Lack of Hardware Updates Leading to Lighter-Than-Expected Quarterly Mac Sales

[stanleyparrales]

said that two weeks ago

that the new macbook will be released just with the arrival of mac OSX Mountain Lion, and having it on board.

yeah expect a massive update around june, even though macs are great apple is focused more on the ipad and iphone, so this leads me to belive that they might just integrate macbook pros and airs, i mean they dropped the macbook all together because people wanted either a lightweight laptop or a powerfull one so it makes sense to integrate everything,
and please drop the optical drive and have quad core on the 13inch that is all that i ask

 

[wikus]

Matte screens are garbage. Stop sitting by windows. Color accuracy is more important to me than reducing glare by putting an AG film all over the screen.

'Stop sitting by windows'

I used to think owning a mac was a status symbol; having the money to buy a nice machine to get some serious graphic design work. Now I see myself as being associated with individuals that display an unhealthy amount of arrogance.

Let me tell you something: your condescending attitude isn't needed, not on Macrumors or any other. The fact that your situation suits you fine isn't law.

This 'our way or the highway' mentality Apple has instilled is disgusting.

 

[a0me]

Others, equally smart or smarter are buying the current models. They don't care about a MBAir - there are Mac Books with 15" and 17" screens, and ample storage on tap right now...

But what if you don't need the added bulk of an optical drive (the last time I used one was when Snow Leopard was released, almost 3 years ago) and you want flash storage because hard disk drives have movable parts which make them more prone to failure (I've had to replace a couple ones in the last few years)?

 

[itsamacthing]

its not only Intel's fault, it's also Apple's fault for building a line of computers that don't take advantage of Intel's roadmap. The other companies seem to update their computers as often as Intel refreshes their CPU's. Nearly 2 years to refresh the Mac Pro! OMG LOG are you kidding? The Mac Pro is shipping today with literally 2 year old hardware. 2 year old hardware in the IT world (comparing to dog years) is like 15 years. Also..The bundled SSDs are dog slow...Sata II. Yet, most macs have Sata III controllers. In fact, the SSD that ships with the current iMac is like 2+ years old (r/w around 150mb). WTH? Most sata III SSDs (like Intel's 520 series) R/W at like 500MB. Not a single mac product has USB 3, talk about future proof, lets all get USB 2 external HDs! And Thunderbolt, was the shot heard round the world...ooops, nobody heard the shot. So seriously, who is running the desktop ship over there at the infinite loop? Leaning more and more toward building another hackintosh since clearly Apple can't get updated computers to market anymore.

 

[cire1244]

My household is waiting to replace a 7 year old Powermac G5 and a 4 year old Blackbook. We need new ones badly but know better than to buy them now...

Refreshes are around the corner, right? Right??

 

[AidenShaw]

But what if you don't need the added bulk of an optical drive (the last time I used one was when Snow Leopard was released, almost 3 years ago) and you want flash storage because hard disk drives have movable parts which make them more prone to failure (I've had to replace a couple ones in the last few years)?

The reliability of SSDs unfortunately is not living up to the promise - see http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html for example.

Although they obviously cannot have catastrophic head crashes, they do fail, and sometimes when young.

Fortunately, a fairly common "catastrophic" failure mode is that the drive loses the ability to write - but can still read existing data. Nice if it's a data drive, or you can boot from another drive/system to recover your data - but on a one-drive laptop it can be really difficult to save your data.

 

[Apple Corps]

But what if you don't need the added bulk of an optical drive (the last time I used one was when Snow Leopard was released, almost 3 years ago) and you want flash storage because hard disk drives have movable parts which make them more prone to failure (I've had to replace a couple ones in the last few years)?

What if you do NEED an optical drive? I have had more failures with ssd than with hdd.

 

[darkslide29]

Maybe Apple will give the Mini the power it should have with Steve out of the picture?
It really should be just a headless iMac with the same innards

For the price, seems to be its a headless MacBook Pro as intended.

 

[techvervela]

Judging by the four week gap between "hard" rumors and the official announcement of the new iPad, I think we have at least another month to wait before we see any new MBP announcements. It may be ok for those of you with the current generation of hardware, but difficult for those who are holding out. Apple better announce something soon before we all spend our tax returns on something else!

If anyone is interested:
Here's why I want to buy this year's MBP.

 

[Ryth]

2012 iMacs With Core i5 And Core i7 Ivy Bridge Processors Coming In June-July Time Frame [Rumor]
http://www.howtoarena.com/2012-imac...cessors-coming-in-june-july-time-frame-rumor/

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What if you do NEED an optical drive? I have had more failures with ssd than with hdd.

Buy
An
External

 

[ChrisTX]

I have a late 2009 iMac Core i7 ... still a lot of life left in this beauty. However, like you, I'm always excited to see new product releases.

Especially because there are rumored refreshes. Always fun to see new hardware, even when I'm not a potential buyer at the moment.

 

[spacepower7]

There's little reason to upgrade right now. My 2009 MBP 13" does everything I need in mobile. The things it doesn't do aren't really remedied with the newer ones. I walked into an Apple store and bought it. I upgraded the RAM to 8gb that night and it's been solid since. With an SSD it would be on par with everything out today for most of my needs.

If I walk into an apple store I can get a 13" MBA with 2GB of memory (no upgrade) and 100 lines less of vertical resolution.

Or the 2009 MBP could be upgraded for the 2011... (13" is my preferred form factor.)

