I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again.
The Mac has been growing for a long time, and they seem to have reached a plateau. I assume that's the reason why Macs have became absurdly expensive in the last few years -- when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit.
The result is that Apple doesn't build the computer most of their potential customers want -- a $1000 Macbook. I understand that they don't care about the $300 netbook market, but not offering a decent $1000 laptop is a bad idea. It means they are going to loose consumers and students – there are decent alternatives at that price point. Or, people like me, who just keep using their old Macbooks because the high price of the new machines isn't worth the marginally improved performance.
Where does this lead us? I don't see how the Mac should grow from here, and as a Mac software developer that worries me. I want to be in a growing market, not a stagnant one. I'm probably going to be okay for the next few years, but is the Mac still going to be a worthwhile platform for a small software company in 10-15 years? I don't know.
I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again.
Well, what do you expect people to buy? I'm sitting on a six year old MBP, having gotten rid of my 2009 iMac. New iMac? Meh, it might come to that, but I already have enough displays. Mac Mini to go with the display I already have? Surely you jest to suggest a four-year old model. Mac Pro? See: Mac Mini. Current laptops aren't an option unless I get desperate (i. e., current MBP dies tomorrow). I mean, I want a new Mac, there just isn't anything out there that makes me feel like I'd be getting an upgrade.
So my theory is that a lot of people are in the cycle I've been in for the last three years: "Meh, I'll wait to see what they have next year...<year passes>...Meh, I'll wait until...holy shit, is this thing really six years old?...<year passes>"
My Macbook is 4.5 years old by now. But why should I upgrade when their lineup is just plain bad? I've always loved their design and features. But they've stripped all of the good stuff from their lineup except for the design and OS. I want my port selection back, a proper keyboard, and a normal price tag again. I thought the original price was expensive, but it was worth it. It has only gone up because the cheaper models just aren't viable anymore, it's a complete rip-off imo.
This is precisely why I like Apple. The fact that I got 5 years out of my last MBP was totally amazing. I used that computer at least 10 hours a day, every single day!
I don't care about saving $1k or $2k when it comes to a device I use that much. We're talking about a dollar an hour here. I've literally spent more money on coffee over that time.
What I wouldn’t give for a ‘Macbook SE’- just like the iPhone SE, same model as a proven favourite, no touch bar, with new innards and lower price (I don’t even need the lower price actually) I would buy THAT in a heartbeat.
Macs used to be cool. The magnifying effect on the Dock was one of the coolest things when I first saw it a few years ago. Windows has completely caught up and I am happy using a PC with Windows Linux Subsystem. I still like shiny new things, but Mac isn't it anymore. I think Apple needs to put more shiny and new in their OS like the magnifying effect used to be. Spice things up a bit.
Yes, though I would like to buy their newest 15”. A better Air model would be more my style. Their prices are just way too steep. I’d rather have an ultraportable with just enough power for UI and a Linux box somewhere for my projects.
I hope they come out with a Mac Mini with similar CPU/memory options to the 13" MBP, like they used to (generation before the one they're currently selling). Using that with either duet display or the new Luna Display and one of the new iPad Pros would be great. And it would be almost as portable as the 15" MBP.
I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again.
The Mac has been growing for a long time, and they seem to have reached a plateau. I assume that's the reason why Macs have became absurdly expensive in the last few years -- when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit.
Well, what do you expect? They keep redesigning the hardware in authoritarian ways: Thou shalt not upgrade the memory yourself (RIP old Mac Pro aluminum tower); Thou shalt not have F and ESC keys; Thou shalt heretofore use USB-C and dongles or will be sent to dongle Hell (I think one of them only has 2); Thou shalt not have feedback on keys. Etc.
And in each of the Commandments there are those who rush to defend: "but I love the new keyboard, I remapped the ESC to Caps, and anyway I love the new garbage can design of the workstation, I prefer soldered memory".
Honestly the worst one is the macbook, which is ostensibly the "macbook air with retina display" everyone was dreaming of, has ONE. We're never getting another macbook air, this is the path forward.
There's plenty of space for two, a prototype design with two ports even leaked a few years back
And yet one. It's not like the air even had a cornucopia of ports. It's not like i think it NEEDS them. But seriously, one port for everything?
I would already own one if it had two jacks, but that's just patently ridiculous. One port arguably is barely enough for a phone, much less a full on computer that's expected to be a device host for even just like, a flash drive.
In Australia cost is a real problem. Wages have stagnated over the last 15 years, the AU$ has fallen, but Macs have gone up in price.
A new entry level 13" MBP 16/512 is A$2,819
Factor in increased discretional spending priorities for smart phones, smart home devices and gaming PCs or Consoles and you have a market problem.
It's not an argument that Macs are expensive as such, or dont represent good value. It's just that Macs are now very expensive for Australian consumers.
