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I am a huge Apple fan but I am happy their sales have declined. Maybe Apple will re-focus and start to paying attention to their Mac lines and make sure their upgrades are solid and big ones. Not small ones keeping a large price tag.
I am holding to my devices longer and longer. My Mac Pro is from 2011, I just updates my iPad after 4 years I think. My iPhone still the 5S.
Stop spreading all over on many industries and focus on what you have done best.

You'd prefer it if Apple made products that needed to be replaced every 1-2 years rather than every 3-4 years?

I recently bought a new iMac, and would hope that it will last at least 5-6 years.
 
This is what happens when you don't release anything innovative, whilst the other phone companies are releasing new technology and cool new features on their phones.

There's now a lot of Android features which are available which iPhone hasn't caught up with yet. Come on Apple! I want a nice shiny new phone in September!
 
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I think the problem is Samsung came out with a large phone with compelling curved display, low light capable camera and refreshing design aesthetic. Apple devoted their resources to producing a small phone visually reminiscent of the iPhone5 with their users who liked smaller form factor in mind.

Just wait until summer when they announce the next phone, the people who've been waiting two years and bought the first 6 and 6 plus models will be refreshing then.

What actually is the practical benefit of the curved display on the Samsung though?

I'm not sure it's reasonable to say that whilst Samsung were doing their curved display that Apple were devoting their resources to the SE.

And are trying to argue that anyone who bought an iPhone 6 when it came out, had started waiting for a new design of iPhone the very next day?

Maybe it's just me, but when I get a new phone I'll spend months, if not years, just enjoying my new phone which works great, rather than get immediately impatient Apple haven't already designed a new, better looking phone than my month old phone.
 
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You'd prefer it if Apple made products that needed to be replaced every 1-2 years rather than every 3-4 years?

I recently bought a new iMac, and would hope that it will last at least 5-6 years.
Make compelling updates, is what I believe the OP is asking for. A compelling update does not make your old machine unusable in 1-2 years - not buying max specs on a glued in machine, when your needs change, can cause you to upgrade in 1-2 years.
 
I wonder how much the decline of iPhone sales is related to carriers stopping subsidizing phones. A lot of college students I know are holding off upgrading their phones because they don't have $800 to spare right now.

Subsidies* have been replaced by payment plans.

You aren't required to have $800 before you can walk out of the store with a new phone. I wasn't. My iPhone 6S Plus went home with me and I didn't have to fork over $800. Funny how that works :)

* It was never a subsidy. You ended up paying the full price of the phone YOURSELF over the course of 24 months. It was simply another type of "pay over time" just like the payment plans of today. Nothing has really changed... it's just named something different.

Stop spreading this nonsense. You don't have to pay $800 up-front for an iPhone. I didn't. And no one else does either.
 
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For everyone who constantly discredits Steve Jobs contributions, the man did do something at Apple. He didn't write code/source parts from vendors etc, but he gave direction as he knew what to work on. Tim Cook isn't the same visionary; the numbers show this. Apple needs to **focus** on building fewer products and making them the best.

You mean the record profits and huge sales numbers since Cook took over?
 
Make compelling updates, is what I believe the OP is asking for. A compelling update does not make your old machine unusable in 1-2 years - not buying max specs on a glued in machine, when your needs change, can cause you to upgrade in 1-2 years.

But other than for the most demanding of professional users who might need the fastest processors for demanding processor intensive work, there can't be many compelling updates within 1-2 years.

If, as you say, the 1-2 year old computer still performs perfectly well, then by definition any updates couldn't be that compelling in the first place.
 
Subsidies* have been replaced by payment plans.

You aren't required to have $800 before you can walk out of the store with a new phone. I wasn't. My iPhone 6S Plus went home with me and I didn't have to fork over $800. Funny how that works :)

* It was never a subsidy. You were paying the full price of the phone YOURSELF over the course of 24 months. It was simply another type of "pay over time" just like the payment plans of today.

Actually, there were subsidies. When iPhones sold through carriers for $200, the carriers paid Apple around a $650 subsidy for each iPhone, then the carriers got repaid for this subsidy plus more over the following two years.
 
I'm curious how other cell phone makers are doing???? From what I've seen, it's tough all over, but I have only done a quick look.

I see many factors at work here... one is Apple had a HUGE upgrade cycle with the 6 model line and when the "S" came out, the reasons to upgrade we're not enough to get current 6 owners to abandon what they have. I know this is true for me. Second, there's a ton of good competition now and tons of incentives and discounts being offered by other manufactures. Third is I think the market is pretty saturated with "good enough" devices (Apple and otherwise) and people are just hanging onto their phones longer.

So I think the real test is going to be the 7 release and iOS10. There's going to be a huge number of people looking to upgrade and the 7 needs to be very compelling to keep current customers from going to something else. The competition is very tough these days.

However... overall Apple can still beat past numbers if they are able to come up with something really compelling in the 7 or models that soon follow. It's not "game over" but the pressure is on and hopefully Apple can pull it off.
 
Actually, there were subsidies. When iPhones sold through carriers for $200, the carriers paid Apple around a $650 subsidy for each iPhone, then the carriers got repaid for this subsidy plus more over the following two years.

Yes... the carriers bought iPhones from Apple for $650.

You paid a down-payment of $199.

But the other $450 was collected from YOU from your carrier over the next two years.

