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Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

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Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#31

Post by vacri »

dantheman wrote: post #13
olalonde wrote: post #6

It's kind of sad that Apple has virtually no competition for its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air in terms of build quality (last time I checked, I'd be happy to be proved wrong). Nowadays, I barely care about "hard" specs (CPU, memory, etc.) when shopping for a laptop, what I really care about is: low heating, low weight, thinness, long battery life and strong build quality. Although I'd rather use Linux than OS X, it's…

Thinkpads are still quite nice.

Also surprising was that standard thinkpads survived more military tests than those all-enclosed 'toughbook' designs.

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#32

Post by cmelbye »

falling wrote: post #12
cmelbye wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That picture is hilarious, it's literally a clone of Apple's Mac line-up, right down to the wireless keyboard and Magic Trackpad.

Look, I'm a Mac user, but it's time we cut down with this, it makes me sick like the stupid kids on Gizmodo. The Vizio computers look good and they are not Mac clones. They picked the right ideas from Apple that nobody else picked up and they are doing a great job without looking the same.

Oh, the computers look very nice, but they're a direct response to what Apple puts out.

The Thin+Light machine is yet another Ultrabook that competes with the Macbook Air, keeping in mind that the Macbook Air was introduced in 2008 and the Ultrabook initiative started in 2011.

The All-in-One desktop is clearly a response to the iMac, right down to the Magic Trackpad.

I don't understand the stigma of pointing out these "inspirations".

However, I do admire the simplicity of Vizio's product line. If it were Dell, the laptop would be called something like the "Inspiron 14z Ultrabook™".

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#33

Post by DigitalJack »

cmelbye wrote: post #29
DigitalJack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When minimalism is a desired trait, it isn't far fetched to see competing firms to come up with similar designs.

I don't understand the belief that minimalist design is obvious and that everyone else totally would've designed it the same way. It's almost like when someone walks up to a work of art and remarks that they easily could've done it themselves. Yeah, but you didn't. Minimalist design is hard, and you're kidding yourself if you honestly think that Vizio's line of computers would've looked the same had Apple never exist…

I totally agree minimalist design is hard. But I believe that in a given genre, minimalist designs will converge. Not completely, but they will tend toward one another simply by virtue of having a common destination. In this case having the simplest laptop design that can still get the job done.

I think that Apple has done the grunt work of whittling away the bulk material toward a minimal design. It would be stupid of somebody else with the same goals to try to pretend that Apple's efforts bore no fruit (sorry, camp not intended) and ignore them.

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#34

Post by calciphus »

pohl wrote: post #15
kbob wrote: post #8

Could that graph possibly be more misleading? Plotting the ratio of a number to one much smaller exaggerates small changes so you miss the big picture: PC sales dwarf Mac sales. A better graph: two lines, one showing PC sales each year and the other showing Mac sales. It would show that Mac sales are less, and it would also show how much the market has grown since 1984. Even better: the number of machines of each typ…

It depends on what you want to visualize. This graph is great for visualizing the effect of Mac sales outgrowing the pc market for 24 consecutive quarters.

This graph could just as easily be explained as people with high incomes (Mac users generally do) are more insulated from economic downturn than the people buying $300 laptops. Reading it how you want doesn't make it true.

Even according to the graph, 15x means that one in 16 machines sold is a Mac. Math tells us that's 6.25% market share. That number hasn't appreciably changed in real terms in the last decade. Yes, moving from 4% to 6% is a 50% "growth", if you want to define growth that way. Normally, that's 2% growth.

However, the inability of Mac to grab any significant market share from the overall PC market should be a concern, considering the relative popularity of their other devices.

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#35

Post by MetaCosm »

cmelbye wrote: post #9
_mayo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vizios new laptop and ultrabook look like they may be competitors. They've designed them from the ground up and ship without bloatware if you choose to run Windows. http://www.vizio.com/computing/

That picture is hilarious, it's literally a clone of Apple's Mac line-up, right down to the wireless keyboard and Magic Trackpad.

What is hilarious about stealing the best ideas from your competitors. It was Steve Jobs who pointed out that the best steal.

http://youtu.be/CW0DUg63lqU

"We have always been SHAMELESS about stealing great ideas" ... someone does it back to Apple and suddenly it is criminal (patent lawsuit fun) or laugh worthy because it looks similar?

