

Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a Decade - vmyy99
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/pc-to-mac-sales-ratio/

======
AlexMuir
PCs are now fucked in the moneyed mass market. The 'PC' brand is sunk - PC is
to computer what Blackberry is to phone - you'll get one from your company,
but you covet an iPhone/Macbook. This is thanks to:

a) The sub-par cheap plastic laptops/netbooks that have been thrown out for
the last three years at $300. They were barely usable at first, and now the
keys have fallen off the keyboard and the speakers don't work. And that advert
to renew some antivirus keeps popping up. And the computer whizzkid who used
to fix it says he doesn't know much about PCs now - he's moved to an Apple
Mac.

b) Windows and IE. People are noticing that Facebook runs like crap in IE. And
that their harddrive still needs formatting every year or the computer runs
like a bag of shit. What's that Microsoft? Windows 8 has all this fixed. It
doesn't matter - there are still millions of computers out there running Vista
and Win 7, taking 60 seconds to boot up (standby mode never works - fuck knows
why). Everytime I sit in front of one and right click-Exit all that shit down
at the bottom right I curse you.

c) The death of desktop software.

-

This is one of the two reasons I'm bullish on Apple (the other is that I want
to see them move into the living room.)

Now PCs and Linux - that's more like it but there's no profit in it.

~~~
feralmoan
I think on the Windows side of things there's been a huge drop in the quality
of PC games which is often overlooked, contributing to an overall degradation
of the market. I used to only build rigs and run windows for games and dual
boot into real work mode (ubuntu), but with such low quality content on PC
nowdays its hard to even justify installing windows let alone building a PC.
*disclaimer: I'm neither old or jaded, its a trend I've noticed amongst my
peers also.

~~~
ladzoppelin
"low quality content on PC" is completely wrong. Some of the best programs
around are desktop software. Samplitude, Sublime 2, Studio One 2 are a brief
few. What happens in your circle of friends does not represent anything and is
one of the reasons why I think Facebook is so unhealthy for the younger
generation. BTW if you do real pro audio/video work you are not going to be
using Linux simply because most "Pro" audio/video does not come in a Linux
version.

~~~
TalkSic
Nuke, Smoke, Houdini, Maya, rv.

Wrong on second point regarding video.

------
olalonde
It's kind of sad that Apple has virtually no competition for its MacBook Pro
and MacBook Air in terms of build quality (last time I checked, I'd be happy
to be proved wrong). Nowadays, I barely care about "hard" specs (CPU, memory,
etc.) when shopping for a laptop, what I really care about is: low heating,
low weight, thinness, long battery life and strong build quality. Although I'd
rather use Linux than OS X, it's hard to find a laptop of comparable quality
to the MacBooks for the requirements I mentioned (of course, it isn't to hard
to find if what you are interested in is raw speed and performance).

~~~
dantheman
Thinkpads are still quite nice.

~~~
Danieru
Plus no one will ever steal it.

I've had two people say to my face "Wow, that's an old computer".

Which is silly since it is the world's coolest looking laptop.

~~~
Variance
Does this mean that Thinkpads are retro now? People always seem surprised that
my thinkpad has a trackpoint-nub-thing and yet is less than a year old.

------
jsz0
Easy to understand why this is happening. When Vista launched you could walk
into a store and buy it on a PC that could barely run it. Mostly due to lack
of RAM and bloat ware. Sure it was cheap but not a good value. A $350
borderline unusable computer is no bargain. I think people are starting I
catch onto this. Things are better now in the PC market bur if you got burnt
in the last few years the take away lesson is cheap isn't always better. If
you only plan to replace your computer every 3-4 years $1000-$1500 isn't a
huge investment to make.

~~~
grecy
> A $350 borderline unusable computer is no bargain. I think people are
> starting I catch onto this.

I agree 100%.

Many friends and family have cheap and crap laptops that continually crash,
and last only a year or two before being replaced (for another cheap, crap
laptop)

As time has gone on, you can see they are slowly realizing this is no bargain,
and are starting to look at the expensive end, and towards Apple.

