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Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

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Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#71

Post by jerf »

hellofunk wrote: post #65
Eridrus wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the expectations, Apple's price tags demand innovation. If they're not doing anything special you can get much cheaper hardware.

I'm curious if, beyond innovative features, the actual build quality and battery life of a machine should command higher prices. I had a couple Windows laptops (one by Dell) with quite poor battery life. My MacBook Pro from 2011 goes all day with serious activity without a charge, sometimes 2 days. I don't discredit the disappointment in the recent Apple laptop announcements, but I do think that paying a premium pric…

"... should command higher prices. I had a couple Windows laptops (one by Dell) with quite poor battery life."

You don't say, but, were they higher-end Dell laptops or not?

I've got an 6-year-old Dell Studio 17 still going strong, which cost about $1,000 when I bought it. I recently replaced it solely because I've learned that waiting until a machine is completely dead to replace it produces stress, when you end up having to go to Best Buy or equivalent and just buy whatever they may happen to have lying around, which is not what I'm looking for. The battery lasts about 10 minutes tops right now but I never bought it for its battery life anyhow. It's in pretty good shape for 6 years old. The screen's doing something weird with diagonal streaks developing in the top and bottom, but it's still perfectly usable at the moment.

On the other hand, the bottom-of-the-line Dell stuff is crap I'd hardly expect to last two years. It depends on what you buy.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#72

Post by scholia »

pawadu wrote: post #48
dazc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been running a cheap Ideapad for 4 years - waiting for it to die so I can upgrade but it refuses to do so.

Feel your pain, my daily driver is a 6 years old X201. This laptop will probably outlive me, not even using it as a hammer managed to kill it...

Problem is that when it dies, you won't be able to get a laptop with such a good keyboard....

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#73

Post by TheCowboy »

agentgt wrote: post #51

Last year I finally switched to mac for work (I had family mac air). Before that I always used thinkpads. I still think the 15" T60 was one of the best computers I have owned. I would have stayed with it if I could upgrade 16gb (ahh Java development). The new thinkpads are bad. I'm sort of annoyed that I finally got used to mac and it is now down a path of crap (love the form factor... hate the Mac UI and no upgrade)…

I went from a T60P to a W520 (used) a year and a half ago, because the lack of ram was a strain. W520 is the last Thinkpad with the "retro" keyboard, and officially supports 16gb of memory but unofficially supports 32gb. Though it's quite heavy and not the most energy efficient, I have been quite happy with it for my needs.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#74

Post by tunap »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #11
nihonde wrote: post #2

When are these publications going to figure out that volume shipped vs Apple is a pointless milestone? I'm interested in margins and revenues, but not units shipped.

These publication rely on getting people to actually read their content. Of course they'll always write articles like this.

Exactly my thought seeing( not reading) the ubiquitous "MS is the new Apple" articles of late.

edit: early morning post needed clarity.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#75

Post by acdha »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #4
nihonde wrote: post #2

When are these publications going to figure out that volume shipped vs Apple is a pointless milestone? I'm interested in margins and revenues, but not units shipped.

As an Apple shareholder I care about revenues, but as a user and software dev, the metric that really matters is ecosystem size.

You usually need more detail than that because the ecosystem isn't uniform: if you sell games it doesn't matter that 200M people have a mid-range Windows PC at work; if you sell professional software the $400 laptop owner segment is probably irrelevant; someone who works on public websites or education has to support almost everything to avoid lawsuits, etc.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#76

Post by gm-conspiracy »

rayiner wrote: post #63
scholia wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work like that. Most PC "manufacturers" (including Apple) don't make PCs, and they all use the same Taiwanese OEMs/ODMs and Chinese factories. The main ones are Quanta, Compal, Pegatron (spun out of Asus), Foxconn (Hon Hai), Wistron (spun out of Acer), Inventec etc. Quanta is probably the biggest notebook manufacturer, followed by Compal and Pegatron. Compal and Pegatron probably have the best quality over…

I don't think it's so simple. Sure, Apple makes laptops at the same places as Dell or Lenovo. But I can't imagine Apple releasing, as Dell as, multiple product lines with a glaring quality defect (coil whine). Or consistently using cheaper IPS displays with backlight bleed and PWM like Lenovo. Apple's laptops aren't defect free by any means (e.g. anti glare coating rubbing off, paint rubbing off on the black polycarb…

You'd really need to compare the same types of laptop (low-end, mid-range, high-end / consumer, business, enterprise) across different PC manufacturers.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#77

Post by shuntress »

agentgt wrote: post #51

Last year I finally switched to mac for work (I had family mac air). Before that I always used thinkpads. I still think the 15" T60 was one of the best computers I have owned. I would have stayed with it if I could upgrade 16gb (ahh Java development). The new thinkpads are bad. I'm sort of annoyed that I finally got used to mac and it is now down a path of crap (love the form factor... hate the Mac UI and no upgrade)…

I have a new T450 for work and at home a new X1 Carbon (which they call a thinkpad). Both are excellent.

Maybe not as good as older thinkpads, but I think it's quite a stretch to call all new thinkpads bad.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#78

Post by m_mueller »

aq3cn wrote: post #40
m_mueller wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone of those making touchpads that come close to Apple?

I am a touch typist and rely on keyboard shortcuts for most of the tasks I do. I also carry a mouse when I carry Windows machine. I find mouse more accurate and reliable in comparison to touch pad. As I own a mac I have some bitter experience with it when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. For example: If you cmd+M to minimize an app, how would you bring it back. Navigating in application windows in Mission control usin…

I do all of what you describe and I also need a mouse with windows laptops - but not because touchpads are bad in general, it's just that windows laptops have absolutely rubbish ones compared to Macbooks. A precision pointer device right below my thumb is still the most productive way to make the cursor go to a specific point on the screen - it's the only way to reduce that particular action down to one gesture in the general case. Hotkeys and macros only help in special cases. Doing computing today basically results in a series of little 1D problems and 2D problems. Sometimes the keyboard, which creates a 1D stream of input sequences, maps well to a 2D problem, but very often using an actual 2D device is the most efficient way of dealing with that.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#79

Post by jeswin »

s_kilk wrote: post #37

Are there any Asus laptops which work painlessly with Linux?

I have the UX360CA and UX501VW.

The fanless Core-Y UX360CA never had any issues, works out of the box.

UX501VW has fan control issues with 16.04, which you can solve by installing a newer kernel (4.8 series) or by upgrading to 16.10. You must do this, otherwise the fan will run at loud, insane speeds and might eventually wear out. NVidia graphics will work without issues, but switchable graphics doesn't work via NVidia's control panel. I don't need the discrete GPU, so I'm exclusively using Intel drivers. Driver does crash (screen flickers) at times with my external 4k monitor. Apart from that, Powertop takes care of Power management issues. Overall, expect to spend 3-4 hours getting UX501VW set up.

Re: Asus to surpass Apple in notebook sales: TrendForce

#80

Post by rayiner »

gm-conspiracy wrote: post #76
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's so simple. Sure, Apple makes laptops at the same places as Dell or Lenovo. But I can't imagine Apple releasing, as Dell as, multiple product lines with a glaring quality defect (coil whine). Or consistently using cheaper IPS displays with backlight bleed and PWM like Lenovo. Apple's laptops aren't defect free by any means (e.g. anti glare coating rubbing off, paint rubbing off on the black polycarb…

You'd really need to compare the same types of laptop (low-end, mid-range, high-end / consumer, business, enterprise) across different PC manufacturers.

I'm talking about the high-end range (Thinkpad T series and XPS series).
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