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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

#241

Post by astrodust »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #202
astrodust wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not a post-PC world. It's a post-everyone-needs-a-PC world but definitely not a post-PC world.

> It's a post-everyone-needs-a-PC world.

Yes, that's post-PC.

Just as post-mainframe meant mainframes were no longer in charge, it didn't mean mainframes didn't exist.

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

#242

Post by astrodust »

aianus wrote: post #239
redwall_hp wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something something Steve Jobs "truck" analogy. We're in a world where the masses don't need/want a PC (which is unfortunate, since that will arguably mean children will have less access to fully-functional computers in formative years when they may develop an interest in programming, but I digress). Apple, a company that claimed to grasp that concept just a few years ago, is completely failing on it right now. So, t…

> They're expensive and overkill for people who want luxury Facebook/word processing machines They cost less than $2k. Amortized over 4+ years, they're extremely affordable for the middle class. People spend more on coffee.

The resale value on four year old coffee is also really low. Meanwhile a four year old MacBook Air sells for at least a few hundred.

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

#243

Post by astrodust »

redwall_hp wrote: post #218
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a post-PC world. It's a post-everyone-needs-a-PC world but definitely not a post-PC world.

Something something Steve Jobs "truck" analogy. We're in a world where the masses don't need/want a PC (which is unfortunate, since that will arguably mean children will have less access to fully-functional computers in formative years when they may develop an interest in programming, but I digress). Apple, a company that claimed to grasp that concept just a few years ago, is completely failing on it right now. So, t…

> Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines.

Underpowered for you. Overpriced for you.

Maybe they're not being made for you. Now perhaps this is Apple's mistake, but the fact is they're chasing after a market that's not you. It's people who don't care that the notebook is $2K, that the CPU isn't the best it could possibly be. They're buying more than just specs and a low price tag.

> They're ...overkill for people...

So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man! Is a Ferrari a better car than a Civic because it can go faster? Is a Ford F-150 terrible because it doesn't have low-profile tires and a rear engine?

Apple is just one vendor of many, we have options as consumers, and some people like their products.

A $2K notebook is not expensive, every vendor makes one at that price point and most have astonishingly terrible trackpads. A $3K notebook carries a premium, but it's a luxury product. It's not intended to be cheap.

Apple's mistake might be not differentiating their product line properly, for actually splitting out the actual "Pro" as in professional from "Pro" as in "Pro-sumer". Having to make one model that will sell in the millions of units does impose a lot of constraints.

Dell makes a bazillion different models of laptop, they can afford to take chances, but they also churn them over quickly. Apple doesn't roll that way, not today anyway. They prefer to focus on keeping the product line lean, and really get behind a few good models.

Maybe this is going to hurt them in the long run. We'll see.

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

#244

Post by astrodust »

narrator wrote: post #221
astrodust wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not a post-PC world. It's more like a Kaby Lake has the same performance as Sky Lake world and Intel is not able to figure out process technology beyond 14nm world. Apple could put an Nvidia 1080 and a Skylake i7 in the pro and an i5 in the mini. I guess and that would be a decent upgrade. Nothing super exciting, but decent. The next refresh is going to be even more depressing than this one if Intel doesn't figu…

PCs aren't extinct, but they're not in charge. That's what "Post PC" means. Mainframes still exist, they're faster and more powerful than ever, but if you argued that because they are that they're somehow still dominant you'd be laughed out of the room.

Phones are the single most popular computing device and your average person spends more time on their phone than they do on their computer when excluding work.

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

#245

Post by guitarbill »

swozey wrote: post #240
guitarbill wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, which is why I mentioned VMs. But we're talking about the MacBook here, not even the MacBook Pro. Simply put the MB just isn't build for VM workloads. If the RAM weren't the bottleneck, the CPU or available storage space would be. Besides, I don't buy it. I also use VMs. And the underlying host doesn't really matter, i.e. it doesn't really matter where the VM is run. So I don't quite understand why you'd spend…

The host OS doesn't matter, the ram does greatly matter. The delay in development between having to spin up and down servers for testing on aws/gcp is MASSIVE vs. launching tests via minikube. Evidently I missed that this was about the Macbook and not pro, I couldn't care less about the Macbook. I'm on a fully loaded i7 2015 MBPr and need a new one stat, new as in more ram (limited to 16gb).

