VAW: Apple is Ready for Vista

Apple is on a row. I can remember not too long ago when Apple barely held on to 3% of the U.S. PC market. Recent news has shown Apple's market share to now be close to 6.1%. This represents a doubling of Apple's consumer PC sales from a low of around 2.8% in 2003. It is not the 10% Steve Jobs proclaimed to be his goal shortly after he took over Apple in the late 1990s, but it is still very good news for the Macintosh community. However, Apple's rampant success of late is due in no small part to Microsoft's incompetence. Microsoft has left a void in the market due to its sluggish implementation of Vista and the many annoyances faced by Windows users on a daily basis who constantly struggle to maintain a Windows machine attacked by viruses, spyware, and bogged down with buggy Windows apps. Apple is a force to reckon with, but I still have a feeling of dread. Windows mania is bubbling with anticipation of Vista, Microsoft's "next generation" operating system.

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I found myself constantly having to defend my preference for the Macintosh. I had just finished a second Bachelor degree in management information systems and was beginning to work in the IT realm. There were no iPods, no iTunes, and Apple was barely holding on to its going concern. An education in information systems translates mostly into an education in Microsoft technology. Kids that formally study IT tend to gravitate to what they know. Some see the light, but most become enveloped in a world filled with Microsoft Windows, SQL Server, MFC, .NET, and ASP.

I was constantly annoyed during this time, but had grown to expect most of my peers to be ignorant of the Macintosh platform. But a strange thing has begun to happen over the last couple years. At the firm where I work, many of the techs began showing up at work with iPods in tow. Soon, talk of Apple and Apple technology began to become quite favorable. People began asking me about the Mac and many suggested that they might look into buying one.

Point in fact, I was at work one day and I got a call on my business phone. It was a firm partner who was calling me from Fry's Electronics. He had just found out that Fry's had 6 Mac minis on sale for $299 each. He was going to pick up 3 for himself and his family and wanted to know if he should pick one up for me too. I, of course, said yes. Unfortunately, another customer picked up the other 3 before he could get one for me, but this demonstrates the excitement Apple products are engendering. Now, he constantly tells me that his Mac mini is the best computer he has ever owned.

Another example comes to mind. An associate asked me my opinion of the new MacBooks. She is planning on buying a new computer and wants to move to the Macintosh platform. I was happy to show her how to log into our firms perks website in order to secure a 10% discount on purchases at the online Apple Store where I had saved several hundred dollars on my previous Mac purchase.

All this good buzz belies that feeling of dread I mentioned earlier. Apple Computer is a fringe player. They technically lead the industry, but the world still revolves mostly around Microsoft. Microsoft zealots are few and far between these days, but give the unwashed masses a little fresh meat and they will turn on you in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, the same advantage Microsoft had over Apple in 1995 is still in effect today. IT is trained to use Microsoft technology and they represent a significant force for evil in the consumer market.

Along with the good buzz I have heard in the last year, one incident to the contrary really stands out in my mind. I was making small talk with a work associate one day and asked what he thought of the Mac. His answers gave me a serious case of deja vu. Basically, it boils down to Microsoft rules the business world and Macs are limited toys. He went on to explain how he grew up with Windows 3.1 and how it was superior to Macintosh even back then. Further, he explained that Macs were just now becoming popular, but Windows has always been the standard.

Hmmmm... How could this be? How could anyone trudge up the old propaganda with the conviction of an Islamic terrorist and the shamelessness of Paris Hilton? I thought we had won all these arguments. I thought everyone knew that Windows 3.1 was nothing more than a primitive operating environment thrown on top of a very limited text-line OS. Apples have just now become popular? The associate may have grown up with Windows 3.1, but I grew up with MacOS (a vastly superior operating system) about ten years earlier than his childhood days. Apple Computers are just now popular? They were very popular in 1977, 1987, and will be going strong in 2007. You can't use Macs in business? I can't really recall any time in Apple's history when it didn't have available business apps, most notably Microsoft Office, which by the way, appeared as a graphical application on the Macintosh years before Windows crashed its first cheap Taiwanese PC clone.

