In The Next Version

yes. we are all mac. running xp and os x on mac books, mac book pros only.

I made the switch a few months back, after 20+ years on windows. I've been waiting in quiet desparation for Notes r8.5 on OSX so that I can get off using parallels to run an XP instance on my mac book. We're almost there. The beta looks great. Now the real question will be - how do I complete the transformation and become a mac AND notes user?

Hi Ken, I think you answered your own question... Notes 8.5.

In India, Mac is still a rare thing. We have more than 1500 PCs and no Mac in our organization.

Availability and support for Mac is still low here.

I made the switch in August. And I'll repeat Ken's question with a little modification: "how do I complete the transformation and become a mac AND notes user...and developer, and administrator?" :-)

We got macs last year for our systems people. I disliked parallels so much I had to set up a pc for notes admin stuff. If I could just get a mac admin client (and a dev client for those times I have to use it screaming and kicking) I'd be a happy geek.

Dates? ;^ )

Macs are over rated :-)

I bought Mac for my machine that I use when I leave the office. I have multiple Linux Desktops used internally and use Windows for the W32 Admin client (web admin is getting there, but still needs work--ymmv).

Basically for me, Windows took all of the fun out of computing. Mac helped to replace it. Linux is my work machine, and Macs are for fun and weekend work. Might change in time, but I'll use any *nix-based OS over Windows, sans hesitation.

My Uncle just got a Mac after ten years on Linux (I wouldn't let him buy Windows--even if he is quite uncomfortable with computers in general). His sister-in-law will probably do the same at some point.

Here in the Philippines, not yet. Although there are now exclusive shops for Apple products. BPO companies here, especially those involved in graphics, use Macs.

In my experience Mac's are hyped in the media but that hasn't translated into any consumer traction whatsoever. If it weren't for all the people in the blogosphere using Mac's I'd be blissfully unaware they even exist.

Prior to Lotusphere this year I don't think I had ever seen anyone actually using an Apple laptop. That goes for the iBooks, MacBook's or MacBook Pro's. If you go into the local coffee shops here and it's going to be a lot of Dell's, some Sony's, and a mix of various other things. I can't tell you the last time I saw an Apple laptop in person outside of Lotusphere.

I only have one local friend with a Mac, and she also has a PC. A while back I helped a local private school migrate from all Mac's to PC's. The graphics department where I work now migrated from Mac's to PC's about two or three years ago.

So it's definitely not an invasion, at least in my little corner of the world.

Charles, it's just a matter of you having the wrong friends :-). I switched about a month or 10 ago and I'm very happy about that, I try to avoid using Windows on my Mac, for most software not really a problem, because there's a lot of good software (most of them very user friendly and real eye candy). Notes is still a problem, and I'm a bit sceptic towards 8.5. Ok, the client will come, but what about Designer?

Anyway, I saw some of my friends move to Apple, and more and more people consider it an option for their new machine (some years ago they would have said "Naaaaah Apple... all nice and beautiful, but I need my PC. The Intel switch really made a difference).

In Spain, and generally in Europe I believe, except maybe the more northern parts, mac is getting bigger, but very slow. I work in quite a big IT company, and we are still on 100% PC.

Probably this is still a money issue, as Pc's and Windows-based laptops are still a bit cheaper then their Mac counterparts here. (But then again, most of our customers in europe just upgraded to Notes 6.5)

I think there are still a few people using PCs.

{ Link }

Not many Macs around me. For most of my circle, price is still king. Here in Toronto, we can get used Athlon 64X2 or P4 3.0 ghz machines well spec'ed plus XP license for $200 refurbished. Add a 19" LCD for < $200. Does everything I need it to do.

Hi,

In Brazil Macs are still much more expensive then regular PC's. A MacBook costs about 1.700 (US$) and a Dell, with the same configuration, about 1.100 (US$). The same laptop from a non-famous company can be bought by 800 (US$).

I have seen only in some graphics departments a Macintosh. Pretty rare, except by those who have more money...

[ ]'s

I've not switched, I've always been :)

We have a few at my current client site, with more coming. It's interesting to this long-time Mac user how OS X has turned things around: developers are really quite into them now.

@11 - Charles, you need to come to DC. :-) Every Caribou or Starbucks I go into, easily half the computer users are Macs.

Work just provided me with a MacBook Air (MBA) for testing and I am LOVING it. I've loaded the Notes 8.5 beta and thus far life is good. Now granted I am not going to spend $3k of my own money for a MBA, but I do expect the prices to drop and I would pay $1100 for one, compared to about $600 for a Dell (about what I paid for my last Dell laptop).

Working for National Geographic, we have a huge Mac user population, over 600 and growing. That is about one-third of the organization... the third that brings in most of the revenue, and most executives, run on Macs. To say the least, we are eager for Notes 8.5 to go gold.

