linuxplatform

aharry wild said:

PBS programming at it’s best aka Apple TV+!

Yeah. The problem here is that rather than innovating and differentiating, all the streaming companies are primarily chasing the same demographic.

1. Affluent young white progressives who live in urban areas on the coasts.
2. People who wish they were 1.

Even the "diversity" offered by the streaming companies are shows about Hispanics, black people, Asians etc. that folks in 1. and 2. want to see and not what Hispanics, black people, Asians etc. actually want to see. Proof of this: the rebooted with Hispanic cast One Day At A Time on Netflix ... cancelled because it performed terribly among Hispanic audiences. Its only audience was Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham fans. 

You would think that a streaming company would have the bright idea: "let's offer programming that the other 75% of the population wants to watch and see how much money we make. Let's go after the audiences that have abandoned network and cable TV for YouTube, social media and video games and see if it is possible to get them back." But nah, the groupthink is too strong so none of them do it. Netflix will occasionally throw a few bucks for a comedian that was popular nationwide 10-20 years ago but can't get anywhere near Hollywood to make a movie or TV series today to make a comedy special but that is as far as it goes.

GeorgeBMac said:

sacto joe said:

...
And finally, the Big Lie continues, where Surface computers are bunched in with PC's but iPads are not. And iPads had a banner year last year.

...

That is a very valid point, but its not even a small lie much less a big one.   It's simply one of those things where you have to be careful with statistics if you're interested in reality rather than simply proving a point.   In this case:

The Surface line essentially started with computers that then incorporated a tablet mode.  But its primary orientation is as a computer.

The iPad line started as a tablet.   But now with an external keyboard and trackpad it can also function as a computer.  But, its primary orientation remains as a tablet.

Nobody is lying.  But each company reports numbers as they see them.   They just aren't compatible.

No, this guy is just repeating one of Daniel Eran Dilger's old talking points. According to that guy Android was never going to make a profit and Google, Samsung and Microsoft were all supposed to be out of business by now. Reality: if you are going to count iPads as PCs then you would need to count the millions of Android tablets sold by Amazon and Samsung as PCs too. Then there are Chromebooks: some analysts consider them PCs but others do not. So there is no massive anti-Apple conspiracy. It is about the OS.

Windows, macOS (and "desktop" Linux distros) are PC operating systems. So devices that are sold with those operating systems that have a PC use case/form factor (meaning excluding servers, gaming consoles and specialty devices where the OS is basically firmware) are going to be classified as PCs. Surface Books have tablet form factors but even the ones that run on Qualcomm mobile ARM chips run the same OS as $7500 Windows 10 engineering workstations. Windows DID make a separate OS for smartphones and tablets. Back when that still existed, the few devices that actually sold were not counted as PCs by IDC, Gartner or anyone else.

Android and formerly iOS are mobile OSes. Devices made with them are going to be considered mobile devices and not PCs.

ChromeOS is a special category. Even though it was built on top of Debian and now - similar to Android - is a custom Linux distro, it is stripped down and doesn't have enough features or capabilites to be considered a (modern) PC OS. You have to add that stuff back in to get a full-blown Ubuntu or Debian PC yourself (totally worth your while if you have enough RAM and a decent CPU/SOC ... but if you have one of the 2 GB of RAM and/or Celeron or MediaTek models don't bother). But even though it has long been used to make 2-in-1 type devices and recently is being used in pure tablets, ChromeOS isn't a mobile OS either. It would be a great one if Google allowed it to be. ChromeOS on Samsung Galaxy Note hardware ... dare to dream.

