Mac sales decline 16.7%

In refence to adage.com/article?article_id=135578:

Indeed, tighter consumer wallets are helping [Microsoft] gain traction over rival Apple. The average price people are paying for a computer today is $689, compared with $873 a year ago, according to NPD Group data from last month. Unit sales of Windows PCs in the U.S. rose 22% year over year, compared with a 16.7% Mac sales decline, according to NPD.

"I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person."

Totally subjective here but by the looks of her clothes, the car she drives and the absolute clunk of a computer she bought, damn right she's not cool enough

That is plain nasty Bosie. Most of us can't afford to drive a Bentley Continental GT and wear pink designer shell suits.

I happen to have 4 Macs around the house including two MacBooks. However, this year the computer I have used the most is an Acer Aspire One netbook running Windows 7.

In my opinion, Windows 7 is now way ahead of Leopard and I doubt we will see much of a change with Snow Leopard.

I'm making the change from Mac to PC...

lol, we might expect a few laughs this summer if Apple decides to respond.

Windows 7 looks nice from the screenshots I've seen posted around but if, heaven forbid, I ever need to use it I'm sure the Macbook Air will run things so that I can pretend it's still a Mac - no need to switch the Bentley and the shell suit, right?!?

I think Apple screwed up this time, very minor upgrades and a price increase for the iMacs.

The non-pro laptops are too expensive.

A sign of the times. People are going to pay more attention to value for money nowadays than a pretty case.

Meh.

Oddly enough it all the more makes me want one. Instead of being £749 for an iMac it's now another £200 more. I still want one when my MacBook will eventually need replacing.

There's no way I'm going back to a PC. That's like getting rid of a Volkswagen Passat and going back to a Vauxhall Astra.

That's like getting rid of a Volkswagen Passat and going back to a Vauxhall Astra.

I seem to remember a thread about you wanting to replace the VW?

NPD's figures are estimates from people without access to real data.

Gruber says:

"It�s never been clear to me why reports like this are reported as fact. NPD doesn�t have some sort of magic access to Apple�s sales numbers, and Apple does not release monthly sales data. My understanding is that everyone who believes these numbers from NPD will be pleasantly surprised next month when Apple releases its actual sales figures for the current quarter."

And in MS's ad, the bimbo saying she is not cool enough has just reinforced Apple's own message (is it a coincidence that the same ad company produced the woeful Seinfield ads?)

You just don't get that feeling of satisfaction with a Windows OS and generic PC laptop.

I've never bought a retail copy of Windows and never intend to. I did buy Leopard and I'll buy the next MacOS version too.

i have 2 macs and 2 passats.

here's some old news: cheap is not generally synonymous with best.

of course the opposite is true as well....

But a premium product has a reputation to defend. A cheap products only selling point is its low cost.

Edited by deleted (Sun 29-Mar-09 19:27:14)

very true reputations are everything which i suppose is why alot of premium manufacturers would like to rubbish those offering cheaper alternatives.... You know I`m typing this on a Dell, which whilst i`ll agree is not top quality but it does exactly what i need it to do for a fraction of the cost of a premium product Sony/Apple etc

If true I'm glad. Apple need a reality check, they need to come down to Earth on the pricing front.

In reply to a post by macduffintosh72:

If true I'm glad. Apple need a reality check, they need to come down to Earth on the pricing front.

The same could be said of MS... in view of their near-monopoly position and their volume of sales, I'd like to see a proper justification of their prices.

Indeed £299 for an Office suite.

With Dell you're often best buying the business models. We had some Dell laptops that were aimed at home users and they were very unreliable. Hard disks failed, mainboards had to be changed etc.

We've had problems on their 17 inch models, one has had a new mainboard.

in view of their near-monopoly position and their volume of sales

Which is infuriating why Apple don't make their products more competitive. You and I know that Macs are superior in so many ways, but charging £500 for the cheapest mac, which doesn't even come with a keyboard and then increasing the price on their new model Macbook to a couple of hundred quid over the old one is just astonishing. I despair sometimes.

Price has a huge impact on how a product is perceived. Go too cheap and people think it will be rubbish.

Anyway, most of Apple's software is very affordable compared to the competition.

Which is infuriating why Apple don't make their products more competitive.

For the same reason that MS don't price their software more reasonably- the customers will pay it.

It's called capitalism

In these times, people simply wont be able to pay Apples prices.

They won't be able to afford laptops with the top edition of Vista or be able to buy Microsoft Office.

I would agree with your argument if Macs were more reliable than PCs. According to these figures they are not. Even discounting the results for Asus, Lenovo seem to be more reliable than Apple.

Do you have any links that show otherwise?

Price has a huge impact on how a product is perceived. Go too cheap and people think it will be rubbish.

Although if you give it away (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris) people will think that it is functional and rock solid. It's a funny old world!

Anyway, most of Apple's software is very affordable compared to the competition.

