I've asked before and I'll ask again. Are you a real person or just some click-wanker pseudo-personality offered by AI to instigate comment on this forum?
There are many factors, some very good ones already discussed in this thread, but I think that the largest reason is this:
The vast majority of desktop PC users don't want to spend $1300 (and up) to do web/FB/pay bills/email/photo editing. If Apple wanted to increase market share of PCs, they'd have to package and market a sub $700 PC setup. Apples grabs some of that market thru $600 mac mini.
Apple already does very well in laptop PC market, so there's not too much to gain/improve in that market.
For some reason, people around the world care deeply about the quality of their mobile phones, ipads, & laptops...care enough to pay "premium" for quality... but could give a crap about what sits on/under their desk.
What do you expect them to update it with every 6 months? Intel's tick-tock cycle isn't that often and there aren't nearly enough changes to the rest of the industry for the components they provide to make that viable.
BY your logic the iPhone should be updated every month to keep ahead of other OEM releases.
Given Apple would never lower the price I would at least expect the CPU speed to be increased to justify the cost. For a machine which first launched at a relatively competitive price, now 10 months down the road just looks uncompetitive.
If Haswell hasn't been available at the price point or quantities that Apple wants up until this point then they should have refreshed the MBP a few months ago with 802.11ac, PCIe SSD and a clock speed increase. Then introduce Haswell when available. That way whenever a customer wishes to purchase a new machine they are getting an up to date machine. At the moment if somebody purchases a MBP they are getting a year out of date machine.
Given Apple would never lower the price I would at least expect the CPU speed to be increased to justify the cost. For a machine which first launched at a relatively competitive price, now 10 months down the road just looks uncompetitive.
If Haswell hasn't been available at the price point or quantities that Apple wants up until this point then they should have refreshed the MBP a few months ago with 802.11ac, PCIe SSD and a clock speed increase. Then introduce Haswell when available. That way whenever a customer wishes to purchase a new machine they are getting an up to date machine. At the moment if somebody purchases a MBP they are getting a year out of date machine.
Show me this scale where Inrel lowers price points on their every month, two months, season or bi-annually like clockwork that would allow Apple to do incremental speedbumps at a rate that is much higher than any other OEM for a given model?
Show me a Retina MBA and I'll upgrade, until then there just hasn't been a compelling reason to replace the (fantastic) 2011 MBA 11 I already have. The updates have been incremental - a 4x screen resolution increase will be huge though.
I also have a 2011 Mac Pro with 12 (2x6) cores - and I'm not sure the new Mac Pro will be the killer upgrade over that that I would hope for. Maybe, but it's really not clear. I do like the new form factor, but I also have all of my drive bays full, have upgraded my video card, and added an eSATA card, which is what a 'pro' machine theoretically is supposed to offer. (And I blame Intel for the flatlining Pro hardware - they keep jacking up the Xeon prices to where the machines just don't make sense... Until Apple releases a 64-core A8 box and can finally bypass them?)
So hardly doomed, but I think without major updates it's pretty hard to get people to move off of machines that Apple already made so damned good.
Show me a Retina MBA and I'll upgrade, until then there just hasn't been a compelling reason to replace the (fantastic) 2011 MBA 11 I already have. The updates have been incremental - a 4x screen resolution increase will be huge though.
I also have a 2011 Mac Pro with 12 (2x6) cores - and I'm not sure the new Mac Pro will be the killer upgrade over that that I would hope for. Maybe, but it's really not clear. I do like the new form factor, but I also have all of my drive bays full, have upgraded my video card, and added an eSATA card, which is what a 'pro' machine theoretically is supposed to offer. (And I blame Intel for the flatlining Pro hardware - they keep jacking up the Xeon prices to where the machines just don't make sense... Until Apple releases a 64-core A8 box and can finally bypass them?)
So hardly doomed, but I think without major updates it's pretty hard to get people to move off of machines that Apple already made so damned good.
This year, only a year after the MBP went Retina, seemed pretty slim. I hope it happens on the next refresh but there are some technical arguments that can be made against it that it wouldn't make me overly surprised if it didn't happen.
