Clearly written by a apple fanboy. % for headlines, what's the unit sales.

"Apple holds third place in IDC's US rankings, experiencing a growth of 18% in the fourth quarter, shipping just over 2 million units"

Many will await Win8 before upgrading. Many will await 'ultrabook' offerings. PCs are a saturated market, and 2011 simply lacked any significant advancement for those looking to upgrade. Cheers to 2012 to begin the offerings of affordable high-res ultrabooks, thunderbolt ports hopefully able to harness high-end external GPUs, and 802.11ac !

the thing is, true PC fanatics will BUILD THEIR MACHINE.

I don't know which i hate more or which looks more stupid... apple fanboys or apple haters, both look stupid as heck

I think Illuminati is correct, 2011 was an off year for PC tech. No new real compelling reason to buy a new PC last year. Overall PC sales will decline as most everyone has one, even a cheap low end system can do email, web, create a basic document and more content is just coming from the web. If you buy into the cloud, all you may need is a fairly basic system at home. Maybe when Windows 8 comes along people will upgrade. My home built system is still going strong (5 years old) after a few upgrades (OS, memory, video) it still meets all my needs.

I'm so confused why we're even talking about Apple haters/fanboys?

Any who the decline was to be expected I guess, Desktops haven't really changed much and prices haven't exactly got better since the floods on the hard drive factory's. Either way, i hope it picks up in 2012.

Because apple haters/fanboys will never pass up an opportunity to express their biased opinion. It's written in some creed somewhere... Oh well, over the years my brain has learned to filter out the bickering.

I'm confused, whose the apple fanboy?

Matt being an Apple fanboy, lol.

As HP and Dell have slipped in quality, this would play a lot in their market shares slipping too. Asus builds rock-solid components, for the most part, and Lenovo is doing well in quality too. I use mostly Asus motherboards when I build a PC because not only it the quality high, but also the support is good. This reputation translates over into the main PC market.
Apple's quality is very high too and also drives their good sales numbers.
Side note:
Fanboys: if Apple is so great why does the OS offer the option to install Windows on it (Boot Camp).
Apple Haters: Apple hardware quality is great, but you can also install Windows 7 on it if you don't like OSx.
BSD/Linus users: no hope for y'all *(just kidding)*

It would be interesting to note how many people built themselves a PC for Christmas.

Did Newegg starve this year? I doubt it.

People either unwilling to take a side, or post with a haughty condescending attitude annoy the crap out of me.

BTW, buying one of each would be a bit ostentatious given the current economy, don't you think?

Go back to hating quietly, it would be more dignified.

I built one this year "for Christmas".

There's no such thing as an Apple fanboy because its a religion.

There's no such thing as an Apple hater because its a cult. (as well as the new cool)

I agree that there hasn't been enough new technology introduced this year to boost PC sales. I also am glad to see Apple is doing well. They make quality products. Those who don't like the Mac OS you do have Boot Camp. Once you make a switch to a Apple product you will never buy a cheap generic PC from HP, Dell, Acer, or any one else. Only thing I can replace my Macbook Pro with would be a custom tower, but then I lose power and portability.

People more are leaning towards building their own custom PCs, I'm sure this statistics has more to do with laptops and not desktop computers. Although they seem to put PC and Laptop as "one" where IMO should be separate category.

Buying a MAC to use BootCamp /facepalm

Quality products, until it gets to your RAM, CPUs and GPU which are always lacking considering what price you play.