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Apple COO Jeff Williams 'Very Aware Of' Concerns Over Apple Product Cost
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Can we show this to someone at Apple?
Can we show this to someone at Apple?
Timmy and the board are well aware of it. But they really do care about nothing but short term profits, making their quick money and getting out. They have no passion or interest for Apple or tech products, they just want to bleed it for as much as they can as quickly as they can and then move on.
Can we show this to someone at Apple?
Only if Finder on Mojave doesn't crash.
I don't want a heart monitor so make all of those apps paid. Those that want it can pay for the research.
I won’t say it’s common sense, for the simple reason that many people don’t seem to understand what makes Apple tick. It’s not the first time someone has claimed that Apple needed a cheaper iphone. It didn’t work in 2013, and it’s still not the case today.
Apple is a premium brand. At this price range, customers aren’t really price-sensitive. Instead, sales are driven more by value proposition, rather than prices.
As such, the simple reason for declining phone sales is that people are holding on to their phones longer because they are good enough. Even if you lower the prices of iphones, sales are likely not going to increase enough to offset the decline in sales. As such, it makes sense to me that the right way forward is to increase prices, not drop them.
As for services, that seems to be what Apple is doing by entering in partnerships with other brands for smart speakers and TVs. This means that Apple doesn’t need to get into a race to the bottom by releasing their own cheap hardware, while still being able to offer premium hardware to consumers willing to pay top dollar for the best Apple experience.
If doing what makes the most business sense for your company means being greedy, then yeah, call Apple that. Doesn’t necessarily make them wrong.
When a premium escort has lowered her quality to quantity, customers will grunt about being charged with the high fee.
Your Logic does not make sense whatsoever. I wonder why then Apple did not listen to you and lowered prices in Japan and China...mmmm
Keeping prices high and keep having declining sales, will not offset anything since sales will continue to go down.
Can make as many excuses as they want, batteries, upgrade cycle, market saturation, market maturing, etc...
But the only issues are price and lack of features that are worth the price.
If sales are declining, price increasing with no justification and there is poor innovation then it makes them way wrong.
With the years, prices got significantly higher, and the technology of the phone (and almost the entire line up of products) is only incremental, when it used to be the complete opposite, where prices stayed the same and technology increased tremendously.
But it is not just the overpriced products, with underspec hardware but also the lack of innovation and the increase of upgrade cycles (in the computer line up up to 4+years) that also affect Apple revenues since users are NOT upgrading that often due to the lack of upgrades.
Since 2012 Even in design Apple seem to languish. Apple used to rule education, video and publishing... those were the markets that set the stage for future developments. It’s in a very sad state today.
Except the iPhone and Watch, Apple computers have become a synonym for overpriced old hardware.
Of course. Most, if not, all Apple products in the last 10 years were not made with toxic materials.
They discontinued the wired keyboard because of the transition to USB-C and so...not designing a new wired keyboard solves (from Apple's perspective) a lot of problems
1. Solves confusion of whether a customer should get USB-A or USB-C keyboards, or go wireless
2. Design team will need to think about the extra USB-C ports on the wired keyboard. For example, could you charge the single port MacBook through the keyboard? Can users plug in any USB-C accessory that Apple makes into the USB-C wired keyboard and it'll work just fine (like USB-C to HDMI out?)? Should Apple include a female USB-C to male USB-A adapter so users that still have USB-A ports can use this too? Spending time solving these problems takes away from the design team's other projects.
3. Like you said, Apple's goal is to deliver the best products. A wireless keyboard is essentially a better product in Apple's eyes, so why design a wired keyboard?
4. Going wireless and making that the standard probably affects design of future products.Who knows, maybe their AR project will allow the user to put on Apple goggles and they can look at an Apple wireless keyboard to immediately pair it, take it around the office and interact with it.
I'm not really defending Apple but merely pointing out that it shouldn't be a shock to anyone anymore about the price of Apple's products. Of course Apple has shareholders to answer to, but they also need to build products that makes sense. It's always been 1) build the best product 2) make money off of it. If Apple can't do both of those things, they won't release the product at all.
Thank the iPhone for that. That's where the money is!
Everything else is just an afterthought!
