You have to drop $6000 to get a mac that takes standard cards. $1500 Macs with vampire video. Crappy keyboards. Few to no ports. Sealed battery compartment on laptops, keyboards and mice. Macs that cannot work as a base for HomeKit. Last year's processors at tomorrow's prices. No Face ID or Touch ID on desktops.
What is not to like?
So you really think having few screws on the battery or the 10th gen processors really going to boost your sale?
Actually how about you go to notebookcheck and do a quick comparison, just to see the cinebench score?
I know that a Mac of similar capability is a significant markup over a Windows or LINUX machine and I have been using Apple products since before the Mac and have been a shareholder since about the time of the Mac OS X Public Beta. I am not an Apple brasher, but think the current lineup does not serve Apple’s potential customers well
You have to drop $6000 to get a mac that takes standard cards. $1500 Macs with vampire video. Crappy keyboards. Few to no ports. Sealed battery compartment on laptops, keyboards and mice. Macs that cannot work as a base for HomeKit. Last year's processors at tomorrow's prices. No Face ID or Touch ID on desktops.
What is not to like?
A good portion of the Apple fan base don’t realize how important some of these issues are. Just the idea that a battery replacement is a major undertaking is a significant killjoy. More importantly Apple takes way too long to update anything Mac related. They also are apparently hung up on Intel hardware which is a same and in part leads to excessively high prices for Apples products. In the end the value isn’t there for many users.
This is no surprise at all. Apple has been in the slow lane for years on this subject. They need to step it up and at least try to be hardware, and somewhat price competitive.
This is very understandable when one compares Apple Products to those of Lenovo:
Lenovo: Mostly high-end, quality products but a wide range of form factors to meet essentially every need from business man to student.
Apple: Entirely high-end, quality products limited to a single form factor* which forces the buyer to adjust their needs to fit the product available.
* Yes, I know there are iMacs, MacMinis and MacPros, but those are essentially irrelevant, only MacBooks count and there you can't tell one from the other without a spec sheet.
And, adding a cursor and mouse to the iPad will hurt the Mac line even more -- Lenovo considers that a laptop that can function as a tablet, Apple will consider it a tablet that can function as a laptop. Essentially they are the same but fall into different product lines.
Apple needs to do 3 things with the MacBook line: 1) Continue to upgrade it (why is Apple News so sucky on the Mac? You can't even adjust the size/zoom! And, why no FaceBook app?).
2) Provide form factors in addition to the "thin & light, minimalist" designs they have so far limited themselves to.
3) Produce a sub $1K laptop.
In other words, its not a matter of quality but of marketing: other vendors are giving people what they want instead of selling a limited product line and trying to force people into liking it. The iPad, iPhone and iPad are all good examples: Apple produced multiple form factors to meet people's needs and preferences and it worked.
Why would Apple make vast range of laptops as you described when another company is doing that already. I believe Apple already has a confusing batch of products which should be whittled down further. I understand the desktop is not where Apple's profits are any longer but gee whiz surely the design could be improved, how many years has it locked and performed the same 7-8?
Nobody wants a vast range of laptops from Apple, rather we need all the rational use cases covered at reasonable prices. Frankly Apple has stuck so long to a formula hatched long ago that the entire Mac product line has become stale.
The product line actually needs to be expanded as the still don’t have a midrange desktop (no the iMac isn’t a answer for that need). The laptops are in horrible condition with ongoing reliability problems, lack of features and everything priced way too high. I have no problem with high end offerings but Aple has nothing for the student or light user. It is fairly easy to offer a quality Mac laptop under the $700 mark as the competition has been doing so for awhile now.
This is no surprise at all. Apple has been in the slow lane for years on this subject. They need to step it up and at least try to be hardware, and somewhat price competitive.
I was always willing to pay the Apple tax back when the base machines lead the industry. Today the base machines are grossly under configured and the upgrades to get them to a usable state are priced out of this world. When Apple charges 4X for an upgrade that I’d have to pay retail for the company has crossed a line that I can’t justify.
This is very understandable when one compares Apple Products to those of Lenovo:
Lenovo: Mostly high-end, quality products but a wide range of form factors to meet essentially every need from business man to student.
Apple: Entirely high-end, quality products limited to a single form factor* which forces the buyer to adjust their needs to fit the product available.
* Yes, I know there are iMacs, MacMinis and MacPros, but those are essentially irrelevant, only MacBooks count and there you can't tell one from the other without a spec sheet.
