19 ms·

Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

278 points by artsandsci 10y ago

jplasmeier 10y ago
I can't wait to retire my 2013 MBA and set it aside with my OEM 8800GT (nVidia's iconic desktop GPU). Both represented the best combination of tradeoffs with the tech that was available at the time at a price point that led to ubiquity. I'm not sure what my next portable computer will be, but if I want it to fit into that criteria of iconic hardware, I doubt it will be an Apple computer.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
  If you would like to stay on macOS, buy a used MacBook (Pro). Some owners treat their MacBook (Pro) like a jewel. Even one or two years old ones can look like new. Performance-wise they are still great compared to the latest siblings. A week ago I bought a MacBook Pro 15" (Mid 2014) with 512 GB SSD and dedicated graphics chip. I can drive two external 4K displays at 5120x2880 (looks like 2560x1440) and the internal display at 3840x2400 (looks like 1920x1200), all at 60 Hz. That is all I needed. Couldn’t be happier. Cost me 1325€. Latest MacBook Pro 15" with 512 GB SSD costs 2700€.
  - jplasmeier 10y ago
    That's true, but there isn't enough value in macOS for me to justify buying old hardware, especially moving forward.
- flamedoge 10y ago
  8800gt to 2013 MBA is a big jump in category. Have you looked at beefier gaming laptops?
matwood 10y ago
Over the year they declined, but were up YoY in the 4q. Early year declines show people were waiting for an update and then purchased when one came out. We'll have to wait for 1q 2017 numbers to see if the releases keep the trend going back up.
bostand 10y ago
Given the CES announcements from Lenovo, Samsung and asus I can only assume 2017 will be even worse for Apple. Laptop with 25 hrs battery? Give me two please!
- WildUtah 10y ago
  Given the Apple announcements last fall, I can only assume 2017 will be even worse for Apple. But let's remember that Apple still makes a majority of all the profit in the PC industry.
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    Apple is on the way out. Even if it is still on top.
    - Steko 10y ago
      We've been hearing this for decades...
      - astrodust 10y ago
        Just wait for Linux on the Desktop to push out Apple!
        nicky0 10y ago
        2017 is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  And yet no one but Apple can seem to make a decent track pad (even for windows). It's a show stopper for me whenever I think of moving back to a PC.
  - ArtDev 10y ago
    My Lenovo has an amazing trackpad. It is better than my wife's Macbook Air (though my machine is much much newer than hers).
jalopy 10y ago
Makes sense to me. Because Apple is discontinuing the Macbook Air - the best combination of power, form factor and price - I'm regularly looking at all available alternatives. Can't really see how they're doing "what's best for the customer" anymore. More like what's best for their bottom line.
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
Back when I worked at Apple the dirty secret was that the cheapest models, despite all the marketing of the MacBook Pro, made up the majority of sales. Back then it was the white plastic MacBook but now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot. That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS. Instead of replacing the Air, Apple introduced the MacBook at a premium price point. It seems like a marketing failure to me that a lower spec MacBook (1080p, slower SSD) wasn't released and the Air discontinued.
- jclardy 10y ago
  Yeah, discontinuing the Air is crazy. The "entry level" laptop from Apple now (excluding their late-year models they kept around) is now $1299 and features a Core M3 processor. For people with a 2014+ Air that is a downgrade in performance for more money than they paid initially.
  - runjake 10y ago
    The MacBook Air (Early 2015) isn't discontinued. They're still being manufactured and it's still a marquee item with its own header on Apple's website. The date nomenclature of Apple's products is the product release date and not its manufacturing date.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    Huh? No, Apple's entry-level laptop is the $999 MacBook Air 13″, which has an i5. The 11″ MacBook Air was discontinued, but the 13″ is still around.
    - CoolGuySteve 10y ago
      You're correct, I didn't notice that the 11" was discontinued. They've effectively raised the price of their entry-level computer by $200 which would explain a slowdown in sales. I guess we saw with the different Apple Watch versions, Apple is exploring just how much utility they can capture as margin.
Esau 10y ago
It's not really surprising given the lack of updates.
hkmurakami 10y ago
Are there any models from Lenovo/Dell/HP that have a good keyboard (obviously there is some subjectivity here)? If Lenovo made a model with the thinkpad keyboard from 10 years ago, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
- radicalbyte 10y ago
  I just bought an ASUS ZenBook with m3 and super high res screen for my wife. The keyboard feels similar to my MBP13R. Much better than my 3k Dell. Really nice little machine, blows the Air away and is a steal at 650 EUR (~400 USD using Apple's exchange rates).
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    Is this the keyboard: http://www.asus.com/zenbook/_img/home/computer02.jpg http://www.asus.com/zenbook/_img/home/computer02.jpg ? I'm not OP, but I'm personally wanting one like this: https://senk9.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/thinkpad-x230-keyboard-1.jpg?w=700&h=469 https://senk9.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/thinkpad-x230-keyb...
    - radicalbyte 10y ago
      Yeah, that's it. Same as the MBP. I personally just use a proper mechanical keyboard if I'm typing for any kind of time. Same thing with mouse/touchpad.
  - sndean 10y ago
    I'm also really happy with my Asus Zenbook ux305fa. The keyboard does feel familiar (replacing my 2011 MBP). And Ubuntu runs fine on it - no problems with wifi or anything else so far.
    - rwmj 10y ago
      I love my Asus Zenbook, but I get the feeling that the screen resolution is too high. There's no need to have a 4K screen in an otherwise small laptop, especially combined with rather patchy support in Linux.
jclardy 10y ago
Makes sense with Apple's current terrible product line setup. Both the retina MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro are much more niche than their last generation. Also much more confusing as the MacBook Air successor is $500 more than the 13" Air was (The non-touchbar MacBook Pro is the spiritual successor to the air.) The true 13" Pro for 2016 is also $500 more than the last gen. The 12" MacBook is there...but it is a super niche product compared to the old Air or even the old Pro. It's performance is probably enough for most people, but at that point you could just buy a cheaper windows ultrabook and get similar or better performance for a much lower price. A huge market for Apple used to be college students. Now in 2017 what Apple laptop do they buy? an underpowered MacBook, or an overpriced pro? The best solution for most is buying an older model, but part of the appeal of buying a Mac is having the "latest" thing. Then you get to desktops...and there isn't much to say there. Apple just doesn't do them anymore. This is coming from someone that has used a Mac for the past 10 years and is typing on a 2016 pro. It is nice, but connectivity wise it is too far ahead of its time. In 1-2 years it will be fine, but right now it is just in early adopter territory.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  Mostly you're straight on, but the latest iMacs are among the best desktop PCs ever built. And they're still a good deal.
  - jclardy 10y ago
    As far as AIO's go they are great, especially with the 5k display, but the main issue is that Apple doesn't spec bump them. It has been 472 days since the last iMac update and it will likely be at least until spring before we hear about an update. The main issue for me is that my laptop can now use Thunderbolt 3 accessories, but if I bought an iMac today I'd be stuck with thunderbolt 2 and no usb-c ports for the next 3 or so years that I would be using the machine.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      Plus, I'm starting to be concerned with quality. Of the last 12 we've ordered 3 were DOA. They got replaced (one after over 2 months), but it wasn't a good experience. They aren't the dumpster fire that HP turned into on the low end for a while, but it is concerning as we have had to send machines back for recalls and fixes. It made for an interesting discussion when we decided a new lab was going to be Intel NUCs with LG 21x9 monitors over buying the outdated Macs. I am hoping for some sign Apple gets it together in 2017.
velodrome 10y ago
Has anyone here used the MBP touchbar on a daily basis? Does it improve productivity or is it just a gimmick?
- j2bax 10y ago
  I read on another thread a user that does a lot of podcasting/audio editing say he absolutely loves the touchbar. He can annotate in Word and pause/play/scrub his video on the touchbar without ever changing app focus. This is a somewhat niche purpose, but I could see a handful of similar applications where you need to have simultaneous control of multiple apps.
- otheotheothe 10y ago
