Steve Jobs talks future Mac OS X upgrades, Mac sales, and more - Page 3

In America we call those "periods," no one had a clue what "full stop" means unless it's related to halting a sailing vessel's progress or shutting down machinery.

you don't have to upgrade each time. the beauty of mac and apple is that you still have a very capable unit. my g3 does just fine for what most families do...email, internet, iphoto etc. granted it doesn't do flash well but hey it's "old". AND my macs, OS upgrades when done have given me zero grief.....not so with MS or vista, hey not only do they have to upgrade everything in the computer to get the top "ultimate" the $$$$$ spent in time and grief when nothing is compatible. gee i'[m not aware of any of the corps i deal with that has gone vista ( in fact they install xp pro and run it instead) good luck with dell or any MS os. i love apple. i upgrade when it makes sense. for me it's timemachine.

To me it's more like there are a few hundred people on The Interwebs who believe Apple should build some kind of bargain Mac especially for them without looking at the realities of the market and the Apple business model. They will use all kinds of flawed logic to justify why there is this "huge untapped" market that Apple is ignoring, and it gets ridiculous reading it in every single thread.

That's exactly what Apple and Steve Jobs does not seem to understand. They are living in an AIO delusion.

Now that's what I call ignorance.

Not at all, nice work with the straw man.

What we want is a machine that is more stripped down and more affordable than the mac pro. There are tons of machines on the PC side in the $800-1200 range (if not cheaper) that demonstrate what is possible in those price ranges if apple was just willing to make a model.

Apple can sell an iMac starting at $1199. That means they could sell the identical machine minus the monitor for $100-200 less than that. Adding an extra drive bay and open pci slot would cost very little, and would probably be completely offset by more flexibility of components by not having to cram into such a tiny form factor.

Or start with the mini. Go to a standard 3.5 inch hard drive and desktop optical drive, there's a big cost savings. Add a drive bay, pci and agp slot, and a couple more ram slots, none of those add much to the cost at all. Right there, you probably have a box you could sell at the same price as a mini but with better features.

Or even start with the Pro. Swap the processor to a dual, lower bus speed and WAY cheaper ram. That would knock hundreds off the $2499 base price. What happened to towers for $1599?

There's no reason apple's cheapest expandable box should be $2499, that's just ridiculous. If there's really no market for such a machine, then why is it such a huge segment on the PC side? Does it really make ANY sense to suggest that a tiny group who posts on the internet would be the only people interested in a mac that can use your own monitor, have a hard drive bigger than 160 gigs, and more than 2 gigs of ram? And that apple can't do something so basic for under $2499???


It's a glass half empty/full situation.

They're either selling "not enough" desktops, or they're selling "more than enough" laptops. With apple's sales way up and increasing faster than all the other major vendors, it doesn't seem logical to put a negative spin on it.

It also ignores the fact that apple is particularly strong in the educational and consumer markets, which I'd bet are both heavy on laptops. MANY desktop sales are for businesses that just buy the cheapest model that is available, and will buy a windows machine regardless of what hardware apple offers - apple isn't going to compete in that segment regardless of what they ship, and since it is a low-profit segment, there's an argument to be made that it's not worth it for them to bother.

You can believe whatever the hell you want, it's just hilarious to watch the same old people scream how stupid Apple is over and over again regarding these phantom xMacs while Apple is increasing their profits, stock price, and market share quarter over quarter. They need to cast aside their successful business plan to satisfy a few niche users, that makes perfect sense!

Intel makes three kinds of processors: mobile, desktop, & server-class. You're trying to say that Apple is right to use only the outer two of those... and in doing so, you're saying that Intel, one of the most successful tech companies of all time, whose only business is making and selling CPUs, is wrong to produce a desktop-class model because high-end laptops are close enough to low-end servers??!?!?!????