Anecodtally many workplaces will now provide employees with a laptop by default, so the need for a home computer is significantly reduced for some people. If you have a family, then a gaming PC or a console is what the Kids want, not a Mac.
I'm an Australian die-hard Apple (computer) user from my first personal computer being a Macintosh SE, to owning almost every single desktop Mac, and lots of the MacBooks, from then until I couldn't afford (justify) upgrading to the 5K iMac. I loved my last 27" iMac like it was one of my kids. That thing was a huge part of my life, and one of the most memorable PCs I've ever owned, so having to bail on Apple was deeply upsetting.
Friends convinced me to build a monster Linux desktop PC, which I've been using ever since and have grown to love it. BUT, I'd switch back to an iMac INSTANTLY if I could a) afford it, b) justify it, c) mentally get over the fact that they've broken decades of love and trust, and treat customers like shit while cranking out increasingly crap products then telling us we should still lick their feet and hand over our first born.
How about making a desktop computer that can actually... compete? I don't care if it's expensive if it's GREAT. I don't mind stuff not being perfect if it's cheap. I won't buy shitty products for premium money though.
Soldered internals, thinness and lightness over performance and quality, sky rocketing prices with snail-pace development, increasingly shittier support and corporate "personality" (? Not sure if that's the right word, but they're becoming easier to hate due to constantly dropping the ball, pissing customers off, releasing shit products, ignoring issues, etc).
I miss the old Apple. I'd love them to turn things around. Release a thicker heavier MacBook that actually performs really well, is built rock solid, and costs $1k USD, even if that means having fans and vents and stuff. Apple has incredible designers, I'm sure they can still make it look good. Release an iPhone SE2 with a modern-era camera, 128GB storage, and make it $500 USD. Release an actual Pro/Geek friendly desktop like the old days, something around $1500 USD, comparable to a mid-to-high (not extreme high end) modern gaming PC, so we can actually render videos and do WORK without it crumbling like the Colosseum every time you ask it to break a sweat.
Yeh my prices and specs probably aren't "correct" but the idea stands. Increase the performance and quality, drop the damn prices, and stop being such a depressing shadow of your former self. Your piles of cash don't make us love you, good products we can actually afford do.
I felt the same way when Apple discontinued the $499 Mac Mini. It's vital to the platform that "anyone can afford a Mac."
But since then, there's the iPad. Apple's line is "the Mac is a truck, but most automobiles aren't trucks." And I hate to admit it, but for web browsing and word processing, the iPad is just fine. I don't like it, but I get it.
The whole recent "what's a computer?" ad campaign kind of signaled that Apple believes we should be using more powerful iPads + keyboards instead of notebooks on a daily basis, right?
Anecdotally speaking, I have a couple friends in medical school right now and they do everything on their iPad + keyboard. My mom has used an iPad as her primary computer for the past 5 years. For a lot of people who primarily interact with their computer using PDF's, slideshows, a little email and video, I think that it is a totally respectable replacement.
I would be curious to see what percent of the market is people that want their computer to be doing things powerful enough to justify a computer more powerful than an iPad pro is.
Disclaimer: Obviously a $300 chromebook destroys an iPad in price but you know so do a lot of Android phones and people still pay the premium for iPhones because they are sexy[1].
This is so dumb, because on the one hand Apple refuses to do a touchscreen laptop because of gorilla arm, and then turns around and says you should replace your laptop with a device that you have to gorilla arm.
I think the more provocative question than "why are Mac sales down again" is: "how do people work? What IS work today?"
For me, I really truly cannot imagine working on anything other than a real computer. I need a lot of text and number input for really any kind of work. Anything that could be called work.
So what's happening with people? With the economy?
I can see a lot of people doing their work on their phones and tablets, without a real computer. Lots of email, presentations, videos, conferences, apps, maybe some report viewing, etc. This fits well for people in management, sales, service, and even some technical professionals that aren’t primarily computer focused (doctors, dentists, etc)
Marketing not so much (lots of spreadsheets), deep development or system admin also (though most of my sysadmin work can be done on an iPad with a terminal, I like the multi monitor displays on a real computer).
but those scores do not necessarily translate to real world experience.
the issue I take with Apple is they do have the ability to come in under 1k and provide a good product that they can profit from both in desktop and laptop lines but they don't choose to.
on product availability and innovation the last major update to iMac was the retina screens discounting putting a workstation CPU in the same chassis. the mini is just a disgrace but this also comes with the fact that they dropped their stand alone screens and people have been waiting for a 4k Apple branded screen.
All they need to do is keep the old form factor and update the internals. No redesigns. I've been waiting for a 11" Macbook Air with Retina screen, but I'll never get it. Many people would buy a cheese grater Mac Pro with updated internals, or a Mac Mini with updated cpu's.
My feeling is that they were so jealous of Steve Jobs legacy that they had to redesign everything to prove something, and screwed it all up in the process. Maybe it's like having a parent who is very famous and successful and having to live in their shadow.
