Apple Says 'You're Only as Good as the Last Thing You Did' Amid Sales Slowdown

[otternonsense]

Yes, this is much better than the Steve Jobs days at Apple, and it's above mentioned world changing devices every second year.

For all the shilling you do across multiple sites, I really hope you're paid, Cerla.

Mac>iPod: it took 17 years
iPod>iPhone: 6 years
iPhone>iPad: 3 years

But of course the iPad was developed before the iPhone so it was readily finalized as standalone category.

I have been on this site forever, as it's my primary source of quality Mac news. Last year, I decided to partecipate to the conversation, because I thought and I think I have something insightful to say from time to time, as soneone who's on Macs since the 7100.

Your post is offensive, and it does not contribute anything to the conversation.

DJ, we've formerly exchanged quips on The Verge, MR and AI. To be honest, you sound even more enthusiastic than a Genius Bar veteran OD'ing on Tim Cool-aid, defending Apple's decisions at every sign of criticism. So @Johnny907 's comment is not exactly far flung. ;-)

 

[TechZeke]

Steve hit the nail on the head so hard it cracked the wood.

And goodness gracious, the people justifying the lack of Mac updates with "Do you really need the extra performance?" is so laughable that I can't even laugh and have to shake my head in disbelief.

 

[otternonsense]

The Skylake chips in those Dell machines are already included in the current Macs (came out in April I believe). Everybody is waiting for the improved Kaby Lake and Cannonlake chipsets from Intel.

Not quite. XPS's are fully fledged workstations. Last April's MacBook is (still) a woefully underpowered sheet of aluminum for typing essays at Starbucks.

 

[Sandybox]

These people are paid colossal sums of money to get it right and keep delivering the next "big thing". If they can't do it then the Board of Apple should get rid of them and hire people who can deliver consistently for shareholders. Given the resources at their disposal there is zero excuse for "falling short".

 

[djcerla]

DJ, we've formerly exchanged quips on The Verge, MR and AI. To be honest, you sound even more enthusiastic than a Genius Bar veteran OD'ing on Tim Cool-aid, defending Apple's decisions at every sign of criticism. So @Johnny907 's comment is not exactly far flung. ;-)

I'm not on AI.

I "defend" Apple ON SOME TOPICS (if I have nothing to say I don't comment) because that's exactly the reason why I stopped being a lurker.

It's easier to try and devalue the source than arguing logically on facts, and that's what you're trying to do now.

This is saddening, and brings nothing to the table of this topic.

 

[62tele]

Do you have any indication that, eg, the iPod or more importantly the iPhone have had shorter gestation times than the Watch? Product development doesn't magically move faster just because a rumour leaks out. The gestation period only appears longer. And a TV content package deal is probably among the hardest to keep under wraps given that Apple has to negotiate with a solid number of different partners, in particular, partners from industries that aren't very good at keeping secrets.

I own an Apple Watch and I appreciate what it took to create it but, it was a still a bit underwhelming. One has to assume that a forward thinking, "innovative" Apple, with it's massive resources, would have been further ahead of the curve on this. Apple has been negotiating with content providers for years. Their heavy handed approach to grabbing an industry by the crotch with an industrial strength vice may have created problems for them in this pursuit. Regardless, others are now making the same overtures to the TV and Apple appears to now be one of many suitors.

That's a ham-fisted way of looking at things.

- Nobody has good TV content packages. It's not Apple's fault; the people who own the rights are digging their heels in. What did Apple do instead? They created the AppleTV. It's early days, but the product is already quite successful and they are building the most attractive platform for TV out of anybody.

- Apple Watch took a long time? Do you know how long the iPhone took to develop? Can you appreciate the amount of work that is required to get a computer of that processing power in to a device you can wear on your wrist and that will still have battery life by the end of the day? I don't see anybody doing a better job of pushing that market forward than Apple is.

As Eddy Cue says in the interview, they are not perfect, and they never claimed to be. They can't just leapfrog 3,4 or 5 years of R&D like they were time-travellers. They try their best to create the best products they can, and for all their faults, they have a fleet of products which are all basically at the cutting-edge.

Where did I say it was easy? I simply don't think it's reasonable to go 18 months without even a modest refresh of your laptop or desktop lines or 3 product cycles to do something beyond these small incremental changes to the iPhone. Not to mention skimping on RAM, Storage etc. You know, "you can't use split screen on your 1 year old (at the time) iPad Air because we only put in 1GB of RAM." That's the opposite of "chicken salad", if you get my meaning.

I am still a loyal Apple customer (have been since my G5 iMac in 2005) but I will wait (and wait, and wait) until they do something to an increasingly stale lineup to make me want to refresh my iPhone, iPad, iMac and MacBook Pro.

