Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen ‘significantly’::A top Apple analyst said Wednesday that shipments for MacBook computers will decline around 30% year over year.
If you’ve gotten on apple silicon there really isn’t any reason to upgrade within the ecosystem yet. M1 is still amazing in terms of processing power to battery.
And with Macs fetching premium prices, people are going to use their device longer and longer
M1 Macbooks were also the first “Not Completely Shit” Macbooks after many years of awful problems so there was pent up demand from Apple users for something worth buying. Now that the demand is satisfied, sales will return to a baseline.
I think we can probably also toss in demand from the pandemic. Lots of people suddenly had need for a new computer and now with return to school/office lots of those machines are probably seeing a lot less use. A couple of years ago the articles were “record demand for MacBooks.”
That’s pretty much describes me. I was a notorious macOS hater for a long time. But the battery life, quiet cooling, and overall power of the m1/2 has totally converted me.
Eh, I have a MB from work and I’m still an unrepentant Mac hater. All the badass hardware in the world won’t save you from crippled software. MacOS will never be keyboard friendly and “MacOS UNIX” will never hold a candle to real Linux.
This is just not correct. Keyboard support in particularly is a checkbox or two in prefs, and then you have out of the box support for mapping/remapping any menu command, remapping mod keys, text expansion macros, remapping all kinds of OS controls like spotlight/mission control, etc, easily typing your favorite symbols like º or ® just by holding a modifier… Toss in Keyboard Maestro and Raycast/Launchbar/Alfred, and you’re going to have difficulty finding any GUI OS that handles keyboards as well.
“MacOS UNIX” will never hold a candle to real Linux.
This is another just purely nonsense statement. “Real” Linux is itself an open source reimplementation of Unix, more or less, and macOS is posix compliant. Idk what this comment is even supposed to mean - open a terminal, install whatever packages you like, carry about your day. I’ve had to spend a significant amount of time in linux/macOS terminals, and in practice all that I usually have to remember is which package manager I have to use or whether it’s bash/zsh.
Does this mean
brew install nvidia-driversworks for you?“Posix compliant”? I’m not sure you fully understand the gap here. Linux has containers, performant and feature rich virtualization, robust networking, user friendly GNU utils, case sensitive filesystems, etc. It’s not stuff you can duct tape on by recompiling Linux tools and be all set. You’re trying to keep up with a Ferrari using a Fiat.
Apple hasn’t shipped with an Nvidia GPU in like a decade, and has only shipped a machine that can add a third party GPU twice in as long, so I am going to guess no? I’m not sure what the point of this comment even is? If I can find a package you can’t install on linux do I win the argument? And of all things in the world you want to count as a win for Linux, you’re going with Nvidia drivers? Lol.
Most of the rest that you’re describing are also mostly optional packages on most Linux distros/macOS or things you’re just getting wrong. Case-sensitive filesystems on macOS are an option. You don’t think macOS has containers, virtualization, robust networking or can’t use GNU utils? You don’t know what posix compliance is, and you’re trying to convince me that GNU utils, many/most of which likely existed before Linux somehow can’t be “duct-taped” on.
I’m not sure you fully understand the gap here.
It’s entirely clear you don’t understand the gap. Linux is a kernel. All of the things you’re describing are packages or pieces of software that are going to differ from distro to distro. Most of coreutils ship in macOS out of the box. All of the things you count as wins are easily added on macOS (where they aren’t out of the box already.)
like, you can just say “I don’t like macOS.” This set of comments read like “Well all of Linux is garbage because Mint doesn’t ship with Solitaire, a game and program invented by Microsoft.”
As much as I love making fun of Apple, isn’t it all Apple silicone made in house? If they’re not coming with Nvidia cards and Apple is not open to the idea of people modifying their computers it shouldn’t matter how easy it is to install Nvidia graphics (not to mention Nvidia Drivers are a pain on Linux sometimes too).
POSIX is just a set of Unix-like standards for software. Mac is based on BSD if I recall correctly, they had Xorg and stuff as an option to install and things aren’t 1 to 1 compatible but closely related.
robust networking
Dude you just gave me flashbacks to traumatic times trying to get Wifi to work on Linux
The Nvidia thing was a subtle way to point out that you can’t “brew install” your way out of every bit of missing OS functionality. The subtly was sadly too subtle.
