Phil Schiller, Apple's head of marketing, said, "We don't understand why a 13% slide. I mean, our MacBook Pro is only 5 years old and our MacPro is about 3 years old. I just don't get it. And our Mac Mini is only 7 years old. WHY, GOD, WHY!!!!!!!!??????????"
To be fair to those attacking Apple here, although I disagree with their assessment, Apple have waited crazy-long to update the majority of Mac products.
I'm going to say I disagree with Tim Cook's philosophy of waiting to update nearly every Mac at once. The Mac Pro hasn't been updated in 3 years FFS. Could have at least given it a bump in that time. Check out the MacRumors buying guide. Something funky is going on. I know one thing for sure, every new Mac they announce this year better be capable of driving their new 5K display and better have USBc across the board. And when they likely kill MagSafe it's going to be a very sad day. MagSafe was a super invention and shouldn't die.
I also hope they add Lightning to all Macs for wired Lightning headphone and EarPod consistency without need for a dongle. Otherwise if we don't want wireless headphones we need to use an adapter on our Mac to use the headphones that ship with our iPhone? That would be quite strange and it's something that would really annoy me.
Frankly I'd go a step further and change iPhone charging cables and plugs to Lightning to Lightning. Either go USBc across the board or do Lightning properly with Lightning, Lightning, Lightning and Lightning. And USBc for everything else.
I know Apple missed two upgrade cycles from our company. We typically upgrade our MacPro's every two years. We skipped the 2013 MacPro's because there was no improvement in cpu over our now 6 year old MacPro's. We keep waiting.... If MacPro's are not part if this "stay tuned" refresh, Dell or HP will get our market share numbers for next quarter.
I just wonder if this amazing pipeline Tim keeps talking about is clogged or something. Seems like every other company is nimble enough to keep their computers refreshed, but the thousand day old MacPro that innovates out of Phil's ass is 2 generations behind on cpu, 3 generations behind on gpu, ports are outdated, low on ram and storage and is still priced as if it were new tech. Man, I wonder why nobody is buying them. As the article states, computer sales are trending away from consumers and more towards businesses and creative pros. It would be nice if they showed some effort towards this market, otherwise don't be surprised to see their computer share continue to slide.
"As the article states, computer sales are trending away from consumers and more towards businesses and creative pros."
So what you're saying is the PC (and Mac) market is witnessing declining market share due to negative sales growth and is thus being relegated to being a specialized device. If so, why participate in such a market?
Of course its a declining market. If all Apple wants to be is a phone company, I have no problem with them saying "we're out of the computer game" and just stops making computers. I would prefer that over them stringing us along while at the same time tarnishing their name. I am strong believer that you are only as good as your worst product. Right now the management of the MacPro is a major embarrassment to Apple. Either your in your out.
They also have to understand that the appeal of iPhones and iPads to our company is the seamless integration with our Mac's. Take away our macs and we also say good bye to our iPhones and iPads too. With how big Apple is (over a hundred thousand employees) , I just can't understand why they can't keep all of their macs refreshed and competive.
Maybe the hardware / software, per their strategy, wasn't ready to go until now. Intel hasn't exactly set the world on the fire with their latest processors. Skylake, when it initially released, was buggy as hell. Ask MS' Surface team, they'll tell you. Plus, the mobile Skylake processors that utilize the Iris 580 Pro iGPU weren't ready until summer. Then you have the issue with AMD's Polaris 14nm-based GPU not ready till late August / early September. On top of that, the OS version that will take advantage of the rumored OLED touchpad has to be ready.
I'm all for Mac updates, not for the sake of updating, but when it makes it sense.
I disagree. At minimum there needs to be a refresh once a year. If all that changed in the industry is the USB port, so be it. This also means Apple's competitors are in the same boat. I'm in the market to buy some new external drives but I don't want to buy them because USB C maybe be in the new MacPro. No updates and no information really strains everything for anyone who needs to plan purchasing.
