Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars Apple may soon have the premium-priced PC market all to itself, if reports by an NPD analyst are correct. Although research firm NPD Group hasn't issued an official release documenting its findings, an article from Betanews reports that NPD says that over 90 percent of every dollar spent on a PC listing for over $1,000 goes to …
Yes I can buy a PC cheap. But then I have to buy a monitor. If I buy an iMac it comes with it.
I am in the market for a PC right now ( because it will run the software I need) and I really don't see anything as cheap as the article unless I buy Acer or Gateway. I didn't even realize that they were still around.
This is one of those articles that I would like to see more details on the comparison.
When I upgrade my mac OS I will pay 25 quid for the full package, When I upgrade from XP I could pay anything upto £600.
Makes the whole extra premium less of an issue in my mind.
However I bet half those mac buyers are probably stupid enough to max out the ram and hard disks from apple, rather than go for the minimum and upgrade for 25% of the cost. I also bet half the pc buyers are stupid enough to buy a computer with 256mb of ram and expect windows to run happily.
Paris cause I can't choose the evil gates/evil jobs combo, she may very well be their love child.
a few comments though:
- that figure must not take into account home-build PCs, which is how enthusiasts do it, and enthusiasts are the ones who spend more than $1.000 on a PC. I just shelled out $2.000 for various parts to build mine...
- honestly, I find XP pretty much bulletproof too nowadays. My PC runs weeks on end, crashes less than once a month... Viruses are still a problem I guess... except it's more of a user problem: I get one per year, when a friend brings me a contaminated media and I forget to scan it. I never got a virus through the net, and don't have an AV on my main PC.
- how are peripherals accounted for ? iMacs are sucky computers, screen included. does that make them premium vs sucky PCs + screen on the side, which are not ?
- to me, the benefit of Windows is that I know how to use it. My brother's mac keep getting in my face, bringing up a weird screen whenever I push the mouse to an out-of-the way corner, keeping apps open even though I closed them and the poor thing is clearly working at capacity, wasting oodles of screen space on an idiot task bar...
1- FYI, Acer is one of the top-5 PC makers. Worldwide, and in the US.
2- Yep, with PCs you can actually change the screen.. or the PC... without having to dump the other part, too.
3- If you do insist on that, you have options, though:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2032280010&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=10&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=all-in-one
Yes, and when you go to replace that iMac, you have to buy another new monitor.
Even with a monitor, a PC is still half the price of an iMac.
And I don't actually like machines where the monitor and the box are one unit. I know very few people who do, personally. They're horribly non-expandable. And to get into an expandable machine with Apple, you need to spend > $2000. For that kind of money I want 3 machines WITH monitors.
I just bought the latest Macbook Air (the SSD one not the cheaper one).
Cue derisive jeer from PC fanboys who assert I spent way too much for it.
The last Mac I bought was a 12 Powerbook G3 about 3 years ago second hand. The only thing I did to it was big up the HD. It was nearly the perfect computer in terms of reliability and productivity. I thrashed it near to death.
I laugh at the PC fanboys because I know most use their machines the way mechanics use cars – they grub about in their innards seeking to better their experience at the expense of their not so valuable time and maybe selling the knowledge gained thusly on to the PC sheeple.
Led by the fanboys, the poor PC sheeple attempt to drive the fucking things never realising what dismal clunkers they are entrusting their entire future to.
I, on the other hand, am the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency and use my computer in a myriad of elegant ways to measurably alter the perceptions of the sheeple.
And that's why I laugh at the PC fanboys. They don't know what they diss. They are slugs criticising the performance of swans.
"90 percent of every dollar spent on a PC listing for over $1,000 goes to Cupertino"
Are NDP's figures limited to consumer sales? Given the $1000+ median price of business machines from Dell, HP, and Lenovo, it's hard to believe that this includes business sales (which remains heavily dominated by Windows).
If you're into gaming to such a degree that you'd spend over $1000 on a computer, then the odds are you're going to build that computer yourself. It's the only way to guarantee the quality and type of components you need.
Yes there is Alien and a few other top end manufacturers, but as most of these have been bought out by the grey box makers not too many people trust them anymore.
