The Mac keeps growing in shipments while PC shipments are falling | Hacker News Reader

The Mac keeps growing in shipments while PC shipments are falling

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46 pointsretskrad57 comments

I would bet my 2 Euro, that it is because people just don't have a need to buy new PC ever year, because computational power did not really went up in last decade?

i.e. I still have my Lenovo E520, which I bought in 2011, after putting there SSD, new battery and more RAM, it works just fine with Windows 10 until today.

I still have my desktop computer with Intel i5, bought around 2013, still working with Windows 10, I have it more-less as backup PC. Got new one around 2019 with AMD Ryzen 7 and I feel no need to upgrade for next few years. Because why should I do it?

I'm in the same situation. I have a 2012 MBP but I use my desktop daily and most of it's components are from 2012-14ish, other than a 2080 video card that replaced a dead video card.

There just isn't as good of a reason to upgrade yearly as there used to be. My desktop is primarily used for gaming and it still keeps up with most games in High quality settings.

My mom tbh is really content with HDD on her laptop that I got her a few years ago. The only reason I upgraded it with an SSD is because windows 10 would randomly start utilizing 100% of the HDD and it would take nothing short of a hard shutdown to stop that. But on even a really cheap SSD, it was at 10% utilization.

Yeah, I'm still fascinated by these 2 lbs GPUs and wondering what the actual value of 4k 144hz monitors are doing.

I just can't see what the limits are

> it works just fine with Windows 10 until today

What happened to it?

No surprise to me.

A few things happening in the PC world that are likely hurting sales:

* Graphics card improvements have largely stagnated. It's been awhile since the latest gen cards, and the new ones just announced (4090, 4080) are now ridiculously expensive.

* Price overall of PCs have gone up. DDR5 is still more expensive. Motherboards are more expensive. So desktop PC component cost has gone up, which naturally must drive higher prices to consumers for marginal gains.

* Laptop manufacturers (besides Apple) are limited to using x86 processors, so their battery life vs. performance still seems to fall behind. Consumers notice that.

* In general, processors have gotten 'good enough', so you care more amount battery life or power consumption, rather than raw compute power. Why upgrade, when the old one works just fine?

I moved from a ThinkPad T450s upgraded with RAM, SSD and a battery to an AMD Advantage Edition laptop from Asus last year.

Key takeaways for me were:

1. Increased display resolution and display rate

2. Better battery life (99whr battery). I get about 10hrs just browsing and around 7-8 if I watch a movie

3. Better thermals, rarely notice the fan kick in

4. Nice coterie of ports: I get 1 HDMI, 1 USB-C, 3 USB-A, 1 3.5mm, LAN port

5. Good GPU (6800M) for occasional gaming and messing around with plaid-ml

6. I really love the processor, everything screams on it!

7. Mood based lighting (haven't tinkered around with it much, but my infant loves it)

8. I love whatever Asus has done with its 2 way Noise Suppression AI. I have my infant screaming and neighbors dog barking, but the person on the other end generally gets a very crisp voice. My boss has a few dogs barking all the time and I won't generally be able to notice them in meetings.

9. Upgradable dual RAM slots and SSD. The first I didn't find on a lot of laptops for some reason.

The only cons that I have are:

1. Lack of a webcam. I do have an external USB Lenovo 300FHD cam that I adore for it's privacy cover. I also tend to unplug its USB cord when I'm done with the meetings as well

2. Noise suppression thing seems to work on windows only

People aren't stupid.

If a PC company came out and charged premium prices but gave you the best quality PC's with a well engineered interfaces and hardware, it would do just fine.

But almost all PC vendors produce bottom of the barrel half ass crap consumer grade computers with terrible QC, that will start falling apart in a few years.

Even the big name brands like Dell and HP who could do better.... prefer shipping a crap product to reduce the bottom line.

And word gets around.

Every single dell xps I had failed via hardware after a couple years. I have Mac's that are still going after a decade.

We should be thankful that Mac exists to show us what's possible with a computer...or we would be at the mercy of these terrible computer manufacturer monopolies and thier crap consumer machines.

Not to mention Windows itself feels like shovelware at this point. Its a horrible experience to boot up a new PC.

OS X has its flaws and with apples recent move toward services it’s getting worse, but goddamn I can’t believe how bad the user experience windows 10/11 is, with nagging notifications at every turn, ads treated as first class citizens, constant urging for me to sign up for this Microsoft saas service…I just don’t feel respected as a user so why would I use it

When I bought my first MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard, it was a magical experience how it was designed and how free from constant nagging everything was. It felt like a complete, designed product.

MacOS and the rest of Apple’s offerings are not quite like that today, with many new prompts for their services and almost Vista-like permission requests on the iOS side.

But they still “win” just because everything else seems so much worse now.

When you attended a Powerpoint presentation in person before covid the chance of the presenter's laptop wanting to scan and update itself in the middle of the presentation was almost certain. On Oct twelfth Microsoft is expected to announce next product line up and if they narrow the gap difference to the Mac they can pat themselves on the back and claim to be a corporate capable of learning. If only the Mac keyboard would look at the utility of the classical Thinkpad keyboard for design ideas. The bottom right corner where the arrow keys are.

