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Feb 13

It’s official: Apple fanboy desperation has splashed off the bottom into the Land of the Ludicrous

apple-death---mac_15-7760

Having apparently completely lost his mind, possibly from overexposure to the pinwheel of death, a (should be) 12-step seeking Apple Fanboy recently posted this:

It’s official: Apple sells more computers than all Windows PCs combined

In which the author, in a mesmerizing, yet stunning, disregard for anything mathematic, statistical, logical or even sane, engages in a drunk stumble to equivocate, prevaricate and adulterate data into something so asinine and convoluted that I truly believe that he convinced himself he had discovered the elusive formula to transfigure his illusory superiority into actual Mac Superiority. What he failed to account for is that the Universe has not imploded.

I’m also completely open to the idea that the article site is actually a less funny version of The Onion or other satirical site.  I’m also not discounting the possibility of mind-altering substances being a culprit.

Here’s his hypothesis (that may be an insult to all actual hypothesis):

- Sum the Q4 2013 worldwide sales of every iMac, iPhone, iPad, iPod - basically every electronic component that Apple sells (this being, in his view, 'things upon which people get things done') and let this value = X.
- Sum the number of Windows based PCs (sold)shipped in Q4 2013 worldwide and let this value = W.
{Note: W explicitly excludes all Windows Phone and Windows Tablets sold for the quarter in question, otherwise the formula doesn't come out the way he wants}
- if (X > W) "Apple sells more computers than all Windows PCs combined";
-- else return "Mactopia Failed, again.";

His defense of this bizzare approach is that:

k20Xyu7“The tasks we used to conduct on PCs are now being carried out on an ever-expanding variety of other devices, pretty much all of them mobile. And this trend will only accelerate.”

dotmac-browser-failThus demonstrating not only his closed-loop echo chamber but his metacognitive illusory superiority which is epidemic in Mac users.  Not only does he truly believe that Mac products are the “only devices upon which people get things done”, he completely disregards – or more precisely, is incapable of comprehending or imagining – the fact that the vast majority of businesses in the US and the World get nearly everything done using a PC.  Furthermore, his conclusion that people actually “get things done” from an actual value-added perspective on mobile (limited to phones and tablets, specifically excluding laptops) devices is completely seperated from the reality that the majority of things that “get done” on a mobile device is limited to referencing things (i.e. a Map), updating statuses (social networks) and communications (phone,email, text, etc).  The only (normal)people who do productive things, like compose a document, on a mobile device are those who don’t have access to an actual computer.

Honestly, this shows the level of desperation for validity that Mac users must experience when they realize that; no matter how trendy Apple’s marketing is or how closed-loop Mac Fan-Boy echo chambers become; Apple/Mac remains an obscure computer with minimal (at best) market share.

This dataset is a joke (but then, a third grader could have told you that) and is based on fairy-tales, pixie-dust and rainbow unicorn farts – much like modern American politics.

Consider:

  • Comparing cell phones with PCs (while leaving out the equivalent WinPhone)? No matter how he construes his logic to make this comparison – I can still show that Wal-Mart actually sold more Apples than Apple did. Which is dumb and means absolutely nothing, just like this data.
  • Apple designs their products to have limited high quality life to validate their (deplorable and dishonest IMO) business model of releasing a new version every 2 years and locking all their customers into buying brand new devices – show me a 3 year old iPhone and I’ll show you a piece of crap.
  • pile-of-broken-iPhone-screensApple also intentionally designs their hardware to be very difficult, and prohibitively expensive, to upgrade – you can barely change the battery on an iPhone without a PHD in Electronic Engineering. Not only do you void your warranty, the “geniuses” will sneer at and belittle you for your idiotic delusions thinking that it is reasonable to expect to be able to perform basic maintenance on your own hardware.
  • PCs on the other hand are modular in design with components that my kids can (and have) upgraded on their own. The PC that I’m typing this on is over 7 years old – the case is 7 years old, that is – the internal hardware is nearly new. Over that time I’ve upgraded the motherboard, RAM, hard drives, USB, sound and video boards – some of them more than once. Show me a 5-10 year old PC and I’ll show you how you can modernize it overnight for a fraction of the cost of a new one (some qualifications, quid-pro-quo, etc apply) … absolutely NONE of which shows up in this data as a “new PC”
  • As an aside – we can logically and rather demonstrably conclude that the Apple business model is an icon of American/First World waste and is generating an insidious amount of landfill waste while the PC hardware model inherently limits this.

Not only are the products in the dataset incomparable, the product lifecycles are incomparable as well. In addition to that, they are comparing essentially closed-loop hardware to a quintessentially open system.

Finally, the most ludicrous stretch is to conflate and oppose subsets of data while explicitly stating that we are aggregating all Mac products with an enumeration of the aggregation and then “comparing” it to “all Windows PCs” – thereby projecting the implication that we’re crafting similar datasets for PCs but obfuscating (in a graphic’s caption) that they are explicitly excluding all the equivalent items that we just enumerated.  The reader initially plows through it thinking they understand the data comparison already from the Mac enumeration and don’t realize they’ve just experienced ‘a fast one’.

iphone-4-broken-screen-repairAt this point, they’re implying that they are crafting a comparison of the market penetration of the much younger windows phone/tablet, which is still trying to figure itself out, against the market mature iPhone/iPad.  The subtext of the article however, informs us essentially that doing any kind of integrity or logic bound comparison results in Mac losing – and we don’t want that!

Ironically, in Q4 2013 the Windows Phone had a 46.7% Year over Year Market Share increase while Android trailed at 40.3% and iOS phones simpered in with 6.7% growth. Granted, iOS vs. WinPhone market share is diametrically opposed to the Desktop/Laptop market – but Mac is not growing in either market while the WinPhone is gaining penetration.

Here is a valid data comparison

Desktop/Laptop Operating Systems accessing the internet Jan 2013 – Jan 2014.

The first Mac result in the dataset is Mac OSX 10.9 with 3.35% share – narrowly edging out Windows Vista by .1%.

(In other news, investigators are trying to track down those computers because they fear the owners may be dead and spam bots are still running non-stop on them.)

Cumulative stats:

  1. Windows: 90.61%
  2. Mac: 7.76%
  3. Linux: 1.63%

That spread has had minimal deviation for several years.  (Notice how few words it takes to present actual valid data?)

Mac rules all right; and it has no clothes.

funnymadworld.blogspot.com - Mac Fail (9)

1 comment

  1. miconn

    Our local school system went with Mac in a project they call The Digital Renaissance. They thought it was a good idea to place a $1200 laptop computer into the hands of every middle and high school student. My kids have never been more on Facebook and Twitter in their lives.
    I laughed when they were trying sell us on the idea that this computer would replace all the books and decrease costs for the system. I knew where this was going. Evidently, some hack in the system thought they could just go online and download the textbooks. I asked them, “what are going to do? Bootleg them? You know that the book companies are not going to just let you HAVE that book online. You will still pay a pretty penny for those licenses, IF they even will do business that way. So my daughters ended up carrying a $1200 computer AND their text books. They now do most of their classwork via online video and Google.
    The school system screams the program is a success! I say somebody lined their pockets with kickbacks on a major sale contract. Did I mention that the school system begged for a one cent increase in local taxes to help the shortfall in funding from the state? They got it, renewed it, only now they slipped in the option to make it permanent by going through the State House versus allowing the residents of our county vote whether or not it should be renewed. Our sales tax here is $.10 on the dollar. But you know, “It’s for the CHILDREN!”………

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