Apple Rises to Become World's Fourth-Largest PC Maker With Around 20M Macs Sold Last Year

[otternonsense]

In which universe? Many folks around here would love to see Apple "go down the gutter", to reinforce their own assumptions about what Apple should and should not be.

Wrong again, and typical of an absolutist thinker (either you're with us or against us -either you're a shareholder and fulltime shill like me, or you want to see the company crash and burn like the "many folks").

At most, many folks would want to see a drop in sales only as a consequence to the numerous slips in the product excellence/QA department (Apple's former forte), and because clearly an impact on profitability could be the only thing that may alert the board something's off. The most vocal/bullish ones (myself included) would want to see Cook & co ousted and replaced with product people and tech visionaries.

Apple should be a product first - shareholder second company. Ideally. That's how we got to know it and get entrenched to it. They can certainly afford to do better. And if we didn't care, we wouldn't be spending our time on forums.

This dissonance of worsening products & improving sales is so jarring, it's like watching a Fargo episode where the tonedeaf accountant with the charisma of a frayed lightning cable keeps winning the day out of sheer oversight.
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Probably not enough to offset the opportunity cost of diverting resources away from other more lucrative product categories such as the iPhone and Apple Watch.

People here don’t seem to get that these products don’t exist in a vacuum.

This person here doesn't seem to get that Apple can afford diversification and capability building that wouldn't require resource splitting.

 

[urbanmacUser]

Unfortunately, at the end of 2017 I had to buy a Mac Pro, really did not like getting 4 year old hardware out of the box, before you ask budget would not stretch to iMac Pro and it had to be a desktop.

 

[Abazigal]

This person here doesn't seem to get that Apple can afford diversification and capability building that wouldn't require resource splitting.

It's not that straightforward as to simply say "Here's your own department and manpower, now go build some Macs".

The way I see it, the biggest issue facing the Mac is that it is becoming an increasingly niche portion of Apple's business model, and is no longer the primary way new users enter the Apple ecosystem (that would be the iPhone). The resources required to update a product like the Mac Pro likely exceeds the revenue it will bring in. However, Apple also walks a very thin line as this small group of pro users (~4% of Apple's user base) is also responsible for creating content for the other 96% of the Apple user base, so they know they cannot afford to piss off this small but influential group of users.

My guess is that Apple tried to have their cake and eat it too by updating the MacBook Pro in 2016, designing the iMac Pro with the intention of having it replace the Mac Pro, letting the Mac Mini die a quiet death, all while continuing to double down on the iPad as a PC-alternative for the masses. The aim was to further streamline the Mac line-up in an attempt to make it appeal to both the pro user and the mass consumer.

The problem is that 4% of a large user base still roughly works out to about 30 million users, and not all of their needs can be met by consumer hardware such as the iMac or even the iMac Pro. They still need powerful, dedicated Mac Pro hardware. Meanwhile, the touchbar seems to have gotten a lot of pushback, while USB-C is still a confusing mess of compliant standards. Pro users simply don't seem to care about Apple's desire to make technology more personal. Things will likely get a lot worse before they get better. In fact, Apple has already had to promise a new Mac Pro sometime in the near future.

I also disagree that Apple can afford diversification. It's not just about the 200 billion it has in cash and equivalents. I find that the company is resource-constrained when it comes to time and attention. Apple's functional organizational structure produces a constant battle among products and teams to grab that finite amount of management's attention. For management to dedicate attention to new pro Mac hardware, the company may need to take its foot off the accelerator with other products. So in order to continue improving Macs for a small group of pro users , you are looking at possibly delaying the development of features and products of more popular products such as wearables which target a much larger user base.

And when you look at new emerging technologies such as wearables and AR, they will all likely utilise some variant of iOS rather than macOS. That's why iOS is getting all the attention, because there's just so much synergy here. It's Apple's key revenue driver right now, and their future product roadmap rides on it. The only reason why the Mac likely even still exists is because you need a Mac to develop iOS apps.

There is always a price to be paid.

 

[grad]

Good for Apple. I wonder how many motherboards did Asus sell.

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

I am not unique. There are millions of users like me.

Yes there are a lot of users like you, and there also are a lot of professional users not like you, what's your point? You have your opinion, others have theirs. Let's leave it at that.

 

[tardegrade]

I'm very happy for your that you are able to do work on your Mac because it comes with a built-in I.D.E. However, I still stand by my statement that Macs are now designed as toys. ...

I the space of one paragraph you've acknowledged that people do their work on Apple computers thus by definition accepting that a Mac is not a toy and then you've again claimed that Apple computers are toys.

I think you need to lie down.

 

[Rogifan]

How many times does it have to be said that:

great sales ≠ great Mac's (or the best they could do)?

We macOS users are land locked into whatever they release for hardware.

