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Apple's Share of PC Users Drops To A Five-Year Low (infoworld.com) 228

Posted by EditorDavid from the falling-Apples dept.
Windows 10 is installed on 24.5% of devices -- but that's only half the story. "Apple's Mac share of personal computers worldwide fell to a five-year low in December," reports Computerworld, adding that Linux and Windows "both benefited, with increases of around a half percentage point during 2016." An anonymous reader quotes their report: According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, Apple's desktop and notebook operating system -- formerly OS X, now macOS -- powered just 6.1% of all personal computers last month, down from 7% a year ago and a peak of 9.6% as recently as April 2016... The Mac's 6.1% user share in December was the lowest mark recorded by Net Applications since August 2011, more than five years ago... In October, the company reported sales of 4.9 million Macs for the September quarter, a 14% year-over-year decline and the fourth straight quarterly downturn. Apple's sales slide during the past 12 months has been steeper than for the personal computer industry as a whole, according to industry researchers from IDC and Gartner, a 180-degree shift from the prior 30 or so quarters, when the Mac's growth rate repeatedly beat the business average.
Apple's success through 2016 was "fueled by Microsoft's stumbles with Windows 8 and a race-to-the-bottom mentality among rival OEMs," according to the article, which also notes that the user share for Linux exceeded 2% in June, and reached 2.3% by November.
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Apple's Share of PC Users Drops To A Five-Year Low More

Apple's Share of PC Users Drops To A Five-Year Low

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @10:46AM (#53623383)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Apple is no longer a computer company (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aliquis ( 678370 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @10:56AM (#53623429)

      And Valve is no longer a game developer.
      They are a gambling site and games retailer.

      Both succeed in their attempts to gain more money =P

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MeanE ( 469971 )
        I only wish Vale would finish Half life 2 (the forever waiting Ep 3). I don't care if they never make another game after that. Steam is an excellent game store/launcher and I feel disappointed if a game I want is not steamworks....as competing services are noticeably worse.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 )

      Saying as a user of iPhone, new MacBook Pro, iPad, TimeCapsule and AppleTV, that apple is no longer a computer company.

      Go to an educational institution sometime. Out of every 100 laptops on display 99 will be MacBooks.

      (I don't know why - you can also get thin/small Windows laptops if you're prepared to pay Mac prices for one).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Falos ( 2905315 )
        K12s often liked the increased homogeneity (even when the same model isn't the same model), they tend to be more resilient, Apple used to be quite education-friendly ages ago, sheer incumbent govt inertia, etc

        Less of their gear in mid/hi schools, where instead of Math With Animals you need software for beginner's coding robots CAD autoshop animation etcetera.

        And much less true after 2014, when chromebooks starting getting hype. Lots of curriculum is now a cloud website, not software, and it's been a g

    • They're making advances in iPhones? I'd be interested to hear more about this.

    • Saying as a user of iPhone, new MacBook Pro, iPad, TimeCapsule and AppleTV, that apple is no longer a computer company. They are an iPhone company. They no longer make advances in anything else but iPhones. As my current hardware slowly dies, I'll be replacing everything listed above with better quality hardware made by other companies.

      This sounds so true. I went to an Apple Store in Reston, recently, to get something for my iPad, and they told me they only sell iPhone accessories, not iPad accessories (even though one can still buy iPads)

      I bought an iPhone 7 recently, but only b'cos I was upgrading from a 5s: had I possessed a 6, let alone a 6s, I wouldn't have bothered. Apparently, the camera in 7 is better, but not much else

    • Apple should outsource to HP and Lenovo (Score:4, Insightful)

      by emil ( 695 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @12:44PM (#53623965)

      Seriously, it would make just about everybody happy. The designs must use aluminium cases, and they must be approved by Apple before manufacture. The Apple logo will be on the cover, and the manufacturer's logo will be over the keyboard.

      PCs are no longer Apple's core competence, and they should make moves to divest the function.

      Problem solved.

