Apple needs to stick this out and keep up innovation on the Mac. The decline in sales is temporary, and here's why:
People are holding out. I want to buy a new MacBook myself, but the slow pace of innovation has kept me waiting. Intel hasn't had significant performance jumps in CPUs/chipsets for years. Until Haswell, there's been no compelling reason to upgrade. As for MacOSX, my opinion is that Apple's best OS was 10.6 and they "broke" it with 10.7. MacOSX 10.9 finally looks to a least pique my interest once more.
It's the economy stupid. Despite the fake rosy comment you hear in the media, the economy is getting worse, not better. People want to buy new Macs but they don't have the discretionary income they once had. People will buy, but they have to save up the $ now. This is largely due to the devaluation of the dollar. With the looming healthcare train wreck, the middle east on fire, increasing national debt, and the ongoing devaluation of the dollar, this aspect is not going to get better. But the silver lining for Apple is that premium price (and quality) tiers will be less impacted than the bargain basement PC market where all of Apple's competitors play. The deteriorating economy is going to dry up any available cash in the lower income space before it hits the upper-middle to high income classes.
Long-in-the-tooth Macs. While Apple has announced a few new "toys" (MacBook Air), I think they've been quite delinquent with Mac upgrades. There is pent up demand. Finally, finally, they are about to release a new Mac Pro. If they promote and support it properly, they could have a real blockbuster here. They also need to update the entire [rest of the] line with the new Haswell CPUs, USB 3, and 20Gb Thunderbolt.
The new process of welding the iMacs does add significant cost when purchased and for repairs. It seems to me that the only real improvements with the new iMacs were its thin design. I think most people would rather have a better screen or faster drive/cpu/gpu.
'Most people' are not in a position to make that assessment.
Determining whether the welded design makes sense requires you to know:
- The cost of building the old design.
- The cost of repairing the old design
- The cost of building the new design
- The cost of repairing the new design
- The percentage of people who upgrade their computers
- The percentage of people who would choose not to buy a computer that's less upgradeable
- The percentage of computers that fail under warranty
- The percentage of computers that fail after warranty expiration
- The other advantages of the new design (greater physical stability which means less likely to break the screen in shipment, for example)
- Other disadvantage of the new design
- Number of customers who buy the new one specifically because of thinness
- Number of customers who refuse to buy the new one because of thinness
And so on
Without knowing all of those things, there's absolutely no way to determine if it would have made sense to stick with the old design. I suspect that Apple has studied the matter pretty thoroughly in coming up with the new design. So where's your data for all of those questions that indicates that they made the wrong decision?
The resolution on the 27" iMac is just fine. 2560x1440 is awesome and images and video look great.iphone 5 cases cool Retina is not that big a thing for me,as I am happy with having more screen real-estate as-is. The default resolution on a Retina 15" MacBook Pro only gives you as much screen real estate as a 1440x900 display,which sucks.
I do wish Apple would bring back the 17" MacBook Pro.
And yes, when these new Mac Pros are selling like hotcakes there will be no room to complain about Mac sales. The movie theaters already brainwashing the masses with loads of hype and teaser sensation. Every 12 year old kid going back to school is gonna want one....and won't stop till they get one!
The new process of welding the iMacs does add significant cost when purchased and for repairs. It seems to me that the only real improvements with the new iMacs were its thin design. I think most people would rather have a better screen or faster drive/cpu/gpu.
Oh does it? Would you like to prove that it really does?
I'm pretty sure Apple knows what customers want a lot better than you do. Just because Apple isn't making what you want, doesn't mean others are unhappy too.
The iMac isn't Apple's biggest seller anyways. Their laptop line up is and has been for quite a while. So I'm pretty sure the lack of iMac sales isn't killing Apple as much as you want to think. Like I said in a previous post, its more likely that people simply don't need to upgrade as much anymore, and they're buying devices like iPads instead of laptops and desktops. This is part of the reason why you see Dell and HP struggling now too. They failed to keep up and relied on PC sales. Apple pushed the market and released amazing new products that wasn't a PC.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by pazuzu
All Macs need retina fast.
Where's the next big thing?
Everything is getting stale.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
lol.
Trolls gonna troll. Haters gonna hate.
Apple needs to stick this out and keep up innovation on the Mac. The decline in sales is temporary, and here's why:
People are holding out. I want to buy a new MacBook myself, but the slow pace of innovation has kept me waiting. Intel hasn't had significant performance jumps in CPUs/chipsets for years. Until Haswell, there's been no compelling reason to upgrade. As for MacOSX, my opinion is that Apple's best OS was 10.6 and they "broke" it with 10.7. MacOSX 10.9 finally looks to a least pique my interest once more.
It's the economy stupid. Despite the fake rosy comment you hear in the media, the economy is getting worse, not better. People want to buy new Macs but they don't have the discretionary income they once had. People will buy, but they have to save up the $ now. This is largely due to the devaluation of the dollar. With the looming healthcare train wreck, the middle east on fire, increasing national debt, and the ongoing devaluation of the dollar, this aspect is not going to get better. But the silver lining for Apple is that premium price (and quality) tiers will be less impacted than the bargain basement PC market where all of Apple's competitors play. The deteriorating economy is going to dry up any available cash in the lower income space before it hits the upper-middle to high income classes.
Long-in-the-tooth Macs. While Apple has announced a few new "toys" (MacBook Air), I think they've been quite delinquent with Mac upgrades. There is pent up demand. Finally, finally, they are about to release a new Mac Pro. If they promote and support it properly, they could have a real blockbuster here. They also need to update the entire [rest of the] line with the new Haswell CPUs, USB 3, and 20Gb Thunderbolt.
'Most people' are not in a position to make that assessment.
Determining whether the welded design makes sense requires you to know:
- The cost of building the old design.
- The cost of repairing the old design
- The cost of building the new design
- The cost of repairing the new design
- The percentage of people who upgrade their computers
- The percentage of people who would choose not to buy a computer that's less upgradeable
- The percentage of computers that fail under warranty
- The percentage of computers that fail after warranty expiration
- The other advantages of the new design (greater physical stability which means less likely to break the screen in shipment, for example)
- Other disadvantage of the new design
- Number of customers who buy the new one specifically because of thinness
- Number of customers who refuse to buy the new one because of thinness
And so on
Without knowing all of those things, there's absolutely no way to determine if it would have made sense to stick with the old design. I suspect that Apple has studied the matter pretty thoroughly in coming up with the new design. So where's your data for all of those questions that indicates that they made the wrong decision?
Originally Posted by pedromartins
you do realize that a similar MBP with 4gb of ram would be much faster, right? I mean, your RAM is what? 1033? the new ones are 1600 and faster.
That doesn't sound right to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WardC
The resolution on the 27" iMac is just fine. 2560x1440 is awesome and images and video look great.iphone 5 cases cool Retina is not that big a thing for me,as I am happy with having more screen real-estate as-is. The default resolution on a Retina 15" MacBook Pro only gives you as much screen real estate as a 1440x900 display,which sucks.
I do wish Apple would bring back the 17" MacBook Pro.
And yes, when these new Mac Pros are selling like hotcakes there will be no room to complain about Mac sales. The movie theaters already brainwashing the masses with loads of hype and teaser sensation. Every 12 year old kid going back to school is gonna want one....and won't stop till they get one!
Quote:
Originally Posted by sog35
The new process of welding the iMacs does add significant cost when purchased and for repairs. It seems to me that the only real improvements with the new iMacs were its thin design. I think most people would rather have a better screen or faster drive/cpu/gpu.
Oh does it? Would you like to prove that it really does?
I'm pretty sure Apple knows what customers want a lot better than you do. Just because Apple isn't making what you want, doesn't mean others are unhappy too.
The iMac isn't Apple's biggest seller anyways. Their laptop line up is and has been for quite a while. So I'm pretty sure the lack of iMac sales isn't killing Apple as much as you want to think. Like I said in a previous post, its more likely that people simply don't need to upgrade as much anymore, and they're buying devices like iPads instead of laptops and desktops. This is part of the reason why you see Dell and HP struggling now too. They failed to keep up and relied on PC sales. Apple pushed the market and released amazing new products that wasn't a PC.
A new MBP with 4 GB of 1600 RAM is faster than one with 16 GB of 1033 RAM?
Perhaps on some limited benchmark tests. But in real life, the one with 16 GB of RAM is likely to be much faster - almost all the time.