Flappo The Grate wrote:

"Windows 7 did little to slow the Mac's sales trajectory during fourth quarter, according to NPD. Year over year, Apple doubled US retail unit share -- from 5 percent to 10 percent -- for PCsselling between $500 and $1,000. More startling, Apple increased its unit share from 79 percent to 90 percent in the market for 'premium' PCs, meaning those selling for more than $1,000," Joe Wilcox reports for Betanews. "In July, I reported that Apple's revenue share for PCs selling for more than $1,000 was 91 percent, because of higher average selling prices; nearly all Macs sold for more than $1,000. Now Apple benefits from 90-percent unit share, too."

That's a nice way of saying that Macs are horribly more expensive than PCs 😁

Relative to performance and productivity, Mac's are not expensive, tournedos. 

B&O takes a premium within A/V; Apple does so within personal computing. Critics who don't know the Apple experience consider them overpriced.

Two takes on that. When a large German publishing company considers buying new computers for its 10.000 employees, it decides to conduct a parallel study between workers using PCs and workers using Mac's. The results are so conclusive that they fast-track the transition to Mac's, and cite the change as a parameter in their study of competitive strength.

But here's another view. Josh Marshall is the founder of Talkingpointsmemo - a political news site on the web, with an enormous number of page hits per day.
He made the transition to Mac's not that long ago, and has some musings on the topic, relative to the number of visitors to his site who are using Mac's, and the growth in their numbers.

link

This article suggests, as I suspected, that TPM's audience has a much higher percentage of Mac usage than the population at large. According to a study by Net Applications from just under a year ago, about 10% of people used Macs. But the rate of growth of Mac to Windows usage seems about on par with ours, just starting from a much lower point. The pick up appears to have started in 2006 (which happens to be when I bought my first Mac) and accelerated in the last year.

Does this dovetail with your experience? Are you one of the converts? As I explained in this post from about three years ago, I bought my first Mac because I was finally at a point in my life where I had enough money and computers were central enough to what I do, that I could afford to buy a really good personal computer. I'd been using PCs for about twenty years. But try as I might, I realized that I simply could not find a computer in the PC world that was well manufactured or worked very well. So out of pure desperation I bought a Mac to see if they were any better and I never looked back.

Recently, he posted stat's on the growth in Mac users, and the increase in use of the iPhone as a browsing device. While IE and Windows are falling in popularity.

they're not actually

a top end alienware or dell workstation is more expensive than a mac pro , while the mac actually has a second hand value

mid range it's similar , the imac has just about everything built in while with a pc it's a plethora of  'hiidden extras'

anyway , bno should hire a linux / os-x  programmer  and ensure all their gear seamlessly integrates with things like the ipad rather than using winblows which is going nowhere fast

that's my point

Spot on Flappo. I recall these very conversations early on when the BeoSound 2 was first introduced. The iPod was brand new and Apple was not nearly the juggernaut they are today. It was stupid 10 years ago and it's stupid today. I can honestly say that BeoPlayer is the biggest joke left. 

(Wrote a post that went to moderation. While waiting for that to appear):

Sometimes, one is cursed by circumstances. Previous B&O mgt had very strong contacts to Microsoft, due to the LEGO&PC-control product line. In fact, one of the factors cited when TBS got hired was his strong contacts at Microsoft.

So B&O picked Microsoft and Windows Media Center just as Apple launched iTunes/iPod.

The fates are wily creatures.

I use PC and i use Mac - every single day. So, please - i'm not going to be a Mac Evangelist here, i just want to state something.

I go to a LOT of homes, all over the UK - and i see a disproportionate number of Mac owners if we look at the traditional Mac/PC split.

I would guess well over half the customers i visit own Macs, and almost all of these people wish B&O would integrate better with them.  Like B&O ownership, Mac ownership is infectious and you end up with multiple items in multiple rooms. You even look for excuses to buy Apple products like as do B&O.  You get excited about new products, and you want them because they just work.. well.

What i'm trying to say is that B&O should indeed hire a Mac/Linux specialist and wake up to the fact a huge number of their customers love their Apple products as much as they do their B&O and get incredibly frustrated when they don't work together.

My message to B&O - Ignore the traditional split that the industry publishes - wake up and look at what your customers are using.  Do everything you can to involve them with other products they are loyal to, which can't be bad for business, surely?

Lee

9 LEE wrote:

I go to a LOT of homes, all over the UK - and i see a disproportionate number of Mac owners if we look at the traditional Mac/PC split.

Well, I'm sure you also see a lot more M-B's sitting on the yard than you would if you delivered LG or Philips kit... 🙂

The average PC user doesn't see much point in paying $1000+ for a PC when half that will usually do the job. I'm not questioning the value for money the Macs give or the market shares that were given or that B&O probably should put more interest in supporting the Apple crowd - I just think that this "premium PC" is a silly statistic.

tournedos wrote:

Well, I'm sure you also see a lot more M-B's sitting on the yard than you would if you delivered LG or Philips kit... 🙂

Spot on.  It's mainly German Cars (MB/BMW/Audi)

Lee

BMW .. check

B&O .. check

Apple ...check

Have them all so, nothing else to add....