DED originated that ridiculous - and utterly false - take because of his personal conviction that 99% of Windows PCs are trash and most Windows users are cheapskate dunderheads who use their PCs for simple consumption and light productivity tasks that an iPad could easily replace. A lot of other Apple bloggers picked up on his hyperbole and propaganda but it was honestly never true. There are tons of necessary things that you can do on a $500 Windows PC that you can't do on an iPad Pro that costs twice as much. (And keep in mind: the iPad Pro or anything like it didn't even exist when DED came up with this ridiculous take. He was pushing this nonsense back when iPads still had 32 bit dual core processors and 1 GB of RAM.) Apple's own failed and thankfully now abandoned "you can replace your PC with an (often more expensive!) iPad" marketing campaign aside, Apple partisans who repeat stuff like that just show themselves to be condescending classist elitists who don't know nearly as much about tech as they claim to.

knowitall said:

linuxplatform said:

knowitall said:

Your mistaken, Mac profits are low in percentage against for example the iPhone, but not low in absolute numbers.

This means that Mac profits are higher than all Dell, Hp and Lenovos combined.

Dell earns about $23 billion in revenue a quarter. Lenovo about $15 billion in revenue. I am not going to list HP because unlike Dell and Lenovo they get revenue from a lot more things than PCs, including services. 

That said, I agree with your overall point. You can easily get a Windows laptop with an i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM for $500-$550. Meanwhile an equivalent MacBook Air is going to cost $1000. Were Apple to drop the price of their MacBook Air to $650, how many more people would buy it? I don't know ... if they make $500 on every MacBook Air as it is but would only make $100 if they were to try to compete with Asus - probably the best "cheap" PC manufacturer there is - would they need to sell 5 times as many MacBook Airs? Now can you envison a scenario where Apple sells 5 million MacBook Airs a quarter? Did Apple even move anywhere close to that many MacBook Airs during "peak Apple", when the iPhone 6+ had everyone in a frenzy, Ballmer was refusing to budge off Windows 8 and there were even multiple major Hollywood movies about Apple and its products? So what would their chances be of doing that now with Windows 10 is at least halfway as good as Windows 7 was and even Chromebooks now somehow being a viable marketable product? Seriously where a $400 Windows laptop is still a questionable purchase, you can spend that on a Chromebook and get a decent Intel i3 Ubuntu laptop with a touchscreen and 2-in-1 form factor that can also run mobile apps.

Even if they were to make the entry level Air model a good bit cheaper, say $750 ... you can get a legit 1080p Windows gaming laptop with an Nvidia GeForce graphics card for that. I really don't think that Apple is going to make much more money by lowering prices. It is tough for the people who want a MacBook but legitimately can't afford one but that's still the set of facts we are dealing with. Apple could lower prices on their cheapest models, experience only a few percentage points bump in market share but actually make less money. 

My point was about profit, not revenue.
So I repeat Apples Macs generate more profit than all pc companies combined.
I wasn't talking about low prices either, although extremely slim margins of pc companies is the reason they have almost no profit at all.   
Your rambling about low prices misses the point completely because you forget about the operating system. You cannot buy a pc with macOS (and this makes it of no value).
It would be nice if Apple could lower its Mac price point, but I indicated that that will happen this year by introducing Apples own A(desktop) processor soc.
At that point pc manufactures have 3 problems: they lack decent processors, a decent operating system and any real profits. 
Because of that I expect Macs to be as successful as iPhones.    

I know you were talking about profit and not revenue. I just don't believe you. Prove me wrong by posting Apple's profits in PCs and then posting the profits of the top 5 PC manufacturers. As for the rest of your comments I was actually agreeing with you but apparently you can't handle someone disagreeing with your minor point while agreeing with your main point. So maybe you should reread my post.

sacto joe said:

ElCapitan said:

sacto joe said:

There are ZERO metrics to measure Apple hardware outside of wild speculation based on generated revenue. It was literally predictable that, when Apple stopped reporting actual sales numbers, we'd see a huge decrease in "estimates" of Apple hardware sold.

Also, the revenue compare over fy 2018 for Macs was actually better for 2 out of 4 quarters, and in Q4 fy '18, Mac sales were literally on fire, so that compare is somewhat questionable.

