“In one of the strangest conjunctions of bad luck in the history of high tech, one of the world’s largest industries — personal computers — suddenly seems up for grabs,” Michael S. Malone writes for ABC News.
Malone writes, “Let’s go back a year. At that time, PCs seemed the most stable of industries. It was filled with giants, all of them lumbering pleasantly along, squeezing profits that remained in an increasingly commodified marketplace.”
“On the Windows side, the big guns — Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony et al — were jostling around, competing against each other, picking up or losing a percentage of market share in desktops, and waiting for Microsoft to finally deliver Vista and make the game exciting again,” Malone writes. “The whole ‘Wintel’ world had grown stale and unimaginative.”
“Meanwhile, on the other side of the Great Divide, Apple continued its long turnaround under Steve Jobs, consistently earning good press for quality new models,” Malone writes. “Indeed, Apple was generating the only real excitement in the entire industry: The penumbra of excitement surrounding the iPod was converting a growing number of bored Windows users to switch to the Mac. Still, these converts represented only a few percentage points in market share shift.”
“Looking back, everything suddenly changed with Apple’s announcement that, 20 years late, it would finally begin offering Macintoshes with Intel microprocessors. It was an important announcement, but certainly not as earthshaking as it would have been in 1986,” Malone writes. “Yet the decision seemed to bring some kind of closure on the entire PC industry — and in the process created some kind of strange attractor that has sewn chaos in the personal computing world ever since. Don’t ask me why — I’m just reporting what has been unmistakable ever since.”
MacDailyNews Take: The switch to Intel wasn’t “20 years late,” it just took Intel 20 years to consistently make better processors than Apple was using and also have the best roadmap going forward.
Malone covers some of “Wintel’s” recent woes and writes, “Surveying the rubble of what was just a few months ago a giant, thriving and thoroughly predictable industry, there is only one headquarters left standing. Apple Computer.”
Malone asks, “Who’d have predicted that a few years ago?”
MacDailyNews Note: Us.
Malone continues, “Now, powered at last by the right chip, with a superior operating system that won’t be challenged anytime soon as well as elegant product designs and legions of potential customers ready to abandon their dreary Windows machines, Apple seems poised to recapture vast chunks of the PC business, perhaps even regaining the preeminence it lost in the late 1980s.”
MacDailyNews Take: Malone, regrettably, then veers off into the whole myth that “iPod sales are slowing which threatens Apple’s cash flow.” It’s a pure load and royally screws the end of what was pretty good article. Too bad.
iPod unit sales:
• Q4 03: 336,000
• Q1 04: 733,000 (holiday quarter)
• Q2 04: 807,000
• Q3 04: 860,000
• Q4 04: 2,016,000
• Q1 05: 4,580,000 (holiday quarter)
• Q2 05: 5,311,000
• Q3 05: 6,155,000
• Q4 05: 6,451,000
• Q1 06: 14,043,000 (holiday quarter)
• Q2 06: 8,526,000
• Q3 06: 8,111,000
During no quarter have year-over-year iPod sales declined. And Christmas comes but once a year. Please read the related article below for more about why iPod sales are not slowing.
As for the rest of Malone’s article, it’s nice to see the MSM finally starting to catch up.
As we wrote in a MacDailyNews Take on May 9, 2005:”The war isn’t over until there’s a surrender. Apple’s still here and the Mac platform is growing and advancing, not shrinking and retreating. As long as Apple makes Macs, as Yogi said, ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over.’ PCs are turned over every few years; all it would take is for the average user to choose a Mac for their next computer and things would quickly change drastically. With Windows in disarray and Longhorn looking more like Stillborn, right now is Apple’s best time to strike and strike hard.”
Our own SteveJack wrote on June 8, 2005, shortly after Apple announced the Intel transition, “Oh, so one could buy a Mac and run both Windows and Mac OS X or buy a Dell and only be able to run Windows. Muahahahahah! So, can anyone explain why would anyone in their right mind would buy a Dell or any other Wintel box assembler’s kit again? This is shaping up to become a “license Mac OS X or die” problem for the Dells of the world. But, what if Steve Jobs doesn’t feel like licensing Mac OS X? Checkmate. Is it too early to suggest that Michael Dell shut down the company and give the money back to shareholders? Wait until Wall Street figures this one out.”
