Apple

Here is an article which appeared in July 1996 Macworld which proves Apple's superiority in the computer market:

[Macworld july.96]

Clip-'n'-Save Apple: The Numbers Nobody Knows;
Snappy answers, snappy statistics for the naysayers in your life

David Pogue

From the articles we all read early this year, you would have thought that Apple had already burst like a soap bubble and completely vanished. "Apple has no future," decided Time magazine. "The fall of Apple," gloated Business Week. Never mind that those same publications are designed on Macs. Never mind that Apple actually made a $424 million profit in 1995. Never mind that a sales slump has hit all computer companies.

Normally, I wouldn't really care how much those articles exaggerate. I mean, I don't panic when I see headlines like "An Alien Fathered My Two-Headed Baby," either. But the trouble with those Apple articles is that they became self-fulfilling. Sure enough, Apple's second-quarter loss was ten times bigger than the first quarter's.

I'm no professional analyst. And I admit that Apple's having the mother of all bad hair days. But Wall Street munches facts and figures like so much Chex party mix, and the popular press has been offering some pretty one-sided perspectives. I loved Time's bizarre statement that Mac clones won't appear until fall 1996. What are Power Computing's clones, chopped liver? Then there's the Wall Street Journal's calculation that there are only 15 million Macs out there. What are the other 7 million of us (as reported by Fortune), baloney?

But that's the beauty of statistics: you can find some to back up any argument. Because concerned citizens approach me daily asking if Apple will be OK, I'd like to publicize the more cheerful numbers--the ones you don't hear much of these days. On the following pages, I've listed the Apple Bad Publicity cliches we, as Mac users, are most likely to hear, along with some facts and figures to fuel our replies. Clip this article, pass it around, tape it to your fridge.

"Apple can't survive with such a small market share."

According to Automotive News (October 1995), Saab, Mercedes, Infiniti, Volvo, Lexus, and BMW have less than 1 percent of the world car market each. And even the big guns, like Mitsubishi and Chrysler, have less than 2 percent of the market apiece. The bottom 16 car companies put together, in fact, constitute only 9.8 percent of the market. Does that mean these companies won't survive? Hardly. They are prospering companies that would kill for Apple's 9 percent market share. (So would almost any individual PC clone maker.)

OK, so I'm a contrarian heretic (what else is new?). But I say, who cares if Apple sells only 9 percent of all computers each year, if it's 9 percent of a pool that itself is growing 15 to 20 percent a year (says International Data Corporation [IDC])? Furthermore, the Mac's market share is much higher where it really counts; see "Market Share, Schmarket Share."

Small market share would matter only if it discouraged software companies from writing for the Mac. Read on.

"Software companies are abandoning the Mac."

If this were true, the Mac really would croak. Fortunately, this point, so popularly parroted in the press, turns out not to be true at all.

At Agenda '96, a cross-platform software-industry trade show, 65 percent of developers said they'd be writing Mac programs this year--compared with 57 percent last year. Attendance at the 1995 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference increased 40 percent over the previous one; 34 percent of the programmers were there for the first time. The number of software companies applying to Apple's developer programs tripled in the first quarter of this year (compared with the same quarter last year)--and renewals doubled.

Software companies, like most of us, are in business to make money. And according to the Software Publishers Association (SPA), Macintosh users buy twice as much software as Windows users--in 1994, we bought 18 percent of all software. What company would be dumb enough to say, "Hmm, maybe I'll eliminate 18 percent of my sales this year"?

It's also much cheaper to write Mac programs; because the Mac requires less technical support, the average cost to develop and support Windows programs is 50 percent higher (per dollar of revenue) than for the Mac (says Dataquest). In other words: Earns more, costs less.

"Windows programs come out first."

True--half the time. The other half, the Mac version comes first. Same as it ever was. To this day, according to Apple market research, 900 programs are still available only for the Mac.
For every example you give me of a program developed first for Windows, I'll give you one that came first (or only) on the Mac. Adobe PageMill and SiteMill. Alias Sketch. Marathon. CodeWarrior. Quark Publishing System. Now Up-to-Date. Now Contact. Panorama. Adobe AfterEffects. KPT Bryce. Cinemation. Pixar Showplace. MegaPhone. VideoShop. Poser. Retrospect. SpeedDoubler. Final Draft. Nisus Writer. Don't get me started.

"I was gonna buy a Mac. But will Apple survive?"

Come on--Apple? Are you kidding?! This is a huge company--bigger than McDonald's, bigger than FedEx--a company that, before catching the Bad Press Flu, was raking in about $1 billion monthly. Furthermore, having eaten a slice of humble pie the size of Montana, Apple is a newly chastened company, taking all the right steps for a course correction.