“Posix” is such a trivial set of APIs that until recently Windows claimed to be Posix compatible (and basically still is???). Darwin, the MacOS kernel, lacks pretty much everything above that slim foundation. No user or network namespaces. No capabilities. Even if you switch to GNU coreutils (ls, ps, netstat, etc), you get a reduced featureset because Darwin lacks /proc, /sys, ioctls, and other knobs&levers to make stuff work the way it does on Linux. Xorg works because X11 was common across all Unixen back then. And on the built in BSD utils, stuff gets weird like
ls ~/Downloads -ldoesn’t work and case insensitivity leads to weird bugs in things like shell wildcards (likels ~/downlo*/*).The Linux network stack is complicated because it can do absolutely everything, at insane speeds and scales. MacOS’ network features are geared towards being a laptop and not much else. I won’t defend Linux as user friendly but it’s been my daily desktop for 25 years, I guess I’ve figured it out. I use and appreciate stuff like VLANs, bridging, nftables, ebtables, etc. If you need to change behavior, there’s probably a /proc/net flag that will do it. It’s stuff that MacOS hides or simply doesn’t have.
Agreed, I’ve never been into the Apple ecosystem, but last time I needed a new laptop I bought an open box M1 MacBook Pro from Best Buy. I boight it solely off the Apple silicon being Arm based for power and efficiency. It’s been a great laptop and probably won’t need to upgrade it for a long time. When the battery finally gives out I’ll just replace that myself and keep going. Plenty of compute power to keep it going for what I do with it.
They’re definitely going to overheating or slow older Mac’s with the next OS update while adding very little.
At max usage, an m1 has a hard time overheating. The hardware is really good this time, and the previous overheating was due to insufficient cooling hardware.
Even if apple adds features that run the cpu/gpu/neural cores as hard as possible, overheating is not really on the table the same way it was on x86 macbooks.
That isn’t how Apple handles it. Macbook models have a finite update support window. They will receive security updates after that window closes but no longer get major MacOS versions. That is how they incentivise upgrades.
No need, they’ve already stopped receiving macOS updates
I… what? No. This is patently incorrect and can be disproven with a simple google search. I know it’s cool to hate apple, but misinformation is never cool. Idk where you got this information, but it’s not true.
I partly think m1 is just so good no one has any appetite to upgrade. But also shit do be expensive. For me it’s repairability. I’m seriously considering not getting another Mac at my next upgrade cycle unless something changes soon.
It’s between Apple and framework for me for my next laptop. The question is do I want a laptop that I can infinitely repair and upgrade, or do I want a laptop that actually has battery life when I pull it out of my bag because it has a functioning sleep mode. Thanks Intel. Maybe make sure your processors are actually power efficient before axing S3 sleep.
People give apple a lot of crap and I get it. But they are still by far the best user experience laptop. There’s a reason with all that walled garden stuff. It’s good hardware and software when used by anyone with the purpose of just using it and not needing to tinker with it.
I’m at a point where I don’t mind the idea of diversifying my time with Linux more. I have an older pc I have mint for fun and a steam deck. Just worried one of these days apple will mess macOS up to the point of no return and Linux will be my lifeline.
There’s a reason with all that walled garden stuff.
Yeah, their wallets.
As someone who uses macos every day my worthless internet opinion is that the Gnome 4 desktop experience is far better for productivity. I mainly use a web browser, email, and ssh, so I tend to value windowing and multidesktop fluidity highly. This is also coming from a linux certified tech though.
AFAIK sleep issues were fixed. Anyway, since AMD framework motherboards exist, you can buy them.
I this case, they are probably suffering from success. Shitty manufacturing and unrepairability aside, the M macbooks are the first competent macbooks in quite a while, so most people probably bought the first versions and now they have no desire to upgrade, because why would they? I have an M1 Pro and aside from gaming performance there is absolutely no reason for me to upgrade.
Istn that the case for every notebook these days?
I have the same model, use it for music production and it’s the sound of my piano via Pianoteq and my synth via Arturia Pigments. It’s going great.
But if they’re that good,why don’t people buy 2 or 3 of them? Don’t they like apple anymore?
They are expensive for the general public. But the M1 chip is actually very performant.
New MacBook: M1 RISC 8GB RAM 250 SSD 1440x900 resolution Touchbar that prevents touch typing? No touch screen $2200+
Decline in demand is sooooo mysterious.
Weird take.
Even the lowest end MacBook Air is 2560x1600. The touch bar got dropped years ago when they transitioned away from Intel. Pricing for the specs you listed starts at $999.
There plenty to criticise. No need to make shit up.
Weird take indeed, but I personally don’t understand why macs don’t have touch screens yet. I’m using laptops with touchscreens for over 8 years now and can’t imagine using one without it.
1400x900 what? I though they all have those Retina displays something?
But in general yeah. A time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones.
First they’ve been building reputation and product image, then those became so strong that their actions, useful or harmful, had no apparent effect, and then it turns out they no longer know how to build reputation, product image and the product itself.
