I like to think that everyone will buy Macs. I buy Macs regularly and just bought one for my sister- and brother-in-law so they can join me in my OS X joy. But folks who say Apple can hit 50% market share in notebooks next year are deluding themselves.
Jeremy Toeman believes in this delusion and his points are these:
1. Virtually all MacBook owners will recommend most MacBook models when asked
2. Virtually no Vista notebook owners will recommend most models from any given manufacturer when asked
OK. Number one I can get behind. Mac buyers make Mac buyers. But this is like snake vodka buyers “making” snake vodka buyers out of their friends — sure It might taste great, but that shizz has a snake in it!
Number two is a pipe dream. Vista is a good OS. It’s solid and will eventually take over until 2045 when Windows 7 comes out. People use Windows and they’ll use Windows laptops.
Then he goes on to posit that notebooks are “personal” devices. Not the laptops I know. The laptops I know are fleet-released boring-books built by committee and sold in bulk to corporations for a pittance. Unless you count the notebook market as “people passionate about mobile computing,” you’re always bumping into the old saw that “No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft.”
We all know OS X rocks my body and my MacBook Pro is super. But 50% is a big number and Apple is fighting Sony, HP, and Dell in this market. If they do get a 50% market share, I’ll eat my hat, provided I can wear a hat made of meatloaf.
yeah … maybe I would buy a Mac if they weren’t so ridiculously expensive compared to a Windows notebook
yeah I can’t believe the price difference wasn’t factored into this. Apple is gonna have to add some bang to the budget line to have a shot.
Just for fun one day, I went to the websites of Apple and Dell and priced out two laptops. Picking one from Apple was easy since they only have a handful. So I selected a Dell and proceeded to go about and add things so that the computer would match my MacBook in terms of hardware and a 3 year warranty. And guess what? The Dell was more expensive by $150 or so.
Hmm, I just did that out of curiosity and the Dell notebook with better specs was still a couple hundred dollars cheaper.
Regardless the point is that beyond the minimal base 1099.00 macbook, theres nothing offered at all.
John,
Thats a deal, if you agree to wear that meatloaf hat for a week.
This guy needs to stop letting his fanboyism get in the way of his work… wait a second, who the hell’s Jeremy Toeman and why do we care what he thinks?
He is also ignoring the simple fact that Apple doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity to achieve that delusional number.
@joy
Oh look – how cute – someone brought up the “macs are expensive” argument.
John – I think you make some valid points. One that I’d like to quickly address:
“Number two is a pipe dream. Vista is a good OS. It’s solid and will eventually take over until 2045 when Windows 7 comes out. People use Windows and they’ll use Windows laptops.” – the point I was making was slightly different. I don’t believe that PC users can make the same word of mouth referrals that Mac users can. There’s virtually always some type of disclaimer, like “get the Latitude X86129347, but make sure you get the NVidia chipset one, not the Intel one, their drivers suck.” That’s not exactly “viral”.
@Joy: entry level MacBook (the one I use) is $1099 vs entry level PC notebook @ 649ish. Can you suggest a PC notebook under $1099 that you’d recommend? We just got a “mid-level” Dell for a relative ($1250) and it’s utter garbage…
@Nate: funny enough, I’m not a “fanboy” and spent most of my career as a bigtime PC enthusiast. I was actually pretty vocally anti-Mac until last year, then bought my first one in August. But you’d know that, and who I am, if you took the time to go to my blog and read more about me…
@yoshi: I think that’s an excellent point, one that I absolutely overlooked. I’ve added it to the post.
The fact that you just started using a Mac means you’re at the hight of your fanboyism. I know. I was there.
Go take a cold shower. You’ll be fine when you get it out of your system.
Yeah, interesting post, but it’s not going to happen. Like the post says, the typical notebook is just a “boring-book” not something people are passionate about.
Yoshi-a s for manufacturing capacity, I would say that’s a non-issue. The same few companies (I think it’s three) make almost all the notebooks in the world. If they are pumping out brand X instead of brand Y I don’t think it matters.
Toeman says ‘I had lunch with a VC friend of mine today, he confirmed that well over 90% of the startups who pitch him come in with MacBooks.’ Talk about living in a bubble.
Now for a real world post that should shut everyone up!