    • Re:Apple is no longer a computer company (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @01:17PM (#53624165) Homepage

      They never were a computer company (atleast not since their "rebirth").
      They're a fashion company and they failed to make enough changes to remain fashionable.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, I don't know if it's Tim Cock, Phil Schiller or Johny Ive to blame, but due to recent years total ignorance towards the mac, I finally switched from Mac to PC (Linux) for the first time since 1993.

      The design aspect has gone totally to their head, the macbook pro used to be not only good looking, but on of the best portables on the market, the recent incarnation is a overpriced joke.
      The mac desktops used to be good albeit quite expensive, it's just crap today. Either you got the mac pro which is outdate

    • Re:Apple is no longer a computer company (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mlts ( 1038732 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @07:23PM (#53625657)

      iPhone, check.
      MBP, check.
      iPad, check.
      iPod Touch, check.
      Time Capsule, check.

      The Time Capsule's functionality hasn't really been added to. Yes, Apple does update the firmware every so often, but fundamentally, the device hasn't seen any fundamental improvements. Even an el cheapo 1 drive NAS like a Synology DS115 gets significant new stuff every so often. The "old" Apple would have had a Time Capsule automatically copy data to a cloud provider (be it iCloud or another), and if a Mac needed a restore, it would first try to hit the TC, then would redirect to where the cloud data is stored. Apple could make some money in selling multi-drive Time Capsules with built in RAID and the ability to back themselves up to the cloud (client-side encrypted, with a Secure Enclave built into the NAS) for peace of mind. People would pay a premium for a dual-drive TC with RAID 1, a good filesystem, encryption, backups to iCloud, and the ability to install a new Mac from the LAN. However, Apple seems uninterested in this market segment.

      The MBP? A Dell XPS 13 is a better MBP than a 2016 13" MBP on the hardware front. The software front, it is obvious that macOS has the hind teat when it comes to improvements. Windows is winding up ahead of macOS just because Apple hasn't done anything to keep it going. While Apple might offer one or two new doodads, Microsoft adds functionality almost anywhere. The WSL is a nice thing, for example. Plus, Microsoft keeps upping its game on security. The Edge browser is supposedly going to be placed in its own Hyper-V VM, completely separating it from the OS. On the virtualization front, W10 comes with Hyper-V, while Apple has absolutely nada for this. The most significant thing in macOS is APFS... but that is mainly so iOS has better encryption, as opposed to be something designed for Macs only.

      I would hate to have a desktop Mac. The Mac Mini hasn't been touched in years, and the last refresh was a four core to two core downgrade. The Mac Pro, Apple's flagship machine? Will it be five years before it sees a refresh? For a flagship machine, Apple should rebrand the canister Mac Pro as a high end desktop box, and make a true E-7 Xeon Mac Pro in the traditional tower case with closed loop water cooling.

      The iPod Touch gets some items, every so often. Because of that, it does work well as an emergency authentication device, because apps work on it, although the platform is definitely not as popular as it used to be. However, with some work, it isn't dead yet. Apple could pitch it as a method of recovering access to websites and such should one lose their phone, especially with 2FA protected by a Secure Enclave chip.

      The iPhone and the iPad are the only two items that are "blessed" by Apple, and it is pretty obvious that they have this status. They are the only devices that get significant new functionality every year, and have a constant refresh cycle.

  • Apple Abandoned Me (Score:3, Informative)

    by ThatNakedGuy ( 4750397 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @10:54AM (#53623413)
    Apple is no longer interested in my business. I use an old 15" MBP and it does everything I want, and has almost every port I need. The new MBP's simply suck in comparison. A "touch bar"??? Hey, Apple, I got something you can touch, and it isnt my money. Dongles? I use one dongle now. With the new MBP I'd need a dongle for everything. When Apple makes a MBP that is upgradable and has the ports that people need now and has noticeably better performance, I'll consider it. Windows is starting to look better and better.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Tim Cook is more interested in making statements than making good products.