Actually I really like my 2017 Macbook Air which I bought for $800. It may have old architecture but the system 'just works', mainly because of the OS (Windows 10 is far from being a decent dev platform). I primarily use it for coding, and for heavy tasks I delegate them to my PC running HyperV.
P.S. I don't really understand the obsession with getting the latest gen processors. Your main bottleneck is IO anyway if you don't do video encoding or some other CPU intensive tasks.
The question is why do you care if Mac sales are down? When the Mac was my primary computer in the 90s, I cared very much about Mac sales because if the Mac died, Apple died. But Apple doesn’t live and die by the Mac.
I doubt Apple will discontinue Mac sales in the foreseeable future.
I plan to rejoin the Mac fold next year and by the look of things, it will be a 5K iMac just because I want to do some Unixy things and you can develop anything on the Mac - iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows.
All of the third party software I care about is open source except for using MS Office occasionally, JetBrains Rider, and Plex. As long as the software support is there, I don’t care.
In the 90's I cared about Apple not dying because I loved the Mac. Apple dying or discontinuing the Mac are the same thing to me. I would be fine with an Android instead of an iPhone, the difference there just isn't that big to me. OTOH every time I try Windows it makes me want to throw the thing out the window.
You make a good point. I personally would love to see Mac sales crater. Just fall through the floor. That would hopefully nudge Apple to stop trying to use the product line as a design exercise in minimalist extremes.
All I want is a slightly thicker laptop, with some key travel, and a couple USB-A ports. Is that too much to ask for?
That's a thousand dollar for hardware that's years out of date. It's a terrible deal. You're going to be far better off buying a decent Windows laptop.
Apple of recent has a habit of selling old Macs that you should not buy. For example, they sold the 2012 non-retina, DVD equipped, 13" Macbook Pro for four years(!) after it came out, for $1100.
The MacBook Pro line was just refreshed 2 weeks ago. I wonder if people were holding off on buying a new machine because of the keyboard issues (if people knew about those) or just the knowledge that new machines were likely to come soon.
If half the devs clinging to their 2012-13 rMBP with missing keys and wire-exposed MagSafe cables would just get with the program and upgrade, sales would go thru the roof.
I think they could start selling MacOS as a competitor to Windows. I realise this would limit some of the coolness and designer feel (and quality) you get from mac hardware, but hardware has become a lot more stable in the past decade or so. with their marketing, they could convince consumers to ditch windows and just put MacOS on their PCs for $X/month.
> I'm probably going to be okay for the next few years, but is the Mac still going to be a worthwhile platform for a small software company in 10-15 years? I don't know.
I think it is more important to measure its users usage shares, rather than unit sold market shares. For example, out of the 2 billion Mobile Phones sold in 2017, 1.3 billon of those are Smartphones, and 230 Million of those are iPhones. That is 230 out of 1300, or ~18%. However if we look at usage, there are close to 3 billion Smartphone users today, and according to Tim Cook's word in today's conference on iPhone user growth, we are looking at around 800M iPhone user, a 26% of the market. The iPhone user base is still growing, as it matches towards one billion iPhone users.
The Mac users bases last report were around 150 million, out of the estimated 1.5 billion PC in use. So 10% of total user base. The PC user base hasn't been growing at all, while the Mac user base keeps growing. I think the most important metrics to Apple, is how many users are leaving its ecosystem and how many users are entering it. It reported 60% of the Mac are sold to new buyers. So Apple is roughly adding ~10M Mac users per year.
I used to think Apple not caring about Mac was because they see Tablet / iPad ultimately as a replacement of Mac. But this hasn't happened. ( yet ) And it may take another 10 years before we know if Tablet could really take over. In the mean time I think it would be wise for Apple to keep the Mac growing, it needs at least 300M user base to make the ecosystem solid.
The thing that worry me most is Apple's inefficiency. With Steve Jobs, he manage to create so many thing with so little budget. Apple now take 7% of its revenue to R&D, the highest ratio it its history and it seems they don't have much to show for. Hopefully we will have MacBook SE and iPhone SE Plus this September.
It's a $330 "laptop". It's less of a general computing device, but there's plenty of software avail for it.
You and I may not think about it as a development laptop, but it does the majority of what the majority of cheap laptop owners want. I love the iPad for family members because it Just Works(tm) and I don't have to play IT for most of it (save the occasional force-quit app).
I could be very wrong here, but I'm not so sure Apple's customers want the $1000 macbook.
Many mac users (and perhaps apple users in general) are the type of people willing to pay up for the top-of-the-line, latest-and-great, spare-no-expense tech gadget.
I've seen this with companies giving their developers the maxed out mac + mac accessories.
I've seen this with individuals who view their mac laptop as the biggest most important usage of their time.
Where have you seen apple struggle because they were being undercut by competitors?