Anyone who thinks this is kidding themselves. There IS a large market for this type of computer. People who say, "not among Mac users" are flawed. The reason there aren't Mac-users in the "mid-range
" desktop market is because THERE AREN'T ANY MID-RANGE DESKTOP MACS! But we "would-bes" love the OS enough to settle for ANOTHER laptop-powered AIO, over-powered MacPro, or expensive MBP.

Wake up and smell the market.

-Clive

Sorry to ruin your buzz but to those of us not living in your RDF your logic is flawed because your positioning your version directly in competition with an iMac, and a Mac mini. You can't do that in Apples world and long time Mac users know it.

The Desktop has to start at a about $1200.00 without a display because Apple does not position computers at the same price points, or Make two computers that function in an identical capacity. The only place there is room to position a computer in Apples world is in the huge gap between the iMac and the Mac Pro.

How the hell would adding one model "cast aside their successful business plan"? Wouldn't offering more consumer choices open up the possibility for more sales? Or are you saying with a straight face that offering another model would actually hurt their profits?

While apple is improving their situation, that doesn't mean that every decision they make is the right one. Or are you saying that they're doing everything perfectly, and there's no possible way their strategy could be improved?

The profits and stock price have noting to do with laptop sales or desktop sales short bus. Your posts are only solidifying the description of ignorance I gave you earlier.

RDF? I don't think that means what you think it means.

Sure, I know apple has never done this before. Sure, I know that chances of it are slim.

And while I see your point about price points, I simply don't agree that it's a good idea. The iMac is a nice computer. But I don't agree it's a machine that functions in the same capacity as a headless equivalent. There are people who would buy a mac in the iMac price range, but simply won't buy an all-in-one.

Apple can offer a machine for that market, or they can kiss it goodbye. Personally, I think they are being stupid and stubborn and limiting their sales by not offering a wide enough variety of hardware choices.

Actually the biggest issue with both the Macbook and the Mini is the GPU. It's not that they won't support games, they can't even support all iLife app functions. iLife are consumer, not pro apps at the very least these systems should support every function in every iLife application.

Keynote is a perfect example. Apple has always been behind when it comes to pairing their systems with decent GPU's and the correct amount of ram to match the system. iMac perfect example, there isn't any reason on earth why that system should come standard with 2gigs of ram.

this isn't a five person company, i'm sure there are analysts figuring out the % marketshare that would want a lower-end apple tower. however, i don't see Apple as a lower-end ANYTHING company.

As for all of this "mini with expansion, imac without a monitor", remember the cube - it might be the cause for fear of producing a mid-range desktop. Even though i loved my cube, it was a business failure.

lastly, nobody posting on this, or any other site would be happy with what was actually offered from Apple for $1000 - $1500 in a tower. all you do is bitch that it doesn't have this or that they went with that, or that Dell puts another 512 ram or 80 gigs of hard drive in the same price point [even with a cheapo enclosure, cheapo keyboard and mouse]

Hm, let's see. People are already bitching Apple has spread themselves too thin with the iPhone platform and surrounding infrastructure for that making hardware refreshes less frequent and hindering Leopard development. Now people want them to introduce another product line that uses desktop parts when they have ZERO other products that use desktop parts. Mac Mini, iMac, MacBook line, AppleTV = laptop parts, Mac Pro and XServer = server parts, correct me if I'm wrong. So they would need to devote another set of resources to procure the desktop parts (and won't have the volume to get good prices for a single line), engineer and design this xMac, advertise it, and support it. This would all cost plenty of dough, and there would certainly be a chance it could hurt their bottom line if the whole thing was a bust! Pretty simple to me. The opportunity costs here could certainly be used elsewhere.


Of course not. They took a chance with the iPhone which to me is a much smarter BUSINESS DECISION as the cell market is MUCH larger (and growing) compared to the stagnant or shrinking desktop market. I think they would be better served using their resources trying to build that platform rather then start anew in a stale desktop market.


