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Why did apple discontinue printers?
- Thread starter wellander1
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I had forgotten that Apple even made printers in the past.
These days, printers are pretty much "plug and play," even with Macs. I don't know that there's a reason for Apple to make their own. In general, it seems as if Apple was building up a number of products to have a full "ecosystem," and slowly they've been letting them go.
I'm still a bit sour over Apple's discontinuation over their router line (AirPort and AirPort Extreme). It's not that routers today aren't "plug and play," I guess, but Apple had made it so incredibly easy to set up and administer, even from iOS devices... other router companies haven't exactly stood still, but so far I haven't seen anything that came close to the ease of administration of the AirPort. It was a nice perk of having all Apple devices.
These days, printers are pretty much "plug and play," even with Macs. I don't know that there's a reason for Apple to make their own. In general, it seems as if Apple was building up a number of products to have a full "ecosystem," and slowly they've been letting them go.
I'm still a bit sour over Apple's discontinuation over their router line (AirPort and AirPort Extreme). It's not that routers today aren't "plug and play," I guess, but Apple had made it so incredibly easy to set up and administer, even from iOS devices... other router companies haven't exactly stood still, but so far I haven't seen anything that came close to the ease of administration of the AirPort. It was a nice perk of having all Apple devices.
Because other people specialise in them and get better economy of scale for pricing and R&D, there's no need for apple specific printers, etc.
USB / network printers work with anything. There is zero need for an apple printer any more.
This is something apple need to keep in mind regarding the rumours they are going into the car business. It isn't their core market, they have NFI what they're doing in that market, and shouldn't bother (IMHO).
I'd love to see a tie up with BMW. BMW Apple Car
and...
wait for it...
drum roll please...
let's get excited...
woooooo...
keep it coming...
BMW Apple Car Mini.
I'm sure that's not quite true - or it's not always simple. Apple have discontinued plenty of things that were profitable, the problem being that a tiny bit of profit might be taking a lot of resources to make - resources that could be more profitable working on other projects.
So what your saying is the cost of the overhead meant they were not making much money. Kind of what I was saying. Resources, are salaries, people, materials, so all of the overhead needed to run a printer line was more then what they were pulling in, i.e., losses vs profits.
Their PostScript printers were great although you always got a faster processor for less money with the QMS equivalent.
I guess. I was more suggesting that, after all those costs were taken into account, they would have turned a small profit - but then other factors come into play like there only being so many engineers for hire, campus space being limited, manufacturing partners expertise.
If a division has costs of $1,000,000 and revenues of $1,100,000 they’re turning a profit. But what if those same people could be making $2m or $50m?
And then the Tim Cook stuff comes in. What if their current output necessitates a specific manufacturing partner. But by changing their focus and making something different, that partner can be dropped and the other manufacturing partners can bid to build the new thing. It might even share parts or processes, making many things more efficient or cheaper.
This article from 2009 explains the history and reasons why Apple is not in the printer market. TLDR: all the money is in ink and supplies. Printer drivers are no longer an issue.
Why Apple will never make printers again
Why Apple will never make printers again