The MacRumors Show: Apple's 2023 Year in Review

[MacRumors]

In the final episode of The MacRumors Show for 2023, we take a look back and evaluate Apple's year as a whole.

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The year kicked off in January with an unusual array of hardware releases consisting of the relaunch of the HomePod alongside the release of the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pros, as well as the M2 and M2 Pro Mac mini. In May, Apple announced Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad, extending its own professional-grade creative tools to its tablet users for the first time.

June was particularly eventful with the announcement of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, tvOS 17, and macOS Sonoma at WWDC. Apple simultaneously unveiled the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, a new 15-inch MacBook Air model, and updates to the Mac Studio and Mac Pro lines with the M2 Ultra chip.

September marked the official release of the new operating systems and the debut of the iPhone 15 series, Apple Watch Series 9, and Apple Watch Ultra 2, alongside the introduction of FineWoven as a new material for accessories, and the launch of AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C. In October, Apple continued by introducing the Apple Pencil with USB-C, and somewhat unexpectedly announced the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max MacBook Pros, as well as the M3 iMac, at the end of the month.

November saw Apple announce support for Rich Communication Services (RCS). The year concluded with the release of iOS 17.2, Aston Martin and Porsche previewing the next-generation CarPlay, and a notable legal development where sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 were briefly banned in the United States.

How do you think 2023 was for Apple? Let us know in the comments. The MacRumors Show is now on its own YouTube channel, so head over and subscribe to keep up with new episodes and clips going forward:

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Article Link: The MacRumors Show: Apple's 2023 Year in Review

 

[Mike MA]

From my PoV a solid year, like many years before. Yet, a year without major highlights, also like too many years before.

 

[Realityck]

I thought that this years WWDC 2023 announcements were more important then most years. Didn't expect the M3 SoC's to be available so early. Then there was the long awaited mixed reality Vision Pro unveiling before its 2024 releases. It was still a bit uninspiring for product announcements for the rest of the year as was the previous 2022 seemed more active.

 

[citysnaps]

I'd like to give Dan and Hartley a huge tip-of-my-cap for putting together and hosting all of the MacRumors Shows this year. Thank you!

Each one takes a huge chunk of work and time brainstorming, researching, organizing, and creating a polished video that people enjoy and look forward to.

Wishing you both a great 2024!

 

[roland.g]

I thought that this years WWDC 2023 announcements were more important then most years. Didn't expect the M3 SoC's to be available so early. Then there was the long awaited mixed reality Vision Pro unveiling before its 2024 releases. It was still a bit uninspiring for product announcements for the rest of the year as was the previous 2022 seemed more active.

Apple under Tim has been an unfortunate timeline. Some good things, but so many missed opportunities. He doesn't understand the brand.

 

[Realityck]

Apple under Tim has been an unfortunate timeline. Some good things, but so many missed opportunities. He doesn't understand the brand.

I think you are forgetting China's finally ceasing city shutdowns that severely affected manufacturing in many cities on Dec 7th, 2022. It took the first half of 2023 to recover how much that countries manufacturing/transportation of produced goods effected the rest of the world's economy including product announcements from Apple. Up to then Apple was deliberately cherry picking announcements/updates to their manufacturing releases that could best shore up not the greatest earning projections. Yes remember the financial warnings earlier this year. So is it the fault of a CEO in those conditions, hardly. If you want to poke fun at him, IMHO the Indian Factory that Apple/FoxConn talked up as a big thing mostly fizzled in the end.

 

[sjsharksfan12]

Happy New Year to both Hartley and Dan and thank you for the show each week. I started listening this year, looking for an Apple News podcast, and this show has been good listening every week.

Apple had a decent year, mainly improving Apple Music and all the new hardware announcements. Some were good and some were questionable but you can say that about any tech company. I think since I’m pretty much done buying Apple stuff, I wish the OS’s were better and not as big filled. 17 was not that great even though it is getting better.

