OS X + XP: Who will really win?

What will the competition between OS X + XP result in?

  • Mac and Microsoft will both keep the same market share.

  • Mac will gain market share among niche groups.

  • Mac will gain market share from the general public.

  • Mac will lose market share.

Results are only viewable after voting.
Matrix Agent

Matrix Agent

Masochist Mascot
I wanna know what you guys really think is going to happen, both short term and long term.

I dont want to know which OS is better, I want to know whether Apple will win market share, and if it does, within which groups?

Will Apple's attempt to move into the future fall flat on its face?
Will XP's hurried shove out the door give businesses a crappy outlook on XP?
Do windows users really care enough to upgrade?

Try to stay as unbiased as you can.
 
I think that OS X will take away from people using other unixen in the short term. In the long term I think more people will migrate to it, but again from macusers,unix users, and artists/educators and people that have used a mac in the past, or a unix in the past.

I think the general public will remain with windows. I think this because it is my observation that computer users are inherently dumb. People who know better have experienced more OSes and not just windows (that is what I call the learned peoples) but most window users (as quoted from another post) "don't know what another OS is"...but even if they did know they think that it's too difficult and have neither the intellectual curiosity nor the willingness to see something from a different angle and try something else (I mean take a look at the x86 platform, it has tens of free OSes but I dont see the win community experimenting).

With XP this will be even more seen since people will be using the built in browser, media player, IM client and other built in features as default and a lot of new users will not take the time to experiment with other alternatives to what MS has provided for them (a great example is the IE debacle with making it part of the OS). M$ is going to make their wma wmv format the defacto standard as well as their MSN and MSN messenger services the defacto for win users to use, and win users wont say anything because they are inherently dumb and thus unwilling to challenge and experiment with others.

man I think I said a lot.
I will shut up now and possibly open myself up to flamming.

thanks :p

Admiral
 
I hate to say it but I'm thinking XP. I'm currently running both and Microsoft hands down tends to be the "slug" 9 time out of 10. Until I loaded OS X 10.0.4 on my Powerbook G4 500MHz with 320MB of Ram, all I can say is dog slow. Meanwhile XP is crusin with only 256MB Ram on my Celeron 500MHz Notebook.

Finch
 
While I don't know this for a fact, i think OS X got kicked out of the door a bit quick in order to satisfy diehard users. This may have hurt them in the short term, but ultimately they will benefit from the massive amount of feedback they recieved. Microsoft will not do this because, to say it frankly, they dont give a shit what you do or dont like about the OS. So where apple started, microsoft is going to finish. In 10.1 Apple will take everything to the next step, to the true OS X, which includes what real people want in an OS.

Now in XP do you see a noticable change in speed, or is it a general change in GUI? If speed is your concern, i think you will be satisfied, it runs much quicker than OS 9, can XP beat win2000?

I'm not flaming you, im just saying that OS X wasn't built for speed yet, save your decisions for a day when you know what the final score looks like.

OK, if i've been overy harsh here, please tell me, im not trying to come off as pushy or combative.
 
Apple will become an even stronger consumer brand. Apple was a different world, that no Windows user had to know about. But Windows users are going to meet Apple users more and more.

Why will more and more Windows users meet Apple users?

The first reason is that OS X is going to make surviving in a Windows world easier:
- MacLink and Apple Works are provided with every iMac and iBook
- some kind of DAVE is being built into the OS
- you can save every document as a PDF

Second, I have the feeling that iBooks are going to take over the iMacs, because they're getting cheaper and cheaper and they're targeted to the same consumer groups. This means that more and more consumers are going to carry their good looking Macs around.

If more Windows consumers are going to meet Apple consumers, the former will notice the differences. Windows consumer systems are messy, loaded with usesless features fighting eachother. They're going to compare that to Apple's simplicity and style. Lack of that is inherent to the Windows system, which has to take account of everyone's interests, which always leads to terrible compromises, bad taste and a lack of vision.

And Windows users are going to see the pride of Apple users carrying their machines around. I'm very aware of that Apple logo telling people: look, here's a guy happily making his own choices and I work with you just as easily as a Windows user.

This is going to mean an increase of Apple's brand strength and I think this should lead to a bigger market share.
 
I think XP will win, not because it is a better os but because it already has a good chunk of the market share. As stated before, people in general are not interested in what is available to them but what's planted right in front of their faces. When people become interested in a product they look at what everybody else has and then do a little bit of research, and eventualy buy the most popular product they can afford. The research doesnt go very far. An Apple person, however, is a little different (We "Think Different"!). I, for one, like unique, stylish, simplistic as well as efficient, things. Ironically, I have to do research to find the simple and efficient things that I like. MS is all over the place offering everything under the sun while Apple is making products that their unique customers like.