    • I hear you re: the dongles. You need to carry a dead octopus worth of cables and dongles with the current MBP.
      But!
      I do love the touch bar.
      I played around with it in the Apple store and found it rather wonderful and userfriendly. I think you can set it to boring standard F keys, but the context sensitive touchbar really makes a number of operations more efficient, for example scrolling through photos.
      • The touch bar isn't so great for a developer.. With most of my IDEs I need the function keys. The only way to 'force' them is to add every application you need them for, one by one. There are places in GUIs where I would have normally hit 'ESC' to exit so my hand goes to that place on the touch bar and it does nothing, which forces me to look down, and then I find there is a 'cancel' button in dead center instead of where the ESC key was. I can understand that it would probably be nicer for someone who l

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Every non-iOS developer I've spoken to about the new MacBook Pro has said that their next laptop will be a Windows laptop unless Apple reverts this design change. IMO, the touch bar was a major screw-up. The real mistakes were introducing this in the Pro laptop instead of the consumer one (it's a very consumer-oriented feature), and putting it on the keyboard instead of right above it.

  • No surprise (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 07, 2017 @10:54AM (#53623417)

    A post Jobs Apple has stagnated. A big, dead, and stinky whale in the water. They stopped innovating and started going for gimmicks and shine. Removing 3.5mm jacks, sacrificing competitive battery performance for thinness not being demanded by consumers. Then you have a MacBook "Pro" that basically kicks professionals in the pants. As an owner of an iPhone 6s Plus and two 2014 MacBook pros, these will likely be my last devices when they go. I run commercial real estate during the day, but do photography on the side and it's expanding to a more primary business. stripping SD card slots and standardising to only USB-C is hardly pro, especially when a lot of us rely on older equipment from time to time in creative fields (like my Kodak film scanner).

    Apple lost its way. It hasn't innovated in a long time. It's become a corporate version of click bait products. The touch bar, the "thinness"... these things would make sense if consumers were asking for them. Everywhere I turn, they aren't. So Apple is trying a forced-down innovation in their vision. Historically, this never works because even if consumers don't know exactly what it is they need, they won't take something they don't want just because you've crammed it down their throats.

    Now that Microsoft has embraced opensource a bit more and Win 10 is more polished, the excuses for Apple software, which is lagging desperately behind in features, even begins to lose steam. RIP, Apple.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )
      I am no OSX expert, but it seems surprisingly rough in several areas. The functions you can perform in the different views of finder aren't even consistent. For example, you can select a range of files in the list view but not in the icon view. Often in icon view you are forced to scroll both horizontally and vertically to see all files since the icons don't wrap. They abandoned the standard nomenclature of 'cut/paste' for files, and instead you must 'copy/move-paste' which is difficult to find because

  • Not a huge surprise... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @10:54AM (#53623419) Journal
    While they continue to pull defeat from the jaws of victory with baffling regularity(eg. needlessly atrocious touchpads for no obvious reason); it's amazing how much less-bad your average PC laptop is today, when compared to the race-to-the-bottom and "Yeah, it's a 15in low-res screen and 2 inches thick" era. Models that can go directly head-to-head with Apple's finest are rarer; but you can often save enough money, vs. the really classy Apple gear, that a few minor sins can be overlooked. Combine that with Apple's more or less total neglect of anything desktop/workstation, which is a boring segment but moves a lot of hardware; and the fair success of Chromebooks as practically-disposable cheap 'n portable options; and you have a few reasons why OSX marketshare might not be doing as well outside of the truly devoted.

    Back in the day, an ibook/macbook was both good and actually one of the cheaper options if you needed something small and light; mac minis stacked up reasonably favorably against all but the most atrocious cheapy towers; and Mac Pros were pretty respectably priced workstation offerings. I remember, back when they were still doing the intel-based 'cheese grater' case Pros; we were a Dell shop but when we priced out the Pros vs. equivalent Precisions our Dell rep turned a slightly unhealthy color and had to cut us a deal to make it worth going with those rather than just bootcamping the macs. That...isn't exactly...how the world works anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      Agree and I say this as a guy who has been with OSX since 10.1. You used to be able to make an argument that while Apple gouged on some areas they were a reasonable buy. Today you just can't. They are mostly inferior across the whole line. Meanwhile PCs in the last 2 years have gotten much better. I had planned on buying a replacement for my 1st year rMBP this year. The new systems aren't much faster and better. There is simply no excuse for the Mac Pro having gone almost 4 years without a refresh.

