Is it too much to ask that when a guessing factory like Gartner puts out their guesstimates, AI could take the time to add "Gartner claims" or "Estimate:" to the headline in order to make it accurate? This is a guess by a company known for being off (sometimes quite wildly) in their estimates. Perhaps Apple did see a dip in sales, but to date Gartner has never called it exactly right, but your headline states this guesstimate as a fact.
Is it too much to ask that when a guessing factory like Gartner puts out their guesstimates, AI could take the time to add "Gartner claims" or "Estimate:" to the headline in order to make it accurate? This is a guess by a company known for being off (sometimes quite wildly) in their estimates. Perhaps Apple did see a dip in sales, but to date Gartner has never called it exactly right, but your headline states this guesstimate as a fact.
That kind of journalism (accuracy in reporting) wouldn’t generate enough ad revenue. Gotta keep those headlines punchy, edgy, controversial, and implicative to draw those eyeballs in.
Price, price, price. Apple is more and more positioning itself as a luxury upscale Rolex or Mercedes type product. Under Jobs they were just a quality electronics company that sold at a premium. Their entry level devices are the same price as others premium products. I've said before that Jobs knew the value of having a quality product that could reach a wider audience. Under current management, it is margins, margins, margins.
You obviously don't know much. Margins were about the same under Jobs. Remember when Jobs released the high-priced and under-spec' MBA? Remember the original cost of the iPhone? I could go on...
The final tally makes no sense whatsoever. 63876 for 2016 and 61105 for 2017. How could that translate to 4.3% growth?
it's missing the minus sign -4.3%, but it's not exactly right.
Myself and no one I know bought the MacBook Pro redesign even though we used to buy the new model every year. The problem is the ports and the touch bar. We disagreed with Schiller who said the new MBPs are selling great.
And? I personally know MANY people who have happily purchased the new MBPs, and are extremely satisfied. I also recommend them whenever anyone asks my opinion about a new laptop. As for "disagreeing" with Phil Schiller, you don't have the info to disagree with him.
I just bought a maxed out 2017 i7 iMac... and I have to say i'm quite disappointed... the first time ever in 30 years. The screen isn't as nice as the 2015 even thou it's supposed to be a better panel. (professionally calibrated). It has slightly more detail in shadows, but very muted / desaturated colors. No vibrancy. The 'brightness' improvement is false advertising. It's no brighter than the 2015 panel. This is from both visual and spider readings.
The keyboard (that I paid an extra $40 for keypad) is a total piece of shit! It feels cheap - because it is cheap. It's barely angled unlike the previous keyboards. The keys are super cheap, noisy, wobble, and I'm having nothing but repeat or mis-key problems. And to top it all off, they removed the usb ports on the side.
I don't notice any improvement over the 2015 in RL performance. Running all the benchmarks the new one is scoring slightly higher. All-in-all... it's a bit faster on paper, but built cheaper.
My first new Mac that i'm disappointed in. Welcome to Tim's world.
1. Hardware costs are always an issue. Produce poor machines as far as a cost/benefit basis goes and you will loose sales. The sis exactly what is happening with the Mac Mini, the Mac Pro, the MBA and the iMacs. The only hardware selling well are the MBP's.
2. Apples hardware line up is crap! No viable updates the the Mac Book Air, the Mini, the Mac Pro and questionable updates the the iMac's have left the line up in the crapper. It very much feels like Apple doesn't give a damn about the Mac.
3. I'm actually neutral on the Touch bar. It is one of those things that will be great for some tasks and a complete failure for others. If it fits a work flow it will be well regarded by those users.
I just don't get your beef with iMacs. They're great machines for the those that purchase them. They are built like tanks and by the time they do outlive their usefulness which is years, no one will want to upgrade them, but buy a new one. Let it go man. My 2009 iMac is still humming at the office. My 5K iMac is working great alongside an additional ("old") Apple 27" LED monitor. I will GLADLY take Apple's hardware when just about any other competitors offering would have failed miserably, and I say that from experience.
I'm looking forward to that iMac Pro, as are many others as well. The Mac mini had its time. If Apple does decide to do something with it, good. It's a niche product as far as I'm concerned.
