The latest numbers from market research firm IDC reveal that Mac sales experienced a slight year-over-year decline in the second quarter, dropping to 4.4 million from 4.8 million during the year-ago period.
Given the past 5-7 years, it’s very unusual to see Apple’s PC sales doing far worse than the overall PC market.
Then again, considering how Appple has been neglecting OS X for years now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, as well as the complete neglect all across the Apple PC product lineup – this really shouldn’t come as a surprise.
If Apple doesn’t care about its PC business, why should anyone else?
To buy an apple laptop, all-in-one or desktop is because you have to make software for the people who didn’t have a valid reason to buy an Apple computer, but still bought one.
How terrible that El Capitan still supports Macs from 2008.
I don’t get your point, you do know that the latest versions of other desktop OS’s such as Windows and Linux work with hardware at least 15 years their senior, sometimes even more and quite well I might add. Take the Thinkpad X200, a notebook I still use for testing new Linux distributions. I chose it because it to was released in 2008, it runs Windows 10 extremely well and is still faster than the fastest Atom CPU available, even the one available in the Surface 3.
My point is, Apple supporting 8 year old hardware isn’t a big deal, especially when their intial hardware costs is so much.
Having to make software for Apple users probably is a big share of those buying Macs. I wonder how many of those buying Macs do it to make apps for iOS?
Come to think abut it, it seem to me the reason that Apple’s PC sales for the past 5-7 years have been doing better than the overall PC market is the iOS app market. Without they probably would have a steeper decline.
I am trying to figure out why they hadn’t made their laptops touch screen yet, with OS X being able to run iOS apps. For the money you pay for a Laptop or a Desktop you are expecting something more than what you can do on your current phone and tablet.
I think you’re misinformed. You can’t run iOS apps on OS X unless you’re talking about the iOS simulator in XCode which isn’t exactly comparable.
There is a valid reason to buy Apple hardware.
I used to keep away from Apple for years – closed, proprietary, expensive, … the common reasons. And the cultish behaviour of the fans.
But I did get a macbook pro.
Because Apple makes the best hardware.
The components are good. They make an effort to try to get good ones .. really. From the sound chips to the screen panel. They test the thing and calibrate it .. from the screen colours to the sound response. The cases are extremely well designed – and I mean designed. From testing weight to opening with one hand .. and the quality of the keyboard is fantastic. Best of all – and this is a deal maker for me .. the trackpad is years and years ahead of everyone else. Really – no PC laptop has ever had a good trackpad .. The battery life is also fantastic – having control over the sofwtare and the hardware helps.
Software – ok I’ll admit this is mixed. It’s not as open a linux but it is UNIXy. It’s not as locked down as it could be .. like iOS. Its more open than Windows .. and it’s got less junk and malware trying to remotely record what you’re doing .. Win10 really ran away with the whole “you are the product” thing. I would never use Win10. Win7 just about.
I’d love for Apple to focus more on OSX .. on the basic they used to do well .. to make the daily bread and butter user experience good. The WiFi debacle that lasted a year showed Apple didn’t care enough.
I used to use Linux as my main desktop for years . and got sick of the constant messing about with display drivers, trackpad config, … ugly font rendering … rubbish power management … untrustworthy suspend/sleep/hibernate … I stopped enjoying trying to get the keybaord to work with the right keymaps…
But despite what I’ve said about the software – it is still better than Win10.
So for *me* (maybe not you) .. excellent and unbeatable hardware, and software that’s better than anyone else … are valid reasons.
And this is from a previously Apple sceptic.
All true, in the laptop segment. I have a Macbook Air and love it. It’s vastly superior to any Windows machine I have ever had to deal with.
On the desktop side though, it’s a little less wonderful. You have the Mac Mini or iMac, both of which are ridiculously under-powered for their asking price. At the other end there’s the crazily-powered and equally unbelievably priced MacPro. In the middle? Well… nothing. Nothing at all.
Mini is perfect home/dev machine – compact, silent and fast enough, has good OS. All compact PC I have seen are total crap.
Have you ever tried buying a windows laptop that cost as much as your MacBook?
I often find people compare cheap crap windows PC with MacBook Pros for some reason. And sure a $3000 laptop is better than $500 laptop.
The Lenovo 3D graphics workstation laptop (W510) beats Apple hardware in every spec, except probably in design, and is still has a cost of around 1000 ^a‘not less of the only Macbook Pro with a proper GPU.
If you can find me a windows laptop for the same price as a maxed out macbook that has all the features … Quality keyboard, battery life, usable trackpad, calibrated IPS display, weight, design … Id be interested. When I looked I found none.
ThinkPad P50, 2.685,16 euros, with:
– Intel Xeon
– Windows 10 Pro
– 6,1 hours
– RAM expandable up to 64 GB
– 4K-Display (3.840 x 2.160)
– 1 TB SSD
– WLAN, Bluetooth
– NVIDIA Maxwell with 4 GB VRAM
– 2,55 kg
– 4 USB 3.0, 2 Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, MiniDP, SDXC, SmartCard, RJ-45
I am not going to pay 3.599,00 euros instead, for something less than that, other than design.
Well, everything sounds very good with one exception: Windows 10.
I’m in the market for a new laptop, even looked at the Microsoft SurfaceBook which seems to be very nicely made.
But I would never, ever run Windows 10 on a $2k+ laptop. Period.
Do you know how well Linux runs on the Lenovo Thinkpad P50?
No, I develop mainly on Windows and am also doing UWP apps.
I just run GNU/Linux on VMs and a tiny netbook for travelling.
