Apples are green, Windows are blue...

by Tim Shier

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about Apple for a while now and eventually got round to doing it when “it” happened – the not so festive Windows Blue Screen of Death. To cut a long story short I was left to do the arduous windows reboot in anticipation of a simple fact: My work would all be gone, never to be seen again!

For years I have chosen a standard notebook computer with Windows over the “this mouse only has one button” Apple Mac – I am now willing to concede that my allegiance has truly faulted and I am finding myself in the MAC camp with a desperate need to for a computer change (Rob, Janine… nudge nudge – say no more.).

Last weekend a couple of us QuirkStars went through to the first South African PodCamp (read the post here). It was an excellently produced event and the speakers were incredible. Of the speakers, two stuck out for me.
Firstly, Apple’s Brad Shrimpton gave an incredible presentation on the MAC and in particular their new application - Garage Band.
Secondly, I particularly enjoyed Dave Duarte’s inclusive presentation on Attention Economy which I plan to discuss in a later post.

Directly after Brad’s presentation Carlos and I looked across at each other and said “I want a MAC”, needless to say Brad had made his point.
On Monday (22nd October 2007) Apple released its quarterly financial report and by all accounts somebody’s doing something right! Apple’s turnover is up 67%; of this 62% were MAC related sales resulting from a 34% growth in MAC units sold.
Not too shabby – especially considering how its main hardware and software competitors are doing: HP only made a gain of 16% in the 3rd quarter (note that the 4th quarter results haven’t been released yet) and Microsoft a comparatively measly 12% in the 2006/2007 fiscal year – its time to up your game folks!

I believe there is a fundamental trend to note here: Older people don’t buy MAC’s, which appears to be supported by Microsoft’s statistics which revealed that 82% of sales are for the “over 30 year old” category. The major barrier to purchasing an Apple MAC is the risk of the user having to relearn everything (or it certainly is to me), this is not to say that users are happy with their Windows product but the perceived overhead of changing outweighs the advantages thereof (as is the case with the change to Linux).

Looking at this in a little more detail I think we can safely say that the vast majority of purchases come from the slightly younger market (less than 30 years old). Furthermore, with OS X considered far more stable than any Windows system and with all services being provided with the device I am yet to find a user who has anything negative to say. This reminds of a cheesy quote “once you go MAC you will never go back” which so far appears to be the true. As this generation of young users come of age and find themselves in the job market Apple can expect their sales to quickly climb (this may already be showing).

Apple and Microsoft users have long been at loggerheads over an argument which seems to be based largely around customisability vs. usability. During the development of the computer age the ability for users to “fiddle” and push the boundaries of their operating system was of great value to the average user. As the computer age leaves its teenage years of experimentation and moves into the more serious “young adult” years of getting the job done I believe the less customisable but infinitely more stable and user-friendly MAC is going to take the market and retain it for the foreseeable future.

2007/10/25 | permalink | comments (5) | trackbacks (0)

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