There are a couple other reasons why Apple's Share is shrinking
1) Win8... to run win8 most people buy new PCs... it's usually the easiest and cheapest way to upgrade.
2) OSX Lion/Mavericks.... to run the latest version of Mac's OS most people... upgrade their current device to the current OS on their current machine.
3) Average useful lifespan of an Mac product is arguably 1.5-2X the length of a PC product (ARGUABLY - Mac laptops are typically more sturdy, and with a greater percentage having no spinning disk, this makes them more reliable, and with less spamware (not no, but less), they degrade over time a bit better than your XP/SP2 or Win7 system.
Is Windows 8 really driving sales?
Anyone who can use Windows 95-XP can use Windows 7, but Windows 8 requires learning a new UI and dealing with the fact that some apps use the new Metro UI while others continue to have the traditional Windows UI. There isn't an organization on earth that wants to waste time and money re-training staff to perform tasks they already know how to do.
If Gartner and IDC exclude iPads, but do include Chrome based hardware in their counts that could help account for both the drop in Mac sales and rise in PC sales. Instead of replacing the family computer, it's now possible to spend roughly the same amount of money and get a Chrome based product for every member of the family. I know people who've done just that, but I won't let Google get their talons into my kids until they're old enough to make that decision for themselves.
I've asked before and I'll ask again. Are you a real person or just some click-wanker pseudo-personality offered by AI to instigate comment on this forum?
ERROR#12:0x0EF493A¨¨¨ˆÏˆ¨ot relevant to the discussion.”}else(is_human_report == 14){“Bot? What’s a bot? I’m not a bot.”; winkemoji();}
My experience with the estimates by both Gartner and IDC are that they consistently underestimate Apple's shipments across the board. I remember early this year, both said that the Mac's marketshare in the US was going up, but one said that Mac sales would drop about 6.5% and the other said 9% (I forget which said what), while PC sales would drop 11%.
Actually, that quarter Mac shipments rose 1%. That's a large error, and they repeat it almost every time.
I been saying this since the retina MBP came out. The pricing of the system is WAY too high. Combine that with the fact that the system is completely unserviceable for a user (i.e., upgrade memory or ssd) and the fact that the warranty is only 1YR without Applecare (3YR with Applecare) and you have an unaffordable product for many consumers. There is not a large customer base for $3K laptops that are out of warranty in 1-3 years and the product is unrepairable except through Apple pricing (outrageous).
PROPRIETARY = FAIL - Apple should know this. It held them back for decades.
If Apple discontinues the cMBP, they are pretty much giving up on the PC market.
My experience with the estimates by both Gartner and IDC are that they consistently underestimate Apple's shipments across the board. I remember early this year, both said that the Mac's marketshare in the US was going up, but one said that Mac sales would drop about 6.5% and the other said 9% (I forget which said what), while PC sales would drop 11%.
Actually, that quarter Mac shipments rose 1%. That's a large error, and they repeat it almost every time.
That's no guarantee it will be wrong again, but it will be interesting to see what Apple says.
Of course, Apple did just update the iMac. And despite a few people here dissing it, they've gotten pretty good reviews. We have to remember that Haswell has little performance advantage over Ivy bridge. The major improvement is in power usage.
As for the lack of an optical drive, well, I can just say that I rarely use one. My daughter hardly uses one, and my wife hardly uses one. Polling friends, most hardly use one. That doesn't mean that everyone hardly uses one, but it does mean that if you really do want one, you can get on and out it on your desk. A wonderful solution? Maybe not for some, but pretty fine.
I agree, and isn't it funny how they always do quarterly studies instead of YoY, and amazingly they (IDC and Gartner) always pick Apples slowest quarter at the time right before the new product launches? Lol coincidence, I think not. We are like a week out of the new iMac updates so they won't factor either. The updates to the Airs have not really been out that long either.
You can always count on especially IDC for the lowest Apple estimates. When they did tablets a while back the idiot that did the supposed survey made up his new way to count by adding in "white box" tablets to push apples numbers further down.
I would expect no less from these two very disreputable firms.
Show me this scale where Inrel lowers price points on their every month, two months, season or bi-annually like clockwork that would allow Apple to do incremental speedbumps at a rate that is much higher than any other OEM for a given model?
