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Mac’s share falls to five-year low

computerworld.com

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Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#31

I think it's as simple as better PC's and Macs that have not really improved and are just really expensive.

Certainly with laptops; PC laptops 4 years ago were really a cut below the macbook pro. PC laptops have improved so much in 4 years. And apple just gimped the latest mbp with a really bad keyboard and another $500 on the sticker.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#32
post #22

Also see the relative growth of /r/buildapc vs. /r/apple: http://redditmetrics.com/r/buildapc#compare=apple (click on Total Subscribers). March 2013 was the crossover point. I'm trying to compare Apple on it's own turf here (tapping into the enthusiasm of retail / consumer folks). That's a lot of mindshare lost, IMHO, by defining themselves as the "Bose of computer hardware". Important mindshare at that: young people…

I'm not sure I believe your assertion that building a PC makes people love it for life— I built a PC in high school, then switched over to a Macbook for college and haven't looked back.

Now that fiddling with computers is my job, it's less appealing as a hobby.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#33
post #13
post #11

Why does StatCounter disagree? They find OS X user share currently at an all-time high of 11%: http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-monthly-200807-2016...

StatCounter's answer to that question: http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#net-apps

404

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#34
post #13
post #11

Why does StatCounter disagree? They find OS X user share currently at an all-time high of 11%: http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-monthly-200807-2016...

StatCounter's answer to that question: http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#net-apps

My own site also shows OS X to be around 10-12%, similar to a year ago.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#35
post #22

Also see the relative growth of /r/buildapc vs. /r/apple: http://redditmetrics.com/r/buildapc#compare=apple (click on Total Subscribers). March 2013 was the crossover point. I'm trying to compare Apple on it's own turf here (tapping into the enthusiasm of retail / consumer folks). That's a lot of mindshare lost, IMHO, by defining themselves as the "Bose of computer hardware". Important mindshare at that: young people…

I'm not sure I believe your assertion that building a PC makes people love it for life— I built a PC in high school, then switched over to a Macbook for college and haven't looked back. Now that fiddling with computers is my job, it's less appealing as a hobby.

Agree. I used to build PCs as well. I even had a review site that received 2MM uniques a month and manufacturers would send me motherboards and top end video cards, for free, to review. I loved making PCs but would I trade my Macbook Pro and go back to a PC/Windows setup, no.

I don't imagine anyone would want to go thru that. Getting a case, fiddling with screws, power supplies, Video Card, and CPUs. Even worse, it is highly error prone. Do something wrong and POOF that 800 dollar CPU you bought is toast.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#36
I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all.

First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013.

But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingrained into open source development. Believe me I used to use a PC not too long ago and nothing would work because OS software is designed to run on top of a NIX environment. I recently had to go through this exercise with a colleague who was in denial. But over time, it ends up the same: software built to run on Linux servers runs best under an environment that is designed more like Linux. He now owns a MBP.

So Windows is out (for non .NET devs). That leaves us with what, Linux itself as the OS? Anyone who suggests doing this either hasn't done it before or has way too much time on their hands. I use macOS because I don't have time to hunt for drivers, trying to understand an obscure error discussed in a long forum thread or having all my software no longer work just because I updated a package. I've already tried that twice once with Gentoo and then with Ubuntu years later hoping it would be different. I know plenty of others who have as well. Ultimately we have jobs and we need to debug our own software.

Which brings us back to the Mac. I fully expect this release to be their Windows 8 moment, a beta event from which they will recover from given time for hardware to catch up. Not every release can be a stellar event. Give it time.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac Pro is in such bad state that it appears it's worth just building a Hackintosh desktop to avoid buying such old hardware. I'm still running a Mid 2010 Mac Pro because the new trash can model wasn't compelling and it's since sat without upgrades since introduction.

The 2010 Mac Pro is also very upgradeable (and fairly cheaply too). I upgraded mine from a 2.4ghz 8-core to a 3.3ghz 12-core w/ 128gb RAM, very very fast SSD, USB3, and much improved graphics card (driving five displays). The only thing it's lacking that I'd want is Thunderbolt really. Yes, newer processors are a little faster, but the main benefit of Haswell and later CPUs is much lower TDP for mostly same-ish perfo…

Who do you use for upgrading it? I have one sitting around that I'd love to upgrade but always found the secondary upgrade market hard to navigate.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#38
post #14

PSA: This "news" comes courtesy of a company called Net Applications, which I've never heard of before. Looks like they're a web analytics firm. So take this with a huge grain of salt, because they can't actually see real user share, all they can see is the share of people who browse to their clients' sites.

So what would be the best way to estimate OS market share? Stopping short from including household OS usage in worldwide census?

I'm not sure, but you could start by asking someone who's in a position to observe a much larger portion of internet usage. For example, I bet CloudFlare could collect some interesting statistics.

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#39
post #36

I keeping hearing the narrative from this crowd that the MBP is on its way out of being in vogue for developers, but I don't buy it at all. First of all, this is market share up to the release of the new MBP. It's not surprising that their market share has been slipping given that up to this point they haven't released a significant update to the MBP since 2013. But getting to the point, the Mac ecosystem is now ingr…

Agreed. If the rumored terraced batteries (that couldn't make it in time for this year's release) come through, coupled with ostensible efficiency improvements in the next gen of processors, GPUs etc, we might be able to reach that hallowed 10 hour mark again.

Well, that and hopefully there's a price drop with the second gen of touchbar MacBooks (not holding my breath there)

Re: Mac’s share falls to five-year low

#40
post #22

Also see the relative growth of /r/buildapc vs. /r/apple: http://redditmetrics.com/r/buildapc#compare=apple (click on Total Subscribers). March 2013 was the crossover point. I'm trying to compare Apple on it's own turf here (tapping into the enthusiasm of retail / consumer folks). That's a lot of mindshare lost, IMHO, by defining themselves as the "Bose of computer hardware". Important mindshare at that: young people…

I was all in with apple and went there for pc building help after the weak macbook update. I can get all the pcie ssds and ram upgrades I want now. Skylake integrated graphics somehow drives a 4k display snappier than a max 2015 macbook pro. Windows 10 isn't bad after you give up on the idea of multitouch trackpad and get a nice clicky-pointy mouse. I am thrilled with getting better performance for my needs at 1/4th the price with the freedom to incorporate any new technology that comes out. The best part about going pc is that this i5 cpu with stock cooler is completely silent compared to the macbook pro that revs up like a jet engine whenever anything is connected to it. My only complaint about the pc world is that all the high end stuff is brightly colored plastic when I'm looking for brushed aluminum.
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