Apple Archive

Panther, iTunes for Windows, and G5 Drawing People to the Mac

- 2003.11.14

For a while there, the computer industry seemed a bit worried. Almost everyone was losing money, because people simply weren't buying new computers. It surely puzzled computer manufacturers - with Dell's at under $600 and iMacs at one point selling for $700, why weren't people buying them?

It was because people didn't feel that they needed them.

Then all of a sudden something seemed to happen, and these people had a need for a new computer. True, OS X isn't lightning on an older machine, but OS X has been out for a while, and most of the people who wanted to upgrade have done so. The same goes for Windows XP.

These people might have been satisfied with the performance for a while - or satisfied with their old OS - until they tried to do something and found that it just wasn't possible on their current computer. I'm amazed at how slow iTunes for Windows runs on my Dell laptop, which is just about three years old. I'd expect that kind of performance from a six year old laptop, not a three year old one. I'm almost wondering if Apple intentionally made iTunes for Windows a little bit slower than the Mac version in order to get people to consider a new machine - namely a Mac.

One of the sites I visit regularly, Boingboing.net, uses the eXTReMe tracking system to track the site's hits. This also tracks operating systems, and the information is available to anyone at the bottom of the page. When I first started going to the site, Windows 98 was the most popular OS, followed by Macintosh, Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows ME, several others - and Windows XP was way down at the bottom. I just checked the stats a few minutes ago, and where is XP? Second, after Windows 2000, which is followed by Macintosh, Windows 98, Linux, and Windows NT. Windows ME makes up a tiny 0.07% of the site's traffic. Windows XP accounts for 22.56%, and the Mac is 20.34%. Clearly people are upgrading. Whether they are buying new machines that come with the new OS (most likely in this case) preinstalled or buying the new OS to upgrade their old machine, people seem to be keeping up-to-date.

Even non-Mac people have been asking me about Panther. "Oh, you have a PowerBook, does it have the new Panther OS on it?" or "You upgraded to 10.3, right? How is it compared to Windows?" This new upgrade frenzy, combined with iTunes for Windows, the introduction of a new Mac OS, the G5, and the lack of a major upgrade for Windows until 2005 have started getting people to think about the Mac. One kid I talked to told me, "I have a Sony, but I'm really thinking that a Mac might be better for the way I work." Of course immediately after he asked me what I thought of 10.3.

I gave him an honest opinion: Panther's not perfect. Wwhile it's more polished than Jaguar, what it offers tends to be small changes. He still wanted a Mac.

And not only do people just want them, they're buying them.

Today in my school's auditorium a kid was sitting with a silver laptop. I approached, and it looked like a 15" PowerBook, so I asked him. It turned out to be a brand new 17" model that he had just bought as a desktop replacement. He said it was the first and only laptop he could find that felt like a desktop computer - so of course he had to have it.

It's obviously got its niche, even though I wouldn't buy one. Too big for a laptop in my opinion. But the fact that Apple has three sizes of PowerBook and two sizes of iBook really opens up the door to consumers who otherwise would be waiting for a redesign of the machine before purchasing it.

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