“Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released report,” Ina Fried reports for CNET News.
“Standalone unit sales of Vista at U.S. retail stores were down 59.7 percent compared with Windows XP, during each product’s first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group. In terms of revenue, sales are also down, but the drop has been less steep, at 41.5 percent,” Fried reports. “‘It’s just not doing well,’ NPD analyst Chris Swenson said of Vista’s performance at retail stores.”
MacDailyNews Take: No, ya think?
Fried continues, “Just because boxed Vista sales are down doesn’t mean they won’t pick up, [Swenson] added. He noted that XP sales peaked a few years after its 2001 launch… But given the fact that only relatively new PCs can be upgraded to Vista, and with standalone sales not showing signs of improving, Swenson said, ‘it’s looking less and less likely that this will happen.'”
“News on the retail front is brighter for Office, which was released to stores the same day as Vista,” Fried reports. “While much of the sales were for the new Office 2007, Swenson said just over 20 percent of all boxed copies of Office were Office for Mac. Swenson credited the large number of people switching to Macs as part of the reason for the spike in Mac Office sales.” [Bold emphasis added by MacDailyNews.]
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: All you need to do is read the Vista reviews. “Five years for a chrome-plated turd” pretty much said it all.
Is this a M$ news site?
A confused cross dresser.
Doh.
I’ve not used Vista to slag it just yet but someday there may be new versions of OS X that are not adopted by the Mac masses as quickly as the prior version of OS.
I’m using 10.3.9 and i’m quite happy with it. It’d be nice to have 10.4 with smart folders, spotlight, etc. but my Mac does everything i need it to do so far. I’d probably upgrade the OS with a new computer.
Vista the Zune of OS’s as it squirts your system resources down the toilet.
I just love the smell of troll bait in the afternoon!
Release the buffoons.
Well at least they have one bright spot
While much of the sales were for the new Office 2007, Swenson said just over 20 percent of all boxed copies of Office were Office for Mac. Swenson credited the large number of people switching to Macs as part of the reason for the spike in Mac Office sales.
Today I spent about 15 minutes using Vista on a friend’s computer. What a mess. I don’t remember the exact verbage of the pop ups so I’ll paraphrase.
I quit Outlook. “Would you like to quit the application?” Yes. “Outlook had problems closing…it will reopen.” WTF?
Wow… I’ve had little experience with Vista, but that’s pretty extraordinary. I’m glad I Bootcamped with XP instead of Vista.
When you can buy a whole PC with Vista for $299, exactly who’s going to buy Vista in a box for $220 (full) or $149 (Upgrade)?
A friend tried to email a picture he had on his brand new Vista system. It wouldn’t let him. I repeat, it would not let him do it. Said he didn’t have the privileges to do so, or something similar. After a visit to his place to see about the problem, it turned out that what he was trying to email was some clip art picture. A picture with a copyright. And Vista wouldn’t let him do that.
Talk about WOW! If I owned a PC and it did that to me I’d take it to Redmond and dump it on their doorstep.
There are now more Vista machines in use than Macs of any flavor. Yet Apple is a success and Vista is a failure? Only in bizzaro world.
“I’ve not used Vista to slag it just yet but someday there may be new versions of OS X that are not adopted by the Mac masses as quickly as the prior version of OS. “
Not necessarily a fair comparison since Apple is primarily a hardware company. Apple’s OS helps sell hardware. Whereas Microsoft is primarily a software company and relies on people upgrading to make money.
I use Vista almost every day on my work laptop, and while I will admit it’s much easier on the eyes than XP (yick. just yick) there really isn’t much to write home about on the functionality front. It just doesn’t do anything that XP didn’t do, other than constantly pester you for attention.
(notice how Reader does that now, too? icon jumps at you for no reason at all. that’s a feature)
I certainly wouldn’t pay upwards of 400 bucks for a decent version if I had to.
Now I’m sure analysts will trot out sales figures for the first 6 months of Leopard for some totally meaningless comparison, and that will be kind of like getting all excited about iTunes Store sales. Does Apple even break down how much they make on boxed OS sales? It can’t be huge… but then, boxed OS sales aren’t a giant slice of Apple’s business so it hardly matters. Every boxed copy of Leopard that sells means someone isn’t buying a new Mac. So as long as the platform is growing, I would think a glut of boxed upgrade sales would mean people just didn’t think too much of your new hardware (after the first few months, of course).
Anyway. What was I saying?
-c
MW: ‘college’
> but someday there may be new versions of OS X that are not adopted by the Mac masses as quickly as the prior version of OS.
