We have all seen the Apple commercials where the young hip guy says,” Hi I’m a Mac.” And the dumpy guy in a business suit says,” I’m a PC.” These commercials lead to the idea that Macs are just the cat’s meow, and PCs are worthless and pathetic. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth, and to prove this I will focus on three areas: market share, security, and value.
First up is market share. If we were to judge solely by the media hype surrounding Apple, it would seem that Apple has to be making a killing. Lines form outside their stores; the faithful awaiting the arrival of the newest widget or gizmo, sometimes for days in advance. The iPad sold one million units in one month, and the new iPhone sold out before it was even in stores (Santo, June 16, 2010)( Willington, May 4, 2010). So Apple must have a large share of the computer market, right? Wrong. In 2009 Apple’s market share was 7.6 percent in this country and about 2-3 percent worldwide; systems running the Mac operating system accounted for only five percent of internet traffic, and that is including the iPhone (Costa, August 27, 2009). To be fair, today in 2010 Apples market share has improved somewhat to around ten percent in the United States. A small increase of only two percent, and over in Europe ninety-two percent of the computers are running some form of Windows (Schramm, May 27, 2010).
Remember the commercial where the PC guy is sniffling and sneezing because he had a virus? Mac systems are so secure they do not have to worry about viruses, worms, and such, or so we are told. According to Rive Richmond of the New York Times, security software maker Symantec (makers of Norton Anti-virus) said,” Mac’s relative safety is primarily a result of their still slim market share ”( Richmond, 2009, April 16). That is Mac’s present too small of a target for hackers to waste their time on. They went on to say twenty-six vulnerabilities were found in Mac OS X in 2008, almost as many that were found in Vista for that year (Richmond, 2009, April 16). In March of this year, Apple came out with a security update to address some fifty-three vulnerabilities (Kerner, March 30, 2010). Some were in their Core Media engine, Quick Time media player, ImageIO image renderer, and a spell-checking vulnerability of all things (Kerner, March 30, 2010). Even more telling is the fact that this update is the first major update since November 2009(Kerner, March 30, 2010). That is not what I would call a secure system, just lucky instead.
Windows is not a perfect operating system though, far from it. Those of us in the Windows world have Patch Tuesday. Patch Tuesday is the second Tuesday of each month. On this day Microsoft releases all the updates for their software. Yes, we may grumble and groan about the time it takes to download and install these updates, but Microsoft has done a good job of making them pretty painless. At least Microsoft recognizes and works to correct the errors in their software instead of living in denial. I have noticed that since Windows 7 came out that Apple has stopped airing those cheeky little ads. I wonder why.
What about value? Do Apple computers really represent money well spent? Let’s compare two systems; Apple’s $1200 iMac versus a HP system of similar price.
Apple iMac ($1199.00) HP HPE310t (1209.98) as configured
3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor 2.8 GHz Intel i7-860 Quad Core cpu
21.5 inch wide screen monitor 21.5 inch wide screen monitor
1920 x 1080 resolution 1920 x 1080 resolution
4 GB memory 8 GB memory
500 GB hard drive 750 GB hard drive
8x double layer DVD burner 16x dual layer light scribe DVD burner
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics 1 GB Ati 5570 graphics card
The prices and specifications are accurate as of June 22, 2010(Apple Store, June 22, 2010) (HP Official Store, June 22, 2010). The two systems match up only in regards to the monitors. Everything else is a clear win for the HP. The HP has twice as many cores, twice the memory, fifty percent larger hard drive, a better video card, and the DVD drive is also faster. In my opinion, it is very hard to make a case for Apple being a better value.
So where do we stand? Apple only has a ten percent market share, the operating system requires updating just like Windows does, and when compared dollar for dollar, Apple loses. When those points are considered, Apple just does not measure up to all the hype and that is why “I’m a PC.”
References
Apple Store, http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?aid=AIC-NAUS-K2-CONFIGURE-IMAC-INDEX&cp=CONFIGURE-IMAC-INDEX
Costa, D. (August 27, 2009). Apple’s mind share matters most. Retrieved June 19, 2010 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2352103,00.asp
HP Official Store, http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/cto.do
Kerner, S. (March 30, 2010).Apple Fixes 53 Security Vulnerabilities in Mac OS X. Retrieved June 20, 2010, http://www.esecurityplanet.com/news/article.php/3873656/Apple-Fixes-53-Security-Vulnerabilities-in-Mac-OS-X.htm
Richmond, R. (2009, April 16). Macs Aren't Safer, Just a Smaller Target. p. B.7. Retrieved June 15, 2010, from National Newspaper Abstracts. http://lirnproxy.museglobal.com/MuseSessionID=ec3bbf38f78427d9eb69d5997ddef29b/
Santo, M. (June 16, 2010) Both Apple, AT&T Sell Out of iPhone 4s, Retrieved June 17, 2010 http://hothardware.com/News/Both-Apple-ATT-Sell-Out-of-iPhone-4s/
Schramm, M. (May 27, 2010) Apple market share climbs to 6.8% in Europe. Retrieved June 17, 2009 http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/27/apple-market-share-climbs-to-6-8-in-europe/
Willington, R. (May 4, 2010). Apple Sells 1 Million iPad Tablets in First Month: The Revolution Is On. Retrieved June 17, 2010 http://hothardware.com/News/Apple-Sells-1-Million-iPad-Tablets-In-First-Month-The-Revolution-Is-On/
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