14 DAY TRIAL // The Macintosh computers have a long history, and since they managed to keep up with this ever changing IT market - thanks to a number of dedicated followers, but also thanks to Apple's innovations that made the popularity of these systems go slowly up, after the introduction of the iPod five years ago - the Mac became more popular too. If you think this is going to change, you'd better think again. The PCs face serious competition at this time from the game consoles and, as latest evolutions show, from the Mac itself too.
The Wall Street analysts keep rising the confidence flag higher and higher, and the last rise of the 12-month target for Apple shares went up to 115$, after the June target rise to 90$. Switching to Mac from Windows isn't that hard either, and these rises of the target share price are also due to the fact that the Mac's ability to run Windows applications makes the transition much easier.
The funny part is that Needham & Co.'s Charles Wolf, the guy that wasn't thinking about how popular the Mac can become without running the Windows OS in June, changed his mind and admitted that he had not expected the stock price to go to 90$ until Boot Camp was introduced in Mac OS 10.5, but the reality proved to be different. Yes, Windows users can switch to Mac without being able to run Windows on their new computer, since the applications that you really need can be counted using the fingers of a single hand.
The Mac sales proved to be stronger than anticipated, and the US and European home users of Macintosh computers are expected to go up to 40% until 2016 compared to 9%, at this time. The future looks bright, and since even experienced analysts change their predictions from time to time, I won't predict anything. All I can do is save some money for my future Mac and wait for the iPhone, iTV and all the other i-Gadgets to come from Apple in the future.