I would also cut Apple some slack if what you mentioned were true. Apple uses Xeon E5v2 processor maxed at 12 cores. Intel released v3 of the chip with 16 cores 2 years ago, and the v4 with 22 cores has been out for over 6 months. The graphics cards are so out of date it isn't even funny. It would have taken them very little effort to refresh this machine with those 2 components along with some larger drives and ram. The damn iPhone has the same storage as a base MacPro. Ridiculous....The only answer for this is neglect and incompetence. Sorry you're not going to convince me of anything other than that.
I know I'm a fan boy but I guess I'm nothing compared to some of you. I don't understand how anyone can be defending Apple in regards to the effort they are putting into their computers. Did you guys just buy a computer and are not in the market for one or something? Would you honestly buy a new MacPro right now? Do you guys even know what the competitors are offering for what Apple is asking for a MacPro? I get that we all love Apple but for pete's sake, can't you take your blinders off for a second and see Apple is neglecting Mac's or at the very least can you cut some slack to those that have. Sheesh..
Agreed!
Here's my desperate hope -- upgrades to the Mac have been delayed because Apple is working on a major transition from Intel to their own A# chips, which will increase their profits, reduce prices, and/or increase performance.
But if all we see is an OLED touch bar in place of function keys as an update to the MacBook Pro, and no updates to anything else, well.... F.
Buy a Mac that has components from 2 or 3 years ago?
That basically addresses all Macs on the market besides the rMB and the upgraded riMacs, that are expensive. Clearly this is the cause: Most Macs are crap.
However, Apple can easily mac the best personal computers. Are they waiting for something in particular? They have to be waiting for some special component, otherwise there's no excuse at all, besides milking uninformed users.
The wait is for the Kaby Lake Intel CPU.
That will be next fall then. I'm predicting its SkyLake this year. The primary features driving sale to the MBP will be the TouchID and the OLED menu. Then next year (or maybe the year after) we will get a refresh to Kaby Lake.
Other manufacturers are improving their computers constantly. So of course their sales are not falling, duh! Apple only improves the mac when ???. I've got 4 and 5-year old computers, but that's okay. I'm not going to go for an interim update that will fall victim to the "port inclusion/upgrade/deletion" du jour, anyways. And it's a hassle because, in my limited personal experience, every new mac I have purchased has been slightly defective. I'll wait for 3 months into the Kaby Lake era, then see. But, cheers! :-)
Buy a Mac that has components from 2 or 3 years ago?
That basically addresses all Macs on the market besides the rMB and the upgraded riMacs, that are expensive. Clearly this is the cause: Most Macs are crap.
However, Apple can easily mac the best personal computers. Are they waiting for something in particular? They have to be waiting for some special component, otherwise there's no excuse at all, besides milking uninformed users.
Yes. They are waiting for Cannonlake processors that have been delayed for a year so they've needed to retool for the better Kaby Lake processors that may just now be ready.
Apple's share of the worldwide PC market continued a steady decline in the third calendar quarter of 2016, with estimates from market research firms IDC and Gartner both seeing shipments down least 13 percent from last year.
Source: Gartner
I saw the chart and wondered "Apple only shipped 4946 computers in the 3rd quarter? That can't be right." Then I read in the article that it is thousands of units. Minus 10 points on the final grade for lack of units, AI.
I know I'm a fan boy but I guess I'm nothing compared to some of you. I don't understand how anyone can be defending Apple in regards to the effort they are putting into their computers. Did you guys just buy a computer and are not in the market for one or something? Would you honestly buy a new MacPro right now? Do you guys even know what the competitors are offering for what Apple is asking for a MacPro? I get that we all love Apple but for pete's sake, can't you take your blinders off for a second and see Apple is neglecting Mac's or at the very least can you cut some slack to those that have. Sheesh..
It's pretty simple.... nothing else runs macOS which is leap years better than Windows. Plus, Macs work great and have longer life and generally outperform machines of similar specs. I'm happy to wait until the next MBP is announced and I can upgrade my four year old MBPr.
Buy a Mac that has components from 2 or 3 years ago?