I repeat... YOU were paying for it. You actually paid twice: $199 up-front... and another $450 which was spread out over 24 months.

That's doesn't sound like a subsidy.

It sounds like a type of payment plan. Which is what they correctly call it now.
 
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So - I wonder when (if) we will hear from Carl Icahn - quite a ways to go for AAPL @ $200/share.....
They should spend some of that money to bring their manufacturing home to the US. Everyone knows that Apple runs some of the harshest slave factories in the world under the Foxconn name. Also they should buy a big car maker like Volkswagon and they could cash in on the coming wave of smart cars, which everyone knows that they are working on.
 
Regardless, it was a profitable Quarter. (20% profit). It just can't keep going up forever.

Not everyone can afford buying a new iPhone every year, and not all Quarters bring new models.

A most objective analysis would consist in comparing the average of this year with previous years.
 
I feel like the carriers moving to nix subsidized pricing played a small role in declining iPhone sales. Most plan pricing didn't go down when they quietly axed the subsidies, but the prices of the devices shot up 100-150% over night. There are ripples.
 
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Steve has been dead four and a half years now. That is an eternity in a technology product lifecycle. My guess is that Steve's viable product visions have run out.

About all that is left are his documented management and product design philosophies. I'm sure that is kept internal to Apple just like Walt Disney kept his "vision" on how to entertain the masses to Disney executives.

Was told that Steve's Office is still under lock and key with the Apple board, Steve's estate, building maintenance and the Santa Clara County Fire Department only having access. While I haven't seen it, been told they have kept as much as they could undisturbed keeping it identical to the day he died for posterity. It'll probably become a time-capsule of early 21st century Silicon Valley.

I would not be surprised if both the Apple Watch and the Swift programming language development started after Steve passed away.

It's already been publicly stated that Jobs was aware of the Watch before he died. In fact, they released the iPod Nano with 17 new watch faces the day before he died, and he would have definitely approved that. Taken as a whole, I'd say that the Watch is still part of Steve Jobs vision, and not necessarily the last. He also knew about the rumored Apple car.

So far, Apple has not been rumored to be embarking on anything that Jobs was not originally part of in some way.
 
I feel like the carriers moving to nix subsidized pricing played a small role in declining iPhone sales. Most plan pricing didn't go down when they quietly axed the subsidies, but the prices of the devices shot up 100-150% over night. There are ripples.

Do you mean when they axed the "subsidies"... but replaced them with payment plans?

Which are basically the same thing but simply called something different?

Nothing has changed. You're still paying for a phone over time.

You might have only paid $199 at the time of purchase... but you were paying the remainder yourself over 24 months.

And the same thing still happens today.
 
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I was thinking about switching away from the iPhone because the last 2 iPhones gave me problems – iPhone 4 couldn't hold a call, iPhone 5 with infamous lock button that stopped working. But we got my son an LG Phone that uses Android and I couldn't believe what crap the Android OS is. It's like Windows 3.11.

So we bought 2 iPhone 6s phones using T-Mobile (switched from AT&T) and, so far, we are very happy. I knew to skip the 6 and wait for the bugs to be worked out and get the 6S. Same was true with the 4 and 5. They need to work on their quality control.

I subscribed to the Apple Music service for $10 a month. I love it. Who needs Sirius satellite when T-Mobile has unlimited streaming and you have Apple Music?

We are looking at getting a new MacBook or MacBook Air because our 10-year old MacBook is on its last legs.

Apple has given up on their pro apps, IMHO. I love Final Cut Pro X but they gave us 3D text in the last "big" update. Seriously? 3D text? Is this 1990? I have a 2013 Mac Pro and I spent a ton of money on it. It's disheartening to see the latest iMac at $2K be faster. I should be able to upgrade the video cards on my $6K desktop computer. A ton of folks are getting Davinci or Premiere Pro and a custom PC. Apple could be like RED or ARRI and be the baddest pro gear brand. They aren't trying.
 
Apple has given up on their pro apps, IMHO. I love Final Cut Pro X but they gave us 3D text in the last "big" update. Seriously? 3D text? Is this 1990? I have a 2013 Mac Pro and I spent a ton of money on it. It's disheartening to see the latest iMac at $2K be faster. I should be able to upgrade the video cards on my $6K desktop computer. A ton of folks are getting Davinci or Premiere Pro and a custom PC. Apple could be like RED or ARRI and be the baddest pro gear brand. They aren't trying.

I'm kinda glad I never got bitten by the Mac bug. I use Adobe products so it doesn't matter which platform I use.

But the fact that I can buy... or build... a monster desktop computer is awesome.

New video card? Just plug it in! A big chassis to house a ton of (reasonably priced) hard drives or SSDs? You betcha!

Windows might not be as "elegant" as OSX... but golly... IMHO the hardware choices makes up for it :)
 
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The real issue is that the 6 was good enough to not warrant the (sometimes $1000+) upgrade to 6s.

There are only a limited number of gimmicky features Apple can add to the iPhone (which 3D Touch is one of), so expecting anything more than refinements and spec bumps (CPU + RAM) from now on is asking a lot.

Yes, wireless charging is cool, but curved screens are a fad.

They still pulled off a massive quarter with a huge profit margin. But the law of large numbers says that there's no way Apple can continue to grow at the same pace it has been -- thinking otherwise is just delusional.
 
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