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Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

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Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#261
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still using a 15” MBP from 2012 for my personal computer! Waiting to see if a 15” MacBook Air gets released soon, as per the rumors.

Last year I upgraded from a early 2013 15" MBP to the 16" Max and it's like a whole new world. Way more storage and memory. I can imagine going from the same machine to the M2 would be amazing but from M1 to M2 not enough of a bump to pay the price.

Last year I upgraded to an M1 Pro; this year a coworker took that machine and I bumped up to an M2 Max. I can't really tell a difference.

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#262
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

second this - purchased and use non-cloud Adobe software, BBEdit, the nice terminal apps and a few minor things, on hardware that is at least six years old. I look for good condition older Macs and have a few of those that I keep safely. Really big aversion to the "phone like" OS, secret changes to the filesystem, app-store apps, increasingly intrusive phoning home and other "modern improvements"

Whilst I agree with your sentiment wait until you try a gently used M1 Macbook Air one day. After a tawdry love affair you'll want to toss the hot noisy intel machines in the garbage .. at least I did, anyway

Maybe. Not everyone does work where more horsepower does anything useful. Still coding away daily on my 10 year old MBP. Only maintenance I've done was install a new $60 battery 2 years ago that any non-apple specific computer repair shop could install in 10 minutes. I'll upgrade when 1) the machine dies or 2) it doesn't actually do something I need it to and I become less efficient

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they just don't like Apple software and are looking for a reason to ding them. Which, fair, XCode is trash. If they don't think either service is great, they can just run a local media server or use dropbox. Apple doesn't force you to use iCloud, and I personally think it's less obtrusively advertised on the OS than OneDrive. Personally.

A lot of Apple's stuff Just Works but when it stops working it Just Stops Working, and it majorly sucks because there is so little in the way of diagnostics, buttons to force manual sync, etc. I say this as someone who has been using a Mac as their preferred system since the late nineties.

Next time try opening “console” and looking at the logs. Usually it’s a deluge of logs but usually shows what is failing even if it doesn’t make sense as to why

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#264

As 'free money' is sucked out of the system (by reversing ultra low interest rates and QE), people are going to focus their spending on what they actually need - which often is not an Apple product.

Weird having an insightful factual beginning of a sentence just to conclude with weak and hugely incomplete speculation ignoring the bulk of the picture (Apple's all other products, what actually needed actually entails, ...).

Apple have been wildly successful in selling Rolls-Royces to the masses. In pretty much all categories they've entered, Apple are considered to be the premium brand.

However the masses generally don't need the level of engineering that Apple products typically feature - people have been compelled into forking out for it in order to status match with their peers (e.g. the green/blue text thing). Now times are tight, the Rolls stay on the forecourts.

(I love their design, engineering and attention to detail - Bauhaus for nerd stuff - and their mission to bring high quality to all. But I object to their walled garden, their cultishness, lack of configurability and, yes, the inordinate waste of natural/engineering resources going in to make what should be commodity devices, coupled with sucking money out of people who really can't afford it)

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#265

What is most surprising here is that Apple's share growth is worse than other PC makers. It seemed like Apple was going to continue to gain market share in PCs with Apple Silicon effortlessly. But this didn't happen in Q1. I'm going to speculate why: * People are going back to buying cheaper laptops due to the economy, inflation, and exchange rates. Apple suffers in this environment because they're generally less fle…

> * M1, Pro, Max were so good that people will wait for M3 or M4 to upgrade again. I'm in this camp.

This is me. I was dominating a 13" mbp m1 base model in startup mode for almost two years. I only upgraded to a 16" mbp m1 base model for the larger screen and higher refresh rate. The moment they release m3 or m4 or whatever without the display notch and even more improvements, I'll upgrade.

I'm fully expecting both my 13" and 16" m1 machines to still be almost as productive as I need them to be in a couple years...but this alien technology deserves to be purchased.

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies usually buy base models. Apple is also struggling with supply chain, as M1 is still prominent. Another feature of this issue is that because of their parsimonious storage configuration and linkage of M2 chip and storage, upgrades are nuts - it costs as much as an iPhone to get a storage upgrade that is like $100 with commodity SSD storage.

