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I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again. The Mac has been growing for a long time, and the

I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again. The Mac has been growing for a long time, and they seem to have reached a plateau. I assume that's the reason why Macs have became absurdly expensive in the last few years -- when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit. The result is that Apple doesn't build the computer most of their potential customers want -- a $1000 Macbook. I understand that they don't care about the $300 netbook market, but not offering a decent $1000 laptop is a bad idea. It means they are going to loose consumers and students – there are decent alternatives at that price point. Or, people like me, who just keep using their old Macbooks because the high price of the new machines isn't worth the marginally improved performance. Where does this lead us? I don't see how the Mac should grow from here, and as a Mac software developer that worries me. I want to be in a growing market, not a stagnant one. I'm probably going to be okay for the next few years, but is the Mac still going to be a worthwhile platform for a small software company in 10-15 years? I don't know.

hindsightbias 8y ago
If half the devs clinging to their 2012-13 rMBP with missing keys and wire-exposed MagSafe cables would just get with the program and upgrade, sales would go thru the roof.
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  Build a decent laptop and they'll soon come around.
runwerks 8y ago
Keep in mind that this doesn't include the 'back to school' season...
- weliketocode 8y ago
  I could be very wrong here, but I'm not so sure Apple's customers want the $1000 macbook. Many mac users (and perhaps apple users in general) are the type of people willing to pay up for the top-of-the-line, latest-and-great, spare-no-expense tech gadget. I've seen this with companies giving their developers the maxed out mac + mac accessories. I've seen this with individuals who view their mac laptop as the biggest most important usage of their time. Where have you seen apple struggle because they were being undercut by competitors?
  - wvenable 8y ago
    This leaves out a huge amount of the market that might want a macOS device but are unwilling or unable to go to the spare-no-expense level. I understand that Apple doesn't want to create a "cheap" Mac but they're even unwilling to do "affordable".
    - qaq 8y ago
      Prob. does not have the margins Apple wants
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Schools. Chromebooks are now an option and the iPad just isn't a laptop. We were buyers of a lot of Mac minis, iMacs, and laptops, but folks are starting to ask for Surfaces and the Intel NUCs are a good deal. At this point, the graphics arts people might get Windows boxes if Apple doesn't get their crap together as Adobe runs just fine either way. That would be a true shame.
mikestew 8y ago
I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again. Well, what do you expect people to buy? I'm sitting on a six year old MBP, having gotten rid of my 2009 iMac. New iMac? Meh, it might come to that, but I already have enough displays. Mac Mini to go with the display I already have? Surely you jest to suggest a four-year old model. Mac Pro? See: Mac Mini. Current laptops aren't an option unless I get desperate (i. e., current MBP dies tomorrow). I mean, I want a new Mac, there just isn't anything out there that makes me feel like I'd be getting an upgrade. So my theory is that a lot of people are in the cycle I've been in for the last three years: "Meh, I'll wait to see what they have next year...<year passes>...Meh, I'll wait until...holy shit, is this thing really six years old?...<year passes>"
- ianai 8y ago
  Yes, though I would like to buy their newest 15”. A better Air model would be more my style. Their prices are just way too steep. I’d rather have an ultraportable with just enough power for UI and a Linux box somewhere for my projects.
- dyarosla 8y ago
  What I wouldn’t give for a ‘Macbook SE’- just like the iPhone SE, same model as a proven favourite, no touch bar, with new innards and lower price (I don’t even need the lower price actually) I would buy THAT in a heartbeat.
  - thinkythought 8y ago
    it befuddles me that they didn't do this after the success of the 2012 13in macbook, which soldiered on for YEARS of the retina models. They kept the 2015 15in pro for a year or two, but i really wish they'd actually just UPDATE the old style of machines and keep one around as a basic model. i wonder if they think, unlike the SE, that it would actually vampire off too many sales from the high ticket models. what i wouldn't give for a 2015 style 8th gen CPU machine.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    If that’s what you want, the 13” MacBook Pro for $1299 should fit the bill. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-space-gray-2.3ghz-dual-core-128gb https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-space...
lev99 8y ago
The air starts at $1000 and is equipped with an i5. That's your $1000 laptop.
- micv 8y ago
  That's a thousand dollar for hardware that's years out of date. It's a terrible deal. You're going to be far better off buying a decent Windows laptop.
  - malnourish 8y ago
    At risk of being a broken record here, that is why I got an XPS. Sub 1k for the 13" model I chose (not due to price, but form factor) and subjectively far better than my 2015 MBP for my use cases.
    - tajen 8y ago
      What really blocks me is... Windows? Ubuntu?... I’d pay 300$ per year for a decent linux (with iMovie and Keynote), maybe even more at the beginning. A good Linux would really double the value of those XPS, I wonder why Dell doesn’t do it. I even wonder whether Apple isn’t trying to hint to the market that it’s looking for a replacement. But no-one’s getting the hint.
    - Silhouette 8y ago
      You might have been a bit lucky there. As we've discovered after making the mistake of buying one to try ourselves, the XPS series has also had plenty of problems. We bought the Developer Edition, which is the official Linux model. The supposedly supported Linux has been throwing up error messages from moments after we first turned it on that have survived all software updates so far. The machine itself had some sort of battery failure after just a few months of occasional use, then an SSD that was corrupted to the point of being unbootable even when we had apparently recovered from those battery issues. More generally, the over-sensitive trackpad that has been widely criticised was an irritation for us as well, and the keyboard doesn't feel particularly good. For a supposedly professional-grade laptop from a big name, that's obviously a long way short of the quality standards we'd expect. But then recent Macbooks have had their issues with both hardware and macOS, and we won't go near Windows 10 until Microsoft fixes the same complaints about updates and privacy that everyone keeps raising. Where's a business supposed to get professional-quality laptops that just work any more? :-(
