Strong Demand for MacBook Pro Increases Apple's Notebook Market Share in Last Quarter

[Spectrum]

I agree completely! I recently purchased the top of the line (at the time) 2015 MBP and it runs like a beast. And not to beat a dead horse, but I don’t find my need for USB going away anytime soon.

For my group, I just ordered the new nonTB 13 inch and an old-style 15 inch MBPro (the one with all the ports).
I have to say that the nonTB13 looks silly. In order to connect up to a 24 inch DVI display (that we already had), we are using a USB-C to HDMI adapter, and then a HDMI to DVI adapter. We then have a USB-C to USB adapter plugged into the only other port, and from that the USBC power adapter. It works, but looks silly.

By contrast, the 15 inch MacBook pro still (thankfully) has a couple of regular USB3 ports, and HDMI, and miniDP (using it to connect to a Dell U2711), and MagSafe, and a SD card slot, and is very fast! It is hard to see in what way the newer designs are better (from an end-user perspective). It seems the only case where they are better are if you wish to plug in to 1 or more 4K or 5K displays. While great, I don't think there are many users doing that with them. Whereas I suspect the number of users that still use USB, mDP, SD cards, and HDMI is massive!

 

[shaunp]

in my opinion the mac is THE Best personal computer by far, from hardware standpoint and by software standpoint, as a owner of the new 13 pro its a blast... also running boot camp alongside mac OS and i got the perfect laptop, the best mac OS machine and the best Windows machine.

That depends upon your requirements. Personally I think Apple laptops have become too thin and now sacrifice functionality over style. Lack of ports, not enough RAM and a horrible keyboard. I know keyboards are subjective, I just happen to hate keyboards with no travel.

 

[lkrupp]

I honestly don't know who is buying Macs at this point. Rich kids who don't know any better I guess. This past year I've watched pretty much every colleague of mine who works on media creation ditch Mac and get a PC. How Mac sales are still going is a mystery.

Why not just use the standard reason given by the hater ilk? People who buy Apple products are stupid. Oh wait, you already did. And that’s really all you have isn’t it? You can’t understand how Mac sales are still going so it must be that Apple customers are stupid.

 

[nvmls]

So basically mac consumers keep buying any crap they put out, thought these were a bit more conscious. Funny though, considering the amount of youtube/forum posts complaining of these mediocre machine generations, many times apple will swap them for brand new ones with the same flaws and people will go home thinking wow what a service lol, keep it up Tim. Also, remember to throw all your lifetime savings into Apple stocks!

 

[BlargKing]

Interesting.

I see less PCs being used by photo / media colleagues when I enter media centers / photo dens. But I don’t think that is a reasonable representation of sales, just like your example isn’t enough of a sample.

I mean, if you pay attention to a lot of production studios then you see the trends change. From 2010 to 2012 I watched a lot of studios switch to an all Mac environment, and now over the last year or so I've watched them change back to PC as they need newer computers and Apple doesn't offer anything for professionals anymore.

At the college I attend they just finished replacing all their 2012 iMacs with custom built PCs, and this is a school that has only used Macs since the first Macintosh in 1981. The only MacBooks I see in the hands of students are from 2012-2014 when they still made half decent machines.

I've got a massive sample size to draw from, and I've seen Macs get phased out by PCs in every situation. At the end of the day, a modern studio workflow requires a lot of CPU cores, a lot of RAM, and a lot of GPU compute power, all of which can be had in far greater amounts for far cheaper on PC.

 

[MrX8503]

Dell XPS looking increasingly likely for me once the hex core chips are released.

I played around with the Dell XPS and the build is piss poor compared to the MacBook Pro. The most frustrating thing about it is, it's very difficult to open with one hand. I learned a long time ago that the value of a machine is the entire experience, not just the specs. When I used to buy laptops based on specs alone, I've always been left dissatisfied.

 

[DanielEAndersson]

I have a Macbook pro 2016 15", when at home I use an Aorus gaming box 1070, which I got cheap since it was a demo model. This allows me to run graphic intensive applications and games on an ultra wide monitor at the home office at sufficient performance.

