Mac market share for CY 2007 and Q4 2007

No bitchfest here weedmonk. Since Paul occasionally does correctly interpret the facts. Since Paul can no longer deny the fact that the Mac market share is actually growing, he calls the improvement "huge." Why would we bitch, Mac market share is up. Paul still insists in focussing on world-wide market share, and makes no effort to distinguish between PCs used strictly as dumb terminals (for example I was in a national furniture store which had about fifteen terminals scattered throughout the store that was used only for inventory as a matter of fact, it was still running a DOS based non GUI program, should these count?) and those that are actually used as Personal Computers. Regardless, Mac market share is up. Which is great for the Mac because what I've seen in the past couple of years is that third party developers who were abandoning the Mac platform a couple of years ago are now coming back. At one point it appeared as though adobe was about to abandon the Mac, (this would have eventually killed the mac IMHO). Contrary to Paul's predictions Vista's release put absolutely no pressure on Mac market share. In fact Vista has been such a disaster that it may have pressured some users to make the switch to the mac. Further, the switch to intel has helped as well, (simply put users buying a mac in the worst case could run Xp) So us mac fanboi's are quite happy with the quarterly numbers out of Cupertino. You might also notice that Paul has rewritten part of his iPhone review. Since Apple has updated the software he says that it has solved enough of the problems to now highly recommend the product. I guess Paul gotten enough crap / guilt about bashing the product and the fact that he now uses the thing as his PRIMARY cell phone that he felt the need to "reevaluate." This either shows he's willing to change his mind, or that he understood the significance of the product but his little brain that was fixated upon "missing features" was unable to allow him to praise the product. Regards Joe Dokes

Once again Paul cites only worldwide share - this includes huge volumes in places like China and India where dirt cheap PCs destined to be loaded with pirated software are sold. A fair and objective source cites both world and U.S. share - Paul is obviously not that.

I previously posted that around 30% of my group now have a Mac, but I just got a couple more calls yesterday on questions for configuring two more switchers' Macs. I even offered advice on a new Vista PC purchase [although I do not own Vista yet], but I could not discourage the switch. Although many writers give various reasons for switching, my group cites too many experiences with Malware, viruses and software problems with Windows. Those with Vista have very few complaints. Also, the upgrade in our offices [XP to Vista] is not needed and would be expensive. Besides, most of our specialized software is not compatible, and upgrading to make compatible would just cost even more money. But, although a few IT guys that we employ, own Macs, it would be extremely unlikely that we would switch due to the cost and software compatibility problems.

@Spidubic - same here on both PC and Laptop. Admittedly my first shot at Vista on the PC wasnt 100% but given the hardware at the time was getting on a bit I was surprised at how will it actually went. Upgraded the MB and CPU (as I generally do every 2-3 years) and no major issues it just runs. As I commented on another forum there is no worlds best OS just deluded fanbois.

Since noone can deny that the Mac has a rich ecosystem of third party software that is growing every day, Marketshare seems to have only one value at this point as a topic: trends. And clearly the trend is that the Mac has momentum. Worldwide share numbers are meaningless otherwise. In fact, you simply must look at Dell to find an example of a company that toppled themselves by going for share at the expense of profit. This is why Jobs killed the clones, because share doesn't mean much if you don't survive to make use of the userbase. Clearly, Apple being a thriving, healthy company with nearly 20 BIllion in the bank has ended the biggest impediment to Mac adoption: the idea that Apple was inevitably going to die. Rob Enderle, of course, predicted that 2007 would be Apple's downfall year in the face of Vista. In reality, the Mac's sales have only ACCELERATED. Enderle is an utter hack and a poison in the world of tech punditry, but Paul is often very reasonable and his acknowledgements of Apple's share gains have been fine.