PC Shipments In 2013 See the Worst Yearly Decline In History 564
An anonymous reader writes "The PC market continues to be in free fall, having now seen its seventh consecutive quarter of declining worldwide shipments. Worldwide PC shipments dropped to 82.6 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Gartner, a 6.9 percent decrease from the same period last year. It's worth emphasizing that this past quarter resulted in a total of 315.9 million units shipped in 2013, a 10 percent decline from 2012, and the worst decline in PC market history. The overall shipment level was equal to the one in 2009."
Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Film at eleven.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Interesting)
yep
i have a 2 year old macbook i'll use for another few years
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Informative)
Macs were the anomaly in all this - their "PC" sales went up 26% over the same time period.
Ultimate source is Gartner, but found the info here: linky [appleinsider.com]
Also, if kept reasonably clean, a Mac will last way longer than the typical OEM box/laptop.
Otherwise, in the PC realm? Yeah... over the past few years, I've just bought laptops as needed, and aside from my last purchase (because the old laptop was failing), that's been farther and fewer between.
In other news, there is also the Tablet Effect; my wife went from a laptop to an iPad 4 last year, and it seems to suit her perfectly.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
> Also, if kept reasonably clean, a Mac will last way longer than the typical OEM box/laptop.
No it won't. It will become obsolete faster as it's completely unmaintainable. Anything that breaks will be harder to deal with. Obsolete components can't be swapped out.
With a PC, I can do this myself or pay someone else. This isn't an option with a Mac.
My old Mac is a doorstop. Can't even get OS updates for it. Similarly old PCs are fine, especially with an upgraded video card.
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No it won't. It will become obsolete faster as it's completely unmaintainable.
Assuming the non-geeks even bother to upgrade anything (the vast majority don't, but let's assume for a moment:)
Software maintenance? I could be running a 2007-era Intel MBP [apple.com] right now and still use the latest OS version, binaries, etc. Let me read that to you in practical terms: I can be using the latest OS/apps on a 7-year-old Apple laptop.
Hardware Maintenance? Wait, what's the point? For Macs, you usually just slap more RAM and/or a bigger HDD in it, and you're good for another year or three before perfor
MAC will last longer ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Any cites for that so-called fact. MAC's are closed systems with a much more engineered life span than a clone PC. As stated previously no parts to be swapped any failure is the end of life for a MAC. The anomaly of MAC's upswing could be attributed to the absolute lack of any upgrade path.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that from the ministry of made-up statistics? Because if so, I'd like to rebut with this, from the ministry of silly ministries -- I have multiple, perfectly-working Windows-based PC machines (both desktop and laptop) that are well over a decade old. In fact, the *only* component failures of any kind that I have had with my machines are hard disks, fans, and keyboards, all of which fail with identical frequency in Macs because they are the exact same components.
Re: Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Current PCs are good enough. (Score:3)
While you are correct in 2004 apple was shipping PowerPC CPU's.
Aple and osx has made not one but two processor arch changes in the last year. IOS is basically a sandboxxed version of osx running a touchUI. Apple does drop support for older hardware however my 2009 macbook is running mavericks just fine. That's five years and 4 OS revisions.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
And then some people just don't like Win 8.
You've actually met someone who does like Window 8?
Everyone I know who's seen it takes one look, goes 'WTF?' and decides not to buy a new PC after all.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
> You've actually met someone who does like Window 8?
I have. Well, wait, he says he does, but he works in Redmond (true story) so it may be a job requirement.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
I went on a trip to Africa a few years back and by shear chance ended up traveling with a Microsoft Salesman. God was that a fun trip... I generally like giving people shit but this was special... ...and when he pulled out his windows phone, and it wouldn't connect... then it crashed... He had to borrow my Android... I just stood there grinning ear to ear every time he had to call home.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't believe people are choosing other tablets.
So you think people buying a $70 Android tablet should be buying $1000 Surface tablets instead?
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
> But for $500, I want to be able to type up a document in a pinch. Plug in my USB devices. Connect to HMDI TV, plug in an SD Card, open a command prompt,
I can do all of that with my phone. I can certainly do that with an Android tablet without spending $500 on it.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of people thought the iPad would flop because what THEY wanted was a more lightweight and portable PC with a touch screen and decent battery life. That's not what an iPad is and it's not what the people who are buying them (and similar Android tablets) want.
