Apple Again Trails U.S. PC Market in Key Back-to-School Quarter as Tablets Continue to Eat Into PC Sales

[topper24hours]

A 13 inch iPad with power-keyboard-cover, would that be a computer or a tablet?

Yes. Yes, it would.

 

[Thunderhawks]

I've got I don't know how many macs. Personally, 3 at home. I'm on the tech committee of small school where we have 30 MBP. I got my parents 2, and my aunt and uncle 1 each. I've also had PCs, and some teachers at our school wanted PCs instead of Macs.

My older Macs have a far longer service life than any PC I've seen. There have been issues, but they've been corrected. We have ongoing issues with even our newer PCs.

I don't have universal stats, but I know what I see, and what I see is a higher quality rate amongst Macs, though nothing is ever perfect.

Same here, Macs do last longer and cost nothing if Apple Care is bought with it.. Had Macs since 1984. Not perfect, but compared to PC's better.

First Mac - Doorstop now but still works
SE 30- Door stop - still works

Duo - Docking station went bad. Duo still works

Problem Macs after Apple Care expired and many years of additional use:

Mac II - anemic in every way
G4 Ethernet card burned out (Probably electrical surge though) easy fix.
Bondi blue egg - powers supply. Not bought be me but inherited.
15 inch iMac screen light burned out documented issue and video card on another one.
Hockey Puck mouse cable fry at connection
Titanium Book = video card
MBP after 7 years mother board fixed at depot charge. Great deal.

Most of what went wrong can be fixed by oneself and I recommend Apple Care.

 

[kustardking]

Why not? XCode is software that creates a file.

If an Intel Apple XCode can spit out a file that runs on an ARM, then a Windows XCode can spit out a file that runs on an ARM.

"Cross-compilers" have been around since the dawn of computing.

I agree, and in fact there's precedent in Adobe's AIR platform which has both iOS and Android runtimes, and you can build for either using OS X or Windows.

 

[topper24hours]

1. You are correct. With a phone iPad Mini you'd need a bluetooth or some other wireless headset or ear piece. I see a lot of people using these kind of devices these days so that i not really an issue.

2. You are right that the technology is outpacing what the small iPhone screen can do. But that is what the iPad and iPad Mini are for. There in my opinion is no need for a new iPhablet category. I think phones (as in the phone part only, not the rest that makes up an iPhone) will move to the iPad Mini or possibly a Nano or iWatch sized device.

3. "A Mini with a cellular radio would hit that happy medium."
All your talk on this and I actually agree. The Mini is not quite a phablet but also not quite a full sized tablet. I don't exactly agree with the Mini's existence. But it is here so lets make full use of it. It does some very nice potential. It defo does not take over the standard iPad for everything. I'd not swap my iPad 4th gen not a Mini even if I was paid to do so. In saying that I think both devices have their place in the market. But they need to do more to differentiate the two. At the moment for the average user it's smaller screen vs retina. Is that enough? I think smaller screen + phone radio vs better specs, retina and I can't think something else but it needs it.

So it looks like we have worked it out. Keep the iPhone the same size. And add a phone radio to the mini. And then everyone is happy.

I could not disagree any more. Currently, for the few that want a phablet by Apple, Skype + BT on mini IS an option. The fact that none of us have EVER seen anybody doing this I think is a fair indicator of the interest level here....
I think ppl want a slightly larger screen iPhone, NOT an 8" iPhone.
While iPhone showed that convergence of devices can be done well... I don't think currently there is a strong market for the loss of one of these categories. I, for one, LOVE my tablet AND my phone! I have no interest in losing either. I hope others feel similar....

 

[mrd0]

So, total PC sales:

3Q 2012 - 15582
3Q 2013 - 16121

and "Research firms Gartner and IDC today released their preliminary calculations of PC shipments for the third quarter of 2013, finding that worldwide shipments fell by roughly 8% over the year-ago quarter"

Apparently they taught me the wrong math at school.

Apparently they didn't teach you to read in school...worldwide drop 8%...numbers from US 3Q sales increase about 3.5%.

