14 ms·

Truly phenomenal. But then when no one else is making decent laptops this is what happens. If anything the gap has grown thanks to Windows 8. I'm not a fan of

Truly phenomenal. But then when no one else is making decent laptops this is what happens. If anything the gap has grown thanks to Windows 8. I'm not a fan of Yosemite by any stretch, but it is very much the least bad of the available options. And on mobile, iOS is very clearly in for the long haul now. There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, but it now looks like the iOS market share in developed markets is going to remain fairly solid. I can't be the only one that has noticed the rise of the Mac-based business but all running on Office 365. It seems to be the new default.

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
I have the opposite impression. Regardless of the bug aspect, I find that Windows 8 looks much more advanced, polished and sophisticated than Mac OS, which has been stagnating for several years now and is still riddled with mindboggling inconsistencies (e.g. why can I rename a file in the Finder but not in an open file dialog, which looks exactly like a Finder?).
- kevinchen 12y ago
  Pretty sure the open file dialog being read only is a feature and not a bug - you also can't move things around, delete things, etc. I actually like this b/c when I want to find a file, I don't want to move something accidentally. It also lets them implement things like dragging a file from Finder to open dialog to select it (that feature doesn't make sense if your file pickers can also modify the files).
  - jmilloy 12y ago
    The point wasn't that having a read-only open file dialog is wrong. It's that that having a read-only file dialog and a full-featured file browser look identical is confusing/misleading.
- sigzero 12y ago
  The open file dialog is exactly that to "open" a file. I find the fact that you can do that on Windows stupid and inconsistent.
  - zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
    You find it normal that two windows that look exactly the same don't behave the same way depending on how they were invoked? This violates a concept at the core of basic GUI design called "The principle of least surprise". I regularly want to do file operations when I open file dialogs, like noticing some garbage file I forgot to delete or wanting to rename things. Having to launch a separate Finder just to do that on Mac OS is a constant reminder how it's an operating system stuck in the early 2000s.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      I can see your point, but Finder looks nothing like an Open dialog. Sure, the Open dialog has a list of files in it but it doesn't feature tabs or a corresponding menu at the top of the screen to allow you to connect to servers (eg screen sharing). They're clearly two different things. I have never seen anyone confused by it. I have seen people more confused by the fact that "renaming" under Finder is done using ENTER! I would expect Enter to open the file but apparently Cmd-Down is the obvious choice... I would say the cluttering up of Windows Explorer is far worse though: it now features a giant useless blue bar (which you can't hide) at the bottom in addition to the statusbar (which is hidden by default), a list of directories on the left in addition to favourites and libraries (all to confuse users so they have no idea where anything is, you should see my mum trying to use it), left and right panes that no longer correspond for navigation (you can navigate with the keyboard in the left tree but the right pane doesn't follow it), a menubar BENEATH the toolbar, an additional toolbar for operations (why aren't these inside the other toolbar?). The list goes on! I know this is under Windows 7 and has likely changed in 8+ but post XP it has really gone downhill.
  - yourapostasy 12y ago
    W-a-a-a-y back in the mists of time, during the MacOS days, it was recognized that Macintosh power users wanted even fewer context switches than the Macintosh was already delivering. There were hooks that allowed savvy software companies to create extensions to the MacOS file dialog, which allowed just exactly what you call "stupid and inconsistent". For users who wanted to work as much as possible through the GUI via the keyboard, these file dialog extensions allowed a lot of customization to workflows. These customizations were apparently popular with the graphics artist set; when I spoke with some of these folks out of curiosity (since I agree with you that cramming these