And, adding a cursor and mouse to the iPad will hurt the Mac line even more -- Lenovo considers that a laptop that can function as a tablet, Apple will consider it a tablet that can function as a laptop. Essentially they are the same but fall into different product lines.
Apple needs to do 3 things with the MacBook line: 1) Continue to upgrade it (why is Apple News so sucky on the Mac? You can't even adjust the size/zoom! And, why no FaceBook app?).
2) Provide form factors in addition to the "thin & light, minimalist" designs they have so far limited themselves to.
3) Produce a sub $1K laptop.
In other words, its not a matter of quality but of marketing: other vendors are giving people what they want instead of selling a limited product line and trying to force people into liking it. The iPad, iPhone and iPad are all good examples: Apple produced multiple form factors to meet people's needs and preferences and it worked.
Why would Apple make vast range of laptops as you described when another company is doing that already. I believe Apple already has a confusing batch of products which should be whittled down further. I understand the desktop is not where Apple's profits are any longer but gee whiz surely the design could be improved, how many years has it locked and performed the same 7-8?
The range doesn't have to vast. It just has to include the products people want.
Yeh, Lenovo has probably gone overboard. They not only have all the current versions of what constitutes a laptop today but then subversions of each one -- and many of those can be customized. But, on the other extreme you get Apple following the Henry Ford philosophy: "Any color you want as long as it's black" (or in this case, thin, light and minimalist).
I think a happy medium would be nice. It would be a win-win: Apple customers get what they want and Apple makes more money.
People will again blame selling prices, but price is not the problem. Years of stagnation in design and performance are more to blame. While the consumer may not always be right, it often is. Stubbornness with the horrific keyboard design for the last three years is a striking example of the current attitude problem at Apple
People will again blame selling prices, but price is not the problem. Years of stagnation in design and performance are more to blame. While the consumer may not always be right, it often is. Stubbornness with the horrific keyboard design for the last three years is a striking example of the current attitude problem at Apple
I bought an XPS with Linux in December. After using it for a month, I'm surprised by how much I miss from the Mac experience as there are definite cons to the XPS, but one thing is clear:
The keyboard is a million times better. The key travel is pleasantly deep (over 1 mm), the keys are large and spread out, and it's just so much more fun to type on. It's even way better than the 16 inch MBP (from when I tried it at various Apple Stores), which, while much improved, is still overrated.
As institutions and professionals continue to flee the ecosystem - the numbers are only going to continue to drop.
The Mac Pro should have been for all professionals, not a niche enterprise-specific only box.
The truth is, there is less and less reason every year to use a Mac - and not more reasons to - like new Apple software. They have all but given up on developing new or better software. The iSuite has been stagnant for a decade with the only real updates coming from making it mobile friendly.
Apple has stopped innovation on desktop software. And the hardware is lacklustre after 1 year of ownership with no upgrade availability. In other words, value in Mac ownership has tanked - with the only factors holding up the platform being the patent system stifling competition and Microsoft being so bad.
The iPhone is the best thing to happen to Apple - but the worst thing to happen to the Mac.
I don’t know whether the numbers provided in the article are accurate or not, but I do know my 2017 MacBook Pro is intuitive and easy to use. Compare that to my wife’s 2019 HP business computer with all the bells and whistles that isn’t intuitive, and every time there’s an issue, she has to use Google to try to find the solution.
I remember they are always wrong and its best to negate the information. So, I expect Mac shipments to have grown against a slight downturn of worldwide shipments.
This is very understandable when one compares Apple Products to those of Lenovo:
Lenovo: Mostly high-end, quality products but a wide range of form factors to meet essentially every need from business man to student.
Apple: Entirely high-end, quality products limited to a single form factor* which forces the buyer to adjust their needs to fit the product available.
* Yes, I know there are iMacs, MacMinis and MacPros, but those are essentially irrelevant, only MacBooks count and there you can't tell one from the other without a spec sheet.
And, adding a cursor and mouse to the iPad will hurt the Mac line even more -- Lenovo considers that a laptop that can function as a tablet, Apple will consider it a tablet that can function as a laptop. Essentially they are the same but fall into different product lines.
Apple needs to do 3 things with the MacBook line: 1) Continue to upgrade it (why is Apple News so sucky on the Mac? You can't even adjust the size/zoom! And, why no FaceBook app?).
2) Provide form factors in addition to the "thin & light, minimalist" designs they have so far limited themselves to.