The macbook pro 13
Is half the weight
Double the batterylife
Had better trackpad than a thinkpad
Better calibrated IPS display
For less cost
Doesn’t manage to do any of the graphics programming workloads that I use a laptop for, no thanks.
Due to my company policy I am a thinkpad users since when they were still built by IBM. Honestly the latest generation is terrible. Hardware specs are fine, but then come the Lenovo “touches”.
Design. do they actually design those laptop or just add a case to contain the internal components? The P50, the professional workhorse, is simply ugly, The stylish carbon is anonymous to say the least.
Finishing material. For a 1600$ laptop, black plastic is not exactly a high end material. And it is delicate too ! Keep it safe in your back-up and within a year or so the upper cover will show wear signs.
Thermal design. The finishing material is a perfect insulator; heat can only be dissipated by the vent. So you carbon X1 turns in to a vacuum cleaner with teh fan at ful throttle as soon as one core of the cpu works at 100% for more than 30 seconds.
Display. Lenovo has to add retina-like display because you can’t ask more than 1000$ and add a simple full-HD panel. But then comes windows: windows 7 does a terrible job at managing high DPI monitor and even the latest windows 10 is only a slight improvement. Sizing of font and icons is terrible and not easy to manage; more-over windows has *a lot* of font/window rendering engines and some of the old ones (albeit still used) do not scale things properly.
Touchpad. indeed good, but still lag behind the macbook touchpad in terms of accuracy and supported gestures.
Custom software. Mostly useless, invasive and known to have serious security flaws. “lenovo settings” and “companion” are a mess of various settings and operations which should have been integrated in the windows system setting. Why should I have to use a third party tool to set-up the battery management when I have a dedicated power management in the global system settings ?
Hardware quality. In my company you can opt for macbook’s or lenovo thinkpad’s and the “market share” is almost 50% – 50%. Obviously the thinkpad’s have far more hardware problems and require replacement more frequently than macbook. Typically you are in a minority if you can complete your 30 months lease period without having your thinkpad replaced at some time. My own carbon X1 has discolouration in the outer frame of the display, and it is just 18 months old.
I’m clinging to the thinkpad/windows combo just for office, but next time I might jump to the macbook for good …
bye
Edited 2016-07-17 08:01 UTC
Pears and Apples
P series are not the equivalent of MBP in thinkpad ecosystem. T series are, and even certain models
So when we get asked to provide examples, Apple fans move the goal posts, typical.
Yes, since the Lenovo acquisition the overall build quality of the Thinkpads went down.
However, Apple doesn’t have any viable model for those of us that care about performance, 3D graphics and GPGPU workloads.
Intel integrated GPUs just don’t cut it.
That’s most definitively not the case, in the US at least. If you go to the webstore for both apple and lenovo, the MacPro 15 and the P-series come out fairly comparable in price if you equate their specs (the thinkpad actually comes around $150 odd dollars more expensive, interestingly enough).
On the desktop I personally think Apple does not offer a good value, since they tend to be a bit over priced and behind the tech curve. But as far as laptops go, MacPros are not that much more expensive than a similar quality Windows laptop.
Edited 2016-07-18 17:38 UTC
A lot of Apple-only users become quite shortsighted about hardware evolution and components that other brands use
For instance, Apple doesn’t offer anything comparable to a true professional-intended display. There is nothing in apple comparable to a DreamColor display, made by HP. Indeed, some premium thinkpad models mount far better displays than Apple’s, if you use other measurements than DPI
How many Apple PC mount a matte display? Let me check… none? How a matte display works in several critical operations?
What GPUs are mounted in Apple PCs? When Oculus CEO joked about Apple doing a proper PC, he was ultimatelly right about VR or other truly demanding graphical tasks
Apple’s keyboard are quite below average in the two main metrics: resistance and travel. Macbook is a joke about it, but chiclet keys of MBP are not much better. Any contemporary Apple keyboard is quite worse than a classic thinkpad one, for instance, both in travel and resistance
A metal frame is “classy” for unknown reasons, but it adds weight and fragility compared with high resistance polycarbonate with a magnesium skeleton. For instance, an HP elitebook is much more resistant than any MBP, and a thinkpad X1 carbon is quite lighter AND resistant
What about RJ45 port? Why in heaven Apple doesn’t mount it?
And speaking about autonomy: thinkpad X260 offers 22 hours with the big external battery, and hot-changing capability with a second, internal battery. Show me any Apple product which offers that
Advantage of Apple’s hardware is both a myth and a religious belief. First, the superiority should be defined against a specific user profile, not generally speaking. A user could need certain resistance although not as much as a rugged pc. Another user could need as much autonomy as possible. Another one can need a high graphical performance
Second, there are factors that cannot be defined but as ridiculous. Metal frames are not superior per se. Thinness is an imbecile metric. Etc
Apple PCs are PCs of uberpremium price and premium-to-average components, well-integrated and serviced. No more
A lot of apple opponent use the old approach “if it’s not right for me than it is useless piece of hardware”.
It’s really an old argument but I keep reading every time a discussion like this is ignited. You do not have to worry, Apple will never produce and sell laptop for gamers and hard-core professionals. They are not apple target since ages and never will be in the future. What would be the ROI of a professional mac ? given the numbers they are making with general purpose laptops, which would be a dream for most hardware manufacturer but in apple portfolio are a dwindling percentage of they income, the ROI would be ridiculous.
You are a tiny minority of users unlikely to be ever an apple customer.
Most of the aspects you deem important, are absolutely of no-concern for most people I know.
RJ45 ? we live in wi-fi age, who still bother with cabled connections ? 99% of homes have a wi-fi router, maybe 1% or less also has ethernet cables for the desktop machines.
