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Surprising (concerning?) that Mac sales didn't go up, given the release of the Mac Pro and the MBP 16", both of which were poised to inject new life into the li

by _bxg1 7y ago

Surprising (concerning?) that Mac sales didn't go up, given the release of the Mac Pro and the MBP 16", both of which were poised to inject new life into the line.

zionic 7y ago
I'm personally holding out for high end 8+ core 10nm (or 7 at this point). I'm not paying $4k for skylake refreshes refresh. I would also love if they started shipping optane in their high end models (or at least have the option).
- swozey 7y ago
  720p camera and Wifi5 no less
raydev 7y ago
Mac Pro was released too late for the quarter, also it starts at $6000. The 16" MBP is also the top tier in the notebooks, and despite complaints, the previous gen TouchBars are working decently for most people. Not surprised the 16" didn't have a huge impact. Updating the 13" line would have a bigger impact. iMac/iMac Pro also haven't seen notable updates in a while.
- whatsmyusername 7y ago
  We've been buying up a shitload of 2017/2018 refurbs. They're perfectly fine even with the keyboard.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  > Mac Pro was released too late for the quarter That's fair > it starts at $6000 The pricing/features can be (have been) debated ad infinitum, but no matter which way you slice it, it represents a huge new direction for the Mac line and at least at the high-end, industry professionals are excited about it. It's a big deal, and it's not a flop, so it should have an impact (next quarter, it seems). > and despite complaints, the previous gen TouchBars are working decently for most people Most people probably won't be trading in their 2018 MBPs for the new 16-inch, but given the strong feelings out there about the keyboard and airflow I'd bet some people will. And more importantly there are people like me, who were holding off on a long-coming upgrade for a moment exactly like this, when Apple's solved the biggest issues with the design. It should've registered as some kind of sales bump, even if not a massive one.
  - curiouscats 7y ago
    I was expecting some pent up MBP demand to buy, so I am surprised sales declined. I still do expect that pent up demand to buy, though I am less confident. Now I am just guessing while the new 16" made people more willing to buy a new MBP it wasn't getting them to rush and buy one. That is my case, I will likely buy this year, without the new 16" I think it was under 50% chance I bought a MBP (and a bit more likely I got some laptop I could run Ubuntu on).
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    While I wouldn't trade in a 2018 MBP, I'm definitely considering trading in my 2016 MacBook to either the 13" or the Air once they update them. I suspect both of these new models came in too late to appreciably affect the Mac quarter results, though, as the OP mentioned -- and I also suspect that the number of people who were holding off on upgrades, like you, has been steadily rising. And I know I'm not alone in looking at the 16" one and thinking it was neat but just too big. So maybe the acid test is going to be seeing what happens to sales when they update the smaller models with the new keyboard.
    - _bxg1 7y ago
      > just too big I pointed out in another comment that the 16" is actually slightly smaller on every dimension than the 15" 2015 MBP, even with the extra diagonal-inch of screen space: 358.9 mm × 247.1 mm × 18.0 mm vs 357.9 mm x 245.9 mm x 16.2 mm Although I do believe it is slightly bigger than the 2016-2018 15"
      - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
        You're right -- by "just too big" I meant my personal preference. :) If it's feasible I'll go down to the Air from the 13" MBP that I currently have!
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    I am also excited about the Mac Pro. However, at a $10k average configuration, it would need to sell several tens of thousands to comprise 20% of Mac line revenue, which would be at least half of the video editors in the US.
pastor_elm 7y ago
16" pros are not popular. Nobody wants to lug that thing around. The Mac Pro is just too expensive. I know people who used to buy Mac Pros and were forced to get iMacs.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  > 16" pros are not popular Clearly you've been living under a rock. I see 15"/16" all over the place. > The Mac Pro is just too expensive For hobbyists. Not for its target market.
  - bcrosby95 7y ago
    > For hobbyists. Not for its target market. The mac pro is somewhere between "too expensive" and "too little, too late". The standard line is that if you make $$$ using the Mac Pro - e.g. production companies - the cost is peanuts. However, they took so long to upgrade the Pro lineup that some of those would-be-buyers have already moved on to non-Apple products because working on old hardware for so long was more expensive than jumping off Apple's ship. Certainly many stayed. But I have several friends that work in production in LA and more than one of them left Apple's ecosystem during that dry spell. They aren't coming back for an overpriced machine.
    - _bxg1 7y ago
      From what I've heard it's not really overpriced at that scale, but yeah, I'm sure there are some that switched for whom the cost of switching back just wouldn't be worth it
- whycombagator 7y ago
  As someone who has been wanting to buy a MBP for several years, the 16" MBP is the best laptop they've made since the 2015 MBP. That being said, I agree with you. It's too large. There's also still a lot of stuff I don't care for (bezel size, massive trackpad, still has an underwhelming keyboard, lack of port diversity, touchbar), but it's decent enough for me to pull the trigger if it were in a smaller package. They gave us the esc key back, and moved away from the butterfly mechanism, etc. If it was just in a form factor similar to that of comparable dell/lenovos (<= 14"), I'd buy one and I feel like I'm not the only one. That being said, I also echo the price concerns. You can easily spec out a 16" to over $3k - that's a lot for a laptop.
eigenvalue 7y ago
I think the fact that Macs don't have touch screens (like MS Surface) is really starting to hurt them. I don't understand it at all... they clearly have the tech know-how. Maybe they are worried that doing that would kill iPad sales?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  macOS isn't suited for a touch-screen and it would create a bad experience in many contexts, which Apple has a history of steering clear of. Anyway, I've never understood the purpose of a touch-screen on a laptop if it can't transform completely into a tablet.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    Even if it can, it's barely useful when it's not in tablet form. We have Dell touchscreen laptops at my office and the only reason people use the touch screen is to scroll with their thumb in the bottom right corner. That hardly seems like a good use case to make the whole screen touch responsive.
  - reggieband 7y ago
    > I've never understood the purpose of a touch-screen on a laptop Me neither BUT I noticed both my Dad and a friend try to touch my laptop screen when I was showing them something. They did so in a way that clearly they weren't even thinking about it and they just expected it to work, especially for scrolling. People's constant use of phones, tablets and newer windows portables that support touch are changing people's expectations. People who primarily use the keyboard + touchpad/mouse are soon to be a minority (if the are not already when the wide world is considered).
    - riversflow 7y ago
      My dad used to do this before I bought him a Mac. He’d had touch screen windows laptops since they first appeared on the market. I’d yell at him and say, don’t put your grubby fingers on my screen. Now that he has a Mac, he feels it is significantly superior to not touch the screen for this exact reason. The trackpad scrolling experience on a Mac more than makes up for it. I think no touch screens is a brilliant design wisdom that falls right in line with Apple’s design philosophy, if it becomes more of a differentiator in that Mac have clean screens, that’s good, subtle marketing. I have never heard someone who owns a Mac in the wild say, why doesn’t it have a touch screen?
busymom0 7y ago
I have been using a 9 year old MacBook (non retina either) and really want to upgrade but the new ones are too out of my price range. Plus the tons of keyboard issues with them has discouraged me. The MacBook I am still using was bought at $1000 new (back to school offer plus student discount) and I manually upgraded the ram to 16GB and replaced the harddrive as well as the optical drive with 2 SSDs. So overall, it probably costed me around $1400 for 740 GB of SSD space. Getting these specs on the new macs is way too expensive for me personally. I might just end up buying an old 2015 one. Retina display is the only thing I really want.
- mxcrossb 7y ago
  My MacBook Air is over 7 years old now, and I feel similar. Mostly because I’m thinking to myself “I need to buy a machine that will last me another 7”.
- scrumbledober 7y ago
  I have a new touchbar mbp at work, and feel absolutely no difference when using it or my personal 2015 retina. Any mbp's without the retina feel ancient.
  - l33tman 7y ago
    Maybe you don't feel the difference, but everybody around you might hear the difference :) The smatter of the keys of the thinner MBP keyboards is horrible in a cafe or office or train etc.. :/ Did they make them more silent in the latest iteration?
    - samatman 7y ago
      From a couple days with the new keyboard, it feels basically identical to the pre-2016 keyboards. I narrowly preferred the feel of the butterfly keys, and I like clicky keyboards in general. But I was one of the many who had keypress failures, which was infuriating. I've beaten the crap out of this style of keyboard, from Apple, without problems, so I'm optimistic that they've fixed the problem. This is my eighth Apple keyboard, and of them all, I've had keypress failures only on the seventh. And yes, to answer your question, it's considerably quieter. And has an escape key. And t-shaped arrow keys. I'm pleased.
hinkley 7y ago
I expect that a lot of people who didn't already know to avoid the 1st rev of Apple hardware learned it due to the keyboard fiasco. I'm looking forward to getting a 2nd gen 16". It's likely to line up with my upgrade cycle.