If you really want a mechanical keyboard there are tons of bluetooth choices and frankly I just don't understand why anyone would want to use a mouse with a tablet. It makes no sense. I'd rather have a tablet that's a great tablet and a PC that's a great PC than one device that's only marginally good at being either one.
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I just don't understand why anyone would want to use a mouse with a tablet.
So you don't get the screen all disgusting and greasy. And faster because your hands don't need to move as far. Also it's more precise than touching.
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I understand why people may want a real keyboard over a touchscreen keyboard, but again, there are plenty of bluetooth keyboards around.
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If you want command line access, Android - which runs on top of the Linux kernel which has been 'accused' of being excessively command-line 'friendly' by many a Windows-supporter - is your best bet. If you want to connect to just about any filesystem worth connecting to - and then some - the same is true. USB ports? Look no further than most low price tablets which, incidentally, usually run Android. Switching between apps? Ehhh... you do realise that Microsoft was rather late at this stuff, don't you? Even
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
I open up Windows Store Apps only on the the Modern UI display and Win32/64 apps on the desktop displays.
Okay, I'll bite: What benefit could you experience on the Metro side (worth dedicating a monitor) that you can't with the desktop?
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
I open up Windows Store Apps only on the the Modern UI display and Win32/64 apps on the desktop displays.
Okay, I'll bite: What benefit could you experience on the Metro side (worth dedicating a monitor) that you can't with the desktop?
Well, you don't get the benefit of a clean slate from swapping to a full screen UI and walking through the mental-door-way that helps you forget what you were about to do. [scientificamerican.com]
You also benefit from the lack of discoverability that these gesture based interfaces present -- So you can sharpen your mind guessing at and maybe even learning new ways to do the things you already knew how to do.
You also benefit from Microsoft's App store which charges developers a cut of profits; You see, I'm not going to eat that distribution cost, I'll pass it onto you so the the same app in their "modern" W8 store will costs you more than the desktop version -- Well, actually, I'll calculate adoption rate then distribute that MS tax across both the W8 UI and the desktop program to increase overall cost to you whether you use W8 or not. This is "beneficial" because it gives Microsoft a cut of software sales they never needed before, so they don't have to focus on their core competency (Selling you an OS with features you want), and instead can... well... Give gamers more glorious ads on their dash over the XBL service they pay for which operates via the same MS sales tax model; Fund more patent suits against FLOSS OSs they had no part in developing so they can roll out the MS tax to smartphones and tablets instead of having to compete; Run servers for software as a service so they can rent you MS Office, and help the NSA [wikipedia.org] maintain "national" corporate interest "security" [wikipedia.org], etc.
You've got to look at things from MS's perspective: It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's only micro when it's soft, baby.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Informative)
I realize that you have not met me but I use Win 8.1 everyday at work and love it (took a while to get used too bout the same as Win7 did from XP)
Oh please. Win7 was not different at all from WinXP; to the casual user, Win7 just looks like a re-skin of XP, except now the task bar shows tasks differently (using big icons instead of small icons with text), and there's a little area on the right with indicators/controls for things like WiFi, battery, etc. Overall, the usage is almost the same.
Win8 is a complete sea-change from Win7/XP, at least until you can find the desktop, and even then you're still going right back to Metro any time you bring up the "start" menu.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Informative)
Win8 + ClassicShell is fine. No drawbacks versus Windows 7 that I've run across. I've never seen Metro since the initial installation, it just isn't there.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Third party UI add-on. 95% of users will never even hear of it, much less use it. Meaningless to the over-all acceptance of Win 8.
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True, and most important, useless to most corporate users.
Microsoft under Ballmer has earned its place in business school case studies next to Edsel, Circuit City, and the inventor of the 110-volt rubber duck.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Interesting)
They did bring back the "Start Button" for 8.1.
Unfortunately not the actual Start Menu inside it thought :-(
The current rumours say we'll see the actual Start Menu in 8.2. That plus auto start to desktop and you are almost back to Win 7!
