deadringer

I think it’s quite likely that Vision Pro early adopters will include a significant proportion of expert systems developers. The price is trivial compared with the benefits of deeply interactive communication of complicated concepts in areas like science, tech, engineering and healthcare. So perhaps these will be the leaders that will give Apple a big boost in organisational computing and lead the way for consumers as the hardware cost falls. 

I think there’s a simple and overlooked explanation for why “analysts" and pundits always get Apple wrong.
Just like in the days of IBM and the Seven Dwarfs, the industry is again divided into two camps - vertical integrators and horizontal suppliers of bits of complete systems. They include the PC assemblers, Microsoft, Google, Samsung and all the rest. Like IBM, Apple is a dominant vertical integrator and technology leader, making the money for new development that makes the weather for everyone else. So competition isn’t defined only by brand, or by operating system, but also by business model.
The likes of Forrester, Gartner, IDC, and the rest don’t work for Apple. In Apple’s world they’re just a minor nuisance at the fringe. For them, all of the Apple world is a competitor. They scratch a living out of selling marketing services and information to all the others. The flashy and grossly wrong reports on Apple are bait. It does no harm to these guys to publish nonsense about a competitor, over and over again. Never mind the truth. Survival is what matters to them.

IDC and the like produce their contorted numbers because they're part of a different business model that competes with Apple’s. Apple does integrated systems. Microsoft, Samsung, Google, Windows PC vendors, Android phone vendors, et al produce components that the customer integrates. The only significant exception is the cellphone networks which Apple has not yet found a way to sideline. (I look forward to when they do - and Apple quality phone contract would be a relief!) Apple isn’t a customer for the tech market research companies, so they produce what the people who pay their bills want - apparently trashing a much more successful business model and product family. Wall Street also gets this wrong, hence the ever too-low stock price. They insist on rating Apple as a hardware vendor, vulnerable to hardware commoditisation. They don’t know the business well enough to recognise that Apple customers buy capability, not hardware. So, the 'industry gurus’ consistently trash Apple products and the ‘financial wizards’ consistently under-rate a remarkably successful company and business model with an extremely bright future. No wonder so many people don’t understand why Apple is so successful and will continue to be so.

I don’t think the Mac is going away. The problem with the Mac is that Apple isn’t in control of its core technology and Intel’s slowing pace of development is limiting Apple’s development headroom. Apple has already made highly successful Mac transitions from Motorola to PowerPC and then from PowerPC to Intel, remarkably seamlessly for users. It’s time to do that again and the A series processors may be the destination. Whether it will be the A series or a new processor, it must be a big job that will take a while. I’m looking forward to the day Apple announces new Macs that will outperform Intel PCs as much as iPhones outperform other phones.