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That is pretty much true. The only reason not to buy the Mac is because you can't afford one. Notice that no one even tries to sell apple-like notebooks at apple-like prices.

Remember the Microsoft ad where they give money to someone to buy a computer. They rush off the Apple store and see that they don't have quite enough money, so they buy a Dell or something. They took that ad down when they realized what they were telling people.

So much fail here.

I avoid macs for Performance/Upgrade-ability/Flexibility - the fact that I'm not raped on pricing is gravy. Paying more for less doesn't sound intelligent to me.

I don't care about laptops.
 
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Good grief...:rolleyes:

You get liquid metal, then what? You will complain that's there's nothing new after liquid metal. You get AR glasses, you complain why do we need the glasses? You get SIRI GM build, you complain it's not good enough. You get full maps that rival google's offering, you still complain not enough coverage.

You're not getting older, you're getting ADD. Name one company out there that has done what apple has done and given you top quality (albeit with some QC problems) devices? At the end of the day, these gadgets are just toys or tools for humans to help get them thru their day. 50 years ago, you have nothing like today and yet humans still functioned fine, and in fact much better than sticking our faces in our phone all day and night long and complaining about the dumbest things.

If everybody was thinking like you, progress in society and science would be nill. You are not feeling anymore hungry you... wise man...

"You get full maps that rival google's offering" That was the highlight of the response...

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Where are the markets for any of these things?

That's what people where asking about tablets 7 years ago...
 
Does apple really only sell roughly 2,000 computers per quarter?? Am I reading the numbers wrong? That sounds incredibly low...9,000 per year? Is the number in thousands or something?

Edit: don't bother calling me out, I went back and noticed that, yes, it is in thousands. That sounds better!
 
That is pretty much true. The only reason not to buy the Mac is because you can't afford one. Notice that no one even tries to sell apple-like notebooks at apple-like prices.

Remember the Microsoft ad where they give money to someone to buy a computer. They rush off the Apple store and see that they don't have quite enough money, so they buy a Dell or something. They took that ad down when they realized what they were telling people.

LOL. Do yourself a favor and step out of the Reality Distortion Field. Design: sure, Macbooks are nice for mediocre, mass market hardware, but lack the sophistication of a Sony Vaio Z for example and the versaitality of a Windows based systems in general. Blue ray anyone? Or how about "App(lication)'s" available for Win compared to MacOS? Isn't that the favorite argument for iOS?

And then performance: ""...cant afford a Mac..." Instead of going to Staples, check out falcon-nw for example. Spoiler alert: you can configure a dream mashine that's blowing everything Apple could ever build out of the water and could cost you as much as a car! Heck, even the custom paint job costs more than a MBA. Just saying.

Apple with it's mass market appeal/strategy has become what HP and Dell & Compaq used to be in the 90ties....

Cheers!

EDIT: why is everyone avoiding to comment on Lenovo's rise -the true and only winner in this analysis? The Verge just had a piece about the 20th anniversary of the Thinkpad...
 
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Then that would suggest that Apple's incapable of writing software for older cards which can support 64 bit drivers. This is admission that Apple can't do what others have done, to include major Linux distros and Microsoft. You're discounting the possibility that the decision to stop support on older hardware is to force people to buy a newer machine.

Thats because Mac OSX is not Linux or Microsoft. Each different OS has a different type of goal that works for it. Each with its own pros and cons.

So pick which operating system works best for you, instead of trying to bend the OS around your own particular needs, which may be different then anyone else's.

Apple does discontinue software & Hardware support sooner then Windows or Linux. Yes, some of the reasons is because they make the most money from hardware sales, not software sales like Microsoft. Because Apple works on a different business model.

I think another important reason for discontinuing software support is bloat. I remember when Microsoft went from WinXP to Vista had a lot of problems with driver support. A lot of things did not work anymore. Obviously Windows has to support everything under the sun all the way back to the 80's. Since Apple does away with that and finally ends obsolete software ( Rosetta )

Apple isn't guilty of being the first to stop support altogether for the sole purpose of generating more revenue/sales and I'm certain they won't be the last.

