All of above is true. But there are also buyers of Macs who are sophisticated users. Those are the folks who might buy a Mac Pro. But the Mac Pro has now gone 860 days without being refreshed and without a price drop. They built this fancy case with innovative thermal capacity and then just did nothing with it? in over two years they couldn't put a new GPU in there? It almost boggles the mind.
The Mac Mini has gone 559 days without a refresh. Maybe they don't want cheap hardware available that can run their OS, so maybe they are going to kill that model. But I think that is a mistake. They could have really captured serious marketshare from Windows during the Windows 8 debacle.
If Apple refreshed the specs in their hardware more often, then power users would be compelled to upgrade more often. And power user sales drive consumer user sales because it is the power users that provide advice.
I'm what many would consider a power user, and my advice these days is consistently "you probably don't need a new computer". Not only because the newer models aren't advancing quickly enough, but because user requirements aren't advancing. SSDs were the last big advance, so you want one of those, but everything else is pretty much gravy.
I have to say that I think Apple has moved to the right strategy on Macs and, apparently now iPads: get off the constant update treadmill and release a new product when it's improved enough to justify it. These are products where the technology curve has flattened and they don't need to put the expense into refreshing as often. Even Intel is realizing that advances in desktop class processors are going to be slowing down-- but more importantly the applications people use just aren't getting that much more demanding.
I loved the PowerPC days because it was exciting to see what IBM/Mot were going to do to compete with Intel, but after the switch it has just been 10% improvement a year like clock work (tick-tock, tick-tock).
Most recently that improvement has been in the form of multicore architectures that most applications still aren't using effectively-- and if they do they are going to find a vast reserve of CPU power that has been accumulating over the years but doesn't require an update to utilize. Or it's been in the form of lower power which has translated into slimmer designs-- if that's something you prioritize, you probably don't ask your geek friend about which laptop is sexiest.
iPads are the same: there isn't much I want to do with an iPad that I can't do with an iPad Air 1. Sure color gamuts are a bit better but does that justify updating? Mostly those are things people will appreciate when their old one breaks and they need to replace it-- wow, the new one feels really nice! I wound up getting an iPP because I wanted the 256GB storage and gave away my Air to someone who had been perfectly happy with an iPad 2.
I think iPhones are getting into that same groove. I still use an iPhone 5 because it does what I need in combination with the range of devices I have available. iPhone is high enough volume that they may keep the annual update rate for a while just from a fashion perspective, because they can amortize the development cost over so many units, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it slow down in the near future as well.
The Watch is at a different point in the curve, and I expect to keep buying updates on that for a few cycles as they advance it toward something truly useful.
So yeah, there are a few tech junkies who always want the latest acronyms in their hardware, but that's not a growth path for a company as large as Apple, even considering knock-on effects. Apple, as a business, is focused on profit margins-- how much value do they as an enterprise add to their products. They will always focus their strategy at where they see they have value, and where that margin holds up. If that means declining unit sales, and reduced update cycles then they'll probably follow that path until they exit the market.
I'd be really surprised if they suddenly implement a strategy of more but smaller updates pursuing unit sales over profit as they chase a stagnating market.
