Anybody Else Thinking About Just Skipping Leopard?

In article <dfmanno->, D.F.
Manno <> wrote:

> > > I suspect nospam's 80% figure is a little high, but it is certainly
> > > heading that way.
> >
> > i'd say it's low, plus powerpc users are probably considering a new mac
> > anyway.
>
> Well, yeah, we're more or less being forced to, now that the OS has
> reached the end of the line for them.

even if snow leopard supported powerpc, people would be considering
upgrading.

In article <1j26n9q.1ikrusm1dn3qm1N%>, David
Empson <> wrote:

> > > Apple claim to have had about 20 million active users of Mac OS X as at
> > > the start of 2006 (PowerPC only) - see the graph from the WWDC keynote.
> > >
> > > Since then, they've sold more than 30 million Intel Macs (going from my
> > > memory of reported sales). Some of the PowerPC Macs will have been
> > > retired or died, so the PowerPC absolute figure will be slowly
> > > declining.
> >
> > they also said 25 million mac os x users at wwdc 2009.
>
> I didn't notice anything specifically mentioning the number of Mac OS X
> users in the keynote. Do you have a reference?

wwdc 2009 keynote starting at 2:40. 25 million 'actual active users',
not shipments, through 2007. the next graph at 3:15 shows active os x
users through 2009 and it's 75 million. since there are 40 million
iphones and ipod touches, that leaves 35 million active mac os x users,
not 25 million as i initially said.

you said there were 20 million powerpc macs in 2006, so assuming all of
those are still in use (which they aren't), there are 64% intel macs
(35/(35+20). many of those powerpc macs have been replaced with intel
macs, so 80% is not an unreasonable number. unfortunately, i don't
recall where i saw the 80% figure.

nospam wrote:
> In article <1j26n9q.1ikrusm1dn3qm1N%>, David
> Empson <> wrote:
>
>>>> Apple claim to have had about 20 million active users of Mac OS X as at
>>>> the start of 2006 (PowerPC only) - see the graph from the WWDC keynote.
>>>>
>>>> Since then, they've sold more than 30 million Intel Macs (going from my
>>>> memory of reported sales). Some of the PowerPC Macs will have been
>>>> retired or died, so the PowerPC absolute figure will be slowly
>>>> declining.
>>> they also said 25 million mac os x users at wwdc 2009.
>> I didn't notice anything specifically mentioning the number of Mac OS X
>> users in the keynote. Do you have a reference?
>
> wwdc 2009 keynote starting at 2:40. 25 million 'actual active users',
> not shipments, through 2007. the next graph at 3:15 shows active os x
> users through 2009 and it's 75 million. since there are 40 million
> iphones and ipod touches, that leaves 35 million active mac os x users,
> not 25 million as i initially said.
>
> you said there were 20 million powerpc macs in 2006, so assuming all of
> those are still in use (which they aren't), there are 64% intel macs
> (35/(35+20). many of those powerpc macs have been replaced with intel
> macs, so 80% is not an unreasonable number. unfortunately, i don't
> recall where i saw the 80% figure.

Good info, both of youse guys.

Now, what about guys like me, who have an 8500, a G3, 4, and 5 sitting
around, but these get booted once a year or so....And what does my Apple
TV run?

--
John McWilliams

In article <h2g75t$827$>, John McWilliams
<> wrote:

> Now, what about guys like me, who have an 8500, a G3, 4, and 5 sitting
> around, but these get booted once a year or so...

those would not be classified as 'active' and if you only boot them
once a year, would you actually have considered paying to upgrade them
to snow leopard if it were possible?

> .And what does my Apple
> TV run?

os x, but i doubt they sell that many to make much of a difference in
the numbers.

J.J. O'Shea wrote:

> Frankly, the only people around here who care about the demo version of iWork
> are would-be Pages and Keynote users, most of whom want me to tell them how
> to work the 'trick' that will unlock the demo version.


One of the recent Apple ads on TV mentioned that when you buy a MAC, you
don't have to spend hours cleaning up tonnes of demo versions of various
software.

When I bought my recent macpro, there was a rebate on buying iwork when
you buy a new computer. But there was no demo on it.

When I bought my laptop, I was offered the same rebate, but declined
since I already have iwork.

Remember that those demo versions are really just paid advertising. And
you can go to the Apple web site to find plenty of demo versions of
games etc if you want.

>> Now, what about guys like me, who have an 8500, a G3, 4, and 5 sitting
>> around, but these get booted once a year or so...

My guess is that Apple uses the "software update" functionality of OS-X
to track active users since that utility "phones home" at regular intervals.

If you are on Classic, the OS doesn't do that and Apple wouldn't know
about you.

The information on active users is important to Apple in terms of
knowing whether to continue to issue patches for verstion combinations
of OS/hardware.


