Katie Floyd themaccore.com
Don McAllister screencastsonline.com
David Sparks macsparky.com
Bart Busschots bartb.ie
Allison Sheridan podfeet.com
Katie & David are starting Mac Power Users Podcast at macpowerusers.com
MICROSOFT VS. APPLE PROFIT & PC SALES DROP VS. MAC SALES DROP
Microsoft reported its profit dropped 32%
Apple?s profit rose 15%
PC Sales dropped 16%
Macintosh sales dropped 3%
APPLE ADS:
Discussion of which ads we like, and which ads we think are perhaps misleading
HACKINTOSH
I recently got to spend some time with a Dell Mini 9 Netbook with OS X installed. I was not impressed. Maybe we could talk about the whole Netbook phenomena and our thoughts about Apple?s participation. Cough Tablet Cough
I went as far as getting an MSI Win to use as a proof of concept, installed OSX and promptly sold it 2 weeks later. So I can chime in on that!
Mac Insurance – safeware.com
WHERE ARE ALL THE MAC USERS?
Something that has been bugging me is where are all the Mac users? Last quarter 2.2 million macs sold yet MacHeist sold 88,000 bundles. A huge number but a tiny fraction of the total Mac population. Do ?normal? mac users buy online software? Why are podcast audiences in the single thousands when there are millions of Mac users? Just a thought!
MAC ROUNDTABLE PICKS OF THE WEEK
Al – Etherpad – etherpad.com
Don – Tweetie for the Mac! – atebits.com
Bart – DeskLickr – desklickr.isnot.tv
Katie – Dashboard Kick Start – alwintroost.nl
David – Livescribe Pulse Pen — livescribe.com
2 gig pen and book – $200
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Thanks guys a real interesting Roundtable this week.
I just had to comment on which I think is of course totally related.
Where are all the Mac Users, well I still feel that I am a recent switcher, even though now is was 18 months ago, so I think I have some knowledge on the, can we call it an issue, well anyway the users are of course out there and I think that you touched on the ?problem? when Bart mentioned the little black box sitting in the corner of the room. But also so called ?normal? people do have lives outside of sitting in front of the computer, and some people have other interests.
OK so lets take myself as an example, I have a family who I want to spend time with and they want (believe it or not want to spend time with me), I Referee Rugby Union matches and I love doing that whenever I get the opportunity, certainly Saturdays and Sundays very often are pretty much taken up, my wife (bless her) doesn?t particularly like the fact I spend Friday nights online, as it is the end of the week and sitting chilling out either listening to music, going out, or a bottle of wine in front of the TV, doesn?t leave a lot of time in the rest of the week for other stuff, what this does is eat into the time I have available to do the Mac interesting things we all love.
I am lucky as I work from home 2 days a week which means I can keep an eye on Twitter and my news feeds during slow periods.
I can also listen to podcasts at work, but no one else at work that I know listens to podcasts, and the only way that I can get them anywhere close to a podcast is via the BBC, I?ll ask them who is their favourite Radio presenter and get them using podcasts as a taster listening to a favourite they already know, from there I?ll ask them if they have found any other podcasts that they like, the normal response is, ?Yeah I saw a few that looked interesting, but I don?t have time to listen?, or ?Naw couldn?t be bothered to look? !!
So this all comes down to how they spend their time, and remember their interests means that they have their circle of friends who meet in the pub and don?t spend their time online.
Carry the statement ?I don?t have time? further, and all that interesting software that we love to mess with and experiment with again takes time to master and use, plus in a lot of cases they just don?t have the need, so as per podcasts new software falls to one side.
So are we all geeks, are we sad for spending some much time hugging our Mac?s, do we need to get out more, well I don?t think so, what I?ve said before and I?ll say it again, if I met any one of you or anyone else I tweet with or interact with in this world of Mac, well I feel that we could have a drink and a chat and a joke together, guess what we are a community.
