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Apple's Mac Sales Stagnant in Q2 2017 Amid Continuing Worldwide PC Market Decline
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I don't think a lack of innovation is holding back laptop and desktop sales. PC's are already capable of tasks that the majority of users have no need for—or no skillset to exploit. Even in enterprise, the real computing prowess is reserved for backend activities. The typical office flunky can barely master MS Office.
The PC was overkill for consumer use from the start (excluding hobbyists and freelancing professionals). If the tablet or phone had existed when the MacIntosh was introduced, PC's would not have occupied homes.
Only marginally better? Think again.
MBP 2015: SEVERE Thermal-Throttling problems with CPU and GPU, throttling the CPU speed as much as FIFTY PERCENT after only about a minute of heavy-use.
MBP 2016: NO THERMAL THROTTLING WHATSOEVER. Even though the CPU is about 8% slower, overall throughput is nearly 50% HIGHER than the 2015 model, due to COMPLETE LACK OF THERMAL THROTTLING, due to completely redesigned thermal management, and a much lower-power-consumption CPU and GPU.
MBP 2015: Maximum of two 4k External Displays.
MBP 2016: Maxiumum of two 5k External Displays, or FOUR 4k External Displays, PLUS the internal Display. I believe that may be an industry-leading spec, BTW.
MBP 2015: Fast SSD
MBP 2016: TWICE as fast SSD, with perhaps the best performance of any laptop's SSD.
MBP 2015: Legacy Ports, with no USB-C, no USB 3.1 gen 2, no TB 3, with all but two ports "dedicated" to a particular function, and an aggregate I/O bandwidth of around 50 Gbps.
MBP 2016: Four Identical, Multipurpose, Future-Proof USB-C/TB3 I/O ports, for a total of 80 Gbps of I/O bandwidth, expandable to around 56 SIMULTANEOUS "legacy" ports, in a MYRIAD of configurations.
MBP 2015: No Touch Bar. No Touch ID.
MBP 2016: Touch Bar. Touch ID.
MBP 2015: Typical Laptop Speakers (that is to say, pretty lame)
MBP 2016: Significantly-Improved Speakers. Perhaps the best in the industry for a Laptop.
MBP 2015: Nice Apple Touchpad.
MBP 2016: Nicer Apple Touchpad, nearly the size of an iPhone 7!!!
No. Barely any improvements at all...
GIMME A BREAK!!!
Yep, I needed a MBP for a variety of reasons (mainly I missed Mac OS X), so I sold my 1060 gaming laptop, and set a decent budget. At the end of my research, I upgraded my hackintosh desktop with a 1070 (only boots into Linux and Win10 now) and bought a 2014 MBP with the 750M video card and 512 GB SSD that still had some applecare on it for $1300. It is amazing even though it is several years old. I use it for VERY casual gaming--it is capable of Overwatch in boot camp at the lower levels.
TLDR; I agree with you. In the long run it is far cheaper to build a desktop for gaming, and use an older MBP.
If your currency is weak against the dollar, then ALL computers should be expensive. So that's hardly a convincing argument.
Sorry but there's absolutely no market conditions excuse for this weakness, it's a reality check for Apple. There was a huge pent up demand for new Macbooks leading up to fall 2016. What do they do? Increase prices by ~$400, release an already out of date family of processors, remove USB ports, remove hardware keys and slap on a gimmicky OLED touchbar. A ripe second-hand market for 2015 macbooks and the 12" macbook sales collapse further my point.
Let's call it what it was: a cocky, self-indulging move by a group of execs asleep at the wheel. When you and I pay a 40+% margin on a high-end laptop these days, we better be getting some space-age rocket ship caliber engineering and power without the nonsense. Look at HP, they grew and at a 4X higher volume. Apple should've absolutely killed it this quarter with the new MBP releases.
Let's call it what it was: a cocky, self-indulging move by a group of execs asleep at the wheel. When you and I pay a 40+% margin on a high-end laptop these days, we better be getting some space-age rocket ship caliber engineering and power without the nonsense. Look at HP, they grew and at a 4X higher volume. Apple should've absolutely killed it this quarter with the new MBP releases.
ehhhh, if these devices were being built, manufactured and paid for in USD and then shipped internationally, I'd understand this... But that's not reality
The only reason Companies peg against the USD is because they report in USD to the USD exchanges. And they need to preserve the USD profit margins on paper to sell to wall street investors.
Instead of treating each international division independantly, and running on local exchanges, Apple is trying to peg everything purely on accounting to USD only.
now you can argue the merit to this, but it doesn't change the fact that, buying IN Canada, paying 40% more for the same device doesn't make sense when no part of the transactions actually go to the US. Canadian money pays canadian departments of Apple, who in turn received their parts and orders from manufacturing in China, and the CAD collected by purchasing never goes back into the US to be stored as USD..
on top of that, Charging Canadian 40% more, doesn't mean we earn 40% more to be able to afford it.
