Sorry but I have to rant first -- I just saw an absolutely hideous ad jump across your home page. I realize you need to fund yourselves, but christ! Please don't do business with anything so intrusive or it will force viewers to get their news elsewhere.



Now, I only have a few points/questions to make regarding the article/metrics. First, and most importantly, how is this infomation actually acquired? Is "market share" simply a mark of current hardware sales, or does it also contain

What I really want to know is this -- I know many, many Mac users whose sole machine is five plus years old. Macs seem much more reliable and last longer (in my experience) than similarly aged Windows PCs. Is there any way to account or show this factor? Without counting those folks, any number you show me is going to be way off.

I'm a Mac and PC tech, and just got back from visiting some clients at a local museum. They have six Macs, four of which are Blue & White G3s (again, they ARE a museum). I doubt most IT departments would ever allow PCs that old to remain on the network.

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Sorry to not add the "slash rant" at the end of the first paragraph above.

To add:

Who has parents who have gone through PCs every two years? Therefore, how can anyone compare PC sales to Mac sales?

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Ok. Look at the source: "The Inquirer".

At work sometimes people send out a link. The more outrageous the headline the more likely that it comes from some English online version of the trash they cal newspapers over there.

There is something strange going on: this news, and the pervious bit about hacking through the mac's wifi. I've only been paying attention to Mac news since I got a mac early last year. Does this kind of bizzare falsification of the demise of Macs go on all the time or is it because it seems like Apple is in ascendance and the mediocracy must pull at those that rise?

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Dry Country:
I have had two macs in the last four years (and iMac G4 and an iBook G4). The rest of my immediate family (my parents and brother) still use our two Windows PCs from 2000/2001. One is a Gateway, running ME, and the other is a Dell that came with ME but was upgraded to XP. I'm planning on buying another Mac next summer, as well as my brother will be getting a computer for when he goes off to college (hopefully a Mac). Before this, we had bought our first computer in 1996 (running Win95), and that was used until 2002.

I know I'm probably in the minority with this, but we're exactly the opposite of what appears to be the general trend.
(Of course, my iMac is still in use, daily.)

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The article is not very useful. It doesn't explain what it means by "market share", and the author doesn't seem to understand that market share is relative to the whole market and not only your own sales. Sure, Apple is selling way more computers now than a year ago, but what about HP, Dell and all the other ones? If Mac sales went up by 50% but the sales of its competitors doubled in the same time frame, Apple's *market share* (defined as new computers sold during a given period of time) will still go down, not up.

I agree with Dry County that, in general, Macs are more reliable and aren't replaced quite as often as PCs. If we define market share in terms of actual use (instead of sales), we will probably get a picture more favorable to the Mac. Safari usage is not a particularly good approximation of OS X usage as many Mac users never use it. I, for one, use Flock as my main browser. I haven't used Safari in ages (although it seems to have learnt a few cool tricks in Leopard). Therefore, I would not be included in Mac users if we use that methodology.

Market share analysis is a really tricky thing. Most analyses are flawed in one way or another. This one was no different. Few have the depth required to be truly conclusive.

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Here are the generally-agreed definitions.
"Market share" = your share of the computers *sold* in the period being examined.
"Installed base" = the number of computers of yours *already out there*.

This report is junk. It's using browser metrics as a proxy for - well, it might be installed base or market share, one can't tell which. (If you think about it, it works out - if you accept the flawed idea that browser metrics tell the story - to installed base.)

If 10% or 20% of Windows users use Firefox, does that mean that the market share or installed base of Windows has fallen? Of course not.

It'd be nice if TUAW were to apply a critical eye to stuff like this. It's not rocket science. That stuff there isn't even statistics - it's just Playtime With Excel.

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CajunLuke,

I guess I asked the wrong board! haha, I think there are a lot more tech-savvy folks here than on, say, AOL forums.

My main machine is a dual 1.25 G4 -- still think it's plenty fast for what I do.

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