It's not going to make a difference. At this point, Cook, you have exposed Apple to the worst type of criticism... high prices, noncompetitive value. High margins are only good for the stock holders. When Jobs was in charge he was price/value sensitive.
High margins are not always good for stockholders. High profits are good. High margins only work if the additional profit makes up for the lost sales. Apple has always pushed the envelope on price. Jobs too. I still think the price of the MBP is too high. I think this move is nice. Won't affect my purchasing decision but it's not all about me.
There is precedent that Apple does lower prices a year or two later. Case in point, the MBA and Retina 5K iMac. It isn't out of the ordinary that in a year or two Apple slashes prices on the new MBP and stop selling the old models (13" MBA & 13" / 15" MBP)
20 - 40% ? ... That's less than an after Christmas sale for most vendors.
Jobs thought customer first. Cook needs to start doing the same. Anybody can build hardware with off the shelf components. It takes an exceptional organization to meet the needs of its customers.
I wonder when we will see a Lightning headphone adapter to USB-C, or anything else?
And if an iPhone user needs to connect their phone to iTunes how do they do it without an adapter? Not throwing a USB C to A adapter in the box was stupid. But then again Apple ships iPad Pro with 12w adapter so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at their decisions. These are the kind of nickel and dime things that chip away at Cook's vaunted customer sat figure. And the things that give the impression Apple cares more about margin and profits than shipping the best products snd providing the best customer experience.
I agree, including the USB C-to-USB A adaptor in the box would've been the wiser move, like how they included the headphone jack adaptor with the iPhone 7. But now that they've lowered prices on the adaptor, I think the price drop should be permanent, not only for two months. As someone else mentioned, it isn't as if the MBP is a $500 machine. They start at $1500.
I wonder when we will see a Lightning headphone adapter to USB-C, or anything else?
And if an iPhone user needs to connect their phone to iTunes how do they do it without an adapter? Not throwing a USB C to A adapter in the box was stupid. But then again Apple ships iPad Pro with 12w adapter so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at their decisions. These are the kind of nickel and dime things that chip away at Cook's vaunted customer sat figure. And the things that give the impression Apple cares more about margin and profits than shipping the best products snd providing the best customer experience.
I agree, including the USB C-to-USB A adaptor in the box would've been the wiser move, like how they included the headphone jack adaptor with the iPhone 7. But now that they've lowered prices on the adaptor, I think the price drop should be permanent, not only for two months. As someone else mentioned, it isn't as if the MBP is a $500 machine. They start at $1500.
To me that's a no brainer considering all iPhones and iPads ship with USB-A. And who knows when that will change considering most people probably don't have PCs with USB-C ports.
This whole thing is unbelievably pedantic on Apple's part. Virtually none of the press release is even true. "We realize.." No, you don't.
"legacy connectors" - No, professional, necessary connectors.
"a transition" - No, Apple, you will make the transition, not others.
It is astounding that a "computer" cannot interface with USB or with a disc anymore. I am getting old! These are not real computers. They should cost $300 maximum.
I have superior equipment that is older (much of it Apple). With things like replaceable hard drives, replaceable batteries and upgradeable RAM. I am amazed that new equipment you buy today is inferior to what I have. My MBP has Firewire, several USB ports, optical out (which I use)... etc. And 1TB storage. And it was cheap! Rawr I am old, time for my nap.
Jobs thought customer first. Cook needs to start doing the same. Anybody can build hardware with off the shelf components. It takes an exceptional organization to meet the needs of its customers.
good to know you're both an armchair executive AND you knew Jobs personally! love your insight!
Good move but the fact Apple felt the need to do it suggests there's some pretty fierce backlash with these new Macs. Perhaps more backlash than Apple was expecting,
I think that's right -- in fact I don't see how there could be any other interpretation.
I'd go even a bit further (though this isn't as obviously right, I think it's still probably right) and guess that while online orders might have "broken records", they may have fallen short of Apple's internal projections. Given the pent up demand for an update, breaking the record in and of itself isn't that big of a deal. What matter is the margin of the record breaking. Apple might have looked at that and thought "oops."
Right, there can be no other interpretation because the iPhone wasn't selling in 2007 when Jobs did essentially the same thing by offering $100 credit to previous buyers after reducing the iPhone by $200.
I'm not sure what your point is.
