Those replace the chips currently in the iMacs e.g i7-4770 goes to i7-4790. 100MHz or so clock speed boost. If they intro a lower cost iMac, I'd expect it to have an i3 processor. To replace a mini bundle, it would have to hit $999 at most. That would be pushing it because the current entry is $1299 so dropping $300 would be difficult.
It also means that you can't get a quad-i7 anywhere near $799 but we always have to keep in mind that the mini affects very few people. 150k per quarter out of over 4 million buyers. Buyers have spoken and they want iMacs so adding a lower cost entry point would do more for Apple than keeping the mini going.
The same goes for laptops, they can use a <8W CPU and make a fanless $799 Macbook Air and boost unit sales.
The laptop chips look like they are due June 2nd. They can be shown off at WWDC if the Air is redesigned. OS X could be redesigned too.
I guess they'll be going for another California name:
Yosemite, Hollywood, Elysian, GoldenGate, Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, Pasadena... lots of names to choose from. Given an aesthetic makeover, perhaps OS X Hollywood would be the most appropriate. Background images of just the Hollywood sign can be tacky but if they get a wide panorama or stylize it, it can look ok:
It also means that you can't get a quad-i7 anywhere near $799 but we always have to keep in mind that the mini affects very few people. 150k per quarter out of over 4 million buyers. Buyers have spoken and they want iMacs so adding a lower cost entry point would do more for Apple than keeping the mini going
Citation needed. If this is true why does the mini consistently sell more on Amazon than the iMac? 150 strikes me as low.
I guess they'll be going for another California name:
Yosemite, Hollywood, Elysian, GoldenGate, Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, Pasadena... lots of names to choose from. Given an aesthetic makeover, perhaps OS X Hollywood would be the most appropriate. Background images of just the Hollywood sign can be tacky but if they get a wide panorama or stylize it, it can look ok:]
That's what they stated it would be last year: inspirational places in California. My guess is that it's unlikely to be any city or town name unless it's just a coincidence because the inspirational place name also shares the name with incorporated municipal. Mavericks isn't even a place on land so what could the next one be?
MR had a recent article on it. I like Yosemite and Mammoth. I think Pacific and California are too general. qnd Big Sur might be too close in location to Mavericks, meaning, if they are going to use this naming convention for awhile I'd think they'd want to spread it around CA a bit more. Perhaps even do something inland this next time.
qnd Big Sur might be too close in location to Mavericks, meaning, if they are going to use this naming convention for awhile I'd think they'd want to spread it around CA a bit more. Perhaps even do something inland this next time.
Big Sur is at least less cliche than some of those others, in the sense that fewer people from outside of California would immediately recognize it as something they've heard of many times in the past.
Those replace the chips currently in the iMacs e.g i7-4770 goes to i7-4790. 100MHz or so clock speed boost. If they intro a lower cost iMac, I'd expect it to have an i3 processor. To replace a mini bundle, it would have to hit $999 at most. That would be pushing it because the current entry is $1299 so dropping $300 would be difficult.
This Haswell refresh is hardly worth the wait unless they have something they haven't let on about coming. That something would be DDR4. Since all indications are that DDR4 won't be supported in Intels Haswell refresh all I can say is ho hum. Let's face it 100MHz will hardly be noticeable.
As for the iMac, again I believe there is plenty of room for a low cost machine. All one has to do is look at the cost of LCD TVs.
It also means that you can't get a quad-i7 anywhere near $799 but we always have to keep in mind that the mini affects very few people. 150k per quarter out of over 4 million buyers. Buyers have spoken and they want iMacs so adding a lower cost entry point would do more for Apple than keeping the mini going.
Actually a quad would be easy with an AMD processor and would perform nicely for a lot of users.
As to the 150K I'm thinking you are high there. At one time it was estimated that over 80% of Apples Mac sales where laptops. That doesn't leave much to split across the iMac, Mac Pro and the Mini.
The same goes for laptops, they can use a <8W CPU and make a fanless $799 Macbook Air and boost unit sales.
Possibly but I don't see an 8 watt processor delivering acceptable performance until Broadwell.
The laptop chips look like they are due June 2nd. They can be shown off at WWDC if the Air is redesigned. OS X could be redesigned too.
I would suspect that Apple will refresh as soon as possible but that WWDC will focus on new hardware devices. Developers will likely have much that is new to support.
I guess they'll be going for another California name:
Yosemite, Hollywood, Elysian, GoldenGate, Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, Pasadena... lots of names to choose from. Given an aesthetic makeover, perhaps OS X Hollywood would be the most appropriate. Background images of just the Hollywood sign can be tacky but if they get a wide panorama or stylize it, it can look ok:
I always liked Joshua Tree in this context. It could lead to some interesting graphics.