features is wildly inconsistent with the Mac design principles, but an awful lot of them were buying these packages from me at the time), it turns out that it was a very practical way to wrangle lots of projects and lots of files in each project going on at the same time. It was a variation of the highly customized key bindings you see lots of vi/emacs/terminal users create, often by those who deal with workflows that have a repetitive aspect, but not repetitive enough to automate. It just so happened these key bindings were all in the file dialog. Since these were primarily graphics artists who I found were the most vocal about these customizations, it totally made sense to me then why they wouldn't be living in emacs and customizing that instead. Mostly actions like "jump to this folder", "copy this filename", "search in this folder", "recursively search from this folder", "serialize these filenames", etc. Very edge case activities compared to mainstream GUI users, but it turned out immensely useful to this subset of users; literally saved them up to an hour per day, which added up really fast. I sometimes wonder if they weren't onto an aspect of GUI development that seems to have languished in recent years. There used to be a sense in GUI design development of an incremental, iterative progressive disclosure of GUI features to accommodate neophyte to expert users alike, and slow down no one in that entire spectrum of operational expertise and/or desire to manage complexity. The Windows and Mac GUIs these days seem to be far more monolithic in how they treat the user spectrum (Windows a little less so, in that there is more room customization, but I don't really see a lot of users adopting the available customization software), and seem less layered and nuanced. I'm sure this reflects really well upon vendor support costs, but some days I wonder how we can bring to the mainstream GUI-oriented users the deep customization benefits that we programmers take for granted on our text-oriented tool suites. At the same time, the KDE and Gnome environments allow this kind of customization (and then some), and they haven't really taken the mainstream GUI world by storm either, so I concede that this might easily just be a worse is better situation, and the kind of advanced GUIs we programmers think are cool are simply not practical for everyday users.
- afro88 12y ago
  Rather, it's that you got used to renaming files in an open file dialog from when you used other OS's and you now expect it to work like that. Logically, an open file dialog should be read only since the task you're trying to achieve is just to open a file, not rename one. This means no accidents etc. And if you've ever seen my Mum open a file, you'll know accidents happen all the time ;)
- kalleboo 12y ago
  I've seen enough novice users inadvertently move or rename files in the Windows save and open file dialogs that I'd call that a feature.
potatolicious 12y ago
More than Windows sucking, the OEM laptop industry has largely fumbled hardware. For a while it looked like Dell and/or Samsung might actually give Apple a run for its money in terms of design and quality, but that fell flat on its face. I'm a pretty biased sample, but honestly I know more people running non-OSX on Apple laptops than I know people running non-OSX on non-Apple laptops. Apple's laptops beat the rest of the industry even without the OS.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  I think this is a big part of it. I would rather run Windows on an Macbook Pro than any of the other hardware (although the new Lenovo machines are getting closer). That said it is still the phone/tablet/media streams that dominate their income.
  - slantyyz 12y ago
    >> I would rather run Windows on an Macbook Pro than any of the other hardware I honestly don't get why people often say that Macbooks are the best Windows laptops. I have always found the Windows on Mac experience to be sub-par with respect to the key placement, driver behavior, and oversensitive scrolling with Apple mice. I far prefer running Windows on a similarly equipped PC laptop. On the two Macbooks that I have run BootCamp on, I have always found it somewhat painful dealing with the subtle but noticeable differences related to the keyboard and pointing devices.
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      That hasn't been my experience. I find the mouse experience equivalent to my Lenovo. The Lenovo maxes out with an HD screen (1920 x 1080) and has about 2/3rds the battery life. I will concede the keyboard point. I pretty much hate all laptop keyboards equally though.
