Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘We Have Great Desktops in Our Roadmap'

[t0mat0]

Not exactly good news or rumours from Gurman at Bloomberg - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple-alienated-mac-loyalists

as per recently, he seems to be getting one end of a stick (sometimes the wrong end) (ATP has talked about this) - in that one rumor or source may not know the whole situation, but it sounds bleak. All the way to the last paragraph, where the Mac Pro doesn't even get a look in for 2017 apparently:

"Mac fans shouldn't hold their breath for radical new designs in 2017 though. Instead, the company is preparing modest updates: USB-C ports and a new Advanced Micro Devices Inc. graphics processor for the iMac, and minor bumps in processing power for the 12-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro. Cue the outrage."

 

[groove-agent]

Tim will say anything is great and magical as if he was full of sunshine and rainbows.

I get the impression that he can run a company, but can't lead one like Steve could.

 

[MarsViolet]

Got it. You're just trolling with nothing to contribute. And still not able to respond to your assertion, "You don't know that whining isn't going to help, or what Apple's going to do in the future," when challenged.

Challenge me all you want. It doesn't change the fact that you don't know that whining isn't going to help, or what Apple's going to do in the future, nor does it make your habit of letting criticisms of Apple threaten your confidence less mockable.

 

[sudo1996]

Obligatory plea for a Mac Pro tower with support for i5/i7. Hey, at least the high-end iMac is surprisingly decent, if you don't mind that it's glued together (but I do mind).
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All the news has been negative because media like MR have chosen to put a negative spin on absolutely everything.

Seriously. Look at every single thread on this site. Find a happy one. It's nothing but people complaining. It's incredibly negative. There's apparently nothing positive to talk about in the world of Apple or anything Apple related.

Seems they've found that negative reporting generates far more conversation from those that view the site which means more ad dollars for them. Sadly, it means a site of nothing but complaints. It's pretty sad to live in a world where all we do is look at the negative side of things and never the positive.

Like all the "DON'T BUY" labels on the Macs in the Buyer's Guide? No, people are just upset because Apple barely makes Macs nowadays, and the long-awaited rMBP was super nerfed.

 

[Michael Goff]

Oh, just like how Craig F said they were dedicated to automation and then broke parts of it with 10.12.2? Words are cheap.

 

[A-Sign]

Not exactly good news or rumours from Gurman at Bloomberg - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple-alienated-mac-loyalists

Thanks for this interesting article with some insider information about what is going on at Apple.

 

[Ethosik]

You don't understand my use case or economic position so do yourself a favour and stop trying to think you know me better than I do.

I fail to see how JUST the soldered components make you use a 2007 system. How can that possibly be better than a 2016 iMac? This isn't a subjective thing, specs do not lie. This is like saying a P4 can perform better than an i7. What is the max RAM you can put in that?

 

[Dirtfarmer]

Macrumours must be blocked by Apple's corporate firewalls

 

[mrhick01]

Steve was a visionary and had passion for creating products, Tim has a passion for running a business and profits , hence we now just get refinements , which is fine , that's Tims strength . In all this we get to see what a one trick pony Ives is without jobs , he is no great designer .....just go extremely lucky that he worked with jobs.

No, Ive is a great engineer and designer, but he's not an engineer, designer and business visionary. Jobs had the vision, the "taste," to see what was beautiful and marketable, and then sell that to the world at large.

Ive can still design, but without Jobs' veto power on ideas that go into the wrong direction, you have what we've got.

 

[DesertSurfer]

Amazing how many people sit here waiting for an opportunity to express their unfunny nonsense. What a life you guys lead.

And you are reading it.

 

[citysnaps]

Challenge me all you want. It doesn't change the fact that you don't know that whining isn't going to help, or what Apple's going to do in the future, nor does it make your habit of letting criticisms of Apple threaten your confidence less mockable.

Criticisms of Apple threaten my confidence? That is so adorable! I'm a proponent of walking away from Apple if the products they make do not meet your needs. I sincerely applaud anybody that is able to stand up and do that.

"It doesn't change the fact that you don't know that whining isn't going to help..."

Well, I can only go by history and Apple's past actions (or rather, inactions due to whines) over many many years.

Again, if you can speak to a single whine on MR that has resulted in Apple changing it's product plans or direction, let's hear about it.

Should be super easy to find at least one or two in the dozens that have been posted here over the years.

 

[imanidiot]

Cool, where did you buy your map, Tim? I'd like to get one like that, too.

 

[4jasontv]

Show me one product in the pat 5 years that MR has been happy with. No matter what Apple announces, no matter how great, everyone focuses on the shortcomings rather than the positives.

The OS updates are generally well received, but you are right in saying that there is little praise from the Apple Faithful for what they have done the past five years. To be fair though, there is little to praise. Even the things that could be taken as bold steps come across as cash grabs.