The MacBook is $1600.... before tax. Canadians can't drop $1600 on laptops every year
Oh really? The whole computer is glued together, and they have been since 2012.5.
It's more expensive then the previous generation.
Can you plug in an iPhone out of the box into a new Macbook Pro? No.
Care to tell me how the new Macbook Pro is more functional than an old one given my points above?
I can buy a PC laptop for under $400 is the quality of those models as good as a Mac no but it costs at least $1600 less and does what I need it to do. But I'm also not buying one of those either. Maybe go read my comment again. It was more about how casual computer, users like myself, who use it mainly for email, internet and playing music and videos are way less likely to continue buying high priced computers (or at least replace way less often) when they can do those things on less expensive and more important to own mobile devices (smartphones). Also not trying to convince you of anything just expressing an opinion on why sales are down.
But thanks for the constructive unresearched response.
Marginal improvement unnoticeable to most users, and offset by terrible battery life (which is very relevant to most users).
The definition of a marginal improvement lol. The percentage of users who need more than two 4K displays is very small.
You said it yourself, it was already very fast. Again, most people wouldn't notice the difference.
Lol. HDMI and SD aren't legacy ports, nor is USB-A. They are all dominant current day ports that are useful for productivity.
Meh. Touch ID would be nice. Touch Bar is ugly to me, and doesn't seem useful. May even be an annoyance. Certainly not worth a $300+ premium.
I'll give you that, but that's what I have headphones and a Bluetooth speaker for.
Hands down my least favorite part of the new MBPs because of the way I normally rest my palms.
Wonder if it would have grown more had we returned to 2015 Macbook Pro pricing. The halved SSD 13 inch wasn't really a price reduction, so we're still riding high.
I hope Apple doesn't just see the mac as an inelastic demand to charge more for, and the price hike will follow the pattern of falling with ongoing production.
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Tell me about it, my apps will lose 30-40% of their graphics performance on /native/ macOS OGL vs Windows DirectX, not a performance sapping wrapper.
And before anyone thinks Metal fixes all that, it's still hit or miss if it actually improves graphics performance over OpenGL! I hope Metal 2 shores it up such that it's always a win, but I can't say that yet.
Metal compute:
OpenCL compute:
Graphics performance
It's still only trading blows and often takes a hit...
I hope Apple doesn't just see the mac as an inelastic demand to charge more for, and the price hike will follow the pattern of falling with ongoing production.
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Tell me about it, my apps will lose 30-40% of their graphics performance on /native/ macOS OGL vs Windows DirectX, not a performance sapping wrapper.
And before anyone thinks Metal fixes all that, it's still hit or miss if it actually improves graphics performance over OpenGL! I hope Metal 2 shores it up such that it's always a win, but I can't say that yet.
Metal compute:
OpenCL compute:
Graphics performance
It's still only trading blows and often takes a hit...
No surprise here. A lot of it depends on what vocation you are in but in mine , I can think of at least a half dozen people like myself who swallowed hard and bought a new last generation MBP in 2016. Reasoning they were good to go for another few years and were able to take advantage of all the extra magsafes power supplies they had and more usable ports. If the new MBP's had even offered even one USB-a port ,one would be sitting on this desk right now. But they didn't and it doesn't.
That no one really asked for, wanted or actually uses. It's not even convenient as you need to take your eyes off the screen to use the damn thing!
Can you give me a source for the previous ones throttling to 50%? That seems...Not right. I have a 2015 15 inch. On a CPU load, the CPU will happily boost clock all day. On a 100% GPU AND CPU load, the CPU will stay at base clocks, which is all intel promises, no dips below it ever, and occasional boosts above it.
I agree the 2016 will allow even more boost, but I have no incling where 50% comes from. Of boost clock? Of base clock? I've never seen it either way.
But, it's more because the power use of the major chips fell, the redesigned cooling system seems to be for thinness with the reduced wattage, as in, the new chips would be even cooler in the 2015 chassis.
Who likes an expensive MacBook without ports and wooden keyboard ?
Who likes an expensive 4 year old slow Mac mini (with soldered ram) and ancient expensive Mac Pro ?
Who likes an iMac (with soldered ram) and a 5,400rpm drive ?
Who likes an expensive iPhone with no audio jack and a wart on it's back ?
A lot of people here are paid to write that these products are amazing and have a great value
Who likes an expensive 4 year old slow Mac mini (with soldered ram) and ancient expensive Mac Pro ?
Who likes an iMac (with soldered ram) and a 5,400rpm drive ?
Who likes an expensive iPhone with no audio jack and a wart on it's back ?
A lot of people here are paid to write that these products are amazing and have a great value
4,236,000 is NOT 56% of the earth's population.
Typo? Someone added an extra set of 3 places - the graph says Thousands of Units. And that's just in one quarter.
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Where is the new Mac Pro?
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"Dell is utter garbage."
If my math is correct, I'll reluctantly admit I've been at this a bit longer than you. But I think maybe some of your biases are "20+ years" old. My current employer is all Lenovo, and they're brittle, plastic and not the Thinkpads of yesteryear. Still, they're pretty cost-effective, and reliably delivered and I gratefully don't have to use one.
When I look at the referenced sales chart, I wonder if Dell and HP's modest gains weren't at the expense of Lenovo and possibly a result of some of their flagship devices (XPS and Spectre). It might be that buyers are attracted to more premium devices.
Correction: Phil does like the touchbar
Or does he only pretend so, in the hope to satisfy those spoiled customers (that remind him of his kids) and reassure his perceived stardom with mediocre effort for another half of a decade ?
A couple of years ago we bought our oldest daughter a new 2015 MBP 13" (had it configured with 16GB and the I7). This past Christmas I bought 2 MBP laptops (with touch-bar) for my younger kids (left at base configuration except I did up them to 16GB). I have to say my kids like the touch bar, but say it is not a major advantage (yet). For everyday use all 3 machines perform about the same, though the screen on the new ones is nicer/brighter. I do not yet regret not upgrading to the I7 (like for my oldest daughter). I hope that was NOT a mistake. One of my younger kids does wish she had an SSD slot, as she does a lot of photography/editing. In 2015 - when I bought my oldest daughter her MBP, I also bought my wife one of the 27" 5K machines (with 32GB and I7) - so a large portion of photo editing is done on that - that is a nice machine (still) and I hope it lasts for a while. I personally wish the new MBPs had the magsafe feature and the SSD slot - but otherwise I actually think our 2015 MBP was a decent value and am satisfied with the new models as well though I certainly would not go out and trade the 2015 for the newest model... but I'm still using a 2013 (8GB 11") MBA....and will till it stops working.
I've got a mid 2012 nrMBP that I dearly love, and use to this day.I agree with you completely, and yet the older ones are still so good.
But I'd sure likes me some TouchBar and USB-C/TB3 Goodness!
Its never been a major player. The people who self build their PCs are generally hobbyists and gamers. They have never been a significant portion of the computer buying population. The vast majority of consumers don't know how to or care to assemble their own PCs.
I'm with you!! I'm using a 2013 (8GB 11")...No need for me to change - though I do love the newer screens - my kids have 2015 and 2016 MBPs...but definitely NOT worth the extra money to me/for me.
Once Intel ships CoffeeLake, LPDDR will be supported and we can have 32GB without battery life taking a plunge.
Phones are becoming more and more capable every day. Heck the 2018 iPhone 7s will probably out-gun a 2008 Mac Pro in single-core based on what the A10X is doing.
They are indeed not. Which is why the keep buying some 30 million of the things a year and the third largest PC OEM. And in the past two quarters Mac has brought in $13 billion in revenue alone.
Why? Apple's the #3 PC OEM and they don't need to sell containership loads of $500 PCs to do it like the #1 and #2 OEMs.
The bulk of those PCs made HP a couple of points of margin compared to the couple of tens of points margin even the cheapest MacBook Air does. Why sell 4X as many PCs to generate 1/8th as much revenue?
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Yep. See:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...c-market-decline.2056302/page-7#post-24797119
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So, you made your entire purchasing decision based on the fact that you didn't want to buy a couple of USB-A to USB-C Cables for $10 or less apiece, or a few simple clip-on USB-A to USB-C Adapters for UNDER $2 apiece!?!?
Yeah, that's some great logic there, bub...
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So, because you don't do anything with your MBP but surf the internet and read email, no one else does either, right?
If you did any video editing, for example, you'd be singing a very different tune about Thermal Throttling:
And as far as "terrible battery life", you need to keep up, man! The original issues with battery life were due to a bug in Safari. That has LONG been addressed.
But even if that is the case, isn't it nice to know it's available if you need it?
And your argument was that the 2016 was only "marginally better", NOT "How many people want feature [x]". Nice moving of the goalposts...
...And again, there's those moving goalposts and strawman arguments...
If they aren't today, they WILL be by the time that the 2016 model is ready for replacement. Why not get ahead of the curve?
Still an improvement, and not a marginal one. So, Next!
Wait! I thought the criteria was "Is this laptop marginally better or not?", NOT "Does this improvement impact MY life":.
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And again, it happens to be others' MOST favorite part; so NOW what?