I bought an iMac G5 for my wife a few years ago. Works great, and every time Vista gives me trouble (which is pretty much daily), I get more and more jealous.

My next computer, which is hopefully not too far in the future, will be a MacBook Pro.

And on the cell phone front, if they add global (tri-band) 3G data services and true GPS to the iPhone, I'll probably pick up a pair of those this spring.

I'm about to make the jump. Waiting for the MacBook refresh to happen in a few months. But I still see myself using the PC for business stuff and the Mac for leisure/personal things.

I haven't bought a new Windows machine in ages, and even that one is now running Ubuntu. Amusingly, a couple of weeks ago some guy at work, in his sixties and ready to retire, came over to ask about what he should buy. While he made mumblings about using it for "work stuff," I think that was something he was just saying as a way to justify it to himself. He ended up getting a MacBook and likes it a great deal.

Hi everyone. Wow, what awesome feedback! This might be the most comments I've gotten for a blog post! Here are some responses...

- Yes, I'd like all Lotus software to run on Mac as well. Notes, Designer, Admin, Sametime, etc. At least we're moving in the right direction, and Eclipse is helping that.

- Yes, Macs do seem to be more expensive. So are Porches though ;-) Apple seems to drop prices on iPods and iPhones quickly, I hope they do the same with laptops and desktops. I have a first generation Mac Mini, and I'd like to upgrade one day.

- Sean, yes... I have those, and most of them seem to be Mac users!

- Bruce, I agree, they are over rated and part of their appeal is simply that they are trendy. (Yes I know you were joking, but I am not) There are lots of things I dislike about my Mac. Mainly Finder. I can't stand it and wish it was a lot more like Window's File Manager where the folder tree could stayed locked in place on the left, and folders could remain at the top of the list in details view. I also dislike the circles on window title bars... the Windows icons for maximize, minimize, and restore make a lot more sense. I dislike that you can only resize a window from the bottom right corner. The list goes on, but I'll save that for another day...

- Charles, I'm really surprised by your comments about no consumer traction, and that you'd never seen one before Lotusphere. Honestly, I see Macs everywhere I go. Like I mentioned, they dominate on the planes I take and at cafes. Several of my family members have recently "gone Mac", some at my prompting, but others that completely surprised me. I was walking around Harvard the other day, and all the student terminals (for use to log onto the Harvard system) in the halls were Mac.

- Richard, I meant no offense!

- Robert can we talk more... did you know my dream job is to be a NG photographer!!!

At work the PC+Windows continues to dominate.

As for friends and relations and personal use I'd say it was about 50/50 in general although a slight bias towards PC+Windows for desktops and a slight bias towards a Mac for laptops.

What I do notice is that the clear majority of people I know who bring out a laptop in public are Mac users and they do it in what would otherwise be social settings. I think they are posing.

For some reason Windows laptop users don't use them in public except on the train while coming or going to work - ie they don't bring them out in social settings.

There's a lot of arty people in my neck of the woods and they like Macs not because of a technical opinion but because they like the look of the chassis.

My brother-in-law and my nephews use Linux. They're farmers.

I live in a University town and I see students all over with Macs. They have the choice and are picking Apple. Wonder what that says about our future users?

@22 - Understood, I was just relaying my experience. I keep saying that Charleston isn't a tech-savvy place. It's lovely and has interesting history, but change happens slowly here. :-)

Alan - you are SPOT ON

I moved to mac last year - and love it... but my main gripe is finder - the windows explorer is easier to use, until you get used to the keystrokes with finder. I do miss windows explorer, and mac finder seems to want you to save everything into one directory instead of a structured folder area.

I'm waiting for Lotus Symphony on Mac OS X. That would be reason enough to move over to Mac.

Charles, you have nice weather and more golf courses, so I'll trade you!

For the time being, I'm a complete holdout. I'm running XP on my Dell Latitude D820.

It doesn't crash.

I don't loose data.

I can connect to anything, anywhere.

Keeping windows "clean" requires the smallest bit of effort. Just either stop installing every bit of garbage some link shows you or else remember to fully remove it if you don't end up using it. Other than that, I don't get why people have so many problems.

Mac has gone from "Unusable" for me to "Potentially Workable" so I'll look at them again when next I replace my laptop -- but at present I see no great reason to move.

Have a new mac pro at work now (work in I.T). I like it as a cross platform box to run windows and Linux on virtual machines using VMware Fusion. The mac runs these VMs better than any machine I have used before.

The mac is a great home and travel machine. However, it has a long way to go before it can be integrated widely into the enterprise. For one thing, it does not seem that Apple is interested in the enterprise. They no longer sell Xserve Raid array. And reported comments by Cringely and others makes you wonder if they even care about the enterprise market.