I think the discussion here was about Apple hardware. It would be hard to argue that their hardware is good value compared to PCs.

And don't forget the cost of all those different versions of Vista

My girlfriends Vista Pro laptop was under £400, 2 years ago. She doesn't use Microsoft Office, nor does anyone I know outside work.

Vista Pro isn't the top edition, that is Vista Premium.

It comes with an OEM licence which is non transferable.

Plenty of people I know run Office outside of work. It's the only piece of software many of them want Windows for.

Have you never been a student or updated a CV?

Edited by deleted (Sun 29-Mar-09 22:21:18)

increasing the price on their new model Macbook to a couple of hundred quid over the old one is just astonishing

isn't some of that a reflection of our currency being on it's knees at the moment?

TBH i've not checked apple.com against UK store, but i would expect any price hikes in the US to be less.

Most people I know who use Vista couldn't even tell you which version they have, including my gf. It's just an OS and as long as they can browse the internet and send/receive emails it's pretty much all they need. I know the Mac OS is better, I use it every day of every week unless I'm away from home. The point is that Macs are, since the recent updates, well overpriced.

The matter of Microsofts licencing and OEMs is a different matter. More the reason for Apple to compete more aggressively on a pricing front.

More the reason for Apple to compete more aggressively on a pricing front.

The day Apple starts doing that is the day Apple's business model collapses.

Apple is about three things: margins, margins and margins.

Price wars kill margins.

Have you never been a student or updated a CV?

That's what OpenOffice is for. It's perfectly adequate for most students or home users.

Price wars kill margins.

But in a recession, margins kill sales.

Not really.

Apple used Just-In-Time production to the greatest extent possible and what really kills firms is unsold inventory.

$20bn or in the bank can't hurt either.

That's what I'd have to agree with...

When I purchased my last MacBook we had almost $2 to the pound now we've got less then $1.4.

Thus, I got a 2Ghz Intel Core Duo, 512mb RAM, 60Gb disk for £789, oh and that was running OS X 10.4

Now in the states you can get a Alu 2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2G Ram and 160Gb disk for $1299 which is £929 UK Apple price, if the exchange rate held out it could of been around the £500 mark. Only thing is now for some reason the Apple remote is extra!

But lets face it, I've an old 12" G4 867mhz powerbook (640mb ram 60gb disk) which runs OS X 10.5.x. OK I wouldn't use it for PhotoShop, but web access, reading e-mail etc it's still fine. On the other hand I've an old HP tablet (P3 1ghz, 2gb ram, 100gb disk) purchased around the same time and there is no way I would expect it to run Visa Professional, and do anything useful. It's fine with XP but it fails the vista compatibility test, although there are a few sites on how to 'cludge' Vista to get it running on the machine. I'd have to buy a new laptop, if I was die hard Windows user still, much like millions of other Windows users had to.

Isn't there a case here that Mac users don't need to keep having to buy newer machines as often as Windows users do.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the cost of upgrades.... 5 users OS X family pack was £120, a single copy of Vista Ultimate (upgrade) around £175 for a single desktop.

Only thing now, is will Snow Leopard still run on G4/G5 machines when it prowls the streets?

Even if it won't, I can't see masses of home Mac users running out to get new machines for a while at least, after all there are plenty of G3 users still out there.....

In reply to a post by ncudmore:

Only thing now, is will Snow Leopard still run on G4/G5 machines when it prowls the streets?

I haven't been able to find anything definitive but accepted wisdom on AD is that Snow Leopard will be Intel only.

t t

Edited by trailertrash (Mon 30-Mar-09 13:19:17)

I disagree. I don't think Apple has to match, pound for pound, the prices PC vendors charge for their machines but seriously, £1000 for a unibody Macbook and £500 for a Mac Mini? I can't honestly recommend a Mac to anyone at those prices.

You certainly need better specifications to play games, more so if you need Bootcamp.

In addition, eBuyer sell Vista upgrades for £53

In reply to a post by AnotherExPipex:

I would agree with your argument if Macs were more reliable than PCs. According to these figures they are not. Even discounting the results for Asus, Lenovo seem to be more reliable than Apple.

Do you have any links that show otherwise?

No, but this article discounts the accuracy of Resecuecom's findings. It's a bit like taking your Mac to TechGuys who aren't AFAIK an Apple authorised repair shop.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/03/26/ridiculous-...

Edited by Tacitus (Tue 31-Mar-09 18:08:36)

People are going to pay more attention to value for money nowadays than a pretty case.

The bird in the advert is therefore in more trouble finding a boyfriend than a dirt cheap laptop.

She might find a dirt cheap boyfriend.

Only thing now, is will Snow Leopard still run on G4/G5 machines when it prowls the streets?

I very much doubt it. Part of the point of it is optimisation, and I cannot imagine that would include wasting time and money on supporting legacy PPC hardware that is by my reckoning be a minimum of 3 years old at the time of Snow Leopard's release.