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

9to5mac.com

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

#181

Post by xvaier »

bootload wrote: post #137
potatosoup wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was she actually against in the new MBP? (New MBP user myself, don't like the touch bar, but otherwise a fine machine.)

"What was she actually against in the new MBP?" Newish MBP user chiming in. Peripheral access and costs. - no DVD/CD player - no Ethernet - no SD card slot - no RCA out What I see is good new machines with the above peripheral access removed. The advantages are no mechanical moving parts, technically better KB, access to faster SDD, software upgradable for quite a while. The hidden advantage is the new Macs are less…

However, two out of four things mentioned have been removed from new models since the first retina came out in mid 2012 (DVD/RJ45) simply because they are nearly as thick as the entire device.

RCA out hasn't ever been in a MacBook to my knowledge.

The only port that made absolutely no sense to remove was the SD card slot (even if I personally never use mine).

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

#182

Post by sytelus »

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-…

By that logic, every developer should be handed out 486s, right?

There are too many things during development that doesn't happen on consumer's computer like compile, fast intellisense, real-time syntax check, multiple instances of IDEs and so on. Developers should have best performing machines money can buy because developer time is expensive and development should happen at speed of thought. Testing should be done in VM that can emulate average consumer hardware. Just because some developers are not good t following performance hygiene, every one shouldn't be working on weak machine to produce performant software.

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

#183

Post by Ezhik »

nickjj wrote: post #153
chadgeidel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've switched out HDDs and installed Linux a few times and it's never taken me 5 minutes. Not even 50 minutes. Sure, it's a one-time "cost" and nearly insignificant over the course of the lifetime of the machine, but please be honest about the time spent.

It's 5 minutes to unscrew a couple of screws, slide out the SSD card, put in the new SSD card and screw it back together. The GalliumOS installer is also really straight forward. You pretty much run 2 commands and hit ok a few times. This part is more than 5 minutes, but it's mainly just twiddling your thumbs waiting for things to download and install. Then you boot up and you're in.

From experience, it's just annoying to have to do things like that. It really is nice to have a machine that I can just use out of the box without tweaks and such, not worrying about updates breaking my drivers, things like that.

However at this point it's not worth paying Apple for that pleasure, when I can get a Windows machine from Microsoft that gives me all that. Hell, I can even get that Developer Edition Dell XPS with Linux.

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

#184

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

guelo wrote: post #53

Both Dell and Lenovo's websites are awful. They try so hard to segment the market that they make it almost impossible to shop their products. I want to buy but I can't figure out what they are selling.

When I bought my first MacBook, I tried piecing together something from Dell's site that would be equivalent. (15", nice screen, SSD, good graphics, etc.) It took me about an hour of flipping through pages and trying to configure various models before I ever got close. And, lo and behold, there was only $300 difference between the "comparable" Dell and the MBP I would up buying. $300 for OS X? Yes please. It was clear to me then that Apple's simplified lineup was a major selling point advantage in the consumer market.

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

#185

Post by Ezhik »

edblarney wrote: post #75
guelo wrote: post #53

Both Dell and Lenovo's websites are awful. They try so hard to segment the market that they make it almost impossible to shop their products. I want to buy but I can't figure out what they are selling.

"They try so hard to segment the market that they make it almost impossible to shop their products. I want to buy but I can't figure out what they are selling." Bravo! This is it. So many manufacturers of so many things screw this up so bad. I call it 'Sony-itis'. They have massive segmentation, within that, so many variations, it's crazy. I think it's an issue of culture: unless the change comes from the top, it wil…

So, Nokia or Motorola?

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

#186

Post by ageitgey »

capkutay wrote: post #86

The jury has been out on Tim Cook's performance as Apple CEO since he took over about 7 years ago. I think this new line of Macs is evidence that he's just too focussed on operations to the point where it's ruining their products. I'm guessing the move to consolidate the ports and kill the audio jack may make total sense internally at Apple when it comes to their 10-year manufacturing operations plan and really maxim…

> The jury has been out on Tim Cook's performance as Apple CEO since he took over about 7 years ago

Not to nitpick too much, but Tim Cook only took over as Apple's CEO a little over 5 years ago.

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

#187

Post by Ezhik »

walrus01 wrote: post #115

I switched to OSX when it was at v10.4, the very first generation of Intel chipset Macbook Pros came out. I switched because it was the closest thing I could get to a proper fully integrated desktop environment with a BSD-like command line and full Unix-ish functionality (macports, etc). The first generation of Macbook Pro (Core Duo) had a full complement of ports that were state of the art when it was released. Now…

>Just give me a state of the art Thinkpad with full I/O ports that runs OSX please.

God, this. I still have no idea what I'll replace my Hachintosh T420 with when the time comes.

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

#188

Post by iak8god »

nicky0 wrote: post #163
iak8god wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web browsing and a bit of office is offered as an example of the lightest imaginable load for someone actually using a computer. My daily needs are much heavier than that. To offer a line of laptops with 8GB of RAM as the max in 2017 is ridiculous.

Ridiculous to sell them or ridiculous to buy them?

Well. I'm not buying, even though I like the form factor and would accept the other limitations of a 12" MB. And I do think it's ridiculous of Apple to not sell reasonable things I want, because right now it means I'm just sticking with an older laptop and waiting to see if maybe I will find something more to my liking from another brand after 15 years of buying Apple.

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

#189

Post by soperj »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #164
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…

I have an IBM ThinkPad from 2004 and Lenovo ThinkPads from (more or less) 2010 and 2015, they all work fine. The 2004 one is slow with current software and the battery lasts like 1 minute, but otherwise it does what it should according to its (now weak) specs. If you think Lenovos don't last, it's probably because you have seen low-end Lenovos (which indeed often break after 3-5 years). But a MBP is a high-end laptop…

You can also buy a new battery for that 2004 thinkpad and replace it in 2 seconds.

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

#190

Post by nessus42 »

hocuspocus wrote: post #155
nessus42 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean make the fans blast? Well, they're not that loud. The building H/V airflow is usually a lot louder. And my Retina MacBook doesn't even have a fan. (Though I also don't do a lot of software development on it, I have done development on slower machines, and it wasn't terribly painful. Depending on what I was doing, of course.) I still remember the days of programming in C++ using C-front, and a compile would t…

Of course, the MacBook is passive :) Incremental compilation makes my coworkers' gear loud enough I can hear it anywhere in the room. No HVAC over here. Maybe a MacPro would handle the load better, but that's completely overkill for our needs. The MBPr and iMac keep getting thinner, for no good reason in the iMac's case.

Personally I love the thinness and lightness of my Retina MacBook. I can easily hold it with one hand. Or even with a few fingers. I can toss it around with ease. Maybe it's gratuitous to be that thin. It's certainly not gratuitous to be that light.

I also loved the hell out of my MacBook Air. I recently gave that to my girlfriend. (Hence me now having a MacBook Retina.) It's four years old and still works as well as the day I got it. It's perfectly zippy. It's only downsides are that the screen isn't nearly as good as the MacBook Retina screen, and the speakers don't go loud enough.

Re iMac fans: well, I love the fact that my MacBook Retina makes no noise at all. But the noises made by my work and home iMacs are not loud enough to bother me in any way. They certainly handle their loads just fine, as long as you don't mind a bit of extra white noise.

But then again, I kind of miss the days when you could hear the disk drive in a computer chugging away. You could often tell what the computer was working on by the rhythm of the chugging.

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