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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.
...Windows PCs are starting to chip away at Apple's strong grip of the high-end computer market...
From my viewpoint, it looks as if Apple has abandoned the high-end computer market. The product line has been stagnating.
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Of course, leave it to Microsoft to declare itself winning over a competitor that has all but abandoned the particular marketspace.
What kind of trouble do *you* think they're in? I sure don't see it. For sure, I don't see them growing much any time soon, because the PC market is so mature, but I sure don't see them as being in any kind of "trouble" either.
PCs aren't going anywhere. You need them to do real work, which can't be done on phones or with phone OSes which are horribly limited (by design). Obviously, you (and many others) believe that Apple seems to be dropping the ball here, and sales numbers do seem to support that currently. However, there's no evidence that people are flocking to anything else either, in sufficient numbers to matter. As much as I'd like everyone to switch to desktop Linux, and have been hoping for that for 15+ years now, I've given up on it because I just don't see it happening. Luckily, desktop Linux is IMO completely usable and in fact superior, but that doesn't equate to mass adoption. People (and companies) are just too married to the Windows platform and its "ecosystem".
So AFAICT, MS can just sit back and milk the Windows/Office cash cow indefinitely. Again, this is not a company you should invest in if you're looking for a "growth" stock, but it absolutely should have reliable revenues.
Apples hardware sucks! HP Z marketing is right!
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campa...
This is where desktops / workstations are not going away anytime soon.
Also apple does not have anything the works good in server room other then running mac os in VM on non apple hardware that works but the license does not let you do that.
When Chrome starts running Android Apps, Microsoft will be dead, except for platform specific products, at which case, most of those could probably be wound up in a custom appliance. I'm simply surprised why anyone would need to build on top of Windows any longer.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Work just provided me with a new laptop. It was my choice and I selected a new MBP 15 inch. My reasons are longevity - my last MBP, which I own, lasted more than 4 years, and I am still using it. OSX is an excellent operating system. I sometimes go months without rebooting and I use the machine 8+ hours each day. I can also run Windows on my MBP. I prefer VMWare Fusion for my virtual machines but Parallels is fine too.
Had I selected a Windows laptop, I would have only a Windows laptop. Having the MBP allows me to test and develop against both platforms. It also provides me with a way to run the less expensive versions of any commercial software, should there be a difference in cost.
So, while Windows licensing sales may be up, there is no way to know where those OS's are running. Heck, it could be that folks are buying licenses to run on their Macs.
MacOS is better. It's a unix derivative. I have my programs (in python & C mostly) on a network drive and they compile and run the same on Linux and MacOS. I use Latex and gnuplot a lot. They both run the same on Linux and MacOS.
Windows is not like that. It's it's own thing and I have to jump through hoops to make programs and documents work across all three. So I don't. I use a Mac and I use Linux. Work give me a windows laptop and I use it to ssh into Linux to do work.
Other people's priorities are generally very different to mine, but I don't give a crap about the minutiae of UI elements (unless it's truly horrible like Gnome). I care about the programming environment.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
From my point of view or from Microsoft's?
From their point of view, I'm going to Windows, because I'll probably go with a Dell XPS 13. From my point of view, it will be Linux. The "problem" is that Microsoft still gets my money, and they still add it to their stats, despite me not wanting their product and not wanting to pay for it.
I have been a MBP user for a decade. My MBPs have been my main workhorses, and I loved them. I've been waiting 2-3 years for a refresh worth replacing my 2012 MBP with, and it's clear that it's not going to happen.
Apple has now merged the MBP and the Air, which I don't understand. I don't want an Air. I want a fucking MBP. 3/4" thick, a battery that goes a day, all my ports, and hardware that's not 5 years behind. 256gb solid state drive, 8gb of ram, and an i5 is the base configuration? Really? For $1500? Really? $1800 on the XPS 13 gives you double everything and an i7 in an aluminum body and all the ports.