2009/2011

Display: 1280x800 / 1280x800
Media: DVDs / DVDs
Processor: 2.26 C2D / 2.4 i5 (never really peg this on my mobile computer...)
HDD: 160GB / 500GB old fashioned mechanical HDD. SSD SKU??
Looks: Same
Battery: Same
Weight: Same
Dimensions: Same
Bluetooth: Same
WiFi: Same
OS: Snow Leopard>Lion

Reasons to maybe upgrade: FaceTime HD Camera and SD XC support...not really worth an upgrade. Graphics have seen a nice boost, but I don't really use my MBP for gaming. And Thunderbolt? Still waiting for it to be useful/ relevant.

Is it any wonder I don't feel the need to rush out and upgrade? I'm really looking forward to an update that really brings something new. It's hard to look at my MBP screen after the New iPad...

The basic 13" MBA has 4 GB Ram and 100 limes MORE resolution. I'm not sure what you meant there.

 

[spacepower7]

aside from the os and processor specs, hardware design is really important and apple not upgrading it (i.e. macbook pro) has affected the sales. so please apple make the upcoming macs awesome

How can Apple upgrade if Intel is holding back the CPUs bc HP, Acer, Asus, etc still need to get rid of their supplies of the older chips?

 

[Derpage]

Well yeah, Apple wants people buying the products that make them the most loot. Why concentrate on computers when you can sell phones and tablets for so much loot.

 

[Old Smuggler]

Price will probably go up or there will be a higher demand with everything going on at foxconn

 

[subsonix]

Looking at the last quarter does not really give the big picture, look at this graph from Asymco.

 

[dermeister]

I feel like we've hit diminishing returns with desktops anyways. It used to be that any update would make a massive difference, but now a days I can't really tell the difference anymore. I feel no sense of urgency for new hardware updates. My Mac Pro 1,1 is working fine with 16 GB ram and a Radeon 5870. The only reason I would ever update is if Apple forced me to with Mountain Lion.

The mobile devices still have major improvements to be made, but even those are being updated so hard and fast that soon we won't care.

It's like the iPod classic at 160 GB. 10 years ago that's what we had for our whole computers. iPod updates used to be more important (10 GB-> 40 GB). Now who cares?

I think the only people who have a good reason to be in a hurry are those who need to buy a new one anyway since it would be a shame to buy a model right before it's replaced.

Of course there are the video editors for whom more bandwidth still makes a huge difference... But for the vast majority, I think our s are quite fine.

 

[lilo777]

Looking at the last quarter does not really give the big picture, look at this graph from Asymco.

Image

It's a "cumulative" growth. These lines will not go down even if Apple stops selling Macs.

 

[subsonix]

It's a "cumulative" growth. These lines will not go down even if Apple stops selling Macs.

Yes, but can you spot the trend? Is the line flat?

 

[lilo777]

Yes, but can you spot the trend? Is the line flat?

The graphs show years (and decades) of sales. A trend formed in the last quarter would not show here.

 

[subsonix]

The graphs show years (and decades) of sales. A trend formed in the last quarter would not show here.

Right, that is what I'm trying to say, last quarter would not form a trend but be part of natural fluctuations. Looking at the big picture shows more clearly where things are going, compare with Apple II for example.

Edit: I agree with the premise of the thread article, lack of recent hardware updates probably does affect sales, not surprisingly.

 

[Exhale]

Although they obviously cannot have catastrophic head crashes, they do fail, and sometimes when young.

Ehm. Just like HDDs really. Theres a well established rule to never put anything important on a HDD less than 3 months old, though its preferable to wait at least 6 months.

For what its worth, the most recent return numbers for Intel was at 0.1%. OCZ was sitting at 4% however, which is a bit of a problem when so many insist on using OCZ drives. (This being a fair bit higher than the 500gb-1tb HDD average)

Though I'd have to put the article in question. Either hes not worked with hard drives nearly enough, or theres another problem going on - like damaged/malfunctioning power supply if the units are failing at such a rate.

Fact is just last year we were working with a HDD failure rate of 300%. Yes, we had to call in warranty replacement three ****ing times in a single year (average) for a set of 80 Seagate drives. Also had some pretty bad replacement rate for personal seagate drives as well.

I don't think I need to point out I cannot bring myself to trust them at all right now.

As for the catastrophic "omg what happened to my data" failures, they are so common in the HDD sector anyone with experience shouldn't react to such horror stories. In all honesty, I'd be tempted to ask "Is this your first month?" if I met the guy in real life.

 

[gnurf]

the option[/B] in the operating system to set the zoom button to a consistent behavior.

The default behaviour for the green button in OS X is to expand the window to fill the current monitor. If a program does differently, it's intercepting the zoom method on its own windows to do something different. Right Zoom fixes this for people who don't like programs doing their own thing (probably based on a previous, misguided interface guideline from Apple), but the OS actually treats the button just like maximise on Windows and most X11 window managers.

 

[IlluminatedSage]

Waiting for the new MBP is daunting. It's been a long wait and there's no solid confirmation in sight for new releases. The current models are pretty bad, at least for video editing: outdated and no Blu-Ray. We're coming up to a year on FCPX, and how can FCPX progress if laptops have FCP7 technology?

More RAM, more VRAM, SSD, Tbolt, etc., can speed along FCPX and prepare the app for future versions. Granted the optical drive will probably be canned, but at least consider updating DVD Studio Pro to Blu-Ray Pro (since Toast 11 reportedly sucks), and that requires improved laptop guts.

Conversely, current MBP prices on the used market are horribly high. New Apple laptops will adjust the price scheme across-the-board, pushing used MBPs down to realistic levels.

Gotta get a mac pro w/ thunderbolt, Blu-Ray!and BD which can read/writed BD

 

[Macman45]

Understandable. The iPad and to a lesser extent the ATV3, have occupied Apples efforts during the last quarter.

I'm pretty sure we will see refresh on the MBP, MP etc. very soon now. The iPhone 5 is a way off yet, so they can concentrate effort on re-design and re-development of these products now.