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Apple Ranks Third in Global PC Sales With iPad Included
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I love it you bend the rules when it complete kills your point.
You argue iPads are PC because it hurts netbooks sells. Netbooks are about as far as you can stretch PC.
Because you said iPads are PC because they steal sells from the netbooks then so should iPods and other smart phones.
This is nothing more than to get hits and make Apple feel good. It kills credibility for places saying that. you have even some Apple fanboys saying it kills iPad is not a PC. It is just to far removed.
Sorry you are not going to convince me because all I have seen is you grasping at straws trying to cover up the fact that the report is complete BS.
I look at the site reporting the information and they only did this to increase hits and try to get people to buy better data. It is pretty much BS and kills crediblity. I just find it funny how it seems to be only die hard Apple fanboys seeming to agree with it and try to defend it.
The iPad as a computer is absolutely laughable. 1024x768 screen? I had a display with that resolution TWENTY years ago. Lack of USB ports? I can't remember the last time I used a PC without one. 16GB of "storage?" Again, I had a ton more storage space a decade ago. What the hell are you supposed to put on 16GB? Some songs, a couple of pictures and a movie? 256megs of RAM? My POS eMac from 2003 came standard with that amount. Seriously, what kind of real work (or state of the art fun) are you supposed to have on a 'computer' with crap specs like that?
I guess it's got a touch screen, though, so it is easy to push those gigantic, jelly bean buttons on all the "apps." And I can use the cool, onscreen keyboard and cramp the hell out of my wrists if I want to type something more than 25 words. And it's got all those swiping and scrolling motions that are impossible to do with a track pad and or mouse.
And never mind the pure awesomeness of trying to play a game without any real input device whatsoever. Yep, the iPad is totally amazing as a computer. It's magical.
The iPad is nothing more than a novelty item. Yes, it's cool to say you browsed the web while taking a dump, or watched a movie on the bus, but in the context of being a traditional computer, according to this 'analyst', the iPad is a joke.
I guess it's got a touch screen, though, so it is easy to push those gigantic, jelly bean buttons on all the "apps." And I can use the cool, onscreen keyboard and cramp the hell out of my wrists if I want to type something more than 25 words. And it's got all those swiping and scrolling motions that are impossible to do with a track pad and or mouse.
And never mind the pure awesomeness of trying to play a game without any real input device whatsoever. Yep, the iPad is totally amazing as a computer. It's magical.The iPad is nothing more than a novelty item. Yes, it's cool to say you browsed the web while taking a dump, or watched a movie on the bus, but in the context of being a traditional computer, according to this 'analyst', the iPad is a joke.
But you called them computers didn't you?
Some of the best selling personal computers of all time had no hard disk, or any other mass storage at all, much less 1GB. Everybody called them personal computers. Still do. As in "I took that old PC to the electronic recycling dump". They didn't suddenly start to call them a toaster.
but at the same time what is the requirements for a PC today is not what the requirements were 20 years ago. Processing power goes up.
If you want to go by your argument my blackberry is a PC because it processor ram, memory and hell screen resolution is higher than a computer for 20 years ago.
I didn't bend anything.
Sure. But the point here is that they are considered PCs.
I didn't say they are PCs in this discussion. I said they compete in the PC market. The have been shown by market analysis to compete significantly with netbooks, which are considered PCs.
What is a PC, what is included as a PC for market analysis, and what competes in the PC market are all different things.
As opposed to your credibility being boosted when you use the term fanboy.
Sigh. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm trying to have a discussion. If you didn't keep bringing up fanboy this and fanboy that, it would be more enjoyable. Your repeated attempts to stereotype are annoying.
Because they don't compete significantly with PCs.
really?
Big one is I look at the place that release this info. They block out anything useful or any break down leaving it with just Apple huge impossible gain (240%) jump telling me that this is more of a marketing stunt at the expense of their credibility. They know the masses out there will eat it up because it has Apple in it. The media will pay more for the data just so they can break it down but at the same time their credibility pays a price.
All this about Apple jumping to number 3 is BS with out better break down of the data as a tablet running more or less iOS is not a PC but a large iPod touch. Since you are not calling an iPod touch a PC then clearly iPad is not a PC because it is just a large iPod touch.