I just bought a maxed out 2017 i7 iMac... and I have to say i'm quite disappointed... the first time ever in 30 years. The screen isn't as nice as the 2015 even thou it's supposed to be a better panel. (professionally calibrated). It has slightly more detail in shadows, but very muted / desaturated colors. No vibrancy. The 'brightness' improvement is false advertising. It's no brighter than the 2015 panel. This is from both visual and spider readings.
The keyboard (that I paid an extra $40 for keypad) is a total piece of shit! It feels cheap - because it is cheap. It's barely angled unlike the previous keyboards. The keys are super cheap, noisy, wobble, and I'm having nothing but repeat or mis-key problems. And to top it all off, they removed the usb ports on the side.
I don't notice any improvement over the 2015 in RL performance. Running all the benchmarks the new one is scoring slightly higher. All-in-all... it's a bit faster on paper, but built cheaper.
My first new Mac that i'm disappointed in. Welcome to Tim's world.
I've got both keyboards and they feel the same to me. The mis-key problem is probably down to a lack of proficiency in touch-typing. If you can't touch-type then the Apple keyboard is not for you.
Cant comment on the screen as I haven't seen one outside of an Apple shop.
Oddly enough though, I prefer the MacBook Pro keyboard to the standalone one.
Market winners by the way are NOT the largest volumes, but the most margin dollars per unit sale.
A computer that makes 90% margin with a unit sale of 1?
I think Apple should at least be aiming at the 10% market share. And it is perfectly achievable with their current Margin, it is a simply the fact Apple dont care about the Mac any more. They are giving all the attention to iOS devices. The updated iMac? iMac Pro? Coming Mac Pro? None of these would have happen if the community wasn't shouting and barking about it. And until some of their long times friends from Apple management switching to Windows did they realize it was a mess. Especially on the Mac Pro.
I am hoping the GPU apple is making will save some cost on future Mac.
I just bought a maxed out 2017 i7 iMac... and I have to say i'm quite disappointed... the first time ever in 30 years. The screen isn't as nice as the 2015 even thou it's supposed to be a better panel. (professionally calibrated). It has slightly more detail in shadows, but very muted / desaturated colors. No vibrancy. The 'brightness' improvement is false advertising. It's no brighter than the 2015 panel. This is from both visual and spider readings.
The keyboard (that I paid an extra $40 for keypad) is a total piece of shit! It feels cheap - because it is cheap. It's barely angled unlike the previous keyboards. The keys are super cheap, noisy, wobble, and I'm having nothing but repeat or mis-key problems. And to top it all off, they removed the usb ports on the side.
I don't notice any improvement over the 2015 in RL performance. Running all the benchmarks the new one is scoring slightly higher. All-in-all... it's a bit faster on paper, but built cheaper.
My first new Mac that i'm disappointed in. Welcome to Tim's world.
The final tally makes no sense whatsoever. 63876 for 2016 and 61105 for 2017. How could that translate to 4.3% growth?
it's missing the minus sign -4.3%, but it's not exactly right.
Myself and no one I know bought the MacBook Pro redesign even though we used to buy the new model every year. The problem is the ports and the touch bar. We disagreed with Schiller who said the new MBPs are selling great.
The Ports were a disappointment for sure. But for developers to seriously consider the TouchBar, Apple needs to include it in part of every MacBook and every Apple keyboard; otherwise, it won't be worth developers' time.
Yep. Right now I don't have an interest in the TouchBar (would have really like the TouchID but can stand the new keyboard) so I just bought a 2015 MBP. But it does seem like Apple should have held up the release of the new iMacs for when they have a TouchBar/TouchID keyboard ready to go with it . And they should have also put the TouchBar on the MacBook and MacBookAir. The other problem is that the Premium for the TouchBar screen is too expensive. It should have only been $100 - $150 more. $300.00 more for something that does little more than a regular keyboard is too much. Fish or cut bait. Apple needs to either put it every where because it's Apple's apple to WIN 10's full touch screens or drop it and move on to making a full touch enabled macOS. right now they are just waiting on MS to stumble onto something that works.