3) Produce a sub $1K laptop.
In other words, its not a matter of quality but of marketing: other vendors are giving people what they want instead of selling a limited product line and trying to force people into liking it. The iPad, iPhone and iPad are all good examples: Apple produced multiple form factors to meet people's needs and preferences and it worked.
Why would Apple make vast range of laptops as you described when another company is doing that already. I believe Apple already has a confusing batch of products which should be whittled down further. I understand the desktop is not where Apple's profits are any longer but gee whiz surely the design could be improved, how many years has it locked and performed the same 7-8?
Your mistaken, Mac profits are low in percentage against for example the iPhone, but not low in absolute numbers. This means that Mac profits are higher than all Dell, Hp and Lenovos combined.
If you make the perfect product, as Apple does, why change the design? It will only make it worse. Apple could improve its Macs in one area and thats third party components, like the CPU and GPU. I expect they will do so this year, with AD (Arm Desktop class) processors that will reduce the price of Mac systems by $200 or more and increase performance and battery capacity by a few factors, making a product no one has.
“Danger, men playing with numbers!” Comparing PC shipments across the board is like comparing car shipments across the board. Ferrari numbers will always come in lower than Ford’s numbers. It’s the same with comparing HomePod sales. You never see a survey comparing equipment across voice assistance hardware. That’s because HomePods are not even in the same class!
This is very understandable when one compares Apple Products to those of Lenovo:
Lenovo: Mostly high-end, quality products but a wide range of form factors to meet essentially every need from business man to student.
Apple: Entirely high-end, quality products limited to a single form factor* which forces the buyer to adjust their needs to fit the product available.
* Yes, I know there are iMacs, MacMinis and MacPros, but those are essentially irrelevant, only MacBooks count and there you can't tell one from the other without a spec sheet.
And, adding a cursor and mouse to the iPad will hurt the Mac line even more -- Lenovo considers that a laptop that can function as a tablet, Apple will consider it a tablet that can function as a laptop. Essentially they are the same but fall into different product lines.
Apple needs to do 3 things with the MacBook line: 1) Continue to upgrade it (why is Apple News so sucky on the Mac? You can't even adjust the size/zoom! And, why no FaceBook app?).
2) Provide form factors in addition to the "thin & light, minimalist" designs they have so far limited themselves to.
3) Produce a sub $1K laptop.
In other words, its not a matter of quality but of marketing: other vendors are giving people what they want instead of selling a limited product line and trying to force people into liking it. The iPad, iPhone and iPad are all good examples: Apple produced multiple form factors to meet people's needs and preferences and it worked.
Why would Apple make vast range of laptops as you described when another company is doing that already. I believe Apple already has a confusing batch of products which should be whittled down further. I understand the desktop is not where Apple's profits are any longer but gee whiz surely the design could be improved, how many years has it locked and performed the same 7-8?
He do think a ThinkPad keyboard will save the Mac, so let it go.
You have to drop $6000 to get a mac that takes standard cards. $1500 Macs with vampire video. Crappy keyboards. Few to no ports. Sealed battery compartment on laptops, keyboards and mice. Macs that cannot work as a base for HomeKit. Last year's processors at tomorrow's prices. No Face ID or Touch ID on desktops.
What is not to like?
So you really think having few screws on the battery or the 10th gen processors really going to boost your sale?
Actually how about you go to notebookcheck and do a quick comparison, just to see the cinebench score?
I know that a Mac of similar capability is a significant markup over a Windows or LINUX machine and I have been using Apple products since before the Mac and have been a shareholder since about the time of the Mac OS X Public Beta. I am not an Apple brasher, but think the current lineup does not serve Apple’s potential customers well
So you didn't prove my point wrong in any way. Why bother replying?
There are ZERO metrics to measure Apple hardware outside of wild speculation based on generated revenue. It was literally predictable that, when Apple stopped reporting actual sales numbers, we'd see a huge decrease in "estimates" of Apple hardware sold.
Also, the revenue compare over fy 2018 for Macs was actually better for 2 out of 4 quarters, and in Q4 fy '18, Mac sales were literally on fire, so that compare is somewhat questionable.
So what hard numbers do these outfits have to base this on? How about none.
And finally, the Big Lie continues, where Surface computers are bunched in with PC's but iPads are not. And iPads had a banner year last year.
I see a lot of folks posting here who are attempting to ding Apple over these "reports" of dropping Mac sales. Amazingly, none of them are interested in questioning the numbers they are so overly fond of relying on.