 

[picpicmac]

as well as the M2 and M2 Pro Mac mini

That last bit deserves more comment than just a factoid dropped into a larger article.

Why did Apple decide to come out with a beefier Mini? Ok, in the past there were windows in the Mini timeline wherein one could get a better processor. Or more RAM. But this time Apple went with improved IO (doubling TB ports, HDMI 2.1) and now with the M-series there is a defined tiering of SOCs.

Why did not Apple put the M2 Pro inside a Studio, instead? Once you upgrade the the M2 Pro Mac Mini to 32GB and 10GBe and add a dongle with USB ports and SD card reader, you're at the Studio base price. Which of course is why reviewers usually point out that instead of upgrading the M2 Pro Mini one should just buy the Studio.

The decision to do an M2 Pro Mac Mini sort of foreshadowed the stronger tiering in the fall 2023 M3 series of MBPs, and reified the belief that one should almost always just buy base model of an Apple product, just moving to a higher tier if a less expensive tier does not meet your need.


I'd still like to see Apple offer a Studio with the M3 Pro 12/18 cores. With 18GB RAM, start it at $1499. Those extra ports are needed by some (such as myself) and I dislike dongles.

 

[picpicmac]

He doesn't understand the brand.

Well, I disagree on that. He understands "the brand" very well.

Apple was headed to the dustbin of history before they introduced the Mac. It was a radical play, an attempt to boldly not go where IBM was attempting to directly the microcomputer marketing.

I remember when our department go that first Mac - it was a curiosity, a draw to the office that had it from those masses with their IBM PCs.

But Apple is not defined only by such moves. Even under Jobs' original tenure there was flailing. Then after he left there was a lot of flailing. Jobs comes back and the company had three hit product lines: iPod, iMac, and iPhone. But there were also failings during Jobs second tenure too.

 

[majus]

I know what happened in 2023 and I don't need a rehash of it. I am much more interested in the future.

 

[ghanwani]

What a disappointing year. The best thing about Apple now is its stonk. Maybe 2024 will be the year it hits $10T market cap.

 

[ghanwani]

I know what happened in 2023 and I don't need a rehash of it. I am much more interested in the future.

It’s time to let go of the future and embrace the past!

 

[LCPepper]

What are the names of the presenters?

 

[sjsharksfan12]

What are the names of the presenters?

Dan Barbera and Hartley Charlton


Their names are listed amongst the staff of McRumors on the bottom of the page.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

What a disappointing year. The best thing about Apple now is its stonk. Maybe 2024 will be the year it hits $10T market cap.

For sure !

 

[CarAnalogy]

Well, I disagree on that. He understands "the brand" very well.

Apple was headed to the dustbin of history before they introduced the Mac. It was a radical play, an attempt to boldly not go where IBM was attempting to directly the microcomputer marketing.

I remember when our department go that first Mac - it was a curiosity, a draw to the office that had it from those masses with their IBM PCs.

But Apple is not defined only by such moves. Even under Jobs' original tenure there was flailing. Then after he left there was a lot of flailing. Jobs comes back and the company had three hit product lines: iPod, iMac, and iPhone. But there were also failings during Jobs second tenure too.

I don’t think you’re wrong but I also don’t think you really addressed the post you’re replying to.

The era you’re referring to is best covered in biographical terms at this point, it’s ancient history.

Jobs was very open about the fact that his concern with Tim Cook is that ”he’s not a product guy.”

Cook is slowly drifting back to the pre-Jobs situation of too many products with too much overlap.

One of the many, many reasons it’s so unfortunate Jobs died when he did is that he didn’t have a chance to see his vision through with the iPad. Under Cook it’s just kind of sat there.

I wouldn’t say Cook is so much flailing as just continuing to steer in the exact direction the ship was going, not confident enough to chart any other course.