It's incredibly hard to measure true customer satisfaction when users have nowhere to go unless they are willing to completely change their eco-system, OS workflow, re-buy much of their software, etc, etc.

But Mac sales aren’t flat and don’t appear to be trending downward (outside of typical PC seasonality). I could just as easily say the ATP crowd is a minority just a very vocal one. It’s like people in my Twitter feed who say the iPad Pro isn’t a real computer because they can’t use it to do podcasting. I’d love to know what percentage of the iOS install base records podcasts. iPad Pro might not work for the tiny minority that are podcasters but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a computer or real work can’t be done with the device.

 

[Baymowe335]

Why would I hate to admit that

I agree, even if you just look at the Mac revenue, Apple's profit margins are much higher then their competitors.
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I agree that apple's profit margins are superior, but I'm not sure its apples and oranges.

Care to offer an opinion rather that just disagree? They have completely different strategies.

 

[turbineseaplane]

But Mac sales aren’t flat and don’t appear to be trending downward (outside of typical PC seasonality). I could just as easily say the ATP crowd is a minority just a very vocal one. It’s like people in my Twitter feed who say the iPad Pro isn’t a real computer because they can’t use it to do podcasting. I’d love to know what percentage of the iOS install base records podcasts. iPad Pro might not work for the tiny minority that are podcasters but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a computer or real work can’t be done with the device.

I don't disagree with what you've said, I'm just not sure how it relates to what I was saying.

Mac users are stuck accepting whatever Apple releases unless they are willing to change their home/work lives & eco-systems - A bridge way too far for many of us..

For most people, it's always going to be preferable to deal with any changes Apple throws at them vs tackle any type of switching. Depending upon their software requirements or preferences, they also might not be able to change eco-systems even if they wanted to also.

It's just hard to meaningfully tell what's a good or bad product design decision simply on sales numbers. The two things don't map to each other very well as Apple, obviously, has the monopoly on Mac hardware. If you want a Mac and/or to run macOS (legally), you buy what they sell.

 

[smacrumon]

This is a non story. Apple is clearly significantly well far off place #3, #2 and #1. It just scraped in at #4 place but easily could have been #5, #6 or #7.

I think with more aggressive pricing, Apple could be at #2 within two years.

 

[DNichter]

Aren't there iOS like interface options in OSX already ?
Sounds to me that's what you are looking for .

Apart from that, I assume noone will doubt that a computer OS like OSX is far more capable and advanced than iOS, Android and the likes .
Those gadget OSs have their use for the simple demands they are made for, but are just too limited to be run on computers .

Well that’s what I’d like to change. Create something new, change the desktop paradigm as we know it today.

 

[blake2]

GJ apple. Bring back the clamshell iBook now and let's eat up the lower-end market too! I'd buy two just for the sentimental value!!

 

[cmaier]

This is a non story. Apple is clearly significantly well far off place #3, #2 and #1. It just scraped in at #4 place but easily could have been #5, #6 or #7.

I think with more aggressive pricing, Apple could be at #2 within two years.

Their goal isn’t to be number two. Or to be number one. It’s to maximize overall profits.

 

[JadawinUK]

Wait a minute... "PC" maker? Suddenly the Mac is a PC? What about all those years of "I'm a Mac, not a PC" advertising?

 

[trevor12]

what it would possible market share when Apple would release "entry level" MB for 399 usd, iphone se II for 299 usd and IMac 5K for 499 usd...

 

[jonblatho]

As far as setting up Python goes you really, really want to use an environment manager like Anaconda. It will take you 5 minutes to set up and environment on a Mac, Windows, or Linux system. Without an environment you will set yourself up for a lot of heartache when one of the packages you depend on gets updated and breaks your code.

Oh yeah, I don’t need Python enough to warrant anything beyond the bare bones. In the case of the script mentioned here, all I imported were os, re, and fileinput. For more in-depth stuff I’d definitely use an environment manager. (But most of my scripting experience is in Swift, which wasn’t well-suited for this specific case.)

 

[Williesleg]

And imagine how much they'd sell had they bothered to keep the entire lineup up to speed.

Yeah, one thing I learned is to get myself an HP and load it up with Ubuntu Linux.

 

[Winni]

Apple isn't selling computers anymore, they are selling toys. Macs are a great design but they are no longer designed for work.

Yeah. And for the "work" part, people either fire up a Windows VM on their Macs or boot natively into it via Boot Camp... But in all fairness, Linux users face the same VM/dual boot dilemma.

 

[Applebot1]

For me I really detest Windows 10 so OSX always for me regardless if the hardware isn’t quite cutting edge.

 

[adnbek]

Not possible. Marco Arment and the ATP crowd/tech bubble keep telling us how awful new Macs are.

