The avg consumer simply are not buying computers like that anymore. Smartphones and tablets are enough for what most of them do.
I honestly do wish the Apple would split into two. The idevice division and the Mac division. Get back to making top of the line hardware with great updates and reasonable (for Apple) prices. The idevice market has screwed over development of decent Mac hardware.
Good thing for Mac users is that the devices have longevity
this is history repeating itself. it's not that they're trying to be the "brand of the rich" it's just that the current direction of the company is focused more on the financials side of things than the products. Apple is catering to the stock market crowd for their business decisions and not necessarily the products themselves.
This can be directly tied to the fact that the CEO's net worth and renumeration is heavily tied to the stock price. it is in Tim Cook's best financial interest personally to operate in this manner.
THe problem is this sort of behaviour can backfire (but not always). if volume decreases due to products that no longer are capable of easily selling themselves due to their own merits that they decide to raise prices across the board to make up for the potential loss revenue, there's always threat of blowback from the customer base.
Often this is seen as "profiteering for the sake of profiteering" or a "tax" to keep wallstreet happy. This can have potential ramifications of pissing off customers. Apple should be no stranger to this, as this nearly tanked them in the 90's. The term "Apple Tax" didn't come from out of nowhere. Many, especially in foreign markets where there is additional currency conversions in place so that Apple's US books can look good, we are paying for those hefty margins just so that Apple can boast to the investors how well revenue wise they did.
This quarter has been a resounding financial success for apple. However, there are certain things that should be paid attention to by Apple, that might pose future risk. iPhone sales were relatively flat with no growth. Mac Sales declined as this article shows. Service revenues, and an increase of ASP accross almost the entire product lineup should make investors raise an eyebrow.
Why do people have a need to buy EVERY SINGLE ITERATION OF THAT Ridiculously overpriced phone?
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I just replaced my 2008 MacBook with a 2017 MBP, and when my 2009 iMac 27' dies, it won't be replaced.
See you again in 10 years, Apple.
Yeah I am looking into Windows machines too. I much prefer the Mac though and it'd be a pain to transfer my large Photos gallery to Windows. The rest wouldn't be a problem.
I'm hoping Apple comes on stage next year to say that they've been having "problems" keeping the Mac up-to-date because of third party suppliers and they will now be making their own CPUs and GPUs for new Macs going forward. Their chip team is incredible and the desktop computing industry overall hasn't been keeping pace in recent years. Otherwise arn might need to be looking into alternative domain names for MACrumors.com because this isn't sustainable.
Apple needs to update their entire lineup and lower the prices if they want to sell more units.
Yep. Pretty much the exact same trajectory as MS under Ballmer.
1. Different group of people needs to upgrade each year. Yearly update is not for you only.People demand yearly mac refreshes akin to the iPhone, but don't understand there's no groundbreaking hardware advances to justify it. If people want to shell out 3K every year for the sake of a new laptop shell, maybe apple should oblige them.
People demand yearly mac refreshes akin to the iPhone, but don't understand there's no groundbreaking hardware advances to justify it. If people want to shell out 3K every year for the sake of a new laptop shell, maybe apple should oblige them.
I agree! Seems no one at Apple gets this. They are quickly becoming the brand for the rich. Sad.
They don't. Mac unit revenues have been rising for years so even as they sell around the same number each year, they make more money from each one. If the Mac was it's own company, it would be in the Fortune 500 and is on it's way to being a Fortune 400 company.
1. Different group of people needs to upgrade each year. Yearly update is not for you only.
2. Even if there is no suitable CPU, you can always update something else like RAM, SSD, GPU etc.
3. If tech really is stagnant, the price should come down as years go by. Not stay the same like this.
4. In fact, each iteration seems to have higher and higher price. Take MacBook Pro 15” as an example. Right now the base model is ridiculously expensive, not to mention their weird decisions to remove the perfectly fine keyboard, MagSafe (along with the LED indicator) and ports.
“They need to?”
Why? Isn’t the goal of a company to make money? They seem to be having no trouble with that.