I don't think Apple is in this thing to win but to continue to make high quality products that are affordable and different. OSX is a high quality OS that is affordable and different. It's just not done yet!

I use a PC at work and have a Mac at home just like every other mac user. The people at work always argue with me over what is better, faster, etc. Whatever you could afford and like is what's better!

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 
I was talking to someone at work today about OS X (since I'm just learning about it myself), and the conversation turned to Windows XP. When I mentioned about XP's licensing/registration scheme, and the ability to change hardware in a <b>legally licensed</b> machine only a few times before the license (and therefore your machine) is deactivated, his jaw dropped - he couldn't believe it.

I wasn't trying to convince him that OS X (or Mac in general) is better in any way, but his last comment on the matter was "looks like I'm going to be buying a Mac..." (My coworker is a die-hard Windows user, btw).

I get the feeling that there's going to be a lot of this kind of sentiment, myself included. Personally, I'm really happy with Win2k - I think it's a very robust, stable, and usable range of OS products, but if XP is the future of Windows, well... Count me out. There's almost nothing that I use my PCs for that I couldn't do on a Mac.
 
The fact is today, OSX isn't a seller app. It won't increase the number of Mac by itself.
OSX can be installed on about 2 million machines (if they increase the memory), but XP can be installed on tenth of millions of machine. It could be hard, the problems could be big, but PC users bought win95, win98, SE, ME, 2K and didn't blame M$oft.
I don't know how Apple could reach such a number.

The real problem is the lack of advertising : only mac users and fans care about OSX. It could be better, simplier and faster, no PC user really cares, because for him the Mac doesn't exist.

What Apple should do now to change this ?:confused:
 
My opinion is that OSX will gain marketshare with the general public.

Let me remind you that XP (although very easy to use) is a variation on Windows 2000 and Windows NT, and is aim at the professional market, not for the general public. Unless I am misinformed, this means that Microsoft will follow with XP Lite, ME2, or something else for consumers. While the professional XP may have the hardware licensing issue, the consumer version may not.

With Apple's continued TV campaign, I think that they will continue to increase their Hardware market share. Especially with the new iBook and some of their other products. I just saw the new Quicksilver TV commercial the other day (the wedding in hawaii) and although I feel the script could have used more work, the point of burning Video (DVDs) that anyone can watch was clear.

I think a lot of UNIX/LINUX fans will start buying G4s because of OSX (once 10.1 is released). OSX is the very first user-friendly full-featured UNIX variety that has been released to date. Corel Linux did a good job in making LINUX easier to use, but OSX blew them out of the water.

It all depends on the outcome of Microsoft's monopoly case, and how much people are upset with Microsoft to turn to Apple (spite is nice if focused correctly).
 
One of my employees friends (Kris) convienced her grandmother to buy an iMac. Her grandmother had very little experience with computers, but bought it anyway so that Kris could use it. This is one of the older iMacs that did not come with OSX, so when OSX was released, Kris convienced her grandmother to upgrade the memory and buy OSX.

Since she installed OSX on the iMac, Kris has not been able to use the iMac because her Grandmother and everyone else wants to use it. So she asked her grandmother to buy her an iBook.
 
I have a friend who is the network administrator at his work and is of course a Windows guy. He has been bothering me about being a mac man ever since I got my imac. Recently, I had a problem with my TCP/IP settings. He was over my house with his wife one day and I thought I would ask him to help me correct my problem on OSX. He could not get over how easy it was to use, how cool it looked, and how fast it was!

Just as eluded to before, he never bothered to ever get on a mac and use it. Once he did he loved it! When he gets the chance to he is going to buy a mac.
 
Apple will definitely gain market share with the release of 10.1 and the opening of Apple Stores. I'm betting that they double it to 10%. There are a few good reasons for this logic:

1) Apple Stores
People's number one reason for not using Mac's is because they are under the misconception that "there is no software for them". This of course, will change when people walk into the Apple Store in their local mall and see 400+ titles sitting on the shelf.

2) BeOS getting dropped
I know of a few people who are so anti-windows that they run BeOS on their PCs. Palm is in the middle of buying out Be. There are no plans to continue the BeOS for the desktop. A lot of these Be users are liking OSX because of it's software support, stability, and overall, "not being windows".