And again, SteveJack wrote on December 28, 2005, “Could Steve Jobs be preparing to drop just such a bomb on the Windows box assemblers at Macworld Expo or sometime in 2006? Would he first drop just a moderately destructive atomic bomb on the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Gateway, etc., leaving out the ‘Windows apps on Mac without Windows’ threat to Microsoft? Or could Jobs actually be boldly planning to drop the industry-devastating hydrogen bomb on both the Windows box assemblers and Microsoft all in one fell swoop? If a Mac could run Mac OS X and Windows, who would buy a Dell, HP, etc.? If a Mac could run Mac OS X and Windows applications without Windows, who would buy a Dell or a copy of Windows from Microsoft? And what would Microsoft be able to do about it? Drop Internet Explorer for Mac (LOL)? Drop Office for Mac? Big deal, we’ll run the Windows versions on our Macs then, if need be. Is this why Jobs has been building a world-class library of Mac-only software titles for years? Does Jobs still harbor the desire to take back the personal computer industry from Microsoft? Could that be the real reason why Jobs is undertaking the massive switch to Intel-based Macs? Or do you really think the switch to Intel-based Macs is just to get better performance per watt CPUs for Apple iBooks and PowerBooks?”
Then, on the day that Apple released Boot Camp, April 05, 2006, we wrote in our MacDailyNews Take, “Welcome to ‘Embrace and extinguish,’ Apple-style. The war ain’t over, folks. It never was. Now, a new chapter begins and today’s shot will be heard around the world! Don’t you just love the smell of napalm in the morning? This doesn’t hurt Microsoft (yet), but it absolutely puts Dell, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, etc. into a world of pain… As Windows-only users buy Macs that will provide them their “comfort” of Windows, they will experience Mac OS X and use it for the excellent Mac-only applications. We all know what happens when people are given the chance to really use Macs for longer than five minutes, they usually want to buy a Mac. These new Apple Mac hardware users will start out using Windows more than Mac OS X and end up using Mac OS X exclusively. Watch and see.”
Full article here.
Related article:
The Observer’s iPod FUD: Apple iPod is ‘wilting away before our eyes’ – September 10, 2006
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Zune is poised to conquer UPS drivers and the lucrative blind and deaf mental patient market.
Sanity check: Who is the biggest shareholder of ABC’s parent company?
Would MDN just let me read the article without any personal opinions, red herrings, or just over the top smugness. It makes the articles impossible to read and form my own opinion.
As an Apple lover, the distractions go against every Apple design sensibility they’ve got.
I find it just as offensive as MDN’s witch hunt for FUD.
err Next ran on Intel processors to… it has little to do with the silicone… its the software stupid!
Mike Melon-head, yeah I remember him! He is the PC bigot who wrote dooms and grooms about Apple in the late ’80 and early ’90. He still writes for food? He is on Apple side now? What gives? He is a M$ Windows troll shit head. Retarded!
Re art_vandelay… err then go to the source… very easy to do you know… move your mouse then click on Full article here… maybe stay there
art_vandelay,
You’re a fool. Go read MacNN or something like it – you’ll be asleep in five minutes.
MDN: never ever stop what you’re doing, please!
MacDailyNews Note: Us.
LOL! Yes, really, LOL!
MDN, is the glass half empty? Half full?
Only you can have a sour take on one of the world’s biggest media outlets singing praises (…..vast chunks of the PC market).
Boy, you must be a real pain in the ass around the house.
Kinda anal, eh?
art_vandelay,
Look at what MDN wrote and when they wrote it.
Tell me they weren’t/aren’t right about what’s happening with Apple Macs.
I can see valuable info and perspective. Unlike art_vandelay.
Malone blew a good article with bad information and bad journalism at the end.
Keep up the good work, MDN.
Don’t let art_v. get you down.
It’s the superior OS which lends to ZERO viruses and a much more stable, user-friendly experience that is getting people to switch – not an Intel chip.
MDN fscking rules.
Yeah art_vandelay, shut up.
“”The whole ‘Wintel’ world had grown stale and unimaginative.” Huh what? The Wintel world has ALWAYS been “…stale and unimaginative”.
And let’s please not start on the OOOOO Goody, Macs use Intel now trip. Personally I’m pretty much past it, but I don’t believe that using the Intel chip, in and of itself, did didley-squat for Mac sales. Apple did what it needed to do for long term techno growth.
