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Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

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Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#171

Post by tomwilson »

iSnow wrote: post #112
edblarney wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a new Macbook, and I can say that it's a great product. Probably the best on the market. The problem I had was cost - they are over-priced. Yes, I've heard the argument that if you want 'x RAM with y CPU' etc it will 'cost just as much' - but this is just no longer true. The Macs with 16G memory are crazy expensive. My Mac has 200-ish G hard-drive which is f-ing retardedly small. They should all have 1T…

I would really love to love Apple. But at this point, my eco conscience kicks in. Buying a laptop that cannot be upgraded in any way, be it RAM, SSD, or WIFI card... that's just too much. I have no idea how big the ecological footprint of a laptop is, but it has to be huge. Once my 2012 Macbook Air kicks the dust, I'll look at Lenovo laptops.

Apple does tout how recycleable it is though. And they have a recycling program. And they run a lot of their stuff (all?) from renewable energy. If you really cared about this from an environmental pov there is far more to it than is it upgradeable. The resale on the mac is much better and people are willing to buy them for way longer, too.

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#172

Post by astrodust »

tomne wrote: post #95
astrodust wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fantastic display panel, though. That's why people buy them. It's not for the fastest CPU, it's definitely not for the GPU. It's because it has a fast enough CPU, a good enough GPU and goes all-in on the display.

Aren't they all glossy though? It looks better, but it's less practical whenever you get some sunlight.

If you're not used to it that can be jarring, but over time it's less of an issue.

It's not something I notice unless I'm in a really bad spot and there's tons of light coming in. Good thing civilization invented this thing called blinds.

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#173

Post by tomwilson »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #5

Back when I worked at Apple the dirty secret was that the cheapest models, despite all the marketing of the MacBook Pro, made up the majority of sales. Back then it was the white plastic MacBook but now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot. That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS. Instead of repla…

I don't think the 11 has ever sold in great quantities. I had one for years (recently replaced with the new 15 pro) and I rarely ever saw another 11 in the wild. If I did it was usually at WWDC.

The 13 air however would easily be their most popular laptop. Those things are literally everywhere.

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#174

Post by astrodust »

Joeri wrote: post #91
astrodust wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claim there's updates in the works. Here's hoping they push them out soon.

With apple's recent behavior, the updates may not be upgrades, but trade-offs.

I think they're having trouble finding their way in the post-PC world.

Jobs knew this day was coming, that the PC would take a back seat to other devices, and brought up the analogy of Apple as BMW: The German company started out building motorcycles and while car sales soon vastly eclipsed that, they continued making really good bikes. It was a point of pride for them.

If Apple goes back to that approach, of making Really Good Computers because they can, selling them not at a loss but at a respectable price for a respectable product, they might piss off fewer in their developer slash power user camp.

I'm not sure this is their current strategy. The "Pro" monicker seems to be a little diluted in terms of meaning these days.

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#176

Post by astrodust »

pixelcloud wrote: post #167
astrodust wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They claim there's updates in the works. Here's hoping they push them out soon.

And then you can wait another 1000 days for a refresh.

Intel isn't exactly rushing out compelling new chips every 180 days like they used to.

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#177

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #44
jclardy wrote: post #10

Makes sense with Apple's current terrible product line setup. Both the retina MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro are much more niche than their last generation. Also much more confusing as the MacBook Air successor is $500 more than the 13" Air was (The non-touchbar MacBook Pro is the spiritual successor to the air.) The true 13" Pro for 2016 is also $500 more than the last gen. The 12" MacBook is there...but it is a super…

The Dell Alienware is so much better value. Amazing keyboard, run any game you like, super fast. I don't care about Win10 either way. It unlocks with facial recognition. It weighs more than my car (but I leave it on my desk 99% of the time) I just couldn't justify buying an Apple, as much as I wanted one. [edit] how the hell do I keep getting down voted for voicing my opinion? Lol. Nope. You're opinion is wrong, lose…

There is an inarguable price premium for getting the arguably better operating system. The integration, the design, the support, the ecosystem... I'm willing to pay for that. Some people aren't, and more power to them.

