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Chromebooks Outsell Macs For the First Time In the US (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: Google's low-cost Chromebooks outsold Apple's range of Macs for the first time in the U.S. recently. IDC analyst Linn Huang confirmed the milestone to The Verge. "Chrome OS overtook Mac OS in the US in terms of shipments for the first time in 1Q16," says Huang. "Chromebooks are still largely a US K-12 story." IDC estimates Apple's U.S. Mac shipments to be around 1.76 million in the latest quarter, meaning Dell, HP, and Lenovo sold nearly 2 million Chromebooks in Q1 combined. Chromebooks have been extremely popular in US schools, and it's clear from IDC's comments the demand is driving US shipments. Outside of the US, it's still unclear exactly how well Google's low-cost laptops are doing. Most data from market research firms like IDC and Gartner focuses solely on Google's wins in the US.
The low cost with touch screen tells me all the other laptops are extremely marked up. My only disappointment is the lack of apps for it. But for simple Google Docs work, it can't be beat for the dollar.
If all one needs to do is surf the Web, handle minor photo and video editing, then a Chromebook is ideal. A full-blown Mac is a complete waste of money. I'm in IT and manage everything from email servers to Wi-Fi, and now, thanks to modern computing and VPNs, can do everything from a Chromebook or actually, just any browser.
I like Chromebook because they are simple, inexpensive, and are harbingers of what's to come--namely, all of our comings and goings will be on the Web.
So.... Chromebooks are selling like gangbusters to a demographic that is very likely to smash their devices, and it's easier to replace a $200 computer than a $2000 one? Holy crap, stop the presses!
Is it really so hard for Verge to maintain readership, that they need to do ridiculous name drops just to get attention?
Want to know what I *really* want to see? School boards finally realizing that blindly throwing technology at a problem isn't going to result in better outcomes. First iPads, now Chromebooks. They continue to increase the burden of already razor thin IT staff, and I have yet to see one single study indicating that education quality and grades have improved.
They are cheap as hell, last forever on their batteries, and for end-users are effectively immune to malware, adware, and all the other horrible shit that makes your grandmother unable that piece of shit windows laptop. (And it's always a piece of shit windows laptop. What is it about grandmothers and their abilty to buy the very worst laptop ever made?)
And when you have physical access it's easy to put them in developer mode (Which will securely wipe any existing userdata, by design). Then you can get a root shell and install whatever OSS toys you want.
that common users do not want to be administrators. They dont want to think about patches or updates, or antivirus. They just want to open the product, and consume their services.
its great for sysadmins...we'll always have a job. However its a killing stroke for corporations and plutocrats hoping the "learn to code" effort is going to help drive the cost of developers or sysops down. You've spent 50 years getting Americans to consider technology a product. things like DMCA and closed-door trade agreements have all but cemented the notion that the consumer is a mindless cash cow, not to be permitted to touch the technology unless theyre to part with their identity or money. this mindset isnt about to change.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The Mac is not simply a PC. It's a PC with a soldered CPU and soldered RAM, sold at twice the price of an equivalent PC.
Sent from my 2010 Mac mini.
Why is this even a story?
Why is this even a post?
... sold at twice the price of an equivalent PC.
Sorry, not true. I defy you to find a similarly built PC for any more than 5~10 percent less than a comparable Mac. I find that comparable computers run pretty much the same price.
Consider the source. This is the same IDC that announced US Mac sales suffered a 1.7% slump when they had actually grown 18% not too long ago. Granted, that was an extreme outlier, but it bears repeating that estimates don't always match reality, particularly when it comes to IDC, since they have an established and documented history of publishing reports that flatter their clients while downplaying the competition. The link above gives details on a number of other irregularities in IDC's data and methodology over the years prior to the incident I cited, such as millions of unverified sales from "other" vendors appearing out of thin air to suppress market share growth in the competition and their history of double-dipping by finding ways to count their clients' products in more than one category while inventing reasons why the competing products are only counted in one category.
Even with all of that said, however, I do expect that the numbers aren't too far off one way or the other, given that Apple itself posted a YOY decline in Mac sales and have had either nonexistent or lackluster updates to their Mac lines so far this year (e.g. only the MacBook has gotten a minor speed bump, whereas the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air haven't gotten their usual updates by now, though that may indicate more significant improvements at WWDC next month).
Challenge accepted and please not that in pretty much every measure the PC is curbstomping the Mac on performance.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah.... makes perfect sense. One thing even my own daughter noticed in middle school though is, all Chromebooks are far from equal. One district she attended school in for a while had really flimsy, cheap Chromebooks that were often breaking down. Another had very nice, solid feeling variants. The main difference between those districts was the tax base in each. The wealthier district had the higher-end Chromebooks in use.
With a Macbook Air, at least you know pretty much what you're getting. Very arguably more than what's needed in a school setting these days -- but it "is what it is". (For our medium sized business, it's a pretty solid all around notebook option for our staff. But we're using Office/Outlook all day long, among other things. Not just web based apps.)