When you use the word ‘penumbra’ you know these boys are serious. KISS
“Sanity check: Who is the biggest shareholder of ABC’s parent company?”
Ooo, Ooo, I know that one! Disney.
er, I mean Apple. Same dif right.
Sorry, archidude, but the biggest shareholder of ABC’s parent company is Steve Jobs.
Although Jobs is not Apple’s biggest shareholder.
Right you are!
Ampar….your posts consistently make me laugh. Funny writing…you have a great sense of humor. Consider me a fan.
This article is just as much an indictment of IBM.
The big shakeup will happen when Apple licenses iTV technology for inclusion in TV sets.
It’s no coincidence that 70% of U.S. car models have an option for a iPod dock connector.
And if TVs are what people drive in the living room….iTV today, built-in iTV on all HDTV sets in the future!
Thanks, pr!
But I must thank Microsoft and other Apple competitors for making it so damn easy to make fun of them. For example, Peter Boyle as Steve Ballmer in a dancing musical called <b>”Innovations!”<b> could sweep the Tony Awards.
It’s like they are trying to copy Apple’s style and success on a photocopier with no toner. And the photocopier actually turns out to be a pastrami sandwich with a lid made of rye. Gates keeps licking his fingers and kicking the “copier.”
Fish in a barrel?
‘During no quarter have year-over-year iPod sales declined
MDN, you really are ignorant… Yes, the above statement is correct.. BUT the last 2 quarters are the ONLY 2 quarters where iPod sales have declined from the previous quarter since 2001. That means growth is slowing..
Let me spell it out for you using the numbers you supplied:
Pod unit sales:
• Q4 03: 336,000 UP
• Q1 04: 733,000 (holiday quarter)UP
• Q2 04: 807,000UP
• Q3 04: 860,000UP
• Q4 04: 2,016,000UP
• Q1 05: 4,580,000 (holiday quarter)UP
• Q2 05: 5,311,000UP
• Q3 05: 6,155,000UP
• Q4 05: 6,451,000UP
• Q1 06: 14,043,000 (holiday quarter)UP
• Q2 06: 8,526,000DOWN
• Q3 06: 8,111,000DOWN
And yes, Sales still went up after the holiday quarter in prior years, so essentially these numbers mean that growth is slowing…
OF course, the refreshed line up could still change all that, but I think Apple is gonna have a hard time beating 14m this Christmas.
I like how MDN left out the part with the auther scratches Apple. Even though I believe he is wrong, it’s still funny. The “lack of money” to fund the come back of the computer? Last time I checked, I think about $8 billion is enough to sustain that. Other than the fact the iPod sales aren’t off, and I be the iPod sales and computer sales (both desktop and portable) will all be record years. If not this quarter, then for sure Q1 (calendar Q4).
It’s a big freak’n market out there. If Apple keeps producing things that people want to buy and play with then it’s really hard to pick where this is all gonna top out, maybe never…..
Hey cheeky, get a clue. You dont look at numbers in sequential quarters, you compare by looking at the number year over year. Allow me to hold your hand and show you the same stuff you just showed, but how a real analyst looks at it.
• Q4 03: 336,000
• Q4 04: 2,016,000 UP from previous Q4
• Q4 05: 6,451,000 UP from previous Q4
• Q1 04: 733,000 (holiday quarter)
• Q1 05: 4,580,000 (holiday quarter)UP from previous Q1
• Q1 06: 14,043,000 (holiday quarter)UP from previous Q1
• Q2 04: 807,000
• Q2 05: 5,311,000 UP from previous Q2
• Q2 06: 8,526,000 NOT DOWN, UP from previous Q2
• Q3 04: 860,000
• Q3 05: 6,155,000 UP from previous Q3
• Q3 06: 8,111,000 NOT DOWN, UP from previous Q3
Malone asks, “Who’d have predicted that a few years ago?”
MacDailyNews Note: Us.
Oh, shit, that’s so true it’s funny!
Cheeky,
macromancer is right.
You don’t compare Apples to Dells or oranges.
Pleese don’t compliment Ampar. You can feel his head swelling from here. He is funny though.
Macromancer,
No need to hold my hand, I understand that YOY sales are up which I said MDN is correct about. However, Before the last two quarters, Apple had 17 quarters in a row (since 2001)which were not only up YOY but also quarter to quarter.. The fact that there have been two sequential decreasing quarters in a row means that growth (not sales) is slowing compared to previous years which could mean that Apple may be nearing a saturation point..
