Wow at Apple!

During the first quarter, sales of Windows-laptops dropped 25% compared to last year, but sales of Mac-laptops increased 50-60%, and sales of tabletop Macs increased 45% from last year. And on another note, for laptops costing more than 1000$ Apple's market share of new computers is 66%. The total market share of Apple computers in consumer markets is now 14%, and I suppose it is growing.

I got these numbers from a Finnish computer magazine website, and they base the numbers on NPD, so they should be legit. I think it's quite amazing how Apple is able to actually improve the sales despite the fact that the price pressure from other PC-manufacturers is so strong. They must be doing quite many things right, so if Apple decides to enter the game console market it's going to be quite interesting. Although I don't think they have a really good chance of succeeding unless they can do some majic and garner a lot of 3rd party support. But it might be that the iPhone SDK and iTunes AppStore will act as a nice stepping stone for 3rd parties to get into the Apple bandwagon, who knows...

Well if the Pippin is any proof , than no , they wont be huge in the console market :P

Apple offers loads of great products (and a few not-so-great ones). I've been a long time Apple user but almost switched back over to PC a few years back. Luckily, Apple went with Intel, allowing me to use dual-boot, making a switch back to PC a waste of my time (until I build another gaming rig, that is).

Their laptops are hard to beat if you're not a gamer. Their feature set is incredible out of the box, the form factor is nearly perfect, and the build quality is high.

Oh, and my iPhone rocks, too. Love that thing. Best product they made since the original iPod.

with its ridiculous price. lack the ability to upgrade and its quarky OS that most people don't know how to use, 14% isn't bad.

now, Where's the "supposed" FULL Mac OS on my IPhone? I've been looking for it for almost a year now.

I think the price issue has been discussed to death many many times before. But what do you mean with lack of ability to upgrade? The upgradability varies between models, some you can upgrade easily, for some others it's not so easy and I hazard a guess that you can't upgrade MacbookAir because it's such a tight package.

While it generally is true that most people don't know how to use OS X since Macs only have a 14% market share, leaving 86% of the market outside, I believe that those people who own Macs actually know how to use OS X at least as well as people know how to use their Windows.

The iPhone OS, from what quick glances I've taken of the development documentation, offers much of the same frameworks as the OS X, but of course it has got limitations and restrictions. It isn't full OS X, but then again, due to the differences in hardware, it never could be.

 hard to access panels on most Macs, and don't even get me started with possibly the ONLY laptop not able to change battery.

As for IPhone OS... funny, Steve Job said it more than 3 times that it was a FULL OSX, with absolutely no compromises. Still looking in my phone tho, and I look harder everytime my Safari and Google Map crashes.

What panels do you mean? I've only got experience from laptops, and I don't think PC laptops are any easier to upgrade. And with regards to the battery on MacbookAir, I've read that you can get it changed for about the same price as a replacement battery for MacbookPro.

As for the iPhone OS, I don't know enough to say how full OS X it is, I've yet to delve into the documentation. 

I will contain my irrational hatred of Apple to applaud their business success. ^_^

I'm thinking about buying Macbook Pro this fall because I'm not satisfied with Vista, XP, or Ubuntu.

I've tried Vista. But after a year or so, I got tired of it for various reasons (slowness, driver issues, etc) and switched back to XP. XP is a good OS, in fact exceptional in my opinion. But after all these years I just don't feel excited about using it. To spice up my mundane PC life I need something new and fun.

I've tried Ubuntu 8.04. I felt it was one of the most user-friendly and polished Linux distributions ever. But it just takes too much time for me to configure it the way I like.

For example, I've spent 6 hours browsing forums looking for a solution just to make my webcam work on ubuntu. I've tried some uncomprehensible long terminal commands that some random people advised on forum but none of them worked. And this webcam fiasco is like merely one of 5 technical problems I've had with ubuntu, and I've had none of them on XP. Sure I like playing around with OS a bit, but I just don't want to put so much time and effort into it.

That's why I'm interested in trying out OSX. I wish that Apple would make OSX installable on non-Apple system so that I can use it on my current PC. But I suppose it won't happen given that Apple presumably profit greatly from selling hardware without having to compete with clones.

That's the spirit :)

Actually, does anybody here have a good answer as to WHY Apple is doing so well? And by good answer I mean something that actually explains what they have done and how it is working for them. I have my own ideas, at least partially, but I can't say I get the whole picture. Just some bits and pieces here and there.