Citation needed. If this is true why does the mini consistently sell more on Amazon than the iMac? 150 strikes me as low.
Apple split out the desktop and laptop numbers in 2012 in their SEC filing and it was 75% laptop, 25% desktop and every filing since, they say the numbers have moved more to portables and they stopped splitting them out. The desktop ASP was $1300, which points to a higher purchase price. Tim Cook reported that the ~2-2.5 month iMac delay in late 2012 caused a 700,000 unit shortfall:
That was when they sold 4.1m Macs vs 5.2m the previous year. This means they should have sold 4.8m Macs, at least 75% of those would be laptops and at least 700k iMacs. This leaves 1.2m - 0.7m = 0.5m to be split between Mac Pro and mini. But, that assumes that they didn't sell any iMacs, which wasn't the case and it assumes desktops still hold 25% but they've been noted to slip further. If you assume the iMac would be 3/2.5 x 700k = 840k, this leaves 360k between mini and Pro.
Computer ownership surveys have put the mini and Pro very close with the mini just out ahead. I would say the Pro is 50-150k and the mini is 150-250k, depending on when in the release schedule we're at. Right now, I'd expect the mini to be at a low level.
The higher sales on Amazon can be accounted for the fact that Amazon buyers would tend towards cheaper options where they can also buy a cheap display. Notice the model is the cheapest one and customers also bought $129 and $157 Asus displays, $109, $150, $170 and $240 Viewsonic, $128 Asus, $190 Dell displays. iMac buyers won't be any better off buying from Amazon and they have to rely on Amazon delivery. I'd buy a Mini from Amazon or even eBay, what's the worst that could happen? An iMac or laptop, I'd buy from Apple direct as I know I'm not going to get screwed on the display like I might with a 3rd party retailer.
The other thing to consider is revenue. Even if the mini is 250k units but selling at $599, that's $150m with 30% gross = $45m gross profit. A $999 iMac might manage to boost revenue as it pushes Mac buyers looking for a quad-i7 to a much higher price, it offers a lower entry price for PC buyers and it pushes mini bundle buyers towards giving Apple money for the display. Maybe a lot of mini buyers just won't buy a Mac but I doubt they'd lose many sales. If they come in with a $799 Macbook Air, that'll more than make up for any losses from the mini.
I don't want to see the mini go particularly but if it doesn't sell well enough, why keep offering it? The future is portable systems and desktops will continue to wind down until they're not worth selling. I'd quite like to see a 13" rMBP with a quad-i7 and Iris Pro around the $1499 mark. The CPU is only $120 more than the entry level $1299, that would be a better option for mini buyers than having to go to a $1999 MBP or $1699 iMac for a quad-i7 processor.
And I thought you hated everything related to California:D . I couldn't resist that joke.
California is a very interesting place that is unfortunately inhabited by some really bad people. It attracts the worst of society like horse shit attracts flies. If it wasn't for that I'd wouldn't be so negative on the place. Of course that shouldn't dismiss what the good people in the state have done over the years but they really need to clean the place up. A lot of good could be accomplished there with a death penalty and a few judges not embarrassed to use it.
So no I don't hate California at all as a place, I hate what it has become as a state. As far as Apple goes there are plenty of places in California that they could choose from for names. Names that can inspire like Joshua Tree or put a bit of fright into to like Death Valley. Personally I'd rather see them stick with beaches as California has plenty. How about Rincon. Maybe we should start a thread on possible beach names for the next Mac OS rev.
So no I don't hate California at all as a place, I hate what it has become as a state. As far as Apple goes there are plenty of places in California that they could choose from for names. Names that can inspire like Joshua Tree or put a bit of fright into to like Death Valley. Personally I'd rather see them stick with beaches as California has plenty. How about Rincon. Maybe we should start a thread on possible beach names for the next Mac OS rev.
1) Not familiar with Rincon but is it inspirational?
2) If they were going to only do beaches (or beach adjacent places like Mavericks) wouldn't they have mentioned that instead of just saying inspirational places throughout California?
3) Joshua Tree is inspirational but 1) I think the name sounds wrong for a Mac OS X codename, and 2) it's very well known compared to Mavericks so I wonder if Apple will be focusing on less familiar places.
So no I don't hate California at all as a place, I hate what it has become as a state.
Agreed. The political system is "worst of all worlds" scenario and the massive public employee unions are bankrupting the state. They should never have been allowed to unionize. It's the fault of both Kennedy (Executive Order 10988) in 1962 and Congress in 1978 (Civil Service Reform Act).
Even Franklin Roosevelt was against it!