Sure we may get Notes working on Apple, but what about the plethera of other enterprise applications? The list is very long...very long!

Hi Alan,

here in Brazil prices are outrageously high: the low-end Macbook Pro sells at US$ 5,000, compared to $1,999 at the US. There were rumours of Apple eventually assembling Macs in Brazil to lower their costs, but so far only confirmed is an Apple Store to open at the posh Iguatemi mall in São Paulo (it will be Apple's first store in Latin America). So you only see Macs in ad agencies, graphic designers, and the musician crowd. The rest of the folks buy it when travelling abroad and bring it in their luggage hoping not to get caught by Brazilian customs.

I have to admit I'm constantly seduced by the "aura" behind the product... but won't make the move until they refresh the macbook pros (I love the backlight keyboard) and I happen to be abroad...and willing to pay that kind of money :)

Personally I'd be pretty happy using say, an employee discount in cheaper machines from any other manufacturer. The savings are well worth it, and as Andrew said, it gets my work done at the end of the day.

Hi there,

I'm still waiting for the new Macbook Pro (Quad-Core) - then I'll definitively switch over.... can't wait :-)

I'm Windows-only at the moment. But considering Linux for Domino servers. And my next laptop (some time in 2008) will almost certainly be a Mac of some sort.

There is a definite bias towards Mac in the Lotus community. Partly that's a result of anti-Microsoft sentiment, which is disproportionately exaggerated for obvious reasons. But partly it's a genuine belief, on the part of a fairly large and vocal minority, that Mac is a 'better' platform that Windows for users. Whether that's true or not is something I will find out for myself soon enough ...

Mac sucks and it just marketing ....

Thank you XP (from Amsterdam using Opera as your browser) for that ever so insightful and well written commentary.

I bought an HP laptop for my wife for Christmas last year, an HP Blackbird PC for myself a few months ago and an HP MediaSmart Windows Home server. We have two iPods and an AppleTV (which I love) but I'm not quite there yet in purchasing a Mac

it takes about 15 minutes from switching on my windows laptop to getting into my email. That's on a very high spec machine that's only a year old. It's insane. I'll definitely buy a MAC next time around.

One of our locally focused sites gets decent traffic. I just checked operating systems and was surprised to see 10% Mac, with iPhone in 4th place. Below are the actual results. Numbers are visits. We have dozens of social network sites and the numbers seem to be matching up among all of them.

{ Link } is the site these stats are for. Stats are from Google Analytics.

1.

Windows

80,288 81.99%

2.

Macintosh

10,621 10.85%

3.

Linux

6,122 6.25%

4.

iPhone

605 0.62%

@38, Surprised that it's that high, or that low?

I was thinking of going Mac for my next purchase (after the abomination that is Vista, and the fact you can't buy an XP PC anymore). I remember a few years ago, the mac user stats were at 3% and PC was around 95%. I didn't think Mac would survive.

Nice work Apple designers.

For

1 - our new kitchen will be installed with an iMac instead of tv ;) Design, i.e. computer integrated in screen and function, i.e. browsing through pictures, files and music with remote control made it the rational choice. In other words, it's just ain't cool any longer to have a black flatscreen with wires running down to the pc itself.

2 - just about to switch employer and will ask to get a mac and not a pc.

3 - Alan, as you state, more and more (young) people get these machines and will undoubtely reach critical mass meaning that (legacy) companies will sooner or later have to offer new employees in order to attract people.

In Spain ocurrs the same. Apple is increasing a lot Mac customers. The right direction. You can visit us at SLUG (Spanish Lotus User Group).

Albert, is that an invitation!!!

Yes, of course, Alan. The SLUG members will contact you in 3 or 4 weeks. We intend to invite you and Ed Brill to open "officialy" SLUG website. Now we are in progress (configuring databases, pages, roles, ....) Thanks to Martin Ortega, www.sidra400.com, Danisoft, www.noteros.com, Josep Alemany, jalemanyf.wordpress.com, Juan Carlos Trigo, www.notesring.com, and a large community of IBM/Lotus Spanish speakers around the world. We appreciate your comments so much!!

Hola Albert...I am happy to help as well!

I've had several clients who have tested Vista and none of them have been happy with it.

Otherwise, 'bout time the rest of the world started catching on.... :)

A lot of the schools I work with are buying Macs because they can run both OS X and Windows on them and no longer have to buy two machines (if they have a Windows lab and a Mac lab). Heck, they're saving money and getting better hardware in the process.

Make yourself happy. Buy a Mac.

Vista for work (why does it take nearly 2 mins to hibernate!?)

Ubuntu at home and on personal laptop.

Hackintosh on another laptop - Cracking stuff, but I prefer the Ubuntu route, does everything I ever want. Mac's are brilliant, but just too costly and niche.