MacBooks account for 86% of total Mac sales; Mac desktops just 14%
macdailynews.com
macdailynews.com
Desktops are increasingly only relevant for specialised workloads like gaming or high-end content creation. Assuming that Apple still holds on to the lion's share of the content creation market, and that content creation as a whole is more common than high-end gaming, Apple would then have a larger share of their sales go to desktops than the industry average.
Any cubicle farms, like call centres.
University labs, Hospitals.
The employees would never work from home (outside of a pandemic) and work set hours.
So if desktops costs less, they will of course be used here since there is nothing to be gained from paying extra. Similarly, these users would not be using pricier Apple products.
This isn't quite true, the call center at my Co. is partially remote for call center staff, they use jabber and other VoIP connected to their PC's to work from home.
Granted, I don't see a lot of offices, but everywhere that I have seen seems to be choosing docking stations or USB-C enabled displays (Dell has an excellent selection of those) and some kind of business laptop like a Precision or Elitebook.
Incidentally, those same screens are used for the staff who have Apple computers, and, largely, those are laptops too.
Desktops seem to be practically dead except for workstation-grade ones in the businesses I've been to.
Workstation-grade, I'd say, is extremely limited and shrinking fast. Particularly outside of the tinkerer niche. Think "gamer", even if I suspect that actual gaming isn't half as big in that niche as marketing approaches would suggest. But in any case very much not-Apple.
For example, do MacBook Airs paired with external monitors perform better than traditional PCs? If not, are people opting for MacBook Pros with docks instead? And if so, is a top-tier MacBook Pro with an external monitor and keyboard actually cheaper than a Mac Studio setup?
I really only know a handful of people with desktops and they are all gamers. My office is devoid of them aside a few specialist workstations.
FWIW re the article, I'm surprised that the share of desktop Macs is so high compared to Mac laptops. I've never seen one in the wild outside shops, but plenty of people using their Mac laptops as desktop (eg connect a keyboard and monitor)
I think this is down to what I was saying: they're not general purpose machines anymore, they're mostly used for specialised workloads. If you don't spend any time in the sort of environment where those workloads are common, you won't see them. Similarly, many people will go all their lives without ever seeing a gaming PC, even though they're completely mundane in my (and, I assume, your) world.
<tin foil hat time> I guess it’s easier to add planned obsolescence to a laptop since the battery only lasts so long, keyboard tends to be more flimsy, thermals always running hot (though that’s less of a concern with the apple silicon mac’s) </tin foil hat time>
For the current youngest generation of humans (Generation Alpha onwards), an iMac is the same as a smartphone or a tablet — neither of these have any interchangeable or individually upgradable parts and both being complete units in themselves. If something breaks or if the performance or function of one part isn’t good enough, the entire unit is (typically) to be replaced.
The iMac is what the MacBooks and MacBook Pros have become over the years. If this trend continues, we probably may not see a computer, display, keyboard and mouse/pointer input made or sold separately. They may exist only in old movies, old TV shows and museums.
Now I work in corporate IT and all the desktops are being replaced during the next upgrade cycle. The desks have docking stations and everyone has a personal laptop that they can use for WFH or the office.
Personally though, I prefer a desktop at home, I like to sit at my desk and use a big screen to get stuff done, if portable, a laptop is too annoying and I usually only want to look up stuff or view content, so for me Desktop + iPad is the best combo.
- It's 0.5cm thinner
- It's 0.41cm wider
- It's 2.3cm deeper
- It's 200g heavier
The aspect ratio on the 11" model was kind of weird too, a lot of apps would barely fit. But a retina screen would help there - just make everything smaller.
I consider the air line dead, tbh—they just lost the magic when they made them bigger and they're just "macbooks" to me now... yea yea it's fanless, but that was never part of the appeal per se. Fewer ports, smaller screen, lighter. Please.
Installed it just to see if it was usable. I expect Linux will be snappier.
It took me a while to find a decent one second-hand, but it has been my ultimate travel companion since. It's small enough to just drop into any bag (handbag even) and can charge of any USB-C charger. No other brand of laptop in that form factor comes even close to build quality. I don't think any other unibody laptop of that size even exists.
