In the future . . .
Been a while, but the last time I saw the numbers it was something like 92% of all computers out there were Windows, 2% other, and 6% were Apple. I think that’s going to change drastically in the next 10 plus years. See, my kids are into iPhones, iPads and other iThings. My daughter saved up her money for an iPad and she got an iPhone. All of my kids’ friends have iGizmos. And their friends have a Mac-books too.
I think we’ll see a majority Apple things in the next decade or so.
July 22nd, 2013 at 9:43 pm
Until they want to upgrade or work on the innnards.
July 22nd, 2013 at 9:55 pm
Android beats iPhone worldwide. Americans love Apple but the rest of the world… not so much.
And windows could have lasted if they hadn’t self-destructed with Windows 8.
When I worked in IT I believed there was a special place in hell for anyone who actually TOUCHED my monitor. I spent all day in front of it. I didn’t want to be looking at fingerprints.
July 22nd, 2013 at 10:06 pm
I really like windows 8, have it on four computers and my phone. Want a surface. Hate iStuff and only keep my old iPhone 4 for playing scrabble. Android is hacker crap. Have one android tablet, never use it.
wife’s kindle fire is basic and cool. Android with a simpler, more enjoyable UI.
July 22nd, 2013 at 10:26 pm
Its all about the marketing. When and if (big IF) Apple learns to share the wealth and grease the palms like MS does, they might have a chance to compete. Until then, they are a niche/cult marketer only.
July 22nd, 2013 at 10:53 pm
I had a similar thought the other day.
I think the appeal of windows back in the day was the fact that you could buy/build/upgrade a PC for cheap. They had gripes, possibly because of the varying tolerances of the 15 separate manufacturers providing the parts for the machines. While Mac continued to make their own parts with their own OS.
The average user now isn’t in the market for a PC. They have tablets and smartphones that can do everything they need that the PC did in a smaller, cheaper package. The smaller packages have tighter tolerances that cannot be farmed out to many outside manufacturers(if at all).
I don’t think Windows will go the way of the Dodo but I predict it will not be the player it once was.
July 22nd, 2013 at 11:16 pm
Except so many individual people won’t use actual PCs, since they can do most of that on phones or other mobile devices. But the office and government computers will still run Windows, through sheer momentum if for no other reason.
July 22nd, 2013 at 11:36 pm
I wouldn’t be betting on an iFuture. Apple has had some serious sales stumbles since the death of Jobs. The proprietary iModel, historically, has not worked out in the long term.
July 23rd, 2013 at 12:10 am
I think Apple is going to get a bigger market share, but a majority? Not a bloody chance. Nothing industrial runs on a Mac, and Apple is too anal to let third parties do very much with either hardware or software, so the PC platform will still remain the majority. But 92%? No, that’s going to drop.
July 23rd, 2013 at 12:12 am
The “PC” market is going to go the way of newspapers (yeah, I still work for a newspaper company). Or perhaps the big computer arena is a better comparison… Anyone still tout Unix/Linux? I’m betting that MS will laugh and concede the PC market to Apple (or whomever).
The big thing is mobile, and as a dedicated CrackBerry user I’ve watched the market with some objectivity and interest. BB is about dead, especially if they are losing a customer like me (and they are). iPhone is a non-starter. My next phone will be a Windows or an Android.
I’m not alone in my assessment. Lots of folks in my company received iPhones to use in the thrust for mobile reporting and many are using their preferred Androids or other phones instead when they can.
July 23rd, 2013 at 2:56 am
I bucked the trend. I use Macs at work and for years used them at home. But, as the Mac OS became less GUI user friendly and my home Mac died, I switched to a cheap Windows 7 notebook. Liked it so much that a few weeks ago I bought another, more of a workhorse, Windows 7 laptop. (Lenovo T430)
Windows 8? No thanks, I’m not a kid or a touchy-feely kind of guy and luckily, the local computer store in Hanover (N.H.) caters to Dartmouth college, which insists that all their computers come with Win 7 Professional. I bought the one that they do.
The software on the Macs at work crash all the time. I’ve never had a crash on my Win 7 laptops. Very stable and a ton more software (much of it free) available.
July 23rd, 2013 at 8:17 am
Windows 8 SUCKS!
July 23rd, 2013 at 9:56 am
Computers…what if one day, they were in charge.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H7HP2vSBHqk&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DH7HP2vSBHqk
July 23rd, 2013 at 10:05 am
I’d considered an Apple product until I bought my iPhone, and found that I could make YouTube videos with it, easily. It is simple to use, and reliable.
Then my IT guy at work handed me an OLD MacBook that was being retasked and I was hooked. Granted, a Mac won’t do lots of things that a PC will, but since I don’t need that capability, it’s not a problem.
BTW- my IT guy compared PC’s and Mac’s this way:
Having a Mac is like going to Toys R Us, where all the shelves are neatly stocked and organized, but there are only ten toys to play with.
Having a PC is like going to the same toy store, but this store has every toy you can think of, it’s just hard to find what you’re looking for because the shelves are in disarray.
He’s a PC guy.