The point is that Apple does this because it responds to customer concerns. Not because sales "have fallen short of Apple's internal projections".
Why do you think the 2007 iPhone example supports your argument? I think it actually does the opposite.
This whole thing is unbelievably pedantic on Apple's part. Virtually none of the press release is even true. "We realize.." No, you don't.
"legacy connectors" - No, professional, necessary connectors.
"a transition" - No, Apple, you will make the transition, not others.
It is astounding that a "computer" cannot interface with USB or with a disc anymore. I am getting old! These are not real computers. They should cost $300 maximum.
I have superior equipment that is older (much of it Apple). With things like replaceable hard drives, replaceable batteries and upgradeable RAM. I am amazed that new equipment you buy today is inferior to what I have. My MBP has Firewire, several USB ports, optical out (which I use)... etc. And 1TB storage. And it was cheap! Rawr I am old, time for my nap.
nonsense. apple skates to where the puck is going, and all the other fatasses go to where it was and complain about having to skate at all.
i guarantee this new MBP will smoke your old crap in every meaningful performance test any day of the week. your big ass removable batteries, hard drives and ram do me absolutely NO good for completing my work. i max my machines out from Day 1 and start generating value. when they get too slow i replace them. (usually by reselling!). that's it. i've never upgraded a notebook hard drive, that's absurd. if the battery fails i drop it off with service.
these are tools, not hobby machines for tinkerers. get a raspberry pi for that.
Awesome move by Apple. This SHOULD shut up most of the complaints, but of course it won't.
It's not like Apple is selling $500 laptops. There's two ways to look at this:
The first is that if someone is buying a laptop that starts at $2400, they should't be complaining about having to buy some adapters, even if they're overpriced and that if you're a pro, technology advances and the investment is the price of doing business.
The other way to look at it is that if someone is spending between $2400 and $4300 (for the MBP with all options except for application software and AppleCare), Apple shouldn't have cheaped out and they should have provided 2 to 4 adapters in the box of the customer's choosing. The price of four adapters/cables is as much as a cheap PC.
And then my cost of ownership goes up because I can't replace the battery, expand memory or replace the SSD myself. Or, if I Iive with a 256GB SSD, I've got to get a ton of external storage for pro-level photos and video and live with the hassle of not having every file with me when I'm out of the home/office.
This is another example of Apple labeling something "pro" and then not understanding the workflow of their pro customers. They did that with FinalCutPro and they did it when they moved away from the tower configuration of the MacPro.
Every time Apple switches ports, they tell the market how their new choices are the greatest and how they want both manufacturers and consumers to commit to that port. Then after a few years, they change their minds and they move on to something else. Did they really need to drop Mag-safe? What about all the people who bought extra power supplies to keep at home/office, etc.? HDMI is ubiquitous on TVs and receivers and the cables have become inexpensive, but now I've got to buy an adapter that costs ten times what the cable cost?
What was Apple's rationale for going solely to USB-C? Was it because they truly think this port is the future and that the accessory market will fully move to that port and that it provides technological advantages? Or was it really because of Ive's anal-obsessiveness over thinness and not wanting to look at different sized/shaped ports on the side of the machine? What drives me crazy is that Apple wants the machine to have this superior industrial design so that it looks great in photos and in ads, but they have no problem with users having to stick a bunch of dongles and adapters on the thing. It's the same with the iPhone and the obsession with thinness, but then we have to put it in a case because it can't survive a fall. So few are really seeing and feeling the thinness anyway. Sometimes I think people at Apple don't actually use the products they produce in the real world.
So, IMO, criticism is warranted. If Apple wants my money, they're going to have to do a bit better. I hate using PCs at work, but I'm not spending $4K to $5K on my next computer and I don't want to feel like I have less than what I have today. So as much as I hate Windows, my next laptop might actually be a Windows machine. And I've been an Apple customer for 35 years.
Actually I think it's you and other dongle-phobes who are the anal-obsessives.
There is so much pure, sculpted techno eroticism in the new form factor that you'd have to be a puritanical ass-wipe to give a second's thought to how it looks with an adapter or two plugged into it.
I can't believe the pettiness of you people. The new MBP is the culmination of five years of foresighted development, if you include —as you must — the investments they were jumping on in IGZO development going that far back to Japan, no less, where the tech was developed.