That basically addresses all Macs on the market besides the rMB and the upgraded riMacs, that are expensive. Clearly this is the cause: Most Macs are crap.
However, Apple can easily mac the best personal computers. Are they waiting for something in particular? They have to be waiting for some special component, otherwise there's no excuse at all, besides milking uninformed users.
almost five million Macs were sold last quarter & the quarter before that, so somebody's buying them.
And who is buying them? Informed users? Professionals? No. Would you buy a Mac like that crap, at that price? TN panels? Mechanical hard drives? 128GB of storage? Outdated internals? Yeah.
It's the people that would buy 16 GB iPhones until few months ago.
At this point, what is making their Mac sales not falling that fast is the same reason that make Blackberry and Nokia grow after the iPhone, or the S4 after the S3. Inertia of many factors, like mindshare, being locked in, etc. Eventually it will kick in, If Apple doesn't revamp the line-up quickly and cleans that garbage products. Can you guys imagine Dell selling a TN panel and outdated components at more than one thousand dollars? What scammy company would do that?
The average user has no clue what a TN panel is. You really got a bug up your butt. Just buy a PC and move along. The rest of us want a machine that works and doesn't run Windows. The MBA will likely die off soon and I expect Apple to reenvision their lineup with more affordable and better options at the low end and high performance MBP at the upper end. Give them about a month. They haven't been doing nothing... but they also don't want to invest in incremental updates when something bigger is coming.
Some users need a machine with more than 1TB of storage that doesn’t need a breakout box to attach additional devices to. Until Apple reopens their hardware for tweaking be “edge case” users, I’ll stick with my 2012 MBP with a discrete graphics card and get a 2TB SSD to replace the 2TB HD when they’re a bit more affordable.
Time for Apple to Refresh the iMac 27", Mac Book Pro and Mac Book. give me new features and a new look with a better processor and graphics card and i'm in
ah yes, we have another conspiracist....certain that apple id the moustache-twirling villain just waiting to rip people off and "milk" them, because such short term schemes would be great for their brand image. riiiight
The fact is, the Mac is not Apple's top priority when they have a little device writing checks for them called the iPhone. Why would you sink more money into something when the percentage is already small and shrinking yoy? Me thinks this is deliberate on their part.
I know I'm a fan boy but I guess I'm nothing compared to some of you. I don't understand how anyone can be defending Apple in regards to the effort they are putting into their computers. Did you guys just buy a computer and are not in the market for one or something? Would you honestly buy a new MacPro right now? Do you guys even know what the competitors are offering for what Apple is asking for a MacPro? I get that we all love Apple but for pete's sake, can't you take your blinders off for a second and see Apple is neglecting Mac's or at the very least can you cut some slack to those that have. Sheesh..
Exactly! Very happy with my 1 year old iMac 5K, but I can't buy these heavy pro laptops or underpowered airs/ or the 12"er
Would you honestly buy a new MacPro right now? Do you guys even know what the competitors are offering for what Apple is asking for a MacPro? I get that we all love Apple but for pete's sake, can't you take your blinders off for a second and see Apple is neglecting Mac's or at the very least can you cut some slack to those that have. Sheesh..
I am in the market for a Mac Pro to replace my old 27" iMac. I know exactly what the competition are offering for the same money, an incredibly fast box that still runs windows built by one of the big companies that has next to nothing in customer service and next to nothing in resale value.
I'm not playing games on the Mac and I don't need insane processing power for rendering. I just want an up to date Mac Pro that's fast enough and reliable enough to last me 7 years (ish) and not feel slow after all that time. Easy to use, does what I tell it, doesn't crash, doesn't require a load of setup whenever you want to do anything and very importantly, when I upgrade next time, this one will still be worth something.
I am a lifelong Mac fan so this is hard to state but it t is clearly obvious Apple are not in the computer business anymore. Tablets, mobile phones or services yes. Laptops/desktops definitely not. Decline with market trends...... bullshit. Decline because most Macs house obsolete components at top dollar prices. What idiot would buy one of those. Currently have a tetina MacBook because it is the only relatively up to date Macintosh. If I wanted a powerful laptop or workstation I would have to buy a current Dell, HP or Lenovo then hackintosh MacOS onto it! Very sad Apple very sad indeed. And please don't say new MBP's are coming, their time between updates was disgusting for a company who claims to be in the business of management facturing quality computers.