Haven't we seen enough of "cover-ups" in the news lately? Do we have to put up with it here as well?
There are ZERO metrics to measure Apple hardware outside of wild speculation based on generated revenue. It was literally predictable that, when Apple stopped reporting actual sales numbers, we'd see a huge decrease in "estimates" of Apple hardware sold.
Also, the revenue compare over fy 2018 for Macs was actually better for 2 out of 4 quarters, and in Q4 fy '18, Mac sales were literally on fire, so that compare is somewhat questionable.
So what hard numbers do these outfits have to base this on? How about none.
That is just completely bull, because they have always researched these numbers which they collect via a large number of channels and reported on them for decades independent of Apple providers figures.
There has always been some discrepancy between Apple's own numbers and these companies, but by and large they agree - also trend-wise.
There are ZERO metrics to measure Apple hardware outside of wild speculation based on generated revenue. It was literally predictable that, when Apple stopped reporting actual sales numbers, we'd see a huge decrease in "estimates" of Apple hardware sold.
Also, the revenue compare over fy 2018 for Macs was actually better for 2 out of 4 quarters, and in Q4 fy '18, Mac sales were literally on fire, so that compare is somewhat questionable.
So what hard numbers do these outfits have to base this on? How about none.
That is just completely bull, because they have always researched these numbers which they collect via a large number of channels and reported on them for decades independent of Apple providers figures.
There has always been some discrepancy between Apple's own numbers and these companies, but by and large they agree - also trend-wise.
Let's crunch some real numbers, shall we? These are from Gartner. IDC's appear to be behind a paywall:
Apple actually shipped:
cy 2016: 20.38 M Macs
cy 2017: 18.55 M Macs
cy 2018: 18.99 M Macs
Gartner said:
cy 2016: 18.61 M Macs
cy 2017: 19.30 M Macs
cy 2018: 18.02 M Macs
Gartner percentage miss (in spite of knowing ACTUAL numbers for 3 out of 4 quarters!):
cy 2016: -9.5%
cy 2017: +4%
cy 2018: -5.4%
Needless to say, this is piss-poor. And they'd have been even poorer in piss if Gartner hadn't had the 3 quarters worth of actual Apple numbers to work with.
But thanks for the opportunity to prove you don't know what the fork you're talking about, along with many other anti-Apple posters here.
Your mistaken, Mac profits are low in percentage against for example the iPhone, but not low in absolute numbers.
This means that Mac profits are higher than all Dell, Hp and Lenovos combined.
Dell earns about $23 billion in revenue a quarter. Lenovo about $15 billion in revenue. I am not going to list HP because unlike Dell and Lenovo they get revenue from a lot more things than PCs, including services.
That said, I agree with your overall point. You can easily get a Windows laptop with an i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM for $500-$550. Meanwhile an equivalent MacBook Air is going to cost $1000. Were Apple to drop the price of their MacBook Air to $650, how many more people would buy it? I don't know ... if they make $500 on every MacBook Air as it is but would only make $100 if they were to try to compete with Asus - probably the best "cheap" PC manufacturer there is - would they need to sell 5 times as many MacBook Airs? Now can you envison a scenario where Apple sells 5 million MacBook Airs a quarter? Did Apple even move anywhere close to that many MacBook Airs during "peak Apple", when the iPhone 6+ had everyone in a frenzy, Ballmer was refusing to budge off Windows 8 and there were even multiple major Hollywood movies about Apple and its products? So what would their chances be of doing that now with Windows 10 is at least halfway as good as Windows 7 was and even Chromebooks now somehow being a viable marketable product? Seriously where a $400 Windows laptop is still a questionable purchase, you can spend that on a Chromebook and get a decent Intel i3 Ubuntu laptop with a touchscreen and 2-in-1 form factor that can also run mobile apps.
Even if they were to make the entry level Air model a good bit cheaper, say $750 ... you can get a legit 1080p Windows gaming laptop with an Nvidia GeForce graphics card for that. I really don't think that Apple is going to make much more money by lowering prices. It is tough for the people who want a MacBook but legitimately can't afford one but that's still the set of facts we are dealing with. Apple could lower prices on their cheapest models, experience only a few percentage points bump in market share but actually make less money.
Comments
In addition there is a real price point issue for the entire product line outside of the USD zone. The same issue largely exist for the iPhone too.
the rational use cases covered at reasonable prices. Frankly Apple has stuck so long to a formula hatched long ago that the entire Mac product line has become stale.