I just bought a maxed out 2017 i7 iMac... and I have to say i'm quite disappointed... the first time ever in 30 years. The screen isn't as nice as the 2015 even thou it's supposed to be a better panel. (professionally calibrated). It has slightly more detail in shadows, but very muted / desaturated colors. No vibrancy. The 'brightness' improvement is false advertising. It's no brighter than the 2015 panel. This is from both visual and spider readings. ... I don't notice any improvement over the 2015 in RL performance. Running all the benchmarks the new one is scoring slightly higher. All-in-all... it's a bit faster on paper, but built cheaper.
My first new Mac that i'm disappointed in. Welcome to Tim's world.
If you aren't doing DCI P3 the iMac screen is just okay. An aRGB screen would be better than either if you are doing print.
If you are using the older Spyder 3 or 4 it's also meh. My "guy" prefers i1 display Pro but honestly I just have him cal because I'm a nerd. Very few folks will notice anything I do after uploading to YouTube.
If you don't see any speed improvement in your workflow then you didn't need a maxed out 2015 either. The GPU is much better.
It is about 2x faster to transcode 4k H264 to ProRes proxy, and about 2x faster exporting to 4k H264 in FCPX. That's huge. Editing 2 cam 4K is now just as fast as editing 1 cam on the 2015.
I'm getting the latest MBP because coding is my day job and FCPX is just a hobby but to claim that the 2017 isn't faster in real world workflows is BS. Maybe not faster in your mystery workflow with questionable calibration but that's not Tim's fault.
I just bought a maxed out 2017 i7 iMac... and I have to say i'm quite disappointed... the first time ever in 30 years. The screen isn't as nice as the 2015 even thou it's supposed to be a better panel. (professionally calibrated). It has slightly more detail in shadows, but very muted / desaturated colors. No vibrancy. The 'brightness' improvement is false advertising. It's no brighter than the 2015 panel. This is from both visual and spider readings.
The keyboard (that I paid an extra $40 for keypad) is a total piece of shit! It feels cheap - because it is cheap. It's barely angled unlike the previous keyboards. The keys are super cheap, noisy, wobble, and I'm having nothing but repeat or mis-key problems. And to top it all off, they removed the usb ports on the side.
I don't notice any improvement over the 2015 in RL performance. Running all the benchmarks the new one is scoring slightly higher. All-in-all... it's a bit faster on paper, but built cheaper.
My first new Mac that i'm disappointed in. Welcome to Tim's world.
I've got both keyboards and they feel the same to me. The mis-key problem is probably down to a lack of proficiency in touch-typing. If you can't touch-type then the Apple keyboard is not for you.
Cant comment on the screen as I haven't seen one outside of an Apple shop.
Oddly enough though, I prefer the MacBook Pro keyboard to the standalone one.
To be clear, he's talking about the wired keyboard MB110LL/B, which Apple discontinued in June. It was never a BTO option for the 2015 iMac, so it was purchased separately. The current Magic Keyboard was introduced with the 2015 iMac. So this is a complaint from 2015. And he paid an extra $30 for the numeric keypad, not "$40" -- so take that for what you will.
On bitmod's reaction to the new screen/display, that's odd. I, too, am thinking of replacing a Late 2015 5K Retina iMac with the 2017 edition. But I can't find much information on the comparison. Obviously brightness is up "43%" whatever that means, but that's not my focus. For me, it's more about color. The DCI-P3 color gamut is the same, but the handling of those billion colors may be improved with "10-bit dithering."
Back in 2015, when El Capitan was released with support for 10-bit color, there was a lot of back-and-forth about the Retina iMac hardware, with a lot of people (on MacRumors, for example) declaring that it was a 10-bit display. But that proved to be wrong and in fact it was an 8-bit display. This seems to still be the case in 2017.
The only decent nugget of information I can find about this is from Rene Ritchie at iMore:
"... 10-bit dithering makes sure all those reds, greens, and every color around and in between transitions smoothly and with no unsightly banding or stepping. The way it works is that 10-bit color information is sent to the TCON (Apple's custom timing controller), which then dithers it specially and temporally for display on the 8-bit panel. ..."