Will it be too little too late? Under the hood Win 8 is really not that much different from Win 7. Probably better. If you can keep corporate desktop users from having to screw around with Metro ever and make it look like Win 7 corporate use may pickup.
I was in Home Depot last weekend and noticed that the Service Desk computers where still running WinXP Professional.
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3rd-party add-ons don't count. Corporate users can't use them. If it isn't built into Windows, it might as well not exist.
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For a power user, everything moved in Win7 - every system setting, everything I knew how to find in the control panel, and so on.
That was briefly annoying, but really wasn't a big deal because everything was discoverable. The problem with Win8 isn't that everything moved again - we're all used to that for Windows - it's that nothing is discoverable in Metro. Blegh.
Dammit, I had the same problem with my XBone. I had to read the freaking manual to figure out how to use a freaking video game console, becaus
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
Menus are passe. Nowadays you're supposed to just search for everything! Want to start Word? You don't need to just click on an icon, you need to select a search box and then type "word" to find it. Want to see what software is installed on that PC? You don't need to know that, just search for what you want!
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is that. It'd be difficult to quantify, but I suspect that there is a significant percentage of people who were going to get another PC, but decided to wait rather than struggle with Win8.
But I think the overriding factor is that PCs made since, oh, 2007 are fast enough for any but the most demanding needs.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be difficult to quantify, but I suspect that there is a significant percentage of people who were going to get another PC, but decided to wait rather than struggle with Win8.
Doubtful. There's nothing sexy about a laptop, whereas Apple and Google (via Samsung and others) have made tablets the go-to computing device of the moment. Win8 is barely moving the needle on this decision; it is all being decided by form factor.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Old PCs are good enough. I'm still on a 3.8 GHz P4 single core running Debian, and it's fast enough for everything I do but running my pet project or doing video encoding, both of which I do on my Core i7 laptop.
My folks recently had to replace their machine. It's a quad core unit that is such serious overkill for email and surfing it's not even funny. Unless it breaks down, I doubt they'll *ever* have to replace it.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Old PCs are good enough. I'm still on a 3.8 GHz P4 single core running Debian, and it's fast enough for everything I do but running my pet project or doing video encoding, both of which I do on my Core i7 laptop.
My folks recently had to replace their machine. It's a quad core unit that is such serious overkill for email and surfing it's not even funny. Unless it breaks down, I doubt they'll *ever* have to replace it.
That's kinda the point -- you can't BUY a PC these days that isn't serious overkill for email and surfing.
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Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
The lowest end AMD E2s might get bested by the P4, but the higher clocked ones would still be a big improvement.
The bigger problem with most cheap laptops is the slow HD and lack of RAM which would cripple any CPU. Give a Celeron 847 an SSD and 4GB+ and it would be fine for most non CPU intensive or gaming tasks. Much better than the P4 for sure.
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I have serious doubts about it being faster than a high-end LGA775 desktop P4.
The CPU benchmarks I found in a quick web search show the Celeron 847 at about twice the performance of a 3.8GHz P4.
Heck, even a dual-core Atom typically benchmarked around the same as a high-end P4 when running four threads.
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That's kinda the point -- you can't BUY a PC these days that isn't serious overkill for email and surfing.
Really, we're at a software block. What exists out there now can be done by existing hardware, and there's nothing pushing it. For your email-surfing example, in the past CPU and GPU time was blocking the quality and did for quite awhile, especially decoding. Remember the days not too long ago where interlaced was the way to go? In gaming, it's the mass-drive towards consoles which are on a serious decline even with the new ones being pumped out. But people are finding that computer 2-4 years old will
Flashblock (Score:3)
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Film at eleven.
Many people never needed one. PC was overkill when all you wanted to do was social network an check email. A smart phone or tablet does this without all the extra bloat and bother (depending upon service provider or how you purchased your mobile computing device, ymmv)
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
What is odd though is that this is not an enviable market to be in. People spend all kinds of money on things they don't need or replacing things that work perfectly well.
Even with something as expensive as cars, many people just want a newer car for the simple reason that it is newer. Their old car works perfectly well. But hey,,, time to buy a new car.
People spend so much money eating out or on coffee and snacks... yet think twice before spending $1.99 or some app.