  Yes i do, it greatly increased my productivity, tho i had to tweak it myself and configure it all myself basically with better touch tool, heres a good article about what you can do: https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-really-customize-your-new-touch-bar-ea42ec66f42c https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-real... i safe you some time and quote the BTT website on what's doable atm: A few words about the current state of the Touch Bar integration in BTT: ''' It’s quite stable now and offers many customization options. You can specify custom Touch Bars for every app or globally You can change how the Touch Bar should appear for every app (e.g. if you want to show the BTT Touch Bar only for certain apps) You can create Touch Bar button groups There are three widgets, more to come. (Currently, Battery Time, Date/Time and an App Switcher widget are available) ''' And then its up to your creativity...the touchid also improved my life, i use it for my password keeper app etc instead of my masterpw... The thing is, you have to ignore all the usual anti touchbar hate and find out for yourselv how YOU could use it, then make a decision if it's worth it for you.
- jclardy 10y ago
  I have one as my main machine. I use the touchbar about as much as I used the function keys...so almost never. Well that isn't entirely true as I use it for volume all the time which I do like better than just having a key. Also TouchID and 1Password together are amazing since I have a fairly long master password. I think it really depends on what you do though, as I have used it in final cut and that seems nice for swiping around your timeline. Anything with a slider control works well, anything with buttons isn't that great as you actually have to look at the thing to see if a button exists in the first place. I don't think it is necessarily a hardware problem, but right now the software just isn't there. I think Apple should rethink the "default" state a bit to give it some more utility.
ComputerGuru 10y ago
The biggest problem that Apple is creating for itself is not one that is being discussed directly in most of these threads: it's not about the loss in Mac sales, which they clearly don't give a damn about. It's the exodus of producers from their platform. Think about it. For those of you that were Mac fans before the iPhone and before it was cool to be so, who else do you know that used a Mac? Forget why, just who? The answer is: content creators. Video creators. Film editors. Photographers. Music artists. Photoshop experts. And developers. These people create the content that the rest of the "herd" consume. The herd doesn't follow Apple (even though it seems that way); they follow the content, wherever that content is. People didn't switch from Windows to Mac primarily because $x wasn't available on Mac. But soon enough, $x, $y, and $z were on Mac and the switch became easier. Think back to when the iPhone was fighting against BlackBerry and Motorola. It was stupid things like Plants and Zombies and Angry Birds that drove adoption. It was the music industry's alliance with Apple (aka content) that helped the iPhone gain an edge just as much as its technical merit. 5 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to say goodbye to my Mac and go back to Windows. This year, I did (just weeks before the joke of an MBP was announced, thank God). My favorite Mac apps are on Windows. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) gives me native Linux on Windows with decent integration. I have my posix and I have an OS I can use. MS was trash, but they listened to their power users (thank god for Nadella and good riddance to Ballmer) and ditched Metro everything and went back to a useable, dev-friendly desktop with Windows 10. They're embracing 3D printing, they're bringing back the content producers, and this is going to hurt Apple way more than I think they realize right now. Every company makes its money at the bottom, but there's a reason these companies continue to make losing investments at the top: to keep the content creators, the prosumers, the reviewers, the influencers happy. It's not just computers. Look at car companies. Look at what Toyota spent on the LFA. They were _never_ going to recoup those costs, no matter what. The goal was to entrench themselves in the minds of auto enthusiasts, to say that Toyota has the ability, the technical knowhow, and the spirit it takes to make a real super car. Now buy and recommend our normal cars, please. Apple discontinuing first its servers, then its 17" MacBooks (and I've never owned a 17" laptop in my life), its Mac Pros (seriously!?!??), and now, the MacBook Pro (there's a reason there used to be a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. Now "Pro" is marketing and they're all MacBook Pros while none of them are), is the problem. It's clear some pinhead that doesn't get the market is looking at the numbers and thinking "hmmmm, $x, $y, and $z have a $devcost/$saleprice ratio that is poorer than our other mainstream products, kill them," not realizing what that means for 10 years down the line. I'm not saying we're going to see this impact _today_, but we're going to see it at some point. Apple's prosumer focus is what kept it alive when it was bankrupt and desperate and allowed it an opportunity to make a comeback. Ignoring them now isn't just shortsighted and stupid, it's also ungrateful and traitorous. But whatever. I'm happy with my thin & lightweight Xeon ZBook with 32GB of ECC RAM and a 4K display running Windows 10 and Linux. I don't care. But I do think it's a damn shame.
marssaxman 10y ago
I was a Macintosh user since 1985, one of the die-hard faithful who stuck around all the way through Apple's late-'90s doldrums, but I haven't bought a Mac in years and at this point it's hard to imagine why I'd ever feel like paying that premium again. Not that there's anything wrong with them - Apple still makes very nice computers. The simple fact is that computers in general crossed my "good enough" threshold en masse, roughly six or eight years ago, and I just don't care much about the differences anymore. Any machine will meet my needs, as long as it has an SSD and at least 4G of RAM. In this world, why would I pay $1800 for a Macbook Pro when any random $300 Thinkpad will do the job? We're riding out the top end of the S-curve here. That's okay; the market is mature. I expect that Apple can continue to do their high-margin BMW/Mercedes thing for years to come. I just don't happen to need (or even particularly desire) a luxury computer.
- visarga 10y ago
  Same happened with my digital camera. I love them but I see no need to get a better one.
Girlang 10y ago
This was the year I switched back. I needed more memory and NVIDIA graphics.
xiaoma 10y ago
The way to fix this is to raise prices and push out fewer updates to the line.
Girlang 10y ago
They never should have switched from their "Supercomputer" Power PC to that slow-as-a-snail Intel chip.
aczerepinski 10y ago
I really like developing on my 13" pro from a couple years ago. I like it significantly more than my higher spec 15" pro from work. The light weight and small form factor are key, and obviously I can plug it into a monitor or two when I'm actually at my desk. I hope Apple thinks of someone like me when deciding the specs of the next super light Macbook. Keep the low entry point for students, and offer a premium build for developers and others who can justify it. If they don't nail it, I'm open to other OSs, but I do care about aesthetics which Apple used to have a monopoly on.
Kevin_S 10y ago
Just wanted to add an opinion you don't see as much here, as a non-developer. It's not just developers who are pretty upset about the new Macbook, myself and my fiance were both in the market, and my fiance used a MBP through college. She pretty much fought me on the new MBP until she tried it in store, and promptly was against it. She's going with a Surfacebook and I'll probably go with the new Dell XPS 15 with the 4k screen. It's not just developers that are a bit... confused by the new direction.
- potatosoup 10y ago
  What was she actually against in the new MBP? (New MBP user myself, don't like the touch bar, but otherwise a fine machine.)
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Yeah I'd like to know the answer on that too. I have a 2015 that I like but I was in the store the other day and tried a 2016 and actually liked it. I have no reason to upgrade, but if I was buying one new and I didn't know the Internet hated it, I wouldn't be put off. That trackpad is HUGE!
    - todd8 10y ago
      Can anybody comment on why such a big track pad is useful? I'm using a 4.5 year old MacBook Pro Retina right now and I feel its trackpad is the right size. Aren't the new trackpads easier to touch by accident?
  - muro 10y ago
    What about the keyboard?
    - pyrophane 10y ago
      I thought I'd hate they keyboard but was a bit surprised to find out that I actually quite like it. It feels quick and responsive to type on, and the keyboards on the older MBPs feel squishy and imprecise in comparison. I also get that this is absolutely a subjective thing. Some people probably just wouldn't like the lack of travel. Still, I consider myself a pretty discerning keyboard user, and I think the current MBP keyboard is my favorite among the laptop keyboards I have used, with the possible exception of the old Thinkpad keyboard.
megablast 10y ago
This comment section is dire. From people who think it is a dirty little secret that the cheapest items sell more. To people who think apple are now just starting to charge a premium. To some guy who only buys iconic hardware. Most of these comments could be transported back 4 years with little difference.
guelo 10y ago