You haven’t listened to ATP lately, have you? They were gushing over the new iMac Pro.

The Imac pro was easy to design since it used current chassis and display. Hardly anything to be excited about.

Comes to show how little the average person understands such things. You realize it’s how they designed the innards to fit in that thing that’s impressive? Taking workstation parts and custom-designing them to fit inside that form factor. And the cooling system needed? The fact they were able to do it using that current chassis is what makes it so exciting.

[doublepost=1515875298][/doublepost]For this discussion about market share, since I don’t feel like copy-pasting what I wrote in another thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...vice-activations.2097601/page-8#post-25642800

Now while HP and Dell did sell more than Apple in this case, the point is still the same. The fact that Apple holds a 10% share of a market that is diluted by tons of brands selling tons of models at every price point. I still find that to be an accomplishment. Not a negative.

 

[RickInHouston]

You probably know but would hate to admit that when you count revenue, Apple is right with those three, and when you count profits, Apple leaves them way behind.

I doubt it if you were to take their phone revenue out of it.

 

[Ileskovar]

Just last week I wrote a script on my iMac that used a well-written regex to search through tens of thousands of METARs and limit the dataset to only what I was interested in (hourly weather observations).

Now, sure, it’s possible on Windows, but I wrote the script in Python, which is natively bundled in macOS. On Windows, I’d have had to go follow one of many possible methods of installing and setting up Python before getting to work.

That’s an analog for a lot of serious work on Windows, it seems.

Firts You have to educate people what is METAR or TAF.. (Just kidding)

 

[CWallace]

You probably know but would hate to admit that when you count revenue, Apple is right with those three, and when you count profits, Apple leaves them way behind.

I doubt it if you were to take their phone revenue out of it.

As I noted upthread, on 300% greater sales, Hp's Personal Systems division (desktops, laptops and workstations) did 30% greater revenue. Apple does not break out Gross margin by product category, but with a near 40% GM overall, it's clear Mac's are not loss leaders and a 25% GM is probably conservative for the Mac. For Hp, it is less than 4% for 2017. So clearly, Apple's profit per unit on the Mac dwarf what Hp is making per unit on their machines.

 

[Falhófnir]

It's not that straightforward as to simply say "Here's your own department and manpower, now go build some Macs".

The way I see it, the biggest issue facing the Mac is that it is becoming an increasingly niche portion of Apple's business model, and is no longer the primary way new users enter the Apple ecosystem (that would be the iPhone). The resources required to update a product like the Mac Pro likely exceeds the revenue it will bring in. However, Apple also walks a very thin line as this small group of pro users (~4% of Apple's user base) is also responsible for creating content for the other 96% of the Apple user base, so they know they cannot afford to piss off this small but influential group of users.

My guess is that Apple tried to have their cake and eat it too by updating the MacBook Pro in 2016, designing the iMac Pro with the intention of having it replace the Mac Pro, letting the Mac Mini die a quiet death, all while continuing to double down on the iPad as a PC-alternative for the masses. The aim was to further streamline the Mac line-up in an attempt to make it appeal to both the pro user and the mass consumer.

The problem is that 4% of a large user base still roughly works out to about 30 million users, and not all of their needs can be met by consumer hardware such as the iMac or even the iMac Pro. They still need powerful, dedicated Mac Pro hardware. Meanwhile, the touchbar seems to have gotten a lot of pushback, while USB-C is still a confusing mess of compliant standards. Pro users simply don't seem to care about Apple's desire to make technology more personal. Things will likely get a lot worse before they get better. In fact, Apple has already had to promise a new Mac Pro sometime in the near future.

I also disagree that Apple can afford diversification. It's not just about the 200 billion it has in cash and equivalents. I find that the company is resource-constrained when it comes to time and attention. Apple's functional organizational structure produces a constant battle among products and teams to grab that finite amount of management's attention. For management to dedicate attention to new pro Mac hardware, the company may need to take its foot off the accelerator with other products. So in order to continue improving Macs for a small group of pro users , you are looking at possibly delaying the development of features and products of more popular products such as wearables which target a much larger user base.

And when you look at new emerging technologies such as wearables and AR, they will all likely utilise some variant of iOS rather than macOS. That's why iOS is getting all the attention, because there's just so much synergy here. It's Apple's key revenue driver right now, and their future product roadmap rides on it. The only reason why the Mac likely even still exists is because you need a Mac to develop iOS apps.

There is always a price to be paid.

That macs are dwindling and iPhone becoming an ever more dominant part of Apple’s revenue is a reason to double down on pushing macs, not saying ‘oh well’ and managing their decline... if you put all your eggs in one basket eventually you’re going to trip over and end up with a lot of egg on your face...

 

[pearvsapple]

Tim Cook: "Dammit! Mac is supposed to die and make way for iOS!"