Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if a lot of people are leaving the Mac ecosystem.

Apple has been selling roughly ~19M Mac per year since 2012, and its new user to Mac has also been steady at ~50%. Apple has had 60M Mac user in 2012 announced in WWDC, and they has been nearing 100M since early 2017. I assume that actual number is larger than 90M at the time, so after nearly 20 Months, ~20M New Mac Users on board, it manage to add a total ~10M Active Install Base.

That is surprising for me, as I was expecting ~110M+ Mac User already, others analysts like Benedict Evans and Asymco put those number past ~120M. So for every 2 new Mac Users, there is one leaving.

I hardly call that good news by Apple Standard. And this high churn rate happens after early 2017. From 2012 to 2016-17, there is 4 / 5 New users for every 1 leaving the Mac Ecosystem.

The timing actually align with their sudden Interviews with Apple journalist on Mac, Mac Pro, and the release of iMac Pro.

And judging from these numbers, I would bet the release of MacBook Pro, iMac Pro and MacBook didn't restore the faith of its Mac users. Apple didn't care about its Mac lineup, this new MacBook Air as well as Mac mini were likely reaction to this churn, much like the iMac Pro.

Or may be, the timing has something to do with their New Keyboard Design, which they introduce to MacBook in 2015 and Pro in 2016, and they managed to fit that in this New MacBook Air.

I bought my first 15" MBP in 2006 after Apple switched to Intel. I was a student back then and I got it for about 1800 EUR. It was a beautiful machine, I could replace the battery myself without unscrewing anything, and if I wanted to upgrade the memory or HDD I could do that easily.

Now here we are 12 years and a couple of Macs later. The current MBP is a bit more beautiful than the first one I got, it's noticeably thinner, the trackpad is bigger, but that's pretty much it. The rest is just technological advancements that have happened to the whole industry line-up of laptops (faster CPU, more RAM, SSDs, USB3, USB-C, Thunderbolt). And for that I now have to pay nearly double the price of my first MBP.

I think the sales people have taken control over Apple again. It just feels natural to look for an alternative at this point.

The really sad part is that Apple software, which is vastly superior to all competitors from my perspective, is no longer accessible for certain people due to the price hikes. I had hoped that Apple would take another path this time. They seem to have forgotten their decline during the 90s.

> It just feels natural to look for an alternative at this point.

I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy (I'd certainly not buy an iphone). But as far as laptops go, I don't see any viable alternative. I'd get a MBP for Mac OS alone, but the hardware is great too.

I agree, the software is the primary factor locking me in as well. I am happy to pay a premium for great hardware (and software), but I don't like the feeling of being ripped off. I guess at some point these bad feelings will outweigh the benefits of the platform. For me personally, that point isn't far in the future anymore.

If anything, there's plenty of alternatives in laptop space. From Surfaces, Lenovos, Dells, Huaweis to bunch of other really good hardware that is only marginally different. Even the OSes have converged to the point where they differ in mostly in the keyboard shortcuts and types of annoyances you deal with.

I tend to disagree on this one. Even if PC hardware has caught up to a certain extent, software has not. Windows is a nightmare from my perspective (usability, privacy, developer tools, lack of good shell, package management, etc.) and Linux is not a viable alternative when you need certain commercial software.

A commercial Linux alternative focussed at desktops with appropriate support for commercial software and an easy transition path for users coming from the Mac would be great.

Speaking of hardware: I recently got a Lenovo for Linux testing. Multi-touch trackpad frequently stops working after standby. Boot time and wake-up time is a lot worse than on my MacBooks. Sometimes it doesn't wake up and needs a cold reboot when I open up the lid. I never experienced any of those issues on my Macs. Not even in 2006.

shrug I regularly use all three and I'm always baffled by posts like yours. Yes, macOS might be marginally more polished, but it's pretty much a matter of few days to get used to new patterns of the OS and that's it.

But yeah, if you decided that you will never in your life ever use anything but Apple operating system, then you just don't have a choice in the market. You'll have to buy what they serve you.