The emergence of powerful public-sector unions was by no means inevitable. Prior to the 1950s, as labor lawyer Ida Klaus remarked in 1965, "the subject of labor relations in public employment could not have meant less to more people, both in and out of government." To the extent that people thought about it, most politicians, labor leaders, economists, and judges opposed collective bargaining in the public sector. Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: "Meticulous attention," the president insisted in 1937, "should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government....The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service." The reason? F.D.R. believed that "[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable." Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was "impossible to bargain collectively with the government."
[QUOTE] I don't want to see the mini go particularly but if it doesn't sell well enough, why keep offering it? The future is portable systems and desktops will continue to wind down until they're not worth selling. I'd quite like to see a 13" rMBP with a quad-i7 and Iris Pro around the $1499 mark. The CPU is only $120 more than the entry level $1299, that would be a better option for mini buyers than having to go to a $1999 MBP or $1699 iMac for a quad-i7 processor. [/QUOTE]
I don't disagree with much of what you have said in your entire message but I'm not certain I agree with this entirely. First off if anybody really thinks that desktops are doing well sales wise they have to be nuts. The demand for desktops has fallen substantially. In Apples world they likely have gone past 80% laptops though I'm kinda hoping for reinvigorated Mac Pro sales shifting that some. All one has to do is to walk into any store selling computers and see that desktops, if they even exist are relegated to a corner in the store. This is a fact in Apples stores too.
Now all of that being said why do I have an issue with what you have said above? The thing here is that I don't see desktops going away completely but rather see them morphing into something different. In this regards I still have this idea that AppleTV might very well be the desktop in Apples future. Of course a vastly more capable machine than the current AppleTV and maybe not easily recognizable as an Apple TV. The idea here is a low cost box that can do double triple or even more duty in a persons home.
Some of the rumors about the next AppleTV containing new features including things like an integrated Ethernet hub might be indicating that Apple is thinking the same way. The big problem here is iOS which sucks as a replacement OS for a Mac. In any event what I'm trying to express here is the idea that the Mini will be replaced with something different. Maybe it won't derive from the iOS family but I can see Apple trying to find ways to incorporate more value into the box to help users justify the purchase.
The other side of the coin here is that Apple needs a low cost box to run Mac OS server on. The Mac Pro certainly isn't suitable and neither is the iMac.
The other possibility is that Apple is simply waiting for a Broadwell based SoC to make the Mini even smaller, possibly passively cooled. For some uses a Mini can't be too small. I follow a lot of the developments in the ARM world where things like Raspberry PI are now very low end but complete computer systems. I can see a whole Mini replacement coming that isn't much bigger. Small and low power could actually be a factor in stimulating sales as some could actually pay for the new machine just by savings gained from reduced electricity use.
Now people may laugh at the idea of Apple reducing the size of the Mini significantly but one only needs to look at where the industry is going? Intel is planning on SoC Broadwell variants, memory modules are going 3D and flash based SSDs are good enough for many these days. I can see a Mini the size of an iPhone 6, maybe an inch and a half thick.
I don't disagree with much of what you have said in your entire message but I'm not certain I agree with this entirely. First off if anybody really thinks that desktops are doing well sales wise they have to be nuts. The demand for desktops has fallen substantially. In Apples world they likely have gone past 80% laptops though I'm kinda hoping for reinvigorated Mac Pro sales shifting that some. All one has to do is to walk into any store selling computers and see that desktops, if they even exist are relegated to a corner in the store. This is a fact in Apples stores too.
Nothing wrong with being in a corner as long as you're being. If we assume this 80% notebook share that leaves nearly a million desktop Macs this past quarter which is probably more than 4 million desktop Macs in a year. I think we get numb to how many that really is when we see iPad and iPhone numbers. How long ago was it when Apple sold less than 4 million total Macs in an entire year? The link below shows that the same quarter that just pasted exactly a decade ago had less than 750k Mac unit sales. I think the Mac is doing exquisitely in a Post-PC era as Post-PC buyers are highly considering the Mac if and when they do feel they need to get a new traditional PC truck. If the desktops were really that pointless would Apple had put so much effort into the new Mac Pro? I don't think they would have.
I also don't think the Mac mini is heavy on R&D and some of those efforts could have lead to making other products (like the Apple TV, iMac and Mac Pro) smaller and more power efficient. If not, I think it's clear it offers advantages for certain buyers like me who want a headless iTunes Server (waiting for update before retiring my tired old flatscreen iMac from 2004) or who are switching. I even know a couple people that went the Mac mini route because the price was reasonable just to say month later they were getting an iMac or MacBook Air/Pro.
I will be annoyed if the Mac mini dies (assuming it's not being replaced with an equivalent product in that category).
1) Not familiar with Rincon but is it inspirational?
A couple of decades ago (literally) I spent some time working with a vendor just outside of the Santa Barbara area. Of course being from the East coast I knew little about that area and more so no idea what all the beach names related to. I'm not sure if the name referred to a specific beach or a geological feature only. However Rincon apparently means Horn in Spanish and there is a horn feature along the coast.