Nice. Childish name calling makes you a superior Interweb poster. They fact that you actually just said that laptop sales have no correlation to Apple's stock price and P&L statement pretty much speaks for itself. Have you ever run or been involved in the management of a business of any kind? Just curious.

Nah, it just means that the same people, likely the vocal minority, keeps coming back and are spouting off THEIR wants, not the wants of the consumers in general.


Think about it. They do have these people called market researchers working at Apple who are on top of what the Joe public is wanting. And their conclusion for the past several years has been that, NO, there isn't "a huge market of people who want a desktop machine that's not a mini, an imac or a fracking macPro annihilator". Simple as that.

The iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro are niche products?

Admit it guys, YOU are the minority.




Oh, and people who are complaining that Apple selling more laptops than desktops. PUHLEASE!!

The only important thing for Apple is the overall market share, where they are seeing tremendous growth. It doesn't matter if it's coming from more laptop sales than desktop sales, that's where the market is heading, and especially, that's where the Apple/Mac market is heading.

There are definitely good reasons behind the unbalance there, too. For example, there probably are more incentives for people looking for a new laptop to migrate from Windows to Macs. I know countless students around at my university who have recently switched or are saying "My next laptop is going to be a Mac.

Some of the reasons behind that are, for example, how quickly Mac laptops wake up from sleep, and the power of being able to have a mobile Mac AND PC (Windows, Linux, etc.) environment all in one package, etc.

So unless you show me that the soaring laptop sales are at the expense of tanking desktop sales, you don't have a case. And if I remember the numbers, iMac shipping numbers have been fantastic, and I don't remember the Mac Pro and Mac mini doing any worse that they have in the past.

What about the mini?


What people are asking for is completely different from the cube, which failed because it was a feature set and price point that nobody wanted. It was almost as expensive as the tower, but with far fewer features. It was a very limited box with slick design at a very high price. And if there's a model comparable to the cube, it's probably the mini, which proved that the design of the cube wasn't bad, it was just vastly overpriced.


Wrong. If they offered something of comparable bang for buck as the imacs, I'd be extremely happy and would likely buy one fairly quickly. Sure, you'd see complaining, but there is complaining about every product apple releases (just as there is complaining about every product everyone releases). But there would be many people who would be very happy with it.

They've got 3 desktops, spanning a large price range. Just because none of them are quite what you want, that doesn't negate their existence. Even if the model you have yourself set on might fill an important niche, arguing something patently untrue doesn't exactly strengthen your position, does it?

What I would really like is a .Mac "Gold" account, where I pay a yearly fee, including all the usual .Mac features, but also receive free updates to OSX.

You clearly have no conception of PC hardware development. A midtower would be the absolute easiest possible product apple could develop. There are tons of reference mobos from intel, the vast majority of the design work has been done already. I think the main intel desktop cpus are even socket compatible with the ones in minis and imacs, so that's not even that different from what they have already.

It could be the least risky new product apple has ever shipped.


I'm not sure why you think it's a zero sum game. Do you really think apple is in a position where they have to choose between the iPhone and a new computer model? The smart business decision is to do both, ship the iPhone and also optimize the desktop line. And while desktop sales are growing less than laptop sales, it's still a huge market which is still growing, isn't it?


You don't know that. The way apple runs, there's a good chance that they are aware that there is demand, but stubbornly refuse to offer the product anyway. If you've followed the company at all you should know that Steve Jobs has a long history of decisions like that, he doesn't make decisions based on market research. And if the public really doesn't want such a machine, why do so many sell on the PC side?

There are two ways to look at this.

One is that the desktop line is inferior, so Apple's sales overall are not what they should be, as their portable sales are right, but desktop sales are below where they should be.

Or two, desktop sales are fine (they just moved up 30%, I believe) for a good product line, but Apple's customers are moving to laptops more quickly because of all these college students who primarily buy portables, and who are a large percentage of Apple's sales.

Pick your poison.