When you reach “market saturation” the only way to maintain your numbers is to consistently deliver new features and models to keep up sales momentum. Apple’s last generation iPods (video and nano) account for almost half of the 60 million iPods ever sold. As much as I like the new iPod line-up, I have my doubts that there are enough must-have new features to force existing owners of the 5th gen iPod and 1st gen nano to upgrade. We will see this December quarter… . I will be very impressed if Apple beats 14 million.
if you look at the rate of growth on a like for like quarter then it is slowing and slowing substantially;
• Q4 03: 336,000
• Q1 04: 733,000 (holiday quarter)
• Q2 04: 807,000
• Q3 04: 860,000
• Q4 04: 2,016,000
• Q1 05: 4,580,000 (holiday quarter)
• Q2 05: 5,311,000
• Q3 05: 6,155,000
• Q4 05: 6,451,000
• Q1 06: 14,043,000 (holiday quarter)
• Q2 06: 8,526,000
• Q3 06: 8,111,000
Q1 733k to 4.5M = 8x. 4.5M to 14M = 3x
Q2 807k to 5.3M = 7x. 5.3M to 8.5M = 1.5x
Q3 860k to 6.1M = 7x. 6.1M to 8.1M = 1.3x
see the trend when you compare 04 – 05 growth is avg 7x and 05 – 06 growth is avg 2x.
not only that as you move thro 06 the rate if growth is still slowing from 3x to 1.5x to 1.3x.
The new models should fix some of this – how much remains to be seen.
all numbers approx of course
I can see I’m needed here.
Cheeky,
Perhaps you missed where MacDailyNews wrote above, “Please read the related article below for more about why iPod sales are not slowing.”
Let’s do something <u>amazing</u> and actually do what MDN suggested. My, my, my, take a look at this:
On May 23, 2006, Credit Suisse analyst Robert Semple wrote in a report to clients, “We believe Apple is still in the early stages of its product expansion and that the company can grow its iPod units at least 20% for the foreseeable future.” Peter Kang reported for Forbes, “The analyst’s prediction comes from what he sees as the low penetration rate of the iPod, estimated at about 10% of PC users, or an ‘active installed base’ of about 40 million units worldwide. One region looking ripe for growth is Europe, which has an estimated penetration rate of 7.1% compared with 15.5% for the United States, according to Credit Suisse. In addition, customers appear to be replacing their iPods with new models quicker; Semple estimates the current ‘lifecycle’ of the iPod at approximately 1.5 years, down from two years. The Credit Suisse analyst compared the current pace of iPod shipments to that of the Sony Walkman and Discman portable music players. ‘We believe that over time Apple’s iPod can easily exceed Sony’s 309 million cumulative Walkman and Discman shipments,’ he said. ‘For comparison, it took Sony over 10 years to sell 50 million Walkmans, while Apple reached the same milestone in half the time despite lower market share and stiffer competition.'”
Now, get back on the bus, put that retarded helmet back on your retarded head, sit down, and shut up until I dump you off at the home.
“Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Zune is poised to conquer UPS drivers and the lucrative blind and deaf mental patient market.”
The Microsoft Zune logo is the worst thing I have seen in at least a decade.
And for the sales of iPods going down the last quarter:
People were anticipating new models and/or an iPhone. They will sell a butt load for the holidays (I predict 16,000,000) and then next year Apple will make all of those obsolete with the iPhone announcement. Gotta love them.
That logo is incredibly awful. A tinkertoy abomination designed by the same MS accountant who insisted on brown. Money doesn’t make you creative. Witness the font vomit from thousands of administrative assistants that were given Publisher to create a sassy new corporate newsletter. Ooooo, Goudy and Caslon and Frutiger and so many Wingdings, oh my ! ! !
Hey, where my porn at? Just like they did with the Internet, may the porn industry be the movie-download trail-blazer!
For @#$%’s sake, the article says iPod sales “have begun to flatten out”, not “drop”!! “Flatten out”! That means the growth curve is leveling off, which it is!!! Growth is slowing, not sales!
Okay, the writer jumps to some silly conclusions based on this fact, but nevertheless, he never said iPod sales are dropping. So stop dragging out the sales statistics.