joezydeco 8y ago
The whole recent "what's a computer?" ad campaign kind of signaled that Apple believes we should be using more powerful iPads + keyboards instead of notebooks on a daily basis, right?
- fzzzy 8y ago
  This is so dumb, because on the one hand Apple refuses to do a touchscreen laptop because of gorilla arm, and then turns around and says you should replace your laptop with a device that you have to gorilla arm.
  - joezydeco 8y ago
    That's why they brought back the stylus^H^H^H^pencil! =)
- collinf 8y ago
  Anecdotally speaking, I have a couple friends in medical school right now and they do everything on their iPad + keyboard. My mom has used an iPad as her primary computer for the past 5 years. For a lot of people who primarily interact with their computer using PDF's, slideshows, a little email and video, I think that it is a totally respectable replacement. I would be curious to see what percent of the market is people that want their computer to be doing things powerful enough to justify a computer more powerful than an iPad pro is. Disclaimer: Obviously a $300 chromebook destroys an iPad in price but you know so do a lot of Android phones and people still pay the premium for iPhones because they are sexy[1]. [1]https://www.recode.net/2017/9/12/16290910/apple-event-iphone-x-branding-sex-scott-galloway-the-four-recode-decode-podcast-kara-swisher https://www.recode.net/2017/9/12/16290910/apple-event-iphone...
  - Gorbzel 8y ago
    Except that iOS blows away ChromeOS and Google’s half assed approach refusing to have a competent approach to tablets...so maybe it’s a bit more than whatever that unnecessarily disclaimer is saying.
mancerayder 8y ago
I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again. The Mac has been growing for a long time, and they seem to have reached a plateau. I assume that's the reason why Macs have became absurdly expensive in the last few years -- when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit. Well, what do you expect? They keep redesigning the hardware in authoritarian ways: Thou shalt not upgrade the memory yourself (RIP old Mac Pro aluminum tower); Thou shalt not have F and ESC keys; Thou shalt heretofore use USB-C and dongles or will be sent to dongle Hell (I think one of them only has 2); Thou shalt not have feedback on keys. Etc. And in each of the Commandments there are those who rush to defend: "but I love the new keyboard, I remapped the ESC to Caps, and anyway I love the new garbage can design of the workstation, I prefer soldered memory". And that the sales numbers speak? Fantastic.
- dionian 8y ago
  I too wish they would abandon an open standard like USB-C for a cornucopia of proprietary and legacy plugs.
  - mancerayder 8y ago
    Yeah, that proprietary sdcard technology has no place on the side of a new computer in 2018. Instead, we should use a generic USB-C hole which leads to cable which leads to this sdcard thing.
    - bumholio 8y ago
      SD Card is legacy. Legacy: (noun) a useful, established technology that Apple's designers feel it makes their computers less pretty.
  - ianai 8y ago
    It’s great on paper but rife with problems of its own.
  - izacus 8y ago
    There's enough space to have both. You know, like on 2015 model. Remove Thunderbolt 2 and Magsafe, add TB3/USB-C. But don't make me look for dongle every time I want to plug in a mouse, USB stick, YubiKey or any other of literary thousands of USB-A devices. The user experience of this device is objectively worse. It made me think less of Apple - they decided to constantly annoy me to earn more money on dongles.
mh8h 8y ago
the high price of the new machines isn't worth the marginally improved performance Comparing the base models of the 15-inch Macbook Pros on Geekbench: Single core: 2012: 3216 2018: 4918 (+53%) Multi core: 2012: 10558 2018: 21118 (+100%)
- Shivetya 8y ago
  but those scores do not necessarily translate to real world experience. the issue I take with Apple is they do have the ability to come in under 1k and provide a good product that they can profit from both in desktop and laptop lines but they don't choose to. on product availability and innovation the last major update to iMac was the retina screens discounting putting a workstation CPU in the same chassis. the mini is just a disgrace but this also comes with the fact that they dropped their stand alone screens and people have been waiting for a 4k Apple branded screen.
  - firecall 8y ago
    Indeed. I recently picked up a used 2012 rMPBP i7 and I dont really find myself waiting for anything. Photoshop and iMovie for instance all work fine. As ever XCode compilling could be faster, as could rendering iMovie videos. But really, it's fine. GPU sucks though. And I wish I had TB3.
    - thinkythought 8y ago
      I usually direct people to the 2014 and 15 ones of these, as someone still rocking a 2012. The newer ones run so much cooler and the GPU performance bumps were nice. They aren't even that much more used generally. I can't get myself to replace mine unless it totally dies, but damn does it run super hot a lot of the time. And it has since it was brand new. It really does feel like there was an apex in there that we've gone downhill from though, and the 2012 was definitely higher up there than we are now.
    - kalleboo 8y ago
      I went from the top-spec 2012 rMBP to the 2017, and was surprised just how small the performance difference was. Most of it was in the GPU (e.g. the 2012 struggled to play a video on an external monitor while working). The 2017 gets a lot less hot/throttles down less often too.
Eric_WVGG 8y ago
I felt the same way when Apple discontinued the $499 Mac Mini. It's vital to the platform that "anyone can afford a Mac." But since then, there's the iPad. Apple's line is "the Mac is a truck, but most automobiles aren't trucks." And I hate to admit it, but for web browsing and word processing, the iPad is just fine. I don't like it, but I get it.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Apple didn’t discontinue it. You can still buy a $499 Mac Mini with - 4 GB RAM. God help your soul if you buy it though.
  - Eric_WVGG 8y ago
