I believe Mac Mini is not a strategic product for Apple, it is probably not generating enough profit to warrant a lot of resources.
Well, that's just another way of saying Apple doesn't have a coherent strategy for that portion of the Mac line without being willing to acknowledge it explicitly!
I.e., I said in the past Apple hasn't appeared to have a coherent strategy for parts of the Mac line; you argued there is a strategy there but things can interfere; and I countered that doesn't explain a 4-year update gap in the Mini. But instead of acknowledging my point, you've moved the goalpost by saying now the Mac Mini doesn't count. With all due respect, that's not arguing fairly. You can't just change the rules to avoid acknowleding your argument isn't correct.
In product development you do not have unlimited resources. If another product needs more focus because it is strategically more important resources will be diverted to the more important project and an update of a less important product cancelled or delayed.
Again, you're not arguing fairly here, since "unlimited resources" is just a
straw man—my argument is not based on an assumption of unlimited resources. It's based on an assumption of very substantial resources.
As far as the Mini goes, I would say either you keep the product in your line, or you drop it. If you keep the product in your line, you treat it properly, which means you at least give it resources in proportion to the profit it delivers. The Mini may represent only, say, 0.5% of Apple's profit (the Mac line is about 10%, and let's say the Mini is 1/20th of that, which gives 0.5%). But that means you devote 0.5% of the company's resources to it, which is not zero. And 0.5% of Apple's vast design resources is certainly sufficient to at least keep the processors updated.
From the inside the decisions are typically well analyzed and motivated. From the outside it may not be obvious.
Of course, there's a lot Apple knows that we don't. So what you wrote is certainly often correct. But remember it's not always correct. Apple can make mistakes and drop the ball just like anyone else. It's composed of people, after all. Let's not treat them like they have papal infalibility!
Here's Phil Schiller responding to a question about the Mac Mini in 2017 during an interview about the Mac professional product lineup. Clearly he's been caught flat-footed, because he doesn't know how to respond, so all he's left with is corporate boilerplate. Translation: The Mini is important but we don't really know what we're going to do with it.
Phil Schiller: "On that I’ll say the Mac Mini is an important product in our lineup and we weren’t bringing it up because it’s more of a mix of consumer with some pro use. So we’re focusing today specifically on the things that are important to pros. While there are some pro usage, there’s also a lot of consumer uses so we aren’t covering it today. The Mac Mini remains a product in our lineup, but nothing more to say about it today.
If we haven’t communicated that, we have a lot of people working on the Mac — a lot of really brilliant people invested in great new products in both infrastructure and people — then we haven’t done our job here today because we do have a lot of resources on the Mac, and that’s gonna stay."
Yes, you could argue he wasn't prepared to talk about it because he didn't think it would come up during an interview. But if Apple did have an actual strategy for the Mini at that time, Schiller would have known about it, and could have come up with a less strained response than "The Mac Mini remains a product in our lineup, but nothing more to say about it today." E.g., he could have said: "Yes, we are planning good things for the Mini", which is standard Apple corporate speak for products for which they do have a strategy, yet don't want to mention the details. It's thus striking he didn't say that.
And leaving a product without an update for four years is not "investing a lot of resources"!
You have already read the news. But we thought we would also use this opportunity to share a transcript of the interview with Phil Schiller, Senior Vice
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