So whatever understanding the brand really means, I suppose one could say he understands it, certainly knows the history of it inside and out, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows where to take the brand from here.

 

[CarAnalogy]

What a disappointing year. The best thing about Apple now is its stonk. Maybe 2024 will be the year it hits $10T market cap.

Those seem to be contradictory statements. How is its stock doing so well if it’s such a big disappointment?

 

[I7guy]

What a great year, especially for AAPL. Apple not only accomplished a lot and set the groundwork for 2024, but is also under threat of overbearing regulations from bureaucrats and pencil pushers. And sideloading is coming in 2024. We'll see how that plays out...from emulators to piracy to phishing and scamware.

 

[ghanwani]

Those seem to be contradictory statements. How is its stock doing so well if it’s such a big disappointment?

World class financial engineering and a foray into surveillance and advertising.

 

[einsteinbqat]

Happy New Year, @Hartley and @Dan Barbera

All the very best to you!

 

[picpicmac]

it’s ancient history.

Having lived through it... makes me an ancient geek....

So whatever understanding the brand really means, I suppose one could say he understands it, certainly knows the history of it inside and out, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows where to take the brand from here.

No one knows. I don't know. You don't know. Tim Cook may also not know, but he certainly can hire the brains who think they know.

I (ancient being) have a different perspective, I guess. I see the desktop computing market as mature, more or less heading towards senescence. Mobile computing is now the hot thing, Apple has ridden it (and pushed it better than anyone else.) And Tim Cook is part of the reason Apple has remained a profitable company during this ride.

But 10 years from now? Who knows. We could have World War between now and then, and the year 2033 could look very different than what we expected only a few short years ago.

Cook has bought the idea that headsets are the next big thing - hence his pushing of the AVP. Someone(s) sold him on that idea. He may be wrong.

So now Apple is now making artisanal monitor stands for the aging desktop market, and flooding the market with phone/tablet variations for the young. This is the Cook era, yes, but I can't say anyone else would do a better job at it.

Look at Michael Dell, for example. He's as successful (personal wealth wise) as Jobs was, even more. Dell corporation is smaller than Apple, but that is because Apple jumped into the phone market and became the market leader, and that led to Apple being the tablet market leader, and both of those led to Apple being the cloud-storage service giant (competing with Alphabet and Microsoft.) Dell didn't do that, so it remains mostly a computer business. Still profitable, still making Michael Dell a billionaire several times over. Dell is about servicing customers in business, not really being very innovative, but dependable and profitable.

And that is what Tim Cook is - more like Michael Dell than he is like Steve Jobs - because that is what the owners (stockholders) of Apple Inc. want of Cook.

Which brings me around to the OP's original inquiry and this idea of waiting for the latest: as long as Apple finds the desktop computer market profitable they will likely make some sort of lower-cost box to service customers that will not buy the flagship box(es). But the low cost box is not going to excite you. It will be an incrementally changed product that will simply fill a niche. Therefore any M3 Mac Mini will just be a minor evolution of the M2 Mac Mini. A bump in performance as the Mini rides the wave of the Apple Silicon development roadmap.

Just like Dell rides the Intel and AMD incremental roadmaps.

 

[djgamble]

Apple under Tim has been an unfortunate timeline. Some good things, but so many missed opportunities. He doesn't understand the brand.

Agreed. He's made Apple more mainstream but gutted its innovative routes in the process.

- The iPhone might as well be an Android. We see annual releases with bigger screens, bigger CPUs and more cameras. I am a 12 Mini user and don't want a bigger phone. IMO Steve made small and minimalistic COOL rather than cluttering devices with more size/features. Tim's only attempts to release smaller iPhones have been perceived as failures as they're largely just re-badges versions of last year's phone pitched towards low-end users.

- We've gone back to making our own CPUs/GPUs and claiming they're faster than what PCs have to offer. I get it but at the same time I don't... seeing these claims that Macs are now high-end gaming machines is a complete farce.

