Why Microsoft Should Fear Apple This was an excellent story from the last week, which I can't let go by without adding to the news library here on Mars. Unlike most writeups by former Windows techies who now "get" the Mac, Scot Finnie is actually quite perceptive about what's going on in the market today. He also is in a good place to observe some important trends in the industry... among the most important is one that finds a groundswell of interest in and adoption of the Mac by IT folks in position of influence. He confirms my own anecdotal experience, which is led by my wife's company, Avaya. There, she's reported in recent months that they have a new CTO who is an Apple user himself and has been talking it up on conference calls. Avaya has another top executive from Sun Microsystems who's a big Apple/Google fan and who calls Steve Jobs his "idol." You know this has got to be affecting mindshare down the ranks. Eventually, the dolts who insist on clinging to old views and prejudices about the Mac and who see Microsoft and its product line through rose-colored--often stockholder-bought--glasses, will begin to have second thoughts about their convictions. What's happening today as well is that more and more Mac users are "coming out of the closet," so to speak. As a longtime Mac user, I can attest to the blatant prejudice and scorn heaped on anyone who makes positive remarks about the Mac in meetings or other gatherings of old-line IT staff who either lived through or led the Macintosh "cleansings" of the late 1990's. It's a relief to think that may finally be going away.

Mac Market Share Over 6 Percent in February, Says New Data Here's a brief Ars Technica article pointing to data from Market Share/Net Applications, which measures OS market share based on a wide swath of web usage reports. The data show the Mac market continuing a steep rise that begun several years ago, and in particular it highlights a huge jump of over 2.0 percent in market share since last August alone. Obviously, the data aren't an exact measure of the size of the Mac market, but they're important because of the trend they're revealing. It'll be fascinating to see what happens during 2007!

Macworld: News: Apple's Mac market share tops 5% with over 30% growth Pretty impressive numbers... Apple was the fastest growing PC maker in the last 12 months. Starting from such a small base, Apple has huge amounts of room for growth---and for rewarding shareholders---in the years ahead. I keep saying it's the best time ever to be a Mac user... and I'm glad to see others finally joining the party.

AppleInsider: Two-fold jump in Mac interest since Intel switch - survey Here's an article full of good news for Mac fans... apparently Apple's switch to Intel chips continues to fuel a fire of growing interest in the platform. Let's hope it translates into a steadily growing user base, so the guys who keep believing the Mac is dead can be proved wrong.

Hands on: Running Vista on a MacBook Pro This is an interesting tale of the writer's experience using Boot Camp to install the latest Vista beta release on his 17" MacBook Pro.  He reports that Vista runs much better on the MacBook than on his year-old Sony Vaio laptop.

CrossOver Mac will be the very best way to run your Windows apps on Intel Macs Originally downloaded 8/31/06. This I've gotta try... Just became available, the first beta release, good for 60 days. CodeWeavers includes an FAQ and Compatibility Center, plus a beta reporting area. CrossOver Mac is based on the open source WINE project, which enables Windows applications to run on non-Windows platforms (originally for Linux).

Version as tested: Beta 1

AnandTech: Apple's Mac Pro - A True PowerMac Successor Looking for all the details on the Mac Pro, as filtered through the eyes of some smart geeks? In words and pictures, you'll definitely get your fill here! (The only thing I can't understand about AnandTech is, with all the great platforms available nowadays for building websites, why would you choose IIS and ASP? I'm afraid that diminishes the weight of their opinion in my book, FWIW.)

Macworld: Game Room: What virtualization means for gaming This is a nice summary of the news related to gaming, from the perspective of the new Intel Macs and their ability to run Windows. Further, the author analyzes each of the options and speculates on what it all means for Mac gaming.

Mac vs. PC System Shootouts - $3,200 Workstations 08/09/06 SystemShootouts.org specializes in detailed comparisons between systems, and here they take on the latest great matchup: Mac Pro versus Dell Precision 690. The price difference was so great, they could afford to throw in an Apple Display with the Mac Pro and still come out ahead. MacSlash started a thread about it, too.

Macworld: Feature: Comparing prices: Mac Pro versus PCs Macworld has published an excellent, detailed article comparing prices on the new Mac Pro line with those on Dell's Precision Xeon-based line. The article is accompanied by a very thorough table showing all the specs for each machine, and the end result is unmistakable--and should be un-debatable, too: The Mac Pro dual-2.66GHz Zeon (dual core) is more than $1,000 less expensive than the Dell Precision 690 with nearly identical hardware specs. The Mac Pro comes in at $3,048, while the Dell will cost you $4,395! They can't be identical, of course, so here's what I can see of the differences in a quick scan:

1. Apple (+): 16GB RAM, Dell (-): 8GB
2. Dell (+): Faster Superdrive
3. Dell (+): Nvidia Quadro FX 3450 is faster than Apple's, both have 256MB VRAM, both 1 dual-link, 1 single
4. Apple (+): Four configurable PCI Express slots to Dells three non-configurable slots.
5. Apple (+): Four Firewire inputs, 2 800MB, 2 400MB to Dell's 2 400MB inputs.
6. Dell (+): Eight USB ports to Apple's 6.
7. Apple (+): Optical Toslink Audio In and Audio Out, Dell has no optical ports.
8. Dell (+): Various ports for legacy PC hardware (PS/2, Parallel, Serial)
9. Dell (+): Dell 19" Ultrasharp 1970FP display (a $250 value bundled for free); Apple has no "free" display
10. Apple (+): Software!! The usual great Mac bundle, versus nothing on the Dell.
Great job, Macworld! Thanks for documenting this so carefully.

