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For the past decade I've been blindly buying Apple products (but been using Macs since late 90s), while looking at alternatives with disdain. Paying the Apple p

For the past decade I've been blindly buying Apple products (but been using Macs since late 90s), while looking at alternatives with disdain. Paying the Apple premium allowed the tech to get out of the way. Very happy to continue paying, but it seems like Apple is forcing me to leave. In this relationship, I'm the one getting dumped. I'm not sad about it, but from a business perspective why they are actively pushing me away? Canceling product lines (routers, mac pro), not updating the active ones (mac mini, iMac), and being difficult with the products they do update (MBP, iPhone). On a relative basis, Apple has infinite resources. It has cash, the brand and can attract the right people to run the business. Each product line, like the routers and mac pro can be focused on because they have the resources to do it. Most companies re-focus on core products because they are spread too thin - Apple is not.

gtk40 10y ago
When was the Mac Pro line cancelled? I can't find any reference to this.
- appleiigs 10y ago
  oh sorry, I thought when the MBP touch bar was released the Mac Pro was no longer available from the Apple Store. I swear I confirmed that myself, but it's up for sale now. My mistake. But, Mac Buyers Guide says hasn't been updated since Dec 2013.
  - whywhywhywhy 10y ago
    Rumours to ATP.fm podcast (very close ties with apple employees) has heard a bunch of stuff including "No one is working on the Mac Pro"
    - pyre 10y ago
      Well, I can't imagine what they would be working on with the Mac Pro if they had people working on it for 3 years without any sort of update.
- matwood 10y ago
  No updates for 3 years and the product page still points to Aperture, another canceled product. I'd say the MP is as good as dead at this point. Actually, I stand corrected. It appears they updated the page to use Pixelmator benchmarks instead of Aperture. This update must have just happened because a friend of mine and I were joking about it a week or two ago. http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/performance/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/performance/
- welly 10y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised to see it cancelled sometime in the near future either. They've all but given up on their pro software - they're not exactly promoting Logic Pro or Final Cut X with any vigour. Top end Macbook Pros are capable enough for their current audience for running the likes of Logic or FCP. So what's the point in maintaining top end hardware if they don't have the software? I'm sure Apple will continue to do well with what it is these days, a fashion house. I'm not sure what my next laptop will be but I fear I've dug myself into a hole with OSX/MacOS. I spent most of last night and half of yesterday toying with Ubuntu and sadly it didn't do it for me. Sure, I was running it on my Macbook Pro and so the keyboard was all out of whack, which I'm sure is solvable, but I found it unstable. So who knows. I'll keep this early 2013 Macbook Pro until it gives up the ghost (I think I'll have another couple of versions of MacOS in it before it's resigned to the scrap pile) but after that, no idea. Things don't look especially bright for Apple users outside those who are only interested in iOS devices.
addicted 10y ago
I think the answer is margins. If you're not making 40+% profit margins you're bringing the company's overall margins down and have to go.
- scholia 10y ago
  You're probably right, but if so, Apple is taking a short-sighted view. We're moving on from product and platform wars to ecosystem wars, and the core feature of Apple's ecosystem is all Apple software and hardware working together (preferably to the exclusion of non-Apple products, but not always). Having control of everything gives you the best chance of making everything just work. Dropping products (X-Serve, monitors, routers etc) and neglecting products (Mac Pro, Mac mini etc) makes the whole ecosystem weaker. For comparison, the main rival ecosystems are Google and Microsoft. Google's is based on doing everything online and creating a complete Google stack. Microsoft's is based on supporting everything cross-platform (Windows, iOS, Android, MacOS and increasingly Linux) both online and offline.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    You could also argue that it makes the ecosystem smaller and easier-to-manage. It can make it so small that the ecosystem fails to be an ecosystem at all.
- carsongross 10y ago
  That's the bean-counter mindset that ruins companies. (See the auto industry.) Apple had an integrated vision for computing. Wireless routers were never going to be more than a round off error on their balance sheet, but they did it anyway because they wanted it done right. With apple giving up on monitors, it's been a sad year: the bean counters are clearly in control.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    >That's the bean-counter mindset that ruins companies. I was laid off from a semiconductor company years ago because the product we were supporting was aging, and their projections for the successor product did not show a 40+% profit margin, so they decided to simply exit the market altogether and dump their customers, who were really pissed.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
