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It's a little weird for me that a company supposedly in "maintenance mode" has been ignoring the Mac for so long. Even a 5th rate computer company can manage to

It's a little weird for me that a company supposedly in "maintenance mode" has been ignoring the Mac for so long. Even a 5th rate computer company can manage to come out with a new model once in a while. How did Apple get to the point where a company in "maintenance mode" ignores a big product line like this for so long? Is Apple not capable of executing on more than 1 project at once?

toyg 10y ago
> a big product line There's your mistake - next to i-devices, the Mac is simply not a big product line. It's something they need to have around for ecosystem developers, and something of a brand exercise in other sectors. Nothing more.
- fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  True, but why is that so? Apple wants the high end consumer. Gamers are high end consumers, and yet Apple doesn't sell them high end desktop or laptop machines with gaming capable GPUs. Also no VR/AR gear. This seems like quite a strange omission from their product line.
  - chongli 10y ago
    Gamers are high end consumers They really aren't. PC gamers hang out on Reddit and other forums trading info about how to build a PC from commodity parts in order to get the absolute best price/performance ratio. It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three thousand. There's no margin for Apple in this space.
    - usaphp 10y ago
      > "It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three thousand." That's a complete BS, I want you to give me an example of that. Less than a thousand dollar desktop vs 3000$ mac. Now re laptops. My PC friends keep telling me that MacBooks are overpriced And that you can get a faster PC laptop for half the price, but as soon as they start giving me examples like razor blade or some msi laptops, they quickly starting to see that base models of those cost > 1500$ and to get decent specs for gaming you have to shell out upward of 2000$, so in the end you are paying the same money you pay for MacBook.
      - chongli 10y ago
        Laptops are irrelevant to this discussion since nobody builds a laptop from off-the-shelf parts. The issue I'm talking about is gaming performance. Apple sells Mac Pros starting at $3000. These machines use workstation class Xeon processors with ECC memory and workstation class graphics cards designed for double precision floating point computation. These features are irrelevant to gamers. It is not hard at all to build a cheap machine that can beat one of these workstations in all your favourite games, especially when you consider the abysmal state of OpenGL drivers on macOS.
        usaphp 10y ago
        If you read my comment i was referring to mac desktops, laptops were a separate point in a discussion. Nevertheless you are comparing 3 year old Mac Pro with current PCs, at the time when Mac Pro was released it was on par with PC systems that costed around 3000$ as well.
        chongli 10y ago
        I'm comparing brand new Mac Pros that Apple is selling right now, today. The fact that Apple hasn't updated this product in 3 years is not my problem. I can't believe you'd think that would not be a point in my favour.
      - dcole2929 10y ago
        it's actually pretty easy. The biggest cost associated with building a new computer are cpu/gpu. A half decent mb goes for around 150. $700 worth of cpu/gpu will let you place most anything out on high settings. Yeah if you are looking for a titan you're gonna end up paying more than $1000 but even still that computer is going to absolutely take any high end mac desktop to the wood shed for still probably half the price
        kkarakk 10y ago
        other companies are moving into this space iirc. external gpu case manufacturers are targeting apple with a pretty perfect idea+execution. macs already have high resolution screens, just lack the gpu processing power to drive games on those resolutions. wolfe/bizon tech are working in this space
  - usaphp 10y ago
    Gamers market is a completely different animal. The hate towards Apple products in that market is spread across it, even if Apple releases a great and powerful computer for gaming - most of the high end gamers would not buy it just because they have an anti mac mentality. On top of that high end gamers want customizability when building their PC, Apple can not possibly support many different model and brands of motherboards, processors, ram etc...
    - cfjgvjh 10y ago
      Not to mention the lack of certain titles on MacOS.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  …and what are the thousand? people in the division doing for years at a time?
- throwaway420 10y ago
  I am perfectly aware that when compared to phones and other devices, Macs make up a small percentage of Apple's income. But it is still a massive business. Apple will be fine either way in the short term. Hell, they have enough cash saved up to run their company for many years even if they make zero income. But their brand reputation is starting to get tarnished when their ecosystems don't get supported. In the long run, having people wondering how frequently the ecosystems they buy into will be supported is a concern.
adamlett 10y ago
Actually Apple is organized in such a way that it is not very good at executing at more than a handful of products at a time. Almost all companies comparable to Apple in size, are organized into product divisions, each with their own balance sheet, as well as sales and marketing departments. This is because it allows big companies to scale to a very large number of different products, ensuring that each product line gets the attention it requires. Apple OTOH is organized by function, e.g. hardware, software, sales, marketing etc. This allows products to be much better integrated, and it also means that there are no «sacred cows» product-wise. There was no iPod-division that was incentivized to obstruct the creation of the iPhone for instance. The trade off is that it is very hard to manage more than a handful of product lines.

