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An Open Letter to the Mac Community: The Decline of macOS
- Thread starter silverdollar
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I can't speak to the accuracy of the chart, but yep, agree w/pretty much the rest. The bulk of Apple's revenues are from iPhone. Mac revenues are a small % of the whole now and smaller than "Wearables, Home and Accessories" and much smaller than from services. Attached a snippet from https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_earnings/2024/q3/filing/_10-Q-Q3-2024-As-Filed.pdf page 9 which is their latest quarterly 10-Q report from https://investor.apple.com/sec-filings/default.aspx.I didn't read this gargantuan thread (I used a dictionary for that word) ,
but the OP is right and that is why Steve Jobs was a genius.
Jobs worked via "how can I make this better functionally and more pleasant to the user" . Apple today does not care about MacOS or the user. All the money is in iphone+iOS. MacOS to Apple is like Bing to Microsoft.
You can see how in 2007 the Mac was 43% of Apple revenue, now accessories like earpods make more money than the mac ( 7.7%). They make money off the hardware , but no innovation or improvements on the OS itself.
So, it makes some sense that Apple from a $ POV doesn't care much about Mac. Why put in a ton of resources into an area that is a small piece of the pie and not really growing or growing much?
OP can also look at page 25 of https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0000320193/faab4555-c69b-438a-aaf7-e09305f87ca3.pdf which was their 10-K annual filing from Nov 2023.
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Revenue? But how much of that revenue is returned to the Chinese manufacturers and to TSMC?
its not about size of revenue, but more about attention dedicated to it. I have yet to see a company that can put dedication to multiple products. There will always be the flagship products, and then side products.
Bing brings Microsoft $12B in revenue, a huge sum of money, but we all know its attention is on Windows/MS Office/ and Azure since they are the biggest money makers.
When it comes to the mac, Apple's innovation attention is directed towards the hardware , M processors and build quality (which is superb btw) but not so much the MacOS itself. MacOS is more on the "If its not broken don't fix it" priority list.
But so is iOS. It’s not exactly cutting edge. It’s more like they’re simply better at hardware.
iOS on iPad if you haven't noticed isn't all that great. People here complain they want innovation on the software side not hardware side. As for iPhone you are correct, but currently I hardly see any problem with. It has achieved maturity. maybe you can add or fix few things here or there but it has reached its max as a smartphone OS I think. What more do you want it to do?
How can one make innovations on the software, when the OS itself quite old? The same old apps year after year with just some eye candy...
Off the top of my head:
- A proper file system.
- Support for Apple Pencil on the phone.
- The ability to back up purchased apps so they don’t just disappear when you get a new phone and the publisher pulled the app from AppStore.
- Group management in Contacts.
But it seems we’re on the same page - Apple is great at hardware, the software side is good /ok.
I agree, though the first one would be more of a pain for me...it probably would work better on the iPad. The other three are good suggestions IMO.
I think the OS itself can "evolve" to improve. No need to re-write a whole OS. Someone who knows programming more than I do probably can answer that one better.
Most of this stuff is negligible and probably Apple doesn't include it for reasons of their own.
-I think there is a file management but they won't let you access it. When I used those "ios-managing" apps like iMazing you could see the file tree then I think Apple blocked this ability.
-Some years ago this was how it used to work IIRC. I'd backup iphone to mac, then when I get a new iOS device I restore from my computer. I got a new iOS device and found it horrific that it only transfers an "instance" of the app/or its icon over to the new device and download the app from the App Store. So they did it on purpose.
Most of the stuff is tiny features that could be added at any time, no big issue I guess.
Of course it can evolve, but does it? Except for the eye-candy? The OS doesn't sell, the hardware sells, so the eye-candy. There are some nice features such as trackpad gestures, mouse gestures etc, but the competitors ave them too now. Linux as an OS doesn't sell either, but it evolves...
The hardware is tied to the OS, though, so if Apple wants to sell hardware, they better make the OS a value add, not a hindrance.
That I agree, but what to do when there are enough people, who'd buy for the sake of buying?
well you are saying what I am saying, Apple doesn't care about the OS, except I see there is not much to improve on a Phone OS compared to desktop computer OS.
If there's enough people who feel that the OS in its current state is good, then there's no incentive to change.