Apple over 6% market share

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2158

So what do you guys think? Is this really a good thing? Or the beginning of the end? With more market share comes more pressures, more customers (obviously), which in turn costs more money. Also, if the security by obscurity people are to be believed, are we going to see that evaporate? Will OS X become more of a target? I kind of felt part of the advantage of Apple was it's small market share. It is a lot easier to do something like switch to Intel or OS X when your user base is small.

 

It is probably going to be a good thing for Apple. They'll have to improve their products even more now with the increased market share, in order to keep their reputation. Probably will be a win-win for Apple and consumers.

 

First, security through obscurity isn't really security at all. If that's all Apple can deliver, the sooner they're exposed, the better. (And of course if their OS really is stable, it doesn't matter that it gets more exposure).

Second, looking on the bright side, Apple might improve a lot with added market share.

If they're going to become a big player, people are going to start expecting responsibility and reliability. If Apple is going to start taking that seriously, and actually 1) acknowledge defects when they're discovered, and 2) properly test new products before releasing them, it sounds good.

The more popular they get, the harder it'll be for them to act like a religious cult, stoning any criticism and encouraging blind worship of their products (and Jobs).
Imagine a world where you can compare Apple and Microsoft products, without being torn to bits by raving Mac zealots.

So yep, I think it's a good thing. A more competetive Apple is nice. Hopefully it means improvements from Apple's side, and it definitely means a less paranoid and xenophobic user base and community behind them, and it means more pressure on their competitors as well, which forces them to improve as well.

Seems like a win-win situation to me.

 

Well, not sure exactly what you're looking at as far as improvements to the products.
They're units are pretty good to begin with. Sure, there were some problems, but hey, who doesn't have problems with new unit launches? Companies that start using brand new technologies are going to have some issues. Apple came forward about those, albeit a bit late, but they did. And they fixed them.
I know they have this thing about not saying theres a problem until they really understand it, and I'm not sure if I like that or not. But I do appreciate that they show more attention to their customers than say, Dell. However, too large of market share will mean that they will start skimping on support and I don't like htat.

As far as security, really, we don't know how secure OS X erally is until there are a lot of hackers hammering it. Obviously, all OS's have their faults and security issues. Sure, you can completely lock it up, but then you cut into it's usability pretty heavily.

I can't say I'm overly impressed with the stability of OS X. The stability is hyped. OS X crashes. It's not perfect. I've had more crashes on my machine in a month than on my XP box in 2 years (until the ram crapped out). However, this machine may be a bit of a lemon... as most other users I know don't have many problems. Of course, they're not power users and I'm unexperienced with OS X.

We just had an article in our Univ. newspaper about the rise of macs on our campus. But the campus doens't have much in the way of tech support nor documentation about using macs on the network.

I just don't want to see Apple turn into another Alienware or Dell. They both used to make great machines, but now... (okay, not all Dells are bad)

 

I honestly think the way you have your setup configured it causing some effects, did you update to the latest 10.4.8? In any case check out macfixit.com and you are pretty much going to find all your questions answered there already, I haven't had any OS X stability problems at all, so from my point of view it's not hyped up.

Hackers is a bit different from viruses and such, like for example if a hacker was to target my machine they would have to literally get pass 3 firewalls to get to my machine, ISP firewall, Hardware Firewall and OS X firewall which in my opinion is a great feat if they can get through all three, if they do then they have an even bigger challenge, how are they gonna get admin access? Are they going to brute force my 25+ character password to get into my admin account so they can enable the root account so they can do ACTUAL damages? As for viruses and such, as long as you follow what we recommend a system should be setup here, you really just cut off one of their legs of support. But like said, only time will tell but Unix has a proven record of security, very few have the wits out there and quite frankly the chances of you getting hit by that type of hacker is very slim.

 

Yeah, but it's not so much just the OS, but applications that are running on it. Say LDAP and other programs you may run can have security flaws that will allow someone in.

 

First and foremost: it's US only market share, not worldwide. Historically US was so far the only country where Apple could operate on purely PR-stunts, nowhere else. What I don't know yet whether Apple can translate this US-only jump into a worldwide trend. Other markets are much more price-sensitive and even though Apple now has several very competitively priced products - Mac Pro, iMac, Macbook -, it's a different world abroad, RDF-based sales doesn't really work and Apple lacks effective distribution channels, is having hard time to swallow the tougher EU rules et cetera - in other words they are expensive for the masses abroad.

"Jumping" from 4 to 6 per cent of US sales may sounds impressive but what it really means is just a 230k extra machines shipped in a 300M country...
To put this number into more perspective: worldwide PC shipments are in the 100-200 million range per year and the growth of the PC market - extra number of PCs sold - is several times bigger than all Apple sales.

Security-wsie I tend to agree with you - I always said as soon as Apple get out of the single-digit ghetto worldwide, the urband legend of virus/hackproof OS X will be history.

 

i agree with T2k is not as if the Mac OS X is immune, its not the hacker that i truly worry about, its the virus, you know it gonna bite sooner or later.i really hate windows registry though.. i can't believe they're still keeping it in Vista. security suite is getting out of hand also. they are hogging the system resources more and more.

 

Hopefully is a good thing