According to box sales monitor PC Data, Apple Computer Corp’s share of the retail and mail order market for desktop computers has climbed to 9.4% from a six-month low of 6.6 in February. The findings inspired celebration at Apple evangelist site Mac OS Rumors (http://www.macosrumors.com), but Stephen Baker, senior analyst with PC Data, says there’s nothing to get excited about. Apple on its own did less than Mac OS did last year, he explains. The departure of clones from the Macintosh market appears to have depleted the platform’s overall retail share, even as Apple surges back. I wouldn’t consider it positive, says Baker, admitting that he has never been much of a Macintosh fan. As for Apple’s much-heralded return to the consumer space, Baker is dismissive of its chances: The iMac will do well at the beginning, however compared to what you can get in a Wintel box at the same price, it’s not good value, he says. They won’t be able to sell it to anyone who is wavering. Not surprisingly, Apple’s Russell Brady disagrees with Baker on each point. Clones didn’t grow the market as hoped; instead, by reabsorbing that market, Apple has returned to strength. What Apple tried to do last year was to stabilize the Macintosh ecosystem and get back to viability and profitability, he explains. As for what Baker perceived as the iMac’s comparatively poor value, Brady says: That’s a pretty PC-centric view. Some analysts seem to take a lowest-common-denominator view of consumers, as if all buyers ever did was ask ‘What can you fit in the box for $999?’, as if they don’t even consider having to add a $300 monitor on top of that. By contrast Brady claims Apple tried to think of everything consumers might need and to package it in one consumer-friendly box. But the real Wintel-killer, he says, is the iMac’s PowerPC heart. With the kind of underpowered processor you get in the cheap Wintel boxes, you won’t be able to run the applications you want in only a couple of years, he says. By contrast the iMac was designed for a long effective life: We’ve got a processor in there that outperforms a 400MHz Pentium II. Ah, religious wars: ain’t just like old times?