It’s funny how many things can be explained just in control theory terms, with feedback loops, response times, sensitivity etc.
1440x900 is the native resolution of a brand new MacBook. I don’t follow gibberish terms used in Macintosh hardware. Retina is eye tissue.
Even the lowest end MacBook Air is 2560x1600.
I meant that’s a 2k display. I may agree about eye tissue, but we humans often repeat terms used by others so to not explain ourselves every time.
I always hated the UI/UX of Mac. I find it annoying and ineffective to work on without heavy modification and third party tools.
I stopped using Macs years ago because with every update I lost more control over the computer, making even basic configurations difficult. It felt like walls closing in.
If all specialized software would work there, I’d be 100% in Linux now because it’s just the superior OS - stable, easy to use, flexible and accessible (aside from Wine).
I was the same way… It’s been about 20 years since I last owned a mac. I skipped the intel years entirely. I was given an M1 mbp for my current job though and its honestly fantastic… One of the best machines I’ve used in years. The chip is a huge part of it.
Since there are so many developers on mac these days, there is a ton of tooling around there to customize the UI enough to be flexible. I’m quite happy on it.
The cause could be that they’re lasting longer. Or it could be the fact that they’re not repairable, don’t support virtual machines or windows, have cut corners internally to increase profits margins and for the most part don’t play games. The company I work for, previous the ARM CPU switch bought MacBooks exclusively and either ran windows in parallels or used boot camp. We can no longer do that to run any of the tools we use for machine programming or troubleshooting so we buy razer blade 15s now. That battery isn’t as great but they’re powerhouses and have awesome repairability.
Apple and repairability are two opposites. Am not convinced about lasting longer either. Gluing and soldering everything doesn’t help with replacing parts, especially since they fought tooth and nail to ban independent repairs.
Why can’t you run Parallels?
I am not sure if you can not, but ARM doesn’t come with hardware level virtualization features many of the solutions today depend on. VBox for example doesn’t want to run until I enable those in BIOS. It’s certainly is possible to emulate anything, but probably less efficiently.
This is hilariously wrong. I have run virtual machines on Apple Silicon myself. They literally built a virtualization framework for the product in question.
We can use parallels, just not to run x86 windows.
For the same reason you can’t run Windows 11 Pro on your phone. The chip architecture.
As weird as it sounds you can (with poor performance). With something like Limbo or Termux you can actually get Windows or any x86 OS running underneath Android on a phone.
Fun project maybe, but not really utilitarian though. Never used apple so can’t actually report on how well their emulation and/or translation layer is working on Arm.
You can run Windows on Apple Silicon in a VM. These people are just wrong. Also Windows for ARM exists.
You might want to tell that to the people who make Parallels.
You can run virtual machines on Apple Silicon. I have done it myself. Also Razer are known for bad reliability.
We’ve had no problems with them so far and the fact that they can be easily dusted and cleaned has made them more reliable than the MBPs we were using. In a dirty environment they fill with dust and don’t live long.
Yeah Apple products aren’t exactly durable. Still I hope you have a service contract with razor.
You can run virtual machines on Apple Silicon
You can, but with emulationb for anything needing x86 (like Windows). Which means it’s slow and unusable
Nope, they use Windows for ARM
Right which still isn’t the x86 version of windows that basically every vendor I’ve come across requires for tooling software and machine programming. It’s okay to be wrong fan boy.
My god you’re calling me a fanboy long after I sold the only Apple device I owned. Like it’s actually hilarious in how off the mark you are. It wasn’t long ago I was getting downvoted on Reddit for suggesting someone not buy their girlfriend a macbook.
I am well aware of the compatibility issues, it’s why I sold my M1 machine. The thing is you were specifically talking about Windows as an example of something that needs emulation, which it doesn’t. It’s specific applications that need “emulation”, which isn’t even a normal emulator. For macOS applications they mainly use static recompilation, and for Windows apps dynamic recompilation (dynarec) is used. Windows for ARM translation layer basically acts like a JIT compiler.
Apple’s implementation is actually shockingly good because they built an x86 like memory coherency mode into the M family SoCs (specifically in the performance cores) and because they are using the static recompilation that I mentioned. Apps running in a Windows for ARM VM couldn’t use that last time I owned a MacBook.
I don’t know if they’ve increased the price so much that people are no longer buying it or that they made the M1 models so good that people don’t need to upgrade.
I have an M1 Mac Mini and I really don’t see myself needing to upgrade for at least another 3 years.
