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Apple Halted M2 Chip Production in January Amid 'Plummeting' Mac Sales
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I'm obviously not suggesting this is the reason for "plummeting sales", but it my case I would have at least considered upgrading from the M1 to M2 if the trade-in price for my M1 wasn't so embarrassingly low. Getting absolutely slaughtered on trade-in price, in exchange for a pretty minor bump in performance, just wasn't a smart transaction.
On the other hand, the trade-in price for my 16" Intel MBP was pretty great when I got my M1—it was a big incentive for me to actually take the leap when I did. Tanking the trade-in prices was a lame move by Apple, imho... In my case it definitely puts a high bar on whatever machine is going to replace my current one.
On the other hand, the trade-in price for my 16" Intel MBP was pretty great when I got my M1—it was a big incentive for me to actually take the leap when I did. Tanking the trade-in prices was a lame move by Apple, imho... In my case it definitely puts a high bar on whatever machine is going to replace my current one.
This is clearly because they killed off the Touch Bar! Time to innovate, Apple!
Tim Cook got what he deserved by cutting the SSD speeds in half on the M2 base models.
The 14" M1 Pro can be bought for $1599, while having a full speed SSD and is a much better buy.
Let's hope Apple stops with this BS of slow SSD's with the M3.
The 14" M1 Pro can be bought for $1599, while having a full speed SSD and is a much better buy.
Let's hope Apple stops with this BS of slow SSD's with the M3.
M1 was extremely successful. Anyone who wanted Apple Silicon pretty much bought it already. That means most people won’t upgrade until M3 or M4. IMO, Apple went to M2 too quickly. They should be on an almost 4 year cycle of releasing new processors rather than releasing every 2 years. People don’t upgrade computers like they do phones.
m3 is the next big jump to 3nm, thats why ppl keep banging on about skipping m2 since its a 5nm reiteration.
Percentages will work in Apple's favour when compared to Lenovo for example, as based on those figures Lenovo sell far more computers than Apple do.
It's always easier to maintain or improve percentages of market share from a much lower base.
Shrinking slower than your competitors is still shrinking and when your sales are not as big as your competitors to begin with, the percentage rate may be lower but the drop is still significant - big enough to suspend chip production apparently.
Based on those figures, Lenovo could have seen its shipments drop by a further 50% in 2024 and it still would have sold more computers than Apple did.
I'm not saying it's not a tough market for all PC manufacturers and of course there is a significant downward trend on PC sales at the moment that affects them all, but that's only one of the problems for Apple.
The other problem is most of their current product range represents poor value for money and this is something they need to address quickly IMO.
I just think there were a lot of old macbook owners waiting to upgrade and looking at how M1 did, and as soon as it was obvious that it was going to be a success they moved on the purchase. That market is now depleted, and we will have to see whether sales of M2, which weren’t helped by the delayed M2 MacBook Pro’s will reach a similar level.
Yes but M2 was not a bad jump in performance for a yearly update, especially on the GPU side. we will have to see what M3 is like, and if it is 3 nm. It could well be, TSMC has been making chips in volume since December, so we could see a product launch at WWDC at the earliest, I think.
We're saying the same thing then
Although I might shorten that time to 4 if the MBP M3 is delivering its promises in 2024.
Not bad but not good enough of a jump to justify an upgrade coming from the M1.
I am aware of that. So people have less money and some are forced to choose between heat or eat. If you want to keep selling the same units in that market you have to lower the prices. It’s all about hitting the equilibrium.
I’m all fine with Apple keeping their high prices if they want to limit them self to “Pro” customers, but then there should be no sobbing about plummeting sales, because their effective customer base has shrunken.
Get a better, higher paid job then. Price is never an issue for Apple users. Elasticity is very low because we're a niche.
Oh my. I know I'm hoping to later get an M2 Pro Mac Mini some time this year, to replace my 2012 quad-core i7 Mini. It would be a logical step up from my M1 MacBook Air (which I'll still use when on the go).
The majority of consumers have no idea the SSD speeds changed and also wouldn't notice or care if they did know, so this is not the reason for a sales decline.
You clearly don't know what a recession is: "a fall in GDP in two successive quarters".
Unless you live in Russia (which actually only outperformed by -2%), North Korea or a very low-income African country, I don't see the problem buying Apple.
You hit the nail on the head with your last sentence when it came to the laptop we bought our college bound teen. Our high school does use Apple products and issues iPads that the students do their work on. But she’s getting into gaming with her friends and gaming on a Mac has its ups and downs. So we got her a gaming laptop for Christmas that should also handle anything her university courses require of her. She’s been a lot more active on her Windows laptop. The gaming laptop was also very generous on specs for the money vs a MacBook Air (I have one).
Selling PCs at a premium is maybe not the greatest idea in a slow economy. Especially when you're frustrating customers with no upgradeability but charging an arm and a leg for RAM and SSDs and clearly positioning the lineup for upselling to the higher priced product. In earlier days you could buy the exact same RAM apple used for half the price and install it yourself. Or you just bought it for double the price from apple. Nowadays you're forced to buy it from them for 4-5 times the market price. Or why are SSD upgrades less than 1/4 the price per GB in an appleTV compared to an iphone despite it very likely being the same type of SSD?
The primary reason is the lack of product differentiation vs. the M1.
The second reason is so many mixed reviews all over the internet, which is new to me.
And SSD performance is only a sub-reason among all of that. But one to watch for nonetheless. Giving Apple a bad name. Hope they will never do this again. Not something you'd expect from such a company.
I think it suficent to say soldered on SSD and RAM is fairly old, look at retina 15” MBP’s back in 2012 it was that way. The advantage of using unified memory architecture now even with 8 GB ram is very apparent.
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So here's my question: what's the development-to-release time cycle for Macs look like? In the automotive industry, it takes five years from inception to production. Given the pace of technological innovation, that means cool tech that gets invented today won't show up in a new car for five years. So what's that like at Apple? If faster RAM or SSDs appear today, how long does it take to get incorporated into a Mac and is that time frame so long that the tech is second or third rate by the time in comes out?