[Ezhik]

What's the laptop market like in Japan anyway? I don't really know a lot about it, but it's always interesting to see these random Panasonic or Fujitsu laptops not sold here, or those rare Japan-exclusive experimental ThinkPads.

[mikekchar]

As others have said, Apple has a very strong presence in Japan. If I go to an electronics store, usually half the models on display are Apple. Panasonic and Fujitsu pretty much rule the desktop with bizarre television/computer fusions. Imagine a TV about the thickness of one of the old plasma TVs. It usually has a stand, but I think you can also wall mount it. You can watch and record TV on them, so they are basically consumer devices.

For laptops, the biggest brand (other than apple) is probably Asus (based on retail floor space ;-) ). Sony, Panasonic, Fujitsu and Toshiba pretty much share the rest. Toshiba is apparently exiting the market soon, though. From my perspective, it seems that the market is split between very high end, large format, desktop-replacement machines and tiny machines. There is not very much in the middle. I live in the countryside, though. It is very possible I don't see the interesting models where I live.

When I worked at a high school, all of the machines were actually Dell. It surprised me greatly.

One thing that most people don't realise is that Japanese electronics are expensive compared to the rest of the world. If you have high end purchases (like a computer), you can fly to Korea and the money you save will pay for the flight, easily. Especially with the insanely high yen, American machines are also a pretty good deal.

I like to support the local economy, but when Toshiba exits, I might be stuck finding the kind of machine I like to use.

[drabiega]

> One thing that most people don't realise is that Japanese electronics are expensive compared to the rest of the world. If you have high end purchases (like a computer), you can fly to Korea and the money you save will pay for the flight, easily. Especially with the insanely high yen, American machines are also a pretty good deal.

This is pretty interesting because my experience has been that electronics were pretty expensive in Korea, as well. When my wife's laptop died while she was working in Korea, I ended up bringing her a new Samsung laptop from the US on my next visit because it was considerably cheaper here than buying it there.

[janneklouman]

I'd like to add NEC to your list (surprised no one is mentioning them). They completely dominated the Japanese PC market during the 80's and 90's, and even though the've been declining heavily since, it's still a strong brand in Japan holding about a fifth of the market share.

[mikekchar]

That's really interesting. You are right. As far as I remember, though, I've never seen one in a shop. I'm going to go to the electronics store today, so I'll have a peek for them. I know that they sell routers and and things (and in fact I will probably buy one of their routers today). Hmmm... Definitely something to consider.

Edit: I take it back. Should have did some poking around before I posted. NEC sells the Lavie model in Japan, which I have definitely seen. Looks like they are filling in that middle tier that I like as well. I wonder how well it supports Linux...

[janneklouman]

Funny you mention it - I actually have a LaVie (PC-LL750TSB http://kakaku.com/item/K0000704707/) that I purchased late 2015. I appreciate the robust feeling and the touch screen. Initially I thought the touch screen was just gimmicky, but actually started using it a lot (perhaps due to the touch pad not being sensitive enough for my taste). Also the four USB ports is something I miss on my MacBook Pro. The Intel HD Graphics 4600 handles multiple displays and 1080p video fine, but is not great for games.

[yuhong]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-9800_series

[atjamielittle]

One thing that I noticed when looking around was that screen resolution didn't seem to be a big focus.

The Panasonic models still have optical media. I can't think of a single western laptop that has a Blu-Ray burner in it. There might be some gaming laptops with that, but they would probably be 17 inch monsters and not extremely lightweight laptops.

[TulliusCicero]

In the US, PC gamers at least abandoned physical media very early.

[TheAceOfHearts]

I work for a startup with roughly half of its employees working from Japan. All developers use Apple laptops. I can't remember off the top of my head if non-developers used other brands.

[donw]

Can confirm: developers here that work with foreign companies are almost all on Macs.

Windows still reigns absolutely supreme in native companies, though.

[santaclaus]

I work with a few developers from Japan - MacBook Pros running Windows, across the board.

[walterbell]

Why do they run Windows on an expensive MacBook Pro, e.g. how is power management, HiDPI, driver support, etc? Is this mostly Windows 7 or 10? Why not macOS + Windows in a VM?

[raihansaputra]

I don't know about running Windows in a VM, but drivers are very good and battery life (even on Windows) is probably better than most Windows laptop. Not to mention you could get a fully-loaded MacBook Pro almost anywhere on the planet if something happens.

[gcb0]

probably USA centric company that forces macbooks on all employees for IT policies. But then the devs need to work on compilers/debuggers for hardware that only runs on windows.

[walterbell]

How do IT departments manage policy for a lot of Macs? MacOS server MDM is for small biz. Are there good OSS tools? I've seen a paper on cfengine, https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/lisa10/tech/full_papers/...

[ben1040]

Everywhere I've worked that deployed Macs in any large capacity also used this management suite from Jamf.

https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-pro/

[astrange]

I'm amazed that works, but don't do what they did. Use configuration profiles where possible.

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/featuredarticles...

[gcb0]

ironically my 20k employee corp uses Microsoft Active Directory.

[wapz]

I live in Japan and laptops here are real expensive. Macbooks are not much more than similar-spec'd windows laptops (well until the newest generation came out). I wanted a decent windows machine with a dedicated video card and was looking at $1700 (for something I could get on sale in the US for $1200 from Dell).