Professional grade display ? Other than publishers and photographers I hardly know anyone who is interested in the gamut and calibration of their display. And even if they buy, by accident, a display that comes with a calibration profile, they do not even install it !
As for the thinkpad, you have to use it for a long time to “appreciate” them. External battery ? sure if you like to carry around a few extra Kg’s… Resistance of the Carbon X1 ? that is myth, the display frame is very weak and it bends if you keep it in you back pack with, say, a couple of books. It happened to me and the lcd got slightly damaged.
Most of my colleague using apple MBP are very happy of their choice and they will never move back to a PC. Are they all dumb ?
No, your colleagues don’t know enough about hardware. As simple as that.
Besides, with battery hot-changing capability, it’s up to you if you want to carry a big battery or a lesser one. It’s your choice.
And there is another thing that should matter: serviceability. A thinkpad T can be opened with standard tools, cleansed and change certain components without tools. Upgrade hard disk or memory, for instance
I prefer thinkpad t for its particular configuration, but there are other premium options. You can argue that fine gamut tuning is for photographers only. Although this is not exactly true, most of all premium displays have a matte option.
Why matte?
because you don’t have to pay as much attention to reflections as with the other option, the only apple option. Because you can use it much more comfortably under the sun.
Finally, maybe thinness is going to be another stupid fashion which vanishes. A thin device is less resistant to minor accidents. If you don’t have a physical disability, 500 grams shouldn’t be a problem, and in exchange of that you can have more protection, better refrigeration, serviceability…
It is almost axiomatic that Apple-only users don’t know enough about hardware. They don’t have to compare and determine which specifications are more suitable for them for every new laptop
Of course apple is more comfy. You have almost no options. but it is plain impossible that an apple pc, in hardware terms, is the best option but for apple developers and for prosumers
I’m sorry but that is both presumptuous and offensive for persons you do not actually know.
Most of them are indeed software developers with years of experience, and they did their choice wisely knowing what they selected.
Again, what is important to you is not the rule by which all laptop must be judged.
I can agree on both the matte display and the “thinner is cooler” approach, I do not like them either. Serviceability and upgradeability have been a must for me back in 90’s, but with time I have come to realize I actually do not care. Most of my latest laptops or desktops have concluded their life exactly as they were when I first had them. When memory got cheaper (10 years ago at least) I opted to install the maximum supported RAM from the start; besides, RAM upgrade are easy on most laptops (MBP included) while they are equally impossible on ultra-thin pc like the MacBook Air or the Carbon X1.
I think the current line of Apple laptop is needing a hw refresh and I think that is mostly the reason apple customers are holding their expenditure. Anyway current pc’s are ridiculously over-powered for most tasks and people choose Apple for several reasons besides the pure HW specs (design, “coolness”, support, the OS X ecosystems and its Unix roots … ). They know it will get their job done, and, for my experience, that is actually true.
I though that we were talking about hardware.
If your friends develop for Apple products (iOS or OSX) there is no other logical choice. However, if they develop for other platforms, then… I don’t know how to measure “design” or “coolness”.
I have very specific preferences, I admit it. But it is not possible that most of the users would be satisfied with just two basic models (air and pro) and three sizes. Actually, a lot of people have specific needs
Besides, what MOST of the humankind cannot afford is uberpremium-priced PCs like Apple ones. Outside of America, OSX presence is anecdotic because OSX devices are too expensive.
Moreover, the raw majority of organizations doesn’t buy apple pcs for their ranks and files. Of course, some of them buy apple pc for their presidents and directors, but, as you say, is more related to “coolness” factor… or to the fact that they would use a different thing compared with the corporate recruits.
I work as a consultant for a huge utility company. Most of the directors use very expensive, premium HP elitebooks. Those machines are close to MBP prices or even over them, but build is in another league. They are maintained by the dozen of thousands, and IT division needs reliability and serviceability.
Non-apple PCs are the logical choice for entire markets, indeed for the vast majority of them in hardware terms.
As for private users, the question is quite easy: an Apple user has to worry just between MBair and MBP. three sizes, a couple of components, that’s it. Each generation is less serviceable than the prior one, and if you want more memory you have to pay a ridiculous prize for it. That is how it works
A non-Apple pc user has to study before taking the next election. Has to choose between a huge number of form-factors, specifications, details, etc.The vendors compete heavily for his attention, and because of it a premium PC will be cheaper than its APple equivalent… if it exist, which is not always the case.
I’m a passionate user of what I understand as proper keyboards. Mechanical at the desk, proper laptop keyboards on the move. For that reason, a mbair is a no-go for me since the keyboard is astoundingly bad. Most of modern dell are not enough for me too.
I came to appreciate trackpads both in HP and IBM. I use them a lot when writing, being closer to the keyboard.
I also spend time evaluating the exact display I am going to prefer for my work. Not only size and finish, but other factors too.
My shopping process extends for weeks usually. It may sound hellish for an Apple user, but finally I’m pretty sure that every component of my PC is going to taylor my needs.
Finally, what I find childish is the comparison between a basic PC and an Apple premium one. Components are not the same… and price is n-fold
. However, certain PCs carefully chosen are indeed better alternatives than Apple PC. For instance, I bought a toshiba chromebook 2015. Crappy keyboard (like a mbair’s), basic materials (although quite resistant), a 1080p IPS 13″ screen, quite brilliant (at least 300 nis)… dual OS’ed with chromeOS and linux with crouton is a surprisingly productive machine at 30% of the price of a MBair 13. I insist, with a far better screen.