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Seven pages of arguing about whether an iPad is really a PC when the Smartest Man in the World has already decreed that an iPad is a PC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWkRgNTJZuM
It's why Microsoft couldn't crack the tablet. They just thought it was a PC crushed down into a different form factor - different shapes and sizes but with a finger for a cursor. Apple comes along, strips down the feature set to create an entirely new category between a phone and a laptop, and finally makes something of it. Tablets are NOT PCs, or if they are then the term 'PC' is being redefined into a new product of simplicity that Ballmer still doesn't seem to understand.
surprisingly balmer is talking about PCs changing in form factor and he has not done anything to prove that statement. Apple on the other hand is already changing Mac in form factor with the introduction of Lion. Microsoft on the other hand continues to give the same OS on different devices that has been proven time and again to not work can they even stay relevant in the new "form factor" of the PC?
The last two paragraphs are quotes I felt were spot on by people that viewed the above video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWkRgNTJZuM
It's why Microsoft couldn't crack the tablet. They just thought it was a PC crushed down into a different form factor - different shapes and sizes but with a finger for a cursor. Apple comes along, strips down the feature set to create an entirely new category between a phone and a laptop, and finally makes something of it. Tablets are NOT PCs, or if they are then the term 'PC' is being redefined into a new product of simplicity that Ballmer still doesn't seem to understand.
surprisingly balmer is talking about PCs changing in form factor and he has not done anything to prove that statement. Apple on the other hand is already changing Mac in form factor with the introduction of Lion. Microsoft on the other hand continues to give the same OS on different devices that has been proven time and again to not work can they even stay relevant in the new "form factor" of the PC?
The last two paragraphs are quotes I felt were spot on by people that viewed the above video.
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So. You've moved your argument from whether it's a computer to whether a particular purchase meets a user's computing applications requirements. Does a Dell beige box PC have enough horsepower to run some nuclear simulation? No, buy an a Cray or IBM supercomputer instead. Does the iPad have enough processing power to web browse eBay and run a small business spreadsheet? Plenty. All 3 are computers.
Don't know about your blackberry, but I used my PalmPilot to run some of the Basic programs and spreadsheets I used to run on my Apple II personal computer. Microsoft even called their PalmPilot copy a PocketPC.
Dude, as much as the Commodore 64 and Atari 800XL bring a tear to my eye, their specs are laughable compared to what is available now.....kind of like the iPad. They are not very useful as a replacement for the computer you have now......kind of like the iPad. Calling the iPad a computer, and judging it in that context, the iPad is a joke. And having said that, even the Commodore 64 had a proper keyboard, and the ability out of the box to connect different devices to it in order to expand it's capabilities. Extra storage? Check. Bigger than 9" screen? Check. Connecting a real joystick? Check. Wow. Even against a practically 30 year old machine, the iPad is an inferior computer in some respects. Magical.
Because the percentage of customers buying mobile devices instead of desktops and laptops, and for similar uses as for a PC, was a rounding error until recently. Not any more.
I know of several Fortune 500 companies that are cutting back on desktop and laptop purchases (not completely, of course, but severely), and buying more iPhones and iPads instead, because a whole category of employees can get their required work done on these devices... same as they previously did on laptops, but the iPads cost massively less to maintain.
And they addressed that in their statement. Netbooks had a similar impact on the market. Just because it's one company instead on three isn't a reason to discount it.
Motive does not prove dishonesty.
Why does it matter how they rank Apple? Do you get a cookie as long as Apple stays below number three in random analyst rankings? Personally, I couldn't care less if Apple is number three in the PC market. They're is nothing dishonest about there methodology. They made a comparison based on the decisions that they clearly described. You could make a comparison that does not include the iPad. Would that make everything all right to you. Or does everyone have to compare things the same way you would?
And you have ignored everything I said. Why bother replying to me?
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Also: 1 MHz 8-bit CPU versus 1 GHz 32-bit RISC CPU. Check. 64 KBytes of memory versus 256 MBytes of memory. Check. 1200 baud modem versus 802.11a/b/g/n + 3G. Check. The C64 emulator on an iPad runs faster than a real C64. You can emulate personal computers on an iPad!
As for the computer most people have now, most users can't tell the difference between their C2D 2 GHz laptop and an iPad's 1 GHz ARM when using a web browser. That spec isn't important to their buying decision.