Besides, even if you believe the Apple empire can evaporate overnight, you'd have a hard time imagining that the Mac will disappear. Macintosh users--56 million of us--buy $12 billion in computers and $1 billion in software each year (says the SPA); critical industries like publishing, science, movies, education, and music rely almost completely on Macs. This is not a computer platform that can be canceled like a TV show.

"Apple has stopped innovating."

Last year, Apple was awarded 53 technology patents, more than any other computer company (says Information Week). And the list of this year's fresh ideas will keep the Microsoft Copycat Engineers scrambling for decades: OpenDoc(the end of software bloat); Copland (fast, stable, neat); QuickTime 2.2 (one word: karaoke!); PowerPC-platform computers (a biggie). In this magazine alone, you've read about dozens of fresh, worthwhile advances in personal computing from Apple. Fact is, Apple's IQ (inventiveness quotient) has never been higher.

"Apple doesn't matter anymore."

Jake Kirchner wrote in PC Magazine (April 9, 1996): "[I]t's doubtful that the great majority of us will feel any effect from Apple's fall from greatness. Its operating system . . . has been matched for the most part by Microsoft's Windows. The next version of the Apple OS has been so long in coming that no one cares anymore."

Jake doesn't get it. Almost every desirable component of the PC he used to write that article--the mouse, 3.5-inch disks, CD-ROM, icons, menus, fonts, PostScript printer, balloon help, control panels, Trash ("Recycle") can, digital movies--was introduced by Apple. Without clever technologies continuing to debut on the Mac, Jake would have no more clever technologies on his computer. In the Apple-less world he apathetically imagines, we could look forward to decades of bleak, uninspired, multimegabyte Microsoft glop for the rest of our computing lives.

"I will find it hard to weep for the organization that sold so much hooey to unsophisticated end users," writes Jake. Fortunately, Apple will recover, and Mr. Sophisticated won't have to find out how wrong he is.

The Upshot

Why do the magazines pick on Apple? Sure, Apple's got problems to fix. But according to Fortune, they're nothing like the troubles at Zenith (3 percent market share, lost $100 million last year) or Packard-Bell (verged on bankruptcy twice in the last three years). Where are those obituaries?

Ah, well, I can't blame the mass media; it's much more fun to report bad news than good. And because of the aura of cockiness it's had since the days of Steve Jobs, Apple's a target as big as the Goodyear blimp.

But personally, I believe that Apple is reinventing itself as a humbler, smarter, better-managed company. And I tell my statistics to anyone who'll listen.

It's out of pure self-interest that I do so, actually. No, not because I write about the Mac--but because I'd have no fun computing on anything else.

Market Share, Schmarket Share

Articles about Apple frequently point out that, of all PCs in the United States, Apple sells fewer than 10 percent. But in a number of fast-growing areas--and overseas--the Mac is much more prevalent, as the following collection of statistics indicates.

• 76 percent of color-prepress customers use Macs (source: Griffin Dix Research Associates).
• 63 percent of all multimedia applications are written on a Mac (Dataquest).
• 63 percent of the computers in U.S. schools (K through 12) come from Apple (QED).
• 47 percent of commercial publishing customers, and 50 percent of scientific and engineering customers, use Macs (sources: Apple and others.)
• 29 percent of full-time college students with computers have Macs--11 percent more than have the nearest competitor (Roper College Track).
• 19 percent of PCs purchased by higher education institutions in 1994 were Macs (Computer Intelligence InfoCorp).
• Apple is the #1 U.S. computer vendor in Japan (IDC and Dataquest).
• Apple is the #1 computer company in Australian business, education, and consumer markets (IDC).
• Apple is the #1 computer company in Canada (A. C. Nielsen).
• The Macintosh is the #1 World Wide Web authoring machine, and 41 percent of Web graphics are created on the Mac (Mirai Consulting).
• The Mac is the second most popular computer for World Wide Web servers; over 20 percent are Macs (Georgia Institute of Technology).
• 25 percent of all Web browsing is done from a Macintosh (META Group).

"If I got a dime for every original idea Bill Gates had, why, I'd have nothing!!" :-unknown originator.

"To see tomorrow's PC, just look at today's Macintosh."

"The label on the box said 'For Windows '95 or better', so I got a Mac."

"Using the Mac is like a day of skiing on 10 inches of packed powder with good friends. Using Windows '95 is like a day of skiing on windswept, rocky, icy slopes with a really good-looking instructor who doesn't care the least about your progress." :-Ted Warren, Massachusetts.

"Why do I think my Mac is better than Windows '95? You can put sideburns and sunglasses on a 50-year-old guy...but that don't make Elvis." Roy Erak, Washington.

"A Macintosh is better than Windows '95 because it connects to a Microsoft network easier!" Hans Sorensen, Canada.

If you have any more cool phrases to add to this small list mail them to me.

To help get the word out, log on to : http://www.evangelist.macaddict.com/"

To read more user testimonials, about how Macintosh beats Windows systems, log on to: http://www.apple.com/whymac/

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