Price, price, price. Apple is more and more positioning itself as a luxury upscale Rolex or Mercedes type product. Under Jobs they were just a quality electronics company that sold at a premium. Their entry level devices are the same price as others premium products. I've said before that Jobs knew the value of having a quality product that could reach a wider audience. Under current management, it is margins, margins, margins.
You obviously don't know much. Margins were about the same under Jobs. Remember when Jobs released the high-priced and under-spec' MBA? Remember the original cost of the iPhone? I could go on...
Ok, you don't seem to know much about history. The MacBook Air was critically acclaimed for its cutting edge technology but sold poorly until the price dropped precipitously a year later. The original iPhone suffered from bad press related to its high price resulting in a large $200 price cut and a $100 store credit given to early adopters. If you do a little research before you type, you would find that Apple's margins have (with a few blips here and there) steadily increased since 2007. I would suggest that it is actually you who knows little about margins. I could go on...
We have the 2009 27" 2TB iMac. Ordered the day after they were announced. I nearly feinted when I heard of the 27", which I don't think was speculated on in advance. Was already drooling over 24" of the day. I was like that graphic we see here with the "Shut up and take my money!".
If memory serves it was $2600 up-spec'd.
Am I wrong to think that SSD prices are taking a long time to come down?
Fusion drive may be fantastic and indistinguishable for most uses, but it's a stop-gap.
Today's 27" iMac 2TB SSD upgrade is $1400. Really would like next iMac to be all-SSD, without reduction in capacity. It's a reach I know.
PS: Our use-case is 50,000 family photos in iPhoto (switched to Photos [Grrrr]) and not-much else. HD getting really slow with that. I haven't been able to force myself to make an "old" Library with the pre-historic stuff, and a "new" library going-forward. My anxiety is I'll rarely go look at the old, and it will be effectively lost, even though it's a just a command-click away. Sheesh. I should just do it.
The final tally makes no sense whatsoever. 63876 for 2016 and 61105 for 2017. How could that translate to 4.3% growth?
it's missing the minus sign -4.3%, but it's not exactly right.
Myself and no one I know bought the MacBook Pro redesign even though we used to buy the new model every year. The problem is the ports and the touch bar. We disagreed with Schiller who said the new MBPs are selling great.
The Ports were a disappointment for sure. But for developers to seriously consider the TouchBar, Apple needs to include it in part of every MacBook and every Apple keyboard; otherwise, it won't be worth developers' time.
I'm not interested it it at all unless they're physical buttons and an escape key is one of the reliably placed buttons. So, either they have to add the touch bar above a row of physical function buttons like is there without the touch bar or they have to get physical buttons with little displays on them (I see this coming eventually but not any time soon).
Not shocking at all. It's a saturated and likely falling market for Apple computers.
• The consumers and power-users who are going to switch have done so. The rest are diehards or disinterested. Some are switching back.
• The consumers who want to buy iMacs and MacBooks have done so and won't buy again until their existing machines die.
• The power-users who want a workstation are not buying because Apple doesn't make one.
• Many working pros who upgrade often are chilled by Apple's recent "pro" crap. Some are just going back to PCs because of a lack of workstation-class hardware in Apple's offerings. Others are waiting for the iMac Pro, and yet others are waiting for the Mac Pro (me).
• The Mac Pro was a joke to some from day one but is now a joke to all today because of the price of 2013 hardware sold today.
• The Mac mini hasn't seen an update in a long time and is suffering from high cost and not being bleeding edge. Plus:
• Apple sells no displays of their own for Mac minis.
• Tablets, especially with keyboards, are taking up a lot of the basic computer usage and cutting into laptop sales, and probably even iMac sales from the end consumers who just don't need a Mac to consume the internet or type up documents.
1. Hardware costs are always an issue. Produce poor machines as far as a cost/benefit basis goes and you will loose sales. The sis exactly what is happening with the Mac Mini, the Mac Pro, the MBA and the iMacs. The only hardware selling well are the MBP's.
