Newly released data from NPD Group, a major global market research company, shows that Apple notebooks accounted for nearly 10% of notebook retail sales for the month of March in the United States, with MacBooks and MacBook Pros combined.

The list omits direct sellers (like Dell, which doesn’t do retail). Apple Insider reports that the NPD Group list puts Apple’s retail sales topped at 9.9%, while Compaq hit 8.5% and Gateway 13%. Top of the chart is Toshiba at 26.2%, then HP at 23.9% This is actually a bit down from earlier in the year, when Apple did 10.1%.

In desktop retail sales, Apple broke into the top five for the first time this year, hitting 7.7%. Top dog here was HP with 35%, followed by a tight trio composed of Compaq, Gateway and eMachines, at 16.7%, 16.6% and 16.4% respectively, then Apple.

Not Likes:

1. I am having trouble getting used to the fact that the red X button on the top right of a window shuts the app down - and not merely close the window. Dang. I unlearned it before, now I have to relearn it again.

2. Is the constant rebooting really necessary?

3. Closing the lid and letting the T43 hibernate or sleep instead of turning it off is like Russian Roulette - you never know if it’s going to screw up. Must I resort to physically turning it on and off every time? I miss just shutting the lid when I’m taking a break and then just opening it and jumping right back in without waiting and worrying.

4. The biometric finger scanning is cool, but sometimes it simply refuses to read my digits when at other times a casual swipe is all it takes. Sometimes it accepts the scan and seems to proceed, but sometimes stops and asks me to swipe a second time, as if it got suspicious and changed its mind. Duh?

5. The video output is …chunky. I’m used to the beauty, grace and clarity of OS X’s Quartz Extreme. ClearType? Pwe!

6. What’s with the constant updating? Every. Single. Day. There. Is. Something. Critical.

7. I miss the Apple Key. (Incidentally, the T43 is the one Windows laptop that does NOT have a Windows key.)

8. Sometimes I notice that the hard drive activity light flashes endlessly, even if I’m not doing anything, and the little network activity indicator flashes just as often. (No, I don’t have any background processes set up and running. I’m not a newbie; I’d know the difference.) So WTF is it constantly doing? Viruses hard at work? Nope, I’m clear, according to Windows Defender, AVG and Norton AntiVirus. Are the Microsoft gnomes playing with my data when I’m not looking, changing it around and sending it home so that the other gnomes in Redmond can have a good laugh? It’s making me paranoid. Creepy, man.

9. The trackpad of the T43 is crowned by a set of large buttons with colors (this is apart from the two large ones below it), and there is this red pencil eraser smack dab in the middle of the keyboard. Crowd me, why don’t you? I feel like I’m going to accidentally trigger WWIII with a wayward button press.

10. Sometimes doing simple things, like just dragging a file to a folder, drives the OS into a deep coma, and I face the choice of either being patient and see if it eventually slips from its funk, or just reboot the damn thing.

11. That little viper nest of a billion useless icons (I think it’s called the Taskbar?) on the lower right corner is maddeningly distracting, with all its blinking and dialog bubbles popping up constantly.

12. I miss my Dock.

13. I miss Dashboard and my beloved widgets.

14. I miss jamming the cursor into a corner and seeing my desktop clear instantly.

15. Why does it have to be “My” everything? My Network Places. My Bluetooth Places. My Computer. My Documents. My Programs... I mean, I know they’re mine, am I that insecure that I need to remind myself I own them every time I look at the screen?

16. While we’re on the topic of naming things, why is the trash can called Recycle Bin anyway? What are we recycling?

17. Just the act of installing a little piece of shareware can freeze the whole thing and turn it into an expensive paperweight. Why can’t this billion-trillion-gazillion industry fix such a small thing?

18. Microsoft will only let you update the system via web if you’re using Internet Explorer. Is that childish or what?

19. It takes forever to just unplug a USB flash drive.

20. Control Panel is a crowded, confusing, complicated jumble of potentially dangerous choices. Give me System Preferences any day.

Likes:

1. I like the games.

One of the sticking points about the iPhone with a lot of industry pundits is the fact that, in true Apple fashion, it’s a closed architecture. Most critics predict that despite the hype and hullabaloo surrounding the product, this refusal to play ball will be the iPhone’s ultimate undoing, when Apple, and only Apple, can create and develop apps and other software and related products for it.

Well it seems Jobs is thawing out a bit. A crack has appeared in the ice.

At the WorldWide Developers Conference 2007 scheduled for June 11-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, one of the presentations is getting a lot of attention: Session 614 on the Content and Media track — Developing Websites for iPhone. The presentation notes state:

iPhone completely redefines browser-based web access on a mobile phone. Learn iPhone best practices for ensuring optimal web development of your existing website, or hosted web application. Join the iPhone Safari and WebKit browser development teams as they share the latest techniques on mobile browser-based user experience design and development.

Wowza. All is not lost yet. There is hope.

You guys remember that issue about that PC World editor who quit because his boss was trying to kill that Apple story that I wrote about in an earlier post?

If you were ever curious about the article itself, PC World put the controversial story (actually, stories - there were two sides to the coin) up on their website.  They were written by Alan Stafford and Narasu Rebbapragada. You can read them here:

Love.

Hate.

Windows Media Player for the Mac is no more, Microsoft has announced.

The folks at Redmond have officially stopped development of the application for Mac users and have no plans of creating future versions of the player,citing business considerations, according to a CNET report,

The last version released for OS X was WMP 9, back in November 2003. Since then, only that and a version for Mac OS 9 have been available for Apple users. Microsoft will continue to make these versions available for download, and announced plans to make Flip4Mac WMV available for free so that Mac users will be able to play Windows Media video files directly from Quicktime. Microsoft says it will instead just focus on developing core apps for the Apple platform, and continue developing major applications like Office:Mac for at least five more years.

In effect, Microsoft is waving the white flag, ceding the throne to Apple’s Quicktime, which has dominated even Windows’ own turf, particularly in the digital music aspect. Windows Media Player takes its place beside Internet Explorer and MSN in the list of Mac-abandoned apps. (At least WMP will still be available; the latter two will be dropped from their downloadable list by the end of May, along with some other Mac tools.)

No great loss.