- Software releases are frigging weird. EVERYTHING is a full 'version' release, which is absolute madness because nothing ever changes. You get a new version every year and the entire focus is on making sure that older Macs get made 'obsolete' as they systematically drop-off the list of supported machines.

Yes Apple's all been about profits since forever and this is an important part of it staying alive. However it's frigging loaded now and I don't get the feeling that money's being put back into innovation. Rather, Cook's developed a repetitive, annual cycle of milking fanatics for 'new' stuff. I'm bored of it! I want innovation, not bigger bottles of strawberry milk with more calories inside than the smaller bottles contained...

 

[CarAnalogy]

Having lived through it... makes me an ancient geek....




No one knows. I don't know. You don't know. Tim Cook may also not know, but he certainly can hire the brains who think they know.

I (ancient being) have a different perspective, I guess. I see the desktop computing market as mature, more or less heading towards senescence. Mobile computing is now the hot thing, Apple has ridden it (and pushed it better than anyone else.) And Tim Cook is part of the reason Apple has remained a profitable company during this ride.

But 10 years from now? Who knows. We could have World War between now and then, and the year 2033 could look very different than what we expected only a few short years ago.

Cook has bought the idea that headsets are the next big thing - hence his pushing of the AVP. Someone(s) sold him on that idea. He may be wrong.

So now Apple is now making artisanal monitor stands for the aging desktop market, and flooding the market with phone/tablet variations for the young. This is the Cook era, yes, but I can't say anyone else would do a better job at it.

Look at Michael Dell, for example. He's as successful (personal wealth wise) as Jobs was, even more. Dell corporation is smaller than Apple, but that is because Apple jumped into the phone market and became the market leader, and that led to Apple being the tablet market leader, and both of those led to Apple being the cloud-storage service giant (competing with Alphabet and Microsoft.) Dell didn't do that, so it remains mostly a computer business. Still profitable, still making Michael Dell a billionaire several times over. Dell is about servicing customers in business, not really being very innovative, but dependable and profitable.

And that is what Tim Cook is - more like Michael Dell than he is like Steve Jobs - because that is what the owners (stockholders) of Apple Inc. want of Cook.

Which brings me around to the OP's original inquiry and this idea of waiting for the latest: as long as Apple finds the desktop computer market profitable they will likely make some sort of lower-cost box to service customers that will not buy the flagship box(es). But the low cost box is not going to excite you. It will be an incrementally changed product that will simply fill a niche. Therefore any M3 Mac Mini will just be a minor evolution of the M2 Mac Mini. A bump in performance as the Mini rides the wave of the Apple Silicon development roadmap.

Just like Dell rides the Intel and AMD incremental roadmaps.

I didn’t quite live through that era, I came up in the era when Apple was irrelevant, during as Jobs described it the decade of darkness in the desktop computer market. The time when Dell became a billionaire. It’s an interesting comparison as Jobs saw himself as the antithesis of what Dell stood for. Dell was everywhere in the 90s as as you said nobody was very excited about it.

With regard to the original point you addressed in the last paragraph, I agree. I don’t think desktop computers are headed for senescence because I think there will always be a place for them. There’s just no replacement for space and raw power.

But with regard to where to take the brand from here, no of course we don’t know, but Tim had better, it’s literally his job. He’s the only one with the power to do it. I’m hoping he’s right about the headset and it’s like the original iPhone. No one in 2024 (happy New Year by the way) is going to be happy using an original iPhone. But it rapidly evolved and became far more useful and now is of course practically indispensable.

You’re not wrong about any of it but I don’t want Apple to just be Dell. Apple was supposed to be the company with vision that drives the industry forward. Dell was able to be successful because Apple showed people how to do desktop computers in the first place.

 

[The Game 161]

Grown into my top 3 podcasts to listen to this past year

 

[McTaste]

Podcast thumbnails always give me uncanny valley vibes.