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Mac Sales Continue to Slide Amid Lack of Updates
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I guess the writing was on the wall when they officially changed their name from "Apple Computer" to "Apple, Inc". This still sucks, though, considering that the Candy iMac was the product that brought late-90s Apple back from the dead.
Moving to ARM would be a major PITA for developers.
All pro software is designed to work on x86 processors and unless Adobe, AutoDesk, etc, were given notice of this years ago, it would be a giant ****up.
Just look at what happened with Metal. It was announced 2+ years ago and Adobe is just starting to release some of its software with Metal support. Moving to ARM would be even more traumatic.
Actually, it makes perfect sense. If Cook only cared about money, he would focus on phones and let Mac die. Which HE IS DOING!
Everything Apple has today is thanks to the strong, stable, easy OSX of 2005-2007. It all flowed from that. IOS started as a scaled back version of OSX. Today, OSX is a modified version of IOS.
It's like Cook, Ive and Ferengi think "all this fruit is awesome, why do we still need THE TREE. Chop it down!" Apple is no longer in the computer business. Apple is a company that makes phones. Why would you buy a computer from a phone company?? ( that's coming from somebody who has NEVER bought a Windows computer) Larry Ellison was right.
I agree with you, but there's still a large portion of developers using macs. And I don't mean iOS developers.
The rMBP is the de facto standard for web developers. These guys don't really need such high end GPUs or dual CPUs. They are fine with tons of RAM, SSD, and a Core i7.
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Seriously, just admit you have no idea what you are talking about.
This is starting to become a real test of brand loyalty. I wonder how many of those missing sales are people waiting to buy a new Mac. I guess we'll see when 2017 sales come in - hopefully for shareholders it's a bumper year and Apple's sheer arrogance paid off.
Not necessarily.
All that pro software badly needs modern rewrites instead of tacking on features onto a 12-year old codebase every year.
This, the lack of pro-level iOS apps and the subscription model is why I'm switching completely from Adobe to Affinity once Affinity Publisher comes out.
Also, Apple has been through this before with the Intel switch, and there will likely be a grace period and substantial assistance within and outside of XCode.
I gave up waiting and ordered a Dell XPS 13" 16/512GB last night. If I can hackintosh it great, if not.. well.. there's always Mint Linux.
All good and fair. But you forgot to mention that 99% of the posters in this thread are hoping that Apple would rush out the latest generation of Mac hardware. If Apple had listened to them….. Apple would end up making the Samsung mistake and you'd end up with exploding MacBook Pros!
Don't need new or different designs, just want updated GPU's and CPUs, please.
Wall Street's point of view:
"Fortunately, Mac sales are little more than a rounding error for Apple’s results. Mac revenue in Apple’s most recently reported quarter was $5.2 billion out of Apple’s total of $42.4 billion."
"Fortunately, Mac sales are little more than a rounding error for Apple’s results. Mac revenue in Apple’s most recently reported quarter was $5.2 billion out of Apple’s total of $42.4 billion."
Apple don't care about the Mac. They certainly don't care about selling MORE Macs.
But the solutions are easy:
MacPro: Scrap the failed trashcan. Just make a generic Xeon tower with a rose gold facia and loads of expansion. That's all pros want and need.
Desktop: Scrap the mini. Make a good, headless mainstream desktop at a vaguely competitive price. Halve the iMac lineup.
Laptops: Stop making everything thinner. Just get the latest chips in the damn things sooner.
I could double Mac sales if I was in charge. It'd be a piece of pee.
But the solutions are easy:
MacPro: Scrap the failed trashcan. Just make a generic Xeon tower with a rose gold facia and loads of expansion. That's all pros want and need.
Desktop: Scrap the mini. Make a good, headless mainstream desktop at a vaguely competitive price. Halve the iMac lineup.
Laptops: Stop making everything thinner. Just get the latest chips in the damn things sooner.
I could double Mac sales if I was in charge. It'd be a piece of pee.
APPLE MAKES COMPUTERS?
EVAN EVAN EVAN, CAN WE GET A FACT CHECK!!!!! EVAN!!!!!!!
EVAN EVAN EVAN, CAN WE GET A FACT CHECK!!!!! EVAN!!!!!!!
Well, Apple has courage.
Apparently, that is all you need.
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I just can't do that for a portable. Apple's trackpads are like crack-cocaine to me (highly addictive and impossible to let go).
But believe me, I understand.
I need to look into Mint, though. Thanks for the tip.
I'm really wondering why so few people see that as a coordinated effort to change the whole lineup.