As it was I went to several beaches along the coast there. Very inspirational for a young man I might say. In Santa Barbara itself the beach is most interesting in that Oil and tar oooze right out of the ground, you have to keep an eye out for clumps of sand and tar else you will be trying to wash gritty tar off your feet. That idea of tar and oil oozing out of the ground has stayed with me all these years. I'm not sure if that is inspirational or not but it does cause you to stop and think a bit.
2) If they were going to only do beaches (or beach adjacent places like Mavericks) wouldn't they have mentioned that instead of just saying inspirational places throughout California?
They might have but California has more beaches than there are big cats, they won't run out of names anytime soon. Personally I would prefer more focused naming conventions instead of leaving it open for any site in the state.
3) Joshua Tree is inspirational but 1) I think the name sounds wrong for a Mac OS X codename, and 2) it's very well known compared to Mavericks so I wonder if Apple will be focusing on less familiar places.
You would be surprised at the number of people that haven't heard of these great places. I've mentioned Joshua Tree and have received blank stares in return. This isn't a California problem, there are great places all over the YS that many people have never heard of.
As for the sound, well you do realize that people still complain about Mavericks. No matter what Apple does some will have objections to a name. I like Joshua Tree due to spending some time there taking a lot of Photographs with an RZ I owned at the time. Other than the really bad sunburn (needed a cowboy hat) it was one of my better adventures. It certainly can inspire one to think different.
Why wow? You can't honestly believe that public sector employees need a union. Many a community has been bankrupted because of union holding hostage communities for ever increasing wages. Not to mention is the fact that most of these unionized positions are a relative cake walk compare to working in the real world.
[quote name="wizard69" url="/t/178073/apple-likely-to-launch-low-cost-imac-soon-retina-macbook-air-still-on-track-for-2014-debut/40#post_2524185"] A couple of decades ago (literally) I spent some time working with a vendor just outside of the Santa Barbara area. Of course being from the East coast I knew little about that area and more so no idea what all the beach names related to. I'm not sure if the name referred to a specific beach or a geological feature only. However Rincon apparently means Horn in Spanish and there is a horn feature along the coast.
As it was I went to several beaches along the coast there. Very inspirational for a young man I might say. In Santa Barbara itself the beach is most interesting in that Oil and tar oooze right out of the ground, you have to keep an eye out for clumps of sand and tar else you will be trying to wash gritty tar off your feet. That idea of tar and oil oozing out of the ground has stayed with me all these years. I'm not sure if that is inspirational or not but it does cause you to stop and think a bit.[/QUOTE]
1) I didn't know the word [I]rincón[/I] — my Spanish lessons are going great¡ — so I looked it up. It means [I]corner[/I] or [I]nook[/I] which does sound like a great description for a nice quite beach.
2) Are you sure it bubbles out of a beach(!) and doesn't just wash up as there are a lot of oil rigs off the SB coast? Although, that's how Jed Clampett discovered he had oil on his land.
[QUOTE]They might have but California has more beaches than there are big cats, they won't run out of names anytime soon. Personally I would prefer more focused naming conventions instead of leaving it open for any site in the state.[/QUOTE]
1) They do have a lot of beaches but that just seems boring to me. And note that Mavericks isn't a beach. There is a Maverick's Beach (note that it's Maverick — no 's' — with a possessive) but the name Apple choose was of the surf location, as in, the wave break. That's inspirational. In fact, I saw it this past weekend as I was fairly close to it for the Big Sur Marathon in Monterey. I brought my surf board and wetsuit but there is no way I'm surfing that wave… at least not until after the '24' miniseries and WWDC… then I can kill myself trying to ride a wave.
2) I think inspirational [U]things[/U] in California is focused sufficiently. I'd really like to learn more about the inspirational or awe inspiring things in this state that I haven't heard of and will be disappointed if it's just another surf location or a beach.
1) I didn't know the word rincón — my Spanish lessons are going great¡ — so I looked it up. It means corner or nook which does sound like a great description for a nice quite beach.
There's also a Rincón in Puerto Rico that known for its surfing. There's a large white (non hispanic) population that has taken up residence there.
California is a very interesting place that is unfortunately inhabited by some really bad people. It attracts the worst of society like horse shit attracts flies. If it wasn't for that I'd wouldn't be so negative on the place. Of course that shouldn't dismiss what the good people in the state have done over the years but they really need to clean the place up. A lot of good could be accomplished there with a death penalty and a few judges not embarrassed to use it.
So no I don't hate California at all as a place, I hate what it has become as a state. As far as Apple goes there are plenty of places in California that they could choose from for names. Names that can inspire like Joshua Tree or put a bit of fright into to like Death Valley. Personally I'd rather see them stick with beaches as California has plenty. How about Rincon. Maybe we should start a thread on possible beach names for the next Mac OS rev.