Like I've said before, Apple makes the most money selling hardware. Thats why it has reduced its own software very cheaply or for free (iLife, iMovie & Garageband), or its own Mac OSX upgrades.

Microsoft on the other hand makes a majority of money through its software. So it charges much more for Operating system upgrades, Microsoft Office ect.
 
This article certainly has the potential to be spun in many ways. On the one hand, the number Mac sales dropped year over year, the first time I think I've seen that in the last 15 years. However, because sales of most other manufacturers dropped even more, Apple's market share increased.

I do think that the main difference for the drop in traditional PC sales is the iPad. I believe Apple stated in one of their earnings conferences that they were starting to see "PC" sales cannibalization by the iPad, but not any loss of Mac sales. It now appears that the huge success of the iPad has also come at the expense of Apple's own desktop and notebook lines.

With the massive profits Apple is earning from the iPad, I have started to wonder how much money, energy and personnel Apple will devote to continue to develop its Mac lines, and I do fear for the future of the Mac Pro and even the iMac.

No spin needed. Doing less badly than the competition is not exactly the greatest formula for success. Apple has been grabbing more of a shrinking PC market for some time now, but this the first time in memory that the market shrink has caught up with them. Fortunately for Apple they are well onto the next big thing already, but it is startling to see this year over year decline in Mac sales nonetheless.
 
It depends on when the product was purchased, if you were one of the unfortunate to have bought it within the latter half before the next release of OS X, the lifecycle has ended. A great example is Snow Leopard. SL 10.6.8 is arguably one of the best (performing) release version of OS X thus far.
If you purchased a Mac Mini on March 2, 2009 (the worst case scenario out of all models for upgrading to ML), and did not take advantage of the 2 week window to exchange it, and did not receive one of Apple's silent early upgrades, then your computer was no longer able to (officially) upgrade to the latest OS X on July 25, 2012, nearly 3.5 years after you were unfortunate enough to have made this worst case scenario purchase. If, OTOH, you purchased on iMac on August 7, 2007, then your more than 5 year old Mac still runs the latest software, and will still be running the latest software at least until it is 6 years old. So, from worst case scenario to best case scenario for longevity/support/ability to run the most current OS, the range is from 3.5 to 6 or more years, not 1-2 years as you stated. My point was that the short end of the range, 3.5 years, was an exceptional scenario, only once before encountered (with the transition to Intel), and one that you would not expect to encounter again any time soon.

Could Apple have rewritten the graphics drivers for the Intel Integrated Graphics on the pre-2009 Mac Mini so that they could run on the 64-bit kernel? I suppose it may have been technically possible, but likely not worth the investment in time and resources, given the limited distribution and limited capabilities of that particular graphics chipset. I suspect that even if ML could run on a pre-2009 Mac Mini, it likely would not run well on it. And as you know, Apple is obsessed with ensuring that the user experience is smooth and seamless, with minimal noticeable lag. Apple may well have tried to run ML on pre-2009 Mac Minis and found its performance to be unacceptable, hence the lack of support on that particular model.

The remainder of your points are excellent. Support of older models as long as possible is ideal, and it is something that Microsoft has recently done better than Apple (although I expect that it will soon be MS's turn to annoy legacy users by discontinuing support of its 32-bit kernel). But at some point, you have to stop sacrificing performance in current machines just to maintain support of legacy machines.
 
Apple with it's mass market appeal/strategy has become what HP and Dell & Compaq used to be in the 90ties.

Macbooks are nice for mediocre, mass market hardware, but lack the sophistication of a Sony Vaio Z for example,

but lack the sophistication of a Sony Vaio Z for example

I mostly envision the $500.00 PC laptops & emachines more of a mediocre mass market for consumers. Which is fine for general use.

MacBook Pro's & Airs still are the best selling over $1000.00 laptops, even compared to the Sony Vaio Z.