Buy a Mac that has components from 2 or 3 years ago?
That basically addresses all Macs on the market besides the rMB and the upgraded riMacs, that are expensive. Clearly this is the cause: Most Macs are crap.
However, Apple can easily mac the best personal computers. Are they waiting for something in particular? They have to be waiting for some special component, otherwise there's no excuse at all, besides milking uninformed users.
You are clueless. Really clueless. The vast majority of PC's sold are no better than the Macs that Apple sells. Abet at a lower price. But that lower price comes at a cost of build quality, less installed software and higher total cost of ownership (TCO) as it must be replaced more often. Are you so clueless that you actually think the all the PC's being sold are better specced than a Mac? The average selling price of a Mac is $1300. The average selling price of a PC is $700. Walmart probably sells more cheap ass $499 laptops than Apple do with their Macbook and Macbook Pro line. A 4 year old Mac will still run El Capitan and most likely the next OSX, Sierra. I'm running Yosemite on an eight year old, 2008, 24" C2D iMac. It's the last OSX upgrade for it, but that's not a problem, with what I need a computer for. What people like you seem to forget is the support Apple will supply to even an 7 year old Mac, when they come out with new OSX's. So the vast majority of PC buyers are not buying PC's with all those features that you like to cite, that is lacking in a new Mac.
You also have to remember that the upgrade cycle for Mac users is longer than for PC users. Fours years is not out of ordinary. And since a lot, if not most, of the Macs sold are sold to people that already own a Mac, Apple don't have to come out with the highest specced Mac every year. There is just not enough Mac users or PC switchers to justify that. Or do you think that if Apple came out with the best personal computer, spec wise, that a majority of PC users would all of a sudden switch to Macs. Windows users are is no different than Android users in that not even the best computer on OSX (or best phone on iOS) will ever convince the majority of Windows (or Android users) to ever switch. Unlike PC's makers, Apple can not rely on low margins and high sales when it comes to selling their Mac products at a profit. Apple do not have the scale of economics with their Macs, like they do with their iDevices, to help drive the cost down.
Microsoft could careless about supporting a PC that is more than a few years old. And PC manufactures wants to sell new PC's, not support old ones. Even if they're only 2 years old. What PC users are probably doing the past year is replacing their PC that came with the worse Windows OS ever made, Windows 8. Since the PC only cost them an average of $699 or less to begin with and most of them likely won't run Windows 10, with our running into problems with drivers, they rather buy another new cheap ass PC with Windows 10 installed. (PC users with Windows 7 will hang on to what will probably be considered the best Windows OS Microsoft ever made.) For the majority, the PC upgrade cycle is no longer driven by the need for new hardware, it's driven by a new version of Windows. Even a 4 year old PC will do for the majority of computer users, if it can be upgraded to a newer Windows 10. And that's a big if. This is why there's an up tick in PC purchases over the year. But by most consensus, it's no where near as large as they would liked to have seen, with a new version of Windows out.
Comments
I'm going to say I disagree with Tim Cook's philosophy of waiting to update nearly every Mac at once. The Mac Pro hasn't been updated in 3 years FFS. Could have at least given it a bump in that time. Check out the MacRumors buying guide. Something funky is going on. I know one thing for sure, every new Mac they announce this year better be capable of driving their new 5K display and better have USBc across the board. And when they likely kill MagSafe it's going to be a very sad day. MagSafe was a super invention and shouldn't die.
I also hope they add Lightning to all Macs for wired Lightning headphone and EarPod consistency without need for a dongle. Otherwise if we don't want wireless headphones we need to use an adapter on our Mac to use the headphones that ship with our iPhone? That would be quite strange and it's something that would really annoy me.
