U.S. Mac Sales Flat in April as iPod Sales Continue to Slide

nicmr said:

iPod is doomed

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Not really. There's no problem for Apple having a little corner in each store selling iPods, and a bit of space on their website, and slowly shrinking number of people at Foxconn building the devices. Even if it is only 2 percent of Apple's revenue, two percent of Apple's revenue is an awful lot of money. No company would give up on that amount of sales.

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OllyW said:

What about this one?

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They seem to have to drop the price on this one all the time, so they might have it for sale, but they are obviously not _selling_ it. And it is slower than any Retina MBP that Apple sells.

Four oF NINE said:

Mac computers remain the benchmark for computers. Nothing else comes close.

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Apart from the fact that hardware in Macs is often dated in comparison to their PC competitors. Hardly a benchmark unless you were talking about design.

Well I did my part.
Bought a 21" iMac over the weekend.

gnasher729 said:

I'm probably repeating myself...

As usual, lilo tries putting a negative spin on things, and as usual, she fails. Most cheap laptops that are sold come with the absolute bottom line of Intel or worse AMD processors. For example, Dell doesn't sell anything with quad core processors that is cheaper than a MacBook Pro with Retina display.

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Dell sells cheap laptop. So what? If you talk about benchmarks, Dell's top of the line laptops (mobile workstations) easily beat Mac Book Pros.

cclloyd said:

I know nobody who bought an iPod new in the last 3 years.

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Do any of your friends work out??

chirpie said:

I think the iPod's road will be harder and harder as time marches on. Everyone and their dog has a phone that, once they upgrade, you could hand it off to someone else, and even if that person doesn't use the functionality of the phone, they're still left with something that's essentially a top of the line iPod Touch.

Can you say nearing point of device saturation? ^_^;

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True, but for kids, who don't need a phone, the iPod touch is still a great option.

Does this really matter?

Mac and iPad sales of last year made Apple the top single computer vendor in the world, with 14.6% of the market.

There are also people who have bought iPad's that will never buy a Mac... So with figures like that, cannibalisation is not a real issue, in terms of overall business model success.

Rocko1 said:

True, but for kids, who don't need a phone, the iPod touch is still a great option.

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maybe in the third world, but here in the USA kids get iphones and other smartphones

lilo777 said:

There is one problem with this statement: Mac computers always lag behind PCs in benchmarks.

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And price/performance ratios.

They need to seriously think about being fair with both the standard configurations and their build to order prices.

There's nothing right about their pricing at all. They're making enough from iTunes/iGadgets to subsidise a "fair pricing" model for their Mac range, then it wouldn't be stigmatised with the reputation of "Pretty, easy to use but obscenely over-priced" that the platform currently has.

nicmr said:

iPod is doomed

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Who needs an iPod when you already have an iPhone?

When the iPhone slides it will be because the screen is too narrow. Doesn't make much sense with the internet.

iMacs are doing well because Windows 8 SUX big time and iUsers remember their good hardware from the iPhone and iPad.

Otherwise, almost everything is down because of the high cost of gas, low wages, and political unrest.

Zachari said:

Do you have children? Are you a child? All of my little siblings including all of there friends have iPod touches. Parents buy them for there kids instead of having to fork out the cash for a contract. As long as little children are around and apple keeps creating them, there will be a demand.

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I bought a 160GB Classic and the old iPod Nano 16GB last summer. I wanted to buy the new Nano until I saw it;s size. I still use my iPhone for music ocasionally as well but the Classic is my player in the car because I can bring everything plus podcasts and still have a little room left over.

lilo777 said:

There is one problem with this statement: Mac computers always lag behind PCs in benchmarks.

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We love it that way, because benchmarks and specs don't mean anything.

It's the total experience.

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nicmr said:

iPod is doomed

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What's an iPod?

BB1970 said:

Do any of your friends work out??

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As it happens, I bought an iPod last week for working out - a refurbished 6th generation Nano. In my little opinion, Apple made the Nano less useful for working out up by changing the form factor of the Nano to something larger and clip-less.

"iPod Phone"

The iPod is not dead. I like to think of the iPhone as an iPod with a phone it.

I've always had an iPod and I still do. Only I have to pay a stupid Verizon monthly bill for it.

What you're calling iPod is just a wi-fi only iPhone.

roadbloc said:

Apart from the fact that hardware in Macs is often dated in comparison to their PC competitors. Hardly a benchmark unless you were talking about design.

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The Mac Pro is pretty much the only thing you can call dated in the current lineup. iMacs are great, Mac Minis are great, laptops are great, with an iminient refresh likely, and we're supposed to see something for the Mac Pro in the future as well.

Benchmark means more than just hardware, too. An outdated Mac is still built better and runs a better OS than the latest Acer/HP/Dell on the market.