Blue ray anyone?
Downloading/streaming is where the market is heading. Even forcing Sony to stop making DVDROM/Blu-ray drives just because of that reason.
 
MacBook Pro's & Airs still are the best selling over $1000.00 laptops, even compared to the Sony Vaio Z.

Downloading/streaming is where the market is heading. Even forcing Sony to stop making DVDROM/Blu-ray drives just because of that reason.


Correct. It is just a different perspective on the common assumption that Apple's hardware design trumps everything else.

Correct again about where the market is heading. However, Blue Ray has been -is - and will be for a long time the gold standard for a superior visual/audio experience. And again, contrary to the common believe, Apple's marketing and premium pricing, and despite Retina display's, the experience of watching HD movie content is sub-standard on a MBP compared to a 1080P/BR combo.

The 30 seconds it takes in iTunes to browse/start a movie is very nice from a UI standpoint, BUT what about the experience of watching that movie for 2 hours in inferior quality? Apple's priority is not to offer the best experience for their customers, but rather to feed their buttom line with iTunes revenue.

Personally, I like the option. Some stuff I dont care about that much - like TV shows - I download for convienience, but the real thing, movies like Blade Runner etc. I want to enjoy in the best possible quality:Blue Ray!
 
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That's not the point. I know users that could get by on a 2006 iMac, easily. Apple wants the same price for something they released a year and a half ago. Which were pretty expensive upon release anyway. So to expect your customers to pay the same price for stuff that is outdated is a slap in the face.

And then there are people who would greatly benefit from more cpu and gpu power, solid state drives and usb 3. These are basic standards that come with almost any computer these days (even Apple's own laptop line has them).

So while you can adequately browse your facebook page with your 2008, don't assume that your situation is the norm, nor that there are other types of customers other than that majority, if it were the case.

But you can't judge a book by its cover. A lot of money went into the design and R&D on these machines. They were (and to some extend still are) trend setters in the market.
 
In many ways I preferred the days when Macs / Apple was less known. Instead of everyone and their uncle owning an Apple product of some kind.... the people owning Macs were true enthusiasts. There was something different about far fewer people having a Mac.

Sort of like owning a Mercedes Benz and then years later everyone on the block has one. Something is sort of lost.
 
Good discussion going on. MacinDoc, I concede on the 1-2 year comment, you made a great presentation and I agree.

The point I'm trying to make is a lot of Apple users are unable... rather unwilling, IMHO, to simply accept the possibility that Apple's goal is to simply force to you to buy a new computer every 2 years. People make all kinds of excuses for them theorizing how software drivers and all that stuff won't work on newer hardware... I don't buy it.

If Microsoft, the company everyone loves to hate can do it, there's no reason why Apple can't considering Apple has repeatedly boasted that it's a better, more modern OS than Microsoft's offerings.

There's no reason why Apple couldn't include iCloud support into Snow Leopard, yet they provided it on Windows PC's (makes me scratch my head), instead they only provided it on Lion. People assume that Apple "couldn't" do it on Snow Leopard, I believe it was more of a strategy in the attempt to add more value to OS X Lion and I'm of the opinion that they did the same with Rosetta for the same reason.

I have no problem with anyone who loves their Apple machines and prefers to use them over any other Windows machine, it's when they start to preach overly optimistic, hardly unrealistic excuses as to why Apple can do no wrong and all their decisions are of the best interest of everyone is when it makes me SMH.
 
So wait, Apple actually lost some unit sales Year To Year for this quarter, you know, the figure that matters because profits are mostly related to unit sales, but we're celebrating because they lost less than the overall market ?

This is actually bad news... why is it being spinned and sugar coated into something positive ?

Lenovo is the only player that did well this quarter. Maybe if Apple had refreshed its entire line-up at WWDC like what was predicted. There was no reason not to put out a full Ivy Bridge line-up and an updated Mac Pro.
 
iPad is NOT A PC.

Its a big ipod touch.

i have owned all 3 of them and tbh im fast getting bored.

