© B Y ..S T E V E ..W E L S H
Oregon MacPioneers User Group (Omug)
When Steve Jobs began his keynote from MacWorld Expo last month we got the usual "State of Apple" union address with Jobs highlighting the positives from Apple to date, priming us for the delights he was going to unveil in the coming hour.
You had to be living in a cave not to know Apple is alive and well these days, continuing to surf the tsunami-like iPod and digital music sale waves it created a few years back.
How do we love thee, Apple? Let us count the waves ...
Number 1 music player in the world, the iPod. Number 1 online music store in the world, iTunes Music Store. No. 1 music jukebox, iTunes, on the Windows/PC platform ... er, uh, wha...?!
I can't officially vouch for that last statistic, but it just may be true. Apple is firing on all cylinders and, unlike the Windows/PC side, leaving a trail of very little or no pollution out of its tailpipe.
Still, I wasn't prepared for the number on the big screen when Jobs revealed the world-wide market share of digital music sales through the iTunes Music Store online: 83%
As if Jobs knew longtime Apple fans like myself would be in shock at first glance, he had the slide brought up a second time for the keynote audience. There it was again, 83%.
This from Apple's January press release: "Apple shipped 1,254,000 Macintosh computers and 14,043,000 iPods during the quarter (last quarter of 2005), representing 20 percent growth in Macs and 207 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter." More than doubling the sale of iPods from the same quarter a year ago is a bit mind-boggling. After all, iPod sales a year ago were pretty good. Selling over 14 million in one quarter is a staggering number (which, Jobs displayed with a smile, came out to 100 sold every minute of each day, 7 days a week).
Somebody cue the Rocky theme, please
Apple followers are used to living in a single digit figure world, where Apple's flagship product, the Mac, has barely tread water in the 3-7% market share of computer platforms for much of the past 15 years. In the mid-90s, industry analysts were once again down on their knees pounding the canvas, giving Apple the last-rites "count to 10" like a referee hovering over an unconscious, knocked out boxer. Apple stock was about $12 a share then. "Ding, ding, ding!" This platform fight was over. You could almost hear Howard Cosell in the background shouting the commentary, "Down goes Apple! Down goes Apple! Down goes Apple!"
The industry told us to get ready for the funeral.
But when Jobs returned to Apple in '97, Apple got up off the canvas before the count of 10. It staggered and appeared wobbly for a bit, but Apple slowly began to fight back. This fight wasn't over. A quick hard uppercut (the iMac). A left to the jaw (OS X). Then a haymaker the PC world didn't see coming (the iPod). This wasn't really a fight for dominance as it was for survival. In this respect, Apple won, and with the iPod and iTunes Music Store success, won convincingly in an amazing comeback. Apple stock in January cracked the $85 per share mark. Mac sales are up, too, and there are more "switchers" coming into the Mac camp, even publicly this time. If they ever make a movie of this chapter of Apple's history, they will have to use the theme from "Rocky" one more time.
Domination? Well, if the shoe fits...
Eighty-three percent. That's a number Microsoft feels more comfortable with. And that's a scary analogy for some Apple fans. How will/is Apple handling it's unusual position of "dominance"? I'm not sure longtime Apple fans are comfortable with that word. To us this is a success story, a love story, if you will.
Americans are famous for their love of pulling for the underdog. Apple has been the underdog for much of its existence, with the Windows and PC side walking 90% of the earth like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. Now, with Apple's domination in the digital music field, there is a sense of justification for Apple fans -- along with a giant sucking sound as we finally inhale after holding our breath for so long.
But of course, once you are on top of the hill, you are no longer the underdog. There are a lot who want Apple to stumble now -- hey, that's normal in a business world. Competition, when played fairly, is good for all of us.
Maybe we should just say the consumer market prefers a bigger slice of the Apple pie these days? Because of the iPod and iTunes Music Store success, there are millions of PC users who are trying Apple products for the first time, getting a taste of what we Apple fans knew about almost 30 years ago.
