5 ms·

Everyone is coasting in the desktop / laptop market. Refresh cycles are like 5-10 years on PCs now, and it’s not clear tablets even have a refresh cycle. You ca

Everyone is coasting in the desktop / laptop market. Refresh cycles are like 5-10 years on PCs now, and it’s not clear tablets even have a refresh cycle. You can’t get growth on PC hardware anymore, not even if you’re Apple. So it goes into maintenance mode. Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes. Apple is all about mobile phones, the Apple Watch and air pods right now. The MacBook is barely a blip on their product radar.

jrs95 8y ago
I disagree, I think Apple is still rather committed to the Mac even if it is no longer their #1 priority. Even if it's a small part of their profits, it's a big source of the strength of their brand (visually speaking, a Mac stands out against a PC far more than an iPhone stands out against any other smartphone), and that's something that's crucial for all of their products. Bad press about the Mac damages the brand, and if they don't continue to put out a good product (and correct their recent mistakes) they are going to keep getting bad press. I would argue that the Watch and Air Pods are more in the category of the Apple TV than they are the iPhone, because they're just a means of pushing up the average value of each iPhone customer. The Mac both does this and serves as a "halo" which is crucial even if it's less profitable. Honda certainly isn't making much money on NSX sales but that doesn't mean it's not still vital for them to produce it just for the sake of the brand (although I admit that's a bit of an extreme example).
- exelius 8y ago
  Sure; but users stopped buying computer hardware on specs last decade (or at least the mass market Apple is chasing). Macs aren’t even any more expensive than top-end PC laptops. They’re just a brand choice.
  - jrs95 8y ago
    They definitely aren’t usually buying them because of typical CPU/RAM specs or whatever, but I think things like battery life, trackpad, keyboard, display, general build quality are all still very relevant aspects of hardware that people pay attention to. The slow upgrade cycle is definitely hurting things and generally slowing everything down, but it’s not as terrible as it’s often made out to be. It’s been a few years since the 5K iMac launched and it’s still a great desktop. The Mac Pro was botched but at least they’re fixing it. We’ve only had 2 years of weak MacBook Pro releases, and it’s very possible that the next release later this year will address both major issues: a bad keyboard and no 32GB RAM option. The keyboard will matter more for most people, but the added RAM plus 2 more CPU cores and Vega graphics will be a big win for true pro users. I don’t think they’ve necessarily “coasted” on Macs just because the last couple years have been weak. It’s more accurate IMO to say they’ve just fucked up a couple times in the last 5 years — specifically with the Mac Pro and the butterfly keyboard devices.
    - exelius 8y ago
      Oh I agree; Apple’s brand carries a ton of heft in the laptop market because they generally get the “product” features (keyboards, battery life, screen quality, etc) right. It’s only so noticeable because their track record has been so good — we would still have plastic laptops and trackpads with mushy membrane keyboards without Apple’s industrial design incorporating metal and glass. And honestly, their desktop line looks very similar to many PC companies. They make the Mac Mini (aka the Apple NUC), the all-in-one iMac, and the Mac Pro (ok, the Mac Pro sucks and there’s no excuse for it). Anyone doing serious workstation tasks these days is likely using a cloud-based solution. There are a few specialized exceptions (ML development stands out to me), but none big enough to build a product around. Especially when doubling the entire PCs and Laptops category wouldn’t move the needle for Apple at all.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  The big signal for me that Macs are becoming second class citizens is if they ever start supporting Xcode on something that isn’t MacOS. That is the only thing keeping app developers on their platform, and if/when that changes, you know the final nail is in.
  - exelius 8y ago
    I would be surprised if Apple doesn’t throw in with Microsoft soon around mobile development. There’s a lot of symbiosis there — Apple and Microsoft don’t really compete in very many markets against eachother anymore. Visual Studio is actually an awesome development platform (I’m including VSTS in this). There’s not much secret sauce in Xcode to threaten Apple’s App Store revenue — it’s just a bunch of signing keys that Apple controls and manages. I do think Apple will make a strategic decision to diversify from core Mac OS soon. The ever-shrinking space allocated to traditional computers at the Apple Store has convinced me of that. They have more floor space allocated to the Apple Watch than they do the Mac these days.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