They really should strip out these gimped up tablets
 
Well done for writing an article about Macs, and never once mentioning the word 'Mac'!

Just as you don't measure your success by how many hours you work each week but by how much $ you bring home, a company doesn't measure its success by market share, but by net profits. Seeing as how they have $1B+ in the bank, I think Apple is by far the current leader, hands down.

We're talking about Macs here, and I'm quite sure Apple was never happy with their PC marketshare. But some years ago now they dumped the 'compete head on with Microsoft in the PC market' strategy, for a new one: create a new market in the minds of consumers—one that will slowly eat away at the PC market—and dominate that. The strategy worked, and so the iPad became (in terms of marketshare) what Apple always wanted the Mac to be.

A lot of people think this means the Mac's days are numbered. I disagree. Apple always new the iPad would never completely replace PCs (Jobs even said as much), and I'll bet they are still hoping for an ever-increasing halo effect—where new users of iOS devices will like the experience so much that they'll consider switching from Windows to Mac.

iPad is NOT A PC.

Well, it is a computer, and it is personal… But Apple won't call it a PC, for the reason stated above. Clever marketing.
 
You can run Windows on a Mac, that only leaves number 3 on that list depending on your definition of bang.

No - it leaves preference and bang for your buck. With only 3 items on his list I would have thought you'd be able to subtract 1 correctly ;)

And I run windows on both my home and work Macs. But It's never quite 100% the experience or performance as it is on an actual PC. But I'm running it in a VM and perhaps you mean an alternative method.

It's truly amazing that there is a person here who honestly believes people only buy PCs because they can't afford a Mac. Even more shocking is that there are obviously more people that feel that way. It's absurd.
 
No - it leaves preference and bang for your buck. With only 3 items on his list I would have thought you'd be able to subtract 1 correctly ;)

And I run windows on both my home and work Macs. But It's never quite 100% the experience or performance as it is on an actual PC. But I'm running it in a VM and perhaps you mean an alternative method.

It's truly amazing that there is a person here who honestly believes people only buy PCs because they can't afford a Mac. Even more shocking is that there are obviously more people that feel that way. It's absurd.

I don't know if I would call it amazing really. Kinda par for the course.
 
So wait, Apple actually lost some unit sales Year To Year for this quarter, you know, the figure that matters because profits are mostly related to unit sales, but we're celebrating because they lost less than the overall market ?

This is actually bad news... why is it being spinned and sugar coated into something positive ?

Lenovo is the only player that did well this quarter. Maybe if Apple had refreshed its entire line-up at WWDC like what was predicted. There was no reason not to put out a full Ivy Bridge line-up and an updated Mac Pro.
Yep. Pretty hard to maintain sales when your entire desktop lineup is more than a year out of date without even dropping prices to acknowledge its relative obsolescence. But I do think that PC sales will continue to drop as more people choose tablets as an alternative.
No - it leaves preference and bang for your buck. With only 3 items on his list I would have thought you'd be able to subtract 1 correctly ;)

And I run windows on both my home and work Macs. But It's never quite 100% the experience or performance as it is on an actual PC. But I'm running it in a VM and perhaps you mean an alternative method.

It's truly amazing that there is a person here who honestly believes people only buy PCs because they can't afford a Mac. Even more shocking is that there are obviously more people that feel that way. It's absurd.
VM will definitely provide poorer performance than Boot Camp/dual booting. I've read that MBPs with Boot Camp have excellent performance running Windows. Can't say the same for Apple's desktops, mind you. Why is it taking Apple so bloody long to update its Mac lineup?
 
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Correct. It is just a different perspective on the common assumption that Apple's hardware design trumps everything else.

Correct again about where the market is heading. However, Blue Ray has been -is - and will be for a long time the gold standard for a superior visual/audio experience. And again, contrary to the common believe, Apple's marketing and premium pricing, and despite Retina display's, the experience of watching HD movie content is sub-standard on a MBP compared to a 1080P/BR combo.