People replace clothes all the time just because they're bored of it.
Apple has probably been the most visible in its ability to get people to think of the computing market like they do the rest of life.
I often catch myself thinking about my purchases. I'll be cheap about my computer or worry about spending money on a game that takes so much skill to make (so many programmers, graphic artists, managers...). Then I'll go out and spend $50.00 at a restaurant or blow $50 on a pair of jeans that probably cost $5 to make and rest is all show.
Current PCs are good enough, but it is sad how poorly we treat the field relative to the rest of life.
yeah, a PC is just a tool... and that's the problem.
A cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.
A pair of jeans is just clothing.
Somehow many other fields manage to make it more than that and that keeps the money going.
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I think it depends on the person. On cars, since the 1980's I've bought lease returns and kept them until the don't run anymore. (I'm on my third.) It's really nice not having car payments. I buy clothes at Costco and keep them until my family starts to complain. For me, eating out is an event, not a daily occurrence. I do drink Starbucks or Dutch Brothers, because they really are better than any food-type drive-thru, but I only order regular black coffee, not any of those inordinately expensive froo
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It depends how you look at your PC. If it's an "appliance" (fridge, microwave, hot water heater, etc.) ask yourself when was the last time you made an impulse buy to replace one of those? We had to buy a new fridge a few years back when after 10+ years our old one stopped working - it was cheaper to replace it than try to fix it.
Of course, if you're a fridge enthusiast, you would take it apart and fix it yourself. Most people aren't.
Same thing with PC's - most people could care less, it's an appliance they
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Film at eleven.
Yep, no significant software improvements have been made. No need to get better hardware. Even games aren't moving things along anymore since most big games are just console ports now days.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
So, with console getting a major upgrade recently, do you expect to see a huge "move" in games in about 2 years?
That 'major upgrade' makes the console about as fast as a low to mid-range gaming PC today.
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It's Microsoft's fault. They won't allow the makers to sell you a PC without a tablet OS.
I'm sure that's a significant factor. I wonder how the makers feel about that.
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:5, Informative)
It's Microsoft's fault. They won't allow the makers to sell you a PC without a tablet OS.
I'm sure that's a significant factor. I wonder how the makers feel about that.
Look no further [neowin.net] "Samsung is blaming Windows 8 for its poor performance in the PC market and the overall decline of the industry as a whole."
Re:Current PCs are good enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
> The market was never driven by equipment wearing out, it was always about rapid planned obsolescence.
Well, it was also driven by being on the steep end of a new technology curve. The 386 was fast compared to the 8088, but the 486 was a godsend if you were doing anything besides text editing. There was a time when you couldn't want to get your hands on the next generation hardware, because current hardware really wasn't good enough. Now it is. (Has been for some time.)
Honestly, I haven't seen a lot of planned obsolescence in current PC hardware. The examples I can think of have to do with software, not hardware. For instance, Windows XP getting slower and slower as the number of patches increases. (As discussed on Slashdot recently.)
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Windows 8. 'nuff said.
Doesn't work.
We've been buying Windows 8 installed PCs by the pallet and then re-imaging them with Windows 7, to purge the toxins.
The hilarious bit about this is Microsoft probably includes those in their counts of "Success Measures" in Windows 8 sales. I doubt we are unique.
We still need to replace the old tech and continue rolling out more computing devices than ever before, but tablets are beginning to take their place and we're evaluating the Chromebooks to see what we can do with those.
Other industries are hurting too (Score:5, Funny)
Iron lungs and horseshoes are still way down.
Re:Other industries are hurting too (Score:4, Funny)
Iron lungs and horseshoes are still way down.
Who doesn't like a game of horseshoes? These kids with their Upset Birds. They need to go outside more.
and who wouldn't want iron lungs? These pink ones get sore after the first pack of cigarettes.
Computers these days are more than adequate (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nice to See Macs are Up (Score:5, Interesting)
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I hate "Apple Tax", please use something else. This is a site ostensibly about knowledge distribution, and Apple Tax is simplistic and bad. Call it Apple Margin. Apple Luxury Price. Apple Price Gouging. Apple "Tim Cook will charge you what he wants because he fucking CAN" (which is most realistic) but not Apple Tax.