MrNomNoms said:

1) When you say 'analyst' aren't you really saying '******** artist'?
2) When over half of Apple's revenue comes from outside of the US with the emerging market being the growth centre - pray tell why is there still this US-centric outlook on Apple or in fact any other business?
3) iPod sales were always going to decline - the idea of it being 'shocking' dumb founds me given that Apple has never made it a secret that there is a transition occurring.
4) Who the hell is Piper Jaffray and why should I take what they have over what some random drunk on the corner says about 'the world is coming to an end'? at least the guy in the corner is trying to dress up his ranting behind the pretentious charade of a business suit!

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1. Of cause. But websites like to quote analysts, it makes them think they sound important.
2. Because US centric rumour websites like US centric rumours.
3. A lot of people can't see things happening till it slaps them in the face. I knew the iPad/iPhone spelled the end of the iPod. A slow death it would be. The golden age of the stand alone iPod is over. That's why things like the watch is supposedly being developed. Apple realise people people want music playing capabilities within their other devices these days. And they got it with the iPad/iPhone. So a music playing watch firs this just nicely.
4. Some random analyst says it and the rumour websites report it. For us as readers we don't even for a second think this crap is fact. Only an idiot would think that (mind you a lot of people do believe these). For us it's nice to see the analyst trends and see on the whole what they think Apple might be doing.

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rneglia said:

The iPod is not dead. I like to think of the iPhone as an iPod with a phone it.

I've always had an iPod and I still do. Only I have to pay a stupid Verizon monthly bill for it.

What you're calling iPod is just a wi-fi only iPhone.

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I think the opposite. What you call an iPhone is just an iPod touch that can make phone calls. And really an iPod Touch is an iPad ultra mini. Or the two iPads are Touches large and extra large.

MacRumors said:

On the iPod side, Munster only briefly cites NPD data showing sales sliding 36% year-over-year, compared to the Piper Jaffray estimate of a 23% decline for the entire quarter on a worldwide basis. But with iPod sales now representing only about 2% of Apple's revenue, the impact of the continued decline in iPod sales as customers shift increasingly to smartphones will be negligible.

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Not surprised, even the kids have smartphones these days. Nobody wants to carry an iPod as well. The cheaper iPhone will probably replace the iPod touch in due course.

They would sell more if they put a bigger memory and made it cheaper so iPod classic owners can finally upgrade.

The iPod lives in a dead zone where it is not a disposable level rugged player for exercising, Sony even has one for swimmers for $99 if you can consider the disposable, and it is not a tablet size (the screen size) device or a phone (to use it as a phone, am I right?).

MacRumors (and other sites) should really stop posting these analysts estimates. They're often very inaccurate and just sir the pot for misinformation and fud.

Thunderhawks said:

We love it that way, because benchmarks and specs don't mean anything.

It's the total experience.

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And I thought that the better the benchmarks the better the experience. What's wrong with owning a faster computer?

cclloyd said:

I know nobody who bought an iPod new in the last 3 years.

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I bought a new 160GB Classic last month. My 5.5 gen 80GB finally died. I like having a separate music player from my Iphone. I also love the click wheel and loathe the interface on Iphone and Ipod touch for browsing a ton of music.

lilo777 said:

And I thought that the better the benchmarks the better the experience. What's wrong with owning a faster computer?

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Yea he totally ignores what high end components do for rendering, gaming and other serious workloads that require power.

TheHateMachine said:

Yea he totally ignores what high end components do for rendering, gaming and other serious workloads that require power.

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I've seen plenty of discussions showing the negligible difference of using ECC RAM and I can't see why with all the reductions in component costs such as RAM, multi-terabyte hard drives and large 250Gb+ SSDs that the next Mac Pro couldn't be an absolute beast yet start at a more affordable price point than it was introduced at. £1599 or less would make a lot of people happy.

Also, it's common knowledge that more often than not, Macs are the last to get truly high end GPUs, if they even get them at all.

lilo777 said:

There is one problem with this statement: Mac computers always lag behind PCs in benchmarks.

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There's just one problem with this statement: Mac computers always lag behind PCs in benchmarks that don't really matter.

i.e. I know I'll get five hours out of my MacBook Pro at university. My old Dell laptop (three years old now) struggled to last two hours. My screen is of a significantly higher standard than almost every laptop out there. Build quality's top notch, incredible support, high re-sale value.

I don't care if your laptop can do the Egypt OpenGLES Offscreen render or whatever 12% faster than my MacBook. I know for a fact Safari will be snappier for me than you can get it.

Also: Do some research.

lilo777 said:

If you talk about benchmarks, Dell's top of the line laptops (mobile workstations) easily beat Mac Book Pros.

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Depends on the metrics you choose.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57581290-37/macbook-pro-declared-best-performing-windows-laptop/