Both Dell and Lenovo's websites are awful. They try so hard to segment the market that they make it almost impossible to shop their products. I want to buy but I can't figure out what they are selling.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Dell's laptop picker is bad enough. Try their enterprise server configuration tool and you'll want to burn down their headquarters and steal their red stapler.
- edblarney 10y ago
  "They try so hard to segment the market that they make it almost impossible to shop their products. I want to buy but I can't figure out what they are selling." Bravo! This is it. So many manufacturers of so many things screw this up so bad. I call it 'Sony-itis'. They have massive segmentation, within that, so many variations, it's crazy. I think it's an issue of culture: unless the change comes from the top, it will never happen. All the MBA's in the world could not convince them to change, operationally. I worked for a 'major' handset manufacturer that just made new products willy nilly. There was hardly any rhyme or reason. They don't exist anymore, or rather, barely do.
  - Ezhik 10y ago
    So, Nokia or Motorola?
  - bhauer 10y ago
    Yes. The whole "Are you looking for a business computer or a consumer computer" initial decision point is one of the most offensive aspects of the Dell site.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  I'm guessing it's because for both of them, the amount of sales though their website is tiny. The vast majority is probably though other resellers/retailers for consumers, and sales people for enterprise. But regardless, it's a missed opportunity and a self-fulfilling thing.
thesumofall 10y ago
I think the good news here is that PC and Mac are back on par again. Even for demanding users of mainstream use cases (office, development, ...) both platforms offer great products. Personally, I have an MacBook Air 13" at home and a Lenovo X1 Carbon at work. Both have their unique strengths and weaknesses but they are both great laptops. Windows has done a great leap forward as has PC hardware. If I were in the market today I would really struggle to make up my mind which one it should be.
- srazzaque 10y ago
  I'd agree with this. Whilst 9-5mac and its readership will be focussed on what Apple is doing right/wrong, this may be ignoring the fact that competitors are offering genuinely compelling products.
nkkollaw 10y ago
Not surprising. Who wants to pay premium for old hardware? I spilled coffee on my MacBook Air and had to replace it. I bought a used early 2015 MacBook Pro for 1000EUR from a guy who bought in 2015, the same that is sold today at the Apple Store for 1,500EUR. I did think about buying the new MacBook Pro (of course without the touch bar), but I just felt stupid spending all that money for an OK laptop.
dkroy 10y ago
Am I the only one that has issues with the Macbook's WIFI and bluetooth drivers? Granted I am sure the price versus specs differential that keeps expanding my have something to do with. With that said, I am a creature of habit, and stuck in my ways and keep using unix and iOS.
- Larrikin 10y ago
  Everything worked decently well for me until I upgraded to macOS. I can no longer broadcast a wifi network from my computer when connected through ethernet, with no work around. My Logitech mouse also disconnects whenever I put my computer to sleep and sometimes while I am using it now. It isn't found unless I open up the Bluetooth panel and wait a minute or so until it finally reconnects. It will not reconnect without opening the Bluetooth panel. This is with zero interaction from the mouse, by clicking the connect button, which I avoid anyway since clicking reconnect will just create a new duplicate device right under my mouse. But that is if I'm lucky and Bluetooth hasn't gotten into some weird state where Bluetooth has been turned off by the system and clicking the turn on button does nothing so I have to restart. The Bluetooth stuff was obviously considered working if Apple products connected and nothing else was tested. My trackpad has no issue connecting to my laptop even when it gets into that weird state where Bluetooth is forced "off" until a reset
capkutay 10y ago
The jury has been out on Tim Cook's performance as Apple CEO since he took over about 7 years ago. I think this new line of Macs is evidence that he's just too focussed on operations to the point where it's ruining their products. I'm guessing the move to consolidate the ports and kill the audio jack may make total sense internally at Apple when it comes to their 10-year manufacturing operations plan and really maximizing their profitability, but to the outside world it's just bad product development.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  IMO the big mistake was to give Jony Ive that much power. Should have put Scott Forstall there instead, the man who made their most important product work, but they got rid of him for being too opinionated and against the grain. Well, that's probably exactly what you need in a product developer. (S)He doesn't need to be a good designer, just recognize good design. Ive is just way out of touch with their customer base.
  - wmeredith 10y ago
    > Ive is just way out of touch with their customer base. The guy who is chauffeured to work in a car that is twice as expensive than my three bedroom house? Say it isn't so! Ive knows exactly what people want. A $200 watch in a $10,000 gold case so the boys down at the country club won't make fun of me from behind their Omegas and Rolexes, amiright? Sigh... As a long time die hard fan of the Apple that made really interesting transformative tech, watching their decline makes me sad.
- ageitgey 10y ago
  > The jury has been out on Tim Cook's performance as Apple CEO since he took over about 7 years ago Not to nitpick too much, but Tim Cook only took over as Apple's CEO a little over 5 years ago.
  - redwall_hp 10y ago
    It lines up perfectly with the decline of the MBP line. I have a 2011 model, and it's truly pathetic how little of substance has changed since then. * Better processors (a given, under the continuous march of Intel) * Minor GPU improvements, with a multi-year draught where you basically couldn't get a dedicated GPU unless you bought the absolutely most expensive unit. * Higher resolution displays. Meanwhile: * They keep making the damn things thinner, at the expense of functionality. * They ship with half the storage compared to five years ago. Yes, it's NAND. But you shouldn't have to spend $600 extra on a machine that already costs $2000 just to get to the point where you were five years ago. And with the $/GB cost of NAND as comparatively low as it is in recent years... * All the ports are gone. First they killed the ethernet, and now they're down to four USB-C ports. All of your DisplayPort-based stuff you've accumulated is now useless, and you need an adapter to plug in a USB flash drive. I get that they think it's going to drive the market down that path, but would it have killed them to go 50/50? * Hey, let's replace a perfectly useful row of keys that can be bound to things, and the all important escape key, with a shiny touch screen. Fuck touch typists, right? * CPUs still throttle aggressively under load (especially in warmer climates). Thermal management is hard on laptops, but Apple generally opts to sacrifice performance for cosmetics. * RAM has been consistently lacking for such an expensive machine. Considering the OS will make full use of it for caches when extra space is available, and that we live in an era of bloated web pages/browsers and garbage Electron software, the consistent lowballing of RAM is annoying.
weisser 10y ago
I bought my Macbook Air for $1,629 in June of 2012. It's still my main computer and I've spent <$300 (new battery, charger, etc) since the initial purchase. I'm not easy on computers. I travel a lot and this think has put up with very poor treatment. I can't think of a better computer for me. After this one dies I'll definitely buy another Mac (not thinking about which one because I'm expecting this to last at least another year). I hope I'm not disappointed because this computer exceeded my expectations for a laptop.
api 10y ago
They need to get the iOS people away from the Mac and start actually listening to their customers.
jknoepfler 10y ago
I have no regrets about my Dell XPS13.
- parr0t 10y ago
  Same. My Dell XPS15 is fantastic.
walrus01 10y ago
I switched to OSX when it was at v10.4, the very first generation of Intel chipset Macbook Pros came out. I switched because it was the closest thing I could get to a proper fully integrated desktop environment with a BSD-like command line and full Unix-ish functionality (macports, etc). The first generation of Macbook Pro (Core Duo) had a full complement of ports that were state of the art when it was released. Now OSX is becoming a bullshit iOS-like walled garden of app store garbage and the hardware is marketed at people who like shiny, non-repairable consumer throwaway junk, and nothing has a proper complement of I/O ports. Ugh. Just give me a state of the art Thinkpad with full I/O ports that runs OSX please.
- Ezhik 10y ago
  >Just give me a state of the art Thinkpad with full I/O ports that runs OSX please. God, this. I still have no idea what I'll replace my Hachintosh T420 with when the time comes.
PaulHoule 10y ago
Back in the 1970s you still had old men who fought in WWII who would refuse to buy a Japanese car, thus, General Motors and Ford abused them because they knew American car buyers would buy American no matter what. It's the same with Macs today. I gave a talk at my local startup accelerator and found that they had every kind of dongle to attach a Mac to a screen, but no (full size) Displayport adapters. The next day I added a full-size to mini Displayport adapter to my kit.
