Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Maintains Mac Sales Momentum in Holiday Quarter
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Maybe you are just growing up and finding more interesting and important things than a gadgets company, don't you think? The abnormal thing is a 40 (30, 50s... you know) years old man freaking out because a new OS is released, not the contrary.
I think that's what happens most of the time with people who say "then this or that was better blah blah blah blah". Maybe they were just more stupid and so impressionable, that's all.
Last edited:
Maybe that is true. But the thing is, I still get super excited when a real disrupting tech comes along. Last year Microsoft introduced 'Storage Spaces' and 'ReFS' filesystem into Windows Server 2012 R2 (but you can enable it on win8.1 as well). It is all I ever dreamed storage should be =] And the amazing part, for something coming from MS, is that it actually works.
On the Apple side, we got Fusion drive. Ok, that's something I guess. But not cutting edge, by far.
This quarter may well be skewed somewhat because of Windows XP being unsupported. For example we replaced about 1000 PCs with XP on them which took out last years computing budget, so no replacement Macs were bought (even though many of them were older than the PCs that were replaced).
Apple sold more Macs last quarter than they did the same quarter a year ago. In other words... Mac sales are up.
That's the Apple-specific portion of this article.
Then we look at the rest of the market... including companies who are not Apple... and you get the other part of this article.
You're right... Apple's market share went down. But at the same time... Apple's sales went up.
Which one of those do you think Apple really cares about?
Their own sales? Or their percentage of sales compared to everyone else?
No, not even a neighborhood survey. Just a personal opinion. Probably should not have posted. I do enjoy using a Mac.
I've got a client not upgrading 1000 PCs from XP to Windows 7 until fourth quarter of this year. Unsupported since April 2014. Unbelievable. That said, I think they are in the minority.
It is just you. In the last quarter.
Apple Pay. Legitimately better buying experience every time you use it. Relies on two unique Apple hardware features, touch ID and secure enclave chip. Might be very hard to duplicate.
iMac Retina 5K. Better screen than can currently be purchased separately, but sold at same price as the top of the line 4K standalone monitors. But comes with top of the line PC components built into very thin frame.
In the prior quarter.
Swift. New programming language to upgrade tools for largest OS developer community. I believe there is currently no such thing as a programmer who does not, on some level, want to program for iOS. Upgrading the tools for this market was huge.
In current quarter.
Apple Watch. Wearable that will outsell in its first year all other wearables ever sold combined. Will take over the high end watch market and might put an entire industry out of business. (Which will be sad by the way.)
Whaaaa? AFAIK that's argument hasn't been true for more than a couple of decades. PC's come in lots of formats. There are AIO's, NUC's, and Pi's that are PC's that don't fit your seriously narrow definition. Heck, Going by your definition Apple would have only sold Mac Pros and Mac minis; no iMacs, MBA's, or MBP's.
Market Share
Market Share doesn't make much sense here.
There are two parts of the PC market. One, purchases by companies for their employees. Two, purchases by consumers for their personal home use.
Just because in both cases a PC is sold doesn't mean there is any reason to combine the markets.
Think about what the PC does after it is sold. My work PC gets Office loaded onto it, a PDF program (Adobe or, in my case a cheaper program called Nitro), a few browsers (only because I'm the exception and I care enough to not want to use Explorer), and that is it basically. It is done. It will never have another program loaded onto it. I will use it for two or three years and it will be replaced. Or if I break it, it will be replaced (which, incidentally is why I have a new computer, I dropped my last one). Aside from Microsoft, that PC does not exist for the purposes of any other programmer or computer company.
My Mac at home. Well I won't buy Office for it. But I will regularly buy various cheaper programs for it. I will buy attachments. I will buy games. I did buy Windows so I could Bootcamp, but pretty much only for gaming.
These are completely different markets in my mind. In my own, somewhat rarified, experiences I've seen this. I think most of my friends uses a PC at work. In the last ten years, among the friends that I have, I know one person who has bought a PC instead of a Mac for their own use. Among that group I can think of dozens of friends who are using Macs. While I'm an outlier and have a set of friends who are well to do and more into Macs, I think this is what is going on. This has to terrify the PC community.
So did the business community suddenly have a need to drop XP or did they have money in their budget? Is that what happened? Because as far as I can tell, no one is buying a Mac for business outside of programming and design shops. And no one is buying a PC for home use, outside of hardcore gamers. So why should the sales of each move in lock step? There is no computer market. There are two markets. Work market and home market. They aren't connected.
Market Share doesn't make much sense here.
There are two parts of the PC market. One, purchases by companies for their employees. Two, purchases by consumers for their personal home use.
Just because in both cases a PC is sold doesn't mean there is any reason to combine the markets.
Think about what the PC does after it is sold. My work PC gets Office loaded onto it, a PDF program (Adobe or, in my case a cheaper program called Nitro), a few browsers (only because I'm the exception and I care enough to not want to use Explorer), and that is it basically. It is done. It will never have another program loaded onto it. I will use it for two or three years and it will be replaced. Or if I break it, it will be replaced (which, incidentally is why I have a new computer, I dropped my last one). Aside from Microsoft, that PC does not exist for the purposes of any other programmer or computer company.
My Mac at home. Well I won't buy Office for it. But I will regularly buy various cheaper programs for it. I will buy attachments. I will buy games. I did buy Windows so I could Bootcamp, but pretty much only for gaming.