    Sorry, outdated knowledge. I know somewhere around 2010 they revamped the line to start at $799, I was under the impression they never dipped back down.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    Mac Mini's have utility. I have an office full of Mac Mini's, a dozen of them or so, and keep buying more. I still love them for my team. I have it down to a routine now, I buy one of the cheaper ones from the Apple refurbished site for about $400-500 or so, and buy an SSD from Crucial on the same day. When it shows up I swap out the unusably slow internal 5400rpm drive for the SSD. That's a little tricky but once you've done it twice you can do it again in 10-15 minutes no problem. Then I get it all fired up. I have a bunch of Dell IPS 4k screens in various sizes and get a another used one or two from B&H if I need more. I'm very happy with this workflow, but it's still a hack. It sure would be better if Apple just made more reasonable desktop machines.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I’ve had two Mac Minis. The higher spec G4 Mac Mini and the first Intel Mac Mini - a Core duo 1.66Ghz. Apple abandoned it relatively quickly but I put Windows 7 on it and my mom still uses it to this day as a secondary computer when she tutors. I also recommended Mac Minis as single purpose computers. A non profit I volunteer for uses one for live-streaming with WireCast and s Black Magic box, one to control lights, and a third for Propesenter. But when I spec out a Mac Mini with a decent processor and RAM, I’m paying as much as I would for s low end 21” iMac with much better specs.
scarface74 8y ago
The question is why do you care if Mac sales are down? When the Mac was my primary computer in the 90s, I cared very much about Mac sales because if the Mac died, Apple died. But Apple doesn’t live and die by the Mac. I doubt Apple will discontinue Mac sales in the foreseeable future. I plan to rejoin the Mac fold next year and by the look of things, it will be a 5K iMac just because I want to do some Unixy things and you can develop anything on the Mac - iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. All of the third party software I care about is open source except for using MS Office occasionally, JetBrains Rider, and Plex. As long as the software support is there, I don’t care.
- function_seven 8y ago
  You make a good point. I personally would love to see Mac sales crater. Just fall through the floor. That would hopefully nudge Apple to stop trying to use the product line as a design exercise in minimalist extremes. All I want is a slightly thicker laptop, with some key travel, and a couple USB-A ports. Is that too much to ask for?
- kalleboo 8y ago
  In the 90's I cared about Apple not dying because I loved the Mac. Apple dying or discontinuing the Mac are the same thing to me. I would be fine with an Android instead of an iPhone, the difference there just isn't that big to me. OTOH every time I try Windows it makes me want to throw the thing out the window.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The chances of Apple discontinuing the Mac without maturing iOS is slim. What I am saying is that In the 90s if the Mac wasn’t doing well, Apple was toast and there wasn’t going to be any Mac. Now, Apple’s existence is not dependent on the Mac and Apple can survive and keep producing Macs without the Mac being thier primary revenue generator. Honestly, it doesn’t take much investment in the Mac to keep it. Apple is already on the path of merging the Mac underpinnings with iOS underpinnings. Any investment in iOS is an investment in the Mac. Intel does a lot of the heavy lifting with chip design and motherboard design.
dangoor 8y ago
The MacBook Pro line was just refreshed 2 weeks ago. I wonder if people were holding off on buying a new machine because of the keyboard issues (if people knew about those) or just the knowledge that new machines were likely to come soon.
mikec3010 8y ago
> I don't see how the Mac should grow from here I think they could start selling MacOS as a competitor to Windows. I realise this would limit some of the coolness and designer feel (and quality) you get from mac hardware, but hardware has become a lot more stable in the past decade or so. with their marketing, they could convince consumers to ditch windows and just put MacOS on their PCs for $X/month.
- lylecubed 8y ago
  The time to do that would have been during Snow Leopard. At this point, MacOS is a liability, not an asset.
IBM 8y ago
They released updates to the Macbook, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro and iMac last year [1]. The year over year comps aren't as relevant. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/apple-macbook-lineup-cpus-ssds-graphics/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/apple-macbook-lineup-cp...
microdrum 8y ago
I think the more provocative question than "why are Mac sales down again" is: "how do people work? What IS work today?" For me, I really truly cannot imagine working on anything other than a real computer. I need a lot of text and number input for really any kind of work. Anything that could be called work. So what's happening with people? With the economy?
- parasubvert 8y ago
  I can see a lot of people doing their work on their phones and tablets, without a real computer. Lots of email, presentations, videos, conferences, apps, maybe some report viewing, etc. This fits well for people in management, sales, service, and even some technical professionals that aren’t primarily computer focused (doctors, dentists, etc) Marketing not so much (lots of spreadsheets), deep development or system admin also (though most of my sysadmin work can be done on an iPad with a terminal, I like the multi monitor displays on a real computer).
jerrycurly 8y ago
Stop development on macOS. iOS is Apples futures. If you haven’t gotten that memo in the 11 years of iOS existence, I’m sorry. (And sadly, there is way less money to make selling iOS $0.99 apps)
- freehunter 8y ago
  It seems Apple hasn't gotten that memo either, because XCode doesn't run on iOS.
firecall 8y ago