No I mean you can use the capex savings from "just" an average laptop to buy/build really beefy servers. In a professional setting this scales quite well. At home, you could also use that server as a NAS or gaming rig. That way, you can also upgrade the server separately from the laptop.

It's maybe not for everybody (e.g. photo/video editing), but pretty underrated IMO. Further advantages: RAID, easy to replace the laptop if you lose it or it gets damaged, server are easier to set up with fast, reliable connections (intra or internet) for pulling VM images. Disadvantages: More maintenance/admin?

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

#246

Post by chadgeidel »

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.

Thanks for the update. That sounds pretty awesome actually.

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

#247

Post by redwall_hp »

astrodust wrote: post #243
redwall_hp wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something something Steve Jobs "truck" analogy. We're in a world where the masses don't need/want a PC (which is unfortunate, since that will arguably mean children will have less access to fully-functional computers in formative years when they may develop an interest in programming, but I digress). Apple, a company that claimed to grasp that concept just a few years ago, is completely failing on it right now. So, t…

> Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines. Underpowered for you. Overpriced for you. Maybe they're not being made for you. Now perhaps this is Apple's mistake, but the fact is they're chasing after a market that's not you. It's people who don't care that the notebook is $2K, that the CPU isn't the best it could possibly be. They're buying more than just s…

>So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man!

Not sure if you have bad reading comprehension or if you're just omitting text to support your argument.

They're underpowered for me. They're underpowered for people who need a "real" computer. For the people they're aiming the new portable at, they're completely overkill and completely overpriced. They're the new MacBook Air, essentially.

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

#248

Post by rwmj »

sndean wrote: post #39
radicalbyte wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought an ASUS ZenBook with m3 and super high res screen for my wife. The keyboard feels similar to my MBP13R. Much better than my 3k Dell. Really nice little machine, blows the Air away and is a steal at 650 EUR (~400 USD using Apple's exchange rates).

I'm also really happy with my Asus Zenbook ux305fa. The keyboard does feel familiar (replacing my 2011 MBP). And Ubuntu runs fine on it - no problems with wifi or anything else so far.

I love my Asus Zenbook, but I get the feeling that the screen resolution is too high. There's no need to have a 4K screen in an otherwise small laptop, especially combined with rather patchy support in Linux.

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

#249

Post by CoolGuySteve »

jclardy wrote: post #37
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? No, Apple's entry-level laptop is the $999 MacBook Air 13″, which has an i5. The 11″ MacBook Air was discontinued, but the 13″ is still around.

It is, but should we really count a laptop with a horrible looking TN panel, 1440x900 resolution, and a processor two generations behind that costs $1k to be a viable option for people? That laptop should cost $700 max in 2017. The only reason they have it is likely for education sales, since they have no other reasonable laptop right now.

Yes we should because it is most likely the best selling Apple laptop at this time based on my experience at the company. That's what I'm trying to tell you.

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

#250

Post by xiaoma »

redwall_hp wrote: post #247
astrodust wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines. Underpowered for you. Overpriced for you. Maybe they're not being made for you. Now perhaps this is Apple's mistake, but the fact is they're chasing after a market that's not you. It's people who don't care that the notebook is $2K, that the CPU isn't the best it could possibly be. They're buying more than just s…

>So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man! Not sure if you have bad reading comprehension or if you're just omitting text to support your argument. They're underpowered for me. They're underpowered for people who need a "real" computer. For the people they're aiming the new portable at, they're completely overkill and completely overpriced. They're the new MacBook Air, essentially.

For me, they're both underpowered and overpowered. I don't need or even want a touchbar or the flattest keys ever to be placed in a laptop. The high resolution displays are nice, though they've probably shot past the point I'd care enough more about to spend more on. On the other hand, I want more RAM and a nicer GPU than they offer. A larger hard drive would be nice, too.

Consequently, macs have become overpriced, overpowered and underpowered for me.

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