My God, the paranoia MDN exhibits can be so damned annoying. Not everyone is against us. I like a good Mac crusade, but let’s show a little sanity, huh?
On the overthrow of the existing PC order, Malone may be more right than he realizes. He referenced strange attractors and chaos somewhat casually, but I think that that whole field — which also includes complexity theory, evolutionary algorithms, simulated annealing, self organizing criticality, co-evolution, the geology of earthquakes and volcanoes … — is very applicable. I’ve done a lot of reading and some programming over the years involving this phenomenon.
The PC world is a complex system with many intricate links, some of which were forged quickly for some technical or business reason. For example, some of the code in Windows was actually built to fail for particular competitors’ applications so that Microsoft could take their market. That had to weaken the architecture of Windows. Microsoft failed early enough to rebuilt its operating system to be more robust and the cracks just kept widening. Just like a fault zone, there are eventually slippages – earthquakes. They happen at all scales and eventually, the big one strikes.
Co-evolution is probably the best analogy for Apple overthrowing the WinTel regime. As Microsoft and the PC makers optimized their businesses to maximize profits, often sacrificing the long term for the short term, they trapped themselves. Apple, resurgent under the leadership of the returned Steve Jobs, bit the bullet. Jobs tore out the then hopelessly dead end operating system built for a simpler era and rebuilt the OS his team from NeXT created as the new operating system for Apple. This is what is done in simulated annealing algorithms when suboptimal solutions do not provide adequate performance or are simply not robust. It is called reannealing. Years were then spent correcting, tuning and debugging the new OS X and slowly adding useful features. Then, with OS X sufficiently mature, the switch to Intel was made. Jobs always had an Intel version of OS X running from the very start. It was too hard to do a double transition – OS 9 to OS X and PPC to Intel all at once without killing Apple. So the two transitions were done in sequence. But now, the hardware transition is done. And Apple is now the toughest predator in the jungle and is starting to take on its less nimble foes.
Malone, IMHO, is right. The more robust Apple is now ready to take on the WinTel – or the WinAMD — ecosystem and replace it with the MacTel ecosystem. The Apple switch to Intel, long planned – I believe – is like the asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs. Bye bye, WinTel/WinAMD.
There’s lies and there’s statistics.
Cheeky,
I’ll take you up on it – I bet they will sell 16 million iPods in the Oct-Dec quarter this year.
LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son: Ditto.
You wouldn’t catch me dead with a Zune, brown or any other color. Besides, Zunes aren’t coming in real brown. More a dried out dog turd brown.
Now an iPod in a nice, rich dark brown, maybe with some gold accents – now you’re talking!!
Zune 2.0 will be speckled with little peanut chunks.
Cheeky,
You are making too large of an assumption that the iPod has reached market saturation. I’m well aware of how product cycles work, and the maturation of a product affects sales and ultimately turns most products into commodities.
I don’t think we are anywhere close to this with the iPod. I personally think that a pretty fair number of iPod sales are by repeat customers buying new models with advanced features.
maybe at some point Apple just runs out of good ideas to add to the iPod. I think that time is a way off, and if you look at some of the smaller features (*COUGH *COUGH* GAMES *COUGH*) you can see that the iPod could potentially be its own platform not just a music player.
Rast,
Speaking of butt-load, how ’bout that Zune….
“it has little to do with the silicone”
You’re right. In fact, it has absolutely nothing at all to do with silicone, unless you’re referring to Lindsay Lohan’s former breasts.
tr
No product could sustain growth by your calculation, which is an exponential growth model — e.g., if Q3 sales for 4 years were 10 100 1000 10000 growth would be a steady 10X, but no product could maintain this kind of growth for more than a few years. If growth “slowed” to 8X in year 4 (i.e., 8000 rather than 10000), which would you rather have, the profits from the 10X of years 2 to 3 (100 to 1000) or the profits or the 8X profits of years 3 to 4 (1000 to 8000)?
As necromancer has shown, sales are growing in every quarter (so far), but the growth is at different rates. Until growth is 0 or less there is nothing to see here.
“. Until growth is 0 or less there is nothing to see here.”
That’s true if the only time you want to see the bus is after it hits you.
Here’s the percentage figures for growth at each point looking at the sales for the trailing 12 months, compared to the trailing 12 months 3 months before. That eliminates seasonal effects.