In Australia cost is a real problem. Wages have stagnated over the last 15 years, the AU$ has fallen, but Macs have gone up in price. A new entry level 13" MBP 16/512 is A$2,819 Factor in increased discretional spending priorities for smart phones, smart home devices and gaming PCs or Consoles and you have a market problem. It's not an argument that Macs are expensive as such, or dont represent good value. It's just that Macs are now very expensive for Australian consumers. Anecodtally many workplaces will now provide employees with a laptop by default, so the need for a home computer is significantly reduced for some people. If you have a family, then a gaming PC or a console is what the Kids want, not a Mac.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  I'm an Australian die-hard Apple (computer) user from my first personal computer being a Macintosh SE, to owning almost every single desktop Mac, and lots of the MacBooks, from then until I couldn't afford (justify) upgrading to the 5K iMac. I loved my last 27" iMac like it was one of my kids. That thing was a huge part of my life, and one of the most memorable PCs I've ever owned, so having to bail on Apple was deeply upsetting. Friends convinced me to build a monster Linux desktop PC, which I've been using ever since and have grown to love it. BUT, I'd switch back to an iMac INSTANTLY if I could a) afford it, b) justify it, c) mentally get over the fact that they've broken decades of love and trust, and treat customers like shit while cranking out increasingly crap products then telling us we should still lick their feet and hand over our first born. How about making a desktop computer that can actually... compete? I don't care if it's expensive if it's GREAT. I don't mind stuff not being perfect if it's cheap. I won't buy shitty products for premium money though. Soldered internals, thinness and lightness over performance and quality, sky rocketing prices with snail-pace development, increasingly shittier support and corporate "personality" (? Not sure if that's the right word, but they're becoming easier to hate due to constantly dropping the ball, pissing customers off, releasing shit products, ignoring issues, etc). I miss the old Apple. I'd love them to turn things around. Release a thicker heavier MacBook that actually performs really well, is built rock solid, and costs $1k USD, even if that means having fans and vents and stuff. Apple has incredible designers, I'm sure they can still make it look good. Release an iPhone SE2 with a modern-era camera, 128GB storage, and make it $500 USD. Release an actual Pro/Geek friendly desktop like the old days, something around $1500 USD, comparable to a mid-to-high (not extreme high end) modern gaming PC, so we can actually render videos and do WORK without it crumbling like the Colosseum every time you ask it to break a sweat. Yeh my prices and specs probably aren't "correct" but the idea stands. Increase the performance and quality, drop the damn prices, and stop being such a depressing shadow of your former self. Your piles of cash don't make us love you, good products we can actually afford do.
batteryhorse 8y ago
All they need to do is keep the old form factor and update the internals. No redesigns. I've been waiting for a 11" Macbook Air with Retina screen, but I'll never get it. Many people would buy a cheese grater Mac Pro with updated internals, or a Mac Mini with updated cpu's. My feeling is that they were so jealous of Steve Jobs legacy that they had to redesign everything to prove something, and screwed it all up in the process. Maybe it's like having a parent who is very famous and successful and having to live in their shadow.
JKCalhoun 8y ago
Wonders aloud — are laptop/desktop markets growing at all? Has the phone killed the computer? Or are Chromebooks/Winbooks on the rise?
jeffchien 8y ago
I'm all for the demise of Mac if it means Apple would eventually have to let developers build iOS apps on other platforms.
keypusher 8y ago
Apply already makes a $1000 laptop - the MacBook Air
thephyber 8y ago
iPad. It's a $330 "laptop". It's less of a general computing device, but there's plenty of software avail for it. You and I may not think about it as a development laptop, but it does the majority of what the majority of cheap laptop owners want. I love the iPad for family members because it Just Works(tm) and I don't have to play IT for most of it (save the occasional force-quit app).
pier25 8y ago
Which is a shame really because the amount of great boutique developers on the Mac is one of the great pros of the Mac ecosystem.
jitix 8y ago
Actually I really like my 2017 Macbook Air which I bought for $800. It may have old architecture but the system 'just works', mainly because of the OS (Windows 10 is far from being a decent dev platform). I primarily use it for coding, and for heavy tasks I delegate them to my PC running HyperV. P.S. I don't really understand the obsession with getting the latest gen processors. Your main bottleneck is IO anyway if you don't do video encoding or some other CPU intensive tasks.
- thesimon 8y ago
  MacBook Air? Coding with a quite low-res screen seems unpleasant.
ericpauley 8y ago
This is overblown, on the call they mentioned this. It's because last year the Mac shipped Q3 and this year it slipped to Q4.
whywhywhywhy 8y ago
>when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit. Don't forget dropping the BOM in increasingly petty ways for such an expensive machine like no longer including the short power cable.
ksec 8y ago
> I'm probably going to be okay for the next few years, but is the Mac still going to be a worthwhile platform for a small software company in 10-15 years? I don't know. I think it is more important to measure its users usage shares, rather than unit sold market shares. For example, out of the 2 billion Mobile Phones sold in 2017, 1.3 billon of those are Smartphones, and 230 Million of those are iPhones. That is 230 out of 1300, or ~18%. However if we look at usage, there are close to 3 billion Smartphone users today, and according to Tim Cook's word in today's conference on iPhone user growth, we are looking at around 800M iPhone user, a 26% of the market. The iPhone user base is still growing, as it matches towards one billion iPhone users. The Mac users bases last report were around 150 million, out of the estimated 1.5 billion PC in use. So 10% of total user base. The PC user base hasn't been growing at all, while the Mac user base keeps growing. I think the most important metrics to Apple, is how many users are leaving its ecosystem and how many users are entering it. It reported 60% of the Mac are sold to new buyers. So Apple is roughly adding ~10M Mac users per year. I used to think Apple not caring about Mac was because they see Tablet / iPad ultimately as a replacement of Mac. But this hasn't happened. ( yet ) And it may take another 10 years before we know if Tablet could really take over. In the mean time I think it would be wise for Apple to keep the Mac growing, it needs at least 300M user base to make the ecosystem solid. The thing that worry me most is Apple's inefficiency. With Steve Jobs, he manage to create so many thing with so little budget. Apple now take 7% of its revenue to R&D, the highest ratio it its history and it seems they don't have much to show for. Hopefully we will have MacBook SE and iPhone SE Plus this September. Today's Apple is good, but we demand great.