I didn't mean to drag it that far off topic. It was meant as more light hearted humor, but I would be interested in being made aware of any point in history where publicly sanctioned executions actually fixed anything. California has faced years of budget problems for quite a few reasons. As you may know property tax assessment increases are limited so as to avoid anyone being forced out of their homes in areas of high inflation. It has been significant in the coastal areas, but we should have cut back on services long ago. California is also one of the states that does pay out more in federal taxes than the state receives back, which doesn't really help as the spread is covered by higher taxes at the state level and to a lesser degree in the form of the state portion of sales tax.
Anyway I do like interesting spots like Joshua Tree. I'm being a little presumptuous on that, as I've never been there. The photos of it look very cool though, and places like that, Ansa Borrego, and Mono Lake are less well known than Santa Barbara, Yosemite, possibly Sequoia National Park, etc. With some of those they may as well reference Santa Monica for the cliche factor.
I don't disagree with much of what you have said in your entire message but I'm not certain I agree with this entirely. First off if anybody really thinks that desktops are doing well sales wise they have to be nuts. The demand for desktops has fallen substantially. In Apples world they likely have gone past 80% laptops though I'm kinda hoping for reinvigorated Mac Pro sales shifting that some. All one has to do is to walk into any store selling computers and see that desktops, if they even exist are relegated to a corner in the store. This is a fact in Apples stores too.
I think it's like Steve Jobs said, desktops are just becoming the "trucks" of computers. But that doesn't have to mean work only, high end gaming needs a truck, and gaming is increasing.
Comments
Mini bye bye soon.
http://vr-zone.com/articles/internal-intel-charts-confirm-may-11-release-date-haswell-refresh/76279.html
Those replace the chips currently in the iMacs e.g i7-4770 goes to i7-4790. 100MHz or so clock speed boost. If they intro a lower cost iMac, I'd expect it to have an i3 processor. To replace a mini bundle, it would have to hit $999 at most. That would be pushing it because the current entry is $1299 so dropping $300 would be difficult.
It also means that you can't get a quad-i7 anywhere near $799 but we always have to keep in mind that the mini affects very few people. 150k per quarter out of over 4 million buyers. Buyers have spoken and they want iMacs so adding a lower cost entry point would do more for Apple than keeping the mini going.
The same goes for laptops, they can use a <8W CPU and make a fanless $799 Macbook Air and boost unit sales.
The laptop chips look like they are due June 2nd. They can be shown off at WWDC if the Air is redesigned. OS X could be redesigned too.
I guess they'll be going for another California name:
Yosemite, Hollywood, Elysian, GoldenGate, Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, Pasadena... lots of names to choose from. Given an aesthetic makeover, perhaps OS X Hollywood would be the most appropriate. Background images of just the Hollywood sign can be tacky but if they get a wide panorama or stylize it, it can look ok:
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/42407/width/500/height/1000[/IMG] [IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/42412/width/350/height/700[/IMG]
They used a picture of Marilyn Monroe in their iPad ad for Hollywood:
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/42408/width/500/height/1000[/IMG]
There are other options if they want to focus on people:
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/42409/width/235/height/1000[/IMG] [IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/42410/width/200/height/1000[/IMG] [IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/42411/width/235/height/1000[/IMG]
It also means that you can't get a quad-i7 anywhere near $799 but we always have to keep in mind that the mini affects very few people. 150k per quarter out of over 4 million buyers. Buyers have spoken and they want iMacs so adding a lower cost entry point would do more for Apple than keeping the mini going
Citation needed. If this is true why does the mini consistently sell more on Amazon than the iMac? 150 strikes me as low.
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Desktop/zgbs/pc/565098
That's what they stated it would be last year: inspirational places in California. My guess is that it's unlikely to be any city or town name unless it's just a coincidence because the inspirational place name also shares the name with incorporated municipal. Mavericks isn't even a place on land so what could the next one be?
MR had a recent article on it. I like Yosemite and Mammoth. I think Pacific and California are too general. qnd Big Sur might be too close in location to Mavericks, meaning, if they are going to use this naming convention for awhile I'd think they'd want to spread it around CA a bit more. Perhaps even do something inland this next time.
qnd Big Sur might be too close in location to Mavericks, meaning, if they are going to use this naming convention for awhile I'd think they'd want to spread it around CA a bit more. Perhaps even do something inland this next time.
Big Sur is at least less cliche than some of those others, in the sense that fewer people from outside of California would immediately recognize it as something they've heard of many times in the past.
As for the iMac, again I believe there is plenty of room for a low cost machine. All one has to do is look at the cost of LCD TVs. Actually a quad would be easy with an AMD processor and would perform nicely for a lot of users.