I'm guessing because when it comes to beefy desktops and chubbier but port friendly laptops, the Windows ecosystem beats them out on price. They don't want to get in a price war with anyone as they will drive down their famous 30-40% margins. I also think Apple is dedicated to stop being a traditional computer company entirely and to become a mobile-only entity in the long run. I think Cook and other leadership are really focused on Jobs' vision of the post-PC period. The problem here is that the PC's never went away. We just stopped updating them as often. I'm afraid Jobs died when it was looking like PCs could ultimately be replaced by mobile devices in most circumstances. I imagine Cook is under pressure by the board to "fulfill Steve's last bullet points" which was an email that was famously leaked recently. It seemed very 2007-2010-ish level of thinking, when the mobile revolution was in full force, but come 2011-2016, suddenly tablet sales stagnated and PC sales didn't bottom out and have recently gone up. Sadly, with VR and AR possibly being the new big thing, a beefy video-card is all but mandatory and not the kind of thing that can be shoved into a 3-5 watt SoC. That's another big thing Apple is going to ignore because it goes against its mobile-only vision. Apple is in a strange position because no one there seems to have the political clout to say "Steve was wrong, the post-PC world isn't happening and we need to beat Lenovo, MS, and Dell on laptops, desktops, and accessories. PC's arent going away guys!" Jobs as a dead prophet is unquestionable. This is the problem of having a cult of personality instead of proper flexible leadership. Cook has become a caretaker to Jobs' vision and Jobs' vision is probably wrong. The moves they are now making are probably wrong.
- pyre 10y ago
  > the Windows ecosystem beats them out on price Just from a "Apple Laptop" vs. "Windows Laptop" perspective, the MS Surface laptops are a bit pricy if you're only looking at the lower end of Apple's offerings.
  - uabstraction 10y ago
    That's the beauty of it though. If you want something slick and powerful, there are options. If you want a $250 piece of shit laptop, there are options. If you want to build a workstation taylored to your workload, there are hundreds of companies making parts you can incorporate into your build. You have backup plans for your hardware, and your software. If either one starts to reek, you can replace it without losing the other.
gaius 10y ago
Apple are clearly abandoning the concept of an all-Apple solution, and the concept that all their products are part of an ecosystem. I've said it before, iPhone and iPad are successful because "there's an app for that" and if Apple doesn't look after developers and content creators, how is that going to work? If they don't own the whole experience then how do they deliver "it just works"? People go Apple because they want the integrated experience, but if that's not on offer anymore, if you have to actually research which is "the best" of any component in your setup, why not re-evaluate everything? Eventually it will get to the point where it's as much hassle to use Apple as it would be to use Windows or Linux and at that point, it will boil down to a decision on price, and Apple will lose heavily. Those HP Mini Workstations look pretty sweet, compared to a Mac Mini...
- geuis 10y ago
  Yeah I'm starting to get disappointed in the direction they're moving. My mb pro is from early 2013 and runs fine, but I'll be looking to upgrade in the next couple years. Nothing I'm seeing in the product line is very encouraging at this point. I'm very disappointed if this router news is true. Router firmware updates on most products are non-existent, but with my Apple router I haven't needed to worry about that.
- appleiigs 10y ago
  Yes, Apple shouldn't have given me any reason to look elsewhere, because I might like what I see. Which I did recently - for less money as a MBP, I bought a near top of the line desktop (dual boot Win 10 and free linux) and still have money left over for an ultrabook (which I might not buy because I'll try my iPad for mobility)
- Steko 10y ago
  For all we know Apple is just canning Airport and launching a new product that replaces it and does other things. It seems kind of silly for Apple to sell a handful of separate products --each replaceable by outside companies' offerings -- when they could instead sell one integrated Apple TV/Airport/Time Capsule/MacMini/whatever. Slap a touchscreen on it call it (Apple icon) Home and sell it for $299 (or $499 if you want a decent SSD).
newscracker 10y ago
From its actions, it's becoming quite clear that Apple does not know what to do with its financial muscle or no longer knows how to do things in parallel. The recent product abandonments seem to point to a future where only iPhones and iPads exist along with one laptop model (Apple TV may also disappear in a few years if Apple cannot or does not want to somehow get into large content production). Everything else is useless in the eyes of Apple and is easily dispensable. I wouldn't be surprised at all if by this time next year the only "computers" from Apple one MacBook Pro w/Touch Bar and one single iMac. To a lay person, this doesn't look like better focus. It looks like: * Incompetence in management, because of all the outdated stuff still being sold at high and old prices * Inability to attract and/or retain good talent, because Apple is not expanding teams to sustain its product lines. It's instead closing down and collapsing them into the iPhone/iPad/MBP lines. * A complete lack of vision, because nothing is being done for years on several product lines. If that's not shameful, I don't know what is. It's very sad to see this unfold, but I guess all good things come to an end, and this is happening sooner than expected.
- appleiigs 10y ago
  Tim Cook was supposed to be a logistics guy. "In parallel" should be his thing. To have years in between updating products is the opposite of what I expected to happen. Thought he'd put Apple on a schedule with periodic updates, like ducks in a row. This plus the lack of vision is sad for a company that had both. EDIT: And look at Tim's wikipedia page, there's a quote: "You kind of want to manage it like you're in the dairy business. If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem"
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    That's why you can't have administrators leading an innovation company. Administrators and beauracrats lack creative vision, and that's what sustained Apple all those years. The sad thing is that creative vision is one of those things that all of us start out with, but then it gets beat out of us through the course of childhood and mandatory education.
    - 10y ago

gtk40 10y ago

When was the Mac Pro line cancelled? I can't find any reference to this.