Hope this makes some sort of sense and I?m quite happy to be corrected if you think I?m wrong, because that?s who we all are people who interact with each other 🙂
Gazmaz
Comment by Gazmaz — April 28, 2009 @ 2:32 am
Wow, I could not disagree more on the Macbook Air vs. Hackintosh. I have the Wind (10″ screen) and have no trouble typing, although I have used small PCs for years (Toshba Libretto, UMPCs, etc.)
The Wind has a lot of advantages besides size and price. Three USB ports vs one. It runs a LOT cooler, due to the Atom processor. It has an SD card slot.
For me, the biggest advantage is the battery. A non-removable battery is to me unacceptable in a computer, your battery life will decline over time. In my case, I can plug a 9 cell battery when I need great battery life, and a 3 cell when light weight and small size is most important.
Does it run OS X as well as my Macbook? No, but it runs almost everything (Spaces with many apps running) and does a lot more than my iPod Touch.
LOL, I am also a fan of Graffiti, and I had the same problem of it leaking into my “normal” writing.
Comment by Bob DeGrande — April 28, 2009 @ 8:37 am
[…] the weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in the Mac Roundtable #62. In it we discussed the recent quarterly reporting, hackintosh netbooks, the rumored Apple tablet, […]
Pingback by Mac Roundtable #62 is Up at MacSparky — April 28, 2009 @ 10:20 am
I really wanted a netbook.
Until I tried one out.
Bleech.
So I adopted my daughter’s 12″ Powerbook G4 1.5ghz. SuperDrive. Bluetooth. B/G Wireless. Full Leopard install.
A new battery and I’m running for hours with a beautiful easy to carry small form factor.
Some guy on eBay has 17 like the one I’m usiing right now. For about the same price as a Dell Mini + Leopard.
Comment by George — April 28, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
[…] that I keep a theft/damage insurance policy on my laptop. I also discussed it on this week’s Mac Roundtable. I have received several e-mails from readers asking where I got it. I’ve used Safeware.com […]
Pingback by Insuring Your Mac at MacSparky — April 30, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
Hackintosh/Netbook:
I am not sure, what to think. Having read that there are Netbooks with a 95% sized keyboard and given the fact that there were Mac notebooks of that size before and also given the fact that Mac sales are declining (yes, because of the economy, but a decline is a a decline and no company is happy with that), why not dip the foot into the water? Done right, it could generate a gigantic Halo effect that could lead many persons to a “big” Mac (I could not resist, sorry).
Where are all the Mac users?
Well, I think, you nailed it in this episode. If you buy a Mac, you are done. There is no need for anything else. You can surf the net, you can watch your pictures, you have a calendar, you can do mail and what not. And I think, this is all what many, many users do. Being the geek I am (and you are), I want to do more. I love MacHeist, MacZot and sites like that. I browse the web for new apps and I have fun to work with them. But I don’t think that the average user is this type of person.
Comment by Christian — May 3, 2009 @ 6:48 am
Why people are not subscribing to Mac podcasts? Most of them (especially the quality ones) are too long. 30 minutes should be the optimum; 45 to 60 minutes is too much. An hour and 15 minutes is way out of bounds; I usually delete one this long. Most info in Mac podcasts can be conveyed in half the time.
I’m a podcast fanatic and usually watch/listen at double speed on QuickTime (instead of using iTunes where you’re stuck with regular speed) just so I can get through them all. But like everyone else, I only have so much time, and the longer the podcast, the less likely it get listened to no matter how good the content.
Comment by GiacGara — May 5, 2009 @ 4:07 am
I love music but I need two hours of podcast a day. I listent to them while running, cleaning, walking,… I never use a device so much as I do with my shaffle.
Most of the people I know ignore the podcast existence and they prefer the “tele” (as Bart said). An as well as Allison said they do not care when talk to them about the greateness of its content.
Thank you very much for doing podcast (… I know you need it 🙂 )
Comment by Jose Lobato — May 6, 2009 @ 4:01 am
I am always fascinated by the discussion about netbooks and when will Apple release a netbook. I find that my iPhone does everything I would want a netbook to do.
An number of years ago Apple sold an e-mate that was marketed to schools. It was based on the Newton operating system. It was killed when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. The e-mate had the form factor similar to the Win netbooks of today. The question to ask is why was the product killed? and How does that influence the design of an Apple netbook of today? Have the requirements changed? or are they the same?