$100 with commodity SSD storage. You answered your own question there. Apple doesn't used "commodity" SSD storage. Apple's SSDs are enterprise-grade, not bottom-of-the-barrel commodity parts.

"You answered your own question there. Apple doesn't used "commodity" SSD storage."

what a weaird thing to say...

So.. tell us.. where does apple get its SSD's if it is not "commodity"? Do they have their own SSD factory?

Then you write "Apple's SSDs are enterprise-grade"... So like "commodity" right? Meaning others can buy "enterprise grade" SSD's and upgrade their non-apple laptops wtih them if they wanted to?

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't understand why anyone would want to support a manufacturer that designs a configuration that has the storage an memory soldiered in.

Might be because it’s the “soldering in” that boosts its performance. So if you can plan ahead you come out ahead.

That's true for the memory (RAM), but not the storage (SSD). Socketed SSDs are just as fast and almost as light as soldered, and there is no good technical reason why they shouldn't be upgradable for a long time.

I'm in the market for a new Mac. I'm currently using a late 2013 15-inch Retina as my trusty friend. If the M2 Max came with socketed SSD I'd buy it today with the 96GB RAM and max spec in every other regard, despite the price being nearly double what I paid for my current machine 9.5 years ago.

But because the SSD is soldered on, expensive and non-upgradable, and I'm always running out of space, and I want to be able to work with some large models, databases and VMs, I need to plan ahead the next 5 years in terabytes. Ensuring enough storage headroom for potential future use takes the price to a level where it's a major commitment I'll have to stick with for years, so I decided to wait and see what comes out later this year instead.

So count me as one of the potential M2 customers who was excited to get one, then after a long wait last year for the M2 MBPs to come out, and a long period of deciding which model to get after they came out, in the end decided to wait, with the unnecessarily soldered-in, non-upgradable SSDs being a factor in why.

(I have some other doubts: When I tried in store, the keyboard on the M2 MBPs is not as nice to type on compared with the 2013 model, and the trackpad is annoyingly large, and prone to triggering tap-to-touch from my hands while typing, and click-to-touch is not my preference. But those aren't bad enough to affect my purchasing decision, as long as the M1/M2 processors are still well ahead of the rest.)

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#268
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and RAM too small The current default is 8GB and max is 16GB. It isn’t too high even now considering it’s 2023

I’m the tech guy in my circle and despite my wishes most of my friends and family get the standard 8GB models. Beside one friend that had a crazy memory link, most of them don’t bat an eye. If Safari, Word, and Excel open they don’t mind too much. 8GB is fine at the moment on MacOS. The standard is still 8gb for most non-performance laptops and there are legions and legions of corporate HPs and Dells with 8GBs.

Really, 8GB is only a problem if you use multiple Electron apps or heavy Webapp tabs (full-fat Gmail, Google Docs) at once or use lots of VMs, which is something most people don't do unless it's for work (or not at all, unless they're tech nerds, in the case of VMs). Otherwise, they'll have 1-3 heavy webshit things open at a time, generally, which fits OK in 8GB.

It's when you've got two or three needlessly-heavy web "dashboards" and Gmail and Slack and Jira and Notion all eating 500-1500 MB each that 8GB starts to feel cramped.

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#269
post #139

Here's data. # of Apple shipment. 2019 Q1 - 3.9m 2020 Q1 - 3.1m 2021 Q1 - 6.7m (111.5% increase YoY) 2022 Q1 - 7.0m 2023 Q1 - 4.1m Apple experienced explosive growth in 2021Q1 over 2020 Q1 compared to other PC makers. Lenovo (+59.1%) HP (+64.1%) Dell (+23.4%) Apple (+111.5%) Acer (+73.5%) Where as Lenovo and HP declined ~15% in 2022 Q1, Apple managed to gain 4.5%. So compared others, Apple had more to fall. Looking a…

This would be a very good comment, if only it had a source attached.

Re: Apple’s plunge in PC shipments is steepest among major computer makers

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's running the latest os lol

The newest macOSes aren't available for HW that old. My 2015 MBP is already in the death row, update-wise.

It can run Catalina (10.15). That was getting support up until November 2022. While it is past its end of life, it isn't something that is half a decade out of support.
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