In hardware terms, Apple products are harder and harder to justify. Ok, coolness is an actual factor for certain buyers, but if you care about computers, it’s not so easy than an Apple PC will be the best choice for your specific needings
Come on, after one year of heavy typing, my macbook keyboard feels glued with jelly.
It is a really nice keyboard and it feels really good, but IMHO it is not as durable as I would want.
The same thing occurs with their power supply cords, they seem to be made to be broken and bought again and again.
It is always the same story. Apple-only users only know apple keyboards. Then, when they test an actual premium keyboard, either they acknowledge the different or comtempt with green grapes
Dell XPS?
Those are pretty slick – well built, great screens, long battery life.
Some models surpass equivalent Macbooks, some models lag behind. It depends what you need.
For example, the XPS 13 vs the MacBook Air 13″, the XPS has more powerful graphics and a significantly better display – higher resolution, wider color gamut – for $90 cheaper than the Macbook. Optional is a screen that is 4x the resolution as the Mac (3200×1800)
It also has long battery life (Greater than 12 hours in practice, though Dell claims 18), very slick design (Slightly slightly smaller and lighter than the Macbook Air)
Like the Air, it has two USB3 ports, but the XPS has a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port, whereas the Air has a TB2 port instead. Both have an SD card reader.
The only real weakness is the odd placement of the integrated camera.
Edited 2016-07-17 21:35 UTC
MacBook Pros start at $1099 MSRP.
Similar priced Windows based laptops are by far superior to Macbook. Apple still has yet to provide a gaming laptops as some of them even feature touchscreen.
A touchscreen is about 99 out of 100 in my list of must have things on a laptop. Many colleagues who have touch screen W10 devices don’t use touch at all. The usual comment is ‘what a faff, far quicker to use the KB or Mouse’.
In the future that may change but I know that I am not alone in knowing that I don’t need touch on a latop/desktop device in order to get my work done.
YMMV and probably will
Stressful environments call for touchscreen input.
An astonishing mix of input requirement is the worst scenario. Think MS could be right at this evolutive phase.
Think pen input [both 2D&3D] at the OS level will give MS a foot into the art Works. Art will progressively become relevant to human economic activity.
On thinking of a new use for power rigs: What about a gloves/3D-goggles scenario? Handling a virtual clay in a gravity free virtual set? You could set the clay properties at will in a time line.
Of course, until Digital Rights trash down that, also.
Ditto. With iTerm 2 & Homebrew I barely notice the difference, other than things that are supposed to work actually, you know, work.
Seems like you haven’t used Linux in 10 years, or did it wrong.
Yeah that’s always the retort isn’t it? “Works on my machine!” or “You should have use $FAVOURITE_DISTRO”.
I used Linux from Redhat 6.2 right up to Xubuntu 13.10, on all sorts of different desktops & laptops, and it roughly sucked about as equally on all of them over the last 5 years I was using it.
I installed for a laugh Redhat 7.3 in a VM. I barely noticed any difference (other than the fonts were extra ugly) between that and modern fedora running something like Mate.
Wow! That’s UI stability. Admins need to focus, We know. Anyone doing time restricted Work need to focus.
The fact is that there are loads of little issues with each distro which always requires some fiddling.
With the mac, I turn it on, install homebrew, a browser and an editor and I have something very similar to FreeBSD port system and then set lscolors=1 in my profile.
Edited 2016-07-16 12:20 UTC
With Mac OS X, you get an outdated unix subsystem that’s littered with bugs, and pretend everything is OK.
Because as is well documented, the Linux userland has no bugs at all and is always perfect.
Outdated by what?
Mac OS X is fully compliant with UNIX certification.
Everything else are operating systems specific extensions to proper UNIX.
Quick example, version of bash is only a few minor versions beyond RHEL5.x, which is close to EOL. Really, just take a look at some of the internal unix utilities, they are ancient.
Bash is not UNIX, only sh is UNIX.
This is UNIX:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/sh.html
Mac OS X is compliant with the latest POSIX standard, http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/apple.htm
So what UNIX utilities, which aren’t open source extensions of the UNIX standard are actually ancient?
Just because UNIX-like clones put something in them, it doesn’t make it UNIX.
Does it matter if bash is ‘not UNIX’? Fairly certain bash is installed on all *nix. My point was that Apple includes it in macOS, but they haven’t updated it in many moons.
I bet you haven’t used HP-UX, Aix, Solaris, Tru64 in a while.
How lovable that your avatar
As an old man I expected to expend less of my time wondering and questioning. I was wrong.
How exactly brew counts as ‘Apple’s software is old’ I don’t know…
Yes, I’m aware you can install brew on macOS. I’m also aware you can even install brew in Debian. Fact is, Apple’s stack is old.
Because what difference does it make if the version that ships with the “distro” is old, when you can upgrade it? RHEL ships with a bunch of old software in it, too.
The comments for this article are sad. There are a bunch of incredibly valid criticisms of OS X, and I’ve made a bunch of them myself. Yet not a single “Boo OS X! Yay Linux!” poster has come close; it’s just an endless stream of petty, poorly supported, petty rubbish.
You’re right.
I didn’t do it right.
I’m too stupid.
Linux defeated me.
Macosx however was oerfect for my low IQ
If you were constantly fiddling with display drivers, then you probably didn’t do it right. Nvidia works well with proprietary drivers, Intel and AMD with free drivers, and all are packaged by any half-decent distro. If you fiddle with them, you’re either doing something wrong, or living on the bleeding edge.
Installing drivers downloaded from hardware vendors is included in ‘fiddling with’. Third party drivers may cause OS X to crash under suspend/resume as well.