That is a pretty good visualization. One of the things that really stands out is the growth in services. One way that has personally effected me has been with music on my iPad.
It has become harder and harder to have purchased music live on your iPad for playing. They have completely skewed what was their signature 'appliance app' (from the iPod of days gone by) from 'carry your music with you where ever you go' to 'portal to our pay per month music service'. Every time I upgrade IOS I worry about how much harder it will be to put my music on the device so that I can listen to it without being connected to a network or paying a monthly fee.
Don't worry - while the majority of users simply consume their music via streaming, local music ownership isn't going anywhere for music enthusiasts.
And as long as Apple allows alternative music players on iOS I'm not worried. I recommend Cesium to anyone using a local music collection: http://www.cesium-app.com/
It uses the same iTunes library as any other music app, including Apple's default music.app.
Sort of. But the "Average Mac selling price (4q average)" is an abysmal chart. The first-glance takeaway is, "Wow! The average Mac price has almost quadrupled recently!" when in reality it has increased about $150, or about 12% from two years ago.
This might make sense if the US had a territorial tax system, like much of the rest of the world. But the US rate applies to the global profits of US-based companies.
The mix of high rate and worldwide (non-territorial) taxation is why so many US companies end up being acquired by foreign companies. Then you don't have to pay US rates on your worldwide income.
How about not just raising taxes to raise taxes? The US isn't really effective with what they collect already (beyond more military), but hey let's slap some more pork belly on.
Cash on hand now upwards of $230B. Your average CNBC talking head would probably recommend a large acquisition soon. Names usually whispered about include: Uber, Tesla, Snap or Netflix. Or a content studio such as Comcast, Disney, or Fox.
But such advice ignores the gargantuan growth that cloud services are experiencing right now. Although iCloud, iTunes, ApplePay and the AppStore are almost solely focused on consumer internet and retail. It's conceivable that $APPL would make a push to deliver more SaaS offerings. Perhaps analagous to Adobe's Creative Cloud suite for profession digital content creators.
This nonsense goes on every year and these people just don't get Apple.
They are a company that resolves entirely around their culture and their ways of doing things. They even have their own internal university that teaches it to their managers. Apple makes a dozen or so acquisitions every year but they are almost always small companies whose cultures typically ends up being eliminated over time.
Buying a large company would make it impossible for this to happen and so I just don't see any of this happening. Not to mention the companies you listed there are completely ridiculous.
Apple doesn't acquire companies outside of their realm. They're not going to buy Tesla, or Sony, etc. They know what they do well. I don't see them spitting out TV's, either. That's something they could have easily done already.
There are sooooo many companies that offer a "university" - do they make you attend school for 4 years solely, working at most part-time? Just more marketing mumbo jubmo.
Yup and music / hollywood content library. It's a match made in heaven but Mr Cook is going to spend 1 trillion on paper stock before he does anything else...
As a shareholder, I'd say the best way to put this to use is to buy back shares. Although it's tempting to see them enter new product categories, I'd be afraid they would just blow money on things that ended up failing.
If I'm Apple I'm earmarking some money for AR development. ARKit is really solid and should get better w/ time. That can provide a nice launching point for developing AR glasses. If anyone can pull off tech glasses it's Apple.
John Gruber already made a remark about Mike Rockwell's title being "Head of AR/VR" when he interviewed him at WWDC. Even though Apple has no VR products.
Also, Apple Music has a much higher percentage of paid subscribers (90–95%) than Spotify (just over 50%), by virtue of not having a free tier. That probably means that Apple's music service isn't losing them money, unlike Spotify (or at least, isn't losing money as fast) -- Spotify's advertising revenue is only about 10% of their total.
So, I can't see a really good business case for that.
Labels have all the leverage, since the value of a streaming service is in having access to all music ever produced, so they will negotiate their way to approaching 100% of the excess that is left after paying for the overhead of running a streaming service.
Great conversation thread here. I will add my bit: I have been an Apple customer since buying serial number 72 of the Apple II (and worked writing software for 45+ years).
I love the iPad. I use Mac laptops for programming at work and my personal projects, but, I use my iPad for SSHing to my servers, reading, audio books, watch movies, research material for new books and technologies I want to learn, take online courses, write, etc.
Yes, laptops are great for writing code, but much of my thinking time is done with an iPad. When I retire, I can imagine just using a remote VPS for recreational coding with whatever can get decent screen space and a keyboard for a few SSH shells, and everything else could be an iPad.
That's impossible. Everyone keeps telling me that Apple is dying.
At this rate I imagine Apple could lock the doors of all of its stores and pull the plug on its website, and it would have enough cash to pay its employees for decades.
Apple has been said to be doomed as long as I can remember.
Somehow it’s great to be underestimated continuously. But on the other hand the stock takes the toll with a low PE ratio (compared to other tech stocks)
>That's impossible. Everyone keeps telling me that Apple is dying.
