Apple's Mac Sales Down in Q3 2018 Amid a Lack of Updates

[bladerunner2000]

Based on the more recent rumors and release of the iMac Pro, it seems Apple has finally started to wake up to this. Hopefully we will see a new Mac mini, $1K Retina MacBook, and Mac Pro soon.

People don't care for any of that. The MacBookd aren't going to be much different, they'll still be gimped with soldered internals, limited ports, horrible throttling because the airflow is garbage, and stupid price tag. At this point I'd be amazed if they kept the headphone jack considering how stupid the company has become. The MacBooks aren't changing.

However, on the desktop front there has always been a demand for one item that Apple refuses to build (because they don't respect you, the consumer);

A headless iMac.

The mac mini is slow trash. Useless for any real usage. The Mac Pro is unupgradeabld overpriced garbage regardless of having your choice of a monitor and the imac is even more expensive garbage except now with a fixed screen to it with no upgrade path at all.

Releasing a regular desktop with an HDMI/Display Port/both/whatever would solve EVERY one of those problems. Who knows... Maybe that would finally be the Mac to increase Apple's world desktop share beyond that pathetic 4% it's been sitting at for decades.

Of course it won't happen, it's been nearly a couple decades of demand for it and Apple's been at its worst in the last 6 years so forget about it doing the right thing.

 

[EdT]

To me, it's not so much that I care about Apple making more money, but more that looking at matters from Apple's perspective often helps in understanding why Apple does things the way they do, even if you may not necessarily agree with them.

In reality, Tim Cook ultimately still has to answer to the board, and if he doesn't maximise profits at Apple, he will just be replaced by someone who will.

So yes, if you were in charge of Apple, and had the power to ignore profitability and could tell the board to go screw themselves, yeah, users may well have gotten the Mac wishlist they do desired. But at what cost? What is the price to be paid with regards to the development of other products at Apple? Maybe you don't really care for the Apple Watch, or AR glasses, or a self-driving car, or even a video streaming service, but who is to say that others share the same sentiment?

I guess my point is that such a move isn't as opportunity-cost free as people here are making it out to be.

I don’t care about Apples CEO’s problems with his board or what monetary expectations that board and top executives have concerning profitability. I don’t control nor have any significant voice in their decision making beyond buying or not buying a product from their company. If Apple can’t make a computer that users want then don’t be surprised when those users move to another company.

 

[Detnator]

I'm not okay with it. I hate that desktop - not because there's anything wrong with it but because of Windows. But look at the Mac desktop space. I can't justify buying any of it - ALL of them are slower than my current Windows desktop except the iMac Pro, but I'm too deep into this rabbit hole because they came out with that hardware over a year after equivalent parts were made available on the PC space, and everything else is out of date.

My use case is a combination of 3D graphics, CAD, and high performance multithreaded programming, especially GPU programming, to solve non-linear differential equations using full approximation schemes - and I like myself some gaming, too.

Now, there is plenty of PC hardware that does exactly what I want, but it all comes with Windows, and until Microsoft turns down the spying, I am unwilling to own a portable Windows device, and I've spent dozens of hours fixing up my desktop and don't want to do that again, so now I'm just ****ed.

But this isn't even about me personally. Why do you feel the need to justify a ****** line-up with "what do you even need it for?". That's the point, Geniuses - the line-up is niche or out of date, or both, across the board.

EDIT #27: I need to proofread better.

Ok, for what it's worth, a lot of people here just spout crap for the sake of arguing, but at least your arguments are logical and pretty sound. So thanks for that and thus a reasonable debate.

So ok, are there plenty of PC laptops that can do performance multithreaded programming? (I'm actually not sure what that is). Putting aside whining about ports and keyboards, do Apple's MBP's really not handle 3D Graphics, CAD, and the other points you mentioned as well as PC equivalents? That's kind of rhetorical. I'm pretty sure Apple's laptops handle that stuff from a performance perspective as well as any PC laptops, right?

It's unreasonable to compare your Windows desktop to a Mac laptop. You accept the iMac Pro compares to your Windows desktop. (Although for the record, looking at Geekbench at least, the current i9 MBP is only marginally behind the iMP in some of the tests). So that's Apples to Apples so to speak. If you want a laptop, then what PC laptops have the hardware to do what you want, better than Apple's hardware?

Fair enough, if you just don't like the keyboard, then that does suck for you personally (and for others with the same opinion, and admittedly, I don't love the keyboard, but I still like it more than the older ones. Obviously, it's subjective.) But it's unreasonable for all these whiners on here saying everyone hates the lack of ports, the non-upgradeability, etc. and even the keyboard (which your initial rant I replied to went on about), when some of us like these developments and consider them the future.

My question really is: how does the MBP not meet your actual needs, that a comparative PC laptop does? What do you need HDMI, USB-A, whatever else for, if you do (such that you can't bring your peripherals into the same decade as your new $5K+ laptop)? Aside from the keyboard, and putting aside just general whining about what everyone here wants to whine about for the sake of whining (ports, soldering, etc.) what is wrong with the MBP that doesn't meet your actual needs?

 

[DVD9]

I’ll say it, Apple’s lack of yearly refreshes at this point is pathetic.

They are awash in profits, he least they can do is basic updates. The replacement models are a joke when they take years to hit market, look at the Mac Pro and Mac mini. It’s sickening how little they re-invest in their Mac product lines

The Macs need to be sold off to another company who will make Mac development their main focus. Tim Cook is holding the Macs hostage.

 

[gollum]

I think the october event might get pushed to november

Which year?

 

[Detnator]

Releasing a regular desktop with an HDMI of display port would solve EVERY one of those problems. Who knows... Maybe that would finally be the Mac to increase apples world desktop share beyond that 4% it's been sitting at for decades.

HDMI? Why? Why is everyone here (and nowhere else) so obsessed with HDMI? What does HDMI do that USB-C doesn't other than plug into your TV (and why do you want to do that anyway, when TV color is terrible for computers)? And then HDMI doesn't even come close to what TB3 can do. Why on earth does a COMPUTER need HDMI??!!

The two devices on Apple's lineup that have HDMI make sense: The Apple TV (it's a TV device, duh), and the Mac Mini (a low end budget computer (comparatively in Apple's lineup) that is designed such that it makes some sense to use your TV as your monitor instead of buying a separate monitor when you don't really care about color accuracy. But Pros?

Every decent monitor on the market that has HDMI also has DisplayPort and you don't need a dongle for that because there are UCB-C to DP cables everywhere for peanuts.

Needless to say, HDMI in a desktop doesn't lose anything, but I'm so tired of everyone wanting HDMI in a laptop. No. Everything you do put in a laptop takes space for something else you can't put in it. Don't clog my laptop up with legacy crap ports (or HDMI, which maybe isn't legacy, but it's not supposed to drive a TV. It's a COMPUTER!)

But back to the question... Why do we need HDMI in a computer??
[doublepost=1539268997][/doublepost]

If Apple can’t make a computer that users want then don’t be surprised when those users move to another company.

...which they're obviously doing in droves, so Apple must be really screwing everything up.

Yes, that's sarcasm.
[doublepost=1539269506][/doublepost]

You know Apple can produce both! The current MacBook Pro for those who love the butterfly keyboard and touch bar and the Pro's Pro! with the OLDER silent blister keyboard, smaller Touch Bar and the USB-A ports which is what real working Pro's want and need!

Really? What exactly do you need USB-A for that isn't catered to by USB-C? And if the answer is all your old peripherals then maybe you need to bring those into this decade too or you can just replace your USB-A to USB-B cables with USB-C to USB-B cables for peanuts.

It's a serious question. No one's ever given me a straight answer to it. Maybe you can?

 

[DVD9]

Sigh. I like it. And I’m not the only one. I do wish it had a little more travel but not as much as the older ones. The older ones now just feel spongy to me and I don’t like going back to them. But hey. It’s subjective.

Point is: Sure it’s not right for everyone but it is right for some. I’m tired of people on this forum saying so adamantly what everyone does and doesn’t like. Speak for yourself, by all means. But who are you to speak for everyone?
[doublepost=1539262499][/doublepost]

I’d like a 17” 4K screen (but for me, glossy not matte. Matte just makes everything fuzzy. Can’t stand that). But it’s not going to happen. They made 17” laptops and they hardly sold. The market spoke. You’ll have to let that one go.

Those 17" models weighed close to seven pounds. A new 17" would weigh five pounds.

 

[Detnator]

Definitely. I’ve got a commodity tower for gaming. A couple of weekends ago I put in a new 500GB SSD to use as an Ubuntu playground. The entire cost of the operation was about half of just the extra increment Apple charged to go from a soldered-down-for-all-time 250GB SSD to a soldered-down-for-all-time 500GB SSD. Even if you count the voluntary donation to Canonical.

Many of the development tools I use are cross-platform. I am finding that, despite three decades of Apple fanboyness, Apple’s stupidity and arrogance is pushing me out the door.

You're a long way from Apple's target market if you're comparing a "commodity tower for gaming" to any of their lineup, ever.

You are aware all Apple's SSD's are top of the line NVMe drives (near 2GB/s on most of them, or striped for 3GB/s on the iMac Pro) and not just standard 500MB/s SATA SSDs, right? Yes, they're more expensive. They should be when they're 3-4 times as fast.

 

[obiwan]

Do it. You'll spend about 1/4 the price (literally) and get double the performance of any Mac out there... Then, you'll also get to have a proper GPU and best of all, no throttling from proper airflow and you'll have an actual upgrade path.

Ive had my hackintosh for a few years now and it still runs circles around nearly apples entire lineup.

Its almost completely silent even at full load while overclocked to 4.3ghz.

I wish I had gone the hackintosh route sooner, every Mac I've owned before this had gone dated after 3 years (and I've owned the original Mac pro as well as the 3,1 Mac pro).

Now I'm looking to upgrade my monitor, all internal drives to SSDs, go from a gtx 980 to a 1070 and add a hot swap bay with on/off switches in the front to turn off the drive for my windows partition when it's not in use. Would never be able to do that on any Mac.

Yeah - I probably would have by now if it hadn't have been for the getting Thunderbolt 3 to work 100% reliably - including hot swap etc. (although I believe this has now been solved). I'd be using it mainly for audio production, so need Thunderbolt 3 to work properly for my audio interface to function. I don't think I've seen any Hackintosh setups with any more than 1 Thunderbolt 3 port either (let alone 4 like the iMac Pro). So still holding my breath for now...

 

[Detnator]

Those 17" models weighed close to seven pounds. A new 17" would weigh five pounds.

... in a market where the 15"-ers are 4 lbs instead of the 5.5lbs they used to be, and the 13" Pro compares with what was the Air when the 17" wa around. The proportional comparison is still the same. I won't say no one wants 17" laptops because obviously some people do (I'd consider one). But not enough people do.

 

[Black Belt]

I’ve said repeatedly, Tim Cook doesn’t even use a Mac. He’s incapable of seeing the big picture of Apple. He should be fired.

 

[DVD9]

... in a market where the 15"-ers are 4 lbs instead of the 5.5lbs they used to be, and the 3" Pro compares with what was the Air when the 17" were around. The proportional comparison is still the same. I won't say no one wants 17" laptops because obviously some people do (I'd consider one). But not enough people do.

Says Tim Cook.

For any other computer company the demand that a 17" Macbook would produce would be more than welcome. This jag.... Cook compares Mac sales to iPhone sales.

Sell the Macs to another company and we would always have yearly updated 17" Macbooks with 5K screens until 8K became mainstream and then we would have that immediately.

Tim Cook and his China iPhone slave factories profit margins have destroyed the Mac.

SELL the MAC.

 

[EdT]

HDMI? Why? Why is everyone here (and nowhere else) so obsessed with HDMI? What does HDMI do that USB-C doesn't other than plug into your TV (and why do you want to do that anyway, when TV color is terrible for computers)? And then HDMI doesn't even come close to what TB3 can do. Why on earth does a COMPUTER need HDMI??!!

The two devices on Apple's lineup that have HDMI make sense: The Apple TV (it's a TV device, duh), and the Mac Mini (a low end budget computer (comparatively in Apple's lineup) that is designed such that it makes some sense to use your TV as your monitor instead of buying a separate monitor when you don't really care about color accuracy. But Pros?

Every decent monitor on the market that has HDMI also has DisplayPort and you don't need a dongle for that because there are UCB-C to DP cables everywhere for peanuts.

Needless to say, HDMI in a desktop doesn't lose anything, but I'm so tired of everyone wanting HDMI in a laptop. No. Everything you do put in a laptop takes space for something else you can't put in it. Don't clog my laptop up with legacy crap ports (or HDMI, which maybe isn't legacy, but it's not supposed to drive a TV. It's a COMPUTER!)

But back to the question... Why do we need HDMI in a computer??
[doublepost=1539268997][/doublepost]

...which they're obviously doing in droves, so Apple must be really screwing everything up.

Yes, that's sarcasm.
[doublepost=1539269506][/doublepost]

Really? What exactly do you need USB-A for that isn't catered to by USB-C? And if the answer is all your old peripherals then maybe you need to bring those into this decade too or you can just replace your USB-A to USB-B cables with USB-C to USB-B cables for peanuts.

It's a serious question. No one's ever given me a straight answer to it. Maybe you can?

Which is why there is an article here on Macrumors talking about the drop in sales and so many people complaining about lack of new models and/or new models with older technology.

 

[Naimfan]

You are aware all Apple's SSD's are top of the line NVMe drives (near 2GB/s) and not just standard 500MB/s SATA SSDs, right? Yes, they're more expensive. They should be when they're 3-4 times as fast.

That's wonderful for the 13 people to whom that makes a material difference.

/s

 

[macrushfan]

Don't forget that non-upgradable memory and SSDs. Really a sad state. Overpriced obsolete junk.

Good.

There is no excuse for the current line-up. It's a pile of crap.

Mac Mini hasn't been updated since 2014, and the 2014 version was weaker than the 2012 version.
iMac hasn't been updated in a while and doesn't have powerful graphics to power its 5K display and doesn't use the latest generation Intel chips.
The iMac Pro is $5000. Although it is fairly priced for what it is, it's obviously not going to move a lot of units.
The Mac Pro hasn't been updated since early 2014, and it's a literal trash can.

The MacBook Air hasn't been updated since 2014 and is woefully out of data.
The MacBook is an extremely underpowered machine that certainly is not worth the money. It's also got a terrible keyboard.
The MacBook Pro is alright, but it's very expensive and I don't like the keyboard.

So yeah, Apple deserves declining Mac sales. Give us something decent already, for ****s sake! We wanna use your OS but there is literally no useful hardware we can put it on. Come on!

 

[GtrDude]

Right about now Apple must be high-fiving each other for having come up with that nasty keyboard, the stupid touch bar and ONLY USB-C on their MB-PRO machines.
Yeah...I'm sure that's happening.

 

[Bacillus]

I don’t care about Apples CEO’s problems with his board or what monetary expectations that board and top executives have concerning profitability. I don’t control nor have any significant voice in their decision making beyond buying or not buying a product from their company. If Apple can’t make a computer that users want then don’t be surprised when those users move to another company.

The Macs need to be sold off to another company who will make Mac development their main focus. Tim Cook is holding the Macs hostage.

I’ve said repeatedly, Tim Cook doesn’t even use a Mac. He’s incapable of seeing the big picture of Apple. He should be fired.

Michael Dell would be a better Steve II for that computer business than Tim can ever be.

 

[Zdigital2015]

And not years old processor chips with crap keyboard mechanisms and dodgy additional T2 chip nonsense
[doublepost=1539264078][/doublepost]

Trashcan cooling solution was utter crap too.

Can't innovate my ass?

No. No you can't.
[doublepost=1539264197][/doublepost]

Any overall PC sales are also...err.....up

Just an FYI:

• The 2018 13" and 15" MacBook Pros use the newest 45w mobile CPUs that Intel currently ships...they are not years old, they are 6 months old - https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-eighth-gen-coffee-lake-notebook,news-58180.html - complain all you want about the Mac mini and Mac Pro, because those are years old, but you are incorrect about the MacBook Pros.
• The keyboard mechanism works well for most and while the issues that were present seem to be fixed for 2018, this was not Apple's shining moment.
• The T2 issue is real, but I am not sure just how widespread it really is for the majority of users. Those that it is affecting, it is very serious and as far as I can tell Apple has been taking it seriously. I wish there was a way to know if the last update to High Sierra and/or Mojave have fixed this issue. Apple needs to get a handle on this before introducing the T2 into any other products.

The Mac Pro 6,1 was innovative, just in a completely unwanted direction by its target market. I truly believe Apple would have been successful with the 6,1, but it would have been better off with using either the most current Core i5 and i7s of the day (i5-4670 and i7-4771) and calling it simply a Mac. Without going into minutiae, Apple bet on the wrong horse, lost and then doubled down again, because they simply saw no reason to allocate time and resources to a single digit % of their user base, when the iPhone and iPad were their profit drivers and mindshare makers and still are.

I believe we ended up with the Trash Can for two reasons:

1. Cost: The Mac Pro 1,1-5,1 were expensive to make, used a considerable amount of raw materials to construct (aluminum) and required more space and fuel to transport to their destination of sale. At that point, with the need for more raw materials and assembly lines to be allocated to iOS devices and better selling Mac models, Tim Cook may have said, "Make it smaller, cheaper to assemble and ship or I am going to kill it altogether."
2. Thunderbolt: Thunderbolt was/is a Pro technology and it had to be incorporated into any revision of the Mac Pro Apple was going to release. Remember, it took almost three full years for Apple to release a Mac Pro with TB, after they debuted it on the Early 2011 MacBook Pro and pros were getting antsy to get it integrated into their workflows with a revised Mac Pro. After no update in 2011 at all, and then a lukewarm update in 2012, the Pro market began wondering what Apple was up to and when TB would arrive on the Mac Pro. The problem was that Apple had no real answer because the nature of the Mac Pro was to have a GPU sitting in a PCIe slot that could be removed and updated over time, which meant that if Apple integrated TB on the motherboard, how were they going to route video from the GPU through the motherboard and out of the TB slot for a Thunderbolt display when the user is going to naturally plug in their monitor to the GPU? Conversely, how would they route TB over the GPU because then the TB controller would have had to have been on the GPU card making it non-removable for users, which would make it a non-starter for most Pro users as that is a huge selling point. Telling Pro users that they could only plug in certain devices to the motherboard, which most certainly would have routed Thunderbolt through the PCH chipset, ate up those PCIe lanes and then sent it over the QPI bus to the CPU or having a custom GPU card that you were stuck with because only Apple would be able to make it (no other GPU company is going to make a third party card for Apple, the market was too small) presented Apple with a no-win situation. Maybe they could have engineered it route the video signals out the Thunderbolt bus, but I suspect that it created such a complex hack that the motherboard would have been a nightmare to engineer. I am not an EE, so I will defer to one who can either verify or refute my theory.

Anyways, I get where people are coming from with regards to wanting their old tower back, but back 6-7 years ago, I do not think the answers were all that easy. So, while you and may others do not think the Mac Pro 6,1 is innovative, it really is, just not in the way the Pro market wanted.

Overall PC sales are up something like 0.1%, I think. I do not see that changing and that is part of Apple's justification/excuse for not updating their lineup when they need engineers creating products that are selling and growing. Like it or not, that is what it is.

 

[seek3r]

HDMI? Why? Why is everyone here (and nowhere else) so obsessed with HDMI? What does HDMI do that USB-C doesn't other than plug into your TV (and why do you want to do that anyway, when TV color is terrible for computers)? And then HDMI doesn't even come close to what TB3 can do. Why on earth does a COMPUTER need HDMI??!!

The two devices on Apple's lineup that have HDMI make sense: The Apple TV (it's a TV device, duh), and the Mac Mini (a low end budget computer (comparatively in Apple's lineup) that is designed such that it makes some sense to use your TV as your monitor instead of buying a separate monitor when you don't really care about color accuracy. But Pros?

Every decent monitor on the market that has HDMI also has DisplayPort and you don't need a dongle for that because there are UCB-C to DP cables everywhere for peanuts.

Needless to say, HDMI in a desktop doesn't lose anything, but I'm so tired of everyone wanting HDMI in a laptop. No. Everything you do put in a laptop takes space for something else you can't put in it. Don't clog my laptop up with legacy crap ports (or HDMI, which maybe isn't legacy, but it's not supposed to drive a TV. It's a COMPUTER!)

But back to the question... Why do we need HDMI in a computer??
[doublepost=1539268997][/doublepost]

...which they're obviously doing in droves, so Apple must be really screwing everything up.

Yes, that's sarcasm.
[doublepost=1539269506][/doublepost]

Really? What exactly do you need USB-A for that isn't catered to by USB-C? And if the answer is all your old peripherals then maybe you need to bring those into this decade too or you can just replace your USB-A to USB-B cables with USB-C to USB-B cables for peanuts.

It's a serious question. No one's ever given me a straight answer to it. Maybe you can?

To be fair, HDMI is very, very useful for a lot of people who work in an office that has breakout rooms, since you can plug into the TV that's pretty much guaranteed to be on the wall. My office also has AppleTVs on the TVs, so you can use AirPlay, but that's not all that common really, and occasionally flakes out, so you still need to be able to plug in sometimes. Our solution as far as the HDMI cables go is to just toss a USB-C adapter in each breakout room, but I do understand why some people find that kludgy.

Another common use of HDMI is presentations, the same reason why VGA persisted for so long on laptops. It's nice to know it's likely you wont need an adapter to plug in at a conference or a client to give a presentation.

So yeah, personally I'm fine with not having an HDMI port, a dongle that I can toss in my bag once in a while doesnt bother me, but I do get why some people want it.

 

[Peperino]

No, you're not. You're closer, but you're not anywhere near having anything even remotely as good and spying free as you get on a Mac out of the box. Fact.

BEst solution is get a hackingtosh. YOu get the great Mac OS with affordable hardware.

 

[MacBH928]

Apple does not care about the computer itself. they care about the money.

Thats the difference, Jobs cared about creating the best computer ever. Tim does not. Tim Cares about the highest revenue ever.

I really think there is a place for a 3rd competitor now in the desktop/laptop computer market, some one that can create a decent OS and solid hardware like Apple used to.

 

[JimmyMac]

AIO are great at space and keeps cord space at a minimum. They are still powerful enough to do all tasks effectively. Apple has been making AIOs ever since the first Mac. It's brilliant. I love them.

I agree. But Lisa was the first AIO, if you didn't need the Profile HDD! And Lisa was totally upgradable. I remember the floppy drive conversion kit Apple sent out to Lisa owners that included the new front cover panel that had only one floppy slot and the new floppy drive unit to replace the two drive unit. Very exciting to do that as a ten year old.

 

[wingmanmac]

Apple dont make any product I want to buy or need to have right now. I have been a loyal customer since the mid 90s, and bought computers, phones, ipads, apple tvs and accessory for private, work and family since then. I am a happy mac pro mid 12 user, and dont want a imac or laptop replacement. I guess my next computer would be an hackintosh, since I cant stand windows. I really miss the days apple focused on computers. The iphone realy changed apple to something else, and its not good.

 

[Peperino]

- You can buy the CPU, RAM, and HD separately cheaper, HDMI, Surface and all that. Idk the Surface Studio, but If you see the teardown of the Surface Pro, it's all wires floating around, wasted space... Every company does the same, and they wonder why, later or sooner, everyone fails. It's a competition on who can put more things with + or - care at a cheaper price. If it wasn't for Apple, they would still put DVD readers. Soldering obviously doesn't make the computer more prone to failure. Instead, you can remove some mechanical assembly parts. And that's what everyone should expect from a computer: not having to deal with its internals. And not having a removable body that would need another structure, making it more prone to failure.
What would be "innovation" for Apple? Putting a touchscreen on the iMac, like everyone does? What really makes Apple different is focusing on the problem itself, and not on the "features" or "specs".

Obviously, you are just giving lame excuses for a poor Apple design.
Soldered components, MAKES a computer not only more prone to failure and but also to data loss. If any of the components fail your computer is dead. How is that a good design?

It is just a poor excuse for Apple milk customers for more repairs fees. There are lot of dumb people that do not want to deal with internal components. Though, changing the RAM or HD is not a big deal. THat is just a poor excuse to make them NOT upgradable. Imagine buying a car and you cannot even change the tires...ridiculous.

Apple used to be the leade on Innovation. Not Apple innovation is in upgrading the internal components. Having a better processor, more RAM, and better battery is clearly NOT innovation.
You can keep buying, overpriced underperforming Apple poor computer Macbook design. Lots of Pro users are tired of waiting for Apple to come up with good computer hardware. They are either switching to Windows or buying Hackintoshes. So sad....
I wonder why Apple computer sales are down.

 

[theluggage]

I agree with you, but I wouldn't say floppies were dead in 98. The iMac G3 shipped with no removable writable media. Flash drives were very expensive, same with CD-R. Home networking was in the future still, by and large.

1.4MB Floppies were becoming useless in 1998. If you could fit it on a floppy, you could send it as an email attachment. - The trouble is, no single technology had emerged to replace them. Should the iMac have included a Zip drive? A Syquest drive? One of (at least 2) optically-tracked 3.5" super-floppy standards? 3.5" Magneto-optical? CD-R/RW (1998 was pretty much the year that affordable/usable CD-R appeared - I got my first CD-R drive then). To please everybody, Apple would have needed to put 2-3 different drives.

Also, the iMac was specifically aimed at people who were using internet, email and local networking - it was a new line that didn't really replace an existing model. Plus, it was a desktop, so hanging an external floppy off the USB port wasn't the end of the world c.f. having to lug a drive around with a laptop (the Powerbook G3 had that neat internal bay that could take a CD, floppy, zip drive or extra battery, and that wasn't dropped until 2001).