Hi, I can be argumentative sod too and I’d like to draw your attention on something. When was the last time you read an article about Dell? You should read this Business Week news story from May 2008 for instance. Only 18% of Dell’s computer sales were to consumers but Dell was already showing up in NPD’s figures, because their products were sold in 13,000 stores including Wall-Mart, Best Buy, Costco, etc. According to NPD Group, Dell’s retail PC share in the U.S. was 8.1% in April 2008, trailing H-P, Apple, Acer, and Toshiba.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2008/tc20080529_159057_page_2.htm

The company is also blogging about its growing retail presence. Its consumer products are now available in more than 30,000 stores worldwide. I think it’s fair to say that Dell’s retail presence is rather significant.

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/17/dell-retail-presence-now-more-than-30-000-stores.aspx

I think you’re missing the point a little. Windows has never had to be exceptional to be a success – witness Windows 95, which was barely any more usable than OS 7, and which ended up being huge for MS.

And it doesn’t have to attract switchers back: remember that in the bigger picture, the actual number of switchers from Windows to Mac, while not quite the “rounding error” that Ballmer makes out, is pretty small. Worldwide and across all channels, you’re talking about a couple of percentage points.

What it does do is be a (much) better Windows. And that will be enough to stop the migration away from Windows becoming any more significant.

You also go on about telling us how Windows 7 will attract IT Managers. As an IT Manager, I can tell you that Windows 7 is more palatable than Vista, but given the choice, most would stick with XP if it were an option. I work for a large corporation that has avoided Vista for obvious reasons, but we are/were in the process of making the necessary preparations to switch to Vista if we had to. I can assure you that this decision to move off of XP for most companies will have more to do with Microsoft forcing the issue (due to licensing of operating systems with new hardware) than it has to do with any merits of Windows 7 itself. For most companies, the bottom line is that XP works well enough. While there are nice features in Windows 7, they aren’t compelling enough to warrant the cost of an upgrade in and of themselves. Further, Vista/Windows 7 breaks compatibility with many of our custom built and third party software. Moving to Windows 7 means upgrading lots of other middleware and in some cases, switching to entirely different products.

I’m sticking with Apple at home for the foreseeable future (because it’s software, not the OS that counts, and I think it will take years for Windows developers to catch up with Windows 7 itself) but I like what I’ve seen of Win 7.

Dare I say that running it on a Macbook there is less mysterious ‘spinning beachball’ style slowdowns than Leopard.

I think you’re being overly kind to Gruber. He spends most of his time deriding or savaging who exhibits the temerity to question Apple products or policies. His output is strictly a one-way street, with no right of reply on his site. He rarely feels a need to defend a point, but when compelled he quickly adopts the “we’re all friends here” routine, in stark contrast to the antagonism of the original post.

While I disagree with Gruber on his piece, and he does frequently snark without defending a point and can become overly fanboyish at times, he is critical of Apple over lots of things like its fiasco of an App Store (where rules are improvised almost daily).

But this is not new. This is not the first quarter we have seen this growth disparity between Windows PCs and Macs. It has been going on for many quarters going back to when Mac switched to Intel and introduced Tiger.

This history means the non-sequitur is in suggesting that the cause of the disparity in the June quarter is that low-end buyers are cutting back in the recession more than the upper-end buyer. Moreover, there is much evidence in many markets throughout the economy that people are reacting to the recession by moving downscale. This should work in Windows favor.

Making these comparisons even more remarkable is that all these measurements are of units. Thus a sale of a $400 netbook counts as much as a $1,500 MacBook Pro. And it is well-documented that the netbook segment has been growing fastest. Yet Apple has no entry in this market what-so-ever. If one wanted to really compare how Apple is doing against its competition, one would be measuring revenue or gross profit instead of units. The disparity would then mushroom.

One final point: Apple makes about $400 gross margin on a $1,500 Mac. If they were to cut their profit in half (an enormous cut), then the price of the Mac would still be $1,300. So when one argues that Apple’s prices are too high and unwarranted, one is really arguing that Apple’s costs ($1,100 in this example) are too high. Does anyone seriously argue that Apple is not good at cost engineering, supply chain management, and purchasing. I don’t think so. So enough of that crap, please. Apple’s gross profits are not unreasonably high at 28% (Mac only), and customers the world over are voting with their wallets that the value in the Mac justifies its price.

ps this is funny! http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/

Ballmer poo-poohed the iPod, and called the Zune an iPod killer.

“Ballmer mocked some of Google’s efforts to develop software to run on PCs.”

I would contend that MOST of Google’s efforts are paying big dividends and it enjoys brand loyalty that MS can only dream of. “Some” maybe duds but MOST are winners.

And when you total up Ballmer’s statements about its competitors and their products i can only come to the conclusion that MS are defensive and they sound downright worried. And so they should be. The chink in their armour has become visible. I think Gruber is correct in characterizing MS as being in a slow decline. This does not mean that they will fail, but as IBM had to move to different market, so too will MS.

They are increasingly losing mind-share in terms of computing, the internet, and they are now toast in mobile market.