Apple wouldn’t care so much as long as customer kept buying new Macs. For Apple, the hardware is the profit center, not the software. But the funny thing is, Apple’s Mac OS X major releases tend to work reliably on older hardware (even some hardware that is not officially supported); in some cases the new release worked better on the same hardware as the previous release due to ongoing optimization efforts. There is a great advantage when one company controls that hardware and OS absolutely, and Apple is exploiting that advantage absolutely.
Here’s another one. Got XP running on a laptop, with a network drive located on my Mac (a folder). While the laptop is away from the network I moved the folder to a different location on the Mac. I would expect this to cause a problem, but what XP said when it tried to access the network drive was “Incorrect password or user name”. Huh? How about “File not found” or something like that? Why does it lead me to believe the problem is login related?
How about this one…. Same scenario, but instead of the laptop being removed from the network, I close the lid and it goes to sleep. While asleep I move the network drive folder on my Mac to another location. When the laptop wakes up and I try to access the folder on the Mac, this time it says “The local device name is already in use.”
What does Microsoft do, pull error messages out of their butt????
These are great days.
You said, “There are now more Vista machines in use than Macs of any flavor. Yet Apple is a success and Vista is a failure? Only in bizzaro world.”
Why the bigger MUST be better focus. Hey, if you get a bad case of the runs, your crap is bigger than my crap and so you crap must be great. ?????
OK, to all the MS trolls out there in MDN land, I give in, Vista, XP, Zune….. Your crap is bigger, smellier, and messier than my crap.
Hmmm, why do I get the feeling that I won that round???
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en
I remember 1995, when people were saying “Windows 95 interface will kill the MacOS interface”.
And here we are, 12 years later, The Mac GUI is still superior.
someday there may be new versions of OS X that are not adopted by the Mac masses as quickly as the prior version of OS.
That very well could happen.
HOWEVER, we’re very unlikely to have a situation where people are buying and installing older Mac OS X versions onto their new Macs, to use as the primary OS.
“There are now more Vista machines in use than Macs of any flavor. Yet Apple is a success and Vista is a failure? Only in bizzaro world.”
In many cities, the rats outnumber the people.
Thus, in Redmond logic, the rats are a success and humanity is a failure.
Bizzaro world indeed.
Leave it to MS to come up innovation to help Vista sales
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/01/windows-xp-sp3-vista.html
> Leave it to MS to come up innovation to help Vista sales
That BBSpot site might take the place of As the Apple Turns (which I’ve greatly missed over the last two years).
Judging by all the things you report about MS. I think you should call yourselves Microsoft daily crap.
That’s great, but why did you say it twice?
A couple of weeks ago I helped a fellow worker setup his new Vista equipped Dell home PC. I tried to talk him into getting XP but he wouldn’t listen. That had to be one of the most miserable experiences I’ve ever had. And what made it even worse was the fact that he wanted People PC dial-up instead of broadband. It’s a good thing there weren’t any guns within hand reach or I wouldn’t be here today.
“There are now more Vista machines in use than Macs of any flavor. Yet Apple is a success and Vista is a failure? Only in bizzaro world.”
Yeah, well, McDonald’s sells more hamburgers than anyone else. That sure as H doesn’t mean McDonald’s makes the best hamburgers in the world now does it? In fact, I’d say they are amongst the WORST.
“There are now more Vista machines in use than Macs of any flavor. Yet Apple is a success and Vista is a failure? Only in bizzaro world.”
there are more cockroaches, than people, this does not make them a higher life form…..
there are more… therefore it must…
ahhh bless, he doesn’t get it, does he.
I had someone say to me the other day that they really like the mac. However, they decided to get a windows machine because when something goes wrong, they know plenty of people that can help.
I then said to him….when you buy a new tire for your car, do you buy a flat one because there are plenty of people that can fix a flat tire?
I have spent some time in Vista and it is LAME. Vista is really annoying to use. My advice is to stay away.
If you need some Windows in your life, stick with XP. It’s worth paying $$$ not to use Vista.
“What does Microsoft do, pull error messages out of their butt????”
Yes, but they’re not allowed to do it all at once. Their engineers calculated that it would create an enormous vacuum and obliterate the city of Redmond, Washington. Ballmer is also no longer allowed to use a ThighMaster for similar reasons.
shen,
The cockroaches use Windows, don’tcha know.
I have never used Vista, or XP, ME, 2000, or 98.
HA!
Cockroaches may use Windows but they’re scared to death of Raids.
That sure as H doesn’t mean McDonald’s makes the best hamburgers in the world now does it? In fact, I’d say they are amongst the WORST.