I am not alone in being a loyal Apple fan who thinks they've lost focus and lost ground. However, most of us don't feel that Windows or Android is a suitable alternative.

 

[s15119]

Oh poor pitiful Apple...sniff, sniff. Come on Timmy, cowboy up and go fire some people. It's not like the choices are hard to find among the rabble of incompetent VPs. And if you can't or won't do it, then the board needs to oust your sorry rear end.

Why would the board fire him? Have you seen recent earnings and profit? He's making his shareholders a ton of money.

 

[bladerunner2000]

The Nvidia Shield is a purpose-built mini gaming box. It looks like a stealth bomber - which is to say that it's appeal is squarely at young males, not the mainstream family market.

It is a totally different product with very different features and priorities. AppleTV has things like Siri which would make little sense on the Shield. That's where Apple put their engineering effort - targeted towards their market.

Maybe one is better suited to you than the other; that's why competition exists.

Wrong.

It's a multi-purpose device, the fact that it's called 'Shield TV' and comes preloaded with Plex should tell you that. Just because it has a powerhouse GPU in it and 3gb of RAM doesn't mean it's meant only for gaming.

Secondly, it DOES have voice control like Siri. The remote and game controller also both have a headphone jack so you can listen to whatever it is on your TV privately (excellent for movies while everyone else is asleep).

And, unlike the sorry excuse of a media player the Apple TV is, the Shield has not one, but TWO USB ports both of which can be used to attach devices including external USB hard drives with movies, music, etc loaded onto them for native playback through a host of different media players that can be download and installed from Google Play, including VLC.

To top it off, it's 4k ready at 60hz, has builtin chromecast, a microSD cart slot, bluetooth, 16gb or 500gb storage, etc.

You might wanna know both products before making assumptions AND spreading misinformation.

Shield TV > Apple TV

And it's not even close.

 

[theheadguy]

Apple should make it up to us and cut the pricing on the existing MBP and the Mac Pro by 35%.

No. Just no. You'd be buying old technology, and it would STILL be overpriced.
[doublepost=1470692982][/doublepost]

The Nvidia Shield is a purpose-built mini gaming box. It looks like a stealth bomber - which is to say that it's appeal is squarely at young males, not the mainstream family market. It is a totally different product with very different features and priorities. AppleTV has things like Siri which would make little sense on the Shield. That's where Apple put their engineering effort - targeted towards their market. Maybe one is better suited to you than the other; that's why competition exists.

This is why these forums are trash sometimes. People opining on a product they've obviously never used and know nothing about.

 

[ramonabynes]

In essence, Apple is a company that survives because of its lies. They are exceptional at bare face lying and deceiving the public to the point where lying could be seen to be the very essence of what the company is about.

It's important to understand that there are two different sides to Apple: the image they portray to the public, and the real company behind that. The image to the public is that of a company that loves tech, produces premium products, cares about design, and cares about the environment and people's privacy. But, the real Apple is much nastier. This is the company that tries to hide the real state of their products behind deceptive made up tech words such as "Retina" screens, that mean absolutely nothing, the company that uses manufacturing companies with suicide nets because the workers on the bottom floors didn't like the thuds of all the people leaping off the roof to kill themselves. They are the same company that makes products that effectively CAN'T be recycled, or repaired. They gimp their products with things like low memory, and then they have the audacity to charge a ridiculous price for an "upgrade" to what you should have received in the first place. They manipulate public opinion by only making their products available on release to reviewers who have a history of giving favourable reviews and target and backstab those who give bad reviews (I've experienced this). They have a highly manipulative marketing campaign designed to produce cult like behaviour. It's not an accident that there is an almost religious type of regard that a certain percentage of users have towards Apple and their products - this has been done deliberately. Apple are extremely arrogant and greedy, and don't care at all about the user experience beyond it being a way to fleece more money out of users, who they regard with utter contempt.

In essence, Apple are a vicious and ruthless company, hidden under a lie of respectability.

I'm clapping for this

 

[ryanwarsaw]

Apples game has always been that they'd rather wait and get it right then release on some sort of expedited schedule. People seem to have forgotten that.

hmmm They released the first iPhone on Edge and only with "web" apps. They didn't hold off another year

 

[BoulderAdonis]

Then don't ****ing remove the headphone jack

It's very clear to see why the headphone jack is being removed. The watch is going to *continue* to improve in functionality - it doesn't have a headphone jack.

Buy removing the headphone jack from the phone, it moves the industry forward with bluetooth - which will work standalone with the watch too.

