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Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

This wolf's been cried about many times, but I do think there is a hole in the market right now: Right now Microsoft is the only option for affordable really high-end desktop/laptop computers.

Contrary to the current hype, mobile is not going to replace the desktop/laptop except at the low end. If you want to do anything compute-intensive you need a "real computer."

You have Apple of course, but Apple gets unreasonably expensive for many applications. The Mac Pro is not cost-effective for power users. Their laptops are a tad better but not great.

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> This wolf's been cried about many times, but I do think there is a hole in the market right now: Right now Microsoft is the only option for affordable really high-end desktop/laptop computers.

Regardless what I think about that claim: That market segment is miniscule. One of the reasons Apple has done so well is that Apple has managed to capture the relatively price-insensitive part of that market segment, and as a result their average revenue per unit is north of $1000.

The average price per unit for PC's on the other hand has been steadily declining to the ~$500 level.

> Contrary to the current hype, mobile is not going to replace the desktop/laptop except at the low end.

So 95%+ of the market, in other words. The PC vendors have been in crisis for years as PC's got "fast enough" that consumers started prioritising low price rather than maximizing performance within their budget.

> If you want to do anything compute-intensive you need a "real computer."

Most users don't do anything more compute-intensive than Facebook and Youtube on their PCs.

"Right now Microsoft is the only option for affordable really high-end desktop/laptop computers."

I have a high end laptop that doesn't run Windows as the primary OS. (I occasionally run Windows in VMs to verify that cross platform OSS software runs on it and on Patch Tuesday to fix the latest exploits...) Other than that, Linux is my primary personal machine at home for development, research, office work, music and movies, etc... I'm also shopping for a new desktop and home media server that will probably not be Windows.

Windows currently has a chokehold on the desktop market with it's huge ecosystem of applications and entertainment, that's what's preventing many folks from moving. Games and accounting applications are the only reasons that my spouse still runs Windows at home.

You're absolutely right. For the 10% of the population that runs compute-intensive apps, they're going to need a good desktop every few years. The other 90% will probably just keep their old desktop for a decade and keep upgrading their mobile devices.

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