The iPhone hasn't always been a "luxury" device. It has been one of the most expensive and popular of mainstream phones, primarily due to its reputation for high quality and resulting longevity and/or high resale value. It also has value as being a part of Apple's walled garden of computers and mobile devices, but that garden has become a bit tarnished of late. By largely neglecting the Mac line, they've mostly become a phone company focusing on pushing prices as high as the market will bear. So far the market has mostly held. Time will tell if they can continue in that manner. If you really want to see a list of "luxury" phones, here is a list of the top 10. Their high price is mostly a result of the materials from which they are made, not their technical features and build quality. Four of the list appear to be refitted iPhones, though none of the featured iPhones are of the latest "X" model lines. With the problems that have arisen with Mac laptops the last few years, combined with high pricing, I no longer buy Apple laptops. That has led me to be less compelled by a "walled garden" of Apple products, and combined with dropping the headphone jack and touch id features in the iPhone, my last iPhone is my 6S-Plus (which, btw, continues to be a fine full featured phone for my purposes). I have a 2017 iPad Pro and an iMac from the same year. I'd like to see them fix the iPad bendy "feature" of the latest model and solve cooling problems with the iMac. If that doesn't happen, and current pricing trends keep ascending, these may be my last Apple products to own. I don't want luxury and thin - just good tech, high function, and reliability. But yes, I'm only one long time customer who is regrettably moving away from Apple.
https://anyphones.com/most-expensive-mobile-phones.html
It’s call price elasticity folks... a basic economic principle!
Thus far in history the iPhone has been 100% completely price inelastic. I.e. whatever apple wanted to charge people would pay. Move price up 10% and demand would stay flat or continue to grow. We are seeing the point of the curve where price is starting to impact demand. It makes sense for every company to progress down the pricing curve until there is an impact to demand then optimize around that curve.
Glad this is happening now at around $1000 phone and not a $1500 phone.
Thus far in history the iPhone has been 100% completely price inelastic. I.e. whatever apple wanted to charge people would pay. Move price up 10% and demand would stay flat or continue to grow. We are seeing the point of the curve where price is starting to impact demand. It makes sense for every company to progress down the pricing curve until there is an impact to demand then optimize around that curve.
Glad this is happening now at around $1000 phone and not a $1500 phone.
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Yes, but they shifted the entire computer line up, to make disposable non-upgradble computers, what actually is much worse. They are soldering what use to be easily upgradable components such as RAM and SSD. So if any component brakes, this creates much more trash, computers more prone to failure, and way more expensive materials. All those things are NOT the best possible products, but products that benefit Apple earnigns and rip-off users.
It makes no sense having to change a car every time you need to change tires...
This actually makes no sense. It actually creates more batteries trash, so it is not environmentally friendly.
Sorry, Apple has NOT been building, neither designing the best products.
The Mac Pro trashcan was a failure. The Macbook Pro 2016+ was another failure with a keyboard that created a class action lawsuit, so those are not the best products. In addition, its quality control has also went down as well.
Not to mention that innovation has disappeared. While Apple used to be the leader, it is not anymore. Apple has been chasing other companies. Look at Home Pod (came to the market late and overpriced)...
Furthermore, what is even worse the upgrade cycles are ridiculous. 4 years to upgrade a computer is pathetic.
Mac Pro 5 years and counting, iMac 10 years and counting (external design same as 10 years ago), Mac Mini 4 years (and after 4 years, they use the same old 4 year-old case).
Sorry, but that shows how little Apple cares about the entire computer line up.
Much of the complaint about Apple's pricing is related to Apple's failure to deliver value for those prices. There was a time when iPhones cost much more than other phones and customers paid the price happily because the iPhone could do things other phones could not, and do so far more pleasantly. Those days are, however, long past.
Right now, Huawei and Samsung both make phones that take better photos (not just because of hardware, but because of software processing), and Google Assistant is a far superior piece of voice-based UI than Siri. Apple is falling behind its competitors in terms of quality, design, functionality -- both in software and hardware. For instance, the amount of storage on the entry-level iPhone and offered to non-paying customers of iCloud (needed to use many of iPhone's features the way they are advertised) is ridiculous -- this is clearly designed to upsell, which is a tactic that turns off customers because it feels like nickel-and-diming. It is also inexcusable that Apple emphasizes the iPhone as a camera in its advertising while the iPhone can neither take the best photos among flagship phones nor enhance/organize/use them as well as Google's services, which are, unsurprisingly, better on Android than on iOS.
Apple's customers are often ridiculed as being mindless followers of Apple's advertising. I don't think there's much truth to that at all. Apple's customers are loyal to the company because it has a tradition of delivering superior products at premium prices -- a tradition notably broken during the late 1990s and also, I think, now. If the products are no longer good enough to justify these prices, then customers will stop buying them, which is what we are seeing.
I didn't used to be one of those people who would trot out "If only Steve Jobs were still around" every time Apple screwed up. But I really do think Steve Jobs would never have allowed Apple to decline to this stage: ****** products for unjustifiable prices.
