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PC Shipments In 2013 See the Worst Yearly Decline In History
An anonymous reader writes "The PC market continues to be in free fall, having now seen its seventh consecutive quarter of declining worldwide shipments. Worldwide PC shipments dropped to 82.6 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Gartner, a 6.9 percent decrease from the same period last year. It's worth emphasizing that this past quarter resulted in a total of 315.9 million units shipped in 2013, a 10 percent decline from 2012, and the worst decline in PC market history. The overall shipment level was equal to the one in 2009."
And now the post gets modded up +3, despite the fact that all the facts in it are obviously wrong, or clear examples of spin. Since apparently Slashdot can't tell the difference between some idiot making shit up and the truth without being guided to it by an asshole, I will be the asshole:
> Also, if kept reasonably clean, a Mac will last way longer than the typical OEM box/laptop.
No it won't. It will become obsolete faster as it's completely unmaintainable. Anything that breaks will be harder to deal with. Obsolete components can't be swapped out.
False. As this actual poster has pointed in his other posts, in many cases the stuff in a Mac is non-proprietary. It works a little better then in commodity PCs, because there's a bunch of well-paid geeks in Cupertino whose entire job is to make sure driver updates don't fuck each-other up, but in many cases you can actually replace a part on a Mac with a part sourced from generic PC manufacturers with no problems. The last edition of the Mac Pro was pretty much 100% in this category.
It's true that for many parts it's impossible for an ordinary geek who buys his products exclusively from internet sites that sell commodity PC components to replace some random part on Mac from the sites they go to. The current Mac Pro won't be upgradeable, or replaceable, for anything except RAM and it's single HD from NewEgg.
But who cares? If you're a car geek you don't conclude Toyota sucks because your favorite dealer in after-market parts specializes in Swedish vehicles. You just know that if you need a Toyota part you may actually have to go to some other dealer. Why is it informative for a PC geek to say the same thing about Macs?
Places like OtherWorld Computing have plenty of Mac parts. Googles for specific part numbers from Apple show plenty of places with Mac parts. eBay has plenty of parts, or (the cheapest option), you can buy a dead version of your current machine to use for spares. But you actually have to do the research, rather then simply concluding the parts don't exist because some random Windows-centric online store you love doesn't have the damn things.
BTW, the "expensive parts" is a result of one of the blessing of Mac use: the products retain their value incredibly well. I bought my MacBook it was about $1,100 including software and a decent printer. That was early 2010. PowerMax currently sells it for $699. If you can sell the whole machine for $700 you ain't going to the trouble of parting it out for less.
With a PC, I can do this myself or pay someone else. This isn't an option with a Mac.
"Pay someone else" is always an option with the Mac. Apple Stores are incredible about getting obsolete parts, and they do the work themselves. It's not cheap, but it is an option. Hell, in my experience it is cheap. I spilled Dr. Pepper on my Mac. They fixed it for free. The daughter-board that connects to my laptop's AC Adapter died. They charged $10.73. I don't have AppleCare.
And in the past I have done repairs myself. I just don't bother anymore because an Apple store is only an hour from my House, they work cheap, and the two-hour round trip is a lot more convenient then waiting for some random part in the mail.
My old Mac is a doorstop. Can't even get OS updates for it. Similarly old PCs are fine, especially with an upgraded video card.
Either he's comparing OS X to LINUX (which just pulled the plug on 386 support that people only used because it was kinda cool to power up a 386 into a modernish OS), or Windows XP, which will stop receiving support in April. Of course LINUX is more geek-friendly then a commercial OS. The entire point of creating it was that commercial OSes were a pain in the ass for geeks. OS X beats Windows in geek friendliness because the latest version is free, so my 2010 laptop is still getting free updates to the most modern MacOS. I just upgraded for free, and performance actually improved du