Same with the keyboard. If Swiss watchmakers made keyboard switches, they would maybe be like this. Probably another five years in the making. And the aluminum machining — try to find a wonky tenth of a millimeter of misfit. How long have they been developing that? And the asymmetric fans, and so on.
Go get yourself a Windows machine. You may not deserve to handle one of these unless you come around. Meanwhile, millions are going to get limitless pleasure out of picking theirs up to pack it at the end of the day as they gladly take care to pack its adapters in the case with it.
Edit: you know why there's no USB A? It's too big, that's why. It's as obsolete as the headphone jack is on the iPhone. If you want them to make the base thicker just to accommodate that port, you're disqualified as an Apple observer.
nonsense. apple skates to where the puck is going, and all the other fatasses go to where it was and complain about having to skate at all.
i guarantee this new MBP will smoke your old crap in every meaningful performance test any day of the week. your big ass removable batteries, hard drives and ram do me absolutely NO good for completing my work. i max my machines out from Day 1 and start generating value. when they get too slow i replace them. (usually by reselling!). that's it. i've never upgraded a notebook hard drive, that's absurd. if the battery fails i drop it off with service.
these are tools, not hobby machines for tinkerers. get a raspberry pi for that.
I appreciate your conversation. My style is not your style. It sounds like my style is far less expensive and more efficient. I bought my MBP in 2010 for $1100. Today it has 8GB/1TB, 2.4 ghz core 2 duo. Still my main Apple machine. I also have a 16GB iMac from 2009. Yes, it's not a gamer king rig. I am also not a Final Cut movie editor. It's not much, but here is my point for you. A 2GB RAM / 250GB machine would suck even more. And with today's Apple, an under-specced brick is what you will soon have., unless you want to get raped by buying a heavily-specced machine from Apple. I understand they want $3k per computer but for me, that is excessive. With non replaceable battery no less. Hahahaha.
My work machines are extremely unglamorous too, because I use them for work, not to glorify my boyhood.
Good move but the fact Apple felt the need to do it suggests there's some pretty fierce backlash with these new Macs. Perhaps more backlash than Apple was expecting,
I think that's right -- in fact I don't see how there could be any other interpretation.
I'd go even a bit further (though this isn't as obviously right, I think it's still probably right) and guess that while online orders might have "broken records", they may have fallen short of Apple's internal projections. Given the pent up demand for an update, breaking the record in and of itself isn't that big of a deal. What matter is the margin of the record breaking. Apple might have looked at that and thought "oops."
Right, there can be no other interpretation because the iPhone wasn't selling in 2007 when Jobs did essentially the same thing by offering $100 credit to previous buyers after reducing the iPhone by $200.
I'm not sure what your point is.
The point is that Apple does this because it responds to customer concerns. Not because sales "have fallen short of Apple's internal projections".
Apple rarely, and I mean very rarely responds to customer concerns. It's one of its great weaknesses: communication. Occasionally the fallout from a certain situation will provoke a statement or even an audience with the top man (antennagate comes to mind). Generally speaking though, if sales are good, Apple does little to nothing.
It's not going to make a difference. At this point, Cook, you have exposed Apple to the worst type of criticism... high prices, noncompetitive value. High margins are only good for the stock holders. When Jobs was in charge he was price/value sensitive.
High margins are not always good for stockholders. High profits are good. High margins only work if the additional profit makes up for the lost sales. Apple has always pushed the envelope on price. Jobs too. I still think the price of the MBP is too high. I think this move is nice. Won't affect my purchasing decision but it's not all about me.
I agree. It's not just the price for adding dongles but the excessive cost of the new MacBook Pros. The limited size of the internal flash drives makes no sense. The base MacBook Pro should come with at least a 500 gig flash drive and a more reasonable price for the 1 terabyte drive upgrade. I don't want to move my Documents folder and Desktop to the iCloud Drive to save a few gigs on the internal drive. I can't afford to risk my most important files to the cloud without a backup.
Maybe I don't fully grasp the backup options for the iDrive cloud. But I don't think backup programs like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner will back up cloud-based files. CrashPlan will not. Not sure about Time Machine.
Even if Time Machine does perform an iDrive Cloud backup, it's still too buggy to for business users in my opinion.
If the MacBook Pro came with an easily upgradable and non-propriety internal drive upgrade option, then I might not be so resistant to the high price.
