Apple losing market share, looks like ‘PC Hunter’ ads are effective…

While I am no Apple fan—I actually despise their very proprietary nature, which is worse than Microsoft’s—they do make some nice pieces of hardware and do it rather innovatively.  Granted, their hardware has issues of its own, but, the truth of the matter is, there is a lot of poorly built PC hardware out there that contains a lot of cheap parts—so it’s not surprising that one can buy a poorly manufactured PC for fewer dollars.  While the ads might have an effect on the general public, I hope some of us can see beyond them.

@Bink you're a fool.

Major (now household) brand names like Dell and HP don't use cheap, poorly constructed parts. Apple on the other hand take short cuts everywhere to save some moolah.

@Tom you’re a shmuck.

Maybe you never had enough money to buy quality hardware, but both Dell and HP make some poorly constructed consumer-class crap.  The ads highlight people walking into a Best Buy or whatnot and picking up whatever last year crap the geek at the counter convinced them to buy.  Remind me how many other companies make a unibody notebook out of a single piece of aluminum?  Oh, that’s right, there are none outside of Apple.

Go away little geek.

Apple does make some nice hardware.  I've liked many of their form-factors, though from an industrial design perspective, some of their past offerings have been a little too much form over function.  And Apple's presence forces other vendors to consider aesthetics in their product designs.  That said, you get what you pay for and it's probably not fair compare a low-dollar HP laptop at Best Buy to a high-dollar MacBook.

I think the recent popularity of Macs directly corresponds to the shift to more online and web-based computing.  As desktop app functionality has moved to the Web, you can be a Mac user without feeling as alienated--and frustrated--as in past years when the very limited app selection was more of an issue.  Now Macs are en vogue.  However, as I questioned in my last blog post, if more and more functionality shifts to the Web as emerging technologies like cloud computing, Chrome OS, Microsoft's Azure and Gazelle, etc. would indicate, will Apple's "value add" still be high enough to justify their higher price tag?  

While Apple certainly could make their products more business-friendly, I don't see them competing in the business market unless BYOC (bring your own computer) policies become the rule vs. the exception at medium-to-large companies.  And even then, that would be more of an indirect entrance into the market vs. an intentional one.  Apple simply moves too slowly, is too secretive, and is too expensive to be an attractive enterprise vendor.  Enterprises need to see roadmaps and want to have some influence over product design and functionality.  Apple works behind closed doors and neither solicits much input nor reveals many details until product launch.

While we can debate their design merits, Dell, HP and Lenovo undoubtedly produce quality product lines.  But I will say that PC vendors do need to simplify the buying experience.  Dell revolutionized the industry with its build-to-order, online shopping experience, but it's gotten to be too complicated with too many decision points.  Apple offers literally only a handful of models to choose from whereas PC makers have dozens of models with tons of options.  I appreciate options in terms of vendors and price points, but there's just too many configuration options and extras.  PC vendors need to reign in some of the options and give people more complete starting options with far fewer customization screens.  And shoppers should never be able to arrive at two or more total prices for the same configuration.  Perhaps Microsoft will address this with its own retails stores...

Apple losing market share looks like pc hunter ads are effective.. Nifty :)

Apple losing market share looks like pc hunter ads are effective.. He-he-he :)

Apple losing market share looks like pc hunter ads are effective.. Ho-o-o-o-t :)

Apple losing market share looks like pc hunter ads are effective.. May I repost it? :)

Apple losing market share looks like pc hunter ads are effective.. Tiptop :)