~~~
freehunter
The problem is people buy cheap, crap laptops, notice they are cheap and crap,
and hear that the Macs are not cheap but also not crap. They then run out and
buy a quality Macbook for $2300, completely ignoring the fact that it's not
that Apple makes a better product, it's that Apple makes a product that exists
in a market these people have never even considered.

Quality Windows laptops exist. I sold my HP Envy for almost as much as I
bought it for after a year of solid use. It cost me $1000 brand new, and there
was almost nothing the Macbook could offer besides OSX that could do anything
but match it.

Yes, Macbooks are better than $300 laptops. But you know what is also better
than a $300 laptop? A $1000 laptop, and the extra $1300 in your pocket. Your
Dodge Neon is a piece of junk, true, but before you shell out cash for BMW
5-series, why not take a look at the Ford Fusion?

~~~
grecy
> Your Dodge Neon is a piece of junk, true, but before you shell out cash for
> BMW 5-series, why not take a look at the Ford Fusion?

Excellent point.

I'm not saying people that are sick of cheap/crap laptops need or must go and
buy an Apple product. I'm saying they start to realize buying something more
expensive works out better in the long run.

When looking at something more expensive, Apple's products come into the
picture (but are not the whole picture, obviously)

While we're here, lets not exaggerate too much. Apple makes exactly one laptop
for $2300, and it's probably the fastest/most feature packed laptop ever made,
without a competitor right now. Lots of their laptops are $1200 - $1700, which
certainly is more expensive than the competition, but again, we've already
decided we're willing to spend a little more for higher quality at this point.

~~~
Tmmrn
Fastest? Most feature packed? You can get notebooks with a HD 7970M and 16GB
Ram for ~2300$.

------
kbob
Could that graph possibly be more misleading? Plotting the ratio of a number
to one much smaller exaggerates small changes so you miss the big picture: PC
sales dwarf Mac sales.

A better graph: two lines, one showing PC sales each year and the other
showing Mac sales. It would show that Mac sales are less, and it would also
show how much the market has grown since 1984. Even better: the number of
machines of each type currently in use.

~~~
pohl
It depends on what you want to visualize. This graph is great for visualizing
the effect of Mac sales outgrowing the pc market for 24 consecutive quarters.

~~~
calciphus
This graph could just as easily be explained as people with high incomes (Mac
users generally do) are more insulated from economic downturn than the people
buying $300 laptops. Reading it how you want doesn't make it true.

Even according to the graph, 15x means that one in 16 machines sold is a Mac.
Math tells us that's 6.25% market share. That number hasn't appreciably
changed in real terms in the last decade. Yes, moving from 4% to 6% is a 50%
"growth", if you want to define growth that way. Normally, that's 2% growth.

However, the inability of Mac to grab any significant market share from the
overall PC market should be a concern, considering the relative popularity of
their other devices.

~~~
pohl
_This graph could just as easily be explained as people with high incomes (Mac
users generally do) are more insulated from economic downturn than the people
buying $300 laptops._

Not if you look at the labels on the horizontal axis and you know when the
downturn actually began.

------
Tmmrn
Better headline: Apple's share in the PC market increases.

Wikipedia says:

> The Macintosh ( /ˈmækɨntɒʃ/ mak-in-tosh),[1] or Mac, is a series of personal
> computers (PCs) designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc.

And some random quote from a comment here:

> the computer whizzkid who used to fix it says he doesn't know much about PCs
> now - he's moved to an Apple Mac.

You mean he doesn't know about windows since the Apple Mac is a PC too.

------
taligent
Would love to see that graph against the trend from desktops to laptops. It
definitely seems like people when buying their first Mac are doing so in a
laptop form factor usually the Air.

------
vtry
I love this comment: "The working class folks who buy PC's are getting whacked
financally, while rich people who buy Macs are making off like bandits."

~~~
mkaltenecker
It’s kind of astonishing that people still have such weird believes about
Macs. You can’t be successful to the level Apple is by only selling to rich
people. Macs are successful as a mass market product.

~~~
grecy
> You can’t be successful to the level Apple is by only selling to rich people

Porsche and Ferrari come to mind...

~~~
Kynlyn
Porsche and Ferrari combined don't have the market share for vehicles that
Apple has on computers, so the comment is valid. Apple's market share is too
large to just be for "rich people."

