We love Apple ... We hate Apple

It's IT Blogwatch: in which Apple's market share grows surprisingly fast, but is that a backlash we smell? Not to mention an 80s electrospoof, complete with secret Heather Mills-McCartney joke...

Gregg Keizer reports:

Apple Inc. moved back into third place in U.S. computer sales last quarter and continues to post gains that outstrip the industry average, a research firm said today. According to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, Apple sold 1.3 million computers in the April-June time frame, a 32% increase over the same period last year. Apple's sales were essentially equal to Acer Inc.'s, which sold 2,000 more machines by IDC's preliminary estimates.

Both Apple and Acer accounted for 7.8% of the U.S. market. Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., meanwhile, retained their hold on the No. 1 and 2 positions with 32% and 25.1% market share, respectively. more

Seth Weintraub inks it in:

Gartner's latest research shows continued growth for the Macintosh platform at a rate far exceeding the PC world in general - at least in the US.  IDC research largely backs this data up.

The most staggering numbers for the Macintosh platform come from the US ... [but it] still hasn't made a big dent in the Global market share coming in below fifth place at under 4.4%.
...
What would happen if you included iPod touches and iPhones in this matrix?  We know Apple sold 1 million iPhones last weekend.  I am not sure if Apple would pass HP or Dell but it would be very close. more

Nik Cubrilovic analyzes:

At this rate, the company should easily take a lead ahead of Acer and reach 10% market share sometime this year. Dell and HP are far too dominant for Apple to knock either of them off any time soon, but a 10% market share for Mac OS X in the USA would be significant. Apple also operates at much higher margins than Dell and HP, so as a business it is much more profitable. Apple has also tightly integrated with its applications and online stores, leading to value-add sales across both Mac and PC platforms. The dynamics of the Apple business are thus very different from those other traditional manufacturers, each of whom has been experiencing its own problems in the past few years. more

James Robertson is no small-talker:

Right now, Apple is firing on all cylinders. The Mac, the iPod, the iPhone - and they all work together well. Now ponder the equivalents for Windows. Individually, there are some nice products, but collectively, they just don't "fit" as well as all of the Apple stuff
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Looks like people enjoy technology that works properly. more

But Kevin Allison isn't fooled:

Beneath these rosy headline figures lie clues about an impending slowdown.

IDC said growth in computer shipments in Asia was slower than expected during the quarter ... [and Gartner] says that the rise in the number of computers shipped masked steep declines in average selling prices. more

Neither is Jason Stamper, who [Obvious joke deleted -Ed.]:

Honestly, you’d think Apple has won the battle for the desktop, the way some news outlets have reported the most recent market share figures ... If you look at the worldwide figures, Apple is hardly on the chart.
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What is true ... is that Apple is seeing better desktop growth rates in the US than its Windows rivals. Apple grew market share in the US by 38.1%, while Windows saw a 4.2% growth rate in the US. more

The increasingly-curmudgeonly Preston Gralla bites the Apple:

Open Source lovers have long had a love affair with Apple, and treat Microsoft as if it were the spawn of the devil. But there are plenty of reasons why the Open Source community should shun Apple.
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The iPhone 3G ... is about as anti-Open Source as a device can be, yet the Open Source community still greeted it with open arms.
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Just one more example of the way that Apple gets a free ride --- in this instance from the Open Source community. But Apple has also been given a free ride by the press, and by the Internet community overall. Apple has been able to use its ability to build great hardware and software as a way to convince people that somehow its business practices are of a higher order than other companies. Nothing could be further from the truth. more

And finally...

• Electro Gypsy [caution: may cause extreme rug cutting]
  

Buffer overflow:

• AllThingsD: AMD Posts Second-Quarter CEO Loss
• Library Clips: Seven ways Enterprise 2.0 differs from Web 2.0
• Data Center Strategies: VMware's Leadership Change - The Dust Settles
• FastCompany.TV: Datacenter of the Future
• Riverbed: Top 10 Storage Inventions of All Time
• Google Operating System: Gmail and Google Calendar to Add Offline Support
• A VC: Blogging's Dead, Long Live Blogging

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Scott McPherson: Situations where waterboarding is appropriate
• Michael R. Farnum: Partial disk encryption leakage
• Mark Hall: Projects: The modern economy's assembly line
• Shark Tank: How not to save money
• Shark Bait: Air Mouse?

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 21 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• SCO: the gift that keeps on giving
• S.F. net.admin holds city to ransom
• Four minutes to pwn?