Look at the Apple Watch. Rather than going, wow this is a cool and allows some great stuff, instead the people here spent months complaining about battery life from a product that hadn't even been released.

(Which indeed turned out to be terrible.)

When it was delivered they found that battery life was nowhere near as bad as they believed and it easily made it through the day on a single charge.

(Not true)

Yet they'd spent months crying about it for no reason.

See previous comment. Watches last days on a charge. If you don't last days, you don't have good battery. As far as all day goes, mine never made it past 8 pm. Most days I'm up at 4 AM and in bed by 1 AM. That is a day for me and it doesn't get half of that.

There's honestly nothing Apple can now release which MR won't cry about. No matter how amazing they'll find something to hate. If a laptop has 12 hours of battery they want 15. If it has 15 they want 20. If it checks all the boxes they'll complain about price or about color or about size.....

You make a good point at the end, and I have defer this back to the voice of Steve Jobs return. Sculley made to many products, and when steve returned he cut it down to four: desktop or portable, consumer or pro. The desktop portable issue has been an issue ever since they began integrating iOS and MacOS. Members of this community have remained strong that they don't want Apple to iPad their Mac. Why are they concerned? The problem is that iOS devices outsell the Mac and features are going from iOS to Mac and not the other way around. It's clear that they want more of their iOS users to switch to Mac, and they don't care at all if Mac users stay. If they did care than their voice would be recognized AND they would act on that recognition. Remember when they launched the new Mac Pro and made the big stink about being able to innovate? They abandoned that product the day it went live. That said, consumers want devices that can run apps and surf the web. For pro users power is important, and they will remain closer to a wall - but consumers expect days between charges on their computers. That is if they really even want a computer. Apple has done great marketing to convince the masses that an iPad pro is basically a Surface. Don't get me wrong, when Apple isn't intentionally making the device slower because a new model is out, there is no content consumption device as well designed as the iPad. If that is what you are looking to primarily do, than yes, YES!, get an iPad. But those of us that don't want iPads don't want iPads. We don't like Apple putting iOS in our Mac. We don't like having Macs be so out of date that iPads actually are competitive in performance.

What is my point? Right now there are three lines of consumer devices being sold as computers: the iPad, the MacBook, and the MacBook Pro. There is no Pro line of Mac products right now. Sticking an Apple Watch in a MacBook doesn't make it a pro model. The Mac Pro has been on shelves so long the Pro badge fell off and got sucked up by the cleaning crew. Let's call it what it is. The Mac Pro is the best Mac Mini you can buy, because the Mac Mini is just an 3 year old MacBook air without a screen. You want to make a Pro device? To do that you need to take time every year to make it faster, add better and more RAM, and make it more expandible for third parties. What you shouldn't do with a Pro Device is lie about the battery life. We didn't care before you brought it up but we sure as heck are mad when we realized it was untrue.

 

[kazmac]

Grateful I do not need a new desktop right now. I keep saying this but the billions spent in trying to win various markets should be spent on R&D and with existing software and hardware. Oh well.

 

[MisterK]

So people buying a new computer choose the models that are new? People aren't waking in line for a 3 year old computer?

My 2009 iMac is far more powerful than the newest Mac mini. That means I can't justify replacing the iMac with the mini. So yeah, imacs sell better. Doesn't make it more popular.

Selling more is the definition of being more popular.
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a 40 year old company with over 115,000 employees and over $200 billion in annual sales is stretched too thin offering 6 products?

I'm wondering, how many tens of thousands of people would it take to get out an update to the mini?

It's a question of focus. There are more products (services, media, maps, Siri, AI, car, AR, iTunes, iPhones, iPads, AppleTV) that Apple should be concerned with improving/creating than segments of their Mac product line that appeal to an increasingly shrinking audience. If the iMac and laptops take care of 95% of their user base (I obviously don't have the numbers but Apple does and appears to be doing this calculation), then they should let the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro die.

As already stated, one reason that Apple has gotten themselves into the position of being the world's biggest company with the highest customer satisfaction numbers is that they have cross-functional teams, rather than product teams. That means that the same 5-10 people are in charge of all their products. Their attention is zero-sum. Time devoted to something means time not devoted to something else.

 

[MarsViolet]

Criticisms of Apple threaten my confidence? That is so adorable! I'm a proponent of walking away from Apple if the products they make do not meet your needs. I sincerely applaud anybody that is able to stand up and do that.

"It doesn't change the fact that you don't know that whining isn't going to help..."

Well, I can only go by history and Apple's past actions (or rather, inactions due to whines) over many many years.

Again, if you can speak to a single whine on MR that has resulted in Apple changing it's product plans or direction, let's hear about it.