I tend to agree. It seems like flagship smartphones (more generally) and Macs are one of the few consumer accessible lines where the price, build quality, and longevity have a proportional and justifiable relationship.

I closed the lid on my 4yo Mac and stuck it in a drawyer 3months ago. I guarantee I could go open it and vscode and Firefox will be just how I left it after it wakes

I still use a 2013 Mac Book Pro daily. Unfortunately Apple no longer allows the OS to be upgraded and I can no longer upgrade Xcode so soon I’ll have to retire it.

The trick was to get 16GB in 2013.

Take a look at the OpenCore project’s legacy patcher: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

The trash can might have a little more life left in it yet.

Thrown Linux on it and keep it rolling.

I’ve been using 2012 Macbook Pro and reluctantly upgraded to MacOS 10.15 last week because new updates of almost every apps I have been using doesn’t support 10.14 anymore. I think that I can continue using this laptop for at least a year.

Agree. I bought a 15” Pro and an 11” Air in 2013, both with 16GB, and used them until this year, when I went M1. Only really because I couldn’t run the latest OS anymore.

Your problem is with buying a dell or hp laptop. They're known to be crap. Buy by specs and look at other brands.

The 2 macbooks I've had shit the bed within 5 years and cost ~$2k each. Both have also required repairs, so add to the costs. The PC laptop and desktops I've purchased/built for under $1200 each have been running smoothly still (laptop for 5 years at ~$900, and a 10 and a 6 year desktop $1100-$1200), haven't required repairs, and don't see any need to upgrade their performance in the near future (tho an rtx 3090 would be nice for running certain ML models).

Yeah windows ui sucks, but the cost to performance ratio for the hardware is way better than an Apple laptop, especially if you build your own desktop. Not to mention, you can always use a linux drive or dual boot if windows ui is that much of a hassle.

I disagree. There isn't a single PC manufacturer that comes close to the hardware of a Mac. I mean in touchpad technology ALONE you can't find anything even close.

Cost to performance for a Mac is better amortized over time. Sure you can get some bargain basement i7 computer for half the price of a Mac but you will need to buy a new one in half the time of a Mac.

Not to mention the unpleasant experience of fighting half ass designed interface peripherals which just reduces your quality of life if you're on a computer all day. And the unpleasant experience that is Windows with literal Ad's in the OS and a required registration with windows cloud for your OS to work....

> Sure you can get some bargain basement i7 computer for half the price of a Mac but you will need to buy a new one in half the time of a Mac.

Can you fucking Apple zealots even read?

Do PC zealots understand statistics?

Anyone know how Chromebooks generally are doing? I use one at work and I’ve been surprised by how effective it has been, I really don’t feel a huge loss between it and a Mac because my company just does everything in the browser. For my next personal laptop I may stick with a Mac but would certainly choose a Chromebook over a Windows PC because it’s just a better user experience IMO

Why limit yourself to a Chromebook? Macs and Windows PCs have a browser plus everything else. If all you want to do is browse the web a tablet is a better choice.

Macs are undoubtedly better, but have two main drawbacks: cost and boot time. ChromeOS wakes up in seconds. My Mac takes a while.

Windows is just so awful I don’t know where to start haha

Why would you boot your Mac all the time? That’s what sleep is for.

I tend to power down when I’m not using it, if I don’t I feel like I always have too many windows and tabs open after a while.

That's not what most people do and not how it's supposed to be used, so you are arguing a strawman. My MBA M1 is the best laptop I have ever used in 30+ years. The battery life alone is outstanding and it does wake up effectively instantly. I can go months between rebooting.

ADD: as for cost, in my experience, my MacBooks tend to live for MUCH longer than my winbooks. My wife's MacBook Pro is over 8 years old. Personally I dread switching notebooks (moving data, adding customization, etc) and would happily pay double for something that will last me twice as long or longer.

Strawman? Really? I’m just talking about my own experience of how I use my own computer.

That’s fine but maybe don’t complain about how booting takes time then.

Nah, I will

> would happily pay double for something that will last me twice as long or longer.

I'm still delivering software and making money from my Toshiba 1805. I'm not sure exactly how old it is though, I got it secondhand maybe 19-20 years ago.

My piece of advice. Just don't. Keep in sleeping. Just close the lid and forget about it. It's a very good experience.

What kind of Mac do you have? My “power down” habit was learned from my PC days, where my laptop would slowly burn down battery on sleep/hibernate, combined with the slow degradation in performance from extended sessions.

I get it! I haven't used Macs much, mostly windows and linux, suspend/resume is really funky on windows for me. Linux was pretty much instantaneous when resuming on my ThinkPad.

I also didn't lose much battery life, probably 5% overnight-midday.

Chromebooks have been really awful in my experience. Most of them are underpowered bricks that can barely run Linux apps. Too much lock-in, limitations and spyware on it to be good for programming.

I bought one and was surprised at how bad everything was. The time it takes for Linux VM to boot and apps to start was really off putting. I went ahead and put ZorinOS on it, I don't have much storage to dual boot with the stock eMMC I can't upgrade, but at least the laptop is way more capable and enjoyable to use. Still bad performance but much better than ChromeOS.