hindsightbias 8y ago

If half the devs clinging to their 2012-13 rMBP with missing keys and wire-exposed MagSafe cables would just get with the program and upgrade, sales would go thru the roof.

iainmerrick 8y ago
Build a decent laptop and they'll soon come around.

runwerks 8y ago

Keep in mind that this doesn't include the 'back to school' season...

weliketocode 8y ago
I could be very wrong here, but I'm not so sure Apple's customers want the $1000 macbook. Many mac users (and perhaps apple users in general) are the type of people willing to pay up for the top-of-the-line, latest-and-great, spare-no-expense tech gadget. I've seen this with companies giving their developers the maxed out mac + mac accessories. I've seen this with individuals who view their mac laptop as the biggest most important usage of their time. Where have you seen apple struggle because they were being undercut by competitors?
- wvenable 8y ago
  This leaves out a huge amount of the market that might want a macOS device but are unwilling or unable to go to the spare-no-expense level. I understand that Apple doesn't want to create a "cheap" Mac but they're even unwilling to do "affordable".
  - qaq 8y ago
    Prob. does not have the margins Apple wants
- protomyth 8y ago
  Schools. Chromebooks are now an option and the iPad just isn't a laptop. We were buyers of a lot of Mac minis, iMacs, and laptops, but folks are starting to ask for Surfaces and the Intel NUCs are a good deal. At this point, the graphics arts people might get Windows boxes if Apple doesn't get their crap together as Adobe runs just fine either way. That would be a true shame.

mikestew 8y ago

I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again. Well, what do you expect people to buy? I'm sitting on a six year old MBP, having gotten rid of my 2009 iMac. New iMac? Meh, it might come to that, but I already have enough displays. Mac Mini to go with the display I already have? Surely you jest to suggest a four-year old model. Mac Pro? See: Mac Mini. Current laptops aren't an option unless I get desperate (i. e., current MBP dies tomorrow). I mean, I want a new Mac, there just isn't anything out there that makes me feel like I'd be getting an upgrade. So my theory is that a lot of people are in the cycle I've been in for the last three years: "Meh, I'll wait to see what they have next year...<year passes>...Meh, I'll wait until...holy shit, is this thing really six years old?...<year passes>"

ianai 8y ago
Yes, though I would like to buy their newest 15”. A better Air model would be more my style. Their prices are just way too steep. I’d rather have an ultraportable with just enough power for UI and a Linux box somewhere for my projects.
dyarosla 8y ago
What I wouldn’t give for a ‘Macbook SE’- just like the iPhone SE, same model as a proven favourite, no touch bar, with new innards and lower price (I don’t even need the lower price actually) I would buy THAT in a heartbeat.
- thinkythought 8y ago
  it befuddles me that they didn't do this after the success of the 2012 13in macbook, which soldiered on for YEARS of the retina models. They kept the 2015 15in pro for a year or two, but i really wish they'd actually just UPDATE the old style of machines and keep one around as a basic model. i wonder if they think, unlike the SE, that it would actually vampire off too many sales from the high ticket models. what i wouldn't give for a 2015 style 8th gen CPU machine.
- scarface74 8y ago
  If that’s what you want, the 13” MacBook Pro for $1299 should fit the bill. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-space-gray-2.3ghz-dual-core-128gb https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch-space...

lev99 8y ago

The air starts at $1000 and is equipped with an i5. That's your $1000 laptop.

micv 8y ago
That's a thousand dollar for hardware that's years out of date. It's a terrible deal. You're going to be far better off buying a decent Windows laptop.
- malnourish 8y ago
  At risk of being a broken record here, that is why I got an XPS. Sub 1k for the 13" model I chose (not due to price, but form factor) and subjectively far better than my 2015 MBP for my use cases.
  - tajen 8y ago
    What really blocks me is... Windows? Ubuntu?... I’d pay 300$ per year for a decent linux (with iMovie and Keynote), maybe even more at the beginning. A good Linux would really double the value of those XPS, I wonder why Dell doesn’t do it. I even wonder whether Apple isn’t trying to hint to the market that it’s looking for a replacement. But no-one’s getting the hint.
  - Silhouette 8y ago
    You might have been a bit lucky there. As we've discovered after making the mistake of buying one to try ourselves, the XPS series has also had plenty of problems. We bought the Developer Edition, which is the official Linux model. The supposedly supported Linux has been throwing up error messages from moments after we first turned it on that have survived all software updates so far. The machine itself had some sort of battery failure after just a few months of occasional use, then an SSD that was corrupted to the point of being unbootable even when we had apparently recovered from those battery issues. More generally, the over-sensitive trackpad that has been widely criticised was an irritation for us as well, and the keyboard doesn't feel particularly good. For a supposedly professional-grade laptop from a big name, that's obviously a long way short of the quality standards we'd expect. But then recent Macbooks have had their issues with both hardware and macOS, and we won't go near Windows 10 until Microsoft fixes the same complaints about updates and privacy that everyone keeps raising. Where's a business supposed to get professional-quality laptops that just work any more? :-(

joezydeco 8y ago

The whole recent "what's a computer?" ad campaign kind of signaled that Apple believes we should be using more powerful iPads + keyboards instead of notebooks on a daily basis, right?