Both these posts ignore Apple's business model - high-margin, high-value hardware. Every counter example given is for a Dell/HP or similar. What are their margins, 10%? Apple builds for 30% margin value. So adding one model, if it designed to complete with these Dell/HP models on both price and features, would be casting aside their model. So the choices seems to be

1) To access this supposedly large market - build low-margin hardware
Not Apple's business model.

2) Maintain the business model and produce these XMAC for significantly more that HP/Dell
Result, don't sell to this supposedly large market.


First, I don't believe this market is that large (outside of corporate drone desktops), but even if it is it currently demands prices that don't allow for the margins that Apple gets for it current product line.

I appreciate that you are able to throw out a real arguement rather than just spouting baseless insults (*cough*onlooker*cough).

You've only taken into account one area of my statement though, the engineering. It still costs a CRAPLOAD of money to introduce a new product line worldwide.

1) Apple must get a good price on all of their mobile components since they use them across several product lines. The desktop CPUs would surely be ordered in smaller quantities, and they wouldn't be able to charge as a high a markup on them (like the Mac Pro) since the mid-range desktop market is so cut-throat. Smaller profit margins is not what Apple wants, especially on a machine that would essentially wind up competing with the iMac. Some would say it's not competing with the iMac and I would strongly disagree.

2) Any idea how much Apple spent on advertising to launch the iPhone? I'm sure it's pretty staggering, but at least they had the benefit of tons of free press due to the uniqueness and hype around the product. It's fairly easy for them to run a few weeks of commercials when the iPod or iMac or what have you gets updated, people already recognize the product line. I cannot see how there would be much hype for an xMac from the media, really that is just from my opinion that the market for this machine just isn't that big... it's hobbyists that think they are a much larger group than they are.

I guess some people have more faith in the general public than I do, which is much, much larger than the hardcore group of enthusiasts. I could easily see them looking at the xMac compared to the iMac and saying hmmmm...same price, and with one of them I get this ginormous screen included. Pass on the xMac. And let's face it, sadly it's the general public that controls the market, not us.


But they already have a very successful entry in the desktop market! The iMac! Some refuse to accept the iMac is a desktop machine but nevertheless, it's true! It makes much more sense to me to just continue to improve this market-proven product. I am just trying to look at this from a business-driven perspective, not what I personally want.

It certainly isn't a zero-sum game, but the reality is Apple is a publicly-owned company that has to show consistancy from quarter-to-quarter to keep that stock price rising. They have a finite amount of money they can sink into this stuff and still keep the profits (and stock price) rising.

Actually, while a popular thing to say, there very little evidence of this in recent times. Apple's execution in product development and the positive reception of almost all of their products shows a very detailed attention to market input. There are, of course, less than stellar results at times, like the HiFi but one of the best examples is the replacement of the mini iPod with the Nano which the mini was at the height of its popularity. This was a very astute marketing decision.

The iPhone, itself, shows this. Despite massive negative positioning by the various pundits, the iPhone has been an amazing success. It is defining a new market area (niche if you prefer) for mobiles, that may be more than a niche.

May I respectfully point out the language you speak is English, I do not think that even the residents of the USA call it American, they call it English. So perhaps just perhaps our word is right and just for once, for it happens so rarely, you Americans are wrong.

There is a diffrence, slight though it may be, between American English and English English.

Am I the only one (outside the USA) who is getting little tired of the quoted $129 price tag for Leopard? All you yanks, (and Steve Jobs if he reads this) look at what the rest of the world pays for Apple software and hardware. Yes I know they sell much more in the US but perhaps the higher (maybe much higher) prices restrict sales outside the US? What about price tags that are a little closer to the exchange rates from dollar to pound or euro (those are some of the different currencies in the rest of the civilised world) rather than thinking of a number.

The main difference is we spoke it first.

You are right there is a difference, but just bear in mind that the US must pay sales tax on top of that, whereas we have it included by default. Unfortunately also the US almost always pay less sales tax than we do. So our government must take some of the blame for the price difference. It is a lot more palatable if you are VAT registered.