The range doesn't have to vast. It just has to include the products people want.
Yeh, Lenovo has probably gone overboard. They not only have all the current versions of what constitutes a laptop today but then subversions of each one -- and many of those can be customized. But, on the other extreme you get Apple following the Henry Ford philosophy: "Any color you want as long as it's black" (or in this case, thin, light and minimalist).
I think a happy medium would be nice. It would be a win-win: Apple customers get what they want and Apple makes more money.
So, I expect Mac shipments to have grown against a slight downturn of worldwide shipments.
Your mistaken, Mac profits are low in percentage against for example the iPhone, but not low in absolute numbers.
This means that Mac profits are higher than all Dell, Hp and Lenovos combined.
If you make the perfect product, as Apple does, why change the design? It will only make it worse.
Apple could improve its Macs in one area and thats third party components, like the CPU and GPU.
I expect they will do so this year, with AD (Arm Desktop class) processors that will reduce the price of Mac systems by $200 or more and increase performance and battery capacity by a few factors, making a product no one has.
Comparing PC shipments across the board is like comparing car shipments across the board. Ferrari numbers will always come in lower than Ford’s numbers.
It’s the same with comparing HomePod sales. You never see a survey comparing equipment across voice assistance hardware. That’s because HomePods are not even in the same class!
Also, the revenue compare over fy 2018 for Macs was actually better for 2 out of 4 quarters, and in Q4 fy '18, Mac sales were literally on fire, so that compare is somewhat questionable.
So what hard numbers do these outfits have to base this on? How about none.
And finally, the Big Lie continues, where Surface computers are bunched in with PC's but iPads are not. And iPads had a banner year last year.
I see a lot of folks posting here who are attempting to ding Apple over these "reports" of dropping Mac sales. Amazingly, none of them are interested in questioning the numbers they are so overly fond of relying on.
Haven't we seen enough of "cover-ups" in the news lately? Do we have to put up with it here as well?
There has always been some discrepancy between Apple's own numbers and these companies, but by and large they agree - also trend-wise.
Let's crunch some real numbers, shall we? These are from Gartner. IDC's appear to be behind a paywall:
Apple actually shipped:
cy 2016: 20.38 M Macs
cy 2017: 18.55 M Macs
cy 2018: 18.99 M Macs
Gartner said:
cy 2016: 18.61 M Macs
cy 2017: 19.30 M Macs
cy 2018: 18.02 M Macs
Gartner percentage miss (in spite of knowing ACTUAL numbers for 3 out of 4 quarters!):
cy 2016: -9.5%
cy 2017: +4%
cy 2018: -5.4%
Needless to say, this is piss-poor. And they'd have been even poorer in piss if Gartner hadn't had the 3 quarters worth of actual Apple numbers to work with.
But thanks for the opportunity to prove you don't know what the fork you're talking about, along with many other anti-Apple posters here.
That said, I agree with your overall point. You can easily get a Windows laptop with an i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM for $500-$550. Meanwhile an equivalent MacBook Air is going to cost $1000. Were Apple to drop the price of their MacBook Air to $650, how many more people would buy it? I don't know ... if they make $500 on every MacBook Air as it is but would only make $100 if they were to try to compete with Asus - probably the best "cheap" PC manufacturer there is - would they need to sell 5 times as many MacBook Airs? Now can you envison a scenario where Apple sells 5 million MacBook Airs a quarter? Did Apple even move anywhere close to that many MacBook Airs during "peak Apple", when the iPhone 6+ had everyone in a frenzy, Ballmer was refusing to budge off Windows 8 and there were even multiple major Hollywood movies about Apple and its products? So what would their chances be of doing that now with Windows 10 is at least halfway as good as Windows 7 was and even Chromebooks now somehow being a viable marketable product? Seriously where a $400 Windows laptop is still a questionable purchase, you can spend that on a Chromebook and get a decent Intel i3 Ubuntu laptop with a touchscreen and 2-in-1 form factor that can also run mobile apps.
Even if they were to make the entry level Air model a good bit cheaper, say $750 ... you can get a legit 1080p Windows gaming laptop with an Nvidia GeForce graphics card for that. I really don't think that Apple is going to make much more money by lowering prices. It is tough for the people who want a MacBook but legitimately can't afford one but that's still the set of facts we are dealing with. Apple could lower prices on their cheapest models, experience only a few percentage points bump in market share but actually make less money.