Brutal: Apple falls from first to fifth place in ranking of top notebook makers

Last week we talked about the latest J.D. Power tablet satisfaction survey, in which Apple lost its usual lead to Microsoft. On that list, however, Ma still earned an honorable second place with a relatively small difference of points. After all, we were talking about a segment where Tim Cook and his class have already lost first place other times, so no big shock there.

But what if I tell you that, in a segment where Apple has always used to lead the press reviews, Ma has seen its perennial first place in a renowned poll be replaced not by a second, not a third, but by a scary fifth position? Because that's exactly what happened.

THE Laptop mag, online publication owned by the Tom’s Guide, published its annual ranking of best notebook manufacturers. It is the site's own publishers who score a number of questions for the industry's top competitors and determine the year's big winner.

Here are the fresh results of 2017:

Laptop Mag Ranking of Best Notebook Manufacturers, 2017

Sound bad? So take a look at this other view of the list, with the historical results of the brands:

Laptop Mag Ranking of Best Notebook Manufacturers, 2017

For: since the research genesis in 2010, the Apple always topped the ranking of the best laptop makers the chart above shows only the results from 2013 onwards but the thing was exactly the same in previous years. In 2017, however, the Cupertino giant dropped to fifth place, losing to Lenovo, ASUS, Dell and HP first to fourth place respectively. Ma still shared the fifth place with Acer. Completing the list, we have, respectively, MSI, Razer, Samsung and Microsoft.

The question: what are the reasons for such a brutal fall? Certainly you already have a hunch, but in order to squish it up in cold, realistic numbers instead of words in the wind, let's take a look at this other list, below, where the score of each mark on each of the points is highlighted:

Laptop Mag Ranking of Best Notebook Manufacturers, 2017

As we can see, Ma has managed to stand out in some ways. She led the question Support, was one of the best (along with Dell) in Warranty and also got a good rating on design; the score for s press reviews specialized to the company's notebooks got in the way. It got on the side of Cook's class, however, innovation and mainly, value and selection (which evaluates the value for money and the variety in the range of models offered by the company) in this, Apple surpassed only Microsoft.

In the dedicated text Ma on the ranking page, the Laptop mag points out that the newer MacBooks (including, I assume, Touch Bar MacBooks Pro) are slim, powerful, well-built, but very expensive, and heavily dependent on adapters and other extras.

Their assessment, we have to agree, is no different from what we have seen here: Apple has invested heavily in a new generation of computers that, according to her, represents the future of personal computing and dictate the new rules of the notebook market. Probably she's right, I might add. But the fact is that, as I have read in many reviews of the latest MacBooks, the beautiful and wonderful future where it belongs belongs to what is to come, not now.

For the moment, at least for the vast majority of us, mere deadly users still living with USB sticks, ancient university projectors, internet networks not as reliable as we'd like, and more, the new MacBooks simply preach for a world we don't live in yet. I would say this is the main reason for Ma's downfall, both in the ranking above and in the reputation itself with its consumers. Now, if the future comes soon exactly as Cupertino's engineers predicted and Apple will take over soon, or if the company will have to settle for admitting one possible mistake (another?), We will only know in the future.

(via 9to5Mac)