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Apple Hits 5 Percent of Computer Market

Monday, November 21st, 2011 | Author: OWC NewsFeed

Those of you who follow these sorts of things will be happy to know that, after hovering around the 2-3 percent mark for about 15 years, Apple now has 5 percent share of the world computer market, according to analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co.

Most of that growth has been due to a recent jump in enterprise sales as well as explosive growth in Asia. During the September quarter, Mac shipments grew 24.6 percent while the rest of the market only grew about 5.3 percent, making it the 22nd consecutive quarter where Apple’s growth outpaced the computer market as a whole.

Much of this has been due to its growth in the business market, where it saw a 43.8 percent increase over the 4.8 percent the rest of the market saw. The home market had similar (if less dramatic) numbers, showing a 25.6 percent increase to the the total growth of four percent. In fact, the only place where it seemed to fall short of the industry as a whole was in its traditional stronghold of the “education” sector, where Apple’s 2.9 percent growth is considerably lower than the 16.9 percent for the market in general.

Both the business and home user gains seem to be due to the iPad and iPhone. While the iPad, with its simpler interface, seems to be eating into Mac sales  (as well as other computers) in the education market, iDevice “halo effect” in businesses and homes has users buying the computer these devices were originally designed to work with.

Can Apple keep up this monumental growth streak? We’ll see.

 

Category: Apple News

Apple and Exxon Fighting for #1

Thursday, August 11th, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Unless you tend to follow the stock market, you may have missed out on this one – I know I did. Looks like Apple Inc, has been volleying back and forth with Exxon Mobil for the title of “Most Valuable Company in the World” over the last few days. And as of 1:08PM Central Daylight Time on August 11, 2011, Apple is sitting in the top slot with a value of $346.61 billion versus Exxon Mobil’s paltry $346.38 billion. Of course, with the effects of market volatility, the financial situations in Europe and the US, and quite possibly Lex Luthor’s mind control ray, that can all change in moments, but right now Cupertino is on top.

I suppose there’s some bragging rights in there somewhere, but that’s something that a market analyst, a financial advisor or maybe Gordon Gekko could probably explain the intricacies of better than I could. All I know is that all of us long-time Mac users finally get to run around screaming “WHOOOOO!!!! We’re Number One!” to each other while swigging from large bottles of champagne and waiting by the mailbox to receive the free Mac minis that Apple is sending out in celebration.

(What?… They’re not sending out free Mac minis?… How about those large bottles of champagne?… No?… Then what’s in it for me?…) Article Continues…

That’s Outta This World

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 | Author: OWC Mike H.

 

Aurora Australis From Space

Image Credit: NASA

One of the pictures of the day over at nasa.gov has piqued our space imaginations over here at OWC. The picture shows a very cool pic of the Aurora Australis from space, similar to the Northern Lights known in the northern hemisphere.

Get the full size image at nasa.gov

2011 iMac Benchmark Testing With the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD

Thursday, May 5th, 2011 | Author: OWC Michael

What a whirlwind of information these new iMacs have been creating. Just a few hours after the machines were released, we had five out of the six base models unboxed and going through our gamut of tests.

We were shocked when we installed our new OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSDs only to find that Apple had essentially throttled the internal SATA connections on the latest Z68 chipset from Intel to 3Gb/s speeds when the Z68 chipset itself could accommodate up to two SATA Revision 3.0 (6Gb/s) ports and up to four SATA Revision 2.0 (3Gb/s) ports. News of this travesty rocked the Mac community - even one of our Twitter followers heard the news and tweeted Phil Schiller directly.

Shortly after the news spread far and wide, Apple released iMac EFI Update 1.6 and two SATA Revision 3.0 (6Gb/s) ports were available on the latest iMac and all was right in the world again.

We fired up the machines, installed the OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G SSD and started our testing again. As promised, here is a glimpse of our initial benchmark testing… Article Continues…

Steve Jobs to return to Apple this month

Friday, June 5th, 2009 | Author: OWC Michael

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, is reported to be returning to work from his medical leave this month according to the Wall Street JournalIn August 2004, Mr. Jobs underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer.

Steve Jobs has been subject of several rumors since the World Wide Developers Conference in June of 2008 when he appeared to have lost quite a bit of weight. In January, Jobs announced that he was taking a leave of absence from Apple and leaving Tim Cook, Chief Operating Officer, in charge while he was away.

Much of the speculation about his health in the run-up to the announcement had been over whether that cancer had returned, but Jobs has maintained that a hormonal imbalance was preventing his body from absorbing certain proteins.  Whatever the case may be, we’re happy to hear that Steve Jobs is doing better and look forward to many more years of Apple with Steve at the helm.

Rumors of Steve actually attending the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco are of yet unconfirmed.