Stan's List

The Westey Argus attributes the increase to the fact Macs can also run Windoze, and the perception Macs are generally free from threat of attack. Around 85% of the class of 2011 purchased Macs, which a 55% increase over the freshmen class of last you. More …

Net Applications reports that the combined share of PPC Mac (3.38 percent) and Intel Mac (3.23) now stands at 6.61 percent. iPhone, which uses Safari, has a market share of 0 .7.

SeekingAlpha reports that RBC Capital Markets, an international corporate and investment bank, is predicting 2 million in Mac sales due to the back to school quarter. More …

The iPhone is having it influence. It is one thing to have the advance publicity and hype surrounding the release of the iPhone. eMediaWire is reporting a surge in Apple laptop sales, close to what was reported before. More …

There is not much evidence in the second article tying the iPhone to the increased laptop sales. At this point who is to say this isn’t also evidence of school year purchases? Laptops are becoming the computer of choice for schools, whether secondary school or higher education (not counting Maine)

Senior Lead Program Manager on Windows Live Hotmail, Omar Shahine, did have this to say about Apple:

I think Apple has already become the best PC OEM … Apple somehow manages to place all the required drivers on a single CD [Boot Camp] you can burn yourself with a single installer. Why can’t anyone else [Ed—Microsoft?] do this is beyond me.

Apple posted a Quick Tip of the Week series, in the form of short videos. While the tips are for small businesses, anyone should not hesitate. The links are at the bottom of the TV like screen. There are eleven already posted:

* No More Squinting
* Keynote at a Distance
* Snapshots of Your Screen
* Applications All Together
* That Perfect Word
* Setting Favorite Fonts
* Customizing Finder
* View Multiple Inspectors
* Easily Create PDF’s
* Presentations Uninterrupted
* Keyboard Shortcuts

With all the attention on the iPhone, and previously the iPod, there was thought Apple might consider getting out of the computer business. The truth is more likely the halo effect and Apple making the Mac an excellent bargain, comparatively. Just get the consumer to think about it. The Associated Press, carried by The Arizona Republic, reports on how impressed the market is about the Mac’s contribution to the bottom line. More …

USA Today reports that Mac market share in the US, as of May 2007, has reached 7.6%, a significant difference from the 3.2% Apple achieved with the Mac in May 2004. More …

Statistics published by web-metrics company, Net Applications, show that the Mac’s share of online users continues to rise rapidly. With 3.95 percent of surfers running OS X PPC and 2.51 percent on OS X Intel, nearly 6.5 percent. More …

The Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro glances at three Office suites for Mac OS X: Office 2008, NeoOffice, and Apple’s iWork. Often there has been rumors that iWork would someday include a spreadsheet. This would elevate iWork equal or above the open source alternatives. iWork does include Keynote. The problem with OpenOffice is that it requires use of XII, the UNIX emulator. If NeoOffice has true Office 2007 XML conversion, then it will be iWork’s only competition. More …

Computerworld opines that Apple has become smarter about how it competes with Microsoft on several fronts. “What’s especially intriguing to me is that many IT managers have reported that execs of all stripes are switching to the Mac at their companies …” More …

Wired News, in its Cult of Mac column, reports that the world may be noticing something most Mac users have realized for most of their Mac experience.. Wired has links to articles which show how sudden this change in opinion has been, under the following captions:

Macs will save you money
Macs are good for business
Less is more
Closed is good
Apple is the darling of Wall Street
Macs can run more applications
More …

I have sold 4 Macs over the last 15 years, always for more than it would cost for a new equivalent PC. All my Macs were “open”. MY first Mac, a IIsi, had a SE30 compatible bus slot in which I put a Applied Engineering FPU riser card that also had a right angle bus slot , to which was fitted a Micron 24 bit video card providing millions of colors long before that was popular (Sony 1304 25 dpi 24 inch monitor). I sold one of my children for scientific experiments. I was the first on my block to swap out the crystal to bump it to 25 MHz. Every Mac thereafter I modified. I could’ve run LinuxPPC, BeOS or Mac OS. Now you can run anything x86 on your Intel Mac, if not in a virtual environment. I have always bought 3rd-party hard drives, mice, and optical disc drives for a lot less. Now Intel Macs can swap almost anything.