I used to love OS X, but even that's starting to wear on me. For example, I'm required to sign into iCloud with the latest OS X update. I have not figured out how to turn this off. I have disabled everything syncing to iCloud, but every hour or so I get a popup telling me to log in. No way to turn it off. Why? See the tiny little hard drives that Apple now ships with, and the inability to upgrade them or add another. (I've got a 1Tb drive in my 2012 MBP for comparison.)
Two or three years ago, the alternatives were definitely shit. Now, I don't think so. The alternatives are better, and the current line of MBPs (and OS X) are so fucking terrible that I'm inclined to say that the pendulum has shifted to the alternatives.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I was with you until the last sentence. Frankly, it's been a while that I've looked at MacOS, but it was always ways superior to Windows since I can remember. And paradoxically Apple used to always make their profits with hardware (which has now become meh, I suppose). Has any of this changed so much? Did I miss something?
No it has not changed. You missed nothing.
The hardware is great, with year-over-year improvements on just the MacBook Pro, and soon to be coming to the Desktop line, now that Intel has gotten their thumb out of their asses on their CPUs a little bit.
UNIQUE features, found in NO OTHER LAPTOP for the 2016 MacBook Pros (esp. the 15"):
1. 80 Gbps of raw, multifunctional I/O bandwidth. Nearly TWICE that of any other Laptop, regardless of brand, regardless of price.
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.
3. UNIQUE, Custom, Apple-Designed SSD Controller with the highest Read/Write performance in the industry.
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.
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.
6. The largest Trackpad in the known universe ;-)
7. TouchID, with ApplePay and App Store Support, as well as several other OS and Application-Level functions.
Now, Add to that the improvements over even just last year's model; which are, all of the above items, PLUS:
1. MUCH better Thermal Management, which allows the CPU and GPU to run full-speed, essentially as long as power is available. The 2015 MBP had SEVERE "Throttling" problems, which seriously compromised performance in high-demand applications.
2. Thinner and lighter than the previous model (which DOES matter to more people than you would imagine) 3. Redesigned, improved keyboard (people who have owned both the 2015 and 1016 MBPs report the new keyboard makes the old one feel "mushy"). 4. USB-C and TB3 support.
5. MUCH improved speakers.
6. Three microphones in the 15" model, which helps with speech-recognition. Important, since Siri is now part of macOS.
And if you will notice, those are ALL solid, engineering improvements, with the possible exception of the size and weight reduction (which also took no small-amount of re-engineering).
So, as you can see, Apple has HARDLY "abandoned the Mac". And I haven't even talked about the improvements to macOS...
What's wrong with lying to a corporation like Dell? Other than the nuisance to lose 10 seconds entering the information, I don't see any problem.
Linux biggest problem is that they (Distro makers) were never willing to raise some serious money and actually try.
Yeah, it's a little hard to "sell" something for free and compete with the $$ marketing campaigns of major closed-source companies. Want to tell us about how easy it is for you to raise some "serious money"? I mean, whenever you decide you're willing to raise it.
Flat, high contrast UI is what's "in," get with it.
I'll stop here as I could list about 10 serious issues such as these.
Um, yeah. If you think adopting the latest gee-whiz, touch screen-obsessed, desktop-crippling, dumbed-down UI on a desktop OS is a "serious" issue, I'm pretty sure I don't care to hear about your other 8 "serious" issues.
Once in a rare while I install and open some old app that's no longer in development and is stuck with some old turn-of-the-century GTK/GTK2 UI. So ugly! Yes, things were crappy in 2000. You couldn't even install a popular Linux distro and expect it to "just work". Hard to imagine that today!
The only trouble I have with Linux (I currently use Ubuntu) is a recent regression on my MacBook Pro--used to work perfectly, and still does on the Mac Mini I'm using this very moment. But even with some ACPI issues on the laptop I'm happy I don't have to use OSX on it. But sorry, I digress. I was talking about actual functional issues, nothing as "serious" as the latest high-contrast, flat UI fashion.
As for the UI... yes, things sure have improved a lot in the UI/UX world in the past 17 years, except in the MS world which seems seems to have been devolving for a few years at least, and I commend Linux distros not keeping up with touch-obsessed disgraces like the Aero/Metro UI that looks like a card game or something.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein