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

[willentrekin]

Curious about how much of this might be attributed to corporations who prefer those top 3 brands so they can run software from five or ten years ago across an enterprise.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Years of no updates.
The computers are practically zombies at this point.
Pretty good about keeping some other things up to date though.

Things...

liiiike...



...

...emojis and watchbands.

 

[doctor-don]

Where are the NEW Mac Mini and the NEW Mac Pro?
I want to replace my 2008 Mac Pro, but not with one that uses 5-year-old electronics.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

What did they mess up? Forgive me for asking. The ports on the MBP?

Yes. I elaborated in a previous post in this thread why Apples halfway move to USB-C wasn't actually "Pro".
While I'd call myself an USB-C-enthusiast, the average user will be scared off by lack of USB-A, HDMI,... Imagine you request a new laptop in your business for productivity:
Is this laptop compatible with USB-C multi-screen docks? No. OSX doesn't support MST on all GPUs.
Can you connect to the beamer? Dongle needed. Easy to forget, gets lost,... (No, Apple Screen Mirroring isn't a relevant standard).
Can you copy those files to my USB-stick? Let me grab that dongle first...
Made some pictures at the inspection using a real camera? Let me get the USB-A SD-Card reader and my USB-A to USB-C dongle.
[...]
Unless your boss/IT department is an Apple Fan, these devices are hard to sell to businesses. The above are only a few examples. USB-C is great. But Apple did it wrong.

 

[CWallace]

Look at the numbers from everyone else. Everybody is down for the most part. It's not a lack of updates. It's a lack of consumer interest in desktop and laptop computers and it's been a trend for several years now. Mobile is the future and it's what most are buying into.

Pretty much. The PC OEMs update every three to six months and they continue to see their sales drop quarter after quarter, year after year.

Sure, not updating for years is not doing Apple's Mac division any favors, but even if they updated as often as the PC OEMs sales would still be stagnant at best. They certainly would not be seeing two or three times the current sales.

 

[Minxy]

Apple is a computer technology company, yet they can’t even get it together to update their core computer products once a year - what a joke. This reveals Tim Cooks disinterest.

 

[Falhófnir]

On the laptop side (~80% of macs sold) it’s not hard to see why volumes are slipping when they’re pricing in kidneys for pros which have had a slew of issues and controversial design choices; the MacBook is available in a single, relatively niche size and the air has been sat on sale untouched for approaching 4 years...

 

[mac_in_tosh]

I guess more businesses buy cheaper and uglier Windows 10 PC's lol

Why would a business care about the looks of their computing equipment?

 

[vixster1901]

Am I the only one worried about no keynote in october?!

they are busy with emoji's

 

[pl1984]

Apple is a computer technology company, yet they can’t even get it together to update their core computer products once a year - what a joke. This reveals Tim Cooks disinterest.

Computers are no longer Apple's core product. That distinction belongs to the iPhone. Computers are an after thought to Apple.

 

[dogslobber]

This is what happens when you ignore Mac Mini updates for 4 years.

 

[CWallace]

Why would a business care about the looks of their computing equipment?

The business might not, but I guess the users do. Almost all of our devs choose the 15" MacBook Pro over a Dell 5000 or 7000 series (the latter running Ubuntu) when given the choice.

 

[pl1984]

I guess more businesses buy cheaper and uglier Windows 10 PC's lol

Appearance is your criteria for buying a computer?

 

[genovelle]

Got any sources for that?

Your logic is way off.

Apples market share is declining because of lack of new products combined with higher prices and product strategy of soldering in ram, ssd, gluing battery, removing slots etc all which makes your workflow or ownership that bit less palletable and repairs more expensive, your machine has planned obsolescence
[doublepost=1539210706][/doublepost]
I’d be hoping it has some ports

Interestingly enough these people said the same last year and were off by over a million units. These are guesstimates that cant account for what they sell in their own stores or the Apple store.

 

[dogslobber]

Computers are no longer Apple's core product. That distinction belongs to the iPhone. Computers are an after thought to Apple.

Macs are the roots of the ecosystem. Cook is playing with fire when he refuses to update the Macs because it p!5535 the core Apple fans off that they could erode their support.

 

[Skeptical.me]

Appearance is your criteria for buying a computer?

I really should have put a /s after the comment.

It was simply a sarcastic comment. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[dogslobber]

They need to make a touchscreen Mac with Apple Pencil support. I think they can hit a home run with one.

Steve says touchscreens suck and I agree with him.

 

[vixster1901]

What's there to purchase ?

MacBooks (pros) keyboards are awful.
MacBook Air now has the best keyboard HOWEVER it hasn't been refreshed in years! many
Mac mini hasn't been refreshed in years.many
Mac Pro hasn't been refreshed in years..many

okay, so theres a $5k iMac.. oh joy

 

[pl1984]

The business might not, but I guess the users do. Almost all of our devs choose the 15" MacBook Pro over a Dell 5100 or 7500 series (the latter running Ubuntu) when given the choice.

Aren't the Dell systems quite dated systems?

 

[diarbyrag]

Cook & Co Not Interested in the Mac despite all the lies and promises, think Cook has more shares in MS than Apple, be happy when he goes, sooner the better, just a gadget and dongle company now, would love to be proved wrong tho ?

 

[Mr. Dee]

Pretty happy with my Early 2015 MBP. See no reason to splurge anytime soon. It will certainly be carrying me into 2020.

 

[viizi]

I used to work for AppleCare customer support until about a month ago. The number of calls I would get with customers asking about how to upgrade or why can't my Mac do this or that when it came down to out of date hardware was immense. I found myself having to be the bearer of bad news more and more often. The only thing I really ever got a sigh of relief for was simple stuff like helping a customer change their account password. I myself have been getting into the 3D field and it's unbelievable to see the difference in performance from Windows to Mac there. I have no option but to switch soon and with boring software updates, it makes it even easier.

 

[pl1984]

I used to work for AppleCare customer support until about a month ago. The number of calls I would get with customers asking about how to upgrade or why can't my Mac do this or that when it came down to out of date hardware was immense. I found myself having to be the bearer of bad news more and more often. The only thing I really ever got a sigh of relief for was simple stuff like helping a customer change their account password. I myself have been getting into the 3D field and it's unbelievable to see the difference in performance from Windows to Mac there. I have no option but to switch soon and with boring software updates, it makes it even easier.

You should have just told them to install Windows so they could run the latest software.

 

[brofkand]

To quote MacRumors any time they discuss Android market share, units shipped does not necessarily translate into sales.

Oh wait, not sure that made it any better.

 

[Icaras]

I love my Touch Bar though. It dynamically changes as I move from Safari to Xcode or from mail to FinalCut. It's elegant and amazing. Why would you want the static function keys anyway? You can hold fn key and function keys are back instantly, in most cases, if you need to use function key, it's better to use a trackpad gesture or a hot-key combination if it is not already showing on touchbar,. I love the sliding brightness and volume thingy and scrubbing progress in video play like on YouTube or something. HTML functions like colour and bold are available on the touchbar directly. It's so convenient. I just love it. Did I mention touchID? It's the best thing ever on a keyboard, yes, I just said that. Bye function keys, I won't miss you.

I was just playing around of course. I’m all for the touchbar myself and am still wishing for a Magic Touchbar Keyboard for my iMac! I think it would be awesome controlling Logic Pro X.