2. Apples hardware line up is crap! No viable updates the the Mac Book Air, the Mini, the Mac Pro and questionable updates the the iMac's have left the line up in the crapper. It very much feels like Apple doesn't give a damn about the Mac.
3. I'm actually neutral on the Touch bar. It is one of those things that will be great for some tasks and a complete failure for others. If it fits a work flow it will be well regarded by those users.
I just don't get your beef with iMacs. They're great machines for the those that purchase them. They are built like tanks and by the time they do outlive their usefulness which is years, no one will want to upgrade them, but buy a new one. Let it go man. My 2009 iMac is still humming at the office. My 5K iMac is working great alongside an additional ("old") Apple 27" LED monitor. I will GLADLY take Apple's hardware when just about any other competitors offering would have failed miserably, and I say that from experience.
I'm looking forward to that iMac Pro, as are many others as well. The Mac mini had its time. If Apple does decide to do something with it, good. It's a niche product as far as I'm concerned.
Exactly! This is why selling a tower at a similar price point to an iMac never worked. Apple has tried this in the past. Sure it was many years ago with the G4 Cube and the PowerMac G5, but both models never caught on. The Mac mini for that matter never really caught on to where the iMac is today.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the iMac. For years its worked brilliantly for Apple and I don't see that stopping. iMacs last easily 5-7yrs for a typical consumer, even in a school environment. Its a very robust computer with an excellent screen on it. If you want a tower with a screen, you know where to look...where its always been available. Apple is never going to make a tower for the consumer. It never really has if you think about it, and I don't see it as necessary today, or in the future. There are no significant advantages of Apple making a tower other than just to shut up a few people who think they need to install their own video card, or they want to use their 7yr old display, etc.
Comments
Period.
The screen isn't as nice as the 2015 even thou it's supposed to be a better panel. (professionally calibrated). It has slightly more detail in shadows, but very muted / desaturated colors. No vibrancy.
The 'brightness' improvement is false advertising. It's no brighter than the 2015 panel. This is from both visual and spider readings.
The keyboard (that I paid an extra $40 for keypad) is a total piece of shit!
It feels cheap - because it is cheap. It's barely angled unlike the previous keyboards. The keys are super cheap, noisy, wobble, and I'm having nothing but repeat or mis-key problems. And to top it all off, they removed the usb ports on the side.
I don't notice any improvement over the 2015 in RL performance. Running all the benchmarks the new one is scoring slightly higher.
All-in-all... it's a bit faster on paper, but built cheaper.
My first new Mac that i'm disappointed in.
Welcome to Tim's world.
I'm looking forward to that iMac Pro, as are many others as well. The Mac mini had its time. If Apple does decide to do something with it, good. It's a niche product as far as I'm concerned.
READ the press release! Hell, just read the title
"Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 4.3 Percent in Second Quarter of 2017"
Global PC Shipments Decrease for 11th Straight Quarter"
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3759964
Cant comment on the screen as I haven't seen one outside of an Apple shop.
Oddly enough though, I prefer the MacBook Pro keyboard to the standalone one.
A computer that makes 90% margin with a unit sale of 1?
I think Apple should at least be aiming at the 10% market share. And it is perfectly achievable with their current Margin, it is a simply the fact Apple dont care about the Mac any more. They are giving all the attention to iOS devices. The updated iMac? iMac Pro? Coming Mac Pro? None of these would have happen if the community wasn't shouting and barking about it. And until some of their long times friends from Apple management switching to Windows did they realize it was a mess. Especially on the Mac Pro.
I am hoping the GPU apple is making will save some cost on future Mac.
But it does seem like Apple should have held up the release of the new iMacs for when they have a TouchBar/TouchID keyboard ready to go with it . And they should have also put the TouchBar on the MacBook and MacBookAir. The other problem is that the Premium for the TouchBar screen is too expensive. It should have only been $100 - $150 more. $300.00 more for something that does little more than a regular keyboard is too much. Fish or cut bait. Apple needs to either put it every where because it's Apple's apple to WIN 10's full touch screens or drop it and move on to making a full touch enabled macOS. right now they are just waiting on MS to stumble onto something that works.
