No trouble at all in the edu market ..... nope not one single sign.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/chromebooks-outsold-macs-for-the-first-time-in-the-us.1973484/
http://9to5mac.com/2016/01/13/ipads-versus-chromebooks-education/
Or not. At the middle of their market yeah the have been and still on pretty solid ground to "trend water". At the edges though. There are problems.
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/04/15/la-school-district-ipad-deal-refund/
"... Under the agreement, Apple will pay the district $4.2 million. "
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-la-unified-ipad-settlement-20150925-story.html
At the upper end of the market > $7K workstation.... there is enough posted examples in this forum to indicate some folks are walking away. Not everybody, but I don't think even the kool-aid drinkers in Cupertino actually think what they have on the market right now is competitive.
even in PC larger market some hiccups.
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/11/gartner-idc-pc-shipments-1q16/
roughly flat worldwide and a bit under flat in US. Apple was outpacing classic PC market. Now in stage where mostly treading water.
iPhones going flat is why the stock prices doesn't look like it did a year ago.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL+Interactive#{"allowChartStacking":true}
and Apple isn't selling 2-3 year iPhones as the entry model; introduced iPhone SE.
"Brand" doesn't run one lick of software or solve any significant customer problem at all.
No, Apple doesn't have to compete only on cost, but throwing millions at development of at $10K watch for the 0.0001% of the world is a company with its head up its butt if the company is suppose to be about "changing the world" as opposed to hanging out with the rich and famous. Apple has pulled that trinket from their stores and I'd be surprised if get another by Apple Watch 3 revision. ( might have been too late nuke it for Apple Watch 2).
The "Thunderbolt Display" is a docking station; not a display. It's primarily target market is
not the Mac Pro. iMacs
already have a 5K display. Why doesn't do a large fraction of iMac customers desperately need
another one? They just bought one. The primary docking station buyers are those with laptops. So the question is what percent of Mac laptops can drive a 5K display? Answer not many. So why cut those other Macs out?
The Thunderbolt Display docking station was one of the first TB devices onto the market in 2011 and has not moved one lick in 5 year years. If there was "urgency" attached to this product there certainly isn't much to show for it. It even bypassed TBv2 and the transition to "thin" iMac market changes.
Bull. It is a display standard interface that other monitors just plug into. It lis like saying Apple has to be in the switch business because 3rd parties can't provide quality connectivity. There was no Apple 4K monitor at Mac Pro 2013 launch and those sold like hotcakes for 3-4 months. Little rational reason why it wouldn't happen again as it has already been done.
Apple left the display business 6 years ago. Haven't built a new display in since 2004 ( 12 years ) ! This has been a designated 3rd party opportunity space for over a decade. It is only the deeply myopic who keep looking at Apple's docking station as a display who can't see this.
Apple needs a display docking station that most Mac laptops can use ( perhaps with a TB2->TB3 adapter). If they don't deliver that ... it will probably fail since that is the primary market.
We'll see. I think there was an earlier post about Apple getting into the more custom PCIe SSD market. They have their own controller (acquisition). They are one of biggest buyers of Flash chips. There is little good reason why they couldn't up the capacity at the same higher than market average price they sell SSDs at. Let alone let a slight drop in Retina screen costs offset an increase in budget given to SSD capacity (or some other do-dad they want to add to the MBP; LED screen function keys. ). SSD average prices have been dropping. Apple could pay same prices as 1-2 years ago and just buy "more" capacity with no change in component cost to them.
Over due how? Apple KB doc
" ...
Dell UP2715K 27-inch 5K display is supported on the following Mac computers: ..."
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587
Anyone with cash can deploy one right within days (or hours depending if local store has one or have to wait for it to ship and arrive.). Any other vendor using same underlying panel and display controller will probably work also ( it isn't just one single monitor that is viable ).
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Apple doesn't have to put Mac Pro framebuffers into the first beta build of macOS Sierra if they aren't shipping any time soon (like next month or so) . If there were no Nvidia appropriate framebuffers either then it really doesn't say one thing one way or the other about AMD if both are missing viable candidate.
If there are new Polaris 10 and 11 GPUs shipped in late June- early September Macs then yeah there should be present in macOS Sierra now ( which probably ships in October ). All hardware released before the target general ship date for the OS should be in the builds now ( so it can be tested for that general release).