Should be super easy to find at least one or two in the dozens that have been posted here over the years.

Since you’re the one feeling butthurt, I’ll leave the obsessive-compulsive forum-diving to you. Should be super easy. Don’t report back until you have found at least a half a dozen examples.

 

[Vertigo50]

Yeah, I don't know why anyone ever got the impression that Tim Cook doesn't think the desktop PC has a future anymore...

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-ceo-tim-cook-why-would-you-buy-a-pc-anymore-2015-11

Oh........right.....

Just keep banging around back and forth Tim. It's been barely working so far, but eventually people are going to catch onto the fact that Apple has no direction and there is no one to steer the ship. The product delays and complete lack of coherence are starting to add up. Eventually more and more users are just going to have to give up and move away.

 

[nixfu]

I FEEL IT!

2017 will FINALLY be the year of the Mac MINI TOWER!!

A mac mini with a couple of PCI-3 X16 slots....imagine that.

 

[4jasontv]

Selling more is the definition of being more popular.
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My use of popular describes what people want, not what they get. The 911 is more popular than the Yaris even though more people buy the Yaris. (And yes I just used a car analogy. I'm surprised no one does that. )

 

[SSDGUY]

Yeah that'll be updated. They care about the Mac Pro but they just haven't been working as mfast as they could be. They've taken their "don't release it until everything is ready" approach too far.

Even if they do, the incredible lack of attention to the mac pro thus far would make me leery. When you invest in a platform (hardware and/or OS) you want it to be something you can count on for future upgrade investments.

 

[Tork]

The problem is not the processor, it's a whole bunch of other very obvious things. Removal of the amazing magsafe, increasing prices to ridiculous amounts when things in the computer industry are getting cheaper and cheaper.

Remember 5 years ago when a 65" flat screen TV was several thousand dollars, and now you can a great quality one for a few hundred dollars at Walmart. Luckily Apple did not get into the TV business, or else a 65" Apple TV would probably be about $10,000 now, for the same quality of a $300 Walmart TV. This is probably why they bailed... they couldn't find a way to steal your money in that business.

Agree on the MagSafe removal. That makes me pretty sad, as it's saved my laptop a number of times.

TVs have always had thin margins (and aren't replaced all that often, so yes, that's why Apple didn't enter that market. But as far as "stealing" your money -- Apple has always been a premium brand. Computers don't sell all that well anymore, so if you want to still buy a premium computer, you'll have to pay even more these days. Otherwise it's not worth it to Apple to devote resources to it. Microsoft knows this too, and as another premium brand, their products are priced accordingly.

Things are priced at what people will pay for them, and (using the new MBP as an example) to get that quality of display, trackpad, keyboard, chassis, design, weight, battery life, quality of OS, ecosystem, etc. all in one package -- many people will pay the premium. The old BMW to Ford comparison holds here too.

 

[MarsViolet]

Computers don't sell all that well anymore, so if you want to still buy a premium computer, you'll have to pay even more these days.

Or Apple could accept that they're going to make less money by selling fewer Macs, and make up for it in creative ways which aren't disingenuous or greedy.

 

[Daniel Reed]

When my wife's away all I do is bash from a phone.

Hahahaha, I almost spilled my coffee reading that!

In terms of desktops, Apple will keep making them after the 2017 iMacs as disposable appliances AND they will run macOS. They just won't be intel based, allow for upgrades, and will not be "headless" (integrated displays only). Apple needs to support the desktop base for its full featured software programs to buy time to guide the transition for most of those programs to iOS.

 

[johngordon]

Apparently so! They sure do for the laptop!!!!!!!!

Apple have stopped updating laptops?

I honestly didn't realise that.
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Did you forget?

1: Jobs and Woz created Apple.
2: Steve left Apple.
3: Apple was within weeks of bankruptcy.
4: Steve returns, creates mind blowing and game changing products including a phone which all other phones are modeled after.
4a: Tim? Well his phones are thinner...

Yes we need Steve Jobs or another one just like him. The odds are against exciting new innovation at the moment.

When Steve returned he didn't just do a refresh and call it new and exciting. He came out with the iMac. The purple, blue, orange, green, paisley, etc., game changing computers.

Refreshes aren't cutting it anymore.

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So the first time Steve left Apple, Apple got to within weeks of bankruptcy.

And after he died, all you have is "his phones are thinner".

In this story, are thinner phones supposed to be comparable to being close to bankruptcy?

AFAICT all that happened with the MBP is that it took a bit longer than recent updates as a combination of working on the touchbar, and issues with availability of Intel chips.

And then half the internet completely overreacted.

 

[Since1987]

Here's the key part of that article. Indicating how very very little they care about Macintosh. Pretending to care would be a better description. And trust me.... IT SHOWS.

"In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there's no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team."