"10.2 million iPods in the three months - up 17 per cent on the same quarter last year"

But wasn't Zune supposed to be the "iPod Killer"??

Maybe we should ask Mr Ballmer about Zune and see how many chairs he can break?

50% of Apple store sales come from people who've never had a mac before..

get away ye wanna be Mac users - stick to your skanky PC's and Linux boxes.

Us seen-the-light-elitists like our air of exclusivity - and the lack of virus, trojans etc..

John,

to me, the term 'prop-up' means to lift up something which is not performing well, or as expected. 'Boost' may have been a better choice?

Gary

Could it be that with all the XP/Vista furore and Linux not quite desktop ready yet, that people are looking for solid, sensible alternatives? I'm a Linux nut, but I have recently moved a relative from Windows to Apple. They are very pleased, with the build quality, the software stability and with only a minor mark-up on the software prices over the Windows stuff. I must admit that having played on an iMac, it's a very tempting platform!

Gary, to be extremely pedantic, he's saying that the iSales are propping up Apple. I assume iSales refer to the selling of ipods, imacs, iphones etc, or even just "sales". Without either of them, Apple wouldn't be doing too well! :-)

Stevie must be doing something right. Check out the market caps of the largest IT players (in Billions of $)

Microsoft 280

Google 203

IBM 156, Intel 155, Apple 151

HP 132

Oracle 108

What's interesting about the Mac sales is that they usually dip the quarter before a new OS release—instead they're breaking Apple's own records.

Yeah the iPod and iPhone have captured the attention, but the biggest key to Apple's seemingly ever-growing revival has to be direct selling via their own stores. Not that long ago Macs were only seen gathering dust at the back of most computer shops, with none of the salespeople having enough knowledge to answer any questions. Decent Mac retailers were few and far between.

These days with Apple selling directly, the resellers have had to raise their game. As a result customers don't feel as if a Mac purchase will see them abandoned when it comes to add-ons or support, leading to a record 2 million Mac sales in just 90 days.

Of course OSX being everything Microsoft said Vista would be helps enormously ;-)

BTW, George. Having installed Ubuntu 7.10 on two computers now I'm of the opinion that Linux is finally ready for the desktop. The refinements that have gone into Teh Gibbon really make it a nice system.

"They are very pleased, with the build quality, the software stability and with only a minor mark-up on the software prices over the Windows stuff."

Erm, Apple products have an extremely poor build quality, from the discolouring MacBooks, to the scratchy screen iPods to the fire hazard Magsafe power adapters.

Apple software is really no more stable than recent versions of Windows, that argument certainly held true in the DOS to Windows ME days discounting 2000 which as well as XP and Vista are at least as stable as MacOS. It gets even worse when you look at applications particularly the Windows flavours, iTunes, Quicktime and Safari are all horrifically badly written and designed pieces of software.

The only real reason people go for Apple is because they have a godlike marketing machine which, like designer clothing that's made in the same sweatshops with the same material and processes as cheap clothing somehow tricks the fools of the world into believing having such expensive, albeit no better and often worse a product somehow makes them worth something.

"Prop-up" does indeed have negative connotations, only a breath away from the old Apple journo mainstay of "beleaguered". Apple does indeed seem to be doing something right. Take a look at this:

http://finance.yahoo.com/charts#chart6:symbol=aapl;range=5y;compare=msft+dell;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;logscale=off

Wish you had shares?

> "Apple products have an extremely poor build quality"

Compared to? They're not perfect, but they are extremely good. My MacBook shows no signs of discolouring, and my PSU has outlasted three Dells. The Dell laptop I had literally fell apart (at least parts are cheap, though unfortunately in every sense), My HP PC is a mire of incompatible drivers and defective graphics hardware, but at least Ubuntu works on it better than Windows ever did.