I do this stuff for a living so believe me it can be done. I regularly walk the floor at Fry’s and purchase their generic desktops and laptops that come loaded with vista or some form of linux. I pay anywhere between 100 to 250 for a desktop and 250-400 for a laptop. Obviously they dont have the best specs but with the right software they fly. I’ve taken vista machines that run on crappy hardware, I install XP not an easy task as of recent because manufacturers no longer provide xp drivers. However if you get the chipsets of the hardware you are looking for you will finx xp drivers. I have yet to run into a machine I wasnt able to salvage with xp. So what I am saying to Mr. Toeman is first of all you got a Dell and even though my work was foolish enough to go Dell you messed up by buying from the Devil himself. Second of all if you knew as much as you thought you knew about pc’s you could easily turn that piece of crap Dell into a good pc. Like I said I turn crap machines into very good machines with the right tweaks and software. Maybe sometimes I have to add a little more ram to that 150 dollar computer but guess what its still way more affordable than going mac and it will do what it needs to do. Now if you want to game then you should know better and custom build your own if you arent comfortable then at least buy something with decent specs you can work off of to create a good xp machine. oh and P.S: Screw you appletards!
Hey, Josh: Angry much?
The Average Fanboy’s Response to this Post {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/l38cyIjvKc_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”The Average Fanboy’s Response to this Post ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/jW4cSFxX36″}}}
Ahh my firewall blocked the average fan boy response haha John you crack me up brotha I can picture you telling me angry much with that hilarious wasted face you have on your birthday pic haha pe@ce John ill be back later. Gotta go do some runs around a few campuses fiber issues =(.
If it happens I will make you a meat loaf hat so that you can eat it.
You didn’t just seriously say that Vista is a good OS did you? If it doesn’t come preinstalled, no matter how great your system is, it aint gonna work. The driver support is abysmal and you can run a mile in the time it takes to boot.
I love my mac. I love XP on my home machine. Vista is worthless, though.
Robyn who said Vista was good? Obviously you think I did since this is a reply to my post. Sit this one out and count down from 10 your confusing my readers, LOL! =P
It was this part that made me think you said Vista was good.
quote: “Number two is a pipe dream. Vista is a good OS. It’s solid and will eventually take over until 2045 when Windows 7 comes out. People use Windows and they’ll use Windows laptops.”
See that part that says “VIsta is a good OS.” If you meant that to be ironic, perhaps you should be more clear because I didn’t take it to mean ironic.
Perhaps you should go count :P
You must be pretty incompetent, considering we just rolled out 75,000 vista workstations from 3 different manufacturers, laptops and desktops. Vista is definately a very good OS.
Vista’s a good OS, in relative terms. It’s finally solid, and there are drivers, and more recent PCs run it well. Just forget about legacy hardware.
It’s still a clunky interface compared to some others (use your imagination). It’s not as productive for many people because scripting isn’t built in, doesn’t let you pull together real, productive Applications like Photoshop, InDesign (or Quark), Flash, Illustrator into meta-applications to do lots of automated tasks, allowing creatives to do the creative stuff.
It really doesn’t offer anything that’s unique, or required to get things done. It does get in the way with stupid annoying messages more than other OSs (and Microsoft admits it was intentional to be annoying). What were they thinking? Who could rationally defend them for such stupid moves, and such poor delivery based on promises made years ago?
My gosh, the anti-Apple fanboys are at a pathetic high these days. They keep repeating the same old memes. They ignore the reality that PC notebooks that are comparable in terms of specs and performance and software are within $50 – $150 of comparable Mac laptops.
As for the doofus who said there’s nothing above Macbooks, you need to get out more.
Apple has already captured the college market with near 50 percent share. That’s the future. People are no longer suckers to Microsoft’s nonsense, and they couldn’t care less about all the tweaking you have to do to make Linux work right (and let’s not even talk about lack of real interoperable software).
More power, more productivity, more stability and more value. If you PC fanboys can’t get your minds around that…
…well, I’m not surprised.
Eric go play some wii everyone else if you dont like pc’s get a PS3 nice little OS in there easy and fun to use. Like Crunchgear!
LMAO who am I kidding that made absolutely no sense hahahahahahaha gawd I love the internet!
Sorry Josh,
I’m too busy traveling the world with my MacBook Pro making photos.
But that PS3 sounds good. Blu-ray!
How bout them LAKERS eh? Think we can beat UTAH?
sounds like another sensationalist post written just to drive traffic to his blog. well done mr toeman, but you’re a serious effing tool for creating more noise in the blogosphere for personal gain. shame on crunchgear for carrying this.
But it’s true, I really like the snake liquor !
http://www.asiansnakewine.com/