US MacBook sales drop 6% over 2012 holidays, NPD says

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  • Reply 81 of 94
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    I think that's it; I think that's a big thing the 17" afforded. I mean, from aught three to '12, the 17" MacBook Pro was the machine used in that situation, and many others. Not saying people didn't take 15's on location, but I've always heard 17, 17, 17… 
    sabu22 wrote: »
    Video editing is not the only situation 17" laptop was/is used (on location is a big one). The 17" laptop was the standard of the recording industry. Logic (or other DAW's) is simply to difficult to work on a 15" retina screen (live mobile situations). Many people in the recording industry would have bought a new laptop (even though the market is small). It is sad that people want to belittle those of us who wanted and were willing to pay for the extra's that came on a 17".

    I know several coders that like the large display on the 17" paired with being portable. Means they can do "real" work from virtually any location. It's clear it was the lowest selling Mac notebook but I would have thought that it would have been popular enough to continue making.

    Perhaps the move to the new design forced engineering issues on them they couldn't easily resolve without making it more expensive to a point they didn't feel was worth producing. Or perhaps it's just being delayed until the Mac Pro update this year. A professional event, so to speak.

    Same here.....I drop a SSD 240GB and replace my dead DVD with another 1TB HDD on my early 2008 Macbook Pro......it's a like driving an old Toyota with a turbo charge 10 litre engine now.:D

    Upgrade for me can wait until it dies off....... 

    Did you set up your two drives as a Fusion drive? I have had a similar setup with OptiBay in my MBP since 2010 but only until the announcement of Fusion did I do the logical pairing of the drives. I like it much better now over having my SSD as my boot/app drive and my entire 1TB HDD as my ~/user folder.
  • Reply 82 of 94
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    sabu22 wrote: »
    Video editing is not the only situation 17" laptop was/is used (on location is a big one). The 17" laptop was the standard of the recording industry. Logic (or other DAW's) is simply to difficult to work on a 15" retina screen (live mobile situations). Many people in the recording industry would have bought a new laptop (even though the market is small). It is sad that people want to belittle those of us who wanted and were willing to pay for the extra's that came on a 17".

    I personally also preferred the 17", but the published figures from last year were that the 17" accounted for only 3% of MBP sales. Obviously, the number was small. And of those, some fraction will undoubtedly have accepted the 15" rMBP instead.

    It raises the question of how large a niche must be to be viable. Apple obviously decided that the number of people who wanted a 17" was too small to justify.

    I'm disappointed, but complaining isn't going to change anything.
  • Reply 83 of 94
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    I think that's it; I think that's a big thing the 17" afforded. I mean, from aught three to '12, the 17" MacBook Pro was the machine used in that situation, and many others. Not saying people didn't take 15's on location, but I've always heard 17, 17, 17… 
    Most of those machine were fitted into custom cases containing extra hw and such. I'm expecting to see new custom cases carrying apple minis with fusion drives, trackpads, Bluetooth keyboards and non Apple monitors.
  • Reply 84 of 94


    Originally Posted by paxman View Post

    …and non Apple monitors.


     


    Just because of the size?

  • Reply 85 of 94
    matrix07matrix07 Posts: 1,993member
    oflife wrote: »
    And the OS (Symbian) was far more intelligent than anything today. For example, to create an entry on the calendar, you just hold down over the appropriate day - little touches like that are priceless.

    I might not get what you were saying because I don't see how's that different than "anything today" like iOS. For example, I can already hold down on a day to create an event on my iPad.
  • Reply 86 of 94


    Apple laptop sales are down?  So are PC sales.  By nearly twice as much?


     


    *Shrugs.


     


    We're in a rough world economy that has been struggling since 2008.  People have it all on finding jobs...rising food and fuel bills which are far outstripping wage rises.


     


    Apple jacked up the price of the iMac by a £100 here in the U.K (while dropping the DVD player which they'll happily charge you £60+ for.)  To get a Fusion, i7 and top end GPU well over £2000+  Historically, very pricey.  