If you are using the older Spyder 3 or 4 it's also meh. My "guy" prefers i1 display Pro but honestly I just have him cal because I'm a nerd. Very few folks will notice anything I do after uploading to YouTube.
If you don't see any speed improvement in your workflow then you didn't need a maxed out 2015 either. The GPU is much better.
It is about 2x faster to transcode 4k H264 to ProRes proxy, and about 2x faster exporting to 4k H264 in FCPX. That's huge. Editing 2 cam 4K is now just as fast as editing 1 cam on the 2015.
I'm getting the latest MBP because coding is my day job and FCPX is just a hobby but to claim that the 2017 isn't faster in real world workflows is BS. Maybe not faster in your mystery workflow with questionable calibration but that's not Tim's fault.
On bitmod's reaction to the new screen/display, that's odd. I, too, am thinking of replacing a Late 2015 5K Retina iMac with the 2017 edition. But I can't find much information on the comparison. Obviously brightness is up "43%" whatever that means, but that's not my focus. For me, it's more about color. The DCI-P3 color gamut is the same, but the handling of those billion colors may be improved with "10-bit dithering."
Back in 2015, when El Capitan was released with support for 10-bit color, there was a lot of back-and-forth about the Retina iMac hardware, with a lot of people (on MacRumors, for example) declaring that it was a 10-bit display. But that proved to be wrong and in fact it was an 8-bit display. This seems to still be the case in 2017.
The only decent nugget of information I can find about this is from Rene Ritchie at iMore:
"... 10-bit dithering makes sure all those reds, greens, and every color around and in between transitions smoothly and with no unsightly banding or stepping. The way it works is that 10-bit color information is sent to the TCON (Apple's custom timing controller), which then dithers it specially and temporally for display on the 8-bit panel. ..."
Is this new, or just improved in 2017?
If memory serves it was $2600 up-spec'd.
Am I wrong to think that SSD prices are taking a long time to come down?
Fusion drive may be fantastic and indistinguishable for most uses, but it's a stop-gap.
Today's 27" iMac 2TB SSD upgrade is $1400. Really would like next iMac to be all-SSD, without reduction in capacity. It's a reach I know.
PS: Our use-case is 50,000 family photos in iPhoto (switched to Photos [Grrrr]) and not-much else. HD getting really slow with that. I haven't been able to force myself to make an "old" Library with the pre-historic stuff, and a "new" library going-forward. My anxiety is I'll rarely go look at the old, and it will be effectively lost, even though it's a just a command-click away. Sheesh. I should just do it.
E.
• The consumers and power-users who are going to switch have done so. The rest are diehards or disinterested. Some are switching back.
• The consumers who want to buy iMacs and MacBooks have done so and won't buy again until their existing machines die.
• The power-users who want a workstation are not buying because Apple doesn't make one.
• Many working pros who upgrade often are chilled by Apple's recent "pro" crap. Some are just going back to PCs because of a lack of workstation-class hardware in Apple's offerings. Others are waiting for the iMac Pro, and yet others are waiting for the Mac Pro (me).
• The Mac Pro was a joke to some from day one but is now a joke to all today because of the price of 2013 hardware sold today.
• The Mac mini hasn't seen an update in a long time and is suffering from high cost and not being bleeding edge. Plus:
• Apple sells no displays of their own for Mac minis.
• Tablets, especially with keyboards, are taking up a lot of the basic computer usage and cutting into laptop sales, and probably even iMac sales from the end consumers who just don't need a Mac to consume the internet or type up documents.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the iMac. For years its worked brilliantly for Apple and I don't see that stopping. iMacs last easily 5-7yrs for a typical consumer, even in a school environment. Its a very robust computer with an excellent screen on it. If you want a tower with a screen, you know where to look...where its always been available. Apple is never going to make a tower for the consumer. It never really has if you think about it, and I don't see it as necessary today, or in the future. There are no significant advantages of Apple making a tower other than just to shut up a few people who think they need to install their own video card, or they want to use their 7yr old display, etc.