Statistics about Apple are looking up!

The advent of low cost Macs like the Mac Mini and the iMac G5, as well as the so-called "halo effect" of the iPod have brought all sort of good statistics to Apple of late.

Their sales are increasing at 3 times the rate of the rest of the computer industry. Their sales of Macs for the last several quarters have increased greatly as Windows owners tired of viruses and having gotten a taste of Apple quality with the iPod have switched to Mac from Windows.

Just the other day, it was announced that Apple has moved up to the number 4 spot among computer companies in terms of market share.

Now Jupiter Research has reported on Apple's share of the business desktop and business server market.

You seldom hear about installed base, but this is a good example of what Mac users have know all along...there are a lot more Macs in use, and in use for longer out there than most Windows-zealots will admit. You can't go buy % of market share of sales in the last quarter. Heck, Apple has pretty much always been in 10 (and now in the top 5) companies. But that seldom is mentioned, because in our short-term-profit centric mindset, that never seems to show up on the radar. Until now.....when the bloom is way, way off the rose of Windows....and the promise of Linux has been diluted with the 15 trillion different distros you have to try and pick from, and the fact that it's still not a low-maintenance OS in most cases (the only exception I can think of being the Lindows/Linspire that Wal-Mart sells, which isn't exactly taking the market by storm)

Mac OS X is Unix/Linux done right, basically. And businesses and IT pros are starting to realize it. They take the best from the open source and Unix worlds and combine it with the polish and professionalism that business users expect of an off-the-shelf machine....and are laughing all the way to bank.

Oh...and ABSOLUTELY NO VIRUSES, vs. Windows 100,000 viruses (which doubled last year alone!)

Heck, 4 years ago when I was looking at houses to buy, whenever there was a computer in the houses I looked at, it was always a Mac. ALWAYS. I couldn't believe it, but there it is! I looked at places all over the city, too.

Congrats, Apple. It's about time you started getting the respect you deserve.