I ran Linux on everything for almost 20 years. I'm done fiddling with my computer, and glad to pay for someone else investing a lot of engineering so I don't have to.

I've always kept a Windows partition for gaming. And now that I moved to a MBP, it's a whole separate machine. It's a Dell 730x monster, from just before they bought Alienware, that originally sold for $8,500. It's about 8 years old now, but, with a nVidia 760, it's still running most games just fine.

I've tried Windows 10 TWICE, and gone back to 7, and have it "pinned" with Never 10. I came back from a vacation, and nVidia forced a new driver on my Windows machine. This version turns ShadowPlay back on (which I turned off because of lousy performance on spinning hard drives). And now I find I have to create an account just to try to find the setting to turn it off! Like Razor, I have to log in to a cloud service to adjust my settings!? No sale! I threw the Razor keyboard away. In the case of the video card, I downgraded to a driver from before they introduced ShadowPlay, and it seems to be running fine.

You can say you're happy with Windows, and I believe you. You can tell me it's a better value. But I'm about to throw this glorified Xbox away, and buy a PS4, mods be damned.

My point is that Linux still takes a lot of babysitting, and Windows is turning my machine into a something which feels like something I rent, but don't own. I'm happy to pay for the premium of macOS at this point, and will continue to find SOME acceptable hardware in their lineup to avoid the other options.

This may or may not be a popular counterpoint. I hate that, like Reddit, the voting system here isn't used the way it's supposed to be.

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#178

Post by arvinsim »

feross wrote: post #64
jclardy wrote: post #10

Makes sense with Apple's current terrible product line setup. Both the retina MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro are much more niche than their last generation. Also much more confusing as the MacBook Air successor is $500 more than the 13" Air was (The non-touchbar MacBook Pro is the spiritual successor to the air.) The true 13" Pro for 2016 is also $500 more than the last gen. The 12" MacBook is there...but it is a super…

"If you want to write fast software, use a slow computer" - Dominic Tarr The 12" Macbook is the best computer I've ever owned. Switched to it from a 2014 Macbook Pro, and found it very easy to adjust. The only time it struggles a little bit is when I run Windows in VMware, on occasion. The biggest benefit of the Macbook 12" is that if software runs well on your computer, you know it's guaranteed to run extra buttery-…

I want my development environment as fast as possible.If I want to test for performance I would do it in a separate slow machine. Why cripple development needlessly?

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#179

Post by skrause »

Zelphyr wrote: post #138

Everyone is complaining about the confusing direction of Apple with regards to the Mac but when I look around, I often wonder if they're just not reacting to what is really happening. For example; my wife's 10 year old MacBook died last year and for the most part, she hasn't missed it. She uses her phone for everything. And for the things that she can't/doesn't want to do on her phone, she uses her iPad. I just bough…

> We as power users hate it because we want to continue to have a solid laptop and/or desktop on which to do our work.

And we will. I think the people who can live with only a phone today are the same group of people who were using no computer at all before 1998 or so. Businesses and power users who were using computer long before that will also keep using laptops and desktops in the future. Or do people really think that in 10-20 years all work will be done on phones and restricted tablets? I don't. The PC market might shrink, but it's not going away. If Apple doesn't want to be part of that market anymore other companies will.

Re: Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

#180

Post by aconz2 »

untog wrote: post #151
Chos89 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be a douche, it was a good analogy.

Of course it wasn't. People on laptops and people on desktops are making the same thing , just desktop users are doing so with more horsepower.

Sure we're all making software which is just bits in memory, but I think that's an extreme simplification. Maybe you're thinking of how we're all just editing text to make programs? But then that doesn't account for what you do with the program you just wrote.

I think you're thinking of using more horsepower for strong scaling, which is a good use, but I'm more referring to weak scaling. You can work on bigger problems with more horsepower, not just solve the smaller ones faster.

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