      - slantyyz 12y ago
        I probably should have specified that my issue is with the Magic Mouse with Windows in particular. It just scrolls when I don't want it to, and when it does, it's stupid fast. I don't have that issue with any non-Apple mouse that I have.
puranjay 12y ago
Google's lack of oversight in the Play store (which is actually a core philosophy) is really holding back Android. There are countless really, really crappy apps and clones crowding the app store. Plus, since most people pirate, developers can't make money (Monument Valley saw around 95% piracy rate and just $250k in revenue from Android, vs. $5.5M from iOS). This sunk Windows Mobile, which I still believe has the best UI of the bunch (sadly, it also had a shit app store and tons of bugs).
- redler 12y ago
  Do you know where we might read more about those Monument Valley numbers? That's an interesting statistic.
  - Htsthbjig 12y ago
    I believe I heard those numbers in one of those videos: http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/12/3/eight-videos-about-the-making-of-monument-valley http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/12/3/eight-vide... But I can't remember exactly when I heard it.
  - avinashv 12y ago
    http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-valley-in-numbers http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-v...
- kirse 12y ago
  You'll have to back up your "shit app store" claim in regards to Windows Phone... I decided try out all-MS with the purchase of a Nokia Icon last year and the integration has been phenomenal. I've also noticed only one bug (in IE of course), and the phone rarely restarts itself like my Droid Maxx often does. Rudy Huyn also creates solid clones of every single popular Andy/iOS app. The UI is cleaner, Nokia Maps > Google Maps especially for Navigation (full GPS offline nav has saved me more than once), complete MS Office app integration, Outlook email client is slick, camera is better than Android/iOS, OneDrive integration works perfectly. I've been very surprised at how well executed it is, and 8.1 promises to be even better with Cortana, etc. To date I've had one app that didn't have an equivalent from WinPhone devs, that was the Amazon Seller App. Then again, I don't spend time playing phone games so I'm not the target market. I keep a Droid Maxx around in case there's a niche app I absolutely must use.
wvenable 12y ago
Windows 8 is not the problem; it's the terrible PC hardware. Even when the hardware is good, manufacturers still screw up when it comes to drivers like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8546702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8546702 Most laptops are so low-end. Finding one that's decent is tough.
- deeviant 12y ago
  I think many would agree with me when I say, Windows 8 was at least part, if not the biggest part of the problem. Nobody wants to relearn a UI just because MS wants to create a bridge into windows phone. The fact is the UI changes did not serve the average MS user, but served Mircrosoft's business ambitions. Any feature that I care about in Windows 8(faster boot, better monitor support, and ah I don't even know of anything else I would care about) could have easily been put into Windows 7 without UI changes and everybody would have been happy. But instead they packaged up the good stuff with a big FU to the power users, who happened to have disproportionate influence on PC acquisition choices and it's not like it was just the power users that were completely flummoxed by the UI changes. Windows PC hardware is fine, drivers are more difficult because there is so much more Win PC hardware out there, but in general I have very little difficulty supporting a multitude of windows hardware/drivers. I actually have a much more difficult time getting driver support in Linux, but for different reasons. Basically, drivers are not what is holding PC sales down, it is Windows 8. It's not just that many saw Windows 8 as a step or two backwards, but the big loss is that it also failed to bring Windows forward.
  - ryan-allen 12y ago
    I think they've learnt from their mistakes and are improving things dramatically in Windows 10. 8.1 was leaps and bounds ahead of 8 (which was a disaster). 10 finally is a sensible direction that allows them to do what they want with mobile and give the desktop users are familiar experience out of the box. 98% of the time when using Windows 8.1 (or 8 for that matter) on the desktop you're in familiar territory anyway. They screwed up, yes, but they will recover, and the way Apple is going with software I'm interested to see how much of the tables will turn in the next few years.