As to the 150K I'm thinking you are high there. At one time it was estimated that over 80% of Apples Mac sales where laptops. That doesn't leave much to split across the iMac, Mac Pro and the Mini. Possibly but I don't see an 8 watt processor delivering acceptable performance until Broadwell. I would suspect that Apple will refresh as soon as possible but that WWDC will focus on new hardware devices. Developers will likely have much that is new to support. I always liked Joshua Tree in this context. It could lead to some interesting graphics.
I always liked Joshua Tree in this context. It could lead to some interesting graphics.
And I thought you hated everything related to California
. I couldn't resist that joke.
Apple split out the desktop and laptop numbers in 2012 in their SEC filing and it was 75% laptop, 25% desktop and every filing since, they say the numbers have moved more to portables and they stopped splitting them out. The desktop ASP was $1300, which points to a higher purchase price. Tim Cook reported that the ~2-2.5 month iMac delay in late 2012 caused a 700,000 unit shortfall:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/01/tim-cook-on-the-imac-cannibalization-is-a-huge-opportunity-for-us/
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/01/23Apple-Reports-Record-Results.html
That was when they sold 4.1m Macs vs 5.2m the previous year. This means they should have sold 4.8m Macs, at least 75% of those would be laptops and at least 700k iMacs. This leaves 1.2m - 0.7m = 0.5m to be split between Mac Pro and mini. But, that assumes that they didn't sell any iMacs, which wasn't the case and it assumes desktops still hold 25% but they've been noted to slip further. If you assume the iMac would be 3/2.5 x 700k = 840k, this leaves 360k between mini and Pro.
Computer ownership surveys have put the mini and Pro very close with the mini just out ahead. I would say the Pro is 50-150k and the mini is 150-250k, depending on when in the release schedule we're at. Right now, I'd expect the mini to be at a low level.
The higher sales on Amazon can be accounted for the fact that Amazon buyers would tend towards cheaper options where they can also buy a cheap display. Notice the model is the cheapest one and customers also bought $129 and $157 Asus displays, $109, $150, $170 and $240 Viewsonic, $128 Asus, $190 Dell displays. iMac buyers won't be any better off buying from Amazon and they have to rely on Amazon delivery. I'd buy a Mini from Amazon or even eBay, what's the worst that could happen? An iMac or laptop, I'd buy from Apple direct as I know I'm not going to get screwed on the display like I might with a 3rd party retailer.
The other thing to consider is revenue. Even if the mini is 250k units but selling at $599, that's $150m with 30% gross = $45m gross profit. A $999 iMac might manage to boost revenue as it pushes Mac buyers looking for a quad-i7 to a much higher price, it offers a lower entry price for PC buyers and it pushes mini bundle buyers towards giving Apple money for the display. Maybe a lot of mini buyers just won't buy a Mac but I doubt they'd lose many sales. If they come in with a $799 Macbook Air, that'll more than make up for any losses from the mini.
I don't want to see the mini go particularly but if it doesn't sell well enough, why keep offering it? The future is portable systems and desktops will continue to wind down until they're not worth selling. I'd quite like to see a 13" rMBP with a quad-i7 and Iris Pro around the $1499 mark. The CPU is only $120 more than the entry level $1299, that would be a better option for mini buyers than having to go to a $1999 MBP or $1699 iMac for a quad-i7 processor.
California is a very interesting place that is unfortunately inhabited by some really bad people. It attracts the worst of society like horse shit attracts flies. If it wasn't for that I'd wouldn't be so negative on the place. Of course that shouldn't dismiss what the good people in the state have done over the years but they really need to clean the place up. A lot of good could be accomplished there with a death penalty and a few judges not embarrassed to use it.
So no I don't hate California at all as a place, I hate what it has become as a state. As far as Apple goes there are plenty of places in California that they could choose from for names. Names that can inspire like Joshua Tree or put a bit of fright into to like Death Valley. Personally I'd rather see them stick with beaches as California has plenty. How about Rincon. Maybe we should start a thread on possible beach names for the next Mac OS rev.
1) Not familiar with Rincon but is it inspirational?
2) If they were going to only do beaches (or beach adjacent places like Mavericks) wouldn't they have mentioned that instead of just saying inspirational places throughout California?
3) Joshua Tree is inspirational but 1) I think the name sounds wrong for a Mac OS X codename, and 2) it's very well known compared to Mavericks so I wonder if Apple will be focusing on less familiar places.
So no I don't hate California at all as a place, I hate what it has become as a state.
Agreed. The political system is "worst of all worlds" scenario and the massive public employee unions are bankrupting the state. They should never have been allowed to unionize. It's the fault of both Kennedy (Executive Order 10988) in 1962 and Congress in 1978 (Civil Service Reform Act).