These are completely different markets in my mind. In my own, somewhat rarified, experiences I've seen this. I think most of my friends uses a PC at work. In the last ten years, among the friends that I have, I know one person who has bought a PC instead of a Mac for their own use. Among that group I can think of dozens of friends who are using Macs. While I'm an outlier and have a set of friends who are well to do and more into Macs, I think this is what is going on. This has to terrify the PC community.
So did the business community suddenly have a need to drop XP or did they have money in their budget? Is that what happened? Because as far as I can tell, no one is buying a Mac for business outside of programming and design shops. And no one is buying a PC for home use, outside of hardcore gamers. So why should the sales of each move in lock step? There is no computer market. There are two markets. Work market and home market. They aren't connected.
Almost hate to say it, but I sort of agree with Aenaon. The things you mentioned are about as exciting as watching paint dry. Like Aenaon, mine is just an opinion. I'm sure others will see things differently. Apple had a chance to get a nice piece of my 2014 disposable income. It came away with an iP6 for my daughter.
Unrelated peeve: iMacs are not thin. They have a thin edge. They have just as much depth as any other AIO. Again, my opinion.
----------
You're neglecting the fact that this report is simply about PC sales, not consumer or business motivation. Personal anecdotes are about as useful as boobs on a bull in analysis such as this. They add no value. That's not a criticism of your anecdote. It's all personal anecdotes. For every one similar to yours there's an equal an opposite one.
Unrelated: Not an Urban Meyer fan and even with 4 dang turnovers, Oregon is still sucking.
Did you actually read the fact they counted 150 dollar tablets as PC's.... Tha'Ts the difference.
Thanks for responding.
Apple only got one major purchase for me, an iP 6 to upgrade from a 5. What are you using for a smartphone? I wouldn't have upgraded from a 5s myself. But the 6 is a very good phone. There are only so many devices to buy, so I don't think I should be buying multiple Apple products in any one year. If you have bought top of the line Apple products in the last two years, should you for your own personal consumption be buying more Apple stuff?
I'm not neglecting that the report is just for PC sales. I'm stating that the report is flawed in that lumping business PC sales with consumer PC sales doesn't make any sense. I don't think, in the U.S., that there are people out there that have a large group of friends who only buy PCs for home use. At least not in any large numbers once you set aside the hardcore gamers. I think a fundamental shift has happened in the U.S. where PCs are rarely by middle class or richer folks for their own home use. Certainly they aren't bought at ten to one over Macs like the reported market share suggests.
The PC market share is based on work PCs. That means something. I think it means something very important. Things are different from the way they were 20 years ago. 20 years ago you bought a PC for your Mom to use at home. Now, I don't think you do that. 20 years ago you bought a PC to take to school to write your papers on English Literature. I don't think you do that at anymore at many many schools. If it is your own money, you buy a Mac. I think that is becoming the reality. If that is the case, isn't that important?
Apple won't.
But adjusted for inflation, a nice iMac is half the price of any Apple you bought in 1989.
Buy a 27 inch iMac, get the better GPU option. Add your own Ram. Accept that the computer will "only" last you five years. Then in 2020 buy another one.
Or bite the bullet and buy the Pro. Then, at least, your monitors will last a decade or so. The Pro won't last any longer than the iMac though. But considering retina screens at affordable prices are probably coming, and you will want that, now might not be the time to spend a lot on a monitor.
Does it matter? The key is they're barely usable as laptops. Might as well, call a keyboard+Ipad bundle a PC by this measure...
The distinction here between PC and Tablets is arbitrary and stuff is moved from one to another to suit the stats... This makes both PC and mobile sales records pointless.
I also agree that Retail sales should be distinguished from Business channel sales since they are very different beasts. Most Apple PC's are sold through retail channels and I'd guess that they are definitively close to the top in those kind of sales.
Hardly. I got them both but for basic stuff people aren't going to buy bulky machines anymore, unless they are running heavy programs for business. They do things on a fly using smartphone or tablet, while before they had to spend lots of money to be able to send emails or browse the internet. But I'm sure you know all this.
With that prognosis, I guess there is no explanation whatsoever why BestBuy and all have PC's on their shelves at all?
Not the Mac Mini. No slots, so it's not a real PC.Whaaaa? AFAIK that's argument hasn't been true for more than a couple of decades. PC's come in lots of formats. There are AIO's, NUC's, and Pi's that are PC's that don't fit your seriously narrow definition. Heck, Going by your definition Apple would have only sold Mac Pros and Mac minis; no iMacs, MBA's, or MBP's.
I was just kidding. People are always arguing about categories. The iPhone has more computing power than a Cray Supercomputer from the 1980s. Certainly it's more powerful and capable than my old Amiga 1000. But the Amiga was a "real PC" and the iPhone is not. When Apple started removing built in CD drives from their computers, people complained that without a CD drive, it wasn't a real PC any more. Really, they did! In a few years people are going to look back at todays arguments about what constitutes a real PC, and they'll say "Whaaaa?"
Yep. Know them feels. Dat Post-Jobs-Era.
Where's the "innovation" I keep hearing them spew out at every event?
Am i the only one that thinks Apple wasted a very important 2-3 years on that silly watch?