Frankly I'd go a step further and change iPhone charging cables and plugs to Lightning to Lightning. Either go USBc across the board or do Lightning properly with Lightning, Lightning, Lightning and Lightning. And USBc for everything else.
I would also cut Apple some slack if what you mentioned were true. Apple uses Xeon E5v2 processor maxed at 12 cores. Intel released v3 of the chip with 16 cores 2 years ago, and the v4 with 22 cores has been out for over 6 months. The graphics cards are so out of date it isn't even funny. It would have taken them very little effort to refresh this machine with those 2 components along with some larger drives and ram. The damn iPhone has the same storage as a base MacPro. Ridiculous....The only answer for this is neglect and incompetence. Sorry you're not going to convince me of anything other than that.
Here's my desperate hope -- upgrades to the Mac have been delayed because Apple is working on a major transition from Intel to their own A# chips, which will increase their profits, reduce prices, and/or increase performance.
But if all we see is an OLED touch bar in place of function keys as an update to the MacBook Pro, and no updates to anything else, well.... F.
I know exactly what the competition are offering for the same money, an incredibly fast box that still runs windows built by one of the big companies that has next to nothing in customer service and next to nothing in resale value.
I'm not playing games on the Mac and I don't need insane processing power for rendering. I just want an up to date Mac Pro that's fast enough and reliable enough to last me 7 years (ish) and not feel slow after all that time. Easy to use, does what I tell it, doesn't crash, doesn't require a load of setup whenever you want to do anything and very importantly, when I upgrade next time, this one will still be worth something.
You are clueless. Really clueless. The vast majority of PC's sold are no better than the Macs that Apple sells. Abet at a lower price. But that lower price comes at a cost of build quality, less installed software and higher total cost of ownership (TCO) as it must be replaced more often. Are you so clueless that you actually think the all the PC's being sold are better specced than a Mac? The average selling price of a Mac is $1300. The average selling price of a PC is $700. Walmart probably sells more cheap ass $499 laptops than Apple do with their Macbook and Macbook Pro line. A 4 year old Mac will still run El Capitan and most likely the next OSX, Sierra. I'm running Yosemite on an eight year old, 2008, 24" C2D iMac. It's the last OSX upgrade for it, but that's not a problem, with what I need a computer for. What people like you seem to forget is the support Apple will supply to even an 7 year old Mac, when they come out with new OSX's. So the vast majority of PC buyers are not buying PC's with all those features that you like to cite, that is lacking in a new Mac.
You also have to remember that the upgrade cycle for Mac users is longer than for PC users. Fours years is not out of ordinary. And since a lot, if not most, of the Macs sold are sold to people that already own a Mac, Apple don't have to come out with the highest specced Mac every year. There is just not enough Mac users or PC switchers to justify that. Or do you think that if Apple came out with the best personal computer, spec wise, that a majority of PC users would all of a sudden switch to Macs. Windows users are is no different than Android users in that not even the best computer on OSX (or best phone on iOS) will ever convince the majority of Windows (or Android users) to ever switch. Unlike PC's makers, Apple can not rely on low margins and high sales when it comes to selling their Mac products at a profit. Apple do not have the scale of economics with their Macs, like they do with their iDevices, to help drive the cost down.
Microsoft could careless about supporting a PC that is more than a few years old. And PC manufactures wants to sell new PC's, not support old ones. Even if they're only 2 years old. What PC users are probably doing the past year is replacing their PC that came with the worse Windows OS ever made, Windows 8. Since the PC only cost them an average of $699 or less to begin with and most of them likely won't run Windows 10, with our running into problems with drivers, they rather buy another new cheap ass PC with Windows 10 installed. (PC users with Windows 7 will hang on to what will probably be considered the best Windows OS Microsoft ever made.) For the majority, the PC upgrade cycle is no longer driven by the need for new hardware, it's driven by a new version of Windows. Even a 4 year old PC will do for the majority of computer users, if it can be upgraded to a newer Windows 10. And that's a big if. This is why there's an up tick in PC purchases over the year. But by most consensus, it's no where near as large as they would liked to have seen, with a new version of Windows out.