In as much as you may love your Apple notebook, Apple’s wares seem to be on the decline according to Laptop Mag.
The publication, which has awarded Apple the top spot in its annual survey since 2010, placed Apple’s notebooks at fifth place alongside Acer but behind Lenovo, Asus, Dell and HP.
The magazine had the following to say about Apple’s recent products:
To pick the winners, losers and also-rans, we evaluated the 10 biggest laptop brands to determine which offer the best combination of quality products, cutting-edge innovation, helpful support, sleek designs and strong value. Because of its modest review scores, expensive products and lack of ports, Apple fell all the way down to fifth place after receiving top honors every year since the Best and Worst Brands debuted in 2010.
Apple’s lowest scoring category turned out to be ‘Value and Selection’, albeit Apple, in recent years was cited for providing a ‘good, better, best’ portfolio with a limited number of machines and options.
It was also noted that while the MacBook line was seen as an investment that would provide a return over the lifetime of the device, the recent MacBooks, including the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, have broken this rule.
The article also points out Apple’s very high initial price that may not be worth the investment as time goes by.
The 2016 MacBook refresh, per the article, was not seen as adding a significant amount of features or functionality to accompany the price. The Touch Bar was only added to the top end models, creating a secondary interface on these machines but at the cost of removing the function keys. More importantly, developers cannot assume that a macOS machine running their code will have the Touch Bar, so anything in the Bar needs to be available in another part of the interface.
The Touch Bar, though considered neat, might not be an integral part of macOS for many years, even if it does become available on Apple’s external keyboard in the future.
Apple now also has to contend with other notebook manufacturers oming to terms with the high-end market and bringing out designs that not only match, but surpass Apple’s choices with the MacBook range. HP’s Spectre 13 offers the thin and ultraportable experience that rivals the MacBook and MacBook Air. Alternative OS users can pick up Linux machines like the Orion that work off the shelf and the gaming community (not particularly well served by Apple) has a mix of gaming laptops from the mainstream manufacturers and companies such as Razer.
Where Windows notebooks are concerned, Windows 10 notebooks are seen as having addressed concerns and frustrations brought out by Windows 8. Microsoft also seems to have found the notebook’s place in a modern, cloud-connected world as well.
While this is disappointing news for Apple, it may be the incidental kick in the ribs Apple needs to make something truly extraordinary for its MacBook line come the next generation.
Via Forbes and Laptop Mag