It's the reverse of a pump and dump scam. It has happened every quarter for the last 21 years. I honestly think it was something SJ cooked up. It started happening just after he returned. My guess, he got John Dvorak in on the scam. That guy's 'beleaguered Apple' PCMag trolling was instrumental in driving the price down for years. Everyone would parrot it. Then, "bam" Apple produces a great quarter. I wonder if JD still does that schtick... You can make money without fail by buying on the dip before earnings announcements and selling on the news.
Without the business, 15 years would be a fair estimate for how long the cash would last, based on modest inflation adjustments on salaries, an average $100k to $125k cost per employee (all in), and either clearing their debt or just paying interest on it perpetually.
They'll probably burn $150b over ten years on employee costs, with 100,000 employees (present count). That's mostly ignoring the destruction of the stock itself, which would hit employee compensation and require higher salaries to offset.
Apple isn't a plucky start up, they're a tanker. They don't change directions quickly. Apple could start putting out rubbish hardware where even the most basic input devices don't work, not admit their mistake for 3 years, double down and roll that out on their entire product line and it would take years to impact sales & revenue.
By the time revenue starts dropping it's probably too late to fix.
>That's impossible. Everyone keeps telling me that Apple is dying.
When people say it's dying they're not talking about financials, and holding up how much money they made as a barometer of success doesn't mean anything.
Some people judge their success on how good the products are not how much money they make because lots of these people have been fans of the company even when it was doing bad financially.
All just seems like they have become what Jobs was describing here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM and holding up the bag of money when they have shipped an objectively poorly designed laptop for 3 years now just reinforces that for some of us.
Apple still relies on the MacBook, and specifically MacOS (of which the MacBook is the flagship product line), as a development platform for all of its other devices... Within Apple's current platform strategy, Apple does not have any alternative for the MacBook. So, it's currently not possible for the MacBook to go the way of the iPod...
Isn't the whole market shrinking in an even faster rate? Besides that: there's nothing spectacular to upgrade to for people that have bought a MacBook Pro in the last 5-6 years. I don't think that's entirely Apple's fault.
I've been holding off buying the new Macbooks due to issues with the keyboard, CPU performance (which was fixed), and the absence of a non-touchbar 15" Macbook (biggest blocker for me).
Until they release a 15" non-touchbar version with a better keyboard, I'll stick to my 2012 rMBP, as I'm sure others (including people I know) are too.
I believe around $199 a share is when AAPL would become the first company ever to have a market cap of $1T. It could happen tomorrow. For reference, the first $1B market cap company was US Steel in 1901.
We have a website and mobile apps. We are watching our revenue not so slowly go from credit card based purchases with a 2.4% transaction fee, to iTunes/Google Play purchases with a 30% transaction fee. This makes a HUGE difference in overhead for a business, and is money directly funneled straight to Google and Apple's "services" divisions.
I don't think this is going to change or level off anytime soon. Everyone wants their cut, now Visa gets it AND google/apple get it :(
Well, if you're in the Apple ecosystem, App Store is where you're going to get your apps, iTunes is where you're going to buy, versus stream music, and who else to trust to fix your iDevices than Apple themselves? So where's the competition?
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The Mac has been growing for a long time, and they seem to have reached a plateau. I assume that's the reason why Macs have became absurdly expensive in the last few years -- when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit.
The result is that Apple doesn't build the computer most of their potential customers want -- a $1000 Macbook. I understand that they don't care about the $300 netbook market, but not offering a decent $1000 laptop is a bad idea. It means they are going to loose consumers and students – there are decent alternatives at that price point. Or, people like me, who just keep using their old Macbooks because the high price of the new machines isn't worth the marginally improved performance.
Where does this lead us? I don't see how the Mac should grow from here, and as a Mac software developer that worries me. I want to be in a growing market, not a stagnant one. I'm probably going to be okay for the next few years, but is the Mac still going to be a worthwhile platform for a small software company in 10-15 years? I don't know.
Well, what do you expect people to buy? I'm sitting on a six year old MBP, having gotten rid of my 2009 iMac. New iMac? Meh, it might come to that, but I already have enough displays. Mac Mini to go with the display I already have? Surely you jest to suggest a four-year old model. Mac Pro? See: Mac Mini. Current laptops aren't an option unless I get desperate (i. e., current MBP dies tomorrow). I mean, I want a new Mac, there just isn't anything out there that makes me feel like I'd be getting an upgrade.
So my theory is that a lot of people are in the cycle I've been in for the last three years: "Meh, I'll wait to see what they have next year...<year passes>...Meh, I'll wait until...holy shit, is this thing really six years old?...<year passes>"
I don't care about saving $1k or $2k when it comes to a device I use that much. We're talking about a dollar an hour here. I've literally spent more money on coffee over that time.
They do need to update the Mac Mini.
