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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

November, 2004

More Evidence of the Impact of iPods

Those of you have have been reading for a while will remember me mentioning on multiple occaisions how big an impact I expected the iPod to have on Mac sales ("Will the Tiger Finally Break Windows?", "The Impact of iPod on Mac Sales" and "Apple's New iMac"). Well, here's some more evidence for you from Forbes.com Morning Session:
Piper Jaffray raised estimates and the price target on Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ), citing a "halo effect" from satisfaction from users of Apple's iPod. Piper Jaffray said that in a survey of 200 users, 6% were former PC users who have purchased a Macintosh after buying an iPod, while 7% were former PC users who plan to buy a Macintosh within 12 months. "We believe that the remarkable satisfaction with the iPod creates a word-of-mouth wildfire that generates new customer interest in Apple products," Piper Jaffray said.
While a 200 person survey is hardly scientific (at American Demographics we refused to use anything under 1,000), it's still important that investors are starting to notice a trend. As more and more applications move online, Microsoft's stranglehold will diminish. I count myself in the list of Apple converts. I still use a PC but I can promise you the next computer I buy for myself will be a Mac. I used a G4 at work and after getting used to it I was sold. Panther is an incredibly easy to use, very customizable and well thought out OS. The computer hardly ever had any problems and every program I ever wanted had a Mac version (which isn't all that difficult considering the majority of my time is spent in a browser anyway). I never thought I'd say the words, but after spending some time on a Mac it's clear that they are better machines. Clearly people are happy with their iPods (as evidenced by the ridiculous sales figures we've seen over the last year), so why wouldn't they think about a Mac as their next PC? It's quite possible we'll have a revolution on our hands in the next five years (one of many I hope).
November 23, 2004
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.