Maascamp 12y ago
Apple's laptop division and the appeal of OSX have very little to do with these revenue numbers. At 6.9B Mac sales are only a few multiples of Microsoft's fledgling Surface business, let alone the laptop market in general. IPhones on the other hand...
beezle 12y ago
I don't think one can by any stretch attribute Apple laptops for the sales of iPhones. Apple is 90% a phone company. As to Macs, while their share has bumped up in recent years, its really just at the top of the historical range going back to the late 80s. (this of course depends what metric you look at and from whom but 7 to 13% seems to be the range). Can't count how many times I heard in the 2008 time frame that OSX/Apple would dominate all in the pc world in short order. Still waiting.
- Steko 12y ago
  Would love citation on the OS X new overlords claim.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Can't count how many times I heard in the 2008 time frame that OSX/Apple would dominate all in the pc world in short order. Still waiting. I've been following the IT world since like 1995, and I've never heard that being said or written once. Can you point to some articles from 2008 that say that Apple will "dominate all in the pc world (with regard to Mac sales) in short order"? What I did read multiple times was that "Apple is doomed" like 10 times a year ever since 1997 (the meme seems to have slowed sometime around last year). That said, note how Apple DOES dominate "all in the pc world" in total revenue/profits when phones are taken into account (after all Microsoft and Google also produce phones). And how Mac profit (not unit sales) DOES dominate "all in the pc world", or at least amounts to the profits of the top-5 rest desktop/laptop seller combined.
- sigzero 12y ago
  That has never been their plan and I have never heard that said.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  I think the people who had been saying that OSX would dominate were deluding themselves - I never heard it said! I would have pointed out the minuscule market share of Apple PCs/laptops as evidence.
MBCook 12y ago
> There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, Could you expound on when that was? I remember their market share dipping as Android grew much faster, but I don't remember it every really looking like they'd disappear.
- simonh 12y ago
  You obviously don't read Business Insider.
Simp 12y ago
> There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, but it now looks like the iOS market share in developed markets is going to remain fairly solid. What are you talking about? iOS market share is at an all time low. It went from 14.4% (2012) to 11.7% (2014). As of the end of Q3 2014, Android was the most popular operating system, with a 84.4% market share, followed by iOS with 11.7%, Windows Phone with 2.9%, BlackBerry with 0.5% and Others with 0.6%.[90] Source: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp
- jdhawk 12y ago
  Those are worldwide statistics (which are great), but in the US, its close to 50/50, UK - 60/40, with the rest of the world slipping down into the numbers you stated. Amongst the english speaking world, iOS is still a MAJOR contender.
  - Simp 12y ago
    According to this article (2014), iOS still has a 32.5% market share in the US. I do admit i'm surprised it's still that high in the US. It's not 50/50, but yes, still a contender in the US. "Android now holds 61.9% of the U.S. market share to Apple’s 32.5%, the lowest percentage iOS has captured since the iPhone 4s launched in 2011." source: http://bgr.com/2014/07/01/android-market-share-2014/ http://bgr.com/2014/07/01/android-market-share-2014/
- skrowl 12y ago
  Agreed. Apple shares are tanking worldwide. You have to really specifically cherry pick to make their mobile share look good. This is why they don't do pie charts during their product launches anymore.
zxcvcxz 12y ago
>it now looks like the iOS market share in developed markets is going to remain fairly solid. It's called vendor lock-in.
netheril96 12y ago
When I decided to to buy a new laptop this year, I decide to go beyond 1366x768. And to my dismay, neither Windows nor Linux can handle even 1920x1080 correctly. All kinds of software, even many system ones, just have small fonts or blurry GUI. Eventually I settled on MacBook. I was not and am not an apple fanboy, but for now, other options are just horrible.