Ok latest example.. I had to fiddle with xorg.conf to get tap to click to work.
That’s the kind of stuff I hate having to fiddle with.
And before you say use gnome or KDE or whatever… I don’t want to…
But that’s just a copy & paste job. It takes like 2 minutes in total, googling and pasting into some file. You do it once. There’s more fiddling with having to click to update Flash under Windows.
It’s interesting that you think Googling an issue and blindly copying and pasting whatever you find into a config file is perfectly ok. It shouldn’t be the case in any polished distro. I use Mint all the time as my daily driver. I never fiddle with it (it even still has the Mint desktop background), yet I had to go searching forums and trying a handful of different things because I couldn’t get resolution settings changes to stick. Just because it works for you (and by works meaning you’re happy to mess with config files). It’s a typical Linux fan mentality. Not everyone wants to mess with config files, and not everyone should be trusted to copy and paste any “solution” they find on any random website directly into their terminal.
If someone messed up their installation by following some instructions they found online to fix a problem, I’ve no doubt you’d be first in line to tell them they were stupid to do whatever it was. Not everyone can knows that pasting sudo rm -r / into their terminal is bad.
Your argument amounts to saying that you didn’t want to use a mainstream DE where someone had done all the fiddling for you, so you chose a different OS with a mainstream DE where someone had done all the fiddling for you. This isn’t a case of Linux not working out of the box, it’s a preference that you have for OSX.
Ha, yet on the opposite side of the argument, I tried my damndest to get middle mouse click to paste working in OSX, but after trying things that supposedly use to work, I gave up and now dual boot the macbook pro with Debian Unstable running gnome, and it works fantastically.
“I used to use Linux as my main desktop for years . and got sick of the constant messing about with display drivers, trackpad config, … ugly font rendering … rubbish power management … untrustworthy suspend/sleep/hibernate … I stopped enjoying trying to get the keybaord to work with the right keymaps…
”
I buy hardware with Linux pre-installed. It mitigates so many of those issues. If you ever want to go back to Linux you might want to consider that approach. It worked for me
TBH that is exactly how Apple achieves stability. Good that some people are doing it for Linux. Now if only they did it worldwide…
The biggest headache for me with Linux (having someone like my mother-in-law run it) was Flash. End users needed Flash to do anything meaningful, and that was always a kind of problem for running desktop Linux.
Flash has seen massive decline in necessity and this fall the major browser makers are taking big steps that will probably lead to it’s final demise (web devs will for sure make sure to avoid “click to activate” which will become the new standard).
So it seems the death of Flash may open the door for useful desktop linux adoption. My (not tech savvy) aunt is already on Chrome OS.
With HTML5 and open source web browsers, and the (possibly coming) ability to run Android (sort of open source) apps on the desktop, it would seem desktop linux (and maybe just more variety in general) is something of a possibility now more than ever.
Lets fact it, that was Ubuntu installed and tbh it the only Linux distro that is relatively easy once you turn off most of the nonsense.
Edited 2016-07-16 17:43 UTC
The release of Windows 10 will likely have convinced people to finally update their aging PCs, giving PC sales a shot in the arm and a better sales performance relative Mac sales.
Overall, in my experience, Mac OS is still vastly superior to Windows 10. And even at today’s development pace it’s probably getting more new features every year than Windows….
I don’t think the gap is in narrowing in any way.
Your statement is completely the opposite to recent reports that indicate that people are using the Free W10 Spyware upgrade rather than buying a new device.
This is hitting the PC makers hard.
Not true. They recently released that one-port netbook, and it comes in pink. Fashion baby!!
Rose!
IMHO the problem with Macs is not the hardware, current Mac hardware is more powerful than Moto/PPC Macs ever were (relative to PC offering of each era)… the problem is OSX and Apple software in general.
OSX quality dropped a lot and Windows improved a lot… so, there’s no real reason to go Mac anymore. The Mac is not the “superior” alternative platform it was in the past.
BTW I think historical Mac users will keep buying Macs, We are 5-10% of the market and that will hardly change… but It will very difficult to get new “switchers” to the platform.
In fact, I think Apple don’t want new Mac users…
I’m not sure it really is so much about Windows improving. My Windows 10 machine has some improvements over Windows 7, but nothing exciting new that would be enough to make me switch from macOS to Windows.
My guess is that Apple has met the limit to how many switchers they can get without making any changes needed to attract new users. For example, until they fix cmd+tab, home+end+pageup+pagedown and the hostile interface in Xcode I’ll never switch over. It isn’t the core OS I’m unhappy about – its the apps and UI conventions. I’ve used macOS for over a decade now, so it isn’t a question of me needing to “get used” to it.
Mix this with Apple being less trendy now and it seems they’ve run out of switchers.
Windows 7 stretched the quality gap between Windows and OSX.
Today nobody will run away from Windows because of its bugs or security problems… but 10, 15 or 20 years ago Windows problems were the main reason to switch to the Mac.
Regarding OSX supposed “bad usability”… It’s a matter of taste. I feel exactly the same about Windows, It’s totally unusable to me because I used to Unix DEs and MacOS… but I can’t blame Windows for being Windows!
Of course you could argue this way. But here’s the thing. If Apple want to win over more people, they have to adjust to their way of doing things. That’s sorta my point – I think as long as they maintain your attitude to Windows users they’ll never win more of the market.
Don’t group Linux DEs with MacOS UI conventions btw. There’s significant differences there – I’d rather switch to Linux than Mac due to a more shared mindset on how certain keys on my keyboard should behave.
It’s not the PC which has fallen down. It’s our [legal] ability to do anything worth its power.