fzzzy 8y ago
This is so dumb, because on the one hand Apple refuses to do a touchscreen laptop because of gorilla arm, and then turns around and says you should replace your laptop with a device that you have to gorilla arm.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  That's why they brought back the stylus^H^H^H^pencil! =)
collinf 8y ago
Anecdotally speaking, I have a couple friends in medical school right now and they do everything on their iPad + keyboard. My mom has used an iPad as her primary computer for the past 5 years. For a lot of people who primarily interact with their computer using PDF's, slideshows, a little email and video, I think that it is a totally respectable replacement. I would be curious to see what percent of the market is people that want their computer to be doing things powerful enough to justify a computer more powerful than an iPad pro is. Disclaimer: Obviously a $300 chromebook destroys an iPad in price but you know so do a lot of Android phones and people still pay the premium for iPhones because they are sexy[1]. [1]https://www.recode.net/2017/9/12/16290910/apple-event-iphone-x-branding-sex-scott-galloway-the-four-recode-decode-podcast-kara-swisher https://www.recode.net/2017/9/12/16290910/apple-event-iphone...
- Gorbzel 8y ago
  Except that iOS blows away ChromeOS and Google’s half assed approach refusing to have a competent approach to tablets...so maybe it’s a bit more than whatever that unnecessarily disclaimer is saying.

mancerayder 8y ago

I care a lot about the Mac, and I'm not sure what to think about the fact that Mac unit sales are down again. The Mac has been growing for a long time, and they seem to have reached a plateau. I assume that's the reason why Macs have became absurdly expensive in the last few years -- when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit. Well, what do you expect? They keep redesigning the hardware in authoritarian ways: Thou shalt not upgrade the memory yourself (RIP old Mac Pro aluminum tower); Thou shalt not have F and ESC keys; Thou shalt heretofore use USB-C and dongles or will be sent to dongle Hell (I think one of them only has 2); Thou shalt not have feedback on keys. Etc. And in each of the Commandments there are those who rush to defend: "but I love the new keyboard, I remapped the ESC to Caps, and anyway I love the new garbage can design of the workstation, I prefer soldered memory". And that the sales numbers speak? Fantastic.

dionian 8y ago
I too wish they would abandon an open standard like USB-C for a cornucopia of proprietary and legacy plugs.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  Yeah, that proprietary sdcard technology has no place on the side of a new computer in 2018. Instead, we should use a generic USB-C hole which leads to cable which leads to this sdcard thing.
  - bumholio 8y ago
    SD Card is legacy. Legacy: (noun) a useful, established technology that Apple's designers feel it makes their computers less pretty.
- ianai 8y ago
  It’s great on paper but rife with problems of its own.
- izacus 8y ago
  There's enough space to have both. You know, like on 2015 model. Remove Thunderbolt 2 and Magsafe, add TB3/USB-C. But don't make me look for dongle every time I want to plug in a mouse, USB stick, YubiKey or any other of literary thousands of USB-A devices. The user experience of this device is objectively worse. It made me think less of Apple - they decided to constantly annoy me to earn more money on dongles.

mh8h 8y ago

the high price of the new machines isn't worth the marginally improved performance Comparing the base models of the 15-inch Macbook Pros on Geekbench: Single core: 2012: 3216 2018: 4918 (+53%) Multi core: 2012: 10558 2018: 21118 (+100%)

Shivetya 8y ago
but those scores do not necessarily translate to real world experience. the issue I take with Apple is they do have the ability to come in under 1k and provide a good product that they can profit from both in desktop and laptop lines but they don't choose to. on product availability and innovation the last major update to iMac was the retina screens discounting putting a workstation CPU in the same chassis. the mini is just a disgrace but this also comes with the fact that they dropped their stand alone screens and people have been waiting for a 4k Apple branded screen.
- firecall 8y ago
  Indeed. I recently picked up a used 2012 rMPBP i7 and I dont really find myself waiting for anything. Photoshop and iMovie for instance all work fine. As ever XCode compilling could be faster, as could rendering iMovie videos. But really, it's fine. GPU sucks though. And I wish I had TB3.
  - thinkythought 8y ago
    I usually direct people to the 2014 and 15 ones of these, as someone still rocking a 2012. The newer ones run so much cooler and the GPU performance bumps were nice. They aren't even that much more used generally. I can't get myself to replace mine unless it totally dies, but damn does it run super hot a lot of the time. And it has since it was brand new. It really does feel like there was an apex in there that we've gone downhill from though, and the 2012 was definitely higher up there than we are now.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    I went from the top-spec 2012 rMBP to the 2017, and was surprised just how small the performance difference was. Most of it was in the GPU (e.g. the 2012 struggled to play a video on an external monitor while working). The 2017 gets a lot less hot/throttles down less often too.

Eric_WVGG 8y ago

I felt the same way when Apple discontinued the $499 Mac Mini. It's vital to the platform that "anyone can afford a Mac." But since then, there's the iPad. Apple's line is "the Mac is a truck, but most automobiles aren't trucks." And I hate to admit it, but for web browsing and word processing, the iPad is just fine. I don't like it, but I get it.