Even Franklin Roosevelt was against it!
Source: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions
A lot of good could be accomplished there with a death penalty and a few judges not embarrassed to use it.
They should never have been allowed to unionize.
Wow!
I don't disagree with much of what you have said in your entire message but I'm not certain I agree with this entirely. First off if anybody really thinks that desktops are doing well sales wise they have to be nuts. The demand for desktops has fallen substantially. In Apples world they likely have gone past 80% laptops though I'm kinda hoping for reinvigorated Mac Pro sales shifting that some. All one has to do is to walk into any store selling computers and see that desktops, if they even exist are relegated to a corner in the store. This is a fact in Apples stores too.
Now all of that being said why do I have an issue with what you have said above? The thing here is that I don't see desktops going away completely but rather see them morphing into something different. In this regards I still have this idea that AppleTV might very well be the desktop in Apples future. Of course a vastly more capable machine than the current AppleTV and maybe not easily recognizable as an Apple TV. The idea here is a low cost box that can do double triple or even more duty in a persons home.
Some of the rumors about the next AppleTV containing new features including things like an integrated Ethernet hub might be indicating that Apple is thinking the same way. The big problem here is iOS which sucks as a replacement OS for a Mac. In any event what I'm trying to express here is the idea that the Mini will be replaced with something different. Maybe it won't derive from the iOS family but I can see Apple trying to find ways to incorporate more value into the box to help users justify the purchase.
The other side of the coin here is that Apple needs a low cost box to run Mac OS server on. The Mac Pro certainly isn't suitable and neither is the iMac.
The other possibility is that Apple is simply waiting for a Broadwell based SoC to make the Mini even smaller, possibly passively cooled. For some uses a Mini can't be too small. I follow a lot of the developments in the ARM world where things like Raspberry PI are now very low end but complete computer systems. I can see a whole Mini replacement coming that isn't much bigger. Small and low power could actually be a factor in stimulating sales as some could actually pay for the new machine just by savings gained from reduced electricity use.
Now people may laugh at the idea of Apple reducing the size of the Mini significantly but one only needs to look at where the industry is going? Intel is planning on SoC Broadwell variants, memory modules are going 3D and flash based SSDs are good enough for many these days. I can see a Mini the size of an iPhone 6, maybe an inch and a half thick.
Nothing wrong with being in a corner as long as you're being. If we assume this 80% notebook share that leaves nearly a million desktop Macs this past quarter which is probably more than 4 million desktop Macs in a year. I think we get numb to how many that really is when we see iPad and iPhone numbers. How long ago was it when Apple sold less than 4 million total Macs in an entire year? The link below shows that the same quarter that just pasted exactly a decade ago had less than 750k Mac unit sales. I think the Mac is doing exquisitely in a Post-PC era as Post-PC buyers are highly considering the Mac if and when they do feel they need to get a new
traditional PCtruck. If the desktops were really that pointless would Apple had put so much effort into the new Mac Pro? I don't think they would have.I also don't think the Mac mini is heavy on R&D and some of those efforts could have lead to making other products (like the Apple TV, iMac and Mac Pro) smaller and more power efficient. If not, I think it's clear it offers advantages for certain buyers like me who want a headless iTunes Server (waiting for update before retiring my tired old flatscreen iMac from 2004) or who are switching. I even know a couple people that went the Mac mini route because the price was reasonable just to say month later they were getting an iMac or MacBook Air/Pro.
I will be annoyed if the Mac mini dies (assuming it's not being replaced with an equivalent product in that category).
As it was I went to several beaches along the coast there. Very inspirational for a young man I might say. In Santa Barbara itself the beach is most interesting in that Oil and tar oooze right out of the ground, you have to keep an eye out for clumps of sand and tar else you will be trying to wash gritty tar off your feet. That idea of tar and oil oozing out of the ground has stayed with me all these years. I'm not sure if that is inspirational or not but it does cause you to stop and think a bit. They might have but California has more beaches than there are big cats, they won't run out of names anytime soon. Personally I would prefer more focused naming conventions instead of leaving it open for any site in the state.
You would be surprised at the number of people that haven't heard of these great places. I've mentioned Joshua Tree and have received blank stares in return. This isn't a California problem, there are great places all over the YS that many people have never heard of.
As for the sound, well you do realize that people still complain about Mavericks. No matter what Apple does some will have objections to a name. I like Joshua Tree due to spending some time there taking a lot of Photographs with an RZ I owned at the time. Other than the really bad sunburn (needed a cowboy hat) it was one of my better adventures. It certainly can inspire one to think different.
Why wow? You can't honestly believe that public sector employees need a union. Many a community has been bankrupted because of union holding hostage communities for ever increasing wages. Not to mention is the fact that most of these unionized positions are a relative cake walk compare to working in the real world.