The forces of evil are out there and will once again reel their ugly heads, but hopefully Apple will be ready. This time around, Microsoft's latest copy of MacOS, Vista, won't have the same dramatic affect on the world as Windows 95. Apple has its ducks in a row. Back in 1995, Apple was a confused company with illusions of being a big player in the business world. Their marketing was split between trying to convince IT that Macintosh was really a business platform and trying to convince consumers that Macintosh actually does have a lot of the same software as Windows computers. Apple is now focused on pushing the realm of the digital hub and that translates to lots of great products marketed almost solely to the home user.

I have no doubt that Vista (or OS X 10.1 as it is known in the Mac world) will bolster the falling Microsoft tide. Closet Microsoft fans will come out in the open and the Mac community will fight back with the shining light of the truth. There is room for both platforms, but not in my home.

Comments:

Apple is definitely ahead of Microsoft with OS X, but Apple does not have anything close to Microsoft Office. If MS pulled Office, Apple would be destroyed.

Neon on Monday, October 30, 2006 at 11:29

It doesn´t matter now. Since Macs can run Windows, Microsoft can cancel Mac Office.

Stephen Jones on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 10:41

The only reason why we are talking today about which one is better, is Mac or PC (really stupid question for me), is because the software hadn´t been released for other platforms like Linux. If, for example, Adobe would make software for Linux, the graphic world probably would use Linux (Acctualy, Mac OSX is a Unix version). Disney Animation Pictures (and other companies) are using Linux with Windows emulators in order to run soft like Photoshop.

It´s really interesting that Pixar is not using Mac´s even tough Steve Jobs is his biggest partner.

Again, always the problem is "software" no computers.

Rafael Altamirano on Thursday, November 16, 2006 at 21:05

Mac fans are not necessarily Linux fans. It is nice that Macintosh is a "tri-platform" (MacOS, Windows, Linux/Unix), but most Mac fanatics would laugh at the prospect of using Linux instead of MacOS.

Kris Hookerman on Friday, November 17, 2006 at 00:16

I don´t think that Mac fans "laugh" at using Linux. It is an interesting platform. Kris, you are a harsh partisan. You really need to take a chill pill.

Carol on Friday, November 17, 2006 at 00:35

My first proper computer was a i386 and at the time I thought it was superb. It had win 3.1 and DOS 6. And as a artist I mainly used Aldus Freehand. After doing work experience I was introduced to the Apple Macintosh (a IIsi in my case) I also got the chance to play with a Quadra 950 with an Apple 16" display and 24BIT graphics card. Running Illustrator and Photoshop on these machines showed me just how sad my PC was and I had to have a Mac at the earliest opportunity.

This would not be until 1996 when I bought a PowerMac 8200 and a 17" monitor. Quite a machine when you consider people were using 14" monitors (if they had a comp at all).

The fact is this... The Mac is the prefered tool of the artist and Microsoft pulling Office would have no effect on Apple sales at all. The biggest scare in my opinion was when Quark anounced that they would not be supporting OSX. Of course they changed their minds lol.

As for me I am now a Motion Graphic Designer and I use a dual 2.7 G5 and 24" HD Cinema Display, which is probably the best monitor I have ever used (and I´ve used a few). The tools I use are Maya, Shake, Boujou Bullet, Photoshop and Illustrator. The only thing that makes me want to move to a pure Linux system is that Autodesk since acquiring Alias has decided that it would not give the OSX port of Maya the full 64BIT Multithreaded interface that it gave to the Linux and WIN64 ports. This is very bad considering the length of time the Apple has had the hardware and OS waiting and ready for this. Shake has it, so why not Maya?
I think I will always have a Mac becuase Illustrator and Photoshop just work better than any other platform. And use a 16 core BOXXstation for Maya Shake and Boujou. Though Flame Flint Inferno are now running on Linux too. These are VERY exciting times. And I would NEVER have my tools running on anything made by Microsoft. EVER!

David Robinson on Friday, December 29, 2006 at 21:06