If you get a later model (2017-2019, 3rd gen) then you get MacOS 13 (Ventura), which still receives updates. If you can find a later-model with upgraded CPU (i5) then performance is actually quite decent, lower-spec models are also still just fine for browsing, email and terminal work.
Supposedly it runs Windows just fine using bootcamp (I haven't tried). I have mine setup for dual-booting Linux. Linux support is decent, though out of the box no support for speakers (headphone jack works), it has a broadcom wifi/bt chip and the wifi works just fine, but bluetooth is currently broken. There are some out-of-tree patches that add limited BT support. I'm working on writing Linux drivers for audio and BT in my (admittedly limited) free time, if someone is interested in helping with that: find my email in bio.
Upsides:
- Very small and light
- Robust unibody
- Does 10 hours on a battery
- Spare parts still available
- Later models still get updates, including Windows
Downsides:
- Probably won't be long before MacOS 13 goes EOL
- First gen (2015-2016) supports up to MacOS 11 (EOL) and second gen (2016-2017) up to MacOS 12 (still receives security updates).
- Only one USB-C 3.1 port for everything, so if you want to charge and use USB peripherals at the same time you need to carry a dongle
- Very low travel keyboard (obviously)
- It's rare, so limited documentation for Linux support
I would really love to buy a Mac Studio, but it was two generations behind all year and now it’s a generation behind over a year into the M4 generation.
Their Apple Silicon chip rollout strategy makes no sense and they should update their devices all at once or at least their high end devices. How can they release an M3 Ultra chip almost a year after they put an M4 chip in their iPad?
- people who use their hardware to the full extent of what it's capable of, namely professionals of any kind and some power users that do the same things pros do but maybe not for monetary gains
Apple is useful in some niches of that but not a lot of them.
- gamers
Apple has no idea about gaming, in spite of their mostly laughable recent attempts.
The rest of the users who don't need all the power / don't even use a computer a lot are better served by a portable device with a built in monitor.
I'm also a fan of laptops but they are more personal, requiring a login and so on. And screens are usually smaller.
It's a nice option and it's not the same as a small laptop that is constantly moving around.
I don't agree with this. Most professions are more than well served by any moderately specced computer, laptop or otherwise.
If you're not crunching big numbers, rendering, or need speciality hardware a laptop is more than enough.
Yes, those are the professionals I was thinking of :)
> People that don’t like trackpads or find them hard to use.
On the wintelamd side, I see a lot of people taking out a laptop and a mouse out of their bag. No reason you can't do the same on apples...
I use a ThinkPad with Linux for personal use and a MacBook Air for my job, I used the Sweep with both. While I prefer trackpad to mouse, I imagine mouse enjoyers would probably do something similar.
And when an M4 Air costs $1k plus or minus a couple hundred, it’s almost a negligible price premium.
Personally, in my own bubble I know few people with laptops, most continue using desktops, especially IT professionals of any kind.
I don't play games newer than half-life 1.
Anytime I am forced to use an x86 laptop, it seems like using a BlackBerry five years after the iPhone came out.
Personally I find my MacBook Pro plenty powerful for most day to day activities, including testing out ideas. The kicker is that when I need real compute, a desktop that’s maybe 3-5x faster pales in comparison to jumping onto a hosted GPU cluster. It also ends up cheaper because I’m not paying for a chunky GPU that’s sitting idle on my desk half the time.
From limited conversation with people in other industries, their experience is similar.
You have to look at Windows laptops and it’s pretty grim. Plasticy machines with some combination of garbage keyboards, shitty displays, terrible trackpads, short battery life, and loud fans (my last 3 machines have been ThinkPads) that are worth almost nothing when you want to upgrade after a couple years.
You can have a win-win combination of high quality components, high performance components, and a low cost device by reuse and iterative upgrades.
- family members of such people
Since they may get the hand me down parts.
Also, it's nice not to have battery fatigue unnecessarily. I'm sure if I used a laptop as if it were a desktop I'd be replacing its battery at least once through its lifecycle.