A couple of decades ago (literally) I spent some time working with a vendor just outside of the Santa Barbara area. Of course being from the East coast I knew little about that area and more so no idea what all the beach names related to. I'm not sure if the name referred to a specific beach or a geological feature only. However Rincon apparently means Horn in Spanish and there is a horn feature along the coast.
As it was I went to several beaches along the coast there. Very inspirational for a young man I might say. In Santa Barbara itself the beach is most interesting in that Oil and tar oooze right out of the ground, you have to keep an eye out for clumps of sand and tar else you will be trying to wash gritty tar off your feet. That idea of tar and oil oozing out of the ground has stayed with me all these years. I'm not sure if that is inspirational or not but it does cause you to stop and think a bit.[/QUOTE]
1) I didn't know the word [I]rincón[/I] — my Spanish lessons are going great¡ — so I looked it up. It means [I]corner[/I] or [I]nook[/I] which does sound like a great description for a nice quite beach.
2) Are you sure it bubbles out of a beach(!) and doesn't just wash up as there are a lot of oil rigs off the SB coast? Although, that's how Jed Clampett discovered he had oil on his land.
[QUOTE]They might have but California has more beaches than there are big cats, they won't run out of names anytime soon. Personally I would prefer more focused naming conventions instead of leaving it open for any site in the state.[/QUOTE]
1) They do have a lot of beaches but that just seems boring to me. And note that Mavericks isn't a beach. There is a Maverick's Beach (note that it's Maverick — no 's' — with a possessive) but the name Apple choose was of the surf location, as in, the wave break. That's inspirational. In fact, I saw it this past weekend as I was fairly close to it for the Big Sur Marathon in Monterey. I brought my surf board and wetsuit but there is no way I'm surfing that wave… at least not until after the '24' miniseries and WWDC… then I can kill myself trying to ride a wave.
[LIST]
[*] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mavericks/@37.492673,-122.499522,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xe553fa0003a09334
[/LIST]
2) I think inspirational [U]things[/U] in California is focused sufficiently. I'd really like to learn more about the inspirational or awe inspiring things in this state that I haven't heard of and will be disappointed if it's just another surf location or a beach.
There's also a Rincón in Puerto Rico that known for its surfing. There's a large white (non hispanic) population that has taken up residence there.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rincón,_Puerto_Rico
California is a very interesting place that is unfortunately inhabited by some really bad people. It attracts the worst of society like horse shit attracts flies. If it wasn't for that I'd wouldn't be so negative on the place. Of course that shouldn't dismiss what the good people in the state have done over the years but they really need to clean the place up. A lot of good could be accomplished there with a death penalty and a few judges not embarrassed to use it.
So no I don't hate California at all as a place, I hate what it has become as a state. As far as Apple goes there are plenty of places in California that they could choose from for names. Names that can inspire like Joshua Tree or put a bit of fright into to like Death Valley. Personally I'd rather see them stick with beaches as California has plenty. How about Rincon. Maybe we should start a thread on possible beach names for the next Mac OS rev.
I didn't mean to drag it that far off topic. It was meant as more light hearted humor, but I would be interested in being made aware of any point in history where publicly sanctioned executions actually fixed anything. California has faced years of budget problems for quite a few reasons. As you may know property tax assessment increases are limited so as to avoid anyone being forced out of their homes in areas of high inflation. It has been significant in the coastal areas, but we should have cut back on services long ago. California is also one of the states that does pay out more in federal taxes than the state receives back, which doesn't really help as the spread is covered by higher taxes at the state level and to a lesser degree in the form of the state portion of sales tax.
Anyway I do like interesting spots like Joshua Tree. I'm being a little presumptuous on that, as I've never been there. The photos of it look very cool though, and places like that, Ansa Borrego, and Mono Lake are less well known than Santa Barbara, Yosemite, possibly Sequoia National Park, etc. With some of those they may as well reference Santa Monica for the cliche factor.
I don't disagree with much of what you have said in your entire message but I'm not certain I agree with this entirely. First off if anybody really thinks that desktops are doing well sales wise they have to be nuts. The demand for desktops has fallen substantially. In Apples world they likely have gone past 80% laptops though I'm kinda hoping for reinvigorated Mac Pro sales shifting that some. All one has to do is to walk into any store selling computers and see that desktops, if they even exist are relegated to a corner in the store. This is a fact in Apples stores too.
And yet here is an article today saying PC gaming now exceeds console gaming (by dollar amount): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/analyst-pc-gaming-now-brings-in-more-money-than-console-gaming/
I think it's like Steve Jobs said, desktops are just becoming the "trucks" of computers. But that doesn't have to mean work only, high end gaming needs a truck, and gaming is increasing.