You must not be aware that the Macintosh 128K and the early IBM PCs did not have hard disks, or even an option to add them. Bloatware had a lot to do with the need for more RAM and HD storage. Early versions of MS Word eit completely on a 400K floppy.
What Apple has done with iOS and the iPad is to roll the clock back to lean and mean computing. This is being done, in large part, to conserve energy and time between recharges. Additionally, the device can be made smaller and lighter.
The old desktop machines you named could plug in perepherials, but that's not what works well if you want to be highly portable. Your argument fails with portable devices. Besides, a spec list of features works against you even when just discussing highly portable devices.
Good news. There are portable computers available, and have been long before the iPad "computer" arrived on the scene. They're called laptops.
Reading comprehension for the win. Not even going to bother trying to go into more detail.
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What happened to the PC industry is that they've been engaging in an arms race with ever increasing specs that were actually useful to a smaller and smaller percentage of the real customer base. Action gamers and photoshop professionals (et.al.) may be noisy in this forum, but are only a tiny portion of the general population. There's really very little need to add as much waste to the environment and carbon to the atmosphere as a desktop PC box adds for most consumer and business personal computing needs these days.
There may always be a need for some time percentage of users for something like a desktop PC, but I wouldn't be surprised if that headed towards becoming as rare and thus costly as big mainframe computers. Everybody else will end up talking to, gesturing at, or peeking into something more like startrek's tablets or comm badges or maybe geordi's visor.
but motive does prove enough to question it. Motive here shows pretty clear that they screwed with the statistics to increase sales. You can sure as hell bet if they though it would not damage them to much they would of thrown in iPod and iPhone into that mix to jack it up even more. They figure the iPad is enough to get away with it.
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And before that, suitcase-sized luggables from Osborne, Compaq and KayPro were top selling personal computers. Things seem to be getting more portable over time. For around a decade now you could run Basic, Zork, a spreadsheet and a web browser on a computer that fits in a pocket.
With only 2% between number 2 Acer and Apple, I'd bet Apple made a lot more money even if they sold a bit less numbers.
Exactly By including the iPad as a PC you 240% an impressive eye catching number. The media all jump on the story and their report get publicity.
There's more substance in that argument than you may think. Because the word "computer" is ambiguous enough to include anything that does any "computing" (my iPhone? my TI-nSpire?), one must draw a line somewhere.
Here's an interesting excerpt from the Wikipedia article on "Computers":
Returning to the iPad, it certainly becomes a grey area. Yet I don't believe the iPad has crossed into the imaginary (and very abstract) image I have engrained in my mind of exactly what a modern "computer" should (not necessarily needed for ME to use) be capable of, of which programming for itself is a part of it.
Lastly, in terms of markets, I still am not convinced iPads are cannibalizing sales of any Macbooks, save the Air. At least, I can't imagine anyone walking into an Apple store who say, is off to university, and walking out not with a Macbook but with an iPad.
Oh and regarding the "it's a computer if it competes with computers" argument, that line there between computers/non-computers is so blurry it virtually is non-existant either. Since when were humans, and specifically our buying habits, so rigid and easily explained?
Consider this hypothetical:
1) I have a Mac Pro, but need something to use out on the go.
2) All I need is to quickly check a website, check my email, and play the occasional game, and that it be as light and portable as possible.
Myself, I'd buy the 13' Macbook Pro. Others may understandably buy the MB Air. Still others might go for the iPad. Others may just trash their old phone while they're at it and buy an iPhone.
To judge that one thing competes with another in a particular "market" involves arbitrarily defining a "market" in the first place, not something that is in the least bit objective. The overlap between the feature list of the iPod Touch or iPhone and iPad is lengthy, yet a person who buys the former is for whatever reason not shopping in the "PC" market, while the latter is?
Consider this hypothetical:
1) I have a Mac Pro, but need something to use out on the go.
2) All I need is to quickly check a website, check my email, and play the occasional game, and that it be as light and portable as possible.
Myself, I'd buy the 13' Macbook Pro. Others may understandably buy the MB Air. Still others might go for the iPad. Others may just trash their old phone while they're at it and buy an iPhone.
To judge that one thing competes with another in a particular "market" involves arbitrarily defining a "market" in the first place, not something that is in the least bit objective. The overlap between the feature list of the iPod Touch or iPhone and iPad is lengthy, yet a person who buys the former is for whatever reason not shopping in the "PC" market, while the latter is?