A quick calculation shows that the ex-VAT price in the UK for Leopard is the equivalent of approximately $148. So a mark-up but maybe not as much as you'd have thought.

My main complaint is that the $19 gap between the two prices is normally justified with answers regarding international language conversion. This annoys me since although we are buying a product which includes all the European languages, so is everyone else. As another English-speaking country, we have to pay more for those languages we don't use whereas in the US you don't. Many moons ago we were actually given a special British version of the OS with 'quaint' differences such as "Wastebasket" instead of "Trash". Now you Yanks have infiltrated our beloved culture we don't even get that any more.

Where are my pipe and slippers Watson??

heh heh! It isn't that you spoke it first as it is that the people who came here couldn't stand the accent, so they came to a place where they could have their own. Oh, and fix the spelling.

All companies either report in their home market, or in their largest one. Therefore they use the pricing and currenct used there.

With Apple, both markets happen to be one and the same.

Prices abroad reflect much more than Apple's pricing. VAT takes a much bigger cut in Europe than taxes do here. And id one lives in a state with sales takes, both state and local, those taxes aren't included in the given pricing, but are added on at the point of sale, unlike the hidden taxes in Europe.

Ah I posted my reply to him before I read yours.

But, we have all the languages as well. We can decide to install them or not.

The differences stem from the rhotic areas of the British Isles anyway, so you have our common seafolk to thank for your peculiar drawl.

As a visitor I find American sales tax more 'hidden' anyway, since when one is used to paying the price on the label, you suddenly find yourself paying more at the checkout, and it's normally something obscure like $14.03

I'd gladly give up our hefty 17.5% sales tax on pretty much any good though, to have prices like yours. That is why I buy a lot of my Apple stuff in NJ shhhh don't tell UK customs!!

So the justification of paying for an International version is completely false then.

How else can Steve Jobs justify the extra $19 then?

I'm in complete agreement with physguy, here. It's most likely a popular "myth" that SJ puts out what he wants, without regards to public demand. Sure, in some of the more brilliant cases, Apple (and SJ, perhaps) manages to *create* demand that wasn't necessarily there to begin with (the iPod line comes to mind), but if you think that SJ can magically pull stuff out of his ass that almost always gets wide public acceptance and popularity, without any market researching, I must say you have too much faith in SJ's godlike abilities

I love England, the UK and all the Brits. Believe me. Some of my best friends are Brits. However, may I respectfully point out that we invented cars, ergo, you drive on the wrong side of the road.



What a feeble and pointless argument. Let's get back to yelling at each other about the xMac.

-Clive

Ok. Apple Doesn't need an xMac. I have a Mac Mini Core duo, and guess what? I have rendered an entire 10 minuet 3d-aminated film on it, in about 10 hours from start to finish, I play Quakes 1,2,3, and 4 on it with little problems, I play Counter Strike and Counter-Strike source, I play Doom 3 and Prey, even though the system requirements say no, I do edit video and audio on it, and I am able to upgrade the HD, RAM, and CPU without too much trouble (for me, personally). I can to this all on a 1.66 GHz computer with no real GPU, and 512 Mb RAM and the iMacs and Mac Pros can do even more. The Mac Mini is a perfectly capable computer, and the iMac does what the Mac Mini can't. Depending on your use, those two can fill your need without dropping $2000 on a Mac Pro.

"mauvés ovriers ne trovera ja bon hostill"

I understand people's need for xMac's, but I rough-cut a feature on an MBP (so my editor could see what I wanted), cleaned up tons of commercials on someone else's Mini, and correct storyboards, write series' worth of scripts and manage to keep up with all my art directors and editors on an iMac. I've done even more on Mac Pro's, but there are so many complaints sometimes I wonder when people have time to actually get work done.

Righteous on the 10 minute 3D film.

it isn't.
but a lot of people like to say "mine is bigger".

the mac mini and imac is made for the average user.