The logical choice would be to move the whole Notebook and Desktop lineup to ARM processors. Yes, it means that for some time we all are in deep **** and will have a transition. However, Apple did that again and again, and they are not going to stop with Intel.
Motorola 680x0 > PowerPC > Intel > ARM
Will this be hard? You bet. But rest assured that the big players are working on that for some time now, and I would assume that they phase out Intel machines rather quickly.
The logical choice would be to move the whole Notebook and Desktop lineup to ARM processors. Yes, it means that for some time we all are in deep **** and will have a transition. However, Apple did that again and again, and they are not going to stop with Intel.
Motorola 680x0 > PowerPC > Intel > ARM
Will this be hard? You bet. But rest assured that the big players are working on that for some time now, and I would assume that they phase out Intel machines rather quickly.
we're just not currently in a position to do that though. The "Grace period" that happened during the PPC to x86 days was because x86 could essentially emulate most of PPC architecture at the time without any performance hits. OSx up until Lion (I believe) was actually running an emulation later called rosetta.
for such a grace period to occur from x86 to ARM, ARM Would have to emulate 100% of the x86 architecture, and do so with enough overhead to have decent performance in those applications. Unfortunately, ARM is not designed for that sort of workload and suffers greatly under emulation. This would mean that a switch from intel to Ax CPU would have to be a clean cut. Nothing you own from x86 would be usable until re-written / recompiled for ARM. This is not as easy as it sounds. Look at Microsoft's epic failure at doing the very same thing.
Speaking of Microsoft, switching Apple computers to ARM would also eliminate any user from also running Windows, either bootcamp or parallels. With OSx actually making up < 5% of the worlds operating system usage, you would be cutting out any user who uses Apple hardware, but relies on Windows applications.
Then you get to performance. Benchmarks are good for the Ax series CPu's. But thats benchmarks. Benchmarks are artificial and do not accurately reflect true real world performance and how the system behaves under workloads. Sure, the A10 benchmarks high. for a mobile device it's fantastic. But it's also on par for real world performance with lowest clocked, slowest intel mobile chips. They could "substitute" in for an M3, and maybe an M5, but once you start moving into the i3, i5 mobile chips there's no real competition. Once you start talking about the 4 core mobile, or even the desktop class CPU's, there's currently no ARM CPU in these ball parks. And so far, while there are some ARM based server farms in the world, the performance is highly specialized and once you hit the same thermals, still don't keep up with intel's server CPU's in most workloads.
what this comes down to is that overall, while the A10 is a fantastic chip. Probably the best mobile designed ARM cores consumers can buy. They are no competition right now for x86 based systems.
but who knows what happens in 10 years time. But it likely wont be with Apple's Ax series CPU's as a mainstream CPU. For onee, Apple won't likely sell / license their CPU tech, so the only company in the world using it will be Apple. Which means Apple computers would once again, lose all compatibility with 95% of the rest of the world's software. That itself is just not a wise business decision
One of my colleagues said something similar recently, so she got a PC and then instantly missed having the ability to send and receive SMS's from her computer and having it be seamlessly integrated with her iPhone and iPad. As for me, my family is all iOS and I have a MBP, iPhone, Pad, and an Apple Watch. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, nor do I have any desire to leave the Apple ecosystem at the moment, but to each their own.
If you mean single-core performance, well, it's true we're somewhat stuck at almost constant levels for years, but, apart from single-core performance, what other technology has been delayed? 10-core i7? R9FuryX? NVIDIA Pascal? The only one delaying updates here is Apple. All of Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA have been updating their products with very significant performance increases.
Yeah, these new components don't fit in Apple's thin-thin-thin fashion, but they exist, it's just that Apple didn't have the proper Mac design for them.
I am desperate need of three new iMacs, but I am not willing to fork over the money for last year's models.
95% of world's software running Intel? Nope, not even close.
The stand-alone PC market is dying, globally. Computing changes.
Microsoft isn't selling boxes anymore, they have Office for ARM ready (and selling it).
They give a ship about Intel, they are selling Office 365 as a service.
Read the signs on the wall. The whole lineup due for refresh.
This is not your usual speed bump.
Face it - Computers will be dead.
The processing speeds of the iPads and iPhones have gotten very quick.
Soon - all storage will be cloud based. You will plug in your iPhone to a monitor and it will run a watered down version or maybe even full of OSX.
Everyone will have a mac in their pocket.
This is the future. Laptops are dead, and Apple knows it.
The processing speeds of the iPads and iPhones have gotten very quick.
Soon - all storage will be cloud based. You will plug in your iPhone to a monitor and it will run a watered down version or maybe even full of OSX.
Everyone will have a mac in their pocket.
This is the future. Laptops are dead, and Apple knows it.