Are people changing from windows to MAC ~ Random Tech Stuff

In early 2007, I wrote that a growing number of Windows users were considering switching to Apple’s Macintosh platform.

I called this “the Macintosh tide” and predicted then that it would swell quickly (see www.chron.com/macstampede).

Indeed, I think you can say that the tide came in. By some estimations, Apple’s market share has grown from the midsingle digits to close to 10 percent in that time, and that growth likely came from the legion of Windows users. After all, there aren’t that many computer neophytes left.

But now I’m wondering if we’re past high tide. For a variety of reasons, the pace and intensity of Windows-to-Mac switching may be starting to ebb.

Don’t get me wrong. There are still a lot of people out there interested in making the leap. During Wednesday night’s episode of Technology Bytes, the computer help call-in show I co-host, we took a call from someone interested in buying his wife a new notebook computer, and he was eyeing a 17-inch MacBook Pro with a price tag of more than $3,000. She was a Windows user, studying accounting at a local college, and was planning to use Parallels Desktop software to run Windows on that Mac.

Four of the five co-hosts on the show use Macs, including me, but all of us suggested the caller’s wife would be better off with a much-less-expensive PC. She already had the software she needed, doesn’t know the Mac OS and isn’t particularly computer-savvy. Using virtualization to run basic productivity apps would have added a layer of complexity she didn’t need, as well as greatly increasing the cost. We suggested she buy a Windows-based notebook at about a fourth of the price and be done with it.

This is a good example of the problem Apple is starting to face in growing its share of the market by winning over Windows users. There are a growing number of factors at play:

• The economy. It’s true that, even in tough times, those who still have money to buy luxury goods will do so, but those folks are fewer and farther between. Despite the legion of die-hards who’ll tell you that Macs are a better value than PCs because of quality, security and feature set, they have a much higher out-of-pocket cost.

You still must have the $2,000 to get a 15-inch MacBook Pro if you want one. But if you only have $800 to spend, you can find a pretty powerful 15-inch Windows notebook. If Apple wants to continue its growth, it’s going to have to lower prices. I still hear from Windows users interested in switching, but more and more, they indicate they’ve decided not to do so because of the cost.

• The cool factor. No one does interesting design or innovates on features like Apple, but it’s my impression that the company’s design juggernaut has stalled in the last year. It had been pumping out interesting and market-changing products, but I haven’t seen anything since the MacBook Air that’s impressed me.

The new MacBooks were impressive, but they didn’t knock it out of the park for me.

New iMacs and a rumored revamped Mac Mini haven’t materialized. The tech universe evolves quickly, but in terms of its Macs, Apple seems to be taking a breather.

• The hype. Apple’s a master at getting others to do promotion on its behalf. The fanboy nation is a powerful force — watch for its presence to manifest itself in the comments under the online version of this column at chron.com — and it saves Apple a bundle in marketing costs.

But at the moment, Microsoft is winning the buzz contest because of the impending launch of Windows 7. With the release of the public beta, the gang in Redmond has tech pundits and bloggers writing about it on a regular basis — including me.

Apple, of course, is working on an update of its own operating system, but it doesn’t do public betas. So, while Snow Leopard is expected to have some impressive, mostly under-the-hood improvements, it doesn’t have much excitement outside of the traditional Apple user base.

Microsoft’s edge here comes from the fact that Windows Vista was perceived as such a dog, and Windows 7 is getting much better reviews. We’ll see in the end if Win7 lives up to the hype generated by its early release.

If the Macintosh tide is indeed ebbing, we should start to see it with Apple’s next quarterly earnings report.

The company did remarkably well at the end of 2008, but it warned that things would be tougher going forward. I think Apple’s leadership also suspects that the tide of Windows switchers may be receding for a while.

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