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#36

Post by MetaCosm »

DigitalJack wrote: post #33
cmelbye wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the belief that minimalist design is obvious and that everyone else totally would've designed it the same way. It's almost like when someone walks up to a work of art and remarks that they easily could've done it themselves. Yeah, but you didn't. Minimalist design is hard, and you're kidding yourself if you honestly think that Vizio's line of computers would've looked the same had Apple never exist…

I totally agree minimalist design is hard. But I believe that in a given genre, minimalist designs will converge. Not completely, but they will tend toward one another simply by virtue of having a common destination. In this case having the simplest laptop design that can still get the job done. I think that Apple has done the grunt work of whittling away the bulk material toward a minimal design. It would be stupid…

Beyond that, Apple's minimalist design isn't manufactured by Apple -- so they tool up companies all over the world to make these Intel based 24" / 27" all in one computers. Obviously when Visio goes to a company that already built them for Apple, there is way lower production risk.

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#37

Post by jsz0 »

freehunter wrote: post #21
grecy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A $350 borderline unusable computer is no bargain. I think people are starting I catch onto this. I agree 100%. Many friends and family have cheap and crap laptops that continually crash, and last only a year or two before being replaced (for another cheap, crap laptop) As time has gone on, you can see they are slowly realizing this is no bargain, and are starting to look at the expensive end, and towards Apple.

The problem is people buy cheap, crap laptops, notice they are cheap and crap, and hear that the Macs are not cheap but also not crap. They then run out and buy a quality Macbook for $2300, completely ignoring the fact that it's not that Apple makes a better product, it's that Apple makes a product that exists in a market these people have never even considered. Quality Windows laptops exist. I sold my HP Envy for al…

For what it's worth Apple's laptop line starts at $999. I totally agree that a $1k+ PC laptop is going to be fine too but I think the confusing part for consumers is it looks basically the same as the $350 model so it's harder to make this leap of faith to the $1k+ price-point. Apple just doesn't sell a laptop cheaper than $999 so there's nothing to really compare it to.

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#38

Post by pohl »

calciphus wrote: post #34
pohl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you want to visualize. This graph is great for visualizing the effect of Mac sales outgrowing the pc market for 24 consecutive quarters.

This graph could just as easily be explained as people with high incomes (Mac users generally do) are more insulated from economic downturn than the people buying $300 laptops. Reading it how you want doesn't make it true. Even according to the graph, 15x means that one in 16 machines sold is a Mac. Math tells us that's 6.25% market share. That number hasn't appreciably changed in real terms in the last decade. Yes,…

This graph could just as easily be explained as people with high incomes (Mac users generally do) are more insulated from economic downturn than the people buying $300 laptops.

Not if you look at the labels on the horizontal axis and you know when the downturn actually began.

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#39

Post by TalkSic »

ladzoppelin wrote: post #24
feralmoan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think on the Windows side of things there's been a huge drop in the quality of PC games which is often overlooked, contributing to an overall degradation of the market. I used to only build rigs and run windows for games and dual boot into real work mode (ubuntu), but with such low quality content on PC nowdays its hard to even justify installing windows let alone building a PC. *disclaimer: I'm neither old or jade…

"low quality content on PC" is completely wrong. Some of the best programs around are desktop software. Samplitude, Sublime 2, Studio One 2 are a brief few. What happens in your circle of friends does not represent anything and is one of the reasons why I think Facebook is so unhealthy for the younger generation. BTW if you do real pro audio/video work you are not going to be using Linux simply because most "Pro" aud…

Nuke, Smoke, Houdini, Maya, rv.

Wrong on second point regarding video.

Re: Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade

#40

Post by Tmmrn »

Better headline: Apple's share in the PC market increases.

Wikipedia says:

> The Macintosh ( /ˈmækɨntɒʃ/ mak-in-tosh),[1] or Mac, is a series of personal computers (PCs) designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc.

And some random quote from a comment here:

> the computer whizzkid who used to fix it says he doesn't know much about PCs now - he's moved to an Apple Mac.

You mean he doesn't know about windows since the Apple Mac is a PC too.

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