If you’re trying to run apps at all, youre probably gonna have a bad time with a Chromebook. If youre mostly doing light stuff like email and video chatting it has been surprisingly effective for me.

Yeah I get that, you can probably watch YouTube and attend online meetings but I'm always kinda skeptical of people recommending it as a productivity device or a laptop that can be used for programming.

The RAM alone isn't enough to run production grade servers as it would either take an eternity to run or just crash with an out of memory error. Running VSCode and a browser is more than enough to occupy most of the RAM on mine.

I don’t write much code, but there are engineers who do, and they do some kind of remote server based development which works with the Chromebook

Chromebooks basically own the K-12 education in the US since schools get them as part of a subscription to Google Classroom, they're also cheap and easily managed. I think Google hopes that it'll result in those kids buying Chromebooks as teens and adults, but they're not great gaming devices.

Personally we have one (HP x360) in the kitchen as a recipe/youtube computer, and it's perfect. Half the cost of an iPad with multi-user support and a real keyboard.

I am not surprised. I just switched, not by choice, from a $1,400 MacBook Air to a well reviewed $2,000 pc laptop for work. The PC laptop is slower, has worse battery life, has a loud fan, and generally is worse in every single way.

MacBooks are the best made laptops and it isn’t close. I even prefer Windows these days but I won’t buy a Windows laptop. None of them are good. If you think they are good it is likely because you haven’t used one of the newest MacBooks. The difference is that stark.

I bet the 2000 PC laptop is not an ultrabook... so in a direct comparison would lose if you're doing a direct comparison to an ultrabook's strengths. It's like comparing a bugatti to an SUV and complaining about how the SUV doesn't have the same top speed. That's not how it works!

And I can tell it's not an ultrabook because you said it has a loud fan when ultrabooks are fanless.

> I won’t buy a Windows laptop. None of them are good. If you think they are good it is likely because you haven’t used one of the newest MacBooks. The difference is that stark.

You don't think another possible reason that somebody might think it's close is that they have used a laptop from a brand that you haven't?

I have MacBook Pro M1 for work and Lenovo P52 for personal use. Lenovo is in my opinion better in every other way apart from the screen. Design and weight are of no concern to me.

I am interested in what you do like better about the Lenovo? I know some people like Lenovo keyboards and their trackpads are better than average, but I find them to be a bit clunky in practice.

You guessed correctly. It's the keyboard + trackpoint. Trackpad is on par with Apple devices in my opinion. I also like its repairability and an option to change the battery down the road.

Is it time to separate x86 and Arm PC sales reporting? The price/performance of Apple M1/M2 silicon and (hopefully) upcoming Qualcomm/Nuvia-based PCs is a discontinuous break from the last decade of x86 PCs. When bare-metal Linux is stable on Apple Silicon, it will enable direct comparison of workload price/performance between Arm and x86.

> When bare-metal Linux is stable on Apple Silicon, it will enable direct comparison of workload price/performance between Arm and x86.

I doubt bare-metal Linux will ever be stable on Apple Silicon, unless Apple changes their secretive and proprietary ways. Linux will always be a year or two behind as Apple releases new things that have to be reverse engineered and supported by the community.

Apparently Apple provides closed firmware and other binary blobs with relatively stable interfaces that can be used by Linux, which should reduce the effort of porting to newer silicon generations. Not great for open-source, but this is also increasingly done on x86 by Intel (FSP), AMD (PSP/AGESA) and Nvidia (GPU firmware).

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1394159806731063298

> Apple have put in a ton of development effort into _allowing_ Linux and other OSes to run on M1 Macs ... There's a whole bespoke boot policy whose entire purpose is to allow this, securely and with user control and consent, with per-OS security policies which even allow you to mix and match security levels. And updates since the M1 launch have gotten more open, not less.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1380849768394485763

> The firmware gets loaded first for security reasons (it's also signed like Nvidia's), but the entire boot process is designed to allow third party OSes and at least one person on the team that designed it has said as much publicly ... they invested a significant amount of development effort into _opening_ the M1 platform, down to supporting multiple security contexts for multiple installed OSes, which is something not even Android phones that bill themselves as open have.

I dont think you really can compare the Whole PC market to a tiny player like Apple.

Yes Apple is a tiny player in the laptop market.

As of March, Apple had a 12% share earning the #4 market slot. Not dominant, but “tiny” is an exaggeration.

https://fortunly.com/articles/lap-top-market-share/#:~:text=...

Update: after actually RTFM I see that Apple’s share has risen to 13.5% as of October thus prompting the article.

I think they only care about "market share w/ decent profit margins" - I don't think they do the bare bones $500 laptop market at all

What other laptop OEM has a larger market share than Apple?

Dell, Lenovo and possibly HP.

Apple just did a once in a blue moon architectural shift to their new ARM processors.

I think this stimulated apple sales for current customers, though maybe a few new customers switched.

But I suspect once folks have switched to the new processor that sales will calm down again.

One anecdote: After being very anti-Apple, I bought my first mac late last year because of the M1 chip. (But only because Asahi Linux exists.)

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