by _bxg1 7y ago

Surprising (concerning?) that Mac sales didn't go up, given the release of the Mac Pro and the MBP 16", both of which were poised to inject new life into the line.

zionic 7y ago

I'm personally holding out for high end 8+ core 10nm (or 7 at this point). I'm not paying $4k for skylake refreshes refresh. I would also love if they started shipping optane in their high end models (or at least have the option).

swozey 7y ago
720p camera and Wifi5 no less

raydev 7y ago

Mac Pro was released too late for the quarter, also it starts at $6000. The 16" MBP is also the top tier in the notebooks, and despite complaints, the previous gen TouchBars are working decently for most people. Not surprised the 16" didn't have a huge impact. Updating the 13" line would have a bigger impact. iMac/iMac Pro also haven't seen notable updates in a while.

whatsmyusername 7y ago
We've been buying up a shitload of 2017/2018 refurbs. They're perfectly fine even with the keyboard.
_bxg1 7y ago
> Mac Pro was released too late for the quarter That's fair > it starts at $6000 The pricing/features can be (have been) debated ad infinitum, but no matter which way you slice it, it represents a huge new direction for the Mac line and at least at the high-end, industry professionals are excited about it. It's a big deal, and it's not a flop, so it should have an impact (next quarter, it seems). > and despite complaints, the previous gen TouchBars are working decently for most people Most people probably won't be trading in their 2018 MBPs for the new 16-inch, but given the strong feelings out there about the keyboard and airflow I'd bet some people will. And more importantly there are people like me, who were holding off on a long-coming upgrade for a moment exactly like this, when Apple's solved the biggest issues with the design. It should've registered as some kind of sales bump, even if not a massive one.
- curiouscats 7y ago
  I was expecting some pent up MBP demand to buy, so I am surprised sales declined. I still do expect that pent up demand to buy, though I am less confident. Now I am just guessing while the new 16" made people more willing to buy a new MBP it wasn't getting them to rush and buy one. That is my case, I will likely buy this year, without the new 16" I think it was under 50% chance I bought a MBP (and a bit more likely I got some laptop I could run Ubuntu on).
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  While I wouldn't trade in a 2018 MBP, I'm definitely considering trading in my 2016 MacBook to either the 13" or the Air once they update them. I suspect both of these new models came in too late to appreciably affect the Mac quarter results, though, as the OP mentioned -- and I also suspect that the number of people who were holding off on upgrades, like you, has been steadily rising. And I know