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

I have the opposite impression. Regardless of the bug aspect, I find that Windows 8 looks much more advanced, polished and sophisticated than Mac OS, which has been stagnating for several years now and is still riddled with mindboggling inconsistencies (e.g. why can I rename a file in the Finder but not in an open file dialog, which looks exactly like a Finder?).

kevinchen 12y ago
Pretty sure the open file dialog being read only is a feature and not a bug - you also can't move things around, delete things, etc. I actually like this b/c when I want to find a file, I don't want to move something accidentally. It also lets them implement things like dragging a file from Finder to open dialog to select it (that feature doesn't make sense if your file pickers can also modify the files).
- jmilloy 12y ago
  The point wasn't that having a read-only open file dialog is wrong. It's that that having a read-only file dialog and a full-featured file browser look identical is confusing/misleading.
sigzero 12y ago
The open file dialog is exactly that to "open" a file. I find the fact that you can do that on Windows stupid and inconsistent.
- zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
  You find it normal that two windows that look exactly the same don't behave the same way depending on how they were invoked? This violates a concept at the core of basic GUI design called "The principle of least surprise". I regularly want to do file operations when I open file dialogs, like noticing some garbage file I forgot to delete or wanting to rename things. Having to launch a separate Finder just to do that on Mac OS is a constant reminder how it's an operating system stuck in the early 2000s.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    I can see your point, but Finder looks nothing like an Open dialog. Sure, the Open dialog has a list of files in it but it doesn't feature tabs or a corresponding menu at the top of the screen to allow you to connect to servers (eg screen sharing). They're clearly two different things. I have never seen anyone confused by it. I have seen people more confused by the fact that "renaming" under Finder is done using ENTER! I would expect Enter to open the file but apparently Cmd-Down is the obvious choice... I would say the cluttering up of Windows Explorer is far worse though: it now features a giant useless blue bar (which you can't hide) at the bottom in addition to the statusbar (which is hidden by default), a list of directories on the left in addition to favourites and libraries (all to confuse users so they have no idea where anything is, you should see my mum trying to use it), left and right panes that no longer correspond for navigation (you can navigate with the keyboard in the left tree but the right pane doesn't follow it), a menubar BENEATH the toolbar, an additional toolbar for operations (why aren't these inside the other toolbar?). The list goes on! I know this is under Windows 7 and has likely changed in 8+ but post XP it has really gone downhill.
- yourapostasy 12y ago
  W-a-a-a-y back in the mists of time, during the MacOS days, it was recognized that Macintosh power users wanted even fewer context switches than the Macintosh was already delivering. There were hooks that allowed savvy software companies to create extensions to the MacOS file dialog, which allowed just exactly what you call "stupid and inconsistent". For users who wanted to work as much as possible through the GUI via the keyboard, these file dialog extensions allowed a lot of customization to workflows. These customizations were apparently popular with the graphics artist set; when I spoke with some of these folks out of curiosity (since I agree with you that cramming these features is wildly inconsistent with the Mac design principles, but an awful lot of them were buying these packages from me at the time), it turns out that it was a very practical way to wrangle lots of projects and lots of files in each project going on at the same time. It was a variation of the highly customized key bindings you see lots of vi/emacs/terminal users create, often by those who deal with workflows that have a repetitive aspect, but not repetitive enough to automate. It just so happened these key bindings were all in the file dialog. Since these were primarily graphics artists who I found were the most vocal about these customizations, it totally made sense to me then why they wouldn't be living in emacs and customizing that instead. Mostly actions like "jump to this folder", "copy this filename", "search in this folder", "recursively search from this folder", "serialize these filenames", etc. Very edge case activities compared to mainstream GUI users, but it turned out immensely useful to this subset of users; literally saved them up to an hour per day, which added up really fast. I sometimes wonder if they weren't onto an aspect of GUI development that seems to have languished in recent years. There used to be a sense in GUI design development of an incremental, iterative progressive disclosure of GUI features to accommodate neophyte to expert users alike, and slow down no one in that entire spectrum of operational expertise and/or desire to manage complexity. The Windows and Mac GUIs these days seem to be far more monolithic in how they treat the user spectrum (Windows a little less so, in that there is more room customization, but I don't really see a lot of users adopting the available customization software), and seem less layered and nuanced. I'm sure this reflects really well upon vendor support costs, but some days I wonder how we can bring to the mainstream GUI-oriented users the deep customization benefits that we programmers take for granted on our text-oriented tool suites. At the same time, the KDE and Gnome environments allow this kind of customization (and then some), and they haven't really taken the mainstream GUI world by storm either, so I concede that this might easily just be a worse is better situation, and the kind of advanced GUIs we programmers think are cool are simply not practical for everyday users.
afro88 12y ago
Rather, it's that you got used to renaming files in an open file dialog from when you used other OS's and you now expect it to work like that. Logically, an open file dialog should be read only since the task you're trying to achieve is just to open a file, not rename one. This means no accidents etc. And if you've ever seen my Mum open a file, you'll know accidents happen all the time ;)
kalleboo 12y ago
I've seen enough novice users inadvertently move or rename files in the Windows save and open file dialogs that I'd call that a feature.