61%
87%
55%
41%
25%
42%
10%
6%
Only a monkey would say that sales growth isn’t slowing on a year on year basis.
And predicting 8 million this quarter
gives a rate of:
4%
And predicting (for the sake of argument) 14 million for Christmas we get to the magic number maccam is looking for:
0%
Short Bus
Great example using % to create a bleak picture. Look at your % and the 12 month sales figures associated with your numbers:
Growth 12 Mo.
% sales
61% 4,416,000
87% 8,263,000
55% 12,767,000
41% 18,062,000
25% 22,497,000
42% 31,960,000
10% 35,175,000
6% 37,131,000
If one believes the large growth % is Apple’s goal, things are bad indeed. If selling scads of units is the objective, then the low growth % is a natural consequence of having a large part of the market and selling lots of units. Big percentages of small numbers are still small numbers; even small percentages of very large numbers can be big numbers. Huge percentage growths are desirable, but not sustainable as a market matures. Would iPod sales of about 35 million a year for the next 5 years or so really spell doom? This would be a concern only if the total market for ‘MP3’ players continued to grow and iPods were stagnant, and there is no sign yet that this is happening.
Old world monkeys have excellent visual acuity.
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” – Mark Twain
If sales of iPods were to increase at the rate they did in the first few years, then in the very near future every man, woman and child on the planet would have several iPods in their pockets. There would be billions of the things and all the factories of the world would be producing nothing but iPods.
This is no exaggeration. Just continue the rate of increase for the Q1 quarters and in a few years you’re in the billions.
What we’re seing in the sales of iPods is necessary deacceleration.
Pod unit sales:
• Q4 03: 336,000 UP
• Q1 04: 733,000 (holiday quarter)UP
• Q2 04: 807,000UP
• Q3 04: 860,000UP
• Q4 04: 2,016,000UP
• Q1 05: 4,580,000 (holiday quarter)UP
• Q2 05: 5,311,000UP
• Q3 05: 6,155,000UP
• Q4 05: 6,451,000UP
• Q1 06: 14,043,000 (holiday quarter)UP
• Q2 06: 8,526,000DOWN
• Q3 06: 8,111,000DOWN
Maybe this is why they are waiting to release a wide screen iPod until Q1 2007?
Ampar – “Witness the font vomit from thousands of administrative assistants”
Man that’s good.
” Big percentages of small numbers are still small numbers; even small percentages of very large numbers can be big numbers.”
Strangely enough though when the percentage growth reaches zero, the additional number of units sold is the same.
My only point is that growth is slowing, and that should be clear even to the most ignorant.
You can spin that however you like. If you think it’s just great that Apple won’t grow iPod revenues going into the future, that’s great for you. Really. If you understand that unit sales may remain high but average unit prices will likely decrease, then that’s not going to disappoint you either.
A lot of (arguably dumb) investors have other expectations. There’s a huge expectation of growth built into Apple’s share price.
“A lot of (arguably dumb) investors have other expectations. There’s a huge expectation of growth built into Apple’s share price.”
Couldn’t agree more. iPods will level out will become a stable component of Apple’s income hopefully for a few years.
Thanks, Lardlad! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I see a secretary hand over an annual report created in PowerPoint or Excel for four color printing.
“In one of the strangest conjunctions of bad luck in the history of high tech, one of the world’s largest industries — personal computers — suddenly seems up for grabs,” Michael S. Malone writes for ABC News.
What’s with the “bad luck” statement?? Was he short on words for the article?? This guy is all over the map. Nothing in his article makes sense.
Well, at least he got to use the word “penumbra”.
Moron.
I will add afew observations. There are a number of changes coming to the desktop world. First the next generation of dektops are being built with multiprocessor/multicore archecture. Second, this is the start of the 64 bit cpu on the desktop. Those who say there is no need for 64 bit there are looking back not forward. The photgraphic world is expecting the next round of PShop to support 16 bit color, it now only supports 8 bit. This will be the firts, more to come. Which company has more experience with 64 bit processors and multiprocessor/multicore systems on the desktop, Apple or Wintel. The lethergy in the Wintel world is immense, Dell only stopped shipping floppies, remember these things, two years ago. All the Dells still come with serial and aprrellel ports. The Wintel world is still using BIOS. Apple has been using a more advanced approach since the newworld blue and white G3s. Backwards compatibility is changing from a life jacket to a millstone for the Wintel world.