 

[Nightarchaon]

this year i would have bought a mac pro...then they showed us what the new one was going to be, went out and spent the money on a PC

i would have bought a new iMac (used as a monitor for said mac pro, and as a personal PC when the pro wasn't doing stuff), but didn't see the point as apples thunderbolt wont play nice with the PC thunderbolt, so now my old iMac does the job and wont need upgrading again as all it does it web surfing and office.

i would have bough a macbook , air or pro, but inability to replace battery myself, and knowing that my usual life-of-use of a product is greater than apples 3 years then bin it approach ill be getting a nice Alienware with a removable battery for use when im away with work.

I can see WHY apples shares are dropping , Johnny Ive is making apples hardware more like ornaments than useful equipment, i wouldn't buy a car with welded shut bonnet or tyres you cant replace...im not buying a computer i cant easily swap out the Hard disk or ram on (Or battery on a laptop)

 

[diegogaja]

Agree...kind of

College can be and expensive time but you would be surprised to know how many will 'splurge' on a computer they know will serve them well over several years rather than having to maintain something for shorter periods. Of all my friends in college only a small percentage actually have Windows based PC's.

Many applications only work on Windows? True...yet they are such as small percentage of applications and the student's needed it are such a small percentage of that. It's a non-issue.

MS Office as a tool is over kill for the vast majority of people. There are no courses I know (save one) that REQUIRE MS Office as opposed to a valid word processing program or presenation program. I myself spent two terms in univ last year doing all of my coursework on my ipad (family emergency wehere i thought i would be away from home for a few days which turned in to a few months). Between Pages and Evernote and a few textbook apps i had everything I needed and then some to comlete my coursework. It took only a few days of adjustment and after that it was smooth sailing.

And maybe I'm missing something...but MS Office is free on Windows?

Not really a surprise considering college is an expensive time and adding cutting back on electronics would be a logical choice for many.

Especially when many applications work on windows only (engineering applications etc.) - MS Office is still very much considered a Windows application despite being available on Mac. Yes windows is on Mac but why pay extra will be some people's thinking.

Apple doesn't have a laptop in the budget range and will continue to lag in this area until it decides to go that route.

 

[roadbloc]

Meanwhile at Lenovo...

 

[cube]

Proof that it is not only power users who don't want crippled locked down computers.

Stop with the tablet excuse.

 

[Konrad9]

Mac sales falter in the PC market when they haven't done any update to their more budget friendly laptops in over a year. Why is this a surprise or considered news? In fact, I disagree with headline in the fact that they seem to be implying that it's because of the iPad.

Apple doesn't have any budget friendly laptops. It doesn't matter that it will hold its value longer and last longer, if someone isn't able to afford a $1000 laptop, they're not going to buy it.

 

[haydn!]

Looking at those figures, I think the reason Apple's market share is slipping is the retina MacBooks. They're simply too expensive, and the non-retina no longer offer value.

Apple really need to shake up their pricing of the MacBook, just like they did with the Air a few years ago. The result of making that more affordable was a massive jump in sales.

 

[jmh600cbr]

this isn't a bad statistic, ultimately it shows that a large number of young consumers cannot afford their premium products, but note that they are still outselling some key competitors. no one is expecting apple to be the highest selling, we expect them to be the best, the very best.

 

[Klae17]

By that logic, with Apple's resources and connections Maps should have been a success, as should MobileMe. All their own mobile apps should have been updated ready for iOS7.

It's not as simple as saying 'they have lots of money and employees, it's easy'. From a development perspective, moving XCode to Windows would literally require iOS being started over again. It'd be like porting Visual Basic to the mac- its an impossibility without bringing across most of Windows in the process.

The same applies with XCode. It cant be ported to windows. Even the iOS Simulator can't.

You're talking about essentially rewriting OS X in a 'wrapper' for Windows. Do you have any comprehension of the cost, time, and reliability of something like that? I'm not talking about the nice looking UI, I'm talking about the entire OS, the core of the operating system that took 10+ years to build.

Not. Going. To. Happen.

I was talking about putting haswell in the Classic MacBook pros. Not rewriting code.

 

[147798]

Not a big deal. Desktop hardware doesn't become obsolete as fast as it used to.



