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

EricTheHalfBee said:
So what you want is for Apple to take the Mac Pro higher and start offering versions from $15K to $30K and up, and you're not satisfied with their highest available configuration (which is around $9700).
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You asked for a competitor offering 44-core configurations. He provided an example. HP also offers a 44-core configuration on their Z840 workstation. Of course a configuration like that is going to be expensive, I don't think that's the point he was trying to make, though.

Both of these workstations from Dell/HP are highly configurable from 4 to 44 cores at various prices ranges and both can offer more cores for less money than what Apple can give you, so what's your point?

Don't move the goalposts.
 
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bladerunner2000 said:
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.
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Yeah, those are things that aren't as important to the AppleTV. What was Apple pushing at the event? Apps. The first-generation AppleTV is about building a platform. They know the content isn't all there, but if they bring the iOS SDK over to the TV you can get at least get that content (which turns out to be quite a lot). They can get native apps, like the MLB app, which give a better experience that can be enjoyed by the whole family.

The only thing they're really missing is the cohesive UI that replicates the traditional Live-TV viewing and channel-surfing experience, and a simplified a-la-carte billing system. That's what they need the deals for.

Yes, I know the Shield is tricked-out with the latest media streamers and USB and microSD ports and whatever. And all of that is totally not the point of the AppleTV. The one USB port it has isn't user-accessible; it's a diagnostics port for developers. My mother isn't going to fuss with Plex (I gave her my old RPi2 with Kodi on it -- oh, God...). She's not the type to watch QVC, but lots of peoples' mothers are, and they'd appreciate something like the rich, interactive apps on the AppleTV.

Yeah, it does some limited gaming with the remote. Come on, man, the remote alone should tell you this isn't really a gaming machine. You're not going to play Arkham Origins with the AppleTV remote.

theheadguy said:
No. Just no. You'd be buying old technology, and it would STILL be overpriced.
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This is why these forums are trash sometimes. People opining on a product they've obviously never used and know nothing about.
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I know the Shield TV. It's not aimed at the same market as the AppleTV.

The Shield is a bunch of hardware and some bundled services. AppleTV is a platform.
 
Everyone knows that the iPhone release this fall is going to be weak, so Apple should have focused on the Mac lineup instead. Except that they did not.
 
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xmonkey said:
You asked for a competitor offering 44-core configurations. He provided an example. HP also offers a 44-core configuration on their Z840 workstation. Of course a configuration like that is going to be expensive, I don't think that's the point he was trying to make, though.

Both of these workstations from Dell/HP are highly configurable from 4 to 44 cores at various prices ranges and both can offer more cores for less money than what Apple can give you, so what's your point?

Don't move the goalposts.
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I'm not moving any goalposts at all.

His complaint was that he didn't have 44 core models (while his competitors did) and that gave them an advantage in completing projects. The machines he wants are not an area Apple currently competes in.

If he complained that he needed to spend $10K on a Mac Pro while his competitors could buy a similar PC for only $6K then you'd have a point.
 
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"You're only good as the last thing you did"?

Well shoot, no wonder why Apple sales are slumping. They keep doing the last thing they did over and over adding a few more sprinkles on it each time then try to market it as "revolutionary" and "innovative". In other words, they keep doing the same thing over and over with only slight improvements.

People have lost their appetite eating the same ol Apple, they've moved on to bananas.
 
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I generally think the doom and gloom predictions are pretty silly, but then I realized that in the past several months I've been considering NOT buying the next iPhone, for the first time since I started with my iPhone 3G. This is coming from someone who has been a DIEHARD Apple fanboy for many years.

Part of it is the idea that they are taking out the headphone jack in their ridiculous drive toward making everything thinner. But part of it is just that Android really seems to be offering better products these days, and as Apple continues to screw up every app and service I used to use (Maps, Photos, Siri) I realize that I'm using mostly Google services these days, so maybe I'd be better off with a device that lets me use those the way I want, instead of not letting me choose from the defaults.

At the same time, I'm looking at the disappointing Mac lineup, and I just don't see anything I want to upgrade to. So when it comes time to upgrade my Macbook Pro, I don't really know what I'm going to do.

All of that is to say, I'm starting to wonder if the doom and gloom predictions actually has some legs, when a fanboy like myself is thinking of jumping ship on multiple products.
 