The e-mate had about the same form factor as netbooks today. It ran an operating system that was optimized for the function it needed to run. See the following site for full specs.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/messagepad/stats/emate_300.html
I think that answering the above questions will help explain Apples reluctance to move to a form factor larger than the iPhone. Add a keyboard to the iPod touch and you have a netbook as Tim mentioned in an earlier podcast. Apple is trying to move the market to the same point they were at when they killed the e-mate. The margin is simply too low and there are too few consumers. Apple failed with the e-mate even when targeting their largest market at the time – education. The e-mate was released at the time when educators were pushing a computer for every student. That is a potential market at the time of about 20 million computers.
A netbook today would have a hard time achieving that kind of sales volume as did the e-mate in it’s time.
The real issue in my mind is that computers have gotten too complicated. The feature set of software has become too rich and adds to the complexity of use It adds a steeper learning curve.
People just think they want a simple machine to access the net, do e-mail and and some light word processing. They soon miss the extra features of a laptop and give up the netbook. Ask Victor about his experiment with a netbook.
So how can Apple win in a market that is fickle and where there is little money to be had. The answer is in a iPod Touch on steroids. Slightly bigger screen and an input device that is better than the virtual keyboard and runs a scaled down version of OS X. Add flash capability and you have a product that will satisfy the fickle marketplace of today and will allow Apple a reasonable margin. When the netbook fad goes away the product will die a quiet death without bankrupting the company.
Comment by Joel Motylinski — May 6, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
I just have to comment on the netbook vs notebook debate as well. I think what the conversation is missing is that the vast majority of people using a netbook would not use it for real work. We wouldn’t go away for a weekend and take it expecting to have to monitor servers or moderate a forum someplace. We would take it so that we can go away for the weekend, sit by the pool, get drunk, and type random messages to our facebook friends.
It’s a toy. Like the iPhone is a toy. Granted it’s extremely powerful, exceptionally well implemented, and capable of being used for so much more, but for the majority of people it is a toy. We delude ourselves because we can check our work email, and read ebooks. Believe me I am guilty. Most of us use Facebook and Twitter not for maintaining business contacts, but for contacting friends and family and finding out interesting things that we may want to pretend to know about later. I have to stress again. This is for most people, not the power users. Even the people that spend all day on facebook and twitter, probably don’t use it for anything other than liveblogging. That’s the reason twitter has such a low retention rate and facebook is so high. That behavior is ignored in twitter and rewarded in facebook.
However, this is unreflecting herd that thinks we need a netbook. We want a bigger screen so facebook and lolcats show up bigger and easier to turn and show a friend accross the room. We want a real keyboard instead of an onscreen one. Yes if we got exactly what we asked for, we would have a piece of junk running OSX and everything would be half offscreen. I’m not usually a proponent of the whole tell me what I really want regadless of what I think I want, but in this case I’m happy they haven’t caved. People like myself, asking for the netbook with OSX, will ruin the traction Apple has achieved with the amazing iPhone implementation. Blah, I’m into rambling mode now so I’ll spare everyone else.
Comment by Nyte — May 7, 2009 @ 10:14 am
[?] the weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in the Mac Roundtable #62. In it we discussed the recent quarterly reporting, hackintosh netbooks, the rumored Apple tablet, [?]
Comment by eve isk — May 19, 2009 @ 12:06 am
Why people are not subscribing to Mac podcasts? Most of them (especially the quality ones) are too long. 30 minutes should be the optimum; 45 to 60 minutes is too much. An hour and 15 minutes is way out of bounds; I usually delete one this long. Most info in Mac podcasts can be conveyed in half the time.
I?m a podcast fanatic and usually watch/listen at double speed on QuickTime (instead of using iTunes where you?re stuck with regular speed) just so I can get through them all. But like everyone else, I only have so much time, and the longer the podcast, the less likely it get listened to no matter how good the content.
Comment by tibia gold — May 21, 2009 @ 12:06 am