“If Apple doesn’t care about its PC business, why should anyone else?”
Well, take a look at hints of Linux late ‘market’ performance at DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking:
Of course, could be DistroWatch.com itself, which is falling aside.
Out of some light, ‘life-prolonging’ distros. The full armada is deriving away.
I am a linux and windows user for years and most recent ones strictly linux. I always was curious to play with OSX to try and see what all the followers love about.
Other than stability there is no other reason to get near any mac but windows 10 is also very stable but faster on the same hardware and even if linux has some bugs here and there it surely flies compared to what OSX speed and performance has delivered
I have a last gen i7 mac with a nvidia gt760 gpu and a 500gb SSD drive.
The thing flies, the OS is stable, the battery lasts forever and everything just works. I am totally sold on macs vs linux.
There are even a number of decent ports for my Steam games (most work btw) and my Mac Mini doubles up a media center / steam machine (streaming from the main gaming PC.
Edited 2016-07-16 12:21 UTC
Take that same hardware and throw a modern Linux distro on it, you’ll see the difference in speed immediately. That’s what I wnded up doing and couldn’t be happier. Not sure what makes macOS so slow, filesystem is one, but I am sure there is more. Basically any OS on that system will be fast, just some are more responsive than others.
TBH unless we are getting into benchmarks I doubt I could notice the difference. Aside performance there isn’t any good reason to put Linux on the machine.
And a lot of reasons not to. Graphics and battery life not the least of them.
15 Years ago I was an avid home Linux user. But one night I was on late shift at work, and one of my kids (at home) had homework to print and the print queue jammed. It caused all kinds of ructions at home, and I decided I had to do something. MS Windows was out of the questions, I’d already given that up years before (like pot). Seeing that OS X was Unix based made my mind up. We now have 3 generations* of Mac users.
I still use Linux at work for the heavy lifting, but for point-and-click we find nothing better than a Mac.
*11 People from 1 event! I should have bought shares in Apple.
I sometimes wonder about Apple.
Technically, APPLE has good foundations.
Apple designs/implements an operating system that is
married to the respective hardware designed by Apple,
ensuring a mostly “just works” experience; I am still productive/happy with my 21.5 inch iMac 2009 model for general computing and C++ software development. The software development experience is good due to available “unix” tools; I am able to avoid the XCode IDE and use a more efficient/intuitive home-made software construction system comprised of {scons, python, bash, terminals, terminal editors, lldb, clang, etc.} for my C++ projects. A more happy/confident/productive developer leads to better-developed programs in a more efficient (say, less stressful) manner. Potential ports to other platforms (e.g. (Free)BSD, Linux, Windows) begins from the initial “mac” build with the help of cross platform APIs/libraries.
I wonder on many occasions why Apple does not scale up and OWN a bigger chunk of the personal computing market; is “mobile”, i.e. smartphones not laptops, really the future ?
The lack of hardware updates, especially on GPU side, is a bit frustrating.
APPLE has good technical foundations for it to step up to the plate. It is a big advantage that APPLE controls the OS and hardware for their “mac” products and still have their products as being “sellable”.
I suspect Microsoft would have liked to have the “mac” OS/hardware-type paradigm with their > ~80% market share; i.e. MS designing their own range of computers with MS exclusively controlling OS and hardware. However, with this model APPLE/etc. must also support more hardware; e.g. more broader range of video cards.
With the traditional stereotype of “mac” being THE “audio/video computer”, I find it strange why APPLE did not attempt to make the “mac” platform the premier commercial-related platform for gaming outside the console gaming market. Could this be related to Carmack’s comments years ago that Steve Jobs was not into gaming ?
I believe the AAA/etc. gaming market is a missed opportunity for APPLE, from the point of view of playing and developing these type of games.
A gaming/multimedia enthused “mac” platform would have an OpenGL version that is not constantly lagging behind OpenGL of competitor OSes.
A gaming/multimedia enthused “mac” platform would support Vulkan.
A gaming/multimedia enthused “mac” platform would support a
more broadened hardware line.
e.g. A “fat” mac mini with at least:
– high end CPU; quad+ core Intel-i7 (or AMD-Zen (?))
– high end video card with 3D graphics acceleration performance like nvidia GXX 980 card (desktop Nvidia GTX 980 performance in a form factor suitable for laptop/mini hardware scenario)
– suitable, not-too-big space, that allows for “quiet” cool operation (probably using custom/efficient/reliable/quiet fan(s))
– potential to upgrade at least the GPU/RAM.
A gaming/multimedia enthused “mac” platform would have a variant of the “Mac Pro”, even slightly bigger, with option for single or dual Geforce/Radeon cards. Imagine dual desktop nvidia 980s in the more efficiently cooled MacPro “bin” setup. Nice.
A gaming/multimedia enthused “mac” platform would ensure reliable support at the kernel/API level for multi-GPU work flows such as:
– all GPUs at least used for rendering (fullscreen) real-time game graphics (e.g. SLI mode)
– X GPUs for rendering real-time game graphics and Y GPUs for executing GPU-based computations
– all GPUs used at least for executing GPU-based computations
-etc.
Gaming is AFAIK, a minority part of the market.
Even if Apple were to release a system capable of being use for Gaming would any games company release their titles for it? Somehow, I doubt it.
I agree with you about multimedia but even as a photographer, I very rarely shoot Video but there are some who would need a top spec system.
It’s a niche market, and It’s 100% Windows based.
Creating a Mac for “gamers” is the stupid thing Apple could do… gamers don’t care about Macs at all, they want commodity PC hardware and they want Windows.