So what hard numbers do these outfits have to base this on? How about none.

That is just completely bull, because they have always researched these numbers which they collect via a large number of channels and reported on them for decades independent of Apple providers figures.
 
There has always been some discrepancy between Apple's own numbers and these companies, but by and large they agree - also trend-wise. 

Let's crunch some real numbers, shall we? These are from Gartner. IDC's appear to be behind a paywall:

Apple actually shipped:

cy 2016: 20.38 M Macs

cy 2017: 18.55 M Macs

cy 2018: 18.99 M Macs

Gartner said:

cy 2016: 18.61 M Macs

cy 2017: 19.30 M Macs

cy 2018: 18.02 M Macs

Gartner percentage miss (in spite of knowing ACTUAL numbers for 3 out of 4 quarters!):

cy 2016: -9.5%

cy 2017: +4%

cy 2018: -5.4%

Needless to say, this is piss-poor. And they'd have been even poorer in piss if Gartner hadn't had the 3 quarters worth of actual Apple numbers to work with.

But thanks for the opportunity to prove you don't know what the fork you're talking about, along with many other anti-Apple posters here.

Actually ... no it isn't. This actually is within the ballpark. Gartner's job is to provide <b>estimates</b> in advance of the official numbers and in particular to provide <b>estimates</b> for companies who never actually release their official numbers (which Apple doesn't do for all their product lines by the way). You can knock Gartner and IDC all you want ... but good luck finding anyone who does better jobs. 

jcs2305 said:

CloudTalkin said:

linuxplatform said:

What about all the other wearable heart rate monitors on the market today and those that pre-existed the Apple Watch? Normally I am suspicious of the "everyone is a lying thieving crook but Apple who can do no wrong" crowd but even if the Apple Watch has "the best" heart rate monitor on the market among wearables there are plenty that are quite good. Garmin, Fitbit, Samsung and even Fossil are reported to have good ones in their watches and bands by the various consumer review sites and a good percentage of them even rate Garmin's as better. It may not be an open standard like, say, bluetooth but it still appears to have been a common and widely implemented technology for years.

They're suing Apple because they claimed to have met with Apple, shared info with Apple, and Apple subsequently hired away key employees and deployed tech that Masimo thinks infringed on Masimo tech.  I don't think Garmin, Fitbit, Samsung, or Fossil meet any of those thresholds for being sued.

Or 1. They could be waiting to sue those guys later (like Sonos suing Google instead of Goggle and Amazon because they can only afford to sue one at a time)
Or 2. The other guys could have licensed Masimo IP
Or 3. Garmin, Fitbit, Samsung, and Fossil secretly formed a Cabal and are secretly bankrolling Masimo's lawsuit against Apple in the hopes of gaining an embargo on the Apple Watch so their smartwatches have a chance of gaining a foothold.  Moments before the judge renders a verdict in favor of the cAbal, the trial is interrupted with the bombshell info that the entire trial has been a conspiracy against Apple and the Apple Watch.  As the judge rules against the caBal, a Samsung Ballie rolls slowly into the courtroom and shoots darts into the necks of the cabAl members so they can't turn against each other.  Which means someone was controlling the cabaL. dun-dun-duuuuuunnnnn.

Not gonna lie.  Sort really hoping for option 3.

Hahahaha  ..great post.

1. If that were the case they would have said so.
2. Extremely unlikely.
3. Except that Samsung already has a foothold. They have a 12% market share, are #3 overall (with #2 making very cheap bands sold primarily in China) and - more important - a 150% year increase YoY in sales. Garmin meanwhile has a 7% market share, quite good for what was always a small company to begin with (their primary product before smartphones with Google Maps and later Apple Maps essentially chased them out of that business was GPS navigators). They have done a pretty good job for themselves rebounding as they are probably selling more watches than they did GPS devices. Fitbit ... they are owned by Google now.