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Apple Mac Sales Flat in November

Apple could turn around those poor desktop sales numbers in an instant. All they'd need to do is introduce a "mainstream" or "normal" desktop computer. Look at what they have: (1) a $700 low spec, non-upgradable Mini, a "way expensive" MP and some all in ones with mirror-like screens. None of them are what most people want.

I'll bet anyone here a beer that if Apple made a weird unconventional notebook that was not the "mainstream" or "normal" design with an LCD inside the cover that folds over the keyboard they would not sell.

The worst thing is that Apple use to sell just exactly what everyone wanted, the G4 tower sold for $1500, was upgradable and for it's day had good performance.
 
Stand behind your product

People would be more likely to pay a PREMIUM for Apple if they knew Apple would stand behind their products.

That means five years of security updates for an operating system after the last date of retail sale.
 
MacTraveller said:
Even a modest price cut would be welcome. Add to that a refresh of the iMac line... and count me in as a Mac (desktop) buyer in 2009.
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+1. It's pretty tough to expect people to pay the same thing for the same computer that first went on sale in April/January/2007.

If the refreshes are going to slow, Apple may need to reconsider their no-price-drops policy and drop the price of things $100 or so midway through the cycle.
 
gwangung said:
This is a myth.

Apple's margins are pretty much in line with any manufacturing company's margins, and substantially lower than most software makers.
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Not true. Apples margins are HUGE. They are by far the largest margins of any hardware maker. Dell and crew scrape by on single digits while Apple is known to be in the 20%-30% on some of their products.
 
whatever said:
Lowering prices is not the answer. Once you lower them it becomes to difficult to raise them. If lower prices were the solution then Dell wouldn't be in the mess that they are in.
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Exactly! Apple said they have some ideas about the lower priced computer market, but I don't think that they are ready yet.

Let's say that Apple decides to lower the price of the Mac Mini to $500 when they update it. The generation after it could not have a higher price, or costomers would complain. They also could not lower the price, because that would be getting too close to the price of the iPod. Don't even think about lowering the price of the iPod more than Apple already has, or they would not be as good of quality because of the limited amount of money they have to spend. Well...you see where I'm going. Price reduction is the wrong idea unless Apple wants to end up like Dell.
 
This thread is full of the usual rations of baloney from armchair CEOs.

Even if these forecasts turn out to be accurate (which I personally doubt), we should keep in mind that Apple has been growing its shipments of Macs at roughly ten times the rate of the Windows PC industry for the last couple of years. Not only is it quite unlikely that this trend has completely reversed, it should be remembered that this growth was accomplished with the current lineup of Mac products, not some mythical product lineup created out of thin air by people with no knowledge of what can be made and sold profitably.
 
What's the price of an ipod got to do with the mini?
What do you mean ending up like dell? A company that sells more with less profit margins, sounds pretty good for the consumer?

People questioning the price are just looking at the hardware inside and what you get for your money.
 
I do want to see a beefed up mini or other mid line desktop, and sure a little price drop would be nice, reasonable like $500 for a core2 and 1gb of ram, but I don't want to see a bunch of $300 celeron POS systems with the Apple name on it.

Part of Vista's great failure was they certified horribly underpowered systems to run it. Vista runs acceptably on a Intel Core 2 duo with 1 gb of ram, but have you seen it run with 512, or, gasp, 512 of ram AND a celeron processor?

One of Apple's greatest selling points was whatever machine you bought from them, you could be assured it will run the current OS more than adequately. Consumers aren't smart enough to differentiate between a cheap computer and a poor OS and that is something Apple cannot afford to get tangled up in.
 
No surprise here! Apple removes hardware options from the current line up. They limit choice to Glossy screens only (fine if you like glossy but for the approximately 50% that don't, not good). They completely ignore the mac-mini.

Apple needs better competitive pricing on some of their line ups!

Example: Just recently for the first time in a longggggg time I found a mac-mini in the refurb store for $699! That's just insane!

I was going to buy one for a xmass present IF they updated it! But, Nope didn't happen!

To me this is no surprise! Hopefully things change soon!
 
Glossy Screens (and no Firewire)

I blame the downturn on the glossy screens and the lack of firewire on the MacBooks!!! LOL!

And yes, I own a Macbook Pro WITH A GLOSSY screen (my 12" PBG4 simply wasn't up to the task of mobile video editing) and I can confirm that it is indeed dreadful. Nothing like looking at yourself all day while you edit. As soon as the matte screen comes back, this thing is going on eBay.
 
Tallest Skil said:
It's not excessive if people pay it.

But there's never anything wrong with a price cut.
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It is excessive to MOST. As I have said for YEARS - Apple would eventually hit the saturation point at their current pricing structure. I think that time is now and a little help from a poor economy may have sped-up that saturation point - but it is clear that those who want a Mac have bought one (for the most part) based on price. People can start flaming now - but Apple is a premium product in so far as people buy it at that elevated price. The price is now a stumbling block to many. In the age of $300 netbook computers and $500 quad-core PC's - a $1300 entry-level aluminum MacBook seems excessive to many people - especially in this economic climate. If Apple want to continue to grow is market share it MUST (in my opinion) lower the prices and offer more options for those who cannot and will not pay the Apple 'tax' such as it is.

Apple does not NEED to use Xeon CPU's in the Pro and there is not need for other choices Apple uses that does not directly affect the performance of the OS or the stability. If Apple would offer a Mac Mini with reasonable specs for $499 or even $399 they could capture the low-end market that will not and maybe cannot afford the high-end products. I do not think you will pull market from the high-end products as those are a different type of user.