The 30 seconds it takes in iTunes to browse/start a movie is very nice from a UI standpoint, BUT what about the experience of watching that movie for 2 hours in inferior quality? Apple's priority is not to offer the best experience for their customers, but rather to feed their buttom line with iTunes revenue.

Personally, I like the option. Some stuff I dont care about that much - like TV shows - I download for convienience, but the real thing, movies like Blade Runner etc. I want to enjoy in the best possible quality:Blue Ray!

I think some people play into the marketing blurb too much. They say its substandard because the marketing tells them so. Most movie/film shown today is based on 70 year old 24p FPS standard. About the the only thing that takes full advantage of 1080p HD wide screen is some TV shows. The only advantage I see for 24p movies like this is wide screen.

You do have some more advantages for blu-ray just because it can hold more storage the conventional DVD. But still based on old standards.

Watching Blade runner based on 80's technology and running it on Blu-ray won't really give you any advantage besides additional content.

For a long time mp3 was the standard for audio, which by many is also substandard.

Note: There might be a big difference perhaps is with audio. But running full surround dolby sound on a laptop or tablet still won't take full advantage of the technology.
 
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And they sold more iPads than any PC maker sold all of their PCs put together.

An iPad is a PC in most ways that matter: it replaces them for a great many people and a great many tasks! (For now, that sometimes means hanging on to an old “traditional” computer and simply not upgrading to a new one. Still a replacement sale that Apple gets and the PC makers don’t.)

That said, I’m very glad the “truck” business is still booming!

Also, in a year when the retina MacBook Pro came out, I can’t really see people thinking Apple has “abandoned” the Mac. Your pet model may be behind on numeric specs that few care about (though I myself do!) but new iMacs will come. The MacBook Air and retina MBP aren't the end of the new Macs, but the beginning.

Pro towers? They’re a niche worth worrying and wondering about, I agree! Apple will still cater to pros in future, but how? Will it always be big airboxes? Or will it be smaller machines that you can add a third-party Thunderbolt expansion chassis to? (Messy, but it may meet a small but important niche: people who need to load up on internal cards.)

Well your "niche" is how some of us make a living and seeing how pcs are currently far superior than mac pros most of us have already left mac. We dont have time to play around with expansions and thunderbolt cords, our clients pay the same no matter what machine we use. If apple doesnt want a cut of that its too bad for them.

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*sighs*

i really don't get why Mac market share is still very small compared to Windows....any idea when Apple will man up and have 60% market share of the PC market?

When they lower prices to compete with windows for enterprise
 
VM will definitely provide poorer performance than Boot Camp/dual booting. I've read that MBPs with Boot Camp have excellent performance running Windows.

If you're only looking to run a PC - then that setup doesn't seem bad. But if you're using a Mac as a Mac - seems like quite a hassle to dual boot. And if you only want a PC - I'm still not sure it makes sense to get a Mac when you can get a PC of similar value if not more - for less. Even ones that are "all-in-one" like the iMac.
 
No - it leaves preference and bang for your buck. With only 3 items on his list I would have thought you'd be able to subtract 1 correctly ;)

And I run windows on both my home and work Macs. But It's never quite 100% the experience or performance as it is on an actual PC. But I'm running it in a VM and perhaps you mean an alternative method.

Well preference for the OS, and I referred to running Windows natively on the hardware.

And if you only want a PC - I'm still not sure it makes sense to get a Mac when you can get a PC of similar value if not more - for less. Even ones that are "all-in-one" like the iMac.

They make excellent quality laptops, why wouldn't that make sense if that is what you are after. Here's a guy that runs Linux on it. ;) http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an...ium-technology-prize-finalist-linus-torvalds/
 
Originally Posted by animatedude
*sighs*

i really don't get why Mac market share is still very small compared to Windows....any idea when Apple will man up and have 60% market share of the PC market?

When they build it cheap. Apple has always been about building the best quality products, not taking short cuts based on price.
 
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