I agree with starbugs, for the record. I'm not married to Mac laptops (I used PCs for many years) but even with the new great ultrabooks out there (which I keep a close eye on), I still haven't seen something that adequately replaces the Macbook. It's gotten a lot closer but I don't think the market has quite caught up yet.

What do you use them for? It’s hard to imagine a power user or developer not having a moderately strong preference one way or the other. If that fits your usage, I am a bit envious of your flexibility!

I develop software for mobile systems (with some backend work too). Why is it hard to imagine? I have bash on all three. I have VSCode on all three. I have vim on all three. I have chrome on all three. I have IntelliJ suite on all three.

Most of the developer stuff is pretty much cross platform these days. What's the big deal if you're typing into bash on Linux, macOS or Windows?

There is no Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, ... on all three.

If all you need is a text editor and a web browser, you pretty much could have been using all three systems for 20 years already.

at least a couple years back using a surface pro 3, windows apps was clearly not up to handle hi-resolution displays: the majority of apps I was using that wasn't VS Studio (7zip, notepad++, eclipse, etc) was completely unusable (especially by means of touch) without screwing around with scalability settings, and swapping it to various percentages depending on the app I was using. I vaguely remember firefox being acceptable but poor as well, but I'm not too sure about that one

Dunno the state now, but that experience makes me reluctant to look at higher end laptops with windows. Otherwise its just generally clunkier and weaker integration of the terminal, but those don't hurt nearly as much as the inconsistent rendering for using a daily driver

It's refusal to tell me what file/program is stopping me from safely removing my hdd is also absolutely infuriating

I am not sure about this. I have always worked with Windows professionally and until 4 years ago also had Windows laptops. Then on whim I bought a 2014 MBP for personal use and I think the software and hardware are much better than anything I have seen in the windows world. At work I can use Surface Book, Surface Pro and HP laptops and in my opinion they are far away from the level of quality of my MBP.

I don't know how anyone could reasonably conclude Apple's software is vastly superior. Apple has always been and continues to be a hardware-first company; their software always lags behind.

In the past two days I've had to reboot my mac twice because the headhone jack stopped working. At my previous job, the terminal program segfaulted at least once a week. Bluetooth is notoriously flaky and requires frequent reboots to fix. My entire OS locks up about twice a month and requires a full reboot. At one point, my OSX got in a state where whenever I would play a video full-screen it would lock within minutes and require a reboot.

When it comes to pure software quality, windows is hands-down the best platform. I worked in a .NET shop for 3 years and had zero problems with the actual OS. Linux is unfortunately the least stable of the three, but I prefer it and currently use it at work over OSX.

Well, I said it's vastly superior from my perspective and my perspective seems to be a bit different than yours.

I didn't intend to start a platform flame war here. I just wanted to say, it's sad that people lose access to that quality software (in my opinion) platform because of being priced out. If it were for today's prices, I doubt I would have been able to buy a Mac as a student in 2006.

If you enjoy Windows, then I am absolutely happy with that. For me personally, I have trouble getting past the forced Windows Update screen each time I boot it.

I'm currently working in a Microsoft shop, and Windows is driving me up the wall.

- Visual Studio (2017) crashes at least once a week without any kind of error reporting. It just closes. Gone.

- PowerShell is absolutely terrible and all terminal emulators are terrible. They are slow, clunky, and never feel 'native' to the OS.

- About a month ago I was in the middle of a problem, walked over to a colleague to discuss, and come back to a forced updating PC. This took upwards of an hour before I could work again.

- I regularly have files or folders that are apparently 'locked' in another process (which one?!), and to do anything with them I have to sign out and sign back in.

- Allowing any application to steal focus is just... The worst UI design decision that was ever made.

I could go on. There's so many annoyances, big to small. This is on a ~2 month old machine with equally fresh install of Windows 10 Pro and Visual Studio Professional. I really like C# and .NET, but Windows is driving me away.

I haven't used Mac OS seriously for about a year or two, so I won't comment on that. My Linux machine is the complete opposite, however. It never does anything that I didn't expect or put there. I always know exactly what is running, what it is doing, and what is isn't doing. I haven't had emacs crash on me yet. I update whenever I feel I have the time, but it's never as intrusive -- even big updates are done in a few minutes. Updates don't require restarts. Again, I could go on.