But the important thing is that most of us can't afford that kind of money in one go. So we gradually assemble the parts until we can build the box we want. This also enables us to replace components we compromised on as we get paid another month's wages.
Over the course of those 2 or 3 years we'll probably spend much more than if we were able to buy it all at once, but we have no choice if we don't want to find the original purchases are obsolete by the time the thing is put together.
Because we didn't buy some shite Dell or HP PC, we know that once the PC is put together, we can now replace parts as we choose. Getting the best case meant that we don't have to worry about whether a new motherboard will fit without snapping all that cheap plastic these people use to hold the insides together.
Getting the best motherboard possible means we have about 2 - 3 years of life and the ability to radically upgrade things like processor / ram combos and video cards in $200-$400 stages - unless your timing is spectacularly bad and changes to the processor pin layout make your socket type incompatible with the latest version a month after you bought it. But you'd still be better off than if you bought a grey box even if that happened so there really isn't a down side in comparison.
So yeah, I agree with the premise that the only people spending $1000 or more on a whole computer these days are those buying Macs. That's not a for or against comment, it just seems to be the case.
Another reason why people buy $400 PCs these days is they think they're getting the same thing as someone who spent big while building their own. What isn't obvious to most people is that the poor quality components in combination with the way the system is designed to be cheaply manufactured means that what appears to be a kick ass computer rarely turns out that way. It is nearly always much slower and much less of an upgrade than you hoped for, despite what appears to be a high spec on the box.
I won't buy Apple because as a programmer what I really want is control.
Well also as an Ubuntu advocate I find myself converting Apple machines to Ubuntu, not just Windows machines. So OSX can't be that good at the end of the daym, it's still expensive for maintenance and expensive to supplement compared to a more standard computer with Free Software installed.
Your attitude is typical of why people hate many Apple users without getting to know them first. I don't know you and I think you're a smug prick who's superiority complex makes me want to vomit in your face.
Stevie Devil as branding & marketing twats like Omar are teh spawn of satan.
I was going to comment but then realised that AC already said everything needed to say.
My friend bought a grey box a while ago and the processor died because the included cooler wasn't strong enough. That says it all really.
And people wonder why they can't play Crysis on a grey box when it says "Games For Windows" on the case.
Grenade to blow up PC World that tried to recently sell me a "gaming PC" which was equipped with a Celeron and on board graphics. I responded with all the respect they deserved. I asked them to demonstrate FarCry 2 on it. For some reason they declined.
I take issue with the quote: PC users cite ... "clarity of product roadmaps"..
I would never ever under any circumstances "cite clarity of product roadmaps" in relation to Windows roadmaps
Windows 2, 3, 3.11, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7. Version, year, made up name, year, made up name, made up name, version. Where is the clear roadmap? I have never seen one
I grew up on a Mac Plus, Built a PC, ran Dos then Windows for 15 or so years on many Desktops and Laptops and now i'm ready to go back to Mac.
A Mac Pro doesn't have enough PCIe slots without spending $1300 for an external chasis.
Abdul Omar....your a duchebag. Who are you calling sheeple? Pot meet Kettle. "Creative Director" In my experience, that means you do little to no actual work. How long do you spend away at lunch? How long are you in the gym when you should be working? How many inane, useless meetings do you create and attend? How much product do you output for how much you are paid?
That´s what I hear all day long from fanbuoys when one of my desktop machines happen to hang for a while... little do the fanbuoys realize that I am running ten times what I could get out of a middle range Gsomething, out of machines listed at 1/2 the price of an iMac. Which is roughly a 20x bang-for-buck ratio. Agreed, I know better than running windows, but the Apple fanbuoys need to understand that they are paying humongous amounts of perfectly good money for what is mostly glorified PDAs. Mind you, I have some stats, the latest MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles is, out of the box, about 1.5 times slower than my 3-yo Acer 5050 running debian. And a few hundred times less secure, too. I admittedly spent a couple hours bending said Debian to my needs, so it´s not exactly fair. Let´s take another example. I just bought an EeePC 901. My only ¨mod¨ was adding the stable Debian repositories to the apt source (so as to get the software I need. It should *slow* the damn thing down). It´s still noticeably faster than an equivalently old MacBook, despite having 1/3 the hardware specs and less than 1/5 of the price tag. (not to mention reliability. Only the folks who never had to worry about maintenance think that Macs are stable). Again, I didn´t go for the MSWindows version -had to wait a couple month, with daily calls to my retailer, which goes to prove that people really ¨want¨ the Windows version as it´s all they´ll be able to get anyway, what with the bribery and all that... I had to turn down crappy ¨offers that I couldn´t refuse¨ 17 times (no kidding) and finally go to another town to get a nice, reliable, MStax-free machine. With the SSD, on which no MS OS younger than W2K would fit. And I not even talking Vista or OSX...