jackhack 10y ago
Corrected title: "Mac sales declined nearly 10% as the company failed to release any hardware improvements for several years running, combined with yawn-inducing changes to MacOS 10.whatever, focusing instead on a watch and phones." Fixed it.
Zelphyr 10y ago
Everyone is complaining about the confusing direction of Apple with regards to the Mac but when I look around, I often wonder if they're just not reacting to what is really happening. For example; my wife's 10 year old MacBook died last year and for the most part, she hasn't missed it. She uses her phone for everything. And for the things that she can't/doesn't want to do on her phone, she uses her iPad. I just bought the family an iMac for Christmas and my kids use it often, but they also spend at least as much time on their iPods. I think what Apple is seeing, and reacting to, is that the younger generation of non-developers are increasingly using their mobile devices for everything. We as power users hate it because we want to continue to have a solid laptop and/or desktop on which to do our work. But I'm guessing that despite our complaining, we're on the whole willing to pony up the money. Not to mention, these machines last a really long time. I'm writing this on a mid-2012 MBP that even with a battery that is going bad will still outlast my friends Window's laptops. So yeah, $2400 is a lot for a laptop by comparison. But its not so bad when you consider that you can reasonably expect to have that machine for a much longer time than a Dell or Lenovo.
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
  I have an IBM ThinkPad from 2004 and Lenovo ThinkPads from (more or less) 2010 and 2015, they all work fine. The 2004 one is slow with current software and the battery lasts like 1 minute, but otherwise it does what it should according to its (now weak) specs. If you think Lenovos don't last, it's probably because you have seen low-end Lenovos (which indeed often break after 3-5 years). But a MBP is a high-end laptop, it should be compared to high-end laptops from other brands.
  - soperj 10y ago
    You can also buy a new battery for that 2004 thinkpad and replace it in 2 seconds.
- skrause 10y ago
  > We as power users hate it because we want to continue to have a solid laptop and/or desktop on which to do our work. And we will. I think the people who can live with only a phone today are the same group of people who were using no computer at all before 1998 or so. Businesses and power users who were using computer long before that will also keep using laptops and desktops in the future. Or do people really think that in 10-20 years all work will be done on phones and restricted tablets? I don't. The PC market might shrink, but it's not going away. If Apple doesn't want to be part of that market anymore other companies will.
eecc 10y ago
Apple's pro laptop design peak was the first Unibody. Just imagine what can get done with the volume: RAM, CPU and GPU wise. I'm a professional developer, I'm comfortable with my web routines but damn I'd love to have a handy tool to work on the edge of that zone.
watertom 10y ago
What is even more baffling is how they can possibly employee 80,000 people. With that many people you think it would be possible to actually update their products regularly, and make the updates compelling. Apple is floating on the surface, and bloating like a dead whale. They have no vision what so ever, and if they do, it's process engineered out of the company. Their previously outstanding product engineering is even falling down. Unless Mr. Cook is able to find or trust a visionary the company will continue to downward spiral. There is a fine line between a vision and a hallucination, and Apple is hallucinating right now.
- raincom 10y ago
  Majority of 80,000 come from Apple retail stores.
brightball 10y ago
Replaced my 2010 17" MacBookPro with an awesomr hulking 17" beast that is the Dell Precision 7710 and now happily running Fedora 25. Zero regrets. Biggest gotchas were learning that Apple mini display to DVI adapters were passive so I had to buy new active ones.
akulbe 10y ago
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If Apple doesn't care about their Mac line, why should their users? I've been a hardcore Mac fan since '04. That said, it's VERY hard to argue that quality in both hardware and software haven't been declining. I spent over $4K for the 2016 MBP w/Touchbar. Problems. Problems. Problems. I'm 2 days in to completely switching back to Windows. I bought a Dell XPS 15" with a better CPU/GPU and more RAM than the top MBP, for a lot less money. Dell makes a better "Macbook" in the new XPS line, than Apple's own Macbooks. It makes me sad. These days, it's hard to think that Apple cares about anything other than iOS devices.
mrmondo 10y ago
This seems odd to me as now more than ever I see more and more people with MacBooks / iMacs and AppleTVs which have become 'the standard' where as in the past you'd see people with windows laptops or whatever and that'd be the norm it's now appearing to be quite rare (at least from what I've seen in Australia), I don't really know anyone that still uses a windows machine bar one friend who has a gaming rig but he only has it for the GPU and uses a MacBook for everything else other than that it's just a few of the older aged managers / project managers at work and everyone else really uses macOS or Linux of some form.
im_down_w_otp 10y ago
I just want a MacBook Air 11" that's been upgraded to have 16GB of RAM and a slightly larger 12.5" screen put in it. I've been waiting for that for years. Through 3 other MacBook Air purchases; always hoping the next time around they'll make what I want.
srazzaque 10y ago
The only links provided in the article are to other 9to5mac articles. There are no links provided to the actual Gartner/IDC analysis that they've derived the content from - perhaps due to content restrictions. I managed to find some related links [1] and [2] through some searching. But [1] was unlikely to be a source due to the release date (and the fact that it doesn't include Apple data for some reason), and [2] is a little old. But my thinking is that if the sources of data are based purely on "units shipped" as per [2], then this relates to both consumer and commercial use. We know that HP, Lenovo and Dell basically dominate commercial sales - thus a drop in consumer PC sales alone could be highly correlated with a drop in Apple sales. A drop in consumer sales could be due to negative shift in design and direction as many have suggested. But it could also be due to many macro-economic factors that simply do not affect the people here, and are thus hard for us to appreciate - Brexit, no. of mobile devices owned, <insert more speculation here>. As developers or designers, we're not exactly price-sensitive when it comes to buying PCs - so it's likely to be about value proposition and getting exactly what we need. But this cannot be said for everyone. Speaking for myself, I had the opportunity to buy a Macbook Pro last year, but I chose not to due to value proposition, even though I'm willing to spend the cash. I considered the Lenovo X260, Macbook Pro 13", and Dell XPS13. I will admit a bias towards Thinkpads, and I'm indifferent towards Mac OS X (my only OS preference is "not Windows"). I went with the X260 not because of said biases, but purely because at the same price for the Macbook plus one or two upgrades, I got a maxed out X260 with an incredible battery life, plus left-over $ to buy an SSD for Linux (I've never booted the stock hard drive). Screen resolution was the only compromise. My wife then inherited my 5-year-old X220 and its docking station - still running strong. BTW - it always gives me a smug smile inside when Apple or Dell markets a 12 hour battery life as though it's miraculous. I had that on my X220 which is now nearing 5 years old (oh - and I could buy a new battery for it as recently as November 2016). Close to 20 hours with the battery slice. [1] http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prEMEA42255917 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prEMEA42255917 [2] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3474218 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3474218
- stekern 10y ago
  Did you get the X260 model with FHD screen? Which distro are you running, and have you experienced any issues yet? My old Macbook Pro is due for an upgrade, and I'm strongly considering getting the FHD version of the X260, upgrading it with 16GB RAM, a 500GB SSD and 72Wh battery, and installing Ubuntu or Fedora.
ndesaulniers 10y ago
Sold my 2011 MBA, bought a late 2016 RBS (Razer Blade Stealth).
innocentoldguy 10y ago
I agree that Apple is dropping the ball, but I still buy their laptops and phones because I'm an macOS whore. I hate Windows and Android, and BSD and Linux, and their myriad applications, don't sync with my phone. Also, there isn't anything equivalent to Apple's trackpads on PC laptops. At least not yet. If it weren't for macOS and Apple's superior trackpads, I would probably switch to something else though, since the hardware lineup leaves a lot to be desired nowadays.
james_niro 10y ago
People forget that Apple makes some of the best products in TJ for world. The problem with Apple is that their product last for several years and a lot of us hold on to it. just remember Apple is a cult and it is tons of followers around the world