July 23rd, 2013 at 11:15 am
For me and the people I know who use them, the big attraction to Apple computers is the ability to buy it, open the box, connect to wifi and start using it. The people I know who have purchased PC’s recently usually describe spending hours waiting for OS updates, cleaning out pre-installed bloatware, setting up antivirus software, and configuring printer settings after plugging in their new machines. The other big complaint is usually that MS seems to update the OS every three days, leading to several restarts and downloads when they start the computer.
The other downside to PC’s is their vulnerability to malware and viruses. Yes, I realize that Mac’s are POTENTIALLY as vulnerable, but the fact is that the malware writers and virus writers have largely ignored them to this point. Having a PC crashed by a trojan, and losing all of the data on the hard drive, despite “up to date” AV software, will make lots of people decide that having a computer that always works is better than having one that allows you to make hardware repairs on it should you choose to.
July 23rd, 2013 at 11:25 am
Apple is a non-starter for me. Their whole ecosystem is too bondage-and-discipline for me — you vill do it our way, vith our hardvare and our softvare, and you vill pay for the privilege. No way.
As the rest of the programming world goes, I have one Linux system, one Android tablet, two Windows 7 devices and three Windows XP devices. (That’s more operating systems than I have computers — I swap C: drives around a lot.) I mainly use Windows 7 for doing things, though I’ll drop back to XP if I want to use some old programs that don’t play nicely with 7. The Android tablet is for fun, and the Linux is there just in case Microsoft or Google misbehave.
July 23rd, 2013 at 11:45 am
Meh, been Mac-centric since…. the Macintosh and have been pretty much Mac only since 1991. I don’t just drink the Apple Kool-aid, I snort the powder raw.
While I lurvs me my MacBooks, the fact is, I use them to create media (blog posts, images, movies, docs) and I consume media (NetFlix, web surfing) on my iPad.
Even with blogging, Tumblr, et al, are the majority of people in America creators of information, or consumers? If it’s the latter, the future belongs to tablets, and right now, that means iPad.
Nothing, however, lasts forever. Eventually, Apple will get caught up in the cash cow trap that ensnared IBM and Microsoft before them, and some other company that’s leaner, meaner and wants it more will displace them. Ask Pan Am or Sperry Univac how their business models worked for them in the long run.
July 23rd, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Not sure home economies can afford the switch to the iExpensive lifestyle.
July 23rd, 2013 at 1:05 pm
General purpose computers are just plain going away. The statistics that matter won’t be what OS it is running, but more what kind of device it is. GP computers are going to go back to programmers and hobbyists. I think in the future, you will have your worn/face distance interface (your phone) and your arms length device(s) — your tablets. Everything else will live on servers in the cloud. You’ll have a server for your home, but instead of it being a GP computer that you sit at, it’s just an appliance that you plug in and leave alone.
I think that our kids’ kids will wonder why in the hell we ever wanted general purpose computers in every house in the first place.
July 23rd, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Linux baby.. that is my favorite. I have a Fedora (Red Hat) machine of my own.
July 23rd, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Apple is behind the curve when it comes to phone tech, and if the new Iphone isn’t a huge step up, they risk being run over in that market. I saw and played with Nokia 1020 yesterday. Awesome piece of equipment, 40 Megapixel camera. Interesting take on how to make it thinner and lighter in all the important ways. Crazy fast.
My Iphone 5 wasn’t in the same ballgame. I really wonder if the Iphone 5 would have come to market in its present form if Jobs was still alive. Apple has had some big stumbles, and I can’t seen them getting much more of the market in phones.
I think the new Windows phones may be game changers, if the Nokia is any indication.
July 23rd, 2013 at 5:49 pm
Eric said: Until they want to upgrade or work on the innnards.
Guess what?
Apart from geeks, nobody ever does that anyway.
And for many of us geeks, it doesn’t matter; I’d far rather have a MacBook Air I “can’t upgrade or work on” than some piece of crap Lenovo that’s three times as big “but I could upgrade”.
Seriously, none of the Normal End Users I know ever open up a computing device. And frankly as a computer-building geek I like not having to, myself.
Note that it’s not just Apple. Nobody’s tablets are “upgradeable”, and more and more laptops aren’t.
Size and weight and structural integrity all argue against battery doors and access hatches, and with solid-state storage who needs to replace a spinny-disk, ever?
(Frank said: Granted, a Mac won’t do lots of things that a PC will, but since I don’t need that capability, it’s not a problem.
Except of course today it will, since it can just run Windows, either natively or in a virtual machine.
Outside of gaming and a few specialized areas (CAD/CAM software, for instance), there’s basically nothing you’re missing.
The extra 10,000 toys in the Windows world are all duplicates that suck.
And I say this as someone who uses Windows every day as a gaming platform and is a professional Windows programmer.)
July 23rd, 2013 at 7:11 pm
I’ve been amazed to discover that recently Ubantu Linux has become easier to install and use than MS Windows. That wasn’t the case when I played with it in the late nineties or when I had servers to care for a decade ago. Now it just works.
July 23rd, 2013 at 7:19 pm
Its a good possibility that you are right because Microsoft seems in complete confusion and disarray.
July 26th, 2013 at 2:11 pm
#22 Yep, Ubuntu Server is just about there too. Out of the box, I can run it headless; push the power button to turn it on, push it again to turn it off. No logins, logouts or shutdowns. I haven’t had a computer do that since my Amiga.