Get a Mac, folks! I mean, you weren´t doing anything with that pile of cash anyway, right?
I mean it doesn't take the different costs of software and OS licensing. I mean when you buy a PC or Mac for $1000, you're likely to have paid $900 in software alone. (If you can get a steep discount)
Linux customers, on the other hand, are often willing to spend $1000 on hardware alone.
Mind you I have some stats - you sir are the Windows cockboy to Omar's Mac cockboy. Both pricks coming from different aspects.
"Only the folks who never had to worry about maintenance think that Macs are stable"
Only the folks that don't have to run commercial software think that Debian will fulfill their needs.
People that buy Macs are probably sick of PCs and it's the only alternative for the software they *have to use*. They may well use Debian if they could but it's unlikely to be an option. They're certainly not going to "run it on Wine" as is often the /. suggestion.
As for the pile of cash comment I think you'll find that Mac owners are generally from a wealthier demographic (not snobbery, go Google it) so they really couldn't give a shit. It's like telling Paul Allan and Larry Ellison to go sailing in tinnies because they do the same job and cost so much less.
I think the debate will never end. This kind of debate is the same as asking "which Linux distro is the best in the world?" and "which programming language is the best in the world?". It's actually very simple, just use the right tool for your need. If you need to play game, buy PC, if you need peace, buy Mac. I, in fact, use them all. I use uBuntu for my firewall because it is easy to configure, I use Windows for my file sharing server because it has it built in, and I use Mac for my personal use as I like to do my work with many saves and deletes with no need to defrag my harddisk.
I personally don't think that Mac is very very expensive compare to PCs; it is reasonably expensive. My friend just purchased an HP DV3, it cost about 1,300$ after discount with comparable configuration to 15" macbook pro 1,699$. The HP will provide you with smaller screen size, removable battery, glowing HP logo at the back, etc. The Apple will give you larger screen size (with not much different in weight), non-removable battery, glowing Apple logo at the back, etc. In short, if you like larger screen size, buy an Apple. If you want smaller screen size, buy HP. If you like glowing Apple logo, buy an Apple. If you want to advertise for HP, buy HP. If you want to remove your battery, buy HP. If you don't care about your laptop battery, buy an Apple. Isn't this simple?
In summary, if you need PC, buy a PC (don't buy an Apple). If you need Apple, buy an Apple (don't buy a PC). You are not paid by Apple or any of PC producers, why do you care to defend them?
I see people talking about keeping machines up and running for a month without trouble.. man try half a year. I bought my lil sony laptop 3-4 years ago and then it was about 2 years old.. and though it's been battered here i am on it right now. So my 250 dollar investment... well worth it ... eat it apple boys... and btw I think mine is the prettier one! :P
Absobloodylutely right. I am still using P3 for a media center. I had to change the original P3 with a P3B/1400 due to recent "improvements" in vlc, but P3 none the less. Works with Debian with flying colours. Same for laptops - a 5 year old compaq nc4000 is still perfectly usable as long as you do not run Winhoze on it. It is about as fast as an iBook and cost much less even when new. And so on.
So from this perspective (answering Christian Berger) Linux customers are probably willing to spend 100 on hardware alone, not 1000. That 100 being mostly for RAM and disks :)
Apple profits rise, MS decline, all these semantics are pointless.
Users are voting with their wallets.
Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini all make more money than GM, you see there is always room at the top, losers chase the market down, winners push it up.
Stack 'em high sell 'em cheap never makes a good long term plan.
As a computing professional, I have to put a concrete value as to how much my time is worth.
For the absence of headaches that Apple's laptops and operating system have given me over the years, I have chosen them because the extra cost to buy their stuff is less than the cost of the time I would have spent with machines and software from elsewhere.