      • I think the OS still counts for something, and Mac OS X remains a much better OS than Windows, and Linux is a pain in the ass for many use cases. Get your daughter either a Macbook or a Chromebook (Chromebooks are the best computer for students).

        FWIW my wife upgraded from her 5-year old Macbook to the new non-touchbar Macbook Pro, and it is substantially faster with a better screen and more portable.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbolden ( 176878 )

          It counts for a lot. I used to figure OSX was worth $1k for me. However:

          a) Virtualization kills a lot of the advantages of having a business system on top of Unix
          b) fink and darwin getting less attention kill a lot of the advantages
          c) The quality of web applications and the move away from desktop kill advantages
          d) The new windows form factors are a real plus. I use laptops because I like portability and Windows takes portability much further.
          e) Azure integration is a real plus. Microsoft now arguab

    • I hear you. My first mac was an SE-30 in 1989. My last is apparently going to be the 2009 mini. When it was my planned time to upgrade in 2013, Apple had nothing worth buying. mostly due to poor video. I waited until 2014 to see if they did better, and they downgraded the entire mini lineup. So I ended up with a Gigibyte Brix Pro, i5 version. Outfitted it to better than the highest end mini for the cost of the mid-range model. I ran it as a hackintosh for a year, then swapped out to Windows 10. Apple has ab

    • Guess I'll be the lone voice of sanity here. The Touch Bar is really, really useful - to the extent I am homing Apple makes an external keyboard that includes it so I can use one when docked...

      As for staying at the high end, that is how Apple survives. Scrounging for tidbits even the rats wouldn't eat is a losing proposition but that is 90% of the PC market. Apple may lose marketshare because there are a flood of supper-crappy cheap laptops, but what does that percentage really matter in the long run? N

  • Apple bet the farm on iOS. (Score:5, Informative)

    by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @10:55AM (#53623423) Homepage

    They abandoned productivity computing users almost entirely.

    Appliance-style computers with high-end sensory specs, rather than modular ones with high-end throughput specs.
    Abandonment of "professional" tier applications, integrations, and support.
    Marketing and product development that targeted information consumption rather than production and manipulation.
    Modifications primarily to the computing platform whenever computing and mobile needed to be brought closer.

    Not so long ago Mac OS was a compelling computing platform at the hardware and at the software level for many professionals, including many computing professionals like me (who were once hardcore Linux/*nix users).

    This is no longer the case. With the changes that have been made over the last few years, Mac OS and related hardware are now also-rans, but ones that come at a significant cost premium and with significant limitations.

    Meanwhile, they have avoided the (often controversial) wisdom of Steve Jobs, who tended to cannibalize existing product lines and userbases with new ones in order to stay ahead of the curve. Instead, they have worked hard not to cannibalize and/or risk the iOS userbase (designing instead for its lowest common denominator, which is low indeed) by upgrading or innovating in iOS.

    The result is that Mac OS is no longer a viable (much less obvious) choice for professionals even in many of its traditional constituencies, while iOS has stagnated and is now significantly behind Android in many ways.

    I don't think all of this would have happened under Steve Jobs, who would have continued to be controversial, and also would have continued to make gains but in often surprising ways that would only be grudgingly conceded later on.

    With Tim Cook they got a traditional bean-counter who carried Apple back into the traditional corporate cycle of aggressive rise, complacent dominance, unavoidable fall.

    I'm annoyed that I'll have to switch computing platforms again—the switch from Linux was not easy after 17 years when I made it in 2010—but I suspect that I will.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They abandoned productivity computing users almost entirely.