278 points by artsandsci 10y ago

I can't wait to retire my 2013 MBA and set it aside with my OEM 8800GT (nVidia's iconic desktop GPU). Both represented the best combination of tradeoffs with the tech that was available at the time at a price point that led to ubiquity. I'm not sure what my next portable computer will be, but if I want it to fit into that criteria of iconic hardware, I doubt it will be an Apple computer.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
If you would like to stay on macOS, buy a used MacBook (Pro). Some owners treat their MacBook (Pro) like a jewel. Even one or two years old ones can look like new. Performance-wise they are still great compared to the latest siblings. A week ago I bought a MacBook Pro 15" (Mid 2014) with 512 GB SSD and dedicated graphics chip. I can drive two external 4K displays at 5120x2880 (looks like 2560x1440) and the internal display at 3840x2400 (looks like 1920x1200), all at 60 Hz. That is all I needed. Couldn’t be happier. Cost me 1325€. Latest MacBook Pro 15" with 512 GB SSD costs 2700€.
- jplasmeier 10y ago
  That's true, but there isn't enough value in macOS for me to justify buying old hardware, especially moving forward.
flamedoge 10y ago
8800gt to 2013 MBA is a big jump in category. Have you looked at beefier gaming laptops?

matwood 10y ago

Over the year they declined, but were up YoY in the 4q. Early year declines show people were waiting for an update and then purchased when one came out. We'll have to wait for 1q 2017 numbers to see if the releases keep the trend going back up.

bostand 10y ago

Given the CES announcements from Lenovo, Samsung and asus I can only assume 2017 will be even worse for Apple. Laptop with 25 hrs battery? Give me two please!

WildUtah 10y ago
Given the Apple announcements last fall, I can only assume 2017 will be even worse for Apple. But let's remember that Apple still makes a majority of all the profit in the PC industry.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  Apple is on the way out. Even if it is still on top.
  - Steko 10y ago
    We've been hearing this for decades...
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Just wait for Linux on the Desktop to push out Apple!
      - nicky0 10y ago
        2017 is the year of Linux on the Desktop.
seanmcdirmid 10y ago
And yet no one but Apple can seem to make a decent track pad (even for windows). It's a show stopper for me whenever I think of moving back to a PC.
- ArtDev 10y ago
  My Lenovo has an amazing trackpad. It is better than my wife's Macbook Air (though my machine is much much newer than hers).

jalopy 10y ago

Makes sense to me. Because Apple is discontinuing the Macbook Air - the best combination of power, form factor and price - I'm regularly looking at all available alternatives. Can't really see how they're doing "what's best for the customer" anymore. More like what's best for their bottom line.

CoolGuySteve 10y ago

Back when I worked at Apple the dirty secret was that the cheapest models, despite all the marketing of the MacBook Pro, made up the majority of sales. Back then it was the white plastic MacBook but now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot. That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS. Instead of replacing the Air, Apple introduced the MacBook at a premium price point. It seems like a marketing failure to me that a lower spec MacBook (1080p, slower SSD) wasn't released and the Air discontinued.

jclardy 10y ago
Yeah, discontinuing the Air is crazy. The "entry level" laptop from Apple now (excluding their late-year models they kept around) is now $1299 and features a Core M3 processor. For people with a 2014+ Air that is a downgrade in performance for more money than they paid initially.
- runjake 10y ago
  The MacBook Air (Early 2015) isn't discontinued. They're still being manufactured and it's still a marquee item with its own header on Apple's website. The date nomenclature of Apple's products is the product release date and not its manufacturing date.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Huh? No, Apple's entry-level laptop is the $999 MacBook Air 13″, which has an i5. The 11″ MacBook Air was discontinued, but the 13″ is still around.
  - CoolGuySteve 10y ago
    You're correct, I didn't notice that the 11" was discontinued. They've effectively raised the price of their entry-level computer by $200 which would explain a slowdown in sales. I guess we saw with the different Apple Watch versions, Apple is exploring just how much utility they can capture as margin.

Esau 10y ago

It's not really surprising given the lack of updates.

hkmurakami 10y ago

Are there any models from Lenovo/Dell/HP that have a good keyboard (obviously there is some subjectivity here)? If Lenovo made a model with the thinkpad keyboard from 10 years ago, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

radicalbyte 10y ago
I just bought an ASUS ZenBook with m3 and super high res screen for my wife. The keyboard feels similar to my MBP13R. Much better than my 3k Dell. Really nice little machine, blows the Air away and is a steal at 650 EUR (~400 USD using Apple's exchange rates).
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Is this the keyboard: http://www.asus.com/zenbook/_img/home/computer02.jpg http://www.asus.com/zenbook/_img/home/computer02.jpg ? I'm not OP, but I'm personally wanting one like this: https://senk9.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/thinkpad-x230-keyboard-1.jpg?w=700&h=469 https://senk9.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/thinkpad-x230-keyb...
  - radicalbyte 10y ago
    Yeah, that's it. Same as the MBP. I personally just use a proper mechanical keyboard if I'm typing for any kind of time. Same thing with mouse/touchpad.
- sndean 10y ago
  I'm also really happy with my Asus Zenbook ux305fa. The keyboard does feel familiar (replacing my 2011 MBP). And Ubuntu runs fine on it - no problems with wifi or anything else so far.
  - rwmj 10y ago
    I love my Asus Zenbook, but I get the feeling that the screen resolution is too high. There's no need to have a 4K screen in an otherwise small laptop, especially combined with rather patchy support in Linux.

jclardy 10y ago

Makes sense with Apple's current terrible product line setup. Both the retina MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro are much more niche than their last generation. Also much more confusing as the MacBook Air successor is $500 more than the 13" Air was (The non-touchbar MacBook Pro is the spiritual successor to the air.) The true 13" Pro for 2016 is also $500 more than the last gen. The 12" MacBook is there...but it is a super niche product compared to the old Air or even the old Pro. It's performance is probably enough for most people, but at that point you could just buy a cheaper windows ultrabook and get similar or better performance for a much lower price. A huge market for Apple used to be college students. Now in 2017 what Apple laptop do they buy? an underpowered MacBook, or an overpriced pro? The best solution for most is buying an older model, but part of the appeal of buying a Mac is having the "latest" thing. Then you get to desktops...and there isn't much to say there. Apple just doesn't do them anymore. This is coming from someone that has used a Mac for the past 10 years and is typing on a 2016 pro. It is nice, but connectivity wise it is too far ahead of its time. In 1-2 years it will be fine, but right now it is just in early adopter territory.

WildUtah 10y ago
Mostly you're straight on, but the latest iMacs are among the best desktop PCs ever built. And they're still a good deal.
- jclardy 10y ago
  As far as AIO's go they are great, especially with the 5k display, but the main issue is that Apple doesn't spec bump them. It has been 472 days since the last iMac update and it will likely be at least until spring before we hear about an update. The main issue for me is that my laptop can now use Thunderbolt 3 accessories, but if I bought an iMac today I'd be stuck with thunderbolt 2 and no usb-c ports for the next 3 or so years that I would be using the machine.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Plus, I'm starting to be concerned with quality. Of the last 12 we've ordered 3 were DOA. They got replaced (one after over 2 months), but it wasn't a good experience. They aren't the dumpster fire that HP turned into on the low end for a while, but it is concerning as we have had to send machines back for recalls and fixes. It made for an interesting discussion when we decided a new lab was going to be Intel NUCs with LG 21x9 monitors over buying the outdated Macs. I am hoping for some sign Apple gets it together in 2017.

velodrome 10y ago

Has anyone here used the MBP touchbar on a daily basis? Does it improve productivity or is it just a gimmick?