Not that you wouldn't want a more capable device for the right use case: watch --> phone --> tablet --> laptop --> desktop --> cluster

But, "watch --> phone --> tablet" is probably going to cover 99% of humanity.

 

[masterhiggins]

Sure, their products are stagnating but at least they have a diverse workforce and green initiative, right? That's all that matters to me as an end user. That and making everything thinner. Very important.

 

[Pilgrim1099]

Excellent post - right on the point - my view is that neither Art Levinson, nor Tim Cook, nor Eddie "the Slob" Cue are product people. The rest will be history and I fear we are seeing it now.

Oh it's happening already. I think they put so much money into the new Campus 2, Apple Car, iOS and Watch line that to the point, they couldn't focus on improving their foundational products ( i.e. iMac, iPod etc ).

Jony plays a huge part of the problem and I think he needs to go independent away from Apple. But Cook, Cue and Williams have got to go. Including the Fools at Beats.

It doesn't matter how hard Cook tries to ignore reality but he got outmaneuvered badly by Nadella and other CEOs. Microsoft may not be perfect but they're doing a great job under Satya's guiding hand.

Cook? That man is a damn fool.

 

[pat500000]

That's it....i'm going out like this...

and play this

in his front yard.....

 

[duffman9000]

Apple - selling 3 year old technology at 3 year old prices - today!! Whatever happened to skating to where the puck is GOING to be? Why are they standing still where it was 3 years ago?

The puck is always passing through gobs of money and only fat profit margins can generate that kind of cash lol.

 

[Theophilos]

With all respect to Mr. Cook, we don't want an Apple that is in every aspect of our lives. We just want consistent, reliable updates to the products that made us fall in love with Apple in the first place, like the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro. The iPhone and iPad were great inventions that have changed the world, but let's not forget about Apple's heritage making the best computers on the planet for which millions of people gladly paid a premium.

I'm sad to say that, for the first time since I switched to Apple back in 2000, I've been wandering to Dell's website to look at the XPS's specs and reading about how Windows 10 matches up with OS X (oh, I mean MacOS, because it was so important to change the name without really improving much else...)

 

[gertruded]

Wang, Kodak, Sears, Xerox, HP, ----------Well we can all name the companies that were on top and failed, some at a very rapid rate.

I think we can now add Apple to that list. And yes, it is sad, and it is always management maximizing short term profits and forgetting about their customers.

 

[duffman9000]

You're completely missing the point. They aren't even updating the specs. They're using 3-year-old CPUs, no proper video card, no ports, etc. It doesn't take much effort to refresh the specs. This is the richest company, and they can't afford to put a modern CPU in a MacMini. I'm an engineer and I understand how hard design is, but even noname Chinese brands are updated regularly.

You forgot to mention the Apple TV. Before the last update it was so old I wouldn't be surprised if it shipped with free dust.

 

[apolloa]

So the same he must have been thinking about the iPhone 7. Why plow money into a new design, Amoled screen, more ram, etc. into it? We've already lost to Samsung and other Chinese companies. Let's milk it to the last drop and escape the computer, phone business altogether. Let's make cars.

By the time Apple has a car ready. I'm sure BMW, Mercedes, VW will beat them with better more advanced cars. With or without help from Google.

I'm sure I'm making a lot of USA people angry here, this is not my goal, but the USA car manufacturers aren't known for making the best cars. You come up with tesla... But remember both Toyota and Mercedes have invested heavily in Tesla too.

Tesla have them now and next year Nissan will have an option on sale for cars that steer and accelerate and brake etc themselves. So literally by the time Apples car, if it is making one, hits the showroom it will be up against a bucket load of experienced competitors with centuries of experience in their market.

But who knows what Apple is doing? All I know is cars are a hell of a lot more expensive then iPhones or iPads and that's where it will be interesting to see what happens. Will people literally put their lives in Apples hands for a possible premium car price tag, rather then BMW or Audi etc etc?

 

[Unami]

"you're only as good as the last thing you did. No one wants an original iPod. No one wants an iPhone 3GS."

well, i for one still enjoy fondling my ipod touch 2g with it's smooth, minimalistic design and simple and fast but meaningful user interface. and i still envy the guys who had a classic macpro when it was still top of the line (with a fresh copy of snow leopard installed). they don't make them like that any more. gadgets with character. sniff.

i guess, if apple is as good as the last things they did, then they've seen better times. but they've also seen worse.

 

[CarlJ]

I'm puzzled why no one comes right out and asks Tim Cook if they ever plan to update the Mac line. With so many people dying to know, why are people so afraid to ask him if/when they have a chance?
If he says they have no intention of doing so, why are they updating the Mac OS? He owes it to all of us who have stuck with Apple from the beginning and pushed their products for decades.