      Very true. Almost everyone in graphic design used to run Apple hardware, but over the past few years we've seen a mass exodus to traditional PC hardware because Apple doesn't provide hardware that is even remotely competitive anymore. Even Adobe's in house Photoshop and Illustrator professionals have moved back to Windows and standard PC hardware. I regularly watch Adobe's official Twitch channel and I don't think I've seen an Apple user in mont

      • there's your answer right there. apple should license its OS to 3rd party manufacturers. they'll still make loads of dosh certifying HW for their SW. they'll still make money with their premium HW. everybody will be happy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrTime ( 838124 )

      Yeah to all above. I've been Macs at home and PCs at work since the Mac came out. Time Capsule too. My first Mac was the MacPlus.

      Apple under Tim Cook is not an innovator any more. The new Google Pixel phone looks compelling enough to make me switch after having the original iPhone, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4S, and now the iPhone 6. All were good in their day. I hope the 6 keeps going two more years before I want to replace it.

      They've become tied to stock market pricing fears and the iPhone as the main produ

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      Agree with everything you wrote except for Tim Cook. Cook has continued in his manufacturing role. Apple manufacturing is really good, and the complexity of the products has skyrocketed. This has continued and is now far better than under Jobs. They now make very complex products reliably, affordably and quickly.

      The problem is that many of the other areas of Apple are stagnating. Cook is doing stuff but he is still acting like head of manufacturing not head of Apple.

      • I think you're probably right about that. It rings true and reflects typical human limitations. He's focused on what he knows, and has blind spots in what he doesn't know as well.

  • And is likely to get smaller... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mr.dreadful ( 758768 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @11:00AM (#53623439)
    My first computer was an Apple IIGS. I've owned more Macs then I can remember. I was responsible for Macs being adopted by my workplace. And yet, I very much doubt my next computer will be a Mac. Poor hardware choices are really the last straw. Chances are good my next rig will be a Dell XPS running Ubuntu.

  • from 9.6% to 6.1% in 8 months? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Camembert ( 2891457 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @11:02AM (#53623447)
    I find it surprising that according to this statistic one third of Mac users stopped using Macs during the last 8 months. Or did the market grow a lot (don't think so)? I can see that some Mac users would switch to Windows (or occasionally to Linux), but one third in 8 months? Seems actually unlikely.

  • They just need to remove a few more standard ports and add more adapters!

  • waiting for something better (Score:3)

    by mrmaster ( 535266 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @11:08AM (#53623477) Homepage
    People were waiting for a good Mac refresh in 2016. The macbook pro finally came out but to mixed reviews. The direction Apple is going with their computers is hard to say. More adapters to lug around....Some screens get improvements while others do not...things changed for the sake of change. Why upgrade your 4 yr old computer when the new one has the very same screen? There will be a bump if Apple spends more of an effort to refresh their computer lineup. I have a 4 yr old 11 inch mac air and I still see no reason to upgrade. I am definitely not in the minority.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @11:11AM (#53623487)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Cutting Tim Cook's pay is not enough - Microsoft put a tech guy in charge of the company - it's time for Apple to do the same.

      Still though, what area of tech is doing well enough that Apple could say, "they are doing it right, let's promote him to CEO?" They are failing technically in all areas. Amit Singh might be a good candidate, though.

      • Several areas aren't doing so well at all at Apple, which is why they don't just need a strong CEO, but strong sector heads (or directors, or whatever they are called) who can deliver reliably as well as innovate on their own, without the CEO babysitting them. Promoting the director of a sector that is doing well is just going to wreck that sector, not save the company.

        • Promoting the director of a sector that is doing well is just going to wreck that sector, not save the company.

          It seemed to work ok for Microsoft......their cloud division is doing extremely well since promoting the head of that sector (the Windows department, on the other hand.......)

  • I'm a more recent convert AWAY from Windows at work in 2013 (7 is going to be my last Windows OS at home), and then they drop this turd of a new MacBook Pro on us.

