101–103 of 103 posts
> Microsoft's plans take aim at Apple, which has nearly doubled its market share in the three years since releasing its own Arm-based chips in-house for its Mac computers. I know that Mac was always in single digit marketshare (but still a healthy amount as far as money for apple goes) but still doubling seems to be quite an achievement? I am curious if this is actually from an increase in Mac sales or a decrease in…
> Microsoft's plans take aim at Apple, which has nearly doubled its market share in the three years since releasing its own Arm-based chips in-house for its Mac computers. I know that Mac was always in single digit marketshare (but still a healthy amount as far as money for apple goes) but still doubling seems to be quite an achievement? I am curious if this is actually from an increase in Mac sales or a decrease in…
Then they released AS and the first round of hardware looked competitive because at least they seemed to have something different, a real advantage worth paying more. At least that was the marketing. I believe it got many to update very old hardware that was kept running because Apple offerings seemed so out of touch; then some others got interested to "complete" their iOS devices and even traditional PC users got sucked in for novelty factor or battery life argument. In practice if the second-hand market is to be looked at, many went back to other machines and the market is inundated by underpowered, overpriced, close to entry level machines (people figure out the hard way that 8GB of RAM is very tight for a post 2020 computer no matter how good your software optimisation is...).
Now the second release of AS was disappointing to say the least (pretty bad considering the price hikes) and I think many are holding to see what they can do with M3. So the sales have dropped a lot, at least as much as all other OEM if not more (especially in comparison to previous years).
So I think what they call the market share is actually the sales number, that doesn't mean much. If you account for all the hardware that got retired plus all the hardware that sit unused (waiting to be sold or else) macOS market share has been slightly slopping upward at best. Mostly stable in practice.
When you look at the sales numbers, it is almost 80% laptops. They barely sell any of what you would call a "PC". It makes sense; since laptops is the only place where AS has any advantages and it is also the only way to use your extra expensive "computer" as a status symbol. This is also what most employers are going to buy for their staff because unless you need real power where AS is almost disqualified from the get go it makes everything easier. They used to sell a lot of iMacs (especially the 27" version) because it was very convenient, but they don't have those anymore so...
If anything, macOS is becoming less relevant as a computing platform by the day and more of a luxury alternative brand. So its market is becoming less relevant by the day too. I think Apple is on the path to become to computing what Campagnolo is to cycling...
Traditional PCs are not going anywhere and for way more reasons than just upgradability (your car is not technically upgradeable but is made with components from many different competing suppliers).
Prior to switching to Apple Silicon, Apple prepared the path with their effort to push for universal binaries by default Software made yesterday were already prepared to run on their new silicon Rosetta was only a transition helper, not meant to be a permanent solution Microsoft didn't do any of that, and still doesn't, their leadership is clueless and dangerous If Microsoft doesn't put in the effort, it'll never wor…
>Why only Apple is able to pull it off? Why this lack of care from everybody else? Apple got burnt, multiple times, by both Intel and Nvidia. That set them on a complete war path to move to arm where they control the chips. As part of that war path, their goal was to drop x86 entirely so they needed the transition layer. Microsoft has no need to drop x86 entirely, in fact x86 will continue to remain a good part of a…
Nvidia and Intel are not necessarily nice irreproachable companies, but if there is one company that is known to be a major d*ck with their suppliers it must be Apple. You only need to look at how they treat their developers to understand, and the only reason suppliers are not treated worse is because they actually need them. I am sure Intel and Nvidia are perfectly OK with Apple doing their own stuff even if they lost a bit of business. Not unlike a tech support guy who finally got rid of a decently well-paying but majorly annoying customer, I guess. Sometimes the money isn't worth it...