[thelist] The Mac Market (was: Mac runtime for java update?)

[Greg Strange]

on 7/26/00 12:54 PM, i at isaac at members.evolt.org wrote:

> 
> It'd be interesting to see ultra up-to-date stats, but from these, the Mac
> market doesn't seem to be "growing so steadily and quickly" at all (maybe
> that's
> been happening entirely since 1999?). Home up 2.1%, business down 0.1%, and
> their favoured education market down 10.7%.

Without getting into a platform war (not sure how appropriate it is) I do
want to make a few points concerning the way that percentages skew the
impact of the Mac market and also how these percentages do not show what
type of user the "Mac person" is.  To remain relevant here I also want to
say something about how that impacts the way we design and code for the web.

Yes, there is a slight drop in overall home users but this is due mainly to
the problem which is tied with the education market dropping.  To that
point, M$ in their cunning business strategy infused the education market
with literally hundreds of reduced price or free PCs.  No blame to the
educators, merely making a statement of fact.  This is partly due to the
fact that schools began to feel that there were more repair options with a
PC (not always true) and that they would have better customer support from
M$ linked software and hardware (also not always true).  In addition, the
CEO before Jobs (I forget his name Guillermo or something) decided that the
education market was locked up and put little effort into maintaining
educational relationships.  As a consequence, home users stopped buying Macs
in the same numbers because suddenly their children were beginning to work
on PCs and more educational software came onto the market for PCs. (that
last bit is an observation).

What these percentages don't tell you is that, even if the percentage is as
low as our Australian colleague reports, we are still talking about
literally millions of Mac users.  Why would you do anything that would
alienate or frustrate even 500,000 users who may visit your site?  I am not
necessarily upset with anyone on this list (in fact I think everyone does a
wonderful of making sure that both sides are considered) but I am most upset
at the "higher-ups who think that Macs are some sort of fringe element,
radical muckrakers who care nothing for business but only for graphics.
Especially a bank.  Don't graphics people bank?  And if you are making a
Java based interface why would you code for only PC features?  I shake my
head.

> Does anyone know when Jobs returned to Apple, and also when the iMac was
> released?
> 
> Are these dates correct?
> Jobs returns: sometime in 1997
> First iMac released: May 6, 1998.

Not sure about Job' return.  However, the first Mac I worked on was an iMac
(I own the seventh one off the production line).  They were announced in
May.  But they were released one Saturday afternoon, August 19, 1998.
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1998/aug/19iMac.html) Over 1 million of
them were sold in the first year of release.

> 
> If so, Jobs' return = education market dropping a further 10+%. Oops...

I would say the reason for this (if it does indeed coincide) is that as soon
as Jobs got back, he stopped negotiating contracts for Mac clones.  Hence,
those companies changed focus and left a lot of educators out in the lurch
so to speak with no CS.

None of this takes into account that the iMac market and indeed the
PowerBook market is being populated quickly by first-time computer owners
and significant percentage (read: one in three
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1999/may/10applesears.html) are getting on
the Internet for the first time.  Want to change the way the Web looks?
Target the people who have no pre-conceived notion of it.

Don't even get me started on Quicktime/Real Player/Media Player. ;)

Greg Strange

P.S.  I know the links are from Apple's website and rightly they should be
suspect as proof but I couldn't find anything anywhere else on such short
notice ;O).
-- 
I never promised to be integral,
I only promised to be functional.