potatolicious 12y ago

More than Windows sucking, the OEM laptop industry has largely fumbled hardware. For a while it looked like Dell and/or Samsung might actually give Apple a run for its money in terms of design and quality, but that fell flat on its face. I'm a pretty biased sample, but honestly I know more people running non-OSX on Apple laptops than I know people running non-OSX on non-Apple laptops. Apple's laptops beat the rest of the industry even without the OS.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
I think this is a big part of it. I would rather run Windows on an Macbook Pro than any of the other hardware (although the new Lenovo machines are getting closer). That said it is still the phone/tablet/media streams that dominate their income.
- slantyyz 12y ago
  >> I would rather run Windows on an Macbook Pro than any of the other hardware I honestly don't get why people often say that Macbooks are the best Windows laptops. I have always found the Windows on Mac experience to be sub-par with respect to the key placement, driver behavior, and oversensitive scrolling with Apple mice. I far prefer running Windows on a similarly equipped PC laptop. On the two Macbooks that I have run BootCamp on, I have always found it somewhat painful dealing with the subtle but noticeable differences related to the keyboard and pointing devices.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    That hasn't been my experience. I find the mouse experience equivalent to my Lenovo. The Lenovo maxes out with an HD screen (1920 x 1080) and has about 2/3rds the battery life. I will concede the keyboard point. I pretty much hate all laptop keyboards equally though.
    - slantyyz 12y ago
      I probably should have specified that my issue is with the Magic Mouse with Windows in particular. It just scrolls when I don't want it to, and when it does, it's stupid fast. I don't have that issue with any non-Apple mouse that I have.

puranjay 12y ago

Google's lack of oversight in the Play store (which is actually a core philosophy) is really holding back Android. There are countless really, really crappy apps and clones crowding the app store. Plus, since most people pirate, developers can't make money (Monument Valley saw around 95% piracy rate and just $250k in revenue from Android, vs. $5.5M from iOS). This sunk Windows Mobile, which I still believe has the best UI of the bunch (sadly, it also had a shit app store and tons of bugs).

redler 12y ago
Do you know where we might read more about those Monument Valley numbers? That's an interesting statistic.
- Htsthbjig 12y ago
  I believe I heard those numbers in one of those videos: http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/12/3/eight-videos-about-the-making-of-monument-valley http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/12/3/eight-vide... But I can't remember exactly when I heard it.
- avinashv 12y ago
  http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-valley-in-numbers http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-v...
kirse 12y ago
You'll have to back up your "shit app store" claim in regards to Windows Phone... I decided try out all-MS with the purchase of a Nokia Icon last year and the integration has been phenomenal. I've also noticed only one bug (in IE of course), and the phone rarely restarts itself like my Droid Maxx often does. Rudy Huyn also creates solid clones of every single popular Andy/iOS app. The UI is cleaner, Nokia Maps > Google Maps especially for Navigation (full GPS offline nav has saved me more than once), complete MS Office app integration, Outlook email client is slick, camera is better than Android/iOS, OneDrive integration works perfectly. I've been very surprised at how well executed it is, and 8.1 promises to be even better with Cortana, etc. To date I've had one app that didn't have an equivalent from WinPhone devs, that was the Amazon Seller App. Then again, I don't spend time playing phone games so I'm not the target market. I keep a Droid Maxx around in case there's a niche app I absolutely must use.

wvenable 12y ago

Windows 8 is not the problem; it's the terrible PC hardware. Even when the hardware is good, manufacturers still screw up when it comes to drivers like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8546702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8546702 Most laptops are so low-end. Finding one that's decent is tough.

deeviant 12y ago
I think many would agree with me when I say, Windows 8 was at least part, if not the biggest part of the problem. Nobody wants to relearn a UI just because MS wants to create a bridge into windows phone. The fact is the UI changes did not serve the average MS user, but served Mircrosoft's business ambitions. Any feature that I care about in Windows 8(faster boot, better monitor support, and ah I don't even know of anything else I would care about) could have easily been put into Windows 7 without UI changes and everybody would have been happy. But instead they packaged up the good stuff with a big FU to the power users, who happened to have disproportionate influence on PC acquisition choices and it's not like it was just the power users that were completely flummoxed by the UI changes. Windows PC hardware is fine, drivers are more difficult because there is so much more Win PC hardware out there, but in general I have very little difficulty supporting a multitude of windows hardware/drivers. I actually have a much more difficult time getting driver support in Linux, but for different reasons. Basically, drivers are not what is holding PC sales down, it is Windows 8. It's not just that many saw Windows 8 as a step or two backwards, but the big loss is that it also failed to bring Windows forward.
- ryan-allen 12y ago
  I think they've learnt from their mistakes and are improving things dramatically in Windows 10. 8.1 was leaps and bounds ahead of 8 (which was a disaster). 10 finally is a sensible direction that allows them to do what they want with mobile and give the desktop users are familiar experience out of the box. 98% of the time when using Windows 8.1 (or 8 for that matter) on the desktop you're in familiar territory anyway. They screwed up, yes, but they will recover, and the way Apple is going with software I'm interested to see how much of the tables will turn in the next few years.