You are confusing hardcore gamers (which are a minority) with the average game player. Most people are OK with modestly upgradable GPU even if they dont upgrade at all.
I used to be a Windows hardcore fan and when I switch to Mac years ago I receive a lot of crap from other PC friends about how it wasnt upgradable, to my surprise most of them never upgraded their PC’s and instead ended up buying new PC’s
You are talking about a niche market for expensive high-end systems. It is unlikely that the investment required to develop and market a “fat” mac would yield a reasonable return for Apple?
I agree that OS X hasn’t got any better. I wanted to “downgrade”, but then I couldn’t transfer a Time Machine backup made with El Capitan.
Hardware? The usual problem, expensive, especially the upgrades. And then they abandoned my beloved 17″ MacBook Pro,
I have an explanation for the sales slump:
Apple didn’t bother to update the Mac and MacBook lines recently. There is no upgrade for owners of existing models.
The uncertainty about the future of Thunderbolt that Apple introduced by releasing the MacBook 12 without it doesn’t help either. Who wants to buy hardware that may be obsolete very soon?
Rumours and leaked photos point to Q3 release of the new MacBook, probably then sales will pick up again.
I have looked at their laptops with an eye towards possibly buying one, even if I would have probably changed the OS to a Linux distro.
What do I find? A laptop that doesn^A't have a f–king ethernet port or almost any port needed by anyone who works professionally.
Most people need a laptop that has a VGA and HDMI port, kudos if it includes a mini-display port too. Why, because VGA to hdmi adaptors do not work all that well and many places where you have to make a presentation still only have VGA projectors.
If you need to configure network gear or simply care about performance, not having an ethernet port is a deal-breaker and the dongles do not support many of the things that you need to do like capturing traffic dumps.
Moreover, I do not want a thin laptop and then carry one hundred little dongles for everything that the manufacturer should have included.
And the list goes on and on. Yes, we want thinner laptops but not at the expense of doing away with a useful machine.
If anyone can point out to me a thin-enough laptop with good battery life, that has all of the above built-in (I do not want dongles), please post a link.
I could make do without the vga port, if needed, and I don^A't care about a built dvd-rw device.
Thanks.
Edited 2016-07-16 10:05 UTC
VGA is deprecated as of Skylake.
more or less valid reasons already mentioned…
– CPUs have been stagnating, a 5 year old model is almost as fast as the current one; no reason to upgrade
– Apple hardware doesn’t have GPUs worth talking about anyway, so any evolution on that front wouldn’t trigger an upgrade
– Apple hardware is still built to last
– (this was mentioned) Apple hasn’t obsoleted old hardware in a long while, so you can still run the latest OS
So I bet most Apple owners don’t upgrade often as they have no need to.
Even on the Wintel front, there is little reason to upgrade unless you’re of the rabid gamer species. If you’re that, you wouldn’t consider switching. If you’re a normal user, you’d switch when your current PC becomes obsolete and you need to spend on a new one anyway. No obsolete PCs, no switchers.
Easy enough.
Apple has obseleted a slew of older hardware with the public Beta of Sierra, including Mac Pros more than capable of running it.
Releasing a new version of OS X every year is “neglect”, huh? OK whatever, that remark was just an attempt to start a flame-war conversation, so i will let that one go. I will grant that Apple has not released any new hardware or upgrades to their computer hardware in years. It makes one wonder just what those thousands of people who will be working in that new soaceship headquarters will actually be doing.
…lol.
TBH Thom you are a troll. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that.
Yes, they make an annual release, but that doesn’t mean that everything in OS X is updated.
The underlying FreeBSD userspace is outdated. The OpenGL support is both outdated and inefficient. OpenMP? It’s an odd mixture of stuff that’s kept current, and lots of stuff that’s almost abandoned and left to bitrot.
I think it’s fair to say that they could do a better job for this stuff. While it’s not user-visible if all you do is run GUI applications, it’s unfortunately problematic if you do want to use this stuff. A big deal has been made about MacOS X being “real unix”. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation for it to be maintained properly and kept up to date.
It’s not about OSX per say, though it to is in desperate need of an overhaul, I^aEURTMm mean OSX doesn^aEURTMt even support CrossFire, which if Linux supports, OSX most certainty should as well. No it’s more about the hardware it’s ran on that is the larger issue. The MacBook for example looks old and is frankly dated, especially when put up against a current Windows laptop for the same price. I recently bought a ThinkPad X1 Yoga, paid less for it than any comparable MacBook and contains so many more features than the MacBook Pro that it’s, well, almost kind of depressing. Look, I don^aEURTMt care what you do with your money but for mine I want something that the MacBook or iMac just simply hasn’t been able to provide for a very long time.
Before you go into how inadequate Windows is, I^aEURTMm not running it, my X1 has Remix OS, Chrome OS and OSX running in a triple boot. OSX runs extremely well, in fact when connected to a monitor and the X1 out of site, you would be unable to know that you weren^aEURTMt using an actual Mac.
Thom, thank you for calling them Apple PCs.
I hate that marketing has muddled the term with Apple pretending that that their computers run on design and Microsoft hogging PC to mean Windows.
+10^10
Lack of games is one of the main reason, not everyone is a software developer and games are still a driving force of PC sales. Apple must get its OpenGL performance up to Windows levels. Create a new bigger mac mini that supports upgradable GPU (since macpro is to expensive for most people) and support certain GPU chips. Maybe launch and improved Xcode for game developers for both windows and mac to allow developers to create multiplataform games and apps.
