rmoo

saarek said:

The majority of PC Gamers don’t play with the most expensive hardware. A small, but vocal, percentage spend stupid money gaming hardware.

Look at the specs for the average AAA game and the M1 machines will fall within them. Sure, you’ll not be playing with graphic settings set to Ultra, but on any latest AAA game you’d have to spend thousands to do that PC or not.

I agree that Apple chasing ever higher margins over market share is strange. If they went back to a 30% margin and took 10-15% off the RRP of their Macs they’d move a lot more of them now that they have such a strong key selling point.

Sadly Tim Cook is obsessed with beyond greedy margins.

It isn't about "the most expensive hardware" but rather the minimum hardware. To play even average Steam games at 1080p at 30fps you need an Intel Core i5 with Nvidia GTX 1650 (or AMD Ryzen 5 with AMD RX 570 equivalent). A Windows machine with those can be had for $700. The cheapest MacBook - whether Intel or M1 - with the necessary graphics power costs at least twice as much.

Of course Apple will be back on top soon. But it is still funny when you consider that maybe 7-9 years ago lots of Apple pundits declared Microsoft to be finished. Allegedly iPads were going to kill of Windows PCs at the low end and the rest would migrate to Macs.

maury markowitz said:

... which is why there's basically 1 in 20 games on the Mac?

Its not like they can blame weak GPUs any more.

Come on you know that it is lack of market share. https://www.polygon.com/2020/1/27/21083870/rocket-league-mac-linux-service-refund-reason-why

And the reason for the lack of market share is the cost of Apple machines. Back in the Intel days, the entry point was $1000 for a dual core 1.1 GHz CPU that would have barely been able to play the 99 cent mobile games or the ancient stuff like Portal on Steam. For that you can get an Intel Core i7 device with a midrange Nvidia GPU. 

The switch to Apple Silicon has made things worse. Despite what Apple's PR is willing to allow you to believe, market share has not increased. But now the RAM on Macs can't be upgraded and there is no third party GPU support, even over Thunderbolt. Your "you can't blame weak GPUs" is false. While the M1 in the Mac Mini, MBA and entry level MBP has CPU performance comparable to many gaming machines, the GPU performance is nowhere close (on games anyway, not the Final Cut Pro stuff that Apple designed and optimized it for). To get RTX 3060 performance you need to spend $3300. That would get you an RTX 3080 system easy. Or two RTX 3060 systems with enough left over to buy an iPhone SE 2020. 

That is also why the "Apple needs to take gaming more seriously and invest in it" talk can't be taken seriously. The pricing just isn't competitive and the decades' old "total cost of ownership" sales like that Apple pushes doesn't work in gaming because hardware gets upgraded or replaced every 3 years - or less - in order to be able to play the latest games. No one who is even halfway serious about gaming is going to buy a Mac. What you want is for devs to ignore this, create or port games for macOS anyway and lose money. 

I don't even believe there is a real avenue for console gaming for Apple. The PS5 and the XBox One X cost $500. The M1 Mac Mini? $700. So the idea of Apple producing a machine with equivalent graphics power for $200 less than their current 8 core GPU device just isn't happening even if Apple chooses to emulate Microsoft and Sony and sell it at a loss. Maybe more things could be done with iPhone and iPad gaming, but they have tried Apple Arcade and it didn't have an impact, mainly because they didn't move nearly as many Apple TV units as they hoped (again, cost). 

Folks relax.

A lot of people thought that Apple would be much less impacted by the chip shortage and supply chain issues than everyone else because of Tim Cook's legendary experience in this area as well as Apple's ability to negotiate to be first in line. Seriously, I have seen comments on various blogs and sites bragging on this idea, but Apple indicated that they were impacted like everybody else, if not necessarily to the degree of everybody else.

Also, for anyone who was thinking that Apple - unlike everybody else - would be able to recover relatively quickly, Tim Cook stated that this was going to continue well into 2022:  https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-fiscal-q4-revenue-misses-expectations-eps-in-line-citing-uncertain-macro-environment/

Really, what do you all want from the media and the markets on this anyway? It isn't their job to be Apple boosters and cheerleaders. If a company misses their projections, their stock is going to fall. For the folks who claimed "but Apple broke records and if the Wall Street predictions were off that was their mistake and Apple shouldn't take a hit for that" ... please add 2+2. The Wall Street folks PREDICTED that Apple would break records. Look, if the record is 5, the prediction was 10 and then yes, they predicted that Apple would set a record. 

Guys, look. Intel met their projects and their stock dropped anyway. Why? Because - like Apple - Intel stated that they were impacted by the chip shortage and would be impacted for the foreseeable future. And because - like Apple - though Intel made a ton on some product lines (CPUs for servers and data centers like Apple on services) they made less than expected on others (PCs, like Apple made less than expected on the iPhone 13). In addition, while Intel met their projections and had YoY growth, AMD's growth was speculated to be much higher (which turned out to be true). 

So no, the markets aren't being unfair to Apple and neither are the article writers. Good grief, the people on their site are acting like the commenters on blogs of sports teams who never win championships. Everything other than unadulterated praise and unconditional love gets treated as a slight. Every positive comment about a competitor is proof that the world is against you. 

shamino said:

So the author is saying what?

Apple will someday cut off support for apps that don't upgrade, so you should summarily stop using them today.

To what purpose?  Make sure you suffer today instead of waiting for some unspecified time in the future when you might (or might not) be forced to?

That sounds pretty counter-productive to me.  Especially when Apple hasn't even completed their hardware transition.

Seems like someone is taking the business decisions of software companies and developers personally. The result of this current age of tech fandom where companies and their CEOs are the new Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant. Not that fandom of celebrities in any way better mind you.