There is no Porsche Tax. You either pay what Porsche charges, or you find other transport. Nobody is pointing a gun at your head to buy it. If you think their margins are too high, you buy a Ford
Re:Nice to See Macs are Up (Score:4, Informative)
Let's see. Other than the case, a Mac is nothing but OEM components. Sure, they may be to some degree at the middle or higher tier of OEM components, but they're just off-the-shelf parts.
A Porsche, on the other hand, isn't just a collection of generic components. Certainly there are some, but the engines, transmissions, suspension and the like are all unique to the Porsche. A Porsche is not just a Toyota Corolla in a different case.
So yes, there is very much a thing called the Apple Tax. Call it what you will, but you pay a premium for the logo. The very existence of Hackintoshes shows you that a Mac is just a PC with some special custom ROMs to facilitate easy installation of OS-X.
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...except it's THE SAME CAR.
The only difference is the outer shell. At least a Lexus has some upgraded innards when compared to a Toyota. With a Mac it's ZILCH. It's the same parts as you could get in a Dell.
There have been particular Dells used as hackintoshes for this very reason.
It's easier to talk nonsense when you have no clue what so ever and you have no idea what you're buying.
Custom Builds (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why not. It's an exponential market.
After friends/relatives/neighbors wanted me to work on their pos dell/gateway/emachines/sony.. I talked most of them into building one for their next upgrade instead of going back to shit companys who won't support you anyway unless you pay. alot.
Most of them went for the custom machine easy. Half the price. Better preformance. No crapware on top. And if i have to 'support' them. I don't want to do it for shitty machines. I built more than a few of them for pe
Re:Custom Builds (Score:4, Insightful)
After friends/relatives/neighbors wanted me to work on their pos dell/gateway/emachines/sony.. I talked most of them into building one for their next upgrade instead of going back to shit companys who won't support you anyway unless you pay. alot.
Most of them went for the custom machine easy. Half the price. Better preformance. No crapware on top. And if i have to 'support' them. I don't want to do it for shitty machines. I built more than a few of them for people too. $50.. an hour of my time picking parts. an hour assembling and installing windows. $25 an hour for something i enjoy doing. Everyones happy and it ends up alot less work and downtime/problems for everyone in the future.
You sound like me ten year ago. I know everyone is different, but get out while you can. If you get more friends and family coming to you, you'll find more and more things breaking, more problems coming up, with expectations that your weekends are no longer yours. And more often than not, over time, these same friends and family will begin expecting you to just fix it, and may even get rude or cause you issues if you expect much more than a "Thank You! Till next time I my smoking causes my GPU to fail due to the dust gunk that caked over the heatsink causing it to overheat for the last few months". And somehow, again over time, they'll come to blame you for these problems that you should have been able to warn them about or prevent. I still assist close friends with anything I can help them with, because they aren't assholes, but some "friends" and definitely some family will take advantage of you. If you feel the desire to pursue this line of work, find a way to do it professionally, and only deal with customers.
Re:Custom Builds (Score:5, Informative)
Custom built PCs are a niche market. I highly doubt they would have anything near a 10% impact on the entire PC market.
Not anymore. Asus mentioned they have sold millions of high end/gaming motherboards as gamers no longer buy Dells and replace the GPU like they did in the old days.
You can thank crappy PSU's and proprietary tiny cases for this decline as gamers are the only ones who upgrade besides corporations and they only do so every 10 years now when MS decides it needs more money for another OS upgrade.
Re:Custom Builds (Score:4, Informative)
Not anymore. Asus mentioned they have sold millions of high end/gaming motherboards as gamers no longer buy Dells and replace the GPU like they did in the old days.
You can thank crappy PSU's and proprietary tiny cases for this decline as gamers are the only ones who upgrade besides corporations and they only do so every 10 years now when MS decides it needs more money for another OS upgrade.
I was about to ask you to back up that claim, but a quick google shows what you're saying as true: http://www.maximumpc.com/gigabyte_asus_wrestle_motherboard_shipment_crown2013 [maximumpc.com]
The article is a bit dated, but apparently Asus was expecting to ship 22.2 million mid to high end boards in 2013. It's starting to seem custom rigs (particularly for gaming) is hardly a niche. Maybe the market's somewhat smaller than desktop machines, but it's certainly large enough to be considered healthy and is still growing.