So they raise the pricing on the MacBook tiers $200 - $300 dollars across the board. Then look like Angels From Heaven because they gave you a $10 break on a USB Type-C cable. Even Steve Jobs at his most brilliant wasn't capable of this powerful new kind of Reality Distortion Field.
That's basically it. Not bad for those willing to buy one of these new models but it will do little to turn the tide in terms of backlash. It might even backfire on them and be seen as cynical. That said, the discounts on the LG monitors are nice ones.
Good move but the fact Apple felt the need to do it suggests there's some pretty fierce backlash with these new Macs. Perhaps more backlash than Apple was expecting,
I think that's right -- in fact I don't see how there could be any other interpretation.
I'd go even a bit further (though this isn't as obviously right, I think it's still probably right) and guess that while online orders might have "broken records", they may have fallen short of Apple's internal projections. Given the pent up demand for an update, breaking the record in and of itself isn't that big of a deal. What matter is the margin of the record breaking. Apple might have looked at that and thought "oops."
Right, there can be no other interpretation because the iPhone wasn't selling in 2007 when Jobs did essentially the same thing by offering $100 credit to previous buyers after reducing the iPhone by $200.
I'm not sure what your point is.
The point is that Apple does this because it responds to customer concerns. Not because sales "have fallen short of Apple's internal projections".
Seriously dude? Do you not think there is a breaking point at which a market segment says enough? I don't know a single pro in the world that cares about 'thin'. They want more battery life and better gpu/cpu's, functionality and convenience. FFS man, you can line the entire inside of the new spaceship campus with Apple dongles and cables.
It's like Cook is Christopher Walken in the cowbell sketch... "I have a fever - and the only cure is more dongles..."
Awesome move by Apple. This SHOULD shut up most of the complaints, but of course it won't.
It's not like Apple is selling $500 laptops. There's two ways to look at this:
The first is that if someone is buying a laptop that starts at $2400, they should't be complaining about having to buy some adapters, even if they're overpriced and that if you're a pro, technology advances and the investment is the price of doing business.
The other way to look at it is that if someone is spending between $2400 and $4300 (for the MBP with all options except for application software and AppleCare), Apple shouldn't have cheaped out and they should have provided 2 to 4 adapters in the box of the customer's choosing. The price of four adapters/cables is as much as a cheap PC.
And then my cost of ownership goes up because I can't replace the battery, expand memory or replace the SSD myself. Or, if I Iive with a 256GB SSD, I've got to get a ton of external storage for pro-level photos and video and live with the hassle of not having every file with me when I'm out of the home/office.
This is another example of Apple labeling something "pro" and then not understanding the workflow of their pro customers. They did that with FinalCutPro and they did it when they moved away from the tower configuration of the MacPro.
Every time Apple switches ports, they tell the market how their new choices are the greatest and how they want both manufacturers and consumers to commit to that port. Then after a few years, they change their minds and they move on to something else. Did they really need to drop Mag-safe? What about all the people who bought extra power supplies to keep at home/office, etc.? HDMI is ubiquitous on TVs and receivers and the cables have become inexpensive, but now I've got to buy an adapter that costs ten times what the cable cost?
What was Apple's rationale for going solely to USB-C? Was it because they truly think this port is the future and that the accessory market will fully move to that port and that it provides technological advantages? Or was it really because of Ive's anal-obsessiveness over thinness and not wanting to look at different sized/shaped ports on the side of the machine? What drives me crazy is that Apple wants the machine to have this superior industrial design so that it looks great in photos and in ads, but they have no problem with users having to stick a bunch of dongles and adapters on the thing. It's the same with the iPhone and the obsession with thinness, but then we have to put it in a case because it can't survive a fall. So few are really seeing and feeling the thinness anyway. Sometimes I think people at Apple don't actually use the products they produce in the real world.
So, IMO, criticism is warranted. If Apple wants my money, they're going to have to do a bit better. I hate using PCs at work, but I'm not spending $4K to $5K on my next computer and I don't want to feel like I have less than what I have today. So as much as I hate Windows, my next laptop might actually be a Windows machine. And I've been an Apple customer for 35 years.
Absolutely agree with this comment. Whats the point of thin iPhone if I have to put a case around the thing to protect it from looking like a beat-up pickup truck after a few days in my pocket without a case. Here's an idea Mr Ive, make the new iPhone out of scratch proof ceramics. Now that would be innovation! Yep and I have been buying PCs since DOS v1.
