Geeks buy stuff. But yes. He's definitely a valley geek insider.
Saw where Cook missed so hard on numbers the entire exec staff is missing bonuses for Christmas, and also saw Apple's desktop market share numbers went down more than any other brand in 2016.
I suspect he's about one more miss from being tossed.
When you consider that neither Win8 nor Win10 are especially popular Windows releases among long-time and business desktop users -- Win8 because of the GUI and Win10 because of the GUI and the spyware -- the fact that Apple is losing desktop market share is even more significant.
I was shopping for a replacement machine for my parents last week. Their ancient e-Machines desktop succumbed to a power surge along with the UPS the computer was plugged into and the DirectTV box in the bedroom. It must have been a hell of a surge to take out the UPS. But I digress.
I looked at all manner of replacements and noticed two things that were rather surprising to me. One was that many manufacturers are still making Win7 Pro machines. It's almost as easy to get a Win7 machine as a Win10 machine from
real computer stores like Micro Center. That doesn't say much about Win10's popularity.
The other thing I noticed was that the Macs I looked at did
not have touch screens, and apparently never will, according to my admittedly superficial research. Apparently Apple doesn't think making a desktop look and work like a phone makes any sense, which is something I agree with. In fact, their more-conventional desktop GUI was one of the reasons I looked at Macs for my own use a year ago. I detest tiled GUIs on non-touch machines.
But there are people who do like touch screens and tiled GUIs; so I was very surprised that Mac hadn't come out with a touch-equipped machine with a touch-friendly GUI as an
optional interface for users who would like that functionality. By not offering touch as an option, they're as guilty as Microsoft of ignoring their users' preferences: Microsoft forces users into a tiled GUI that only makes sense for touch even if the user doesn't have or want a touch screen; and Apple won't let their customers have a touch screen and a touch-friendly GUI even if they
do want them.
The thing is that on Windows, you can install Classic Shell or some other GUI add-on to sort of get around Microsoft's compulsory tiled interface and make the computer feel more or less like a conventional Windows machine. There's no equivalent that I know of that will make a Mac touch-friendly. I don't even know if Mac desktops can support touch-screen monitors. (Obviously their laptops won't.)
Personally, I detest touch screen desktops, along with the tiled interface needed to make them useful. I just don't get the point. Why reach out three feet in front of me to do what I can do with the mouse and keyboard that live by my fingertips? It makes no sense to me.
But my mother fell in love with my younger brother's touchscreen AIO Win10 machine when she was at his house, so that was the direction in which I was looking. She also told me how disappointed she'd been when she tried to upgrade to Win10 and found that her hardware wouldn't support it, so buying a Win7 Pro machine and pretending that 8 and 10 had never happened wasn't an option. So in the end, I ordered her a Dell AIO machine with Win10. I suspect that she'll hate it after a week, at which time I'll install Classic Shell on it, and the screen will likely never be touched again.
Then again, though, I could be wrong. Mom's actually quite the geek for an old lady once you get past her non-conventional terminology; her refusal to accept that software is almost never really "free"; and her difficulty accepting that when I say "click," it means "left click" unless I specifically say "right click." She's made some progress on the first two, but I think the last one's a lost cause. She'd give Bobby in Bangalore fits if she ever called for support.
But again, I digress. My point is that for whatever reasons she might have (possibly arthritis), Mom
really wanted a touch-screen machine. But Apple doesn't make one. So the company that prides itself on innovation and user-friendliness lost a potential sale for being
behind the technology curve and not giving a prospective new user what she wanted.
Rich