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There's very little incentive to create a "custom" PC any more. Very powerful machines can be gotten refurbished for less than $300. My guess would be that custom PC's are less than 1% of the entire PC market.
I don't see why this was unexpected (Score:5, Interesting)
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This just isn't news to me. There is a large percentage of people that don't really need a PC todo what they do. play online, email, Social media, shop, pictuers, etc.... Until a few years ago the PC was the only way todo this so, they bought a PC. They bought an item that designed todo work and tweeked for home use, so it was overly complex for most. Along came the smart phone and tablet. Small, portable, works, it's SIMPLE and does everything they want/need it todo. Couple that with the slowing of PC speeds advances and new techknology, it is no wornder PC sales are down. They will continue to go down until they reach their new equilibrium.
Not to be snide, but you sure have a lot to say about a 'no news' story.
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> Mac mini was in its own world for years,
Not it wasn't. It was just heavily marketed to a bunch of idiots that think that Apple invents everything that it sells.
I got my first low profile PC in 1999 and was advocating for something like the Mac Mini right here on this website when Apple was still selling that desk lamp monstrosity.
So? (Score:2)
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yep
i remember when multi PC families started popping up. today you only need once per family and the rest are smartphones and tablets
the PC makers missed the boat
expect apple to come out with a cheapo laptop (Score:2)
my prediction for 2014 to 2016
apple comes out with a somewhat cheap A7 powered laptop in the $300 to $500 range sort of like a chromebook
most of the cost of a computer goes to intel and MS. once you trade those out for cheaper parts you can make yourself it fairly easy to make a nice profit
as long as it has a 500GB hard drive, its enough for close to 90% of the people out there
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I'm sorry, I'm trying to wrap my brain around "apple" and "cheap" in the same sentence.
Window 8 (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't Window 8 released about seven quarters ago?
Re:Window 8 (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't Window 8 released about seven quarters ago?
Utter coincidence. Nothing to see here. Move along, now.
Modded funny but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The PC is Dead! Long live the PC! (Score:4, Interesting)
Build your own (Score:5, Informative)
Now I'm only going by my circle of friends, family and acquaintances so this might be a small anomaly but...
It appears that not only is tablet use displacing having a 2nd or 3rd PC, it is more importantly replacing the laptop (name brand). When buying a desktop, the people in my circle have been moving away from buying the Dells and Compaqs and other name brands and have either been building their owns or buying the local PC shop pre-mades, Numbers that wouldn't show up in these reports.
As others have mentioned, today's desktop PCs also tend to last longer as they are still very powerful 3-4 years later.
Mix all of these together and it's no surprise
My Quad Core is over 6 years old... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen the PCs they're selling these days? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the low end of the price spectrum, you have Chromebooks (yuck, puke, no one sane buys these unless they put Linux on it instead), Celerons, and AMD E2 and A4 processors; none of those are even remotely fast. Moving up in price, you see a lot of AMD APUs and Intel Core i3-M systems. I've owned two fairly new laptops recently, one with an AMD A8-4500M ($400) and one with an Intel Core i7-2630QM ($830). The i7 was disappointing (it's a freaking i7, it should absolutely blaze) and only more so because for tasks that are not heavy in the data processing side of things (i.e. data/video compression, software compilation) the A8 seemed to move much faster than the i7 with identical Windows 7 images. Unfortunately, someone at AMD had the stupid idea of making the L1 instruction caches a pitiful 16KB in size and that makes data-heavy tasks run like dog poo.
On the higher side of things, you find ridiculous and exotic offerings like the Yoga 2 Pro with a 13.3" LCD that has a 3200x1800 resolution (hint: you can't read anything at all unless you squint) and it comes with a low-performance ULV version of a mobile (read: already low-performance without being ULV) Core i5 and a nice low-performance Intel GPU, and all versions of this insane hardware combination are around the $1000 mark. I also firmly believe that while there is a market for "ultrabooks," the majority of people out there are wasting their money on "convertible laptops" and having touchscreens for Windows 8. It's a neat shiny new feature that ends up only being useful in niche situations and otherwise was no different than wrapping $400 up and chucking it in the rubbish bin.