appleiigs 10y ago
oh sorry, I thought when the MBP touch bar was released the Mac Pro was no longer available from the Apple Store. I swear I confirmed that myself, but it's up for sale now. My mistake. But, Mac Buyers Guide says hasn't been updated since Dec 2013.
- whywhywhywhy 10y ago
  Rumours to ATP.fm podcast (very close ties with apple employees) has heard a bunch of stuff including "No one is working on the Mac Pro"
  - pyre 10y ago
    Well, I can't imagine what they would be working on with the Mac Pro if they had people working on it for 3 years without any sort of update.
matwood 10y ago
No updates for 3 years and the product page still points to Aperture, another canceled product. I'd say the MP is as good as dead at this point. Actually, I stand corrected. It appears they updated the page to use Pixelmator benchmarks instead of Aperture. This update must have just happened because a friend of mine and I were joking about it a week or two ago. http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/performance/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/performance/
welly 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised to see it cancelled sometime in the near future either. They've all but given up on their pro software - they're not exactly promoting Logic Pro or Final Cut X with any vigour. Top end Macbook Pros are capable enough for their current audience for running the likes of Logic or FCP. So what's the point in maintaining top end hardware if they don't have the software? I'm sure Apple will continue to do well with what it is these days, a fashion house. I'm not sure what my next laptop will be but I fear I've dug myself into a hole with OSX/MacOS. I spent most of last night and half of yesterday toying with Ubuntu and sadly it didn't do it for me. Sure, I was running it on my Macbook Pro and so the keyboard was all out of whack, which I'm sure is solvable, but I found it unstable. So who knows. I'll keep this early 2013 Macbook Pro until it gives up the ghost (I think I'll have another couple of versions of MacOS in it before it's resigned to the scrap pile) but after that, no idea. Things don't look especially bright for Apple users outside those who are only interested in iOS devices.

addicted 10y ago

I think the answer is margins. If you're not making 40+% profit margins you're bringing the company's overall margins down and have to go.

scholia 10y ago
You're probably right, but if so, Apple is taking a short-sighted view. We're moving on from product and platform wars to ecosystem wars, and the core feature of Apple's ecosystem is all Apple software and hardware working together (preferably to the exclusion of non-Apple products, but not always). Having control of everything gives you the best chance of making everything just work. Dropping products (X-Serve, monitors, routers etc) and neglecting products (Mac Pro, Mac mini etc) makes the whole ecosystem weaker. For comparison, the main rival ecosystems are Google and Microsoft. Google's is based on doing everything online and creating a complete Google stack. Microsoft's is based on supporting everything cross-platform (Windows, iOS, Android, MacOS and increasingly Linux) both online and offline.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  You could also argue that it makes the ecosystem smaller and easier-to-manage. It can make it so small that the ecosystem fails to be an ecosystem at all.
carsongross 10y ago
That's the bean-counter mindset that ruins companies. (See the auto industry.) Apple had an integrated vision for computing. Wireless routers were never going to be more than a round off error on their balance sheet, but they did it anyway because they wanted it done right. With apple giving up on monitors, it's been a sad year: the bean counters are clearly in control.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >That's the bean-counter mindset that ruins companies. I was laid off from a semiconductor company years ago because the product we were supporting was aging, and their projections for the successor product did not show a 40+% profit margin, so they decided to simply exit the market altogether and dump their customers, who were really pissed.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

I'm guessing because when it comes to beefy desktops and chubbier but port friendly laptops, the Windows ecosystem beats them out on price. They don't want to get in a price war with anyone as they will drive down their famous 30-40% margins. I also think Apple is dedicated to stop being a traditional computer company entirely and to become a mobile-only entity in the long run. I think Cook and other leadership are really focused on Jobs' vision of the post-PC period. The problem here is that the PC's never went away. We just stopped updating them as often. I'm afraid Jobs died when it was looking like PCs could ultimately be replaced by mobile devices in most circumstances. I imagine Cook is under pressure by the board to "fulfill Steve's last bullet points" which was an email that was famously leaked recently. It seemed very 2007-2010-ish level of thinking, when the mobile revolution was in full force, but come 2011-2016, suddenly tablet sales stagnated and PC sales didn't bottom out and have recently gone up. Sadly, with VR and AR possibly being the new big thing, a beefy video-card is all but mandatory and not the kind of thing that can be shoved into a 3-5 watt SoC. That's another big thing Apple is going to ignore because it goes against its mobile-only vision. Apple is in a strange position because no one there seems to have the political clout to say "Steve was wrong, the post-PC world isn't happening and we need to beat Lenovo, MS, and Dell on laptops, desktops, and accessories. PC's arent going away guys!" Jobs as a dead prophet is unquestionable. This is the problem of having a cult of personality instead of proper flexible leadership. Cook has become a caretaker to Jobs' vision and Jobs' vision is probably wrong. The moves they are now making are probably wrong.