Well, what do you expect? They keep redesigning the hardware in authoritarian ways: Thou shalt not upgrade the memory yourself (RIP old Mac Pro aluminum tower); Thou shalt not have F and ESC keys; Thou shalt heretofore use USB-C and dongles or will be sent to dongle Hell (I think one of them only has 2); Thou shalt not have feedback on keys. Etc.
And in each of the Commandments there are those who rush to defend: "but I love the new keyboard, I remapped the ESC to Caps, and anyway I love the new garbage can design of the workstation, I prefer soldered memory".
And that the sales numbers speak? Fantastic.
There's plenty of space for two, a prototype design with two ports even leaked a few years back
And yet one. It's not like the air even had a cornucopia of ports. It's not like i think it NEEDS them. But seriously, one port for everything?
I would already own one if it had two jacks, but that's just patently ridiculous. One port arguably is barely enough for a phone, much less a full on computer that's expected to be a device host for even just like, a flash drive.
Dead Comment
A new entry level 13" MBP 16/512 is A$2,819
Factor in increased discretional spending priorities for smart phones, smart home devices and gaming PCs or Consoles and you have a market problem.
It's not an argument that Macs are expensive as such, or dont represent good value. It's just that Macs are now very expensive for Australian consumers.
Anecodtally many workplaces will now provide employees with a laptop by default, so the need for a home computer is significantly reduced for some people. If you have a family, then a gaming PC or a console is what the Kids want, not a Mac.
Friends convinced me to build a monster Linux desktop PC, which I've been using ever since and have grown to love it. BUT, I'd switch back to an iMac INSTANTLY if I could a) afford it, b) justify it, c) mentally get over the fact that they've broken decades of love and trust, and treat customers like shit while cranking out increasingly crap products then telling us we should still lick their feet and hand over our first born.
How about making a desktop computer that can actually... compete? I don't care if it's expensive if it's GREAT. I don't mind stuff not being perfect if it's cheap. I won't buy shitty products for premium money though.
Soldered internals, thinness and lightness over performance and quality, sky rocketing prices with snail-pace development, increasingly shittier support and corporate "personality" (? Not sure if that's the right word, but they're becoming easier to hate due to constantly dropping the ball, pissing customers off, releasing shit products, ignoring issues, etc).
I miss the old Apple. I'd love them to turn things around. Release a thicker heavier MacBook that actually performs really well, is built rock solid, and costs $1k USD, even if that means having fans and vents and stuff. Apple has incredible designers, I'm sure they can still make it look good. Release an iPhone SE2 with a modern-era camera, 128GB storage, and make it $500 USD. Release an actual Pro/Geek friendly desktop like the old days, something around $1500 USD, comparable to a mid-to-high (not extreme high end) modern gaming PC, so we can actually render videos and do WORK without it crumbling like the Colosseum every time you ask it to break a sweat.
Yeh my prices and specs probably aren't "correct" but the idea stands. Increase the performance and quality, drop the damn prices, and stop being such a depressing shadow of your former self. Your piles of cash don't make us love you, good products we can actually afford do.
But since then, there's the iPad. Apple's line is "the Mac is a truck, but most automobiles aren't trucks." And I hate to admit it, but for web browsing and word processing, the iPad is just fine. I don't like it, but I get it.
OTOH, the top three best-selling vehicles in the US are trucks: the Ford F Series, the Chevy Silverado, and the Dodge Ram.
Now it's "anyone can afford an Apple product." Get an iPhone for $125 a month or whatever it costs to lease and get a voice/data plan.
I would be curious to see what percent of the market is people that want their computer to be doing things powerful enough to justify a computer more powerful than an iPad pro is.
Disclaimer: Obviously a $300 chromebook destroys an iPad in price but you know so do a lot of Android phones and people still pay the premium for iPhones because they are sexy[1].
[1]https://www.recode.net/2017/9/12/16290910/apple-event-iphone...
For me, I really truly cannot imagine working on anything other than a real computer. I need a lot of text and number input for really any kind of work. Anything that could be called work.
So what's happening with people? With the economy?
Marketing not so much (lots of spreadsheets), deep development or system admin also (though most of my sysadmin work can be done on an iPad with a terminal, I like the multi monitor displays on a real computer).
Comparing the base models of the 15-inch Macbook Pros on Geekbench:
the issue I take with Apple is they do have the ability to come in under 1k and provide a good product that they can profit from both in desktop and laptop lines but they don't choose to.
on product availability and innovation the last major update to iMac was the retina screens discounting putting a workstation CPU in the same chassis. the mini is just a disgrace but this also comes with the fact that they dropped their stand alone screens and people have been waiting for a 4k Apple branded screen.
My feeling is that they were so jealous of Steve Jobs legacy that they had to redesign everything to prove something, and screwed it all up in the process. Maybe it's like having a parent who is very famous and successful and having to live in their shadow.