In a nutshell: I choose Apple because it is cheaper.
"I, on the other hand, am the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency and use my computer in a myriad of elegant ways to measurably alter the perceptions of the sheeple."
I doubt you use your 2Gb RAM, 13" powerhouse for anything more than OCD-style TweetDecking during interminable trans-Atlantic telecons with Cillit Bang's marketing department.
I〙d like to thank all the slugtards who commented on my previous post.
Your static proves my point completely - that you are utterly unequipped to understand the benefits of a tool that doesn〙t require endless maintenance.
The fact is, whenever someone is doing anything productive like in filmmaking or design for example, the computer used is sure to be a Mac. PCs are for boring things like sequencing genes or calculating pi to the zillionth decimal to get rounder fractals or something... or playing ridiculous games that make you believe you〙re spacemen or soldiers or anything to to compensate for the fact that really you〙re just pathetic little slugs.
Ha ha Pathetically Cretinous little slugs, I〙ll be swanning off now.
Because they are such a tiny part of the market. As are home builds (and I include my self in that category) and serial upgraders (posibly the same thing). The mass market is what they are looking at people who go into PC world and like and look at something shiny and buy it or conversely businesses who buy on price and service. It's the same as the car market.; sure modders and custom builders aren't included in the sales figures. They are a small part of the market. Marketeers are only interested in what goes out of the showroom with a profit margin on it.
Similarly people buy an Audi because of kudos, build quality and enjoyment of ownership and residual value they could have bought a Ford which obstensibly does the same thing but choose not to.
Just thought does anyone look at residual value in the computer market. I note you can't get an 5 year old mac for less than a couple of hundred quid. A 5 year old old PC is just a door stop
I don't even beleive those figures, they don't make sense. They clearly exclude self builds, and parts of business. Infact 90%? I'd only beleive that if it was "from a sample taken of apple employees".
If it is true, macs will not dominate. If you're spending over a grand on a PC, you are buying it for a specific purpose. And as such you have to have a certain OS. If it's sound work, macs win, but gaming rigs? You wouldn't save for a super rig and then buy apple, no matter how good, they can't run crysis. And coding, simulations, CAD whatever else you want done, some of it is best done on apple, some just won't work withouit windows. The market won't change because of those niches. Simple as.
I don't get why you'd spend $1000 on hardware for a linux PC. I guess you might want to compile code on it? Largley, though, it's got free applications which are fine if you're on a budget or not super serious, but less amazing than the real thing, and why spend a grand on a new PC and then run knock off software on it that lacks functionality or the like? (which to be honest is amazing for the price, but won't cut it against stuff done by a team of developers, with money. And yes, before you say it, note well that linux OSes themselves with *budgets* aren't unheard of, hell ubunut)And with linux footprint at 2bytes as most fanboys would say, running smoothly on a pocket calculator, surely that much hardware would be overkill?
A number of people have said that they can't afford a Mac. Why not? It is perfectly obvious that they are wasting time tinkering with their hardware and OSs and 'playing games' fer fechsake. It is no wonder they haven't got any money! To make money you have to be productive. It also helps to have a bit of talent.
Using a computer should be a transparent experience like using a pen, you should not have to think about it never mind having to 'work' to make it work. Computers are a means to an end. It is what you do with them that counts - and if you do something of value, you will be paid. It doesn't matter if they don't have the fastest processors or the most memory, unless that impacts on the speed you can do you work.
I will happily pay a premium for a computer that does not impede my ability to make more money!
Abdul Omar was either trolling or is a bit of a tit (OK, a lot). The clue in the post was '...I bought was a 12 Powerbook G3 about 3 years ago second hand...' and 'I, on the other hand, am the creative director of a branding and marketing communications agency...' Riiiight. Not all Apple users are like that. I've seen as many, if not more, Windows and Linux 'evangelists' on these pages spout the same sort of shite (see ElReg!comments!Pierre - if you can be arsed to read it!).
>"bringing up a weird screen whenever I push the mouse to an out-of-the way corner"
He chose to configure his mouse (screen) corners to show open window thumbnails.
>"keeping apps open even though I closed them"
In other words you closed an application window, not quit the application. Many applications may keep open multiple windows.