j2bax 10y ago
I read on another thread a user that does a lot of podcasting/audio editing say he absolutely loves the touchbar. He can annotate in Word and pause/play/scrub his video on the touchbar without ever changing app focus. This is a somewhat niche purpose, but I could see a handful of similar applications where you need to have simultaneous control of multiple apps.
otheotheothe 10y ago
Yes i do, it greatly increased my productivity, tho i had to tweak it myself and configure it all myself basically with better touch tool, heres a good article about what you can do: https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-really-customize-your-new-touch-bar-ea42ec66f42c https://medium.com/productivity-freak/what-if-you-could-real... i safe you some time and quote the BTT website on what's doable atm: A few words about the current state of the Touch Bar integration in BTT: ''' It’s quite stable now and offers many customization options. You can specify custom Touch Bars for every app or globally You can change how the Touch Bar should appear for every app (e.g. if you want to show the BTT Touch Bar only for certain apps) You can create Touch Bar button groups There are three widgets, more to come. (Currently, Battery Time, Date/Time and an App Switcher widget are available) ''' And then its up to your creativity...the touchid also improved my life, i use it for my password keeper app etc instead of my masterpw... The thing is, you have to ignore all the usual anti touchbar hate and find out for yourselv how YOU could use it, then make a decision if it's worth it for you.
jclardy 10y ago
I have one as my main machine. I use the touchbar about as much as I used the function keys...so almost never. Well that isn't entirely true as I use it for volume all the time which I do like better than just having a key. Also TouchID and 1Password together are amazing since I have a fairly long master password. I think it really depends on what you do though, as I have used it in final cut and that seems nice for swiping around your timeline. Anything with a slider control works well, anything with buttons isn't that great as you actually have to look at the thing to see if a button exists in the first place. I don't think it is necessarily a hardware problem, but right now the software just isn't there. I think Apple should rethink the "default" state a bit to give it some more utility.

ComputerGuru 10y ago

The biggest problem that Apple is creating for itself is not one that is being discussed directly in most of these threads: it's not about the loss in Mac sales, which they clearly don't give a damn about. It's the exodus of producers from their platform. Think about it. For those of you that were Mac fans before the iPhone and before it was cool to be so, who else do you know that used a Mac? Forget why, just who? The answer is: content creators. Video creators. Film editors. Photographers. Music artists. Photoshop experts. And developers. These people create the content that the rest of the "herd" consume. The herd doesn't follow Apple (even though it seems that way); they follow the content, wherever that content is. People didn't switch from Windows to Mac primarily because $x wasn't available on Mac. But soon enough, $x, $y, and $z were on Mac and the switch became easier. Think back to when the iPhone was fighting against BlackBerry and Motorola. It was stupid things like Plants and Zombies and Angry Birds that drove adoption. It was the music industry's alliance with Apple (aka content) that helped the iPhone gain an edge just as much as its technical merit. 5 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to say goodbye to my Mac and go back to Windows. This year, I did (just weeks before the joke of an MBP was announced, thank God). My favorite Mac apps are on Windows. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) gives me native Linux on Windows with decent integration. I have my posix and I have an OS I can use. MS was trash, but they listened to their power users (thank god for Nadella and good riddance to Ballmer) and ditched Metro everything and went back to a useable, dev-friendly desktop with Windows 10. They're embracing 3D printing, they're bringing back the content producers, and this is going to hurt Apple way more than I think they realize right now. Every company makes its money at the bottom, but there's a reason these companies continue to make losing investments at the top: to keep the content creators, the prosumers, the reviewers, the influencers happy. It's not just computers. Look at car companies. Look at what Toyota spent on the LFA. They were _never_ going to recoup those costs, no matter what. The goal was to entrench themselves in the minds of auto enthusiasts, to say that Toyota has the ability, the technical knowhow, and the spirit it takes to make a real super car. Now buy and recommend our normal cars, please. Apple discontinuing first its servers, then its 17" MacBooks (and I've never owned a 17" laptop in my life), its Mac Pros (seriously!?!??), and now, the MacBook Pro (there's a reason there used to be a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. Now "Pro" is marketing and they're all MacBook Pros while none of them are), is the problem. It's clear some pinhead that doesn't get the market is looking at the numbers and thinking "hmmmm, $x, $y, and $z have a $devcost/$saleprice ratio that is poorer than our other mainstream products, kill them," not realizing what that means for 10 years down the line. I'm not saying we're going to see this impact _today_, but we're going to see it at some point. Apple's prosumer focus is what kept it alive when it was bankrupt and desperate and allowed it an opportunity to make a comeback. Ignoring them now isn't just shortsighted and stupid, it's also ungrateful and traitorous. But whatever. I'm happy with my thin & lightweight Xeon ZBook with 32GB of ECC RAM and a 4K display running Windows 10 and Linux. I don't care. But I do think it's a damn shame.

marssaxman 10y ago

I was a Macintosh user since 1985, one of the die-hard faithful who stuck around all the way through Apple's late-'90s doldrums, but I haven't bought a Mac in years and at this point it's hard to imagine why I'd ever feel like paying that premium again. Not that there's anything wrong with them - Apple still makes very nice computers. The simple fact is that computers in general crossed my "good enough" threshold en masse, roughly six or eight years ago, and I just don't care much about the differences anymore. Any machine will meet my needs, as long as it has an SSD and at least 4G of RAM. In this world, why would I pay $1800 for a Macbook Pro when any random $300 Thinkpad will do the job? We're riding out the top end of the S-curve here. That's okay; the market is mature. I expect that Apple can continue to do their high-margin BMW/Mercedes thing for years to come. I just don't happen to need (or even particularly desire) a luxury computer.

visarga 10y ago
Same happened with my digital camera. I love them but I see no need to get a better one.

Girlang 10y ago

This was the year I switched back. I needed more memory and NVIDIA graphics.

xiaoma 10y ago

The way to fix this is to raise prices and push out fewer updates to the line.

Girlang 10y ago

They never should have switched from their "Supercomputer" Power PC to that slow-as-a-snail Intel chip.

aczerepinski 10y ago

I really like developing on my 13" pro from a couple years ago. I like it significantly more than my higher spec 15" pro from work. The light weight and small form factor are key, and obviously I can plug it into a monitor or two when I'm actually at my desk. I hope Apple thinks of someone like me when deciding the specs of the next super light Macbook. Keep the low entry point for students, and offer a premium build for developers and others who can justify it. If they don't nail it, I'm open to other OSs, but I do care about aesthetics which Apple used to have a monopoly on.

Kevin_S 10y ago

Just wanted to add an opinion you don't see as much here, as a non-developer. It's not just developers who are pretty upset about the new Macbook, myself and my fiance were both in the market, and my fiance used a MBP through college. She pretty much fought me on the new MBP until she tried it in store, and promptly was against it. She's going with a Surfacebook and I'll probably go with the new Dell XPS 15 with the 4k screen. It's not just developers that are a bit... confused by the new direction.

potatosoup 10y ago
What was she actually against in the new MBP? (New MBP user myself, don't like the touch bar, but otherwise a fine machine.)
- freehunter 10y ago
  Yeah I'd like to know the answer on that too. I have a 2015 that I like but I was in the store the other day and tried a 2016 and actually liked it. I have no reason to upgrade, but if I was buying one new and I didn't know the Internet hated it, I wouldn't be put off. That trackpad is HUGE!
  - todd8 10y ago
    Can anybody comment on why such a big track pad is useful? I'm using a 4.5 year old MacBook Pro Retina right now and I feel its trackpad is the right size. Aren't the new trackpads easier to touch by accident?
- muro 10y ago
  What about the keyboard?
  - pyrophane 10y ago
    I thought I'd hate they keyboard but was a bit surprised to find out that I actually quite like it. It feels quick and responsive to type on, and the keyboards on the older MBPs feel squishy and imprecise in comparison. I also get that this is absolutely a subjective thing. Some people probably just wouldn't like the lack of travel. Still, I consider myself a pretty discerning keyboard user, and I think the current MBP keyboard is my favorite among the laptop keyboards I have used, with the possible exception of the old Thinkpad keyboard.

megablast 10y ago

This comment section is dire. From people who think it is a dirty little secret that the cheapest items sell more. To people who think apple are now just starting to charge a premium. To some guy who only buys iconic hardware. Most of these comments could be transported back 4 years with little difference.