I'm quite happy with this setup, but think it's a shame that we'll see 1060 mobile performance in Surface Book 2, while we get, well not that good graphics card in the Macbook Pro.

With eGPUs, I also think it is important for a broad support for both AMD and Nvidia. I don't want to be restricted to one supplier when choosing eGPU, but be able to choose eGPU dependent on which player currently has the best price/performance for my current needs. I currently use my 1070 gaming box in both windows bootcamp and on mac, but mac is a bit of a hazzle (since it's not AMD).

As for the Surface Book 2:s ability to detach the screen and use as a tablet, I can live without that. I do however use iPad apps astropad, duet screen and Splashtop. (still on ipad air 2 with adonit pen).

I do think apple could do more to include certain functionality on iPad. I would like an bundled app that let me remote desktop to my mac. It's damn lazy that there isn't one. I use Find My iphone to generate a sound on my macbook pro so it wakes from sleep, so I can remote in. Should also be a Wake My Mac button in there to wake up the computer without playing a sound. I remote in to my macbook pro all the time from my iPad when the macbook pro isn't around.

To combat the Surface Book 2, they should really create their own apps for when you are working with both iPad and the Mac, Astropad like functionality could be included in an app called Canvas, Remote desktop in an app called To My Mac.

I think Touch Bar is a good addon to the Macbook pro, and although I don't think it was worth the price increase, I hope it is here to stay. I also hope they do a stand alone keyboard with a touch bar, perhaps inspired by the Logitech Craft keyboard.

 

[The Mercurian]

I played around with the Dell XPS and the build is piss poor compared to the MacBook Pro. The most frustrating thing about it is, it's very difficult to open with one hand. I learned a long time ago that the value of a machine is the entire experience, not just the specs. When I used to buy laptops based on specs alone, I've always been left dissatisfied.

Yeah......how long does the keyboard last ?

 

[RobertMartens]

I'm confused. HP shipped 40 million units for the year, and they're number one. Dell shipped 665 million units during the QUARTER and they're number three. How is that possible?

You have a point, or they are missing one!

 

[BlargKing]

Why not just use the standard reason given by the hater ilk? People who buy Apple products are stupid. Oh wait, you already did. And that’s really all you have isn’t it? You can’t understand how Mac sales are still going so it must be that Apple customers are stupid.

They aren't necessarily stupid, but they must either be unaware of or unwilling to look at alternatives.

 

[Abazigal]

So basically mac consumers keep buying any crap they put out, thought these were a bit more conscious. Funny though, considering the amount of youtube/forum posts complaining of these mediocre machine generations, many times apple will swap them for brand new ones with the same flaws and people will go home thinking wow what a service lol, keep it up Tim. Also, remember to throw all your lifetime savings into Apple stocks!

Or maybe what we are seeing here is a vocal minority who isn’t representative of the general mac user base.

Makes you wonder who the people really out of touch with the ground are.

 

[RobertMartens]

I learned a long time ago that the value of a machine is the entire experience, not just the specs. When I used to buy laptops based on specs alone, I've always been left dissatisfied.

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten” – Benjamin Franklin

 

[840quadra]

I mean, if you pay attention to a lot of production studios then you see the trends change. From 2010 to 2012 I watched a lot of studios switch to an all Mac environment, and now over the last year or so I've watched them change back to PC as they need newer computers and Apple doesn't offer anything for professionals anymore.

At the college I attend they just finished replacing all their 2012 iMacs with custom built PCs, and this is a school that has only used Macs since the first Macintosh in 1981. The only MacBooks I see in the hands of students are from 2012-2014 when they still made half decent machines.

I've got a massive sample size to draw from, and I've seen Macs get phased out by PCs in every situation. At the end of the day, a modern studio workflow requires a lot of CPU cores, a lot of RAM, and a lot of GPU compute power, all of which can be had in far greater amounts for far cheaper on PC.

I too have a massive sample size in my personal experience, however like yours, you are still only seeing a small portion of the market.

Once you can personally start to document millions of devices, then, perhaps you will have a reasonable sample size.

 

[project_2501]

My only gripe with the pros is the graphics cards. I have a 2016 Pro that still struggles with full screen video playback. That is pretty damn unacceptable for a 2016 machine at this price point (nTB 13" pro).