    I'm not interested in a fancy function keys bar or Touch ID because I don't need my MacBook Pro to be an iPhone that happens to have a keyboard. I want a fast, powerful, reliable OS on a fast, powerful, reliable laptop that just works without any extra effort.

  • Why people went Apple, and why they leave now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @11:24AM (#53623555)

    Apple was a "just works" solution for people who didn't want to be bothered with their computer to do what they actually wanted to do. And Apple delivered that beautifully. Not to me, I never got my mind wrapped around the "Apple way" of thinking, but I could easily see it with the various people I used to admin PCs for. They quickly fell in love with the intuitive interface (beats me how this is intuitive, but they thought so) and how "naturally" everything felt (personally, I felt it was all wrong). But it wasn't for me, it was for them, and for them, it worked perfectly. There also was never an issue with odd drivers or having to upgrade them, Apple did that for you. There was also never an issue with having to buy some additional reader for whatever esoteric memory medium your digital cam used, your Apple could read it. Out of the box. Without you having to install anything. Even the most cryptic format nobody heard about, your Apple would read it and seamlessly let you work with it, it organizes your files for you, it was the perfect computer for people who just wanted to do stuff without having to learn how to do it.

    Quite frankly, Apple's engineers apparently spent a lot of time employing people like my dad telling them what they want to do and they designed the software to "think" for the user. That was the key asset for Apple. And they threw that away.

    No, not with the software. That probably still works the way it did. But with the hardware. Again, one of the key selling points for Apple was that their machines could read anything you could possibly throw at them. And that is simply no longer the case. They can't even read USB out of the box anymore. Instead you are supposed to buy a lot of additional crap, various cables for various reasons that confuse and overwhelm people. Which one do I need? And I don't want to buy the wrong one, they're all quite expensive.

    Apple replaced total compatibility with absolute incompatibility. They saw that they can cram it down their users' throats in the phone market and tried the same stunt with their computers. And now they get to learn the MS lesson: Just 'cause you can piss on your customers in a market you dominate doesn't mean that it will work everywhere.

    • For me it wasn't about intuitiveness, it was about the lack of conflicts.

      If you bought all Apple, you didn't need "workarounds." Versioning issues, compatibility issues, conflicts between apps and/or devices, weird workflow and hardware chains to get information from one place to another. Linux got worse and worse in that regard until I finally threw my hands and gave up on it in the late '00s.

      Moving to Apple during that period was bliss. If it said "Apple" or "Mac" anywhere on it, or in the marketing mater

  • PC and Notebook shipments falling in general (Score:3)

    by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @11:31AM (#53623589)

    It just looks like [jonpeddie.com] people are moving to tablets and phones over laptops and desktops in general. In addition, speed bumps for CPUs and GPUs aren't really noticable to non-gamers, I've been able to stick with the same machines for a long time now. On my MacBook Pro I'm running Linux so I wasn't affected by Apple cutting off OS support. It's still as speedy as ever.

  • A Mega-Mac Pro is Needed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BoRegardless ( 721219 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @11:31AM (#53623593)

    Consumers aren't buying PCs anymore in volume.

    Hence, Apple should aim the MacPro at the literal "PROFESSIONAL" market only.

    The cost of a MacPro is less than the total cost of the software on the system. I pay more for CAD licenses in the lifetime of my MacPro than the cost of the MacPro.

    Get it? Cook? Just my opinion.

    • This. I've also heard the argument of buying the high-end mac because that's the best value for money period.
      If you went for the 27" iMac 1 to 2 years ago, you'd have a monitor that is basically worth 1,000$ compared to the competition 27" 4k's out there (27" 4k monitor prices of last year). So for the 1,000$ left of the price of the 27" iMac you'd have top-end hardware in there. Plus you get the great design look of the iMac. Great value for money.

