iPod: The Only Reason to Buy a Mac?

The iPod, few would disagree, is a major hit. Knowledgeable individuals are opining that this year the total number of iPods sold will near forty million. Competitors may be befuddled but to the digital audio buying public there only exist iPods and pieces of worthless junk. Fans and stockholders of Apple computer are understandably elated. At least most of them are, selling a ton of iPods isn’t enough for the people who fervently desire the Mac platform to shine.

These people want to see Macs move and believe that massive iPod sales will surely result in increased Mac sales. The notion that people who buy iPods will then by Macs has become known as the “Halo Effect’ and seemingly a day doesn’t pass where you don’t hear the magical “Halo Effect” mentioned. Which sets up an interesting scenario: The Mac is suddenly dependent on the iPod for its success or failure. No matter how “insanely great” OS X is the fortunes of the operating system are firmly tied, in the minds of some, to the success of the iPod.

Thinking about recent Mac sales there is every reason to believe that the iPod is exerting a powerful effect on the numbers of Macs sold. The notion isn’t surprising, when results are reported the Mac sales are always cast in the most positive possible light. Imagine that Mac sales were horrible for the first quarter of 2005. When the execs announce sales for the second quarter they note that sales were up 30% over the previous quarter without noting that the previous quarter featured a 35% drop in demand. Which is no big deal and no reason to criticize the Apple PR spinners, their job is to put Apple in the best light possible. They are also required to give out some hard data so at this point an examination of the data is in order.

Ah, what better method to illustrate quarter after quarter of results than our friend the graph? Probably many things but since a graph is handy let us take a look:

iPod sales

Mac Sales

It certainly seems like we are seeing some sort of halo effect, the bulges and dips seem to march together (one would expect the spikes in the Macs sold to actually lag behind the spikes in the iPods sold category but… whatever). Concrete proof of the iPod halo effect, yes? Let us not gallop too far ahead of ourselves at this point. While Macs are seemingly on the rise the longer view looks like this:

What we see here is a different story. Suddenly it isn’t so much that the success of the iMac is pushing up Mac sales rather that Mac sales are finally recovering from the change to OS X.

The notion that Mac sales are just now recovering from the switch from Classic to OS X may seem quaint to the tech minded among us, after all tech folks were using OS X as soon as possible, but it is likely the case. Broad acceptance comes much more slowly than acceptance by the technically elite. To cite one particularly salient example the local newspaper is a Mac shop and they are thinking they might make they change this summer. It may be worthwhile to remember that Macs didn’t boot to OS X exclusively until 2003. Presumably there are still OS 9 machines with a few months of AppleCare coverage left.

With this information in mind, we are left with two alternatives. We can choose to believe that the recent growth of the Mac is due to the unintentional beneficence of the iPod or we can surmise that the Mac is finally returning to Pre iPod levels of demand. Neither is a very palatable option. In the first case one shudders to think where Mac sales would be without the iPod and in the second case Mac fans aren’t seeing any actual growth they are only witnessing the completion of the switch to OS X. In actuality it a probably a little of both, the iPod has undoubtedly lured more than one person to the Mac and the switch to X, despite Steve’s seemingly earnest exhortations, took a bit longer than most people realized.