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So much wisdom and fun snark in this thread, all I can do is nod my head and agree with so many others. Whatever the hell TC and co are smoking, drinking or eating, they need to lay off. Concentrate on quality control, stable software and hardware. Stop spreading the Apple sauce so darn thin.
 
appleisdomed
 
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The Mac line hasn't had a big update because it hasn't had anything to justify them - there hasn't been a big chip upgrade since the 4th Gen Core processors (nearly 3 years old now). The 5th gens were just spec bumps and 6th gen (Skylake) was even smaller than that, but did give USB-C natively. Kaby Lake, the 7th gen, will bring something more to the party - Thunderbolt 3 and native USB C (on the first rMB, they used a controller). I suspect that now that Kabys are working their way to developers we'll see a good new revision after BTS season.

Now I sell Macs every day, so I think I can add some insight into what I see selling them, and what people want:

My personal hope is for new MBP both 13 and 15, with Kaby Lake, the rumored OMLED bar and USB-C, a new Macbook Air 13" with either Skylake or Kaby, USB-C without retina, and a spec bumped rMB, with the drop of the MBP non-retina and MBA 11".

On the desktop side I'd like to see the the 21.5 iMac in non-Retina 1TB HD and Retina 4k with a 1TB Fusion drive on the base model, and the 27" 1 and 2TB Fusions all being updated to Kaby with USB-C and TB3, a refreshed Mac Mini that harkens back to the 2012 model (with upgradable SATA HD and RAM) with a 500gb HD or 1TB Fusion Drive. I would also like to see new Mac Pros but honestly, I don't deal with them enough to have a ton of opinions. I would drop the disappointing 1.6DC iMac and the 1TB non-Fusion 27".
 
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springsup said:
Yeah, those are things that aren't as important to the AppleTV. What was Apple pushing at the event? Apps. The first-generation AppleTV is about building a platform. They know the content isn't all there, but if they bring the iOS SDK over to the TV you can get at least get that content (which turns out to be quite a lot). They can get native apps, like the MLB app, which give a better experience that can be enjoyed by the whole family.

The only thing they're really missing is the cohesive UI that replicates the traditional Live-TV viewing and channel-surfing experience, and a simplified a-la-carte billing system. That's what they need the deals for.

Yes, I know the Shield is tricked-out with the latest media streamers and USB and microSD ports and whatever. And all of that is totally not the point of the AppleTV. The one USB port it has isn't user-accessible; it's a diagnostics port for developers. My mother isn't going to fuss with Plex (I gave her my old RPi2 with Kodi on it -- oh, God...). She's not the type to watch QVC, but lots of peoples' mothers are, and they'd appreciate something like the rich, interactive apps on the AppleTV.

Yeah, it does some limited gaming with the remote. Come on, man, the remote alone should tell you this isn't really a gaming machine. You're not going to play Arkham Origins with the AppleTV remote.
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None of that matters because the Nvidia Shield TV does everything the Apple TV does just as well and just as easily (and then some). Your mom had trouble with Kodi? So what? Should have given her something basic. Are you suggesting she couldn't figure out Android TV OS? The Shield TV is pretty damn straight forward but also can be 'tricked out' if your'e competent and that's mostly thanks to it having a functional USB port. But I see why you're saying this... it's the pledge of allegiance to the Apple brand, I get it.

What Apple has sold you is watered down garbage for an inflated price that was long overdue.

But this is Apple's entire philosophy and what the problem with Apple is especially today;

Take a potentially great product, strip it down from being perfect, make it stupidly easy to use but sell it at 3X the price.

Proof?

Mac Pro: no proper PCIe port, therefor completely USELESS in a few years time seeing how you cant upgrade an already outdated GPU
iMac: cram laptop grade components into a desktop and make it unnecessarily so thin that it creates a ton of heat and noise from the fan just to keep it running cool while it also downthrottles because otherwise it'd fry
MacBook Pro: soldered RAM. nuff said
MacBook: ONE stinking USB port that also acts as the charging port???
iPhone: You need to jailbreak it just to get some customization on a device that's with you almost 100% of the time? Why does Apple treat it's customers like lemmings? And where the hell is the file manager?! And NO MicroSD card slot???? Why? Samsung just came out with dual sim and one slot doubles as a MicroSD slot. No excuses.
iPad: Same problems as the iPhone
Apple Watch: joke of a product that needs no explanation.
OS X: green button acts as full screen, completely useless on a desktop monitor and laptop (annoying as hell having to swipe between multiple apps). no proper cut/paste command for the Finder, System Integrity Protection has screwed small developers, etc.