  • Like others lamenting here, between 2005 and 2010 I was essentially Apple only, having switched from Windows and Linux. In 2011 I tried Linux again, putting Ubuntu on a Sony Vaio laptop (dual booting with Windows), and then an Acer laptop. The improvements in Linux re-ignited my inner penguin, and it is what I use most often. My macs are a 2008 iMac, and a 2009 macbook. There is no point in upgrading the hardware, nothing more recent, first- or second-hand is a sensible option, and Snow Leopard is the most

  • Apple makes FAR more money on the iOS side (Score:5, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @01:44PM (#53624297) Journal

    I think when Steve Jobs was still alive, he enforced a philosophy at Apple that the Mac was the "cornerstone" of the company, no matter what else it developed. It was all about that "halo effect", where the Mac was the control center for everything else, and everything had a symbiotic relationship with everything else Apple sold. (EG. You could be a Windows user and buy an iPod as your music player, and use it just fine. BUT, you'd eventually say, "Hey... Apple's iTunes software that manages this thing really runs better on the Mac than it does in Windows. Maybe I'll just go with a Mac in the future and use it with this?" Or you might be a Windows or even Linux user who bought an Apple Airport Extreme as your wi-fi router because it got high reviews. You *could* manage it with the Windows version of the management software, but you'd find it's easier to just set one up from an iPhone, where support is built right in.)

    Back then, it was commonplace for Jobs to remind people that low overall percentages of Mac sales compared to Windows didn't concern him. It was about selling gourmet food vs. McDonalds. If you have a premium product, you concentrate on catering to those who appreciate that ... not worrying about maximizing sales numbers.

    Today, it's very different. Apple under Tim Cook seems to believe iOS devices are the "future" as the traditional computer dies out, and MANY of the complaints Mac users have are direct results of this change in course. There are problems right now with PDFKit in OS X, where Apple suddenly rewrote the thing from the ground up in OS X Sierra without so much as informing developers. The reason? They wanted one with feature parity with the iOS version. This made Apple's own Preview software unsafe to use to edit PDF documents, because it causes embedded OCR layers to be stripped from them when you save them. Other applications like Mariner Paperless, which use Preview to display scanned documents in their database, crash as soon as you try to view a file in your collection. It's basically a trainwreck right now. I hear Apple is scrambling to fix a lot of this in the latest OS X beta, but this fiasco already caused many realtors to switch back to Windows because they rely so heavily on PDF as part of their daily workflow,

    If rumors I've heard can be believed, Apple doesn't even have much of a Mac OS X development team left anymore. The updates to it are supposedly being done by a team that's expected to spend part of their time doing iOS related work.

    I've been a big Mac proponent since the 2001 time-frame, but I'm finally reaching the point where my next computer won't be a Mac, unless there's a major change of course in the near future. As others have said, Apple has nothing for sale that I'd really want to buy. The new Macbook Pro 15" looks desirable at first glance. The touch-bar is a nice addition and it looks attractive in space gray color and all that. But in reality, it's the most expensive laptop Apple has ever sold (in a high spec configuration at least), while demanding more compromises to use it than have ever been expected of "Pro" users before. The lack of all ports except USB-C would be more acceptable if the USB-C standard was more prevalent. But putting it there today is doing it just to prove you're "cutting edge", while hampering real-world usage. And at that price? Why isn't a set of the dongle adapters included with it?? The Mag-Safe charging was a mistake to eliminate too. That's been a signature feature that made Mac laptops a step ahead of everyone else. Couldn't they at least do a USB-C variant of Mag-Safe?

    • I don't want to put together a list of applications and conflicts because that will obscure the forest for the trees. But your case is emblematic of what I now deal with in Mac OS, too—and many other pros, besides.

      I was 17 years on Linux and Solaris before that. I wrote a pile of books about *nix, founded a software company in *nix space, and so on. It was no small thing for me to switch to Apple.

      I did it because it saved me bucketloads of time. All those annoyances of the sort that you describe weren

    • Apple under Tim Cook seems to believe iOS devices are the "future" as the traditional computer dies out

      Partially true.

      Apple is the victim of their own design hubris...the port removals are the perfect example.

      They think paper thin phones are "a few years away" and are pushing wireless everything, and it's horseshit.