Why would anyone buy a new laptop when they are so ridiculous? If you're penny-pinching, you get a machine with tons of RAM, hard drive space, and maybe even USB 3.0, but the CPU is slow beyond belief and the whole system suffers. Dropping a few hundred more bucks might get you into i7 territory but even the i7 up to Sandy Bridge is, in my experience, not much better than equivalent higher-end chips in laptops made four years ago. Why blow $1000 on a really nice new laptop when they're either not much better than what you already own or they're an expensive high-resolution joke of a machine? No thanks; I'll wait until they sweeten the pot some more. (And until the convertibles fad goes to hell.)
It's a Windows problem, not a PC problem (Score:5, Funny)
Unit sales for Apple computers are way up year over year. Likewise unit sales for smart phones, tablets, game consoles -- literally everything with a CPU that doesn't run Windows -- are up year over year.
This is a Windows problem. People don't get excited by clunky old Windows. They don't buy it because they love it, they buy it when they have to. And increasingly they don't.
Massive Correction, not Death (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people like to say that the Desktop PC is dead or dying. I doubt that but I think the market is going to shrink A LOT in the next 10 years. What people seem to forget is that before the internet most people did not have PCs and yet, there were several companies making a lot of money selling them.
I think most people in our society have a strong aversion to technology. They don't want to learn about it, they may want something from it (the internet) but they don't want to make ANY effort to learn anything about it in order to get that. It's not that they are unable or even unwilling to learn something, it's specifically technology. They learn other things in absurd detail like sports stats and clebrity trivia.
People don't want to see technology. They are repulsed by the site of something that looks technical. That's why TVs have to be flatter. You only see the front, the front is a picture of something else, not a TV. Before flat screens the big thing was to hide them inside cabinets with doors that close. People do that to their stereos too. Somehow a overpriced but cheap piece of fiberboard is better to look at than some shiny piece of kit.
I think what we actually have is a society full of wannabe ludites. They would be ludites except... they can't break themselves of their internet and entertainment habits to become real ludites.
But, now there are tablets and other small devices. Tablets and phones look more like jewelry and require less actual learning to use. So, the ludite wanabee masses are ditching the PCs they didn't really want to have in the first place and getting their fix from their.
But, that tech friendly minority of the population that always existed before has not gone extinct. We too will use our tablets and phones where it is appropriate but some things are just better on a bigger device that is not encumbered by the size, energy and weight restrictions of a portable. We will buy Desktops just like we did 15-20 years ago. That is a much smaller market but it was big enough to float large corporations then, it will be big enough now... once the number of competitors is whittled down a bit.
The sad thing is I think their time with PCs was actually starting to mend people's mass psychosis of tech hatred. Now people will just revert back to their old ways.
Windows PCs just not necessary for home use anymor (Score:5, Informative)
We have a couple of aging Windows laptops in our house but they are slowly getting replaced by Chromebooks and tablets. There's just nothing that we run on Windows that absolutely 100% demands Windows. We're using Mint instead of Quicken now, that was the last Windows thing we used. On the Chromebooks, the kids use Google Docs or Microsoft's own cloud based Office when it is absolutely called for. They have yet to hand in an assignment this year where the teacher could tell what source program was used.
The Windows laptops are used mostly for browsing and there's one that my husband keeps around because his work VPN is on it, but he hasn't used it in so long, he's not entirely sure the password is up to date. We also have one Macbook that gets a little usage.
Even so, it's much more likely that if we ever buy an actual full on computer, it would more likely be a Macbook Air rather than a Windows PC. Just never warmed up to the Metro look at all. I tried it and it looked ugly and busy to me whereas the Mac look is still familiar and simple.
The reality about PCs (Score:5, Interesting)
This just go show several things:
The market is saturated
New computers are not that much better than what you have now.
Most people never wanted a PC but wanted a tablet..
The economy still sucks..
Games used to drive PC sales (Score:3)
Is that still the case now? Seems like the consoles might be siphoning away some of those gamer sales.