     


    Apple's laptop line look pricey on the retinas if you take away the fancy screens.  The gpus aren't that hot on them.  No optical.  You have to really want that retina...


     


    I have no doubt that the iPad has been laying waste to netbooks and crap wintel cheap laptops on the battlefield.  While the economy has slowed purchase of Apple's premium computers.  Apple's pc growth seems to have hit the ceiling.  But that's been coming for a while...as the growth numbers declined over time.


     


    Many people are exposed to Apple Stores.  Apple are getting new customers.  But many of the computers these days are all the machine most people need.  They'll last longer than an average pc.


     


    I guess computer sales will hover between 4-5 million.  The iMac sales will get a bounce...but it was a year and a half out of date...and it could barely deliver them last quarter.


     


    I think there's a case for making Apple computers a pricey cut.  They're creeping upwards in price, correlating nicely with the hubris that saw Apple release 'maps' as the best mapping solution out there. 


     


    Lemon Bon Bon.

  • Reply 87 of 94
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 6,953member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post



    I know several coders that like the large display on the 17" paired with being portable. Means they can do "real" work from virtually any location. It's clear it was the lowest selling Mac notebook but I would have thought that it would have been popular enough to continue making.


     


    While it's hard to have too much screen real estate when coding/debugging, the number of people doing this and in the market for a MBP is tiny relative to the general population. Same with other potential uses such as graphic design or (I believe someone mentioned) filmmaking or recording. All together they are a tiny percentage of potential customers.


     


    On the other hand, maybe they should have treated the MBP 17" like the Mac Pro. Let the design languish (I mean, there isn't really much to improve with either, for the purpose they serve) but keep producing them with infrequent updates. The only problem is that they would have needed to make a Retina version of the MBP 17", with optical drive, or it would have quickly been irrelevant anyway.

  • Reply 88 of 94
    robbyxrobbyx Posts: 479member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Macky the Macky View Post


    There is a downside to Office when it comes to a "touch" interface, and that is it's so full of bells and whistles that it becomes nearly impossible to implement. Even Microsoft seems to cede that point on the Surface RT. Word, for example, has grown in complexity to the point where it can nearly perform as a word-processing program. That's a good thing for a sub-set of users that are highly skilled at designing with Word.


     


    The broader set of users want to open whatever they want, read it, edit it, and create much simpler documents. A pdf document serves most of these functions except the last, and iWorks satisfies the bulk of latter.


     


    Apple, on the other hand, seems to be of the mind to keep the iWork apps lean and clean and in balance with the overall iPad experience.



     


    Most people don't use 95% of Office's functionality.  So long as business feels the need to pay for overpriced software with features that the vast majority of users never touch, Office will thrive.  But the times they are a changin'...

  • Reply 89 of 94


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  • Reply 90 of 94
    stelligentstelligent Posts: 2,680member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by robbyx View Post


     


    Most people don't use 95% of Office's functionality. 





    Can you prove this?

  • Reply 91 of 94
    stelligentstelligent Posts: 2,680member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Lemon Bon Bon. View Post


     


    But many of the computers these days are all the machine most people need. 



    What does that mean? Hablas ingles?

  • Reply 92 of 94


    Originally Posted by stelligent View Post

    What does that mean? Hablas ingles?


     


    What was confusing? Computers are already far more powerful than is needed by a majority of the people that use them. When e-mail, and browsing (as of late, "browsing" has started to be called "Facebook", for which I want to punch people in the face really, REALLY hard) are all they do, they don't need Haswell. They don't need RAM. They don't need this or that or what have you. 


     


    All they need is an iPad. Or something even weaker.

  • Reply 93 of 94
    maybe it's time for apple to get back with cheaper and reasonnable prices ? ;)
  • Reply 94 of 94


    LOL, or I just look around at other laptops of comparable options (- the retina) and they are $500-$1100 at most.   Its not complicated.

     

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