pyre 10y ago
> the Windows ecosystem beats them out on price Just from a "Apple Laptop" vs. "Windows Laptop" perspective, the MS Surface laptops are a bit pricy if you're only looking at the lower end of Apple's offerings.
- uabstraction 10y ago
  That's the beauty of it though. If you want something slick and powerful, there are options. If you want a $250 piece of shit laptop, there are options. If you want to build a workstation taylored to your workload, there are hundreds of companies making parts you can incorporate into your build. You have backup plans for your hardware, and your software. If either one starts to reek, you can replace it without losing the other.

gaius 10y ago

Apple are clearly abandoning the concept of an all-Apple solution, and the concept that all their products are part of an ecosystem. I've said it before, iPhone and iPad are successful because "there's an app for that" and if Apple doesn't look after developers and content creators, how is that going to work? If they don't own the whole experience then how do they deliver "it just works"? People go Apple because they want the integrated experience, but if that's not on offer anymore, if you have to actually research which is "the best" of any component in your setup, why not re-evaluate everything? Eventually it will get to the point where it's as much hassle to use Apple as it would be to use Windows or Linux and at that point, it will boil down to a decision on price, and Apple will lose heavily. Those HP Mini Workstations look pretty sweet, compared to a Mac Mini...

geuis 10y ago
Yeah I'm starting to get disappointed in the direction they're moving. My mb pro is from early 2013 and runs fine, but I'll be looking to upgrade in the next couple years. Nothing I'm seeing in the product line is very encouraging at this point. I'm very disappointed if this router news is true. Router firmware updates on most products are non-existent, but with my Apple router I haven't needed to worry about that.
appleiigs 10y ago
Yes, Apple shouldn't have given me any reason to look elsewhere, because I might like what I see. Which I did recently - for less money as a MBP, I bought a near top of the line desktop (dual boot Win 10 and free linux) and still have money left over for an ultrabook (which I might not buy because I'll try my iPad for mobility)
Steko 10y ago
For all we know Apple is just canning Airport and launching a new product that replaces it and does other things. It seems kind of silly for Apple to sell a handful of separate products --each replaceable by outside companies' offerings -- when they could instead sell one integrated Apple TV/Airport/Time Capsule/MacMini/whatever. Slap a touchscreen on it call it (Apple icon) Home and sell it for $299 (or $499 if you want a decent SSD).

newscracker 10y ago

From its actions, it's becoming quite clear that Apple does not know what to do with its financial muscle or no longer knows how to do things in parallel. The recent product abandonments seem to point to a future where only iPhones and iPads exist along with one laptop model (Apple TV may also disappear in a few years if Apple cannot or does not want to somehow get into large content production). Everything else is useless in the eyes of Apple and is easily dispensable. I wouldn't be surprised at all if by this time next year the only "computers" from Apple one MacBook Pro w/Touch Bar and one single iMac. To a lay person, this doesn't look like better focus. It looks like: * Incompetence in management, because of all the outdated stuff still being sold at high and old prices * Inability to attract and/or retain good talent, because Apple is not expanding teams to sustain its product lines. It's instead closing down and collapsing them into the iPhone/iPad/MBP lines. * A complete lack of vision, because nothing is being done for years on several product lines. If that's not shameful, I don't know what is. It's very sad to see this unfold, but I guess all good things come to an end, and this is happening sooner than expected.

appleiigs 10y ago
Tim Cook was supposed to be a logistics guy. "In parallel" should be his thing. To have years in between updating products is the opposite of what I expected to happen. Thought he'd put Apple on a schedule with periodic updates, like ducks in a row. This plus the lack of vision is sad for a company that had both. EDIT: And look at Tim's wikipedia page, there's a quote: "You kind of want to manage it like you're in the dairy business. If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem"
- tomc1985 10y ago
  That's why you can't have administrators leading an innovation company. Administrators and beauracrats lack creative vision, and that's what sustained Apple all those years. The sad thing is that creative vision is one of those things that all of us start out with, but then it gets beat out of us through the course of childhood and mandatory education.
  - 10y ago