Ever stop at a Hardee’s or White Castle? Gotta love the grease and onions…
As for the relevance to Apple and Windows? Something about Vista just screams “Happy Meal”. Too bad you don’t get a prize.
Brand new 20″ aluminum iMac owner here (as of Friday, courtesy of my very loving lady friend). The first piece of software I bought for it was a Windows XP/Office 2003 bundle to Boot Camp with.
In short, f*^k Vista! There’s a milion reasons why M$ doesn’t waste the $$ to advertise it.
I’ve got a home business to run and I’m not going to have my success to be affected or impacted by that nonfunctional dog shyt OS.
I’m shocked ANYone uses it.
My two cents.
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
…this is off topic but I realized what’s been bothering me about this photo of the Vista-neck sweater team. If you convert the photo to gray and squint it’s reminiscent of stills from Tod Brownings 1932 movie Freaks
From truemors.com:
“Skype announced a new worm that affects Windows Skype users. It’s called W32/Skipi.A by FSecure, Symantec calls it W32.Pykspa.D. Infected computers send a chat message to other Skype users that asks them to click on a link. Then the recipient gets infected. Another fun day in the Windows world.”
You don’t have to suffer.
Whatever you or I think about Microsoft or Vista, it’s a pretty shocking statistic concerning Vista vs. XP sales.
Just think of all the effort the Vista development teams put out only to receive such universal scorn for the final product! That must be incredibly disheartening. ONE integrated team couldn’t fuck up so badly could they?
Recently, I’ve had 2 family members switch to Macs, with another waiting for their Dell box to die. These are/were dyed-in-the-wool Windows users, too. One has been a software developer and tester, the other running a home business. The fence sitter was another Wndows developer!
One sent an email… the first DAY of using a new Mac mini…saying he couldn’t believe how logically Mac OS X is and he was already doing things more efficiently… ONE DAY! Maybe the iPod I gave his son had some effect.
Microsoft certainly isn’t going away anytime soon, but news like this must sting everyone in Redmond pretty badly. I kinda feel sorry for them.
One side benefit?
There have been no recent reports of Fat Boy Ballmer shooting off his mouth lately.
@Olmecmystic
welcome, and congrats
just one question, did you consider office for mac ?? could of skipped using windows at all??
While much of the sales were for the new Office 2007, Swenson said just over 20 percent of all boxed copies of Office were Office for Mac. Swenson credited the large number of people switching to Macs as part of the reason for the spike in Mac Office sales.
I want to be a troll now!
======================
ths shows that maqs suk cuz evn XP doez all we need an macs alwaz breaks and need update x.2 break x.3 break x.4 break!!
One has to wonder what the Hell those guys are doing up in Redmond. They must run that ship like the US Government for Vista to be such a piece of crap. It is, too, I bought my wife an HP laptop with Vista on it because she said that she didn’t want to learn anything new like my Macs (she’s an AOL user!?) and I don’t really let her touch my MacBook. I have refused to touch her laptop anymore because Vista just sucks all over. So, it’s hers to figure out on her own. She already thinks that Vista sucks and I have begun the campaign of conversion by giving my 3 year old my old G3 B&W;w/Panther. She has to use it just about every day because he always wants to play games on it. HAHAHA. She’ll be with us soon, and I’ll have a brand new HP Laptop to load Linux on for goofs!
When life gives you lemons….
Apple should put a dent in Vista sales by releasing a PC only version of Tiger called Hasta. It would be funny to watch, no drivers etc. but those people who could use it would make a lot of positive noise.
@SAB
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look at the bright side: she can take hints from VISTA how to suck on a whole new level
“DOS Computers, manufactured by millions of companies, are by far the most popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches are far more numerous than humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form.” –The New York Times, November 26, 1991 (also quoted in MacAddict 4).
MDN: “Personal” as in Vista, a very personal frustration
d00d M$ makes the best commercials.
Seriously, this is the official MS promotional video for the DOS 5 update. I think the video speaks for itself.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1774935
“Yeah, well, McDonald’s sells more hamburgers than anyone else. That sure as H doesn’t mean McDonald’s makes the best hamburgers in the world now does it? In fact, I’d say they are amongst the WORST.”
But you miss the point, McDonalds are a huge success, and Joes single outlet store, voted best burger in town is comparatively, a failure.
And the argument like that doesn’t really scale to PCs. It’s not like Apple are a single location burger joint. Apple, like McDonalds and Microsoft software are available to almost all consumers worldwide. Buyers could be choosing either, but for some reason choose Vista and other Microsoft products in overwhelming numbers compared to Macs.
And in less than a year the Vista user base has totally surpassed the number of Macs in use.
All that says is Microsoft is doing something right compared to Apple.