>"wasting oodles of screen space on an idiot task bar"
It's called the Dock and Windows 7 has adopted the idea.
Why not accept that each OS has similarities and differences, and that you might need to learn just a little about each before you compare them?
"- honestly, I find XP pretty much bulletproof too nowadays. My PC runs weeks on end, crashes less than once a month... "
Nothing personal Barth your expectations are a product of your experiance with the piece of shit standards set by consumer OSes (that includes OS X which I use), but it almost makes me cry to read "pretty much bulletproof .... crashes less than once a month"
QNX runs for years without crashing and that can include complete OS upgrades without shutting down.
A computer and operating system manufacturer that has positioned its products at the higher end of the market, and currently manufacturers no entry level or low cost systems has a higher average selling price than... welll everything else.
This just in - Lamborghini's have higher average selling prices than Toyotas! No really its true.
Really, irrespective of your brand preference, that Apple would have a higher ASP is really is bloody obvious I wonder who's retarted idea it was to report that. Part of the article is more interesting - that among those who want to pay more, they generally choose Apple - but the rest is not.
***"And that's why I laugh at the PC fanboys. They don't know what they diss. They are slugs criticising the performance of swans."***
Have you *seen* a swan trying to get into the air? You call that performance?
The last time I saw a swan attempting take-off, it crashed into a sea wall.
I usually buy machines built by one of the UK box makers and make sure they're specced up for graphics work and gaming. Average price around £1700 - £2000. Because of the software I use (not to mention the legacy stuff) I run Windows. Oddly I've found that if you have decent quality innards in your machine, built by reputable companies who provide good drivers, even Vista will run for ever without crashing. Spend to Mac levels and get Mac quality...
Oh yeah right, 90% of 5% of the market is just not a sales position to be proud of, or whatever the market share is for $1,000 units.. But the 90% figure looks good in board meetings and this tact has been used for years by marketing people to make themselves look good.
"Why yes sir, we've cornered the market on fly paper sales in Northern Alaska. And we're soon to achieve a 92.3% market share for sales of baseball bats in Outer Mongolia."
What are there, something like 20 versions of Windows 7 coming out, when you include the EU ones without I.E., and another full set without a media player? And how many versions of Vista are there? And really, can you explain the differences between them adequately to someone who isn't some sorm of nerd like us, say your mum, without them being dumbstruck about the pointlessness of it all? It's worse than Linux kernel numbers...
Yup, 1500 quids worth of hardware here, the equivalent dell/HP box would be over 2000. But running gentoo, to get something with the same kind of performance it would be more like 3 grand and still wouldn't match the performance of software compiled to match the hardware.On top of that I get to run a damn sight more games using wine than 64bit windows can run stably, plus they get to use all 4 cores :)
Still, nice to see the smart money is going to the lesser of two evils. Who said mac's are glorified PDA's? Your getting your acronyms mixed up, it's BSD. BSD != PDA*1e10
<quote>- to me, the benefit of Windows is that I know how to use it. My brother's mac keep getting in my face, bringing up a weird screen whenever I push the mouse to an out-of-the way corner, keeping apps open even though I closed them and the poor thing is clearly working at capacity, wasting oodles of screen space on an idiot task bar...</quote>
- The "weird screen" is probably Expose or Spaces, which can be configured not to appear via the mouse
- If apps are open after you closed them, you clearly didn't close them
- idiot task bar? You know you can hide it, right?
Sounds like you should spend a few minutes learning about it instead of moaning about it. As for getting in your face, Windows has far more crud getting in my face than OSX. I've grown to hate those yellow balloons with a fury that burns like a thousand suns...
Oh dear. You just don't get it, do you?
We Mac people ARE superior in ALL respects. We buy expensive machine because we CAN. We earn more because we are CLEVERER. We appreciate good design as we would a fine wine. We fanbois snigger behind PC owners backs. The real sheeple are the hordes of PC owners who are too thick to get out of the Windows fold. They build their own PCs because they try to impress their girlfriends (or boyfriends) with knowledge of the interiors of their computers whereas we Apple owners have merely to flash the Apple symbol.
We ARE smug. Deservedly so, and your vomit will serve only to underline our superiority as we would not stoop to such low levels.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
