bruceb news

The market for notebook computers is growing fast. Notebooks already outsell desktop computers in the US and will outsell desktops globally by next year, according to the New York Times. Here’s a report released yesterday comparing global notebook shipments in the first quarters of 2007 and 2008, showing HP and Dell with hugely increased sales and more than a third of the market between them.

You probably have some vague idea that Apple owns the notebook market, right? It’s part of the reality distortion field that Apple has used so brilliantly over the years. (Random example: an article from last fall about the “major shift in notebook buying patterns” and “ominous news for Dell.”) Apple has been selling a lot of notebooks and its market share is definitely increasing, particularly in the US, but don’t get all carried away about it. According to the report, Apple had been in eighth place for four consecutive quarters, but “surged” to seventh place in the first quarter of 2008 with a 4.6% market share, barely beating out Asus (which had an even larger percentage growth in year-over-year sales).

Still it must be great to use an Apple computer and live the easy life of a troublefree operating system, right?

• I trust all the Mac users got the updates two weeks ago that fixed more than forty security holes in OS X v. 10.4.11. Or perhaps you upgraded to OS X 10.5.3? Next time I talk to Mac users, I think I’ll ask them which choice they made – Macs are so easy to maintain that it’s probably obvious if they’re running a fully patched version of 10.4.11 or 10.5.3.
• Oh, and did you get the update to Quicktime 7.5 that fixed security holes that could have allowed people to control your computer remotely? That was the update that followed Quicktime 7.4.5 a couple of months ago, which fixed more security problems. The Quicktime problems potentially affect Windows users too – thanks, Apple.
• It’s not clear whether there’s a fix for the security problem with Apple’s Safari Internet browser for the Windows users who were fooled into installing it a couple of months ago by Apple’s deceptive “update” utility.

Apple is pretty free to claim that the Windows world is unsafe and confusing, but it’s just the teensiest bit annoying that Apple is one of the forces contributing to making it so.