I don't know. How many people, outside those that spend their time on computer fora and mailing lists ever actually want to do anything other than use their computers? In my experience it's often rare for people to even upgrade their software, which is often straightforward, rather than their hardware which involves opening the box. I've shared my home and flat with many men over the years (more likely to fiddle and tweak than women) and only one of my current flatmates opens his up ... and he has three old computers sitting right behind me now at his desk - a Viglen, an xxx?? and a blue Silicon Graphics machine! They are just taking up space, as they have for over two years, but he obviously likes the idea of doing something with them even though he doesn't.
I've no interest in fiddling around inside - the only thing I've ever done with my Macs is up the memory and that's since 1984. It really depends on what you want your computer for. Because of the home brew / kit / geek starting point for computers, they have always appealed to the 'twiddle it' side of some people but I would imagine that most people (including PC buyers with all those expansion slots and the like) no more desire to tweak their computer than they do their TV, stereo, car, fridge, or vacuum cleaner. They just want to email, surf, play music, rip CDs and so on. The iPad is even less upgradeable and that doesn't seem to stop them flying off the shelves. And since 1984 I've had an iLamp HDD die and that's it - so that's one HDD failure in a Mac since 1989 (that was the first time I had a model with one inside!) which isn't bad I reckon. Others' experiences are probably wildly different. Given that Apple's sales are rising and rising and Windows PC sales are declining, it would seem that Apple know just what people want and what they don't really want. Stephen On 28 Nov 2011, at 16:31, Tony Crooks wrote: > > On 28 Nov 2011, at 16:15, Ray Packham wrote: > >> Is it me or is it getting to the stage where people may not purchase apple >> computers simply because you cannot upgrade themselves (easily anyhow). Are >> apple designing themselves into a cul-de-sac ? food for thought... those who >> are used to just plugging in a new hard drive and formatting it may well shy >> away from Apple in the future, i don't know but it may happen... > > > You raise an interesting question, Ray. How many of Apple’s purchasers are of > the type to fiddle with hardware upgrading? Precious few these days I’d > venture. > > I’m in the market for a new iMac but my hardware constraint is memory rather > than storage. As the price of SSD falls away quite sharply built-in HDD is of > less significance. For storage I rely almost exclusively these days on > external HDD and ‘cloud’ services. In any event I spend more time using an > iPad than my iMac. > > Regards, > > Tony > -- > Tony Crooks "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." ~ Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB.
