jasenj1

The iPhone X seems to be what Apple should/could be doing with the MacPro: Extremely cutting edge technology, premium price, a pathfinder for manufacturing processes, etc. Apple will learn from the X and use it to pull high-end features to the more average devices. Very few people "need" what the X offers, but it will be a status symbol and people enjoy having the latest bauble.

Maybe the PC/workstation market doesn't have room for such a product. The "trash can" MacPro was touted as having some serious innovation, but I don't think it was very successful. Perhaps the things that are valuable in a handheld device are different than those in a PC. Expansion, upgrades, & repair are very valuable in a workstation/server.

It's nice to see Apple has a fancy new phone, but I still remember/think of them as a computer maker. I'd like to see a new Mac with as much hoopla & innovation.

sog35 said:
So why did Apple get rid of 3.5 inch iPhones?

sog35 said:

or you could buy a phablet and have both.

exactly my point

And end up with a phone that is too big to fit in a shirt/pants pocket and is therefore a pain to carry. And a screen that is a bit too small for reading books, playing games, or doing other things while at home. The use cases for phones & tablets are different. They overlap some, but there are plenty of places where they don't. 

How about you just go buy an MS Surface and have a PC, tablet, & phone all in one convenient package?

Metriacanthosaurus said:

Lot of uneducated arguing going on here.

Couple of things are pretty clear:

1. Apple thinks 7.9" iPad is a poor user experience, and having had one of them in my house to observe over time, it is in fact a terrible iPad. They would rather you get a real iPad for $329 and actually enjoy the product.

2. Apple has no interest in $299 price points or lower because it is not [as] profitable [as other products]. They tried it. Didn't work. And the 8 people who bought and love the iPad mini are not factors, sorry.

3. Today's change to the lineup tells you all you need to know. The mini is nearly done, and is only being kept around to appease the few that insist upon the usefulness of the form factor, but only at a price point they feel comfortable with. Hence the change to 128 GB, which doesn't cost them much more, but justifies the pricing at $399.

Point 1 is pure personal opinion. Many other people think the mini is a great iPad.

Point 2a: Apple (and many other companies) sell plenty of products for less than $299. So point #2a is invalid.

Point 2b, that the mini did not sell in large enough quantities to justify continued manufacturing, is something that requires insight into Apple's sales info - which I doubt anyone here has. Anecdotal evidence in this thread is that there are many happy owners (my family is one) and many usages where the mini is felt to be superior to a full-sized iPad or iPhone.

IMHO, Apple has made a mistake here. They are going to lose purchases of minis to Android tablets. It may well be that Apple wasn't selling enough minis to warrant the continued manufacturing costs, and they are content to lose those purchases. It's their business to run. And my option as a consumer to complain that I liked the product they're killing off (an entry level iPad mini).

Interesting.

On the whole ARM replacing Intel issue I'm of mixed feelings. One of the reasons for switching from PowerPC to Intel was that IBM did not have enough customers to pursue making chips that meshed with what Apple wanted (low power laptop chips). So Apple switched to Intel who has a ton of PC & laptop manufacturer customers. I suspect AMD comes into play somewhere as competition for Intel, but they seem to have fallen by the wayside of late. If Apple were to move to custom ARM chips, I suspect for the first few years people would be cheering and thumbing their noses at Intel. But five years down the line, when Intel is roused and continues innovating, and Apple realizes making your own CPUs is expensive and time consuming, I think people would start looking longingly at Intel and complaining that Apple is resting on their laurels, and how annoying it is to be locked into a proprietary CPU architecture, etc., etc.

And there's the whole issue with GPUs and drivers. Apple can barely get GPU drivers now. Imagine how terrible they will be when Apple has their own CPU architecture.

Or maybe that's just the natural march of progress. Apple goes off and does their own thing for a while. That gets troublesome and they move to a different solution. That gets stale and Apple heads out on their own. Repeat.