P.S. I don't really understand the obsession with getting the latest gen processors. Your main bottleneck is IO anyway if you don't do video encoding or some other CPU intensive tasks.
I doubt Apple will discontinue Mac sales in the foreseeable future.
I plan to rejoin the Mac fold next year and by the look of things, it will be a 5K iMac just because I want to do some Unixy things and you can develop anything on the Mac - iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows.
All of the third party software I care about is open source except for using MS Office occasionally, JetBrains Rider, and Plex. As long as the software support is there, I don’t care.
All I want is a slightly thicker laptop, with some key travel, and a couple USB-A ports. Is that too much to ask for?
That’s not saying it’s what I want in a $1k laptop, but what Apple thinks it is.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/apple-macbook-lineup-cp...
I think they could start selling MacOS as a competitor to Windows. I realise this would limit some of the coolness and designer feel (and quality) you get from mac hardware, but hardware has become a lot more stable in the past decade or so. with their marketing, they could convince consumers to ditch windows and just put MacOS on their PCs for $X/month.
I think it is more important to measure its users usage shares, rather than unit sold market shares. For example, out of the 2 billion Mobile Phones sold in 2017, 1.3 billon of those are Smartphones, and 230 Million of those are iPhones. That is 230 out of 1300, or ~18%. However if we look at usage, there are close to 3 billion Smartphone users today, and according to Tim Cook's word in today's conference on iPhone user growth, we are looking at around 800M iPhone user, a 26% of the market. The iPhone user base is still growing, as it matches towards one billion iPhone users.
The Mac users bases last report were around 150 million, out of the estimated 1.5 billion PC in use. So 10% of total user base. The PC user base hasn't been growing at all, while the Mac user base keeps growing. I think the most important metrics to Apple, is how many users are leaving its ecosystem and how many users are entering it. It reported 60% of the Mac are sold to new buyers. So Apple is roughly adding ~10M Mac users per year.
I used to think Apple not caring about Mac was because they see Tablet / iPad ultimately as a replacement of Mac. But this hasn't happened. ( yet ) And it may take another 10 years before we know if Tablet could really take over. In the mean time I think it would be wise for Apple to keep the Mac growing, it needs at least 300M user base to make the ecosystem solid.
The thing that worry me most is Apple's inefficiency. With Steve Jobs, he manage to create so many thing with so little budget. Apple now take 7% of its revenue to R&D, the highest ratio it its history and it seems they don't have much to show for. Hopefully we will have MacBook SE and iPhone SE Plus this September.
Today's Apple is good, but we demand great.
Don't forget dropping the BOM in increasingly petty ways for such an expensive machine like no longer including the short power cable.
It's a $330 "laptop". It's less of a general computing device, but there's plenty of software avail for it.
You and I may not think about it as a development laptop, but it does the majority of what the majority of cheap laptop owners want. I love the iPad for family members because it Just Works(tm) and I don't have to play IT for most of it (save the occasional force-quit app).
Many mac users (and perhaps apple users in general) are the type of people willing to pay up for the top-of-the-line, latest-and-great, spare-no-expense tech gadget.
I've seen this with companies giving their developers the maxed out mac + mac accessories.
I've seen this with individuals who view their mac laptop as the biggest most important usage of their time.
Where have you seen apple struggle because they were being undercut by competitors?
iOS is Apples futures.
If you haven’t gotten that memo in the 11 years of iOS existence, I’m sorry.
(And sadly, there is way less money to make selling iOS $0.99 apps)
https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q3-2018-results-533-bi...
It has become harder and harder to have purchased music live on your iPad for playing. They have completely skewed what was their signature 'appliance app' (from the iPod of days gone by) from 'carry your music with you where ever you go' to 'portal to our pay per month music service'. Every time I upgrade IOS I worry about how much harder it will be to put my music on the device so that I can listen to it without being connected to a network or paying a monthly fee.
And as long as Apple allows alternative music players on iOS I'm not worried. I recommend Cesium to anyone using a local music collection: http://www.cesium-app.com/
It uses the same iTunes library as any other music app, including Apple's default music.app.
The mix of high rate and worldwide (non-territorial) taxation is why so many US companies end up being acquired by foreign companies. Then you don't have to pay US rates on your worldwide income.
That would be fucking swell.
But such advice ignores the gargantuan growth that cloud services are experiencing right now. Although iCloud, iTunes, ApplePay and the AppStore are almost solely focused on consumer internet and retail. It's conceivable that $APPL would make a push to deliver more SaaS offerings. Perhaps analagous to Adobe's Creative Cloud suite for profession digital content creators.
They are a company that resolves entirely around their culture and their ways of doing things. They even have their own internal university that teaches it to their managers. Apple makes a dozen or so acquisitions every year but they are almost always small companies whose cultures typically ends up being eliminated over time.
Buying a large company would make it impossible for this to happen and so I just don't see any of this happening. Not to mention the companies you listed there are completely ridiculous.