      Apple just needs to come back to reality and put usable ports on their devices...that's all...

      Windows is still spyware/adware garbage, and even with Apple's port nonsense, Apple products are stil

      • I have 2TB SSD storage inside my MBP 17" and am fighting the temptation to back one of them to a spinner go to 3TB—mainly because I don't want to invest in installing more parts in a seven-year-old machine and can't stand the slowness of spinning hard drives.

        When I'm in my home office, I am regularly plugged in to all three USB ports (and one of them leads straight to an 18-port USB hub that has about half the ports full at any time).

        You can't even carry 3TB with you on a current MBP, under any circum

        • I just don't have the time or the inclination to fuck around with the current MBP products. I see a million roadblocks and stumbling points that I just don't want to deal with. I have other things to do.

          imho you aren't an edge case...you should be the target user...sort of like how a pole vaulter aims *over* the bar...grandmas and sorority chicks who use their mac for email and facebook will be happy if you're happy, in that sense

          but...switching to windoze?

    • You touch on an important point with the lack of Mac OS X developers. I work at a hardware company that supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is getting *very* hard to find and keep people to work on the Mac version of our driver and it's starting to show in the quality imo.

  • when they were at their almost-10-percent-high, they made an effort and had unique, high-quality and competitively priced machines. now half of their lineup is slowly dying. if you buy a new mac, you can't be sure that there'll be a follow-up model in that line. macpros and mac-mini sales are probably pretty flat, because of that and because of old hardware that was on the cusp of being overpriced when it was released three years ago. new releases value aesthetical design over function and are no good valu
  • Then there is lots of hardware out there you could argue is better than Apple (expandability, performance, etc). But.... OS X is still in my humble opinion better than Windows (even 10). Anybody who says they are dumping the Mac for a Windows system solely because of hardware evidently does not give much weight to OS X.

  • Government Contracts (Score:3)

    by globaljustin ( 574257 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @04:06PM (#53624915) Journal

    Windows has always...*always* benefitted from these kinds of stats due to the fact that most desktops in the US government run Windows.

    It's our taxpayer dollars at work!

    Apple's products are better than ever...*except* for the ridiculous port nonsense.

    Windows is still garbage spy/ad-ware...it's worse than ever.

    Neither are right, but Apple's products are still way better for the end user of any level.

    • Unless you want to DESIGN that Mac. Then you need a modern parametric 3D CAD package and modern schematics capture/board layout package. And those can only be found on Windows. And thus - you may have a Macbook - you run Windows to design your hardware.

  • - Only device you can get a touchscreen/active stylus with is an overpriced boutique internet appliance.

    - Only hardware innovation in years is a goofy touch bar.

    - Only major changes in hardware is to make things slightly thinner and remove any aspect of user upgrade/serviceability. Can't even swap SSD or upgrade RAM in PRO models.

    - OSX is becoming increasingly locked down. Even installing something like TotalTerminal has become a pain in the ass.

    - Increasing efforts to force everyone through a silly app s

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday January 07, 2017 @05:39PM (#53625247)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Here is the simple reason. I had a Mac Pro (the garbage can) and it was pretty kick ass. But it had a few issues. One is that I couldn't really upgrade it, another is that it had ATI video cards (I now need CUDA), and three was that if anything broke in it the whole thing was going to be a financial nightmare to fix.

    So I spent 2.5k on a Windows desktop where no one part is terribly expensive, I get a 1TB SSD plus massive HD, I get a crazy nVidia card, I get a damn good processor, and most importantly I ge
  • Focus on the Mac Pro. Make a deal with intel, AMD or Nvidia.
    Roll out a new version every year with a bump in cpu, gpu. Even if a few get sold, the software will be ready for 5K, 8K.
    That mind share, market share, developer glow will attract creative people who want to show how trendy and arty they are.
    That will build a base up from iMac and mini users who are aspirational.
    The blogs, social media filled with hype about the last Mac Pro and the new Mac Pro is what makes a brand have value.
    Get a better M

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