In the 4th quarter of 2011, shipments of Windows-based PCs (from makers like HP, Dell, Toshiba and Acer) were down cumulatively 8.5% while Mac shipments for the same period were up 20.7%. The Small Wave reports this as well as clearing up the original data from Gartner which was misleading and showed the PC numbers to be much better than they actually were. (Gartner lumped Apple’s numbers in with the rest of the industry, which effectively propped up the Windows PC segment and made their decline appear to be less than it was.)
If you truly want to know how Apple did in the US on its own against “PCs”, you must subtract it from the latter’s numbers. Here’s what you get:
The Wall Street Journal’s What They Know Tech section looks at online privacy issues, and how an increasing number of companies are working harder to track your activity on the internet.
iFixit.org — The People Who Are Fixing the World — is a new project by the talented and helpful team at iFixit.com, the ‘free repair manual you can edit.’ I have used iFixit to get detailed instructions on upgrading our Macs and it’s been a really useful resource. You can find repair guides for all kinds of things—including game consoles, automobiles, cameras, household items and more. They have a free repair manual app for iPhone and iPad so you can download guides right from your mobile device.
On ifixit.org, we’ll be writing about the problems caused by our throwaway culture. [...] We’re going to profile repair gurus and share why people fix things.
Today Apple announced a new initiative for textbooks on the iPad. If successful, this could transform the textbook publishing industry and radically improve the way classroom materials are developed, published and used in schools around the world—a classic example of disruptive technology. They are proposing that high school textbooks be sold through the App Store for $15 or less.
Apple also introduced a new free application—iBooks Author—for creating this content and publishing it to the iBooks Store for distribution, so the tools are there to start making this happen now. You can download it from the Mac App Store here.
There’s a 7-minute overview of the whole thing here, and the longer keynote presentation video can be seen here.
For a fascinating illustration of the trend towards mobile computing, check out the short video (28 sec) below showing the history of some popular computing platforms, starting in 1975 and running up to the present. It includes some oldies like the TRS-80, Amiga, Atari, NeXT and Apple II as well as the now familiar Windows PC, Mac, Android, iPhone and iPad.
He’s talking about mobile virtualization—accessing a PC remotely from another device, like a tablet or smartphone, for those situations that require a full Windows machine. This is impacting PC sales as many users are finding they can do a lot of what they want on the other devices with less reliance on the PC.
Between this new cloud streaming of computer applications and improved remote access apps, there’s less incentive to buy a new computer. Instead, you can either get more mileage out of an old computer or “rent” one that’s available in the cloud. And either of these can now be accessed by a tablet or smartphone that’s far cheaper than a new computer.
PC sales are down, while tablets and smartphones are gaining traction with both businesses and consumers. And smartphone sales have already surpassed PC sales.
A Forrester report this week predicts CIOs will pour $19 billion into Apple products in 2012—$10 billion in iPads, $9 billion in Macs. This is up from around $12 billion last year, where the split between iPads and Macs was roughly even.
I think a couple of things are happening here, neither of which is unexpected.
For one, the device operating system (Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, etc) is losing relevance. It still matters of course, especially among most big companies that are heavily invested in the Microsoft toolset, but the new direction is obvious and inevitable. With the ascendancy of mobility both in the workforce and society in general, applications and data are gradually being decoupled from the old desktop OS frameworks.
Also, the so-called ‘consumerization of IT’ is really about a backlash from users who are tired of working with tools that are often second-rate in quality and reliability—like some cheap PCs running Microsoft Windows, and Blackberry phones that have not kept up with Apple’s iPhone or the popular Android smartphones. Increasing numbers of employees get better results with their personal devices, and have begun to demand something better at work. With cheap commodity technology you usually get what you pay for.
The Apple assault on the corporate market has so far taken place without much formal Apple support, and probably without Apple itself understanding its full extent.
This is the interesting subplot. Beyond building in some management and security tools in their devices, it doesn’t appear that Apple has made much of a directed effort at the corporate market. I think some of this has been due to Steve Jobs’ insistence on secrecy with regard to product roadmaps, and I wonder if Apple under Tim Cook might be heading in a more collaborative direction with corporate customers. There’s a lot of opportunity for them there.
In 2006 Gilberto Kassab, mayor of São Paulo, Brazil passed the Clean City Law which banned “every billboard, poster, and bus ad in São Paulo.”
Anna Freitag, the marketing manager for Hewlett-Packard Brazil, said her company had never considered how inefficient billboards and the like were until they were illegal. “A billboard is media on the road,” she told the FT. “In rational purchases it means less effectiveness… as people are involved in so many things that it makes it difficult to execute the call to action.”
It’s like everyone is competing to see who can scream the loudest, or find the most clever way to say Click Here. I went to a business meeting a few years ago in Aspen and, in addition to the natural beauty of the place, one of the first things I noticed: no billboards, and very little outdoor advertising at all.
Estimates say some Americans now look at upwards of 4,000 ads per day. When is enough enough?
This is the main reason we don’t watch much TV at our house, and when we do everyone in the house knows to hit the mute button when a commercial comes on because most of it is vacuous or obnoxious. I don’t know how anyone tolerates it.
I wonder if any major US cities might ever try Mayor Kassab’s model. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the visual pollution just disappeared one day.
Joshua Kopstein calls out Congress in a Dec 16 post titled Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works — as important legislation (SOPA) is being considered that would impede free speech and give corporations the power to censor. The gist of Kopstein’s piece is that members of Congress not only don’t have a basic understanding of something as important as the Internet, they don’t seem to even be interested in understanding it.
When the security issue was brought up, Rep. Mel Watt of North Carolina seemed particularly comfortable about his own lack of understanding. Grinningly admitting “I’m not a nerd” before the committee, he nevertheless went on to dismiss without facts or justification the very evidence he didn’t understand and then downplay the need for a panel of experts.
We don’t need no stinkin’ experts!
One of the controversial methods proposed to counter online infringement of intellectual property is DNS filtering—a technical point, sure, but relatively easy to explain and understand its basic functions. We’re not dealing with quantum entanglement here.
We get it. You think you can be cute and old-fashioned by openly admitting that you don’t know what a DNS server is. You relish the opportunity to put on a half-cocked smile and ask to skip over the techno-jargon, conveniently masking your ignorance by making yourselves seem better aligned with the average American joe or jane — the “non-nerds” among us.
We don’t need Computer Science PhDs in public office in order to reach intelligent decisions about things like this. What we need is people who are willing to make an effort to understand a few underlying principles, and how they integrate to form one of the most essential pieces of infrastructure on the planet. Our elected representatives apparently can’t be bothered to learn anything or even listen to those who could simplify a few technical matters for them.
“But the chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.”
I’m reminded of a quote by Isaac Asimov that sums up a bit of what is wrong with our government and American culture in general:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”
Technology is no longer just the domain of a special class of citizens. It’s central to nearly everything we do now: commerce, entertainment, communications, education, innovation, community. My elementary school-age kids are part of a digitally-connected generation, and they need political representation that understands a little about the world they are growing up in.