scarface74 8y ago
Apple didn’t discontinue it. You can still buy a $499 Mac Mini with - 4 GB RAM. God help your soul if you buy it though.
- Eric_WVGG 8y ago
  Sorry, outdated knowledge. I know somewhere around 2010 they revamped the line to start at $799, I was under the impression they never dipped back down.
- CPLX 8y ago
  Mac Mini's have utility. I have an office full of Mac Mini's, a dozen of them or so, and keep buying more. I still love them for my team. I have it down to a routine now, I buy one of the cheaper ones from the Apple refurbished site for about $400-500 or so, and buy an SSD from Crucial on the same day. When it shows up I swap out the unusably slow internal 5400rpm drive for the SSD. That's a little tricky but once you've done it twice you can do it again in 10-15 minutes no problem. Then I get it all fired up. I have a bunch of Dell IPS 4k screens in various sizes and get a another used one or two from B&H if I need more. I'm very happy with this workflow, but it's still a hack. It sure would be better if Apple just made more reasonable desktop machines.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I’ve had two Mac Minis. The higher spec G4 Mac Mini and the first Intel Mac Mini - a Core duo 1.66Ghz. Apple abandoned it relatively quickly but I put Windows 7 on it and my mom still uses it to this day as a secondary computer when she tutors. I also recommended Mac Minis as single purpose computers. A non profit I volunteer for uses one for live-streaming with WireCast and s Black Magic box, one to control lights, and a third for Propesenter. But when I spec out a Mac Mini with a decent processor and RAM, I’m paying as much as I would for s low end 21” iMac with much better specs.

scarface74 8y ago

The question is why do you care if Mac sales are down? When the Mac was my primary computer in the 90s, I cared very much about Mac sales because if the Mac died, Apple died. But Apple doesn’t live and die by the Mac. I doubt Apple will discontinue Mac sales in the foreseeable future. I plan to rejoin the Mac fold next year and by the look of things, it will be a 5K iMac just because I want to do some Unixy things and you can develop anything on the Mac - iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. All of the third party software I care about is open source except for using MS Office occasionally, JetBrains Rider, and Plex. As long as the software support is there, I don’t care.

function_seven 8y ago
You make a good point. I personally would love to see Mac sales crater. Just fall through the floor. That would hopefully nudge Apple to stop trying to use the product line as a design exercise in minimalist extremes. All I want is a slightly thicker laptop, with some key travel, and a couple USB-A ports. Is that too much to ask for?
kalleboo 8y ago
In the 90's I cared about Apple not dying because I loved the Mac. Apple dying or discontinuing the Mac are the same thing to me. I would be fine with an Android instead of an iPhone, the difference there just isn't that big to me. OTOH every time I try Windows it makes me want to throw the thing out the window.
- scarface74 8y ago
  The chances of Apple discontinuing the Mac without maturing iOS is slim. What I am saying is that In the 90s if the Mac wasn’t doing well, Apple was toast and there wasn’t going to be any Mac. Now, Apple’s existence is not dependent on the Mac and Apple can survive and keep producing Macs without the Mac being thier primary revenue generator. Honestly, it doesn’t take much investment in the Mac to keep it. Apple is already on the path of merging the Mac underpinnings with iOS underpinnings. Any investment in iOS is an investment in the Mac. Intel does a lot of the heavy lifting with chip design and motherboard design.

dangoor 8y ago

The MacBook Pro line was just refreshed 2 weeks ago. I wonder if people were holding off on buying a new machine because of the keyboard issues (if people knew about those) or just the knowledge that new machines were likely to come soon.

mikec3010 8y ago

> I don't see how the Mac should grow from here I think they could start selling MacOS as a competitor to Windows. I realise this would limit some of the coolness and designer feel (and quality) you get from mac hardware, but hardware has become a lot more stable in the past decade or so. with their marketing, they could convince consumers to ditch windows and just put MacOS on their PCs for $X/month.

lylecubed 8y ago
The time to do that would have been during Snow Leopard. At this point, MacOS is a liability, not an asset.

IBM 8y ago

They released updates to the Macbook, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro and iMac last year [1]. The year over year comps aren't as relevant. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/apple-macbook-lineup-cpus-ssds-graphics/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/05/apple-macbook-lineup-cp...

microdrum 8y ago

I think the more provocative question than "why are Mac sales down again" is: "how do people work? What IS work today?" For me, I really truly cannot imagine working on anything other than a real computer. I need a lot of text and number input for really any kind of work. Anything that could be called work. So what's happening with people? With the economy?

parasubvert 8y ago
I can see a lot of people doing their work on their phones and tablets, without a real computer. Lots of email, presentations, videos, conferences, apps, maybe some report viewing, etc. This fits well for people in management, sales, service, and even some technical professionals that aren’t primarily computer focused (doctors, dentists, etc) Marketing not so much (lots of spreadsheets), deep development or system admin also (though most of my sysadmin work can be done on an iPad with a terminal, I like the multi monitor displays on a real computer).

jerrycurly 8y ago

Stop development on macOS. iOS is Apples futures. If you haven’t gotten that memo in the 11 years of iOS existence, I’m sorry. (And sadly, there is way less money to make selling iOS $0.99 apps)

freehunter 8y ago
It seems Apple hasn't gotten that memo either, because XCode doesn't run on iOS.

firecall 8y ago

In Australia cost is a real problem. Wages have stagnated over the last 15 years, the AU$ has fallen, but Macs have gone up in price. A new entry level 13" MBP 16/512 is A$2,819 Factor in increased discretional spending priorities for smart phones, smart home devices and gaming PCs or Consoles and you have a market problem. It's not an argument that Macs are expensive as such, or dont represent good value. It's just that Macs are now very expensive for Australian consumers. Anecodtally many workplaces will now provide employees with a laptop by default, so the need for a home computer is significantly reduced for some people. If you have a family, then a gaming PC or a console is what the Kids want, not a Mac.