3) XP is going to make it difficult for developers
XP is basically windows 2000 with a ripped-off skin [do you know that it is going to come with windows movie editor? *cough* iMovie rip-off *cough*]. As CNET put it, the only original thing about windows XP is the "P". But developers are going to have to change their code to make their applications XP compatible. Mostly GUI changes, but changes non the less.

4) Are users really going to upgrade to XP just for a butt ugly color scheme?
5) Everyone who knows anything about computers knows that UNIX is better.
The idea of running UNIX as a desktop OS is mighty intriguing to a lot of power users. A lot of these power users are fed up with M$ and their baggage. Once they try OSX in an Apple store, they will be soooo jealous....

Hang in there folks...I think we are in for a bright future.
 
Until the point that OS X can be installed and used on a PC box Micrcosoft will win. If Apple ever releases a version that runs on intel chips then it could be a different story.

Hardy
 
OS X on Intel would degrade the user experience. Without the user experience, what is apple?

While OS X on Intel is in the best interests of the company because it would be able to sell large amounts of a high-margin product, it is not in the best interests of its uers because it would give problems to many users through drivers, display capabilities, and all other sorts of variables which can only be guarenteed if Apple has control over the computers on which its OS is based.

Not to mention that it would take forever to program....
if it was so easy, someone would have already been working on it.
 
To Knighthawk's "One More Thing" comment:

Actually, Windows XP IS intended for the home, as well as business. It is being released in two versions, a "Home", and "Business" version (this will complete the original model for Windows 2000, formerly known as NT5, where there was an Enterprise Server, Advanced Server, Server, Professional, and Home version), and finally put to death the old MS-DOS-derived Windows 95/98/ME line. To me this is a Good Thing - I'd love to see the general public enjoy the stability and excellent features of 2000. In fact, XP will probably put to rest many of the most common complaints home users have nowadays - crashes.

However, XP has its faults. And M$'s licensing technology is a huge one for me. I've never really been anti-Microsoft, but this just crosses the line for me in M$'s "rule the world" campaign (as opposed to their previous "rule the computer" campaign).

...On another note:

As stated above, too, lack of software really is MUCH less of an excuse. For the probably 50% of new computer users that use their machine as nothing more than an internet access point (browsing, email, etc), it's tough to justify going with Wintel unless it's simply "cheaper"...

Ian
 
I was just talking to a very pro Windows person this morning... He was telling me that if Microsoft does go through with this disabling thing, there will be issues in court.

If Microsoft sues someone for installing a pirated version of XP, they will win, but if Microsoft disables the computer so that it is unusable (needing to reinstall), the courts would be against Microsoft because legally they cannot disable other companies software or prevent the user from accessing his data. That does not even count the privacy issues involved.

Personally, I believe that this is just going to blow over as an empty threat.

As far as Apple converting OSX to Intel... it would be possible. Darwin is already Intel ready, but the main problem would be Aqua and all of the current Mac Applications. Every developer would need to reprogram and recompile their software to work with Intel unless Apple emulated the PPC.

If Apple were to come out with an Intel version, I could see them almost overnight taking over a much larger market share (maybe even 33%), but then Apple would have huge losses in hardware sales and lose its edge in technology advancement. Then Apple would be dependent on hardware developers to set the standards instead of the other way around.

The problem with Microsoft and it "protecting" its assets from pirates would become the problem of Apple. Apple does not protect its OS because it doesnt need to. A few threads back, someone said that they have not purchased an OS since 7.5. He said it with pride, but he is wrong. If I remember right, he was working on a Titanium Powerbook. Unless he stole that, he purchased the OS with computer, and therefore owns the OS.
 
I think Windows XP will win, not because I like Windows or Mi¢ro$oft in general, but because everything relates to Microsoft now. Example 1:

::Car won't start:: "DAMN YOU, MI¢RO$OFT!!!"

Seriously though... Tons of people use PC's because they're afraid to switch over to a new OS. Afraid to dabble in the wide range of operating systems. "If I switch over to a Mac it would be a huge hassle."

Too bad for you. You should've gotten a Mac in the first place, you would be much happier with your compter now.

On another note, it wouldn't be such a bad idea to market OS X on PC... I still beleive they have it running on some PC in a heavily-fortified basement somewhere... but they would have to market it just right. If they didn't it could be a big disaster. For those of you who don't know, Apple makes more money on their hardware. Remember the clone fiasco? Almost killed them. They would have to market OS X perfectly, otherwise they would find themselves turning over all their efforts into PC and not Mac.

Well, there's my two cents... anyone agree with me?
 
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