http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/chriskraeuter/10233033.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat

=FREE&cm_ite=NA

.  

This type of PR is great for Apple, because it tells potential customers that others are buying 

Apple products. I personally hope that Apple is able to continue blowout sales of both the iPod 

and Macs. But I think the MP3 player market is getting saturated, so tremendous sales cannot 

continue forever. Obviously, what Apple needs is another killer device. I have heard some 

rumors of a video playing device. But what I have heard is really limited and mostly speculation. 

So I can speculate some my own. 

What I would like to see from Apple is a video player, hard drive based like the iPod. One that 

would let you transfer video to it via the FireWire 800. I don't know where the video for these 

units would come from, since Hollywood is so touchy about DVDs.  I imagine that Apple could 

sell videos, perhaps the music videos, so you could listen to and watch them on your new video 

pod (I hope Apple comes up with a really cool name for it, if they develop such a beast). But it's 

all dreams and speculation on my part. We shall see. 

But wait, there's more. In a recent article posted on the Forbes site, they indicated that Apple 

has moved up in market share to 2.5%, again while this isn't tremendous, it is upward growth, 

which his good. 

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2005/07/25/apple pc market 

0725markets14.html

.  They expect that Apple's market share will grow to 3 to 5% in 2005! 

Good news. Keep buying those Macs people ; ) 

In a related article, 

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2005/03/18/0318automarketscan10.html

,  

they also indicated that conversion of users from PC to Mac was a lot higher when polling iPod 

owners. They saw a 19% conversion rate, versus an expected 10% conversion rate that was 

expected. This indicates, at least to me, that there is a  Halo effect  associated with the iPod.  

No matter how you cut it, new people buying Macs as well as returning sales are all a good 

thing. Perhaps someday we will see Apple market share back in the double digits. 

Apple making inroads in the server market   Not only is the consumer sales of Macs doing 

better, but apparently the higher end server market is slowly beginning to accept Macs as a 

viable option.  

As reported on the MacNewsWorld.com site 

http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/7I090YR17mzkFa/Apple Rolls Into the Data 

Center.xhtml

,  where once IT people would laugh if you mentioned Macs, they are now gaining 

respect and acceptance. This apparently is helped by the fact that Oracle supports the Mac 

servers with their 10g database, as well as a robust group of software that goes with the Apple 

Server. While the article mentions there is a long way to go before Apple is fully accepted in the 

market, the signs are good. 

A close look at the Moon   As you might have heard, Google has been offering their version of 

online maps. As would be expected with an innovative company like Google, they have added 

some features that really improves working with maps. My favorite is the ability to click/hold the 

mouse button, then move the map this way and that to get the exact placement you like for 

printing or viewing. A tremendous improvement over the standard click, then have the map 

redrawn a little, moved in the direction you choose.  

  MPN, LLC 2005 macCompanion 

Page 21 

August 2005, Volume 3 Issue 8