Comments
I hope they'll credit me the difference for the TB3-to-TB2 adapter I have on order.
EDIT: I had an online chat with a pleasant lady at Apple and she updated the order with the new price.
... That's less than an after Christmas sale for most vendors.
Jobs thought customer first. Cook needs to start doing the same. Anybody can build hardware with off the shelf components. It takes an exceptional organization to meet the needs of its customers.
This whole thing is unbelievably pedantic on Apple's part. Virtually none of the press release is even true. "We realize.." No, you don't.
"legacy connectors" - No, professional, necessary connectors.
"a transition" - No, Apple, you will make the transition, not others.
It is astounding that a "computer" cannot interface with USB or with a disc anymore. I am getting old! These are not real computers. They should cost $300 maximum.
I have superior equipment that is older (much of it Apple). With things like replaceable hard drives, replaceable batteries and upgradeable RAM. I am amazed that new equipment you buy today is inferior to what I have. My MBP has Firewire, several USB ports, optical out (which I use)... etc. And 1TB storage. And it was cheap! Rawr I am old, time for my nap.
i guarantee this new MBP will smoke your old crap in every meaningful performance test any day of the week. your big ass removable batteries, hard drives and ram do me absolutely NO good for completing my work. i max my machines out from Day 1 and start generating value. when they get too slow i replace them. (usually by reselling!). that's it. i've never upgraded a notebook hard drive, that's absurd. if the battery fails i drop it off with service.
these are tools, not hobby machines for tinkerers. get a raspberry pi for that.
could you explain your logic there?
There is so much pure, sculpted techno eroticism in the new form factor that you'd have to be a puritanical ass-wipe to give a second's thought to how it looks with an adapter or two plugged into it.
I can't believe the pettiness of you people. The new MBP is the culmination of five years of foresighted development, if you include —as you must — the investments they were jumping on in IGZO development going that far back to Japan, no less, where the tech was developed.
Same with the keyboard. If Swiss watchmakers made keyboard switches, they would maybe be like this. Probably another five years in the making. And the aluminum machining — try to find a wonky tenth of a millimeter of misfit. How long have they been developing that? And the asymmetric fans, and so on.
Go get yourself a Windows machine. You may not deserve to handle one of these unless you come around. Meanwhile, millions are going to get limitless pleasure out of picking theirs up to pack it at the end of the day as they gladly take care to pack its adapters in the case with it.
Edit: you know why there's no USB A? It's too big, that's why. It's as obsolete as the headphone jack is on the iPhone. If you want them to make the base thicker just to accommodate that port, you're disqualified as an Apple observer.
I appreciate your conversation. My style is not your style. It sounds like my style is far less expensive and more efficient. I bought my MBP in 2010 for $1100. Today it has 8GB/1TB, 2.4 ghz core 2 duo. Still my main Apple machine. I also have a 16GB iMac from 2009. Yes, it's not a gamer king rig. I am also not a Final Cut movie editor. It's not much, but here is my point for you. A 2GB RAM / 250GB machine would suck even more. And with today's Apple, an under-specced brick is what you will soon have., unless you want to get raped by buying a heavily-specced machine from Apple. I understand they want $3k per computer but for me, that is excessive. With non replaceable battery no less. Hahahaha.
My work machines are extremely unglamorous too, because I use them for work, not to glorify my boyhood.
Maybe I don't fully grasp the backup options for the iDrive cloud. But I don't think backup programs like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner will back up cloud-based files. CrashPlan will not. Not sure about Time Machine.
Even if Time Machine does perform an iDrive Cloud backup, it's still too buggy to for business users in my opinion.
If the MacBook Pro came with an easily upgradable and non-propriety internal drive upgrade option, then I might not be so resistant to the high price.
We need more flexibility in the Pro models.
That's basically it. Not bad for those willing to buy one of these new models but it will do little to turn the tide in terms of backlash. It might even backfire on them and be seen as cynical. That said, the discounts on the LG monitors are nice ones.
We need another 'Yikes'.
Do you not think there is a breaking point at which a market segment says enough?
I don't know a single pro in the world that cares about 'thin'. They want more battery life and better gpu/cpu's, functionality and convenience.
FFS man, you can line the entire inside of the new spaceship campus with Apple dongles and cables.
It's like Cook is Christopher Walken in the cowbell sketch... "I have a fever - and the only cure is more dongles..."