[kilron]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

Sorry I wasn't more clear. I've heard figures from 2-5% representing the proprotion of new computer purchases that are Mac products. I'm not sure if anyone is really sure, hence the range, but the Mac market is far from mainstream in my view.

aha. i think your numbers are off by quite a bit. apple is much much higher than 5%. its typically around 12% i believe (amongst consumers) and growing. the macbook has been the hottest selling laptop for a while now i believe.

i think you're confusing mainstream with majority. apple is certainly not the majority, but it is VERY mainstream. not everyone uses apple machines, but everyone knows about them and is very aware of them. apple machines are also used by people across all demographics. that's mainstream. majority is something entirely separate.

BUT...the Apple name is mainstream, without a doubt. Linux - definitely not so much, somewhere under 2% last I heard, and definitely not a household name.

linux is not only NOT mainstream, and NOT a majority, its also very little known and not used by people across many demos. linux is for tweekers. always has been and probably always will be. that doesn't make it bad, its just a very narrow niche thing. oh and servers too to some extent i suppose. but again, definitely not a mainstream consumer product.

As for problems - I'm sure every OS has issues. I agree that the internal/external memory thing is a doozy. But it was also the same issue on PDA's for a decade...as was total loss of memory when the battery ran out. They still sold.

sure they did, but times have changed. just because they sold back then doesn't mean they'll sell now. back then you had no other choice and the apps for them were also teeny tiny as well. times have changed....

I see the iPhone OS as horribly flawed because it locks you in to Apple and only Apple approved products.

and that's a very valid point, however its one that a very small minority of people care about. you have to ask yourself, "ok, so apple locks it down... what am i really missing out on because of this? and do the positives of a locked down system outweigh the negatives?"

first, i'd argue that the positives DO outweigh the negatives, but then again i do have a ton of experience with the iPhone so i know its insides and outs. other folks may have different priorities and come to a different conclusion.

secondly, everyone that i know that has an iPhone (and amongst close friends it probably amounts to 15 people), NONE of them care about that one bit. you know why? because their iPhone does some freakin' amazing things that no other phone can do and it does it so easily and hassle free. that's where apple shines.

that's also why the iPhone continues to sell like hotcakes. its extremely polished. there will always be a very small minority demographic that will assail it for what it doesn't do, but apple doesn't care about that demo. why? because they're so small. they may be very vocal (as they tend to be very technically inclined), but they're a very small percentage and have very very little impact on apple's sales and profitability. i personally believe the iPad will be another example of it.

Right now - I just got the cheapest phone I could because I want to use it as a phone, not a computer. I geek out with the best of them, but all the options, right now, leave me frustrated (windows based units)/waiting for a few more revisions (Android)/resenting their closed nature(iphone).

understandable. everyone has different preferences and requirements. its always a waiting game and it seems like there's always a newer and better android phone around the corner as they continue to polish the OS and hardware.

The NA phone market is different from most of the rest of the world, too, as I understand it. Outside NA, most phones are sold without contract and without being subsidized. Perhaps this affects google's decision, as Verizon doesn't necessarily represent that much of the world market.

ehh... i think it depends. i think in the rest of the world there are more options for you to buy it on contract or not whereas sometimes in the US the carriers don't give you an option to buy it contract-free. i know that in the UK and many european countries they can sell you the phones subsidized on a contract. i think it does vary a lot but i know there are many countries that do offer phone subsidies for 1-3 year contracts.

also the initial issue with verizon is that they operate on a different technology called CDMA (like sprint) that doesn't work anywhere else in the world but here because everyone else in the world is on GSM like at&t and t-mobile. but i'm guessing we'd probably see the nexus one on verizon before long anyway. but once verizon moves to LTE (4G) within the next few years, that incompatibility should fade away.