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Microsoft Says It Is Winning Its New War Against Macs (cultofmac.com)
Windows PCs are starting to chip away at Apple's strong grip of the high-end computer market, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said on an earnings call Thursday. From a report: Microsofts licensing business, which sells Windows to third-party PC makers, was up 5 percent last quarter, confirmed CFO Amy Hood during an earnings call on Thursday. The "non-pro" (consumer) market grew 5 percent, beating the overall decline of the PC industry. "Our partner ecosystem continued to see growth and share gains in the Windows premium device category," Hood continued. Those gains would have eaten into Apple's share of that market, which has been dominated by Macs until recently. There are other things that could have contributed to this, of course. Many long-time Mac users have been somewhat disappointed with Apple's most recent releases, which come with big changes that not everyone is willing to embrace.
All my friends have ditched Windows 10 and gone to MacOS.
Several have lost work due to updates and reboots. These aren't IT people.
The spying and constant messing around with the system were enough for them.
OSX/MacOS isn't perfect but for them it is a whole lot better for average users than W10.
While it's true that Apple hasn't done much in the way of releasing new products to actually compete, and the one product line they did refresh was with a controversial touch bar in place of function keys, Microsoft has gotten better at making products, particularly their Surface line. The newest one that looks much like an iMac but has a huge touch screen seems like it would be great for people who do a lot of drawing. I'll admit that I have no use for such things, but they've started making some interesting hardware, or at least releasing it. Back in the Ballmer days that talked about a lot of interesting stuff, but most of it never saw the light of day. Even outside of Surface, they're making stuff like Hololens.
Their software on the other hand doesn't seem better, at least from the consumer side. I guess Azure is fairly popular and they've probably got other stuff I'm not overly familiar with that gets used by businesses. However, if Microsoft hadn't started making better products, people would have jumped ship from Apple for something else like HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. instead of buying Microsoft hardware.
Uh, real digital artists use Wacom Cintiqs, not Surface. I should know, I worked with hundreds of them. I've never seen a single artist use a Surface.
If you're getting an XPS 13 and don't want Windows, take a look at their Developer Edition line; http://www.dell.com/us/busines... Ships with Ubuntu, but you should be able to put any flavor of Linux you'd like on it.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
you're a retarded fanboi.
1, 2, 4) shit you can't use because there are no TB3 docks
3) LOL. Samsung 960 pro is almost twice as fast.
5) LOL, my sides, you can put that smiley face there on the touchpads
6) smaller is actually better
7) Thinkpad from fucking 2005 had that
1. 80 Gbps of raw, multifunctional I/O bandwidth. Nearly TWICE that of any other Laptop, regardless of brand, regardless of price.
If it had a port to check my car's tire pressure that would also be a feature that no other laptop has, at any price. In other words: so what?
This falls into the category of shit I don't need and can't use with any equipment i own or am likely to own this year. The multifunctional i/o bandwidth available in other laptops is fine. Apple going to 11 on this feature is all fine and dandy but it lacks the features users actually need and want.
2. 5k Internal Display on 15" model (I think the 13" is 4k?) I believe that is UNIQUE relative to any other Laptop, regardless of brand, regardless of price.
UNIQUE yes. UNIQUELY pointless. Its just more "Innovation" nobody cares about. Do you have 5k content? No? So who cares? At 15" will it look any better than 4k display? No? So who cares?
3. UNIQUE, Custom, Apple-Designed SSD Controller with the highest Read/Write performance in the industry.
I'd far rather a COTS module I can replace in 2 years for $200 for with a 4TB one. I'm willing to give up a few % points of performance for that. My 2011 Macbook pro is still useful to me (my family at least) because I was able to upgrade the RAM and SSD. This new one? Sure its a few points faster ... but its stupidly overrpiced for the marginal improvement in speed, and you're stuck with whatever capacity you get today forever. I don't object to the existence of this tech as an option for people who want it... but does apple give you the option? Nope. If you want an MBP you have to have this overpriced tech whether you want it or not, whether you need it or not, whether you'd be happier with COTS SSD or not.
4. Ability to natively drive up to FOUR 4k external displays, plus its internal 5k display, or up to TWO 5k external displays, plus its internal 5k display, more than any other Laptop, regardless of brand, regardless of price.
But no native ability to connect to even one HDMI projector in the customer or hotel meeting rooms without carrying a bag of accessories. Swing and a miss.
5. UNIQUE, multitouch, multifunctional Touch Bar interface, that not only replaces the Function keys, but also allows Applications and the OS to present the user with unique, custom controls that do not take up screen real-estate.
Replacing keys i can touch type with a bar i can't is not progress. It's 2 steps backward 1 step forward. Cool feature, maybe, definitely wasn't worth giving up function keys I can touch type with for, and the escape key. What's the next innovation to replace the number key row too? Then you can have numbers or even more application controls. Better still just get rid of the keyboard and staple two ipads together as the new macbook pro.
6. The largest Trackpad in the known universe ;-)
There is too small. And there is big enough. "Largest in the known universe" isn't worth anything once the others are 'big enough'.
7. TouchID, with ApplePay and App Store Support, as well as several other OS and Application-Level functions.
So, as you can see, Apple has HARDLY "abandoned the Mac".
I kind of recall Top Gear covering a lot of cars over the years that are just like the mac book pro... you know the ones... the cars with 1500 horsepower but no trunk or glove box. $50,000 for custom brake system that shaves 6 ft off a stop from 60 to 0... but well... $50,000 and when they fail you have to fly an engineer from Italy to service them. And you need a truck following you around with spare tires because it rips through a pair as often as a regular car needs to fill up with gas. A tour de force of technology... but completley useless as a daily driver.
That's the macbook pro...sure its got support for up to four 4k screens but you need to carry around a bag of dongles to attach a USB flashdrive. 80Gbps of io but we're not allowed to have more than 16GB RAM? Its utterly ridiculous.
As another datapoint to how badly Apple is pissing people off... I periodically look at the refurb lists that Apple offers. For the first time ever, almost their entire stock of refurbs is gone. Literally nothing left except for a couple of base model 11" Airs.
It isn't rocket science when people preferentially buy last years refurbs to "superior" current gen products, to conclude that the current gen products are crap.