No one asks because it'd be a foolish question. I don't think anyone is afraid to ask (you think Aplle has hit squads to deal with such people?), and Tim Cook owes you nothing - you bought hardware that works with the software that shipped with it, and that's what you have - I've bought into the ecosystem because based on my past fifteen years of observation, I expect it'll continue, not because Apple owes me anything. Of course they plan on updating the Mac line - they wouldn't be putting highly valued engineers on developing a new version of the OS just to, what, trick people into thinking there'll ever be new hardware? That that line of reasoning makes any sense to you suggests perhaps a level of bitterness interfering with your judgement. The real question is, what improvements will we see in the next Macs - and no one is asking Tim that because they know he won't answer, beyond smiling and saying that good things are coming. Apple has been playing their cards close to the vest like this for decades, it shouldn't be a surprise.

 

[Johnny907]

DJ, we've formerly exchanged quips on The Verge, MR and AI. To be honest, you sound even more enthusiastic than a Genius Bar veteran OD'ing on Tim Cool-aid, defending Apple's decisions at every sign of criticism. So @Johnny907 's comment is not exactly far flung. ;-)

Have you read the gem he left on Verge today, where he equated Apple selling less iPads to consumers to apple "winning" the Enterprise business market? Good chuckle had by all.

 

[EricTheHalfBee]

No one asks because it'd be a stupid question. I don't think anyone is afraid to ask (you think Aplle has hit squads to deal with such people?), and Tim Cook owes you nothing - you bought hardware that works with the software that shipped with it, and that's what you have - I've bought into the ecosystem because based on the past fifteens years of observation, I expect it'll continue, not because Apple owes me anything. Of course they plan on updating the Mac line - they wouldn't be putting highly valued engineers on developing a new version of the OS just to, what, trick people into thinking there'll ever be new hardware? That that line of reasoning makes any sense to you suggests perhaps a level of bitterness interfering with your judgement. The real question is, what improvements will we see in the next Macs - and no one is asking Tim that because they know he won't answer, beyond smiling and saying that good things are coming. Apple has been playing their cards close to the vest like this for decades, it shouldn't be a surprise.

You left out Final Cut and Logic Pro. Those have been getting regular updates to make them more powerful. Doesn't make sense to continue development of your two most popular software packages (and adding in things like dual GPU support) if you're not going to continue to provide hardware to run that software.

I used to build a PC gaming rig almost every year because CPUs and GPUs were improving at a breakneck pace. Now I keep my rig for several years because new CPUs and GPUs just aren't improving enough for me to justify doling out money that often. So it is now with iPhones and Macs. And people are upset because they don't get a new MacBook every year when they don't upgrade every year in the first place.


I could open a salt mine by collecting and drying all the tears on MR. Amazing how many Apple users there are that hate Apple.
[doublepost=1470696368][/doublepost]

Have you read the gem he left on Verge today, where he equated Apple selling less iPads to consumers to apple "winning" the Enterprise business market? Good chuckle had by all.

Apple owns the enterprise market for phones and tablets. I don't need to read whatever you're claiming someone said to know this is a fact.

Are you complaining about his analogy or are you claiming Apple doesn't own enterprise? Because they most certainly do.

 

[Johnny907]

I love this video so much I wish I could like this comment again a second time. I use it everytime someone throws the tired "Apple doesn't have to innovate so much anymore" argument, or lauds a new Apple ad like the "shot on iPhone" nonsense.
[doublepost=1470696677][/doublepost]

You left out Final Cut and Logic Pro. Those have been getting regular updates to make them more powerful. Doesn't make sense to continue development of your two most popular software packages (and adding in things like dual GPU support) if you're not going to continue to provide hardware to run that software.

I used to build a PC gaming rig almost every year because CPUs and GPUs were improving at a breakneck pace. Now I keep my rig for several years because new CPUs and GPUs just aren't improving enough for me to justify doling out money that often. So it is now with iPhones and Macs. And people are upset because they don't get a new MacBook every year when they don't upgrade every year in the first place.


I could open a salt mine by collecting and drying all the tears on MR. Amazing how many Apple users there are that hate Apple.
[doublepost=1470696368][/doublepost]

Apple owns the enterprise market for phones and tablets. I don't need to read whatever you're claiming someone said to know this is a fact.

Are you complaining about his analogy or are you claiming Apple doesn't own enterprise? Because they most certainly do.

1) Wasn't talking to you
2) His statement was blanket, not specifying tablets or phones, but everything. When only 1 in 10 businesses are using Macs instead of Windows based PC's, that's not "winning" anything. Were I talking to you, I might have specified this. But I wasn't, so I didn't.