4 years. But it still looks great. And they have tweaked it a bit for the Air and Retina machines.



So? It's on schedule and will be out soon.



Agreed. Prices should probably come down a bit. Windows laptops are WAY cheaper.



That's subjective. It's better, but I'd still rather use OS X.

The question is not what you think about all this. The question is why did Mac sales shrink faster than the PC market. You might be happy, but others aren't buying.

 

[goaltech]

I think the shrink is really the longevity of Macs. My PowerBook G4 lasted 6 years. My brother and parents went through 6 win computers in that same time. I just got a new Macbook Pro that given any unforeseen issues will last the same. If people are buying PC on average 2-1 the numbers will always be skewed.

 

[Renzatic]

I could not disagree any more. Currently, for the few that want a phablet by Apple, Skype + BT on mini IS an option. The fact that none of us have EVER seen anybody doing this I think is a fair indicator of the interest level here....

Skype accounts for nearly 1/3rd of all the cell traffic in the world. Despite it's apparent popularity and wide usage, I've never seen ANYONE using it before.

It's all anecdotal evidence, and proves nothing about how popular or unpopular a phoned up Mini would be.

 

[Count Blah]

I think the shrink is really the longevity of Macs. My PowerBook G4 lasted 6 years. My brother and parents went through 6 win computers in that same time. I just got a new Macbook Pro that given any unforeseen issues will last the same. If people are buying PC on average 2-1 the numbers will always be skewed.

Yes, but each year, you have the people who bought 3,4,5,6 years ago who are looking to replace their older machines. With enough time, like we have in this case, you point is lessened quite a bit.

Still valid, and would explain 2:1, just not 9:1

 

[rmwebs]

Why not? XCode is software that creates a file.

If an Intel Apple XCode can spit out a file that runs on an ARM, then a Windows XCode can spit out a file that runs on an ARM.

"Cross-compilers" have been around since the dawn of computing.

It comes down to the OS framework libraries - many of these were actually made at NeXTSTEP and they are only ever going to work on the iOS/OS X core kernel.

These libraries are all needed for making Mac or iOS applications. Without them nothing can happen.

To put it another way. It'd be like trying to port the Windows UI over to Linux - that's the level of difference we're talking here. *Nix based operating systems share no common code with NT based operating systems. It's not a simple case of picking up each framework, tweaking it a bit and dropping it into Windows. You'd need to rewrite them from scratch, and for a lot of them thats not even possible without rewriting/overloading massive parts of the NT Kernel.

Even with the best team of developers, to actually do it would be a bare minimum of 8 years, and thats a pretty conservative estimate. We're talking about frameworks here that have been built and refined over a 15 year period. We're talking about rewriting an OS, inside another OS.

Physically possible? Sure, if you've got all the time and money in the world. Worth it from a business perspective? No way in hell is it.

If Apple were ever going to ditch OS X / Macs / Desktops they could bring it all over to any Linux distribution (like Darwin given OS X is based on it) within a couple of years. That' be the way they would go.

Of course this is all theoretical as it'll never happen. By the time it becomes a problem we'll likely not even be using OS X / iOS / iPhones / Macs.

 

[AidenShaw]

It comes down to the OS framework libraries - many of these were actually made at NeXTSTEP and they are only ever going to work on the iOS/OS X core kernel.

These libraries are all needed for making Mac or iOS applications. Without them nothing can happen....

Not sure what you are trying to say. Obviously, the IOS frameworks for ARM don't work on OSX x64 - but somehow the cross-compiler is able to make ARM binaries linked with the IOS ARM frameworks. (Hint - they're in files.)

I would also venture to say that many of the OSX frameworks that XCode would need are already available for the ITunes Windows version.

 

[rmwebs]

Not sure what you are trying to say. Obviously, the IOS frameworks for ARM don't work on OSX x64 - but somehow the cross-compiler is able to make ARM binaries linked with the IOS ARM frameworks. (Hint - they're in files.)

I would also venture to say that many of the OSX frameworks that XCode would need are already available for the ITunes Windows version.

It's not about compiling. It's about having the functionality coded up. Look at the libraries that OS X and iOS use - there are rather a lot. If you've got a library giving instructions to the OS, those instructions will not, ever work on another OS - so they would need rewriting from scratch.

