Apple's U.S. Mac Shipments Fall 7.5% as Overall PC Market Plunges 14% Year-Over-Year [Updated]

[Krazy Bill]

Are you serious? You are complaining about what exactly? The Launcher screen? Nobody forces you to use it. Notifications? You can turn them off. Game Centre? Nobody forces you to use it.

Let's not go here son.

Have you seen Windows 8?

Yes. I have a boot camp copy and use it at work. (on Lenovos )

Do you not think the Metro start screen is more of a toy?

Never use metro - don't even see it. Boot right into the desktop. (A $5 app took care of this). Even without it the desktop is just 1 click away. I'm thinking about getting an MS-Surface the next refresh (if it survives ) or a different hybrid machine. Metro will come in handy for this.

Do you think enterprise users are lining up to upgrade to Windows 8? Think again.

No. But when they do you can bet MS will support it for many years just like XP and Win7 (Unlike Apple).

Apple has some of the most powerful/hi resolution laptops around.

Resolution is highly overrated in the Enterprise market.

 

[Rogifan]

They are considered very accurate, along with Gartner. There are some differences, and the numbers might not be 100% accurate, but they are close enough to be considered correct.

IDC and Gartner are reliable sources for this sort of data.

Ok well according to c|net Gartner's numbers were 180 degrees opposite to IDC. So who's numbers do we believe?

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I think the new iMacs have been a huge disappointment. Removing the useful DVD slot to create the useless "illusion" of thinness wasn't worth it. And the ongoing unavailability of a matte screen has kept a significant chunk of the professional graphic design market looking elsewhere.

But these screens are less reflective than the previous iMacs.

 

[claus1225]

i dont see much difference here. 10 to 15% Mac users. Majority still PC.

 

[mrxak]

With the updated story, I think all the doom and gloom is a bit premature.

 

[aristotle]

Let's not go here son.

Who you calling son, guy? I have been working for the same company for almost a decade an a half as a software developer on the windows platform. I have only owned a mac at home since Jaguar (10.2) came out.

Yes. I have a boot camp copy and use it at work. (on Lenovos )

So you work for a small company then? Not a large publicly traded company? Where I work, we have to abide by microsoft licensing agreements.

Never use metro - don't even see it. Boot right into the desktop. (A $5 app took care of this). Even without it the desktop is just 1 click away. I'm thinking about getting an MS-Surface the next refresh (if it survives ) or a different hybrid machine. Metro will come in handy for this.

So you are not working for a SOX compliant company then? You are running a Hackintosh on a lenovo with an addon app for windows 8 at work?

No. But when they do you can bet MS will support it for many years just like XP and Win7 (Unlike Apple).

Resolution is highly overrated in the Enterprise market.

XP is EOL now. Windows 7 will not receive any more service packs, just security patches. Apple was still releasing fixes for 10.6 and 10.7.

 

[ScottishCaptain]

Tablets are taking over the world, eh?

That's fine and all. I don't really care.

I am curious, though. If tablets take over the world, where will people write applications for those tablets? Clang won't compile on ARM, GCC will but it is hardly efficient once you've done so. Xcode doesn't exist for iOS, and I can't imagine any reality where it would. It's physically impossible to type out code at any reasonable speed on a glass keyboard.

In other words, no desktops, no tablet apps, no tablet sales, no tablets.

But hey, tablets are taking over the world, so we should all just throw out our desktops and buy iPads! Woo!

-SC

 

[fastasleep]

You can get an external USB2 or USB3 Blu-ray "burner" for under 200 bucks before tax.

Or just a plain DVD burner for as low as $20. Just velcro it to the back of your super-thin iMac if you don't want it on your desk.

Apple was very correct to remove the optical drive. There's absolutely no reason to put them in millions of machines when fewer and fewer people actually use them. I'm about to rip my optical out of my MBP to make room for a second hard drive —*I haven't used the damn thing more than once or twice in the last year.

 

[gnasher729]

Ok well according to c|net Gartner's numbers were 180 degrees opposite to IDC. So who's numbers do we believe?

That has been the case every single time that I remember. Gartner always showing much better numbers, and much better change, than IDC numbers.

 

[HenryDJP]

Dear Apple: Take note of Lenovo. Enterprise users want something different than what you give to the kiddies. With iOSX You truly are a general consumer company now with 100% of your products fully entrenched in that market.

All that Apple talent. A shame.

Dear Apple, people that have Krazy Bill's thinking are in the minority and please don't forget that when you catered to a niche like Lenovo does your company almost closed it's doors back in 1999 so please don't listen to Krazy Bill, you're doing the right thing with your business model.

Oh Apple, one more thing, some people like Krazy Bill tend to forget that professional businesses extend further than the enterprise world, you know, like the Music Recording Industry that uses Macs and OS X exclusively to record and remaster all the music people buy today? Yeah so again Apple, keep doing what you're doing. Some people just don't get it.

 

[Carouser]

Removing the useful DVD slot to create the useless "illusion" of thinness wasn't worth it.

They were removing the DVD slot anyway, they didn't do it so that they could make the machine thinner. Once it was gone, they might as well make it thinner. I hope this clears up your confusion.

But hey, tablets are taking over the world, so we should all just throw out our desktops and buy iPads! Woo!

False dilemma. Tablets can 'take over the world' without having to throw out every desktop. I hope this clears up your confusion.

 

[gnasher729]

How so? Apple outperformed the market, if these numbers are correct. Remember, a big reason Apple got into markets like the iPhone and iPad is that Jobs quite correctly predicted that the PC market had peaked. Do we worry about GE because incandescent light bulb sales have collapsed? Did the end of the typewriter spell the end of IBM? Not at all, because those companies moved on to other things.

It's not that Jobs _predicted_ that the PC market had peaked. By introducing the iPad, he actually _made_ it peak. If Apple hadn't introduced the iPad, there would still have been some reasonable growth in the PC market.

 

[HenryDJP]

1) Synchronization with bibliographic managers
2) Different headers and footers based on document sections
3) A master table of contents, as well as sub-tables of contents, based on headers, but which can exclude some headers
4) Footnotes and endnotes, both of which can have their position and formatting in the document altered, to handle things such as roman AND arabic pagination
5) A document map

Those are only a few things. Can Pages do them all? I genuinely don't know.

LOL, I genuinely don't know either. . But I get ya. iWork does need a serious upgrade. Our office uses Pages extensively for making banners and flyers but the templates are anemic and it gets harder to think up ways to be creative.

 

[gnasher729]

Dear Apple, people that have Krazy Bill's thinking are in the minority and please don't forget that when you catered to a niche like Lenovo does your company almost closed it's doors back in 1999 so please don't listen to Krazy Bill, you're doing the right thing with your business model.

What Krazy Bill doesn't get is that sales from the various PC makers are basically interchangeable. There will always be huge shifts of sales by one PC maker to another, and with four of the top five companies being PC makers, you will always have one or sometimes two of them having higher growth rate than Apple. To Apple that doesn't make a difference. What counts to Apple is how many computers where Windows PCs vs. Macs. If Lenovo manages to increase their percentage in the Windows PC market, that is good for Lenovo, but it doesn't hurt Apple at all.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

Lenovo is making good quality very well priced notebooks and it shows.

Apple is doing worse than it seems. I'd say a good chunk of that drop is due to windows 8 (and therefore not applicable to macs).

Why is Apple growing on the 2nd table while dropping on the 1st one? I'm confused.

 

[gnasher729]

Question:

do windows 8 rt tablets count as PCs or tablets?

do windows pro tablets vount as PCs or tablets?

Do windows 8 rt laptops count as PCs or tablets?

What about chrombooks? and android laptops?



what defines a PC? the OS? the Cpu architecture? the form factor?

And how much would it change the percentages? Not much.

 

[inkswamp]

The Jobs aura is wearing off. Tim Cook just hasn't got it.

