft understood this in the early days when Apple did not. Job understood it, but he was gone when it really mattered in the late eighties and early nineties. Network effects are the feedback loop that drives sales because there are more apps/accessories for the platform, which causes people to move to the platform, which expands the market, which leads developers to provide more solutions... etc. There is a threshold that you cross with network effects though. To small and you go into a death spiral. But if you're big enough, getting bigger's margin benefit starts to disappear. The Mac is well past the later for most markets. The Apple platform is 100% viable for most users. It provides all the third party software and accessories most users will ever need. People can get great apps for basically any application they want in the consumer space, as well as many other markets. Lesson #2: Apple's market share is big enough in the segments it targets to have a rich, sustainable and growing ecosystem with adequate network effects to keep things going strong. Which leads us to #3. The most important one of all. The one that Paul and the winCabal ignore time after time after time. #3. The only share that matters is market segment share. Aside from the fact that a company should only be judged on the markets they target... judging marketshare across an industry as wildly diverse as "all computers" is idiocy because it lacks any useful buyer information or broad network effects. If you are a consumer, you aren't concerned with the same third party support an architect is, or a fortune 100 enterprise is, or a major stock firm, or a hospital, or a manufacturer or a broadcast facility, or a biotech research firm. Each of these markets exists in near isolation with their computing systems being used for very specific tasks and being supported by completely different industries of third party solutions. Take my business: film and TV. The Mac dominates. Third party support for the Mac and Final Cut Pro actually exceeds Windows. Final Cut Pro has over 70% marketshare of the entire worldwide video editing market with over 1 million active, registered users (and likely quadruple that in pirated users). On the flip side, in a different part of the same industry, 3D animation and to a lesser extent compositing for feature films and broadcast is largely done on PCs. Many large applications such as Softimage XSI and 3D Studio Max aren't even available on the mac. This same reality plays out for every user segment of this massive market. Apple is believed to have up to 20% marketshare of the US consumer and 10% worldwide. That matters way more to Joe average computer buyer than Apple's 3.5% worldwide share. Why? Because it means that applications that a consumer cares about are going to be available as well as third party peripherals. So... again for the billionth time: LESSON #3: Overall worldwide marketshare is an irrelevant and meaningless benchmark whose only valid use is to spot year-over-year growth trends at the macro level. Segment share, or niche market share is the only share that really matters. I've emailed these facts back and forth with Paul and his only response has been "I just like worldwide marketshare". That's just willful ignorance. If you care about sounding educated, avoid that line of thinking.

Oh, and as for Vista sales being great.... yeah... don't you think that's just a result of it shipping with new PCs. That's not a reasonable argument for it being bad or good. I'm not saying Vista is bad or good. Just that it's not a choice people are making. They're choosing to buy a new computer and it happens to have Vista. All you have to do is look at the abysmal growth rate of the PC market this year to see that there was really nobody holding off on a new PC in order to wait for Vista. Pretty obvious logic. If your water utility rolled out new, more fluoride-rich water to your area, they'd be able to pretty quickly claim amazing penetration of the new "product". "Look, everyone now has the new water and is paying for it! What a success!!!". That's the power of monopoly. What I (obviously) find more interesting is that, despite the prognostications to the contrary by uber grand wizard of the winCabal, Rob Enderle, Apple's sales and marketshare have grown throughout the entire rollout of Vista. 2007 was the best year for Mac sales ever. Buying a mac is more active choice since it's not the defacto standard. That makes Mac growth far more difficult and far more amazing.

"Were you talking about Zune or AppleTV? I love the Apple TV, but you could certainly call it a disappointment from a sales standpoint. Perhaps even a failure... except that the whole media extender market has been pretty slow, so I'm not sure it's underperforming competitors.