Intel does decrease prices from time to time as yields improve, but you're right that all OEMs have access to those price adjustments.
Apple issued speed bumps earlier this year to the MacBook Pro from 2.3GHz to 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz to 2.7GHz when Intel made the faster chips available at the same price that the slower ones had previously been. It's safe to assume that Apple did this because MacBook Pro customers are important to them.
Today the 2.6GHz i7-3720QM and 2.7GHz i7-3740QM both cost exactly the same amount and that price is identical to what customers previously paid for the 2.3GHz 3610QM yet the Mac mini continues to carry the older, slower CPU. It's safe to assume that Apple doesn't worry about giving Mac mini customers the best possible bang for their buck.
The 3610QM no longer appears on the Intel price list so it's not known whether customers with long term supply agreements for the older chip are getting a discount or not.
FYI the Core i7 4800MQ is priced identically to the 3740QM so it's pretty safe to assume that it will be the CPU in the late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro.
Intel does decrease prices from time to time as yields improve, but you're right that all OEMs have access to those price adjustments.
The previous suggestion implied that if Intel drops the price by a few dollars Apple should do so as well. This ignores Apple's pricing structure would then have to be reset for new Macs when new chips are inserted, usually at the same price point for the chip, and that Apple buys in bulk which makes the whole notion of what a vendor does at one point forcing a customer to alter their prices immediately pretty silly. These aren't gas prices where it's based on futures (and wouldn't it be horrible if it was set up that way?).
We also can't be so shortsighted as to think that Apple prices a machine for what it costs that day coming out of the factory. Apple, like any successful company, uses many metrics to figure out a price point. Let's say that zero days sales of the MBP have component costs that are 25% more than at the end of the production cycle for that machine. That's fine, because at the end of the cycle they probably aren't selling as much so the cost for production could actually go up per unit, and, most importantly, Apple has figured in the total cost for producing that model for it's lifecycle when figuring out the price. If ones wants to pay less at the end of the cycle then one might as well slap extra cost to the start of the cycle.
Today the 2.6GHz i7-3720QM and 2.7GHz i7-3740QM both cost exactly the same amount and that price is identical to what customers previously paid for the 2.3GHz 3610QM yet the Mac mini continues to carry the older, slower CPU. It's safe to assume that Apple doesn't worry about giving Mac mini customers the best possible bang for their buck.
This is something I'd like to see, but making the next Mac mini about the footprint of the current AirPort Extreme could work. Not as tell as it doesn't need to support a 3.5" HDD, but it could support one or two 2.5" HDDs for the server model. These could be laid sideways (which would be length longways as the width of a 3.5" drive). I think using less desk space is a good thing here, plus you want to limit things being placed atop it.
Of course, Apple seems to be moving away from HDDs so the next Mac Mini would probably only have a PCIe SSD with a couple TB2 ports for external storage.
Comments
IntelG5 outside!Hey TS.
I've asked before and I'll ask again. Are you a real person or just some click-wanker pseudo-personality offered by AI to instigate comment on this forum?
Your thoughts please ;-)
There are many factors, some very good ones already discussed in this thread, but I think that the largest reason is this:
The vast majority of desktop PC users don't want to spend $1300 (and up) to do web/FB/pay bills/email/photo editing. If Apple wanted to increase market share of PCs, they'd have to package and market a sub $700 PC setup. Apples grabs some of that market thru $600 mac mini.
Apple already does very well in laptop PC market, so there's not too much to gain/improve in that market.
For some reason, people around the world care deeply about the quality of their mobile phones, ipads, & laptops...care enough to pay "premium" for quality... but could give a crap about what sits on/under their desk.
What do you expect them to update it with every 6 months? Intel's tick-tock cycle isn't that often and there aren't nearly enough changes to the rest of the industry for the components they provide to make that viable.
BY your logic the iPhone should be updated every month to keep ahead of other OEM releases.
Given Apple would never lower the price I would at least expect the CPU speed to be increased to justify the cost. For a machine which first launched at a relatively competitive price, now 10 months down the road just looks uncompetitive.