Look at them and you'll see what I'm talking about.

There's nothing at all simple about moving XCode to Windows. Also the iTunes windows version is a different app. The only thing it shares is the ability to connect to your devices. It's not based on the Mac version in any way (code wise).

 

[Asia8]

There's little relationship between the rise of tablets and the slowing sales of PC's. There's a much simpler answer.

New PC's just aren't that much different today to those of 5 years ago for most common non-gaming usage scenarios.

Even then, just upgrading the RAM can makes a very significant difference to most users. It's interesting how many laptops I've seen lately struggling simply because they only have 2GB of RAM (which is very simply fixed).

It's just becoming less important to upgrade as both the hardware and it's requirements are just not advancing at as fast a rate as they were before.

People aren't buying new computers simply because there's little reason to.

It's the same reason so many people use XP, they've never felt the need to change as it fulfills all their needs and it's what came with their computer when they bought it.

I'm sick of hearing the lie that this drop in sales is mainly due to tablets.

 

[9000]

A recall is a company's quality control, doesn't mean something WILL go wrong, it's a precaution so you're friend's iMac getting a hard drive recall replacement doesn't count as the iMac being defective, and especially since the hard drive was not manufactured by Apple nor does that count as Macs not having a long shelf life. It could affect any computer it was installed in.
I'm not discounting your issues but you're making it sound widespread that Macs are problem prone which simply isn't true. You've only stated one actual problem.

Alright, if you don't count recalls as signs of the computer not lasting long, then it's a reliable computer. I point to the hard drive and GPU failures as signs that the 2011 27" iMac is a problematic model, and the fact that Apple did the right thing and recalled them doesn't change that.

There were widespread graphical problems on the 2006 iMac too, but Apple didn't recall them. That's how my beautiful 24" 2006 iMac died.

----------

Missing the point. The era of the pocketable PC is nearly nigh. With SoCs reaching absurd levels of performance and the development of cloud computing, full fledged PC replacements that can fit in your pocket are less than a decade away...and it's a race to see who gets their first.

OK, why can't this pocket PC run OS X? If it is to be a desktop PC replacement, wouldn't it run a desktop PC operating system?

----------

There's little relationship between the rise of tablets and the slowing sales of PC's. There's a much simpler answer.

New PC's just aren't that much different today to those of 5 years ago for most common non-gaming usage scenarios.

This statement was just as valid before the iPad came out. Why would that be an explanation for the recent drop in PC sales? All that would cause is a relative drop in PC sales (compared to tablet sales).

----------

Not only nothing wrong, but something very right about using a full OS that honors the concept of a file

Except for the recent removal of the "save as" button. It's been driving me nuts ever since I upgraded to Mountain Lion. But yeah, I understand what you're saying. You can't use iOS for the kinds of work a PC does.

 

[147798]

Except for the recent removal of the "save as" button. It's been driving me nuts ever since I upgraded to Mountain Lion.

worst idea ever.

I am really hoping Mavericks replaces the save as option.

 

[cylack]

Another reason for a decline in sales is that the laptop market is mature in terms of desired new features. What new features are people lusting after? Most people running Office, surfing the web, and watching movies on their laptop don't need a new one since recent core i5 and i7 based laptops do those jobs perfectly fine. Personally, I'm happy with my early 2011 MBP. I don't particularly desire Retina display. I did upgrade my internal 5200 rpm hard drive to an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD drive, which makes it seem like I have a new MBP. I plan to use my MBP till it literally dies, then I'll get the latest MBP. I'm not going to get one now because I want some new feature or performance improvement.

 

[Michael Scrip]

See, I think Apple does need to do something here because the one biggest limiting factor of the iPhone is that the screen is far too small for the hardware behind it.

A Mini with a cellular radio would hit that happy medium.

If Apple were to keep the iPhone the same size as it is for people who like smaller phones, but set it up so the Mini can make phonecalls, they'd have all their bases covered without making any huge changes to their current lineup.

So wait... the 4" iPhone is too small... so the next logical step is the 8" iPad MiniPhone?

That's a happy medium?