Edited 2016-07-17 00:03 UTC
There is no profit for Apple in anything you have suggested there. Gaming to the extent that bleeding edge hardware is required is a minority pursuit, especially among non-Windows users.
iOS is where gaming is concentrated for Apple users and iDevices bring in the big moolah for Cupertino at the moment. Everything else is at the back of the queue. It has been years since the Mac Pro was updated, to say nothing of the Mini.
And what about the majority of computer users who aren’t serious gamers and don’t need a bleeding edge GPU? Who want something to let them stream movies, edit photos, print boarding passes, listen to music, look after their calendar, browse Facebook? What’s wrong with just targeting that market? they don’t really need the minority gaming market, where most people want to build their own machines anyway.
‘Far Worse’ is quite a hyperbole.
Compared to the overall PC market, the difference was less than four percentage points.
-8%, -4%…. Potatoe, potahto.
Sensationalizing, if you ask me.
Not so much Sensationalizing. It used to be that the market was down 10% while Apple was up 10%. Now the market is down 4% and Apple is down 8%. That is a very significant difference
the obvious thing is that OS News wasn’t spending alot of time analyzing why apple was up 10% and everyone else down 10% for the last several years. i get that this is a european site and apple isn’t as prevalent in europe as the US, but lately the mobile workers scene in the US has become nearly 80% macbook from my observations. it’s been on a steady crawl upwards for over 10 years now.
those plastic machines just don’t like the constant mobility, in and out of bags without either being too thick or too fragile. apple had issue with their screen edges too when they made them out of plastic or titanium.
to be opened, closed, and moved 5x a day is alot to ask of a laptop frame as the months and years wear on. apple is successful in making a very durable laptop, and then doing one slightly smaller and sexier than the last one every few years to keep you upgrading.
i think i’m on my 6th or 7th apple laptop since 1998. also, since the upgrade is usually painless, i still have data from back then! some of the stuff i’ve archived onto externals, but c’mon, that’s pretty cool and user-friendly.
It sure has, from about 4% to about 8% in those 10 years. So when that crawl upwards turns into a descend that is newsworthy
It sounds like you are a very happy Mac user. No reason to bash on Windows machines (those plastic machines) though
There is still only one way to pronounce potato, fool!
Tomayto tomahto on the other hand…
Edited 2016-07-19 08:04 UTC
The only explanation why this happened suddenly is because either
1. the world has woken up to the technical superiority of competitive products. This is very unlikely, although there is some supporting evidence for this: Samsung’s Galaxy S7 is outselling Apple’s iPhone 6S in the US. (src: http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/7/13/12171604/galaxy-s7…)
2. Other brands/products are simply cooler (sad reason, but seems likely)
It used to be that Apple was ahead of the market, but lately they have fallen behind the market. That is a really bad sign for them.
I’m a computer guy.. mot a Mac guy or a PC or a Linux guy.. so I don’t get into the flame wars.. cult of “insert product here”… I just use the tools available to me on whatever platform is presented to me.
I’ve used a mac everyday at work for the last 25 years… But when I come home I’ve always gamed on a Windows PC. When I tinker to build something for fun, it’s some flavor of Linux.
In the last 10 years, the ability to dual boot Mac hardware (bootcamp and VM’s) has been awesome for gamers, especially with the Steam platform and people who like to use linux too. The problem now is that Mac hardware (Laptops and iMacs) are so underpowered (video card and bus speed) that even if you dual boot, most games can’t be played in boot camp unless they are on the lowest settings. 2gb ddr3 and 1gb ddr5 video ram doesn’t cut it in todays world. Especially on non-upgradeable Mac Hardware.
A platform is a platform.. but the hardware has to support the lifestyles of the users too (Well pro users anyways) … not just look thinner and sexier.. if it’s a bulkier laptop and has 3-4gb of ddr5 video ram and a hard drive I can swap out for a larger one at some point.. thats what I’m getting.. Same goes for a desktop too.. are people really gonna spend 3-12k on a new MacPro just to get decent hardware? Not your average consumer. BUT the average consumer can buy a monster HP desktop for under 2k that is upgradable and can dual boot into Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
The apple hardware and user software has been dumbed down for average consumers who use office apps and surf the internet. Thats just the reality of Apple now. They are a mobile first company, not the MacOS company of Steve Jobs…
If you want better affordable hardware from Apple (it’s not going to happen) your gonna have to go outside of the box and build something to meets your needs.
When MacOS will start supporting recent OpenGL and Vulkan. Until then, it’s DOA.
I don’t think Apple care though. They recently seem to be all over the place, not having any strategy for MacOS in general. They should open it up and give it away to the community. Or simply kill it off to stop its suffering and prevent developers from wasting their time on working around its bit rot.
Edited 2016-07-18 18:54 UTC
People no longer need PC upgrades anymore. Even in gaming any decent video card from 6 years back is doing fine with todays titles.
This is happening now with mobile phones and tablets.
It happens to any industry for that matter.
I wouldn’t go as far to say Apple hardware is quality (because there are many aspects they could improve on) but at least they offer a simple, easy to understand decision matrix without implying the customer to know what type of hardware is better and where it goes.
If you put anything in a shiny new box, write software only for it and market this as the best experience possible it will sale nevertheless.
YMMV. You can play current games with older cards on lower resolutions, but if you’ll try anything larger (2K, 3K, etc.) they already probably won’t cope.
Same goes for VR.
Edited 2016-07-19 23:08 UTC
I find it refreshing that you don’t have to upgrade your operating system every few years, like in windows world. Apple has a polished operating system and sending a message that they’ll not update the OS just for the sake of shareholders. MS has no choice than to come up with these wacky os-updates, since its doesn’t have smartphone market-share anymore.