And finally, back to the Apple TV:
Apple TV: USB port is completely useless, doesn't playback MKV files (or pretty much any formats other than MP4 and MOV with h263/h264), but for some reason VLC exists for Apple TV which would fix that problem!!! WTF?!?! But there's Plex on Apple TV as well, but you didn't complain about THAT because it wouldn't suit your narrative! But wait, it's not the SAME as Plex for the Shield TV, right? Why? Because it doesn't act as the server... and why is that? Well because Apple's stupid gimping tactics made it impossible to take advantage of a USB port that came shipped with the product!

And you know what the worst thing about all this is? ALL of these problems could be so EASILY fixed, it's almost as if Apple gimps it's products BY DESIGN.

You know, I'll admit, for what the products do, they do them very well, but you have to have your head buried in the sand if you think Apple doesn't make some seriously BONEHEADED decisions on these products.
 
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Rigby said:
So true. They simply have no product for people who want to reasonably up to date server or desktop machine with high performance. The iMacs and particularly the Minis are underpowered and outdated, and the pricing for SSD and memory upgrades is ridiculous by 2016 standards.
The 13" MBP is actually still their most acceptable model in my opinion. The CPU is just one generation behind Skylake (and the performance difference is negligible), and the other components (PCIe SSD, display, touchpad) are still top notch.
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Agreed. THe MBP 13" is the machine I can sell that I don't feel bad about. Though since they silently spec-bumped the MBA 13" to have 8gb (they did this when the rMB was released) it does create a little tension. The MBP is obviously better, but is it 300$ of better?
 
springsup said:
I know the Shield TV. It's not aimed at the same market as the AppleTV.

The Shield is a bunch of hardware and some bundled services. AppleTV is a platform.
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Wrong, again.

The Shield TV is aimed at the same market because it IS a platform (Android TV).

Stop spreading misinformation.
 
A big problem with Apple is that they talk too much.

No surprise, no intrigue. The mystique has faded. The only difference between Apple and any other tech company it seems is the endless platitudes they offer.

Apple is far from doomed, but the reason to choose Apple and their products over many other rather well-built products is getting harder to justify.
 
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They should beta test the hardware too. That way they wouldn't do stupid stuff like removing an audio jack! Idiots. #bringbackaudiojack

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BruceEBonus said:
Yet conversely and bizarrely, Apple's share price is rising. How does that work? :confused:
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It's called share buy back... Apple has less shares to sell, so the price goes up. See how that works?
 
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nt5672 said:
And if we have to do Windows professionally, why have a phone that works crappy with Windows.
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This is exactly what Apple don't seem to understand. They have created an ECOSYSTEM of products. One weak link in that ecosystem can cause a chain reaction that causes a user to abandon the WHOLE THING. If the Mac lineup is weak (or any other single product is weak) and a user is forced to replace a device with something outside of Apple's product range, they are also forced to replace the software with alternatives as well. Once that process starts, each Apple device that is left becomes progressively less useful and this can drive a user away from Apple products entirely.
 
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Narg said:
Um... that's called an HP....
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If only HP computers came with OS X. OS X is far superior to Windows for the type of development work I do (while at the same time being better supported by commercial software than Linux). Unfortunately they don't.

Frankly, OS X is the only reason why I haven't moved away from Mac hardware completely, and I'm getting close to the same on the iOS side. It's a shame really, since Apple used to make desirable hardware as well. :(
 
someone with a brain should remind Cue that for most users the "last thing you've done" is your latest software update. and frankly, I can't remember the last update or release that's been memorable since OS X 10.6 and 10.6.5. almost every update on every platform has been white knuckle "will it slow down or brick my machine, phone, etc". how yes men like this keep their jobs so long is beyond me sometimes.

edit: and all this ecosystem talk bums me out. we moved past this worry when Apple embraced UNIX, these problems are poor QC by a distracted and fragmenting company.
 
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wiredup72 said:
edit: and all this ecosystem talk bums me out. we moved past this worry when Apple embraced UNIX, these problems are poor QC by a distracted and fragmenting company.
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I'm fairly young on OS X (started on Leopard), but it seems like things never went as bad as when I updated to El Capitan. It's just frustrating.
 
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