I am sure the Mac elitists are already sharpening their keyboards for a smart-ass comment but I think Apple has saturated the market for high-end, boutique products and in order to compete in this current market climate they need more choices and a lower entry-level price point.

Again - this is just my opinion from a reasonably well educated mid-30's male with a small business and a bit of experience with how the real-world works. Apple is a fine company and one that has had fantastic success recently with the model they are using now - but how well Apple succeeds from this point on is a factor of Steve Jobs and his desire to cater to a client without the ability or desire to buy a $2000 MBP or $3500 MP.

D
 
It's not the laptop bump in November/December, nor the bump in desktops in January/February 2009, it's March, April and May 2009 when the effect of the recession begins nibbling at Apple - Winter bills, credit card splurge, more layoffs... As for income, high or low earner, blue or white collar, you are not immune.
 
Other factors...

I think there are some substantial other factors being missed here, and that's the overall trend in the market from desktops to laptops on the consumer level. First, the gap between what you can cram into a laptop and a desktop has shrunk (of course) dramatically in the last 8-10 years. New high-end consumers (college age kids and those in their mid-twenties) are much more likely (my opinion only) to purchase a laptop than a desktop these days. Mobility has always been an incentive, and now that the spec hit you take for getting that mobility is almost insignificant, I think most people are ignoring the desktop and looking primarily at laptops. Second, but related, those people who are looking for the expandable power of a desktop tend to be gamers, and in my experience those people are going to go with a Windows based PC or build their own because of the (correctly) perceived notion that that offers better graphics and software interoperability. So you can rant about the price points and the margins and the lack of a cheap piece of crap tower in the Mac line, but at the end of the day, this consumer report may not be telling us anything about any of those things.
 
iOrlando said:
yeah since dell and hp also make all their laptops from one piece of aluminum. and have multi-touch trackpads installed on all laptops..


come on....lets get our facts straight.
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He is correct in his statement for the most part - you picked two items to point out that are exceptions to his comment. The parts ARE basically the same and the price is high. Period.

Did Apple NEED to use a single piece of aluminum? No - it allowed them to do something with the physical appearance and design. There is nothing wrong with that - but people want and have been ASKING for a lower-priced Mac llne-up for YEARS! I would rather have a lower-priced notebook that looks nice but has OS X for $800 that did NOT have a milled aluminum 'brick'. Many people would rather have a nice-looking notebook for less without the hype and gimmicks of Apple yet still runs OS X. I am a huge Apple fan and own many Apple computers and NO PC's save for my Acer One. I would LOVE to see Apple more price competitive - but, as my Aunt from down South would say, 'it ain't gonna happen'!

D
 
ddTaylor said:
I am sure the Mac elitists are already sharpening their keyboards for a smart-ass comment but I think Apple has saturated the market for high-end, boutique products and in order to compete in this current market climate they need more choices and a lower entry-level price point.
Click to expand...

As if I needed one, this is a perfect example of the kind of baloney I referred to above. You make this argument with absolutely no data to back it up, nothing more than your own opinion -- and then have the gall to paint anyone who might not agree as "Mac elitists" making "smart-ass comments."
 
Apple's prices on the new notebooks are the entire problem. 6 months ago I was a Mac user all the way. Now I'm looking at PC's more seriously than I ever imagined. That fact that a MBP's worth of specs can be found for $1000 means that I have looked closely at various notebook PC's - and realized that being able to run OS X is simply not worth the 100% price increase. Apple is also no longer the frontrunner when it comes to design, with many manufacturers now competing for that title. Apple has, frankly, made some serious missteps in the past year, and it is hurting them.
 
The desktop sales dont surprise me. The whole range needs a speed/ram/hd bump and a price drop so no shocks there that people are hanging on. It's the portable figures that surprise me - with Apple increasing it's prices last time round to what they were around 5 years ago ... I'm amazed that anyone outside the US is still buying them. They need to drop the price by 30% to be remotely competitive. It's only the software investment that keeps many people tied to the same brand after all. If you could get iLife 2009 for windoze off the shelf from your local supermarket for 29€ I think a lot of people would bail out on Apple books for a supermarket Toshiba for 300€ /£200. You can get 5 of them for the same price as an Apple!
 
Amdahl said:
People would be more likely to pay a PREMIUM for Apple if they knew Apple would stand behind their products.
That means five years of security updates for an operating system after the last date of retail sale.
Click to expand...

WTF are you talking about? My 8 year old G4, that originally ran OS9, now runs OSX 10.4.11 and with all the security updates and latest iTunes? What more do you need?
 
i know this always hits the stock prices and the company takes a dive, but to be down only 1% from last year during the worst financial times our country has seen in decades is actually good news for apple. in a terrible economy, they are still strong.

i hope this helps them spur the need for an intermediate tower of some sort. i know people say that solution is called the imac, but you can't expand or play around inside the imac. either a glorified mini, a retooled mini, or a separate tower would be great.

and in any case the mini needs a serious update!
 
As others in here have stated or maybe I'm the first. The MB's should be only aluminum and start at $999 and the MBP's need that matte finish that everyone willing to pay that price has complained about. Not to mention that the MBP's are about $300-400 more than they should be.

Maybe this is driving the Mini upgrade because it will gain users since the economy isn't so hot.
 
My local Apple Store recently removed its Mac Pros from retail display. I have no idea if that had anything to do with sales numbers.
 
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