Mac sales fell 16% in February ahead of desktop refresh - Page 3

Originally Posted by GMHut

The population of Japan is tiny compared to the number of RTL speakers spread all over the world, and those numbers are increasing at a huge rate. That much we know. Those numbers mean that even a small percentage of a very huge number is still a big number.

Originally Posted by vinea

And the number of RTL language (script) speakers in the world was dwarfed by the number of vertical script users in the world. Guess what? All those users are doing LTR horizontal text today (including Japan).

The change was largely voluntary. There's no need for Apple to do RTL support in order to penetrate those markets. Those users will get used to it or fall behind. Their choice given that the US, China and India all do LTR.

Urdu, Arabic, Hebrew script users will just have to cope with poor RTL support.

Arab World: 320M with a average growth rate of 2.3%
Pakistan: 173M pop, 1.99% growth rate
Iran: 65M pop, 0.79% growth rate

India: 1.1B pop, 1.58% growth rate
China: 1.3B pop, 0.62% growth rate
US: 300M pop, 0.88% growth rate

The growth rates may be higher but dwarfed by the huge head start of China and India and their largest pop base is not much larger than the US.

Let's not even talk about the relative economic power of those six countries/groups.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Voltaic
You are wrong. If ExpressHD can build and sell at a profit this kind of PC for $1,400, due to economies of scale, Apple could sell one for say $1,600-1,800 and make a killing. Enough to pay for all the software development/hardware integration.

There is plenty of evidence of Apple's greed and stupidity in its history. Choosing to offer a very narrow product line is stupid in my opinion. Apple could offer non-Xeon lower end towers for the bulk of such market.

Again, when not enough Mac Pros sell, Apple will rationalize it by saying that market is dying. Delusional greed is what they are affected with.

I think you hit the nail on the proverbial head. I think at least part of the faulty thinking they have is due to having no real competition for the hardware end of things. Yeah, if you want to compare Windows to OS X there is a comparison, but that's clearly NOT an Apples to Apples comparison (pun intended). If you want a "Mac" you're SOL. It's either an Apple or hack city. Psystar meant to at least do the work for you, but you see how Apple is treating that. Instead of competing, they want to sue to protect their monopoly. Instead of most Mac people recognizing how bad it is for them in terms of choice and quality, they'd rather defend Apple's right to overcharge everyone.

I can only figure this is do to the fact that most people tend to not think about their situation, but imagine they'd do the same if they were in Apple's position (most people ARE greedy, sad to say). But in terms of Capitalism (which isn't my favorite thing as it breeds greed generally speaking), competition is good period and Apple has none unless you include consideration of changing operating systems. If you have thousands of dollars of software invested, you aren't likely to do that and Apple knows it. Whereas they take advantage of the opposite situation. They now make it EASY for a PC user (who is more likely than not to have NOT purchased his software, statistically speaking regardless) because they "allow" (big of them eh) you to put Windows on their machine so you do not have to give up your Windows software. Of course, if they allowed virtualization of OS X in Windows, the same could be true there as well. They are very one-sided in this issue and of course it's because it benefits them (greed) to do so. By fair and open trade standards, it's not 'fair' at all, of course, but people justify it because Macs are a small overall market share of operating systems even though they are a rather large share of overall hardware sales from a single vendor. Most Mac users refuse to see this, though because they are blinded by their own greed (they'd do it too if they could get away with it) and they tell themselves that Apple "owns" their OS so they can put any restrictions on it they want, even if that means invading your personal privacy and thus your 4th Amendment guaranteed Constitutional rights.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

I agree with the sentiments of this.

Originally Posted by piot

Where is this post, by Voltaic, that you are responding to?

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

Ah...I think I pulled it from Macrumors. Sometimes I like to pull stuff for an outside of Appleinsider insight.

Originally Posted by piot

"Pretty friggin stupid pissant idea!"
Originally posted by "moFo" at ZdNet

Originally Posted by GMHut

Just have to cope? The East will become the West or fall behind? Do you watch the news at all? The "East" has a propensity for not wanting to fall in lock-step with the "the great Satan". It IS debatable as to whether a US based company should invest in RTL markets. I'm musing they should, I take it you're musing they should not. If your argument is Western businesses should not market themselves to the East, they don't have to, the East will just suck it up, and gladly take what ever scraps they get, I will refer you to the evening news as to how well that philosophy is working.

Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon.

I agree with the sentiments of this.

The recent price hikes left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. When the specs can generally be had for half the price in PC land.

Hey, if Apple was a windows only vendor...would you buy one?

Still. Maybe somebody will teach the newly arrogant Apple some humility in the next year or so...

Lemon Bon Bon.

Originally Posted by vinea

Of course you agree.

And yeah someone will teach Apple some humility, because we see such a slump in sales.

If Apple was a windows only vendor they wouldn't do well...but they aren't so they can ignore the xMac and build a PROFITABLE product line. This is why they spent $400 million into buying OSX (NeXT) and then all the money they spent making it OSX and updating it constantly.

Had Sony ponied up $400M in some alternate universe and put Jobs in charge this would be the SonyInsider site and you'd be whining about how expensive VAIO AIO desktops were. Note that Sony doesn't have any towers anymore either.

And I have no clue where the 4th amendment plays into this other than some folks want to force Apple to give up it's IP rights because they don't want to pay the asking price.

Too damn bad.

You want the same specs for half the price live with Windows or Linux/Gnome.

Originally Posted by nvidia2008

Have you seen the Dell Studio 15" with LED backlight, Mobility Radeon 4570 512MB, 7200rpm 320GB drive, 64bit Vista...? (about equivalent of USD$800+ in my country). Very tempting, and I don't mind "living with Windows" if it means being able to play Call of Duty 4,5, Bioshock, Left4Dead, Fear2(ProjectOrigin) at decent resolutions with nice visuals and antialiasing... All without having to deal with the usual big hot desktop boxes.

Apple will have to face lower Mac sales, that's a fact. Whether that is us "punishing Apple", of course, let's not be too drastic in our thinking.