guelo 10y ago

Both Dell and Lenovo's websites are awful. They try so hard to segment the market that they make it almost impossible to shop their products. I want to buy but I can't figure out what they are selling.

astrodust 10y ago
Dell's laptop picker is bad enough. Try their enterprise server configuration tool and you'll want to burn down their headquarters and steal their red stapler.
edblarney 10y ago
"They try so hard to segment the market that they make it almost impossible to shop their products. I want to buy but I can't figure out what they are selling." Bravo! This is it. So many manufacturers of so many things screw this up so bad. I call it 'Sony-itis'. They have massive segmentation, within that, so many variations, it's crazy. I think it's an issue of culture: unless the change comes from the top, it will never happen. All the MBA's in the world could not convince them to change, operationally. I worked for a 'major' handset manufacturer that just made new products willy nilly. There was hardly any rhyme or reason. They don't exist anymore, or rather, barely do.
- Ezhik 10y ago
  So, Nokia or Motorola?
- bhauer 10y ago
  Yes. The whole "Are you looking for a business computer or a consumer computer" initial decision point is one of the most offensive aspects of the Dell site.
guitarbill 10y ago
I'm guessing it's because for both of them, the amount of sales though their website is tiny. The vast majority is probably though other resellers/retailers for consumers, and sales people for enterprise. But regardless, it's a missed opportunity and a self-fulfilling thing.

thesumofall 10y ago

I think the good news here is that PC and Mac are back on par again. Even for demanding users of mainstream use cases (office, development, ...) both platforms offer great products. Personally, I have an MacBook Air 13" at home and a Lenovo X1 Carbon at work. Both have their unique strengths and weaknesses but they are both great laptops. Windows has done a great leap forward as has PC hardware. If I were in the market today I would really struggle to make up my mind which one it should be.

srazzaque 10y ago
I'd agree with this. Whilst 9-5mac and its readership will be focussed on what Apple is doing right/wrong, this may be ignoring the fact that competitors are offering genuinely compelling products.

nkkollaw 10y ago

Not surprising. Who wants to pay premium for old hardware? I spilled coffee on my MacBook Air and had to replace it. I bought a used early 2015 MacBook Pro for 1000EUR from a guy who bought in 2015, the same that is sold today at the Apple Store for 1,500EUR. I did think about buying the new MacBook Pro (of course without the touch bar), but I just felt stupid spending all that money for an OK laptop.

dkroy 10y ago

Am I the only one that has issues with the Macbook's WIFI and bluetooth drivers? Granted I am sure the price versus specs differential that keeps expanding my have something to do with. With that said, I am a creature of habit, and stuck in my ways and keep using unix and iOS.

Larrikin 10y ago
Everything worked decently well for me until I upgraded to macOS. I can no longer broadcast a wifi network from my computer when connected through ethernet, with no work around. My Logitech mouse also disconnects whenever I put my computer to sleep and sometimes while I am using it now. It isn't found unless I open up the Bluetooth panel and wait a minute or so until it finally reconnects. It will not reconnect without opening the Bluetooth panel. This is with zero interaction from the mouse, by clicking the connect button, which I avoid anyway since clicking reconnect will just create a new duplicate device right under my mouse. But that is if I'm lucky and Bluetooth hasn't gotten into some weird state where Bluetooth has been turned off by the system and clicking the turn on button does nothing so I have to restart. The Bluetooth stuff was obviously considered working if Apple products connected and nothing else was tested. My trackpad has no issue connecting to my laptop even when it gets into that weird state where Bluetooth is forced "off" until a reset

capkutay 10y ago

The jury has been out on Tim Cook's performance as Apple CEO since he took over about 7 years ago. I think this new line of Macs is evidence that he's just too focussed on operations to the point where it's ruining their products. I'm guessing the move to consolidate the ports and kill the audio jack may make total sense internally at Apple when it comes to their 10-year manufacturing operations plan and really maximizing their profitability, but to the outside world it's just bad product development.

m_mueller 10y ago
IMO the big mistake was to give Jony Ive that much power. Should have put Scott Forstall there instead, the man who made their most important product work, but they got rid of him for being too opinionated and against the grain. Well, that's probably exactly what you need in a product developer. (S)He doesn't need to be a good designer, just recognize good design. Ive is just way out of touch with their customer base.
- wmeredith 10y ago
  > Ive is just way out of touch with their customer base. The guy who is chauffeured to work in a car that is twice as expensive than my three bedroom house? Say it isn't so! Ive knows exactly what people want. A $200 watch in a $10,000 gold case so the boys down at the country club won't make fun of me from behind their Omegas and Rolexes, amiright? Sigh... As a long time die hard fan of the Apple that made really interesting transformative tech, watching their decline makes me sad.
ageitgey 10y ago
> The jury has been out on Tim Cook's performance as Apple CEO since he took over about 7 years ago Not to nitpick too much, but Tim Cook only took over as Apple's CEO a little over 5 years ago.
- redwall_hp 10y ago
  It lines up perfectly with the decline of the MBP line. I have a 2011 model, and it's truly pathetic how little of substance has changed since then. * Better processors (a given, under the continuous march of Intel) * Minor GPU improvements, with a multi-year draught where you basically couldn't get a dedicated GPU unless you bought the absolutely most expensive unit. * Higher resolution displays. Meanwhile: * They keep making the damn things thinner, at the expense of functionality. * They ship with half the storage compared to five years ago. Yes, it's NAND. But you shouldn't have to spend $600 extra on a machine that already costs $2000 just to get to the point where you were five years ago. And with the $/GB cost of NAND as comparatively low as it is in recent years... * All the ports are gone. First they killed the ethernet, and now they're down to four USB-C ports. All of your DisplayPort-based stuff you've accumulated is now useless, and you need an adapter to plug in a USB flash drive. I get that they think it's going to drive the market down that path, but would it have killed them to go 50/50? * Hey, let's replace a perfectly useful row of keys that can be bound to things, and the all important escape key, with a shiny touch screen. Fuck touch typists, right? * CPUs still throttle aggressively under load (especially in warmer climates). Thermal management is hard on laptops, but Apple generally opts to sacrifice performance for cosmetics. * RAM has been consistently lacking for such an expensive machine. Considering the OS will make full use of it for caches when extra space is available, and that we live in an era of bloated web pages/browsers and garbage Electron software, the consistent lowballing of RAM is annoying.

weisser 10y ago

I bought my Macbook Air for $1,629 in June of 2012. It's still my main computer and I've spent <$300 (new battery, charger, etc) since the initial purchase. I'm not easy on computers. I travel a lot and this think has put up with very poor treatment. I can't think of a better computer for me. After this one dies I'll definitely buy another Mac (not thinking about which one because I'm expecting this to last at least another year). I hope I'm not disappointed because this computer exceeded my expectations for a laptop.

api 10y ago

They need to get the iOS people away from the Mac and start actually listening to their customers.

jknoepfler 10y ago

I have no regrets about my Dell XPS13.

parr0t 10y ago
Same. My Dell XPS15 is fantastic.

walrus01 10y ago

I switched to OSX when it was at v10.4, the very first generation of Intel chipset Macbook Pros came out. I switched because it was the closest thing I could get to a proper fully integrated desktop environment with a BSD-like command line and full Unix-ish functionality (macports, etc). The first generation of Macbook Pro (Core Duo) had a full complement of ports that were state of the art when it was released. Now OSX is becoming a bullshit iOS-like walled garden of app store garbage and the hardware is marketed at people who like shiny, non-repairable consumer throwaway junk, and nothing has a proper complement of I/O ports. Ugh. Just give me a state of the art Thinkpad with full I/O ports that runs OSX please.

Ezhik 10y ago
>Just give me a state of the art Thinkpad with full I/O ports that runs OSX please. God, this. I still have no idea what I'll replace my Hachintosh T420 with when the time comes.