Approximate yearly sales of desktop PCs worldwide (all kinds) are 200 million per year... I can't find 5 year refresh cycles on any HP, Dell, etc. desktops or laptops. They tend to refresh in line with corporate cycles, i.e. 18 month to 3 years, from what I see.
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  Contrast with ~1.5 billion (!) smartphone sales per year.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    such figures wont last forever once smartphones are sufficiently mature and there is no performance difference from one model to the next.
    - happosai 8y ago
      The main reason to buy a new phone these days surely is "the old one broke". Being with us all the time. The planned obsolence - unreplaceable battery, glued screen, glassback etc mean phones break all the time. PCs stand still, even laptops tend be mostly stationary. No wonder my work laptop is now 6 years old and I feel no urge to request upgrade.
      - kbwt 8y ago
        > The planned obsolence - unreplaceable battery, glued screen, glassback etc mean phones break all the time. Don't forget planned insecurity two years after release through unpatched software vulnerabilities.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        With shops still selling un-upgradable Android devices with 5.1 on them, I seriously doubt non-technical users actually care about it. https://tinyurl.com/yakmsz6b https://tinyurl.com/yakmsz6b (sorry, in German)
wolfgke 8y ago
> Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes. My personal impression is that while pre-built PCs are mostly sold to businesses, there is a strong growing trend since a few years to build your own PC from parts. I really do observe that if mobility is not an issue, people now tend to move away from laptops towards self-built PCs (or often rather: let a good friend build one). I don't want to go into the details what advantages these have over laptops, but just mention customizability with respect to requirements (e.g. very silent, very high-power, ...) and repairability. A small (but only small) contributing factor is that laptops do not have sufficient power for VR, so you really need a stationary PC for VR. The strongest "dampening factors" with respect to this trend are the growing prices of GPUs, because lots of cryptocurrency miners (in the last years in particular Ethereum) hoard them (but it is my impression that this will somewhat ebb away as soon as attractive ASICs for Ethereum get released) and the growing prices of RAM lately. On the other hand the release of Ryzen made building of PCs with either very high-performance or very good cost-benefit ratio feasible.
- lev99 8y ago
  Is building your own PC really a recent trend? A lot of early pcs were kits people built, and I remember pc gaming in the '90s and '00s was also heavily focused on custom built machines.
  - jhanschoo 8y ago
    Probably the last couple decades saw custom PC building decline in market share as prebuilt solutions became mainstream, but perhaps it's seeing a resurgence now that most consumers have moved from focusing on computers to focusing on smartphones as their personal tech hub.
    - HelloNurse 8y ago
      Now that prebuilt PCs tend to be cheap and limited, anyone who wants something better needs to build the machine from parts.
zoltaan 8y ago
"Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes." I believe you should embrace the novelty concept called 'work' sometime. Then you may see some 'niche' application of PCs. Mobile devices can, yes, be sold in bigger numbers, may produce higher profit, many trivial applications like browsing for news and sharing our newest and greatest experiences by tweets and photos do not require, luckily, a desktop anymore and so these paramount usages could been shifted to the only important platform of mobile devices, yet the second grade activities of design, manufacturing, academia and so still rely on the archaic concept of desktop computers and they keep alive this dying artefact. Even traitor mobile developers (all of them, the fools!) dare to use desktop computers still instead of solely relying on mobile phones. But not long, soon the last aircraft engineer or corporate accountant will sell their desks and throw away the last of the keyboards moving to the only necessary platform of mobiles so the PC can go extinct finally!
- hrktb 8y ago
  I think the GP’s point was laptop sales are outgroing desktop sales at a high pace for a while now. And that in an overall stagnating market.
  - exelius 8y ago
    More that both laptops and desktops are dinosaurs compared to mobile so Apple isn’t pouring R&D into them. And it’s a smart move.