Re: (Score:3)
its not 1975
expect the different manufacturers to merge or dump their PC business onto others until we have Apple and one or two other companies to make laptops and desktops
Re:even compared to the number sold in 1975? (Score:4, Informative)
what does the worst in history mean?
It means the worst in either absolute or percentage terms. It is far worse than 1975, since PC sales did not decline at all that year. The Altair 8800 [wikipedia.org] was introduced in 1975, and it was a big hit. Sales were in the hundreds.
Re: (Score:3)
Why buy a PC when you can buy an iPad or and Android tablet ?
Because the tablet is slow and clunky and Google (and possibly Apple) are tracking your every move? I left my laptop at home last time I traveled and took the tablet instead, but I went back to the laptop (and the desktop for anything CPU or graphics intensive) as soon as I returned home.
What can be done on a desktop or laptop PC that can't be done on a tablet ?
You can do word processing on a tablet, but it's god-awfully painful compared to a desktop or laptop. Even emails are clunky if you're sending more than two lines.
Re: (Score:3)
Why buy a PC when you can buy an iPad or and Android tablet ?
Because the tablet is slow and clunky and Google (and possibly Apple) are tracking your every move? I left my laptop at home last time I traveled and took the tablet instead, but I went back to the laptop (and the desktop for anything CPU or graphics intensive) as soon as I returned home.
What can be done on a desktop or laptop PC that can't be done on a tablet ?
You can do word processing on a tablet, but it's god-awfully painful compared to a desktop or laptop. Even emails are clunky if you're sending more than two lines.
Apple and Microsoft are tracking quite a lot more on their desktop platforms now, too.
A tablet with a keyboard and external monitor is indistinguishable from a desktop for most user tasks.
Re:Hear that, Microsoft? (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't just the UI. They need to get rid of Windows Store. They also need to distance themselves from UEFI boot restrictions both in word and deed. Windows 8 isn't just a bad UI. It's too much lock-in for the PC. Consumers are OK with their phone and even their tablet being an appliance. They want their PC to be general-purpose. PC users don't get a lot of credit. I think they appreciate these issues more than some realize.
What they really ought to do is come out with service packs for the old OSs after their EOL dates, and charge subscription fees for patching. I'm on the record as being willing to pony up $30/yr. for XP patches rather than replace my old XP machine. A lot of people are in this, "take our money, please" situation; but MS won't go that way.
Also, just make the full compiler suite free, dammit. It's not like that's really earning you a lot of revenue; but just think of how much more software you'll get when your developers don't have to sign up for some program or pay out like a bunch of weenies.
In other words, quite being a bad copy of Apple and re-embrace your role as the competition that provides and alternative approach.
Then for you next project you can do something like OSX with a BSD-based core; but don't abandon the old PC ecosystem. Do it as a separate project, a separate company perhaps to isolate it from the toxic corporate culture. The world is ready for Xenix 2.0 on the desktop now.
Re: (Score:3)
Didnt they do that already with 8.1? You can now boot directly to the desktop and they even put back the start menu.
Unless I'm much mistaken, they just added a 'Start' button that takes you to the steaming pile of tile crapola that everyone hates.
Re:Hear that, Microsoft? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't. [stardock.com]
It's a computer - a tool. Bend it to your will, don't bend to it.
Re:Theories? (Score:4, Insightful)
III. is incorrect. The tech-savvies "coming of age" now have jobs, relationships, kids, responsibilities. Gone are the days of spending a whole day troubleshooting and tweaking video drivers to get the latest game to work. Now it's a matter of "I need it to work and don't have the time to fix it". That's when you realize the phones, tablets and Macs are built to be simple and reliable to use. Perhaps not perfect but reliable. Those who have come-of-age have a little more money than time these days.
Re:Theories? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anyone surpised by this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tablets don't have decent keyboards. Smart phone additionally have screens that are too small.
There are a lot of use cases where tablets and smartphones are sufficient. There's a huge number where they aren't. But people will use what they have on hand even if it's poorly adapted to the job.
FWIW, I'm considering getting a smartphone. It has a use-case that makes sense. I can't see ANY case for a tablet...except for things like warehouse worker, or inventory control. The ergonomics of keyboards are bad enough.