Right now, Huawei and Samsung both make phones that take better photos (not just because of hardware, but because of software processing), and Google Assistant is a far superior piece of voice-based UI than Siri. Apple is falling behind its competitors in terms of quality, design, functionality -- both in software and hardware. For instance, the amount of storage on the entry-level iPhone and offered to non-paying customers of iCloud (needed to use many of iPhone's features the way they are advertised) is ridiculous -- this is clearly designed to upsell, which is a tactic that turns off customers because it feels like nickel-and-diming. It is also inexcusable that Apple emphasizes the iPhone as a camera in its advertising while the iPhone can neither take the best photos among flagship phones nor enhance/organize/use them as well as Google's services, which are, unsurprisingly, better on Android than on iOS.
Apple's customers are often ridiculed as being mindless followers of Apple's advertising. I don't think there's much truth to that at all. Apple's customers are loyal to the company because it has a tradition of delivering superior products at premium prices -- a tradition notably broken during the late 1990s and also, I think, now. If the products are no longer good enough to justify these prices, then customers will stop buying them, which is what we are seeing.
I didn't used to be one of those people who would trot out "If only Steve Jobs were still around" every time Apple screwed up. But I really do think Steve Jobs would never have allowed Apple to decline to this stage: ****** products for unjustifiable prices.
a lot going on in developing markets? Hellllooooo Please check the median income of families in THE UNTED STATES and then compare that number to the number homes that HAVE an iPhone etc...and you will realize that you have priced your product high and that some families cannot afford to buy your products, but do anyway at the sacrifice of basic necessities.
yes, that is me...
yes, that is me...
The prices are completely justifiable if people are willing to pay them.
The products are delivering value if people are willing to pay for them.
I've been on MacRumors a long time. That entire time it's been consistent - people always complain about how NOW Apple products aren't worth it, but they used to be, and NOW there is some new thing wrong with Apple products and it didn't used to be that way, and "I have always loved apple, but now they've gone too far."
What it comes down to is that people believe that whatever *they* value and whatever *they* need must be universal. If I don't think it's worth it, nobody else should. If I am willing to trade weight for replacing doodads and I need a wazzit port and this computer is unusable without one and if I use the command line all day, then everyone else has the same needs and ranks requirements and desires the same way.
They don't.
Do I hate the MBP butterfly keyboards? Yep.
Do I DESPISE the Touch Bar and find it not only useless but worse than useless because of false touches? Yep.
Do I think Apple has done nothing to improve MacOS for the last two major releases? Yep. Do I wish they would? Yep.
Do I wish they still made a 17" MBP? Yep.
Do I wish iPhones cost a couple hundy less? Yep.
Do I think HomePod is worth the premium over Sonos? Nope.
Do I think that Apple has turned terrible, or, for that matter, changed in any substantial way since Tim Cook turned over? Nope. There have always been things to complain about with Apple. It's a byproduct of their philosophy of not making every product for every need. Sometimes the needs they are meeting are not mine.
The difference is that Apple's iterative products were always on par with what Windows was offering in a package that was far more attractive, robust, better battery life, slightly ahead on ports, better screens, and neat minor inventions like magsafe and perfect glass trackpads. That is what has changed. We no longer have a reason to pay top dollar when the crowd has reach Apple's iterative products.
They need to simplify, get away from being greedy with services, start supporting right-to-repair laws, and for once put out products that make us proud to be part of the mac faithful again. It didn't used to look like you were crazy to be part of Apple's walled garden. In fact, at times, the windows/android crowd was envious of us.
Not true at all. First MacBook air lost all the ports, wasn't that robust, etc. iPod had fewer features than competition. Hell, not one release of any iphone, iPad, Mac, etc. has gone by without massive uproar about its shortcomings compared to the competition. Even the original iphone - where's the keyboard? it doesn't run third party apps! No Flash?!?! Fake GPS!?!?
You just never noticed because whatever was lacking in the past was something that didn't matter to you. Now that what is lacking matters to you, you interpret that as some new shortcoming of apple management.
Good thing Apple is not a pharmaceutical company, or prices could be even higher. Or is it that pharma companies are trying to be like Apple?
If you don't think the complaints about Apple now are qualitatively different than the complaints about Apple ten years ago, then there's not much we can say to convince each other. I feel that today's Apple is verging close to the Apple of the 1990s (milking existing customers for as much as possible with mediocre products instead of innovating and winning customer loyalty.)
They *are* qualitatively different. Now that most posters are recent to Apple and have arrived post-iPhone, and many are Millenials, they are much more self-entitled than they used to be. It used to be "damn Apple, I wish you'd make a MacBook with an external scsi port. Nobody will buy this otherwise." Now it's "damn Apple. You are a bunch of evil idiots, and I am going to call your CEO 'Timmy' because he's gay and emasculating him is ok, and I am entitled to a replaceable battery in my mac and I am done with Apple, but I'm going to hang around here and keep posting anyway so everyone knows how done with Apple I am."
I wasn't talking about what the detractors thought. I was talking about what we as the Apple faithful thought. There is definitely a distinct difference.
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This.