Maascamp 12y ago

Apple's laptop division and the appeal of OSX have very little to do with these revenue numbers. At 6.9B Mac sales are only a few multiples of Microsoft's fledgling Surface business, let alone the laptop market in general. IPhones on the other hand...

beezle 12y ago

I don't think one can by any stretch attribute Apple laptops for the sales of iPhones. Apple is 90% a phone company. As to Macs, while their share has bumped up in recent years, its really just at the top of the historical range going back to the late 80s. (this of course depends what metric you look at and from whom but 7 to 13% seems to be the range). Can't count how many times I heard in the 2008 time frame that OSX/Apple would dominate all in the pc world in short order. Still waiting.

Steko 12y ago
Would love citation on the OS X new overlords claim.
coldtea 12y ago
>Can't count how many times I heard in the 2008 time frame that OSX/Apple would dominate all in the pc world in short order. Still waiting. I've been following the IT world since like 1995, and I've never heard that being said or written once. Can you point to some articles from 2008 that say that Apple will "dominate all in the pc world (with regard to Mac sales) in short order"? What I did read multiple times was that "Apple is doomed" like 10 times a year ever since 1997 (the meme seems to have slowed sometime around last year). That said, note how Apple DOES dominate "all in the pc world" in total revenue/profits when phones are taken into account (after all Microsoft and Google also produce phones). And how Mac profit (not unit sales) DOES dominate "all in the pc world", or at least amounts to the profits of the top-5 rest desktop/laptop seller combined.
sigzero 12y ago
That has never been their plan and I have never heard that said.
72deluxe 12y ago
I think the people who had been saying that OSX would dominate were deluding themselves - I never heard it said! I would have pointed out the minuscule market share of Apple PCs/laptops as evidence.

MBCook 12y ago

> There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, Could you expound on when that was? I remember their market share dipping as Android grew much faster, but I don't remember it every really looking like they'd disappear.

simonh 12y ago
You obviously don't read Business Insider.

Simp 12y ago

> There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, but it now looks like the iOS market share in developed markets is going to remain fairly solid. What are you talking about? iOS market share is at an all time low. It went from 14.4% (2012) to 11.7% (2014). As of the end of Q3 2014, Android was the most popular operating system, with a 84.4% market share, followed by iOS with 11.7%, Windows Phone with 2.9%, BlackBerry with 0.5% and Others with 0.6%.[90] Source: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp http://www.idc.com/prodserv/smartphone-os-market-share.jsp

jdhawk 12y ago
Those are worldwide statistics (which are great), but in the US, its close to 50/50, UK - 60/40, with the rest of the world slipping down into the numbers you stated. Amongst the english speaking world, iOS is still a MAJOR contender.
- Simp 12y ago
  According to this article (2014), iOS still has a 32.5% market share in the US. I do admit i'm surprised it's still that high in the US. It's not 50/50, but yes, still a contender in the US. "Android now holds 61.9% of the U.S. market share to Apple’s 32.5%, the lowest percentage iOS has captured since the iPhone 4s launched in 2011." source: http://bgr.com/2014/07/01/android-market-share-2014/ http://bgr.com/2014/07/01/android-market-share-2014/
skrowl 12y ago
Agreed. Apple shares are tanking worldwide. You have to really specifically cherry pick to make their mobile share look good. This is why they don't do pie charts during their product launches anymore.

zxcvcxz 12y ago

>it now looks like the iOS market share in developed markets is going to remain fairly solid. It's called vendor lock-in.

netheril96 12y ago

When I decided to to buy a new laptop this year, I decide to go beyond 1366x768. And to my dismay, neither Windows nor Linux can handle even 1920x1080 correctly. All kinds of software, even many system ones, just have small fonts or blurry GUI. Eventually I settled on MacBook. I was not and am not an apple fanboy, but for now, other options are just horrible.