Me too. It's extremely poor of Apple.

Here's my very long journey trying to fix it ...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-macbook-pro-13-non-tb-review.2056971/

 

[Bacillus]

Yes but clearly the Mac is N0°1 if you look purely at revenue. Half the number of sales and three times the average price at least. Great to see that a lot of people still get it and you are right, it is and that's from someone who also has windows machines. You use windows when you have to but the macs when you want to.

Why would pure revenue be the highest aim for us customers (...)
rather not

 

[BlargKing]

I too have a massive sample size in my personal experience, however like yours, you are still only seeing a small portion of the market.

Once you can personally start to document millions of devices, then, perhaps you will have a reasonable sample size.

I mean it really boils down to price for performance in a studio. Why would any studio buy a bunch of Mac Pros at 4000-6000$ a machine running old, slow hardware, when for 4000-6000$ you can get a PC that will massively outperform any Mac.

As an individial attending a college for Digital Media Production, why would someone spend 3000$ on a MacBook with soldered RAM, a tiny soldered SSD, and a terrible mid-range GPU, when 3000$ can get you a PC laptop with a full desktop 1070/1080 GPU, a better CPU, more replacable ram, and an SSD+HDD combo?

No matter how you look at it, Macs are overpriced and under perform compared to PC, and anyone who needs to do more than touch up some photos will need the superior performance that PC offers.

As far as high end content creation on Mac goes, its dead.

 

[MrX8503]

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten” – Benjamin Franklin

People have been complaining about Apple products for DECADES and people still continue to buy their products.

Yeah......how long does the keyboard last ?

Still working. I love the keyboard. My only gripe is that it's louder.

 

[kazmac]

I wonder how much of this was iMac sales? If I had to use an Apple laptop exclusively, it would be a 2015 or older model. The newer models are way overpriced for what you get and the keyboard is painful to type on.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The newer models are way overpriced for what you get and the keyboard is painful to type on.

Yes, new keyboard is horrrrrrible. I know because I use it everyday. It's nowhere near a professional keyboard. Unfortunately, as laptops get skinnier the first thing that suffers is the most important user interface.

 

[The Mercurian]

I wonder how much of this was iMac sales? If I had to use an Apple laptop exclusively, it would be a 2015 or older model. The newer models are way overpriced for what you get and the keyboard is painful to type on.

I wonder how much is the "new" 2015 model sales ?

 

[votdfak]

Let me share a story about my rMBP 13" Late 2013. Battery is over 1000 cycles and down for replacement, it's not holding charge like before, understandably. We don't have Apple Store where I am from, local, premium reseller and service center wants to charge 400EUR for battery+replacement service, or if I want to buy battery separately, they wanna charge 800EUR for battery without guarantee. iFixit is selling replacement kit (Apple OEM battery included) for 99$.

 

[DoctorTech]

I'm still running a late 2013 15" MBP. Apple hasn't really given me a reason to upgrade in the past 4 years. I know they have made some incremental improvements (keyboard, faster chips, touch bar) but nothing that so appealing to me that I would want to spend the money for a new computer.

 

[kazmac]

Yes, new keyboard is horrrrrrible. I know because I use it everyday. It's nowhere near a professional keyboard. Unfortunately, as laptops get skinnier the first thing that suffers is the most important user interface.

I know some people have gotten used to it and even enjoy it, but I could not. I need that tactile response. It is a shame Apple could not combine features of the 2015 with the newer models (keep the older keyboard and ports) while tweaking just a bit.

I hope they update where folks have a choice with more current internals and different bodies/keyboards.

 

[djcerla]

Most people are commenting as consumers and put their own wishes and needs before Apple's profits.

I was not referring to them.

Rather, to those product and marketing geniuses that predicted doom and gloom for the Mac not long ago due to Apple not conforming to their "vision".

 

[Glideslope]

Yes, new keyboard is horrrrrrible. I know because I use it everyday. It's nowhere near a professional keyboard. Unfortunately, as laptops get skinnier the first thing that suffers is the most important user interface.

When I pass some day they will need to pry my daskeyboard Mac Cherry MX Brown from my hands.