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The niche developer/macrumors posters will never be happy regardless of what Apple does The "niche developer/macrumors posters" were extremely happy with it be

The niche developer/macrumors posters will never be happy regardless of what Apple does The "niche developer/macrumors posters" were extremely happy with it before, and were hearty advocates of it. Further, I would say that developers/enthusiasts comprise a very high percentage of macbook purchasers.

Kurtz79 8y ago
"Further, I would say that developers/enthusiasts comprise a very high percentage of macbook purchasers." And you base this assumption on? Every action from Apple in these last few years have gone towards the wishes of the average developer/enthusiast. Worse keyboards, useless gimmicks, gimped CPUs, fewer ports, less repairability/configurability. If they consider developers/enthusiasts as their main audience, they have a really weird way of catering to them. And since Mac sales have been at least steady over the last years, developers/enthusiasts have a really weird way of showing their discontent. https://bgr.com/2018/01/14/mac-sales-2017-marketshare-pc-decline/ https://bgr.com/2018/01/14/mac-sales-2017-marketshare-pc-dec...
- endorphone 8y ago
  I base it on the fact that among developers it is an extraordinarily popular laptop, and that there are a shitload more developers than most people seem to estimate. We are a pretty large "niche" nowadays. I have a Lenova Yoga 720 and I am almost always the single non Macbook user in any developer group. "developers/enthusiasts have a really weird way of showing their discontent" If you want to use xcode, you have no choice[1]. If you're in the ecosystem, you have no choice. So you complain about it and hope they change it the next time around. [1]-I remote desktop to my desktop, but eh.
  - Kurtz79 8y ago
    My point is that there is a much larger audience outside of our own "niche". The fact that we see a lot of developers with Macs, does not mean that they are a large audience among all of the Mac users. My brother works at an Apple shop, and the vast majority of people he has to attend come from all walks of life, they are not developers/enthusiasts.
    - endorphone 8y ago
      We are talking specifically about Macbooks. Among buyers of the iPhone, iPad, and iMac is a broad, society-representing demographic. For Apple laptop it is overwhelmingly developers and aficionados (e.g. designers). I don't have any official stats, but I don't know a single person who owns a Mac laptop who isn't in those two categories.
    - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
      There are around 20 million developers globally and Apple has been selling 4.5 million Macs per year on average since 2013 (most of them MacBooks). If 27% of all developers are using Macs (as the stackoverflow survey indicates) and the machines are replaced after 4.5 years then developers would be buying ~1.2 million Macs per year, 27% of all Macs sold. In terms of revenue developers are probably an even larger share, perhaps a third? That's still not the majority, but it's certainly very significant even assuming that Mac users are overrepresented in the stackoverflow survey.
astrodust 8y ago
Happy? Every single MacBook that's come out has been booed, loudly, by the "niche developer/macrumors posters". Without exception. This is a long trend that goes back to the old PowerBook days. Yet the same group that was so vocal in denouncing the new model is suddenly a huge fan of it when a new-new model comes in. And so the cycle repeats.
- skgoa 8y ago
  It happens with every Apple product since as far back as at least the original iPod. There is always one thing (or a small number of things) that people just can't stop complaining about... Yet the product gets super high sales numbers a year or two later the people who complained the loudest return to buy the newest verison anyway. I mean, the people who don't like it are in their right to have that opinion. It sucks when your use case gets fucked. But when the removal of the ESC key is your reason to bemoan the sure death of the MacBook, you gotta at least be aware that you are in a tiny, tiny minority.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    I just don't understand the grief over that. Even if you do use a notebook for programming, would you actually use the laptop keyboard all the time? I always have an external keyboard around for any serious dev work. That way you can pick any style you want, clicky mechanical or wireless or whatever.

Kurtz79 8y ago

"Further, I would say that developers/enthusiasts comprise a very high percentage of macbook purchasers." And you base this assumption on? Every action from Apple in these last few years have gone towards the wishes of the average developer/enthusiast. Worse keyboards, useless gimmicks, gimped CPUs, fewer ports, less repairability/configurability. If they consider developers/enthusiasts as their main audience, they have a really weird way of catering to them. And since Mac sales have been at least steady over the last years, developers/enthusiasts have a really weird way of showing their discontent. https://bgr.com/2018/01/14/mac-sales-2017-marketshare-pc-decline/ https://bgr.com/2018/01/14/mac-sales-2017-marketshare-pc-dec...

endorphone 8y ago
I base it on the fact that among developers it is an extraordinarily popular laptop, and that there are a shitload more developers than most people seem to estimate. We are a pretty large "niche" nowadays. I have a Lenova Yoga 720 and I am almost always the single non Macbook user in any developer group. "developers/enthusiasts have a really weird way of showing their discontent" If you want to use xcode, you have no choice[1]. If you're in the ecosystem, you have no choice. So you complain about it and hope they change it the next time around. [1]-I remote desktop to my desktop, but eh.
- Kurtz79 8y ago
  My point is that there is a much larger audience outside of our own "niche". The fact that we see a lot of developers with Macs, does not mean that they are a large audience among all of the Mac users. My brother works at an Apple shop, and the vast majority of people he has to attend come from all walks of life, they are not developers/enthusiasts.
  - endorphone 8y ago
    We are talking specifically about Macbooks. Among buyers of the iPhone, iPad, and iMac is a broad, society-representing demographic. For Apple laptop it is overwhelmingly developers and aficionados (e.g. designers). I don't have any official stats, but I don't know a single person who owns a Mac laptop who isn't in those two categories.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    There are around 20 million developers globally and Apple has been selling 4.5 million Macs per year on average since 2013 (most of them MacBooks). If 27% of all developers are using Macs (as the stackoverflow survey indicates) and the machines are replaced after 4.5 years then developers would be buying ~1.2 million Macs per year, 27% of all Macs sold. In terms of revenue developers are probably an even larger share, perhaps a third? That's still not the majority, but it's certainly very significant even assuming that Mac users are overrepresented in the stackoverflow survey.

astrodust 8y ago

Happy? Every single MacBook that's come out has been booed, loudly, by the "niche developer/macrumors posters". Without exception. This is a long trend that goes back to the old PowerBook days. Yet the same group that was so vocal in denouncing the new model is suddenly a huge fan of it when a new-new model comes in. And so the cycle repeats.

skgoa 8y ago
It happens with every Apple product since as far back as at least the original iPod. There is always one thing (or a small number of things) that people just can't stop complaining about... Yet the product gets super high sales numbers a year or two later the people who complained the loudest return to buy the newest verison anyway. I mean, the people who don't like it are in their right to have that opinion. It sucks when your use case gets fucked. But when the removal of the ESC key is your reason to bemoan the sure death of the MacBook, you gotta at least be aware that you are in a tiny, tiny minority.
- astrodust 8y ago
  I just don't understand the grief over that. Even if you do use a notebook for programming, would you actually use the laptop keyboard all the time? I always have an external keyboard around for any serious dev work. That way you can pick any style you want, clicky mechanical or wireless or whatever.