For instance, if it sees a LOT of people still on Tiger on a G3, it will
make sure that Itunes updates will be avaialble for that combination and
not be compiled with switches that make Itunes no longer compatible with
a G3. It did that for Iwork and Ilife which now require more modern
processor and I suspect the next Iwork/Ilife might be Intel only because
they will require features in Leopard or perhaps even Snow leopard.

nospam <> wrote:

> In article <1j26n9q.1ikrusm1dn3qm1N%>, David
> Empson <> wrote:
>
> > > > Apple claim to have had about 20 million active users of Mac OS X as at
> > > > the start of 2006 (PowerPC only) - see the graph from the WWDC keynote.
> > > >
> > > > Since then, they've sold more than 30 million Intel Macs (going from my
> > > > memory of reported sales). Some of the PowerPC Macs will have been
> > > > retired or died, so the PowerPC absolute figure will be slowly
> > > > declining.
> > >
> > > they also said 25 million mac os x users at wwdc 2009.
> >
> > I didn't notice anything specifically mentioning the number of Mac OS X
> > users in the keynote. Do you have a reference?
>
> wwdc 2009 keynote starting at 2:40. 25 million 'actual active users',
> not shipments, through 2007.

So that was a historic figure, not a current one.

> the next graph at 3:15 shows active os x users through 2009 and it's 75
> million. since there are 40 million iphones and ipod touches, that leaves
> 35 million active mac os x users, not 25 million as i initially said.
>
> you said there were 20 million powerpc macs in 2006, so assuming all of
> those are still in use (which they aren't), there are 64% intel macs
> (35/(35+20).

There aren't 35 million Intel Macs. Apple has only sold 25 million (up
to March 2009 - we don't know figures for the current quarter yet, but
it is probably in the order of 2 million).

This means that Apple's count of "active" Mac OS X users must be
including PowerPC Macs which are still in active use.

If we take your 35 million figure total as accurate, then that means
there must be at least 10 million active PowerPC Macs to make up the 35
million total, and (25/(25+10)) = 71%.

This ignores two issues:

- Some of the 40 million iPod Touches and iPhones will no longer be
"active". If so, the number of "active" Macs will be higher, and as the
number of Intel Macs is well known, the additional Macs must be PowerPC.

- Some of the 25 million Intel Macs will no longer be "active". That
means even more PowerPC Macs in active use.

Therefore the percentage of active Intel Macs is likely to be somewhat
lower than 71%.

It is also reasonably certain that the number of Intel Macs is greater
than the number of PowerPC Macs (we've crossed the 50% point).

Old timers with big collections of computers see a greater proportion of
PowerPC. (I'm at 67% Intel, not counting my occasionally used PowerMac
8600 running Mac OS 9.)

But really, we're arguing over minor points here. The important ones:

1. Isn't it great how rapidly the Mac OS X market is growing.

2. PowerPC Mac users should be increasingly concerned about their
dwindling share of the Mac market, but I don't think it is necessary to
panic yet. If you want to run new software you will need to get an Intel
Mac at some point.

3. From the figures in my previous post, Mac OS X 10.4 is a similarly
small percentage of the Mac market, and 10.5 and later will keep growing
due to new sales. Mac OS X 10.4 users are therefore increasingly in a
position of needing to upgrade either their computer or operating system
in order to run new software.

It wouldn't surprise me if all 10.4 support from Apple (e.g. iTunes,
QuickTime and iWork) is gone within a year of Snow Leopard's release,
and third party support will also be drying up.

--
David Empson

In article <0004e5b4$0$2384$>, JF Mezei
<> wrote:

> >> Now, what about guys like me, who have an 8500, a G3, 4, and 5 sitting
> >> around, but these get booted once a year or so...
>
> My guess is that Apple uses the "software update" functionality of OS-X
> to track active users since that utility "phones home" at regular intervals.
>
> If you are on Classic, the OS doesn't do that and Apple wouldn't know
> about you.

classic also had an auto-update mechanism so it too 'phones home', and
that's nothing more than reporting what version is on the computer so
apple knows what updates to offer.

In article <1j27z3r.1mjr8y31pfan0iN%>, David
Empson <> wrote:

> But really, we're arguing over minor points here. The important ones:

true.

> 1. Isn't it great how rapidly the Mac OS X market is growing.

yes

> 2. PowerPC Mac users should be increasingly concerned about their
> dwindling share of the Mac market, but I don't think it is necessary to
> panic yet. If you want to run new software you will need to get an Intel
> Mac at some point.

it's not really any different than when os x itself came out and
support for anything before the g3 was dropped. although it was
possible to run os x on a powerpc 604, it was incredibly slow and more
of a curiosity than anything usable. support for g3 was dropped a few
years later. think of the power pc chips as just another old
processor.

> 3. From the figures in my previous post, Mac OS X 10.4 is a similarly
> small percentage of the Mac market, and 10.5 and later will keep growing
> due to new sales. Mac OS X 10.4 users are therefore increasingly in a
> position of needing to upgrade either their computer or operating system
> in order to run new software.

right, and as i said they're likely to be wanting a faster computer
anyway.

> It wouldn't surprise me if all 10.4 support from Apple (e.g. iTunes,
> QuickTime and iWork) is gone within a year of Snow Leopard's release,
> and third party support will also be drying up.

usually apple supports one version back, so 10.4 support will probably
be gone except for maybe a major security update while 10.5 will get
security updates for a while.

nospam wrote:
> even if snow leopard supported powerpc, people would be considering
> upgrading.

Not everyone has money to toss out that easily.

I got 10.1 because I bought a G3 Mac on eBay for parts
that turned out to work when received. I bought
10.3 (for the same Mac) when I came into some
unexpected money. And I got 10.4 when the second
G3 started getting flaky and I spent less than
a hundred for a G4 eMac.

--
Wes Groleau

Film Review: El violin
http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/russell?itemid=1428