jrs95 8y ago

I disagree, I think Apple is still rather committed to the Mac even if it is no longer their #1 priority. Even if it's a small part of their profits, it's a big source of the strength of their brand (visually speaking, a Mac stands out against a PC far more than an iPhone stands out against any other smartphone), and that's something that's crucial for all of their products. Bad press about the Mac damages the brand, and if they don't continue to put out a good product (and correct their recent mistakes) they are going to keep getting bad press. I would argue that the Watch and Air Pods are more in the category of the Apple TV than they are the iPhone, because they're just a means of pushing up the average value of each iPhone customer. The Mac both does this and serves as a "halo" which is crucial even if it's less profitable. Honda certainly isn't making much money on NSX sales but that doesn't mean it's not still vital for them to produce it just for the sake of the brand (although I admit that's a bit of an extreme example).

exelius 8y ago
Sure; but users stopped buying computer hardware on specs last decade (or at least the mass market Apple is chasing). Macs aren’t even any more expensive than top-end PC laptops. They’re just a brand choice.
- jrs95 8y ago
  They definitely aren’t usually buying them because of typical CPU/RAM specs or whatever, but I think things like battery life, trackpad, keyboard, display, general build quality are all still very relevant aspects of hardware that people pay attention to. The slow upgrade cycle is definitely hurting things and generally slowing everything down, but it’s not as terrible as it’s often made out to be. It’s been a few years since the 5K iMac launched and it’s still a great desktop. The Mac Pro was botched but at least they’re fixing it. We’ve only had 2 years of weak MacBook Pro releases, and it’s very possible that the next release later this year will address both major issues: a bad keyboard and no 32GB RAM option. The keyboard will matter more for most people, but the added RAM plus 2 more CPU cores and Vega graphics will be a big win for true pro users. I don’t think they’ve necessarily “coasted” on Macs just because the last couple years have been weak. It’s more accurate IMO to say they’ve just fucked up a couple times in the last 5 years — specifically with the Mac Pro and the butterfly keyboard devices.
  - exelius 8y ago
    Oh I agree; Apple’s brand carries a ton of heft in the laptop market because they generally get the “product” features (keyboards, battery life, screen quality, etc) right. It’s only so noticeable because their track record has been so good — we would still have plastic laptops and trackpads with mushy membrane keyboards without Apple’s industrial design incorporating metal and glass. And honestly, their desktop line looks very similar to many PC companies. They make the Mac Mini (aka the Apple NUC), the all-in-one iMac, and the Mac Pro (ok, the Mac Pro sucks and there’s no excuse for it). Anyone doing serious workstation tasks these days is likely using a cloud-based solution. There are a few specialized exceptions (ML development stands out to me), but none big enough to build a product around. Especially when doubling the entire PCs and Laptops category wouldn’t move the needle for Apple at all.
Karunamon 8y ago
The big signal for me that Macs are becoming second class citizens is if they ever start supporting Xcode on something that isn’t MacOS. That is the only thing keeping app developers on their platform, and if/when that changes, you know the final nail is in.
- exelius 8y ago
  I would be surprised if Apple doesn’t throw in with Microsoft soon around mobile development. There’s a lot of symbiosis there — Apple and Microsoft don’t really compete in very many markets against eachother anymore. Visual Studio is actually an awesome development platform (I’m including VSTS in this). There’s not much secret sauce in Xcode to threaten Apple’s App Store revenue — it’s just a bunch of signing keys that Apple controls and manages. I do think Apple will make a strategic decision to diversify from core Mac OS soon. The ever-shrinking space allocated to traditional computers at the Apple Store has convinced me of that. They have more floor space allocated to the Apple Watch than they do the Mac these days.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