PaulHoule 10y ago

Back in the 1970s you still had old men who fought in WWII who would refuse to buy a Japanese car, thus, General Motors and Ford abused them because they knew American car buyers would buy American no matter what. It's the same with Macs today. I gave a talk at my local startup accelerator and found that they had every kind of dongle to attach a Mac to a screen, but no (full size) Displayport adapters. The next day I added a full-size to mini Displayport adapter to my kit.

jackhack 10y ago

Corrected title: "Mac sales declined nearly 10% as the company failed to release any hardware improvements for several years running, combined with yawn-inducing changes to MacOS 10.whatever, focusing instead on a watch and phones." Fixed it.

Zelphyr 10y ago

Everyone is complaining about the confusing direction of Apple with regards to the Mac but when I look around, I often wonder if they're just not reacting to what is really happening. For example; my wife's 10 year old MacBook died last year and for the most part, she hasn't missed it. She uses her phone for everything. And for the things that she can't/doesn't want to do on her phone, she uses her iPad. I just bought the family an iMac for Christmas and my kids use it often, but they also spend at least as much time on their iPods. I think what Apple is seeing, and reacting to, is that the younger generation of non-developers are increasingly using their mobile devices for everything. We as power users hate it because we want to continue to have a solid laptop and/or desktop on which to do our work. But I'm guessing that despite our complaining, we're on the whole willing to pony up the money. Not to mention, these machines last a really long time. I'm writing this on a mid-2012 MBP that even with a battery that is going bad will still outlast my friends Window's laptops. So yeah, $2400 is a lot for a laptop by comparison. But its not so bad when you consider that you can reasonably expect to have that machine for a much longer time than a Dell or Lenovo.

Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
I have an IBM ThinkPad from 2004 and Lenovo ThinkPads from (more or less) 2010 and 2015, they all work fine. The 2004 one is slow with current software and the battery lasts like 1 minute, but otherwise it does what it should according to its (now weak) specs. If you think Lenovos don't last, it's probably because you have seen low-end Lenovos (which indeed often break after 3-5 years). But a MBP is a high-end laptop, it should be compared to high-end laptops from other brands.
- soperj 10y ago
  You can also buy a new battery for that 2004 thinkpad and replace it in 2 seconds.
skrause 10y ago
> We as power users hate it because we want to continue to have a solid laptop and/or desktop on which to do our work. And we will. I think the people who can live with only a phone today are the same group of people who were using no computer at all before 1998 or so. Businesses and power users who were using computer long before that will also keep using laptops and desktops in the future. Or do people really think that in 10-20 years all work will be done on phones and restricted tablets? I don't. The PC market might shrink, but it's not going away. If Apple doesn't want to be part of that market anymore other companies will.

eecc 10y ago

Apple's pro laptop design peak was the first Unibody. Just imagine what can get done with the volume: RAM, CPU and GPU wise. I'm a professional developer, I'm comfortable with my web routines but damn I'd love to have a handy tool to work on the edge of that zone.

watertom 10y ago

What is even more baffling is how they can possibly employee 80,000 people. With that many people you think it would be possible to actually update their products regularly, and make the updates compelling. Apple is floating on the surface, and bloating like a dead whale. They have no vision what so ever, and if they do, it's process engineered out of the company. Their previously outstanding product engineering is even falling down. Unless Mr. Cook is able to find or trust a visionary the company will continue to downward spiral. There is a fine line between a vision and a hallucination, and Apple is hallucinating right now.

raincom 10y ago
Majority of 80,000 come from Apple retail stores.

brightball 10y ago

Replaced my 2010 17" MacBookPro with an awesomr hulking 17" beast that is the Dell Precision 7710 and now happily running Fedora 25. Zero regrets. Biggest gotchas were learning that Apple mini display to DVI adapters were passive so I had to buy new active ones.

akulbe 10y ago

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If Apple doesn't care about their Mac line, why should their users? I've been a hardcore Mac fan since '04. That said, it's VERY hard to argue that quality in both hardware and software haven't been declining. I spent over $4K for the 2016 MBP w/Touchbar. Problems. Problems. Problems. I'm 2 days in to completely switching back to Windows. I bought a Dell XPS 15" with a better CPU/GPU and more RAM than the top MBP, for a lot less money. Dell makes a better "Macbook" in the new XPS line, than Apple's own Macbooks. It makes me sad. These days, it's hard to think that Apple cares about anything other than iOS devices.

mrmondo 10y ago

This seems odd to me as now more than ever I see more and more people with MacBooks / iMacs and AppleTVs which have become 'the standard' where as in the past you'd see people with windows laptops or whatever and that'd be the norm it's now appearing to be quite rare (at least from what I've seen in Australia), I don't really know anyone that still uses a windows machine bar one friend who has a gaming rig but he only has it for the GPU and uses a MacBook for everything else other than that it's just a few of the older aged managers / project managers at work and everyone else really uses macOS or Linux of some form.

im_down_w_otp 10y ago

I just want a MacBook Air 11" that's been upgraded to have 16GB of RAM and a slightly larger 12.5" screen put in it. I've been waiting for that for years. Through 3 other MacBook Air purchases; always hoping the next time around they'll make what I want.

srazzaque 10y ago

The only links provided in the article are to other 9to5mac articles. There are no links provided to the actual Gartner/IDC analysis that they've derived the content from - perhaps due to content restrictions. I managed to find some related links [1] and [2] through some searching. But [1] was unlikely to be a source due to the release date (and the fact that it doesn't include Apple data for some reason), and [2] is a little old. But my thinking is that if the sources of data are based purely on "units shipped" as per [2], then this relates to both consumer and commercial use. We know that HP, Lenovo and Dell basically dominate commercial sales - thus a drop in consumer PC sales alone could be highly correlated with a drop in Apple sales. A drop in consumer sales could be due to negative shift in design and direction as many have suggested. But it could also be due to many macro-economic factors that simply do not affect the people here, and are thus hard for us to appreciate - Brexit, no. of mobile devices owned, <insert more speculation here>. As developers or designers, we're not exactly price-sensitive when it comes to buying PCs - so it's likely to be about value proposition and getting exactly what we need. But this cannot be said for everyone. Speaking for myself, I had the opportunity to buy a Macbook Pro last year, but I chose not to due to value proposition, even though I'm willing to spend the cash. I considered the Lenovo X260, Macbook Pro 13", and Dell XPS13. I will admit a bias towards Thinkpads, and I'm indifferent towards Mac OS X (my only OS preference is "not Windows"). I went with the X260 not because of said biases, but purely because at the same price for the Macbook plus one or two upgrades, I got a maxed out X260 with an incredible battery life, plus left-over $ to buy an SSD for Linux (I've never booted the stock hard drive). Screen resolution was the only compromise. My wife then inherited my 5-year-old X220 and its docking station - still running strong. BTW - it always gives me a smug smile inside when Apple or Dell markets a 12 hour battery life as though it's miraculous. I had that on my X220 which is now nearing 5 years old (oh - and I could buy a new battery for it as recently as November 2016). Close to 20 hours with the battery slice. [1] http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prEMEA42255917 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prEMEA42255917 [2] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3474218 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3474218

stekern 10y ago
Did you get the X260 model with FHD screen? Which distro are you running, and have you experienced any issues yet? My old Macbook Pro is due for an upgrade, and I'm strongly considering getting the FHD version of the X260, upgrading it with 16GB RAM, a 500GB SSD and 72Wh battery, and installing Ubuntu or Fedora.

ndesaulniers 10y ago

Sold my 2011 MBA, bought a late 2016 RBS (Razer Blade Stealth).

innocentoldguy 10y ago

I agree that Apple is dropping the ball, but I still buy their laptops and phones because I'm an macOS whore. I hate Windows and Android, and BSD and Linux, and their myriad applications, don't sync with my phone. Also, there isn't anything equivalent to Apple's trackpads on PC laptops. At least not yet. If it weren't for macOS and Apple's superior trackpads, I would probably switch to something else though, since the hardware lineup leaves a lot to be desired nowadays.

james_niro 10y ago

People forget that Apple makes some of the best products in TJ for world. The problem with Apple is that their product last for several years and a lot of us hold on to it. just remember Apple is a cult and it is tons of followers around the world