Phil Schiller at WWDC: "We're going to beat out and bust" that myth about Macs being more expensive! I'm just getting around to watching Monday's Keynote presentation at the Apple WorldWide Developer Conference (WWDC). This is a remarkable excerpt that goes to the heart of the argument I started making last year: Macs are not more expensive than PC's. In fact, they can be quite a bit less expensive depending on the model you're looking at. If I have time, I'd love to go back and update the study I did in April 2005 with the Apple and Dell models that were being sold then. It's great to hear Phil Schiller saying basically the same thing... which until now hasn't really been Apple's official "position" on the question. (I did note that Apple was linking a page on their site to my April 2005 article, though.) In this clip, he points out that a comparable Dell is about $1,000 more expensive than the new Mac Pro, and he urges those who understand this point to "bust that myth together... Let every one know: It's not true!" Powerful stuff indeed:

Alpha--The CNET Blog: Macs are cheaper than PCs? Yes OK, folks, this isn't me saying this... it's CNET. Take a look at the data for yourself. It's black and white. The new Mac Pro is much cheaper than comparable high-end PC's.

Macworld: News: WWDC: VMware brings virtual machines to Mac OS X As Macworld points out, VMware is a bit late to the game, but the game is adding players every day lately, it seems. Parallels Desktop, CrossOver from CodeWeavers, and TransGaming's newly announced Cider tool. It's certainly great to not have to rely on one vendor (Microsoft) for virtual Windows any more.

Cider: Mac portability engine gets Apple users to the core of gaming Wow! If the Mac becomes a good gaming machine, that's just one more nail in the lid of Windows' coffin. This is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

PC Advisor: Apple MacBook hardware review

And one reason the Mac market share continues upward is that Apple keeps coming out with stand-out products like the new MacBook. Folks from the PC world just can’t seem to believe it’s as good as it is for as little money as Apple wants for it. And they love the fact that you can run Boot Camp on it. Actually, reviewers from the Mac world are quite pleased with the MacBooks, too.

Tom Yager: Mac is back in the big league Yager makes a point that hadn't really sunk in with me before:

Thanks to Parallels Desktop, an $80 virtualization solution that will sell a million Macs all by itself, every Intel-based Mac will run every 32-bit x86 OS, from DOS to Longhorn Server, from FreeBSD to Suse Linux Enterprise System, at (truly) near-native speed and with no need to reboot to switch OSes.

My son just got an Intel iMac, and installing Windows XP is in the cards for me as soon as I get Boot Camp and/or Parallels set up. But the thought of just as easily running other x86-based OS'es hadn't occurred too me. Cool!

From Macworld: Analysts Say Windows on Macs will not open corporate doors I certainly agree that Boot Camp won't cause corporate IT departments to suddenly start buying Macs. Did anyone ever suggest such a thing? In fact, as the Macworld article notes, Apple has been promoting Parallels as the "run Windows on your Mac" choice rather than Boot Camp. No, I think other things will eventually sway IT... for example, if home users start to buy Macs, they'll start to put pressure on their companies to let them use their Mac notebooks. Once that starts to happen, IT will be forced to deal with the issue.

From Yahoo!: Mac The Apple Of More PC Buyers' Eyes: Financial News This is the kind of headline I enjoy seeing! The odds of people actually making the switch are so low that any headway is cause for celebration. The report has a nice graph showing flat-to-falling interest in Dells and fairly steady increases in interest in Macs. Apple's moves to make the Mac more Windows-friendly this year (Boot Camp, Intel chips) are cited as major incentives.

CrossOver lets Windows apps run on OS X, sans Windows CodeWeavers plans to release a Mac OS X Version of its WINE-based CrossOver application this summer.  CrossOver doesn't require a full version of Windows running in emulation... rather, it uses the open-source WINE project to run individual Windows applications just like any other app on your Mac.  Word is, the apps run about the same as they would on a Windows computer.  Theoretically, PC games would run fine, too, but it's not certain this will be the case in reality.  If CrossOver works as advertised, it would be even a step above Parallels Desktop in making it simple to run Windows apps on the Mac.  Besides convenience, CrossOver would be less susceptible to Windows viruses since there's no actual Windows OS running.  

Daniel Eran: Apple & Open Source... Strange Buffaloes? Here's the latest in Daniel Eran's attack on the tech writers who've beaten a non-story about Apple's Intel kernel into the ground. Here, he takes issue with a couple of points John Gruber made in his response to Tim Bray's bemoaning Apple's lack of open-source initiatives.