I think people can’t afford Apple hardware and not at the numbers Wall Street wants
Maybe we would buy their shit if our housing didn’t cost more than an entire paycheck
I was out when they did the thunderbolt only thing. and of course when they realized it was a mistake, they not only fixed it but also added a massive unnecessary notch in the display to make it match the iphone. it’s like the joke writes itself in my case.
Tech companies aren’t hiring. They’re firing.
They should make hardware people want to buy.
Hardware that’s worth the price.
Lately they failed on both counts and failed 1st means never had a chance at 2nd.
Exactly. The price keeps inching upward and the last generation of MacBooks was awful. After getting burned by one of those things I’m not about to buy another one even if the new processor is awesome.
Not to mention, the OS has become junk over the years. It used to be great for developers. They still ship crusty old versions of programming languages, window management sucks, and it’s just a pain in the ass to work with. These days, I would rather be on a Linux machine. Plus, most games work on Linux now, which is something Apple still hasn’t figured out.
I use Linux for home and Mac for work. My Mac is older Intel based with software bar for F keys. If in the past 10 years ago I was into Mac and owned one… I no longer see the reason for Mac.
Hardware choices are not a selling point
Context bar makes it harder to use for programming. It is not a sell for me.
Mouse pad frequently jumps cursor.
Keyboard feedback is cheap.
Software is not impressive either
Usability wise Gnome is better than OS X for me. No ctrl key on right side is terrible.
Due to Windows subsystem for Linux v2 I am starting to think Windows is better for Linux development than Mac.
MAC M1, M2 laptops have good battery life going for them.
The keyboard’s on macs have always been crap. They’re even crap on desktop, they’ve taken their awful, but I suppose understandable, laptop keyboard and stuck it on a desktop keyboard base. Why?
Why are Apple allergic to the concept of keys having three dimensions to them, why are they all flat with zero travel.
They’ve been a form over function company since the iMac days with the round mouse with a single button completed with PC mice thatwere commonly two button with scroll wheel and in a shape that fit the hand and let you know which way it was oriented.
Apple was known for the one-button mouse in 1983, 15 years before the iMac
Yeah but the iMac was when they introduced the completely symmetrical mouse that you couldn’t tell which was it was pointing without looking for where the cord was. The previous one-button mice were just lacking functionality but looked as bad as most mice did in those days. The round one-button mice looked nicer but functioned worse, hence form over function.
That said, I should have probably added an “at least” to my original statement.
Hmm. What ide do you use? I develop mostly C#, and I use rider on an m1 MBP (not my main pc of course, but nice for not sitting at my desk my whole life) and I’ve got access to the latest .Net framework (which is still old as MS has stopped releasing framework versions) as well as .Net 7 and the .Net 8 RC.
Again I pretty much only develop with C# .Net and JS/TS, but I’ve not had issues with support for current development.
By lately, do you mean the M2 chip compared to M1?
My wife’s 3 years old MacBook with the software bar is such a nightmare to use. I get really pissed off whenever I get close to this thing. Between the poorly placed bar and the weird touchpad, never again.
i mean i want the m2 Chip but like the reasonable person i am, i wait for the competition to catch up and then buy it at a fair price, and install an actual OS on it. like holy hell… they make decent hardware and then on top of that totally ignore that vulkan is the best thing that happened to graphics apis in 20 years
Still rocking my M1 Air. Battery is good and it’s so much more powerful than I’ll ever need for my casual use. There is literally zero reason for me to buy another Macbook right now and I’m betting that’s the case for most Mac users.
Same machine, but even with the desire to upgrade, it just seems like Apple themselves don’t want me to.
A MacBook Air M1, with the upgraded 8-Core CPU, 16gb ram and 512Gb storage ran me just shy of £1400 2 years ago and has been an excellent device for all my needs.
A similarly specced M2 machine is closer to £1700, and that’s not even the 15in model! Why would I upgrade when the price increase is so drastic? I would’ve happily sold my current MacBook Air and considered the 15in Air, but it simply doesn’t add up.
The base M1 Air as you and many others said, is already such a powerful machine that it really doesn’t need updating, especially when you consider that subsequent machines don’t provide a meaningful boost to productivity from M1 to M2, as intel to M1 did.
Oh no people can’t afford anything how can we fix this? Maybe more pizza parties? Or how about forcing people to come back to the office and burn their own money in gas and other expenses? Maybe try raising prices more while keeping wages low, that will fix it!
Oh no, does Tim Apple know???
Hah. I’m still running my MacBook Air from 2013.
Similar. MacBook pro from mid 2014 for personal stuff
Ha Lenovo T430 here! But I’ve probably needed to upgrade mine way more than the MacBook over the years 🤔