Approximate yearly sales of desktop PCs worldwide (all kinds) are 200 million per year... I can't find 5 year refresh cycles on any HP, Dell, etc. desktops or laptops. They tend to refresh in line with corporate cycles, i.e. 18 month to 3 years, from what I see.

brianpgordon 8y ago
Contrast with ~1.5 billion (!) smartphone sales per year.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  such figures wont last forever once smartphones are sufficiently mature and there is no performance difference from one model to the next.
  - happosai 8y ago
    The main reason to buy a new phone these days surely is "the old one broke". Being with us all the time. The planned obsolence - unreplaceable battery, glued screen, glassback etc mean phones break all the time. PCs stand still, even laptops tend be mostly stationary. No wonder my work laptop is now 6 years old and I feel no urge to request upgrade.
    - kbwt 8y ago
      > The planned obsolence - unreplaceable battery, glued screen, glassback etc mean phones break all the time. Don't forget planned insecurity two years after release through unpatched software vulnerabilities.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        With shops still selling un-upgradable Android devices with 5.1 on them, I seriously doubt non-technical users actually care about it. https://tinyurl.com/yakmsz6b https://tinyurl.com/yakmsz6b (sorry, in German)

wolfgke 8y ago

> Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes. My personal impression is that while pre-built PCs are mostly sold to businesses, there is a strong growing trend since a few years to build your own PC from parts. I really do observe that if mobility is not an issue, people now tend to move away from laptops towards self-built PCs (or often rather: let a good friend build one). I don't want to go into the details what advantages these have over laptops, but just mention customizability with respect to requirements (e.g. very silent, very high-power, ...) and repairability. A small (but only small) contributing factor is that laptops do not have sufficient power for VR, so you really need a stationary PC for VR. The strongest "dampening factors" with respect to this trend are the growing prices of GPUs, because lots of cryptocurrency miners (in the last years in particular Ethereum) hoard them (but it is my impression that this will somewhat ebb away as soon as attractive ASICs for Ethereum get released) and the growing prices of RAM lately. On the other hand the release of Ryzen made building of PCs with either very high-performance or very good cost-benefit ratio feasible.

lev99 8y ago
Is building your own PC really a recent trend? A lot of early pcs were kits people built, and I remember pc gaming in the '90s and '00s was also heavily focused on custom built machines.
- jhanschoo 8y ago
  Probably the last couple decades saw custom PC building decline in market share as prebuilt solutions became mainstream, but perhaps it's seeing a resurgence now that most consumers have moved from focusing on computers to focusing on smartphones as their personal tech hub.
  - HelloNurse 8y ago
    Now that prebuilt PCs tend to be cheap and limited, anyone who wants something better needs to build the machine from parts.

zoltaan 8y ago

"Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes." I believe you should embrace the novelty concept called 'work' sometime. Then you may see some 'niche' application of PCs. Mobile devices can, yes, be sold in bigger numbers, may produce higher profit, many trivial applications like browsing for news and sharing our newest and greatest experiences by tweets and photos do not require, luckily, a desktop anymore and so these paramount usages could been shifted to the only important platform of mobile devices, yet the second grade activities of design, manufacturing, academia and so still rely on the archaic concept of desktop computers and they keep alive this dying artefact. Even traitor mobile developers (all of them, the fools!) dare to use desktop computers still instead of solely relying on mobile phones. But not long, soon the last aircraft engineer or corporate accountant will sell their desks and throw away the last of the keyboards moving to the only necessary platform of mobiles so the PC can go extinct finally!

hrktb 8y ago
I think the GP’s point was laptop sales are outgroing desktop sales at a high pace for a while now. And that in an overall stagnating market.
- exelius 8y ago
  More that both laptops and desktops are dinosaurs compared to mobile so Apple isn’t pouring R&D into them. And it’s a smart move.