I love when people say things like this. You do realize that Tim Cook was shouldering a great deal of the leadership burden during Jobs' last few years, right? I mean, it's pretty silly to say he's failing because Jobs is gone. He was successful as Apple's leader even when Jobs was alive.

 

[NoNothing]

Why is Apple growing on the 2nd table while dropping on the 1st one? I'm confused.

Gartner VS IDC guesses. They differ by that much.

 

[Doctor Q]

Why is Apple growing on the 2nd table while dropping on the 1st one? I'm confused.

Different industry analysts use different sources of data, make different assumptions, use different definitions (what constitutes a "PC"? what constitutes a "shipment"?), and use different methods to analyze and present the data. It's almost a surprise when they agree with each other!

 

[gnasher729]

Why is Apple growing on the 2nd table while dropping on the 1st one? I'm confused.

You are not confused. It's either the analysts at IDC, or the analysts at Garter, who are confused. Possibly both

 

[ChrisA]

Surprising they didn't fall the most. Highest prices around.

High priced goods are sometimes the most recession proof. The people most effected by a recession were never Apples costumers to begin with. Apple's problem with the Mac line up is just that there is little reason to buy a new mac if your current Mac still works. The new ones are only very slightly better. Apple needs to fix that problem

Mostly what sells Macs is the software, iLife and iWork are getting OLD and the pros (final cut, Aperture, Logic) are wondering if Apple is still going to support them. Nothing from Apple lates but tiny changes to a phone and an iPad with a smaller screen. They are going to have to start thinking again.

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Why is Apple growing on the 2nd table while dropping on the 1st one? I'm confused.

It looks like there is that much margin for error. These "analysts" are guessing because no one really counts the number of Macs sold but Apple and Apple does not tell anyone. So it is clear that on average analyst's guesses are off by about 7% Not to bad for guessing.

 

[64Mario64]

Surprising they didn't fall the most. Highest prices around.

High-end PCs are further away in price from tablets than low-end PCs are. That is, if you're going to go cheap, it might be better to get a nice tablet instead of a junky PC. Besides, at least from my experience, a lot of people are switching to Mac.

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Or just a plain DVD burner for as low as $20. Just velcro it to the back of your super-thin iMac if you don't want it on your desk.

Apple was very correct to remove the optical drive. There's absolutely no reason to put them in millions of machines when fewer and fewer people actually use them. I'm about to rip my optical out of my MBP to make room for a second hard drive —*I haven't used the damn thing more than once or twice in the last year.

$20? Nope. I got my DVD+RW drive for $5 (Goodwill FTW). I hardly ever use it, and I could definitely live without it. DVD drives in modern Macs are just a waste of space, money, and cooling for most people.

 

[CausticPuppy]

With the updated story, I think all the doom and gloom is a bit premature.

No, it's par for the course.

Apple has been declared dead 61 times since April, 1995.

The Apple Death Knell Counter (ADKC) is a collection of death pronouncements for Apple throughout the years. Issued by journalists, analysts, pundits, business executives, and the like, there have been innumerable "Apple is dead," "Apple will soon be dead," and "Apple is dead if they don't do this or that" statements issued by all sorts of people who have been proven time and again to be wrong.

 

[64Mario64]

Game Centre? Nobody forces you to use it.

That's not true. I get asked every time I open a game if I want to use Game Center if I don't log in. Eventually, it gives me a "disable Game Center" button, and I press it, but it comes back eventually (think if I sign out of my iTunes account then sign back in). Renaming the Game Center app to "Gay Center" using iFile doesn't help.

 

[Silvereel]

You can get an external USB2 or USB3 Blu-ray "burner" for under 200 bucks before tax.

Heck, you can get a third party one for 30 or 40 bucks.

 

[64Mario64]

You find exponential growth in the iOS device market.
Macs had a linear growth. Growth of 20% - 25% was a healthy margin.

I don't think that these -7% can be ascribed to the iMac delay. The most part of Macs are portable devices.

Growing by a percentage every year is exponential growth, not linear.