- Universal Studios
- PlayStation (aka a big foothold in the living room) and some of the most creative game studios
- Awesome displays (TVs)
- Bigger footprint in the consumer electronics market
- ... and most important of all the best camera sensors in the market (including camera phone sensors).
Sony has only sold 75 million PS4's since it was released (https://www.businessinsider.com/ps4-playstation-4-lifetime-s...). Apple sells almost that many iPhones in a good quarter.
TVs are big and bulky and have something like an 8 year replacement cycle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Pictures
They have been buying LCD panels from Samsung of South Korea in a joint venture:
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4344101&page=1
And their new OLED TV is mostly the work of LG Display:
https://www.theverge.com/ces/2017/1/10/14222986/sony-bravia-...
Tim Cook has already said so and it's exemplified by some of their recent hires:
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/apple-cyber-paint-app-...
https://www.harrypotterwizardsunite.com/en/
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/07/05/apple-music-spot...
Also, Apple Music has a much higher percentage of paid subscribers (90–95%) than Spotify (just over 50%), by virtue of not having a free tier. That probably means that Apple's music service isn't losing them money, unlike Spotify (or at least, isn't losing money as fast) -- Spotify's advertising revenue is only about 10% of their total.
So, I can't see a really good business case for that.
Labels have all the leverage, since the value of a streaming service is in having access to all music ever produced, so they will negotiate their way to approaching 100% of the excess that is left after paying for the overhead of running a streaming service.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/careypurcell/2018/05/15/with-50...
https://thenextweb.com/apple/2018/02/27/apple-confirms-it-ru...
Edit: SaaS growth has hard technical requirements and is a key qualifier in parent comment.
Edit 2: Everything after "but" is the take I'm reading.
Dead Comment
I love the iPad. I use Mac laptops for programming at work and my personal projects, but, I use my iPad for SSHing to my servers, reading, audio books, watch movies, research material for new books and technologies I want to learn, take online courses, write, etc.
Yes, laptops are great for writing code, but much of my thinking time is done with an iPad. When I retire, I can imagine just using a remote VPS for recreational coding with whatever can get decent screen space and a keyboard for a few SSH shells, and everything else could be an iPad.
What do you use to write? I have just started with the Apple Pencil and love it, use Notability. Any recommendations here will help.
Includes mosh support so you can sleep your iPad, switch between LTE/Wifi, etc - then later continue your terminal without interruption.
I guess Apple's accountants use MS Office?
1: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q3FY18ConsolidatedFinanc...
At this rate I imagine Apple could lock the doors of all of its stores and pull the plug on its website, and it would have enough cash to pay its employees for decades.
Somehow it’s great to be underestimated continuously. But on the other hand the stock takes the toll with a low PE ratio (compared to other tech stocks)
It's the reverse of a pump and dump scam. It has happened every quarter for the last 21 years. I honestly think it was something SJ cooked up. It started happening just after he returned. My guess, he got John Dvorak in on the scam. That guy's 'beleaguered Apple' PCMag trolling was instrumental in driving the price down for years. Everyone would parrot it. Then, "bam" Apple produces a great quarter. I wonder if JD still does that schtick... You can make money without fail by buying on the dip before earnings announcements and selling on the news.
They'll probably burn $150b over ten years on employee costs, with 100,000 employees (present count). That's mostly ignoring the destruction of the stock itself, which would hit employee compensation and require higher salaries to offset.
By the time revenue starts dropping it's probably too late to fix.
When people say it's dying they're not talking about financials, and holding up how much money they made as a barometer of success doesn't mean anything.
Some people judge their success on how good the products are not how much money they make because lots of these people have been fans of the company even when it was doing bad financially.
All just seems like they have become what Jobs was describing here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM and holding up the bag of money when they have shipped an objectively poorly designed laptop for 3 years now just reinforces that for some of us.
You can look up their cash and cash equivalents and get a sense of their employee costs, you don't have to guess.
Q1 2018: 77.3 million iPhones sold
Q3 2016: 40.4 million iPhones sold
Q3 2018: 41.3 million iPhones sold
They are selling MORE iPhones..
Until they release a 15" non-touchbar version with a better keyboard, I'll stick to my 2012 rMBP, as I'm sure others (including people I know) are too.
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If you've got a Core i series CPU, your laptop will age fairly well and potentially delay your upgrade. Maybe that's the cause of the decline?
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http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-all-...
Reporting says services revenue (App Store, Apple Care, Apple Pay, iTunes) is up 31%, despite heavy competition in those areas.
I don't think this is going to change or level off anytime soon. Everyone wants their cut, now Visa gets it AND google/apple get it :(
For streaming, Apple is still an also-ran, even on the iPhone, and even with 40 million subs.
Google Play Music by Google, Inc.https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/google-play-music/id69179798...
unsure because i don’t use it, but it looks like it from the outside