It's interesting how our experiences can be polar opposite, yet both be valid.

> I could go on. There's so many annoyances, big to small. This is on a ~2 month old machine with equally fresh install of Windows 10 Pro and Visual Studio Professional. I really like C# and .NET, but Windows is driving me away.

what about introducing .net core to your team? so you can actually write more code in mac/linux

I actually did a small project in .NET core here a few months ago. Pretty cool.

Sadly, older and bigger projects aren't as easily ported over, and do still require new features etc.

Nah, Mac users hate Windows. Personally, I don’t know how any power user can be productive on Windows, and I don’t know how people put up with the bugginess, forced reboots, and invasive telemetry. I use both heavily and hate Windows more with each passing day. It wasn’t so bad around Windows 7, but still not a productive environment for someone who relies on basic unix tools and a working terminal (I know about WSL...).

But these are just my preferences, and clearly many disagree.

Your reboot problem on the Mac was hardware, not software, by the way. Macs have had hardware reliability problems, and they usually mean the whole thing is junk, minus the case or screen. I wish Apple software on third party hardware was a viable option, personally.

What an obnoxious statement. No, not all Mac users 'hate Windows'. Yes, power users can be productive on Windows. Yes, macOS has bugs that require resets for some users.

Apple software is flawed and imperfect, but you still easily earn the outlay back in productivity within a year. So much time wasted fighting Windows or Linux to do basic tasks like reading email or running an IDE...

> When it comes to pure software quality, windows is hands-down the best platform.

I've switched from mac to windows since this summer and I disagree. From the way windows defender interfers with usage to WiFi reception issues (Thinkpad 480s) to poor taskbar functionality to crappy setting screens to harder-to-read fonts, it's just not nowhere near macOS in terms of useability. But the keyboard and ports are that much better that I'm still putting up with it (while thinking about Linux).

I was a Windows user all my life (Started with Win98 as an 8 year old) but switched to MacOS once hitting "Windows Key" and typing 'Downloads' to jump to my Downloads folder became non-deterministic.

Like Windows 10 actually suggests some web / app store results first, and after about a second, it will remember that I have a local folder called 'Downloads', so instead of using 'Win+D.o.w.+Enter' as a shortcut, I have to wait for the computer to suggest Downloads as a suggestion.

This is on a top of the line Surface Book.

Besides that I spent hours trying to get colors working in a terminal emulator so I could use vim and tmux with syntax highlighting. I gave up and bought what I figured would be the last Macbook Air with USB-A and a decent keyboard.

I've never had any of those issues, they sound like hardware problems to me honestly.

Not that I don't have a litany of complaints about macOS software quality, but it's mostly UI bugs (why the hell does it take a minute to drag a photo out of Photos.app?!), not stability issues.

For another anecdotal datapoint, I've /never/ had any of these issues with my 2015 Macbook Pro. I vastly prefer OSX software to Windows, both for usability and because the commandline is incredibly similar to other Linux distros.

> So for every 2 new Mac Users, there is one leaving.

The vast majority of this fluctuation could be down to Macs in the education and business leasing programs, rather than individual user-owners.

Specifically, schools are switching from Macs (in computer labs) and iOS devices (for students), to Chromebooks;

and some very large companies like IBM, who assign their employees Macs, are downsizing, and so returning/selling off those Macs.

Apple executives are probably telling themselves these people are just trading in their old laptops for iPads hence why they have been doubling down on iOS for the last 5 years. Milking the entire ecosystem for 30% compared to 0% on a laptop sure hasn't hurt, either.

Based on business results the Apple execs are right. To detriment of the relatively small number of professional users like software devs or photographers.

One can only hope that those software devs who create applications for both ecosystems don't leave for greener pastures, taking their software with them...

It will be interesting. I always thought that one success factor of iOS was that during that time Macbooks were incredibly popular among devs.

Yeah, these fools building the biggest company in the history of humanity. Taught them right!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com