You see, the PC world was suffering from an illness called DOS back in early 80s until the Lisa and Mac was born. And even though Windows tried to copy the Mac DNA all these years, all the "cloning" in the world never matched the original. Now with Apple's latest and greatest success, it's helping more and more of the "rest of us" (who used to be called "them" on the other side of the platform fence) who never knew just how good Apple could be.
Kinda' like that line from the Mary Poppins' song: "Just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down."
Never heard that song? Well, let me play it for you on my iPod.
OTHER MAC NEWS BITS:
Apple releases Tiger update 10.4.5
It wasn't wrapped in chocolate, but Apple still sent us a Valentines Day gift, an update to our favorite OS. The above link takes you to the Apple document that describes the 10.4.5 update (read it all), and then has links at the bottom to guide you to the proper installer type that you need. The size of this update will vary according to your OS and hardware needs, and whether you choose to update via Software Update or downloading the installer. We recommend downloading and installing manually using the Combo updater (or the specific 10.4.4-to-10.4.5 Delta installer). If you are currently running 10.4.4, read this article.
e- i- e- i- ... no eMac?
Hmm, what will happen to the eMac -- will it be the ONLY holdout with the PPC chip by the end of 2006? As of the first of February (at least by my notice) it has been removed from the Apple Store online's inventory of hardware for sale. The eMac does, however, remain in the Education purchase que.
As I mentioned last column, my greatest concern with the new generation Macs (Intel cpu) is security. I'm not the only one giving it hard thought. Several Mac news sites have some discussions going and reader write-ins that get fairly technical but in the end seem to indicate we don't have THAT much to worry about ...
(2-2-06) iMac 17" G5 model dropped by Apple:
(Macintouch) Following Apple's price cut on the 20" iMac G5 earlier this week, the 17" iMac G5 suddenly disappeared from Apple's online store last night without warning. (Amazon still shows the 17" iMac G5 in stock with a rebate this morning, but we have no idea how long that will last.) Apple representatives told financial analysts in a conference call last month that the company would sell PowerPC-based Macs only "while supplies last" - and apparently its supplies of the 17" iMac are now exhausted. There's absolutely no indication from Apple when availability of any other PowerPC Mac will terminate, but the company seems to be accelerating its switch to Intel-based Macs, giving earlier estimates for a full changeover last month than it had previously.
Watching my iCal-ories:
QuickTime will display an active movie playing in your Dock, Clutter (a nice little iTunes supplement that displays large album cover art) will show you the current album/song art in your Dock, so why in Jaguar and Panther did the iCal icon in the Dock just sit there like a bump on a log, not showing the current date? Bugged some of us who thought that should have been a bit of obvious "Apple cool" to do (boy, we Mac users are spoiled, aren't we?). In Panther it WOULD update to the current date but only after you opened iCal. Now, in the Tiger version (iCal v. 2.x) the icon shows a static July 17 date. Huh? Longtime Mac users remember how their Macs would display the date "12:00 am, January 1, 1904" when their internal battery died. So what's up with July 17? Turns out it is the date iCal was originally announced at Macworld in the summer of '02.
No foolin', Apple celebrates 30 years April 1st
"One last thing... you know, Apple was founded on April Fool's Day in 1976. We thought that was pretty funny at the time," Jobs explained, as he stood in front of an image of himself and fellow Apple founder Steve Wozniak at the Expo keynote. "And what that means is that Apple will be thirty years old this April Fool's Day. And I don't know what we're going do for it, but since we may not see many of you before then, I just wanted to point it out. Thirty years, making the best personal computers in the world." Which leads us to our next thought ...
Two big events from Apple in the next 2 months?
It would shock most of us if Apple's anniversary on April 1st came and went without fanfare. Prizes to be given away via the iTunes Music Store or in some other contest? Maybe. But I think there may be "one more thing..." -- another Special Event announcement before the birthday bash. It may be more Mac models with the Intel chip inside, but that's the easiest guess. Knowing Apple, I have this feeling that something totally brand new is coming. Ahhh, what was it Carly Simon sang so sweetly? "An-ti-ci-pation ..."
Never heard that song? Well, let me play it for you on my iPod.
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