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
I'm an Australian die-hard Apple (computer) user from my first personal computer being a Macintosh SE, to owning almost every single desktop Mac, and lots of the MacBooks, from then until I couldn't afford (justify) upgrading to the 5K iMac. I loved my last 27" iMac like it was one of my kids. That thing was a huge part of my life, and one of the most memorable PCs I've ever owned, so having to bail on Apple was deeply upsetting. Friends convinced me to build a monster Linux desktop PC, which I've been using ever since and have grown to love it. BUT, I'd switch back to an iMac INSTANTLY if I could a) afford it, b) justify it, c) mentally get over the fact that they've broken decades of love and trust, and treat customers like shit while cranking out increasingly crap products then telling us we should still lick their feet and hand over our first born. How about making a desktop computer that can actually... compete? I don't care if it's expensive if it's GREAT. I don't mind stuff not being perfect if it's cheap. I won't buy shitty products for premium money though. Soldered internals, thinness and lightness over performance and quality, sky rocketing prices with snail-pace development, increasingly shittier support and corporate "personality" (? Not sure if that's the right word, but they're becoming easier to hate due to constantly dropping the ball, pissing customers off, releasing shit products, ignoring issues, etc). I miss the old Apple. I'd love them to turn things around. Release a thicker heavier MacBook that actually performs really well, is built rock solid, and costs $1k USD, even if that means having fans and vents and stuff. Apple has incredible designers, I'm sure they can still make it look good. Release an iPhone SE2 with a modern-era camera, 128GB storage, and make it $500 USD. Release an actual Pro/Geek friendly desktop like the old days, something around $1500 USD, comparable to a mid-to-high (not extreme high end) modern gaming PC, so we can actually render videos and do WORK without it crumbling like the Colosseum every time you ask it to break a sweat. Yeh my prices and specs probably aren't "correct" but the idea stands. Increase the performance and quality, drop the damn prices, and stop being such a depressing shadow of your former self. Your piles of cash don't make us love you, good products we can actually afford do.

batteryhorse 8y ago

All they need to do is keep the old form factor and update the internals. No redesigns. I've been waiting for a 11" Macbook Air with Retina screen, but I'll never get it. Many people would buy a cheese grater Mac Pro with updated internals, or a Mac Mini with updated cpu's. My feeling is that they were so jealous of Steve Jobs legacy that they had to redesign everything to prove something, and screwed it all up in the process. Maybe it's like having a parent who is very famous and successful and having to live in their shadow.

JKCalhoun 8y ago

Wonders aloud — are laptop/desktop markets growing at all? Has the phone killed the computer? Or are Chromebooks/Winbooks on the rise?

jeffchien 8y ago

I'm all for the demise of Mac if it means Apple would eventually have to let developers build iOS apps on other platforms.

keypusher 8y ago

Apply already makes a $1000 laptop - the MacBook Air

thephyber 8y ago

iPad. It's a $330 "laptop". It's less of a general computing device, but there's plenty of software avail for it. You and I may not think about it as a development laptop, but it does the majority of what the majority of cheap laptop owners want. I love the iPad for family members because it Just Works(tm) and I don't have to play IT for most of it (save the occasional force-quit app).

pier25 8y ago

Which is a shame really because the amount of great boutique developers on the Mac is one of the great pros of the Mac ecosystem.

jitix 8y ago

Actually I really like my 2017 Macbook Air which I bought for $800. It may have old architecture but the system 'just works', mainly because of the OS (Windows 10 is far from being a decent dev platform). I primarily use it for coding, and for heavy tasks I delegate them to my PC running HyperV. P.S. I don't really understand the obsession with getting the latest gen processors. Your main bottleneck is IO anyway if you don't do video encoding or some other CPU intensive tasks.

thesimon 8y ago
MacBook Air? Coding with a quite low-res screen seems unpleasant.

ericpauley 8y ago

This is overblown, on the call they mentioned this. It's because last year the Mac shipped Q3 and this year it slipped to Q4.

whywhywhywhy 8y ago

>when they can't grow unit sales, they need to grow revenue per unit. Don't forget dropping the BOM in increasingly petty ways for such an expensive machine like no longer including the short power cable.

ksec 8y ago

> I'm probably going to be okay for the next few years, but is the Mac still going to be a worthwhile platform for a small software company in 10-15 years? I don't know. I think it is more important to measure its users usage shares, rather than unit sold market shares. For example, out of the 2 billion Mobile Phones sold in 2017, 1.3 billon of those are Smartphones, and 230 Million of those are iPhones. That is 230 out of 1300, or ~18%. However if we look at usage, there are close to 3 billion Smartphone users today, and according to Tim Cook's word in today's conference on iPhone user growth, we are looking at around 800M iPhone user, a 26% of the market. The iPhone user base is still growing, as it matches towards one billion iPhone users. The Mac users bases last report were around 150 million, out of the estimated 1.5 billion PC in use. So 10% of total user base. The PC user base hasn't been growing at all, while the Mac user base keeps growing. I think the most important metrics to Apple, is how many users are leaving its ecosystem and how many users are entering it. It reported 60% of the Mac are sold to new buyers. So Apple is roughly adding ~10M Mac users per year. I used to think Apple not caring about Mac was because they see Tablet / iPad ultimately as a replacement of Mac. But this hasn't happened. ( yet ) And it may take another 10 years before we know if Tablet could really take over. In the mean time I think it would be wise for Apple to keep the Mac growing, it needs at least 300M user base to make the ecosystem solid. The thing that worry me most is Apple's inefficiency. With Steve Jobs, he manage to create so many thing with so little budget. Apple now take 7% of its revenue to R&D, the highest ratio it its history and it seems they don't have much to show for. Hopefully we will have MacBook SE and iPhone SE Plus this September. Today's Apple is good, but we demand great.