If Haswell hasn't been available at the price point or quantities that Apple wants up until this point then they should have refreshed the MBP a few months ago with 802.11ac, PCIe SSD and a clock speed increase. Then introduce Haswell when available. That way whenever a customer wishes to purchase a new machine they are getting an up to date machine. At the moment if somebody purchases a MBP they are getting a year out of date machine.
Show me this scale where Inrel lowers price points on their every month, two months, season or bi-annually like clockwork that would allow Apple to do incremental speedbumps at a rate that is much higher than any other OEM for a given model?
I also have a 2011 Mac Pro with 12 (2x6) cores - and I'm not sure the new Mac Pro will be the killer upgrade over that that I would hope for. Maybe, but it's really not clear. I do like the new form factor, but I also have all of my drive bays full, have upgraded my video card, and added an eSATA card, which is what a 'pro' machine theoretically is supposed to offer. (And I blame Intel for the flatlining Pro hardware - they keep jacking up the Xeon prices to where the machines just don't make sense... Until Apple releases a 64-core A8 box and can finally bypass them?)
So hardly doomed, but I think without major updates it's pretty hard to get people to move off of machines that Apple already made so damned good.
This year, only a year after the MBP went Retina, seemed pretty slim. I hope it happens on the next refresh but there are some technical arguments that can be made against it that it wouldn't make me overly surprised if it didn't happen.
There are a couple other reasons why Apple's Share is shrinking
1) Win8... to run win8 most people buy new PCs... it's usually the easiest and cheapest way to upgrade.
2) OSX Lion/Mavericks.... to run the latest version of Mac's OS most people... upgrade their current device to the current OS on their current machine.
3) Average useful lifespan of an Mac product is arguably 1.5-2X the length of a PC product (ARGUABLY - Mac laptops are typically more sturdy, and with a greater percentage having no spinning disk, this makes them more reliable, and with less spamware (not no, but less), they degrade over time a bit better than your XP/SP2 or Win7 system.
Is Windows 8 really driving sales?
Anyone who can use Windows 95-XP can use Windows 7, but Windows 8 requires learning a new UI and dealing with the fact that some apps use the new Metro UI while others continue to have the traditional Windows UI. There isn't an organization on earth that wants to waste time and money re-training staff to perform tasks they already know how to do.
If Gartner and IDC exclude iPads, but do include Chrome based hardware in their counts that could help account for both the drop in Mac sales and rise in PC sales. Instead of replacing the family computer, it's now possible to spend roughly the same amount of money and get a Chrome based product for every member of the family. I know people who've done just that, but I won't let Google get their talons into my kids until they're old enough to make that decision for themselves.
I've asked before and I'll ask again. Are you a real person or just some click-wanker pseudo-personality offered by AI to instigate comment on this forum?
ERROR#12:0x0EF493A¨¨¨ˆÏˆ¨ot relevant to the discussion.”}else(is_human_report == 14){“Bot? What’s a bot? I’m not a bot.”; winkemoji();}
Apple needs to reduce prices on the MBP just to increase market share and stay relevant.
NOPE.png
I think you'll have better luck emailing Tim this news, instead of posting here. Unless of course, you don't want to be relevant here.
The Software Publishers Association used to be experts at this:
http://web.archive.org/web/19990427063057/http://www.dol.net/~Ragosta/spa.htm
I been saying this since the retina MBP came out. The pricing of the system is WAY too high. Combine that with the fact that the system is completely unserviceable for a user (i.e., upgrade memory or ssd) and the fact that the warranty is only 1YR without Applecare (3YR with Applecare) and you have an unaffordable product for many consumers. There is not a large customer base for $3K laptops that are out of warranty in 1-3 years and the product is unrepairable except through Apple pricing (outrageous).
PROPRIETARY = FAIL - Apple should know this. It held them back for decades.
If Apple discontinues the cMBP, they are pretty much giving up on the PC market.
PROPRIETARY = FAIL - Apple should know this. It held them back for decades.
If being the most powerful company in the world is being held back...then what the hell does that make every other company?
My experience with the estimates by both Gartner and IDC are that they consistently underestimate Apple's shipments across the board. I remember early this year, both said that the Mac's marketshare in the US was going up, but one said that Mac sales would drop about 6.5% and the other said 9% (I forget which said what), while PC sales would drop 11%.
Actually, that quarter Mac shipments rose 1%. That's a large error, and they repeat it almost every time.
That's no guarantee it will be wrong again, but it will be interesting to see what Apple says.
Of course, Apple did just update the iMac. And despite a few people here dissing it, they've gotten pretty good reviews. We have to remember that Haswell has little performance advantage over Ivy bridge. The major improvement is in power usage.
As for the lack of an optical drive, well, I can just say that I rarely use one. My daughter hardly uses one, and my wife hardly uses one. Polling friends, most hardly use one. That doesn't mean that everyone hardly uses one, but it does mean that if you really do want one, you can get on and out it on your desk. A wonderful solution? Maybe not for some, but pretty fine.
I agree, and isn't it funny how they always do quarterly studies instead of YoY, and amazingly they (IDC and Gartner) always pick Apples slowest quarter at the time right before the new product launches? Lol coincidence, I think not. We are like a week out of the new iMac updates so they won't factor either. The updates to the Airs have not really been out that long either.
You can always count on especially IDC for the lowest Apple estimates. When they did tablets a while back the idiot that did the supposed survey made up his new way to count by adding in "white box" tablets to push apples numbers further down.
I would expect no less from these two very disreputable firms.
If being the most powerful company in the world is being held back...then what the hell does that make every other company?
In a race to the bottom.
" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
Show me this scale where Inrel lowers price points on their every month, two months, season or bi-annually like clockwork that would allow Apple to do incremental speedbumps at a rate that is much higher than any other OEM for a given model?
Intel does decrease prices from time to time as yields improve, but you're right that all OEMs have access to those price adjustments.
Apple issued speed bumps earlier this year to the MacBook Pro from 2.3GHz to 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz to 2.7GHz when Intel made the faster chips available at the same price that the slower ones had previously been. It's safe to assume that Apple did this because MacBook Pro customers are important to them.
Today the 2.6GHz i7-3720QM and 2.7GHz i7-3740QM both cost exactly the same amount and that price is identical to what customers previously paid for the 2.3GHz 3610QM yet the Mac mini continues to carry the older, slower CPU. It's safe to assume that Apple doesn't worry about giving Mac mini customers the best possible bang for their buck.
The 3610QM no longer appears on the Intel price list so it's not known whether customers with long term supply agreements for the older chip are getting a discount or not.
FYI the Core i7 4800MQ is priced identically to the 3740QM so it's pretty safe to assume that it will be the CPU in the late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro.
The previous suggestion implied that if Intel drops the price by a few dollars Apple should do so as well. This ignores Apple's pricing structure would then have to be reset for new Macs when new chips are inserted, usually at the same price point for the chip, and that Apple buys in bulk which makes the whole notion of what a vendor does at one point forcing a customer to alter their prices immediately pretty silly. These aren't gas prices where it's based on futures (and wouldn't it be horrible if it was set up that way?).
We also can't be so shortsighted as to think that Apple prices a machine for what it costs that day coming out of the factory. Apple, like any successful company, uses many metrics to figure out a price point. Let's say that zero days sales of the MBP have component costs that are 25% more than at the end of the production cycle for that machine. That's fine, because at the end of the cycle they probably aren't selling as much so the cost for production could actually go up per unit, and, most importantly, Apple has figured in the total cost for producing that model for it's lifecycle when figuring out the price. If ones wants to pay less at the end of the cycle then one might as well slap extra cost to the start of the cycle.
This is something I'd like to see, but making the next Mac mini about the footprint of the current AirPort Extreme could work. Not as tell as it doesn't need to support a 3.5" HDD, but it could support one or two 2.5" HDDs for the server model. These could be laid sideways (which would be length longways as the width of a 3.5" drive). I think using less desk space is a good thing here, plus you want to limit things being placed atop it.
Of course, Apple seems to be moving away from HDDs so the next Mac Mini would probably only have a PCIe SSD with a couple TB2 ports for external storage.