toyg 10y ago

> a big product line There's your mistake - next to i-devices, the Mac is simply not a big product line. It's something they need to have around for ecosystem developers, and something of a brand exercise in other sectors. Nothing more.

fauigerzigerk 10y ago
True, but why is that so? Apple wants the high end consumer. Gamers are high end consumers, and yet Apple doesn't sell them high end desktop or laptop machines with gaming capable GPUs. Also no VR/AR gear. This seems like quite a strange omission from their product line.
- chongli 10y ago
  Gamers are high end consumers They really aren't. PC gamers hang out on Reddit and other forums trading info about how to build a PC from commodity parts in order to get the absolute best price/performance ratio. It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three thousand. There's no margin for Apple in this space.
  - usaphp 10y ago
    > "It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three thousand." That's a complete BS, I want you to give me an example of that. Less than a thousand dollar desktop vs 3000$ mac. Now re laptops. My PC friends keep telling me that MacBooks are overpriced And that you can get a faster PC laptop for half the price, but as soon as they start giving me examples like razor blade or some msi laptops, they quickly starting to see that base models of those cost > 1500$ and to get decent specs for gaming you have to shell out upward of 2000$, so in the end you are paying the same money you pay for MacBook.
    - chongli 10y ago
      Laptops are irrelevant to this discussion since nobody builds a laptop from off-the-shelf parts. The issue I'm talking about is gaming performance. Apple sells Mac Pros starting at $3000. These machines use workstation class Xeon processors with ECC memory and workstation class graphics cards designed for double precision floating point computation. These features are irrelevant to gamers. It is not hard at all to build a cheap machine that can beat one of these workstations in all your favourite games, especially when you consider the abysmal state of OpenGL drivers on macOS.
      - usaphp 10y ago
        If you read my comment i was referring to mac desktops, laptops were a separate point in a discussion. Nevertheless you are comparing 3 year old Mac Pro with current PCs, at the time when Mac Pro was released it was on par with PC systems that costed around 3000$ as well.
        chongli 10y ago
        I'm comparing brand new Mac Pros that Apple is selling right now, today. The fact that Apple hasn't updated this product in 3 years is not my problem. I can't believe you'd think that would not be a point in my favour.
    - dcole2929 10y ago
      it's actually pretty easy. The biggest cost associated with building a new computer are cpu/gpu. A half decent mb goes for around 150. $700 worth of cpu/gpu will let you place most anything out on high settings. Yeah if you are looking for a titan you're gonna end up paying more than $1000 but even still that computer is going to absolutely take any high end mac desktop to the wood shed for still probably half the price
      - kkarakk 10y ago
        other companies are moving into this space iirc. external gpu case manufacturers are targeting apple with a pretty perfect idea+execution. macs already have high resolution screens, just lack the gpu processing power to drive games on those resolutions. wolfe/bizon tech are working in this space
- usaphp 10y ago
  Gamers market is a completely different animal. The hate towards Apple products in that market is spread across it, even if Apple releases a great and powerful computer for gaming - most of the high end gamers would not buy it just because they have an anti mac mentality. On top of that high end gamers want customizability when building their PC, Apple can not possibly support many different model and brands of motherboards, processors, ram etc...
  - cfjgvjh 10y ago
    Not to mention the lack of certain titles on MacOS.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
…and what are the thousand? people in the division doing for years at a time?
throwaway420 10y ago
I am perfectly aware that when compared to phones and other devices, Macs make up a small percentage of Apple's income. But it is still a massive business. Apple will be fine either way in the short term. Hell, they have enough cash saved up to run their company for many years even if they make zero income. But their brand reputation is starting to get tarnished when their ecosystems don't get supported. In the long run, having people wondering how frequently the ecosystems they buy into will be supported is a concern.

adamlett 10y ago

Actually Apple is organized in such a way that it is not very good at executing at more than a handful of products at a time. Almost all companies comparable to Apple in size, are organized into product divisions, each with their own balance sheet, as well as sales and marketing departments. This is because it allows big companies to scale to a very large number of different products, ensuring that each product line gets the attention it requires. Apple OTOH is organized by function, e.g. hardware, software, sales, marketing etc. This allows products to be much better integrated, and it also means that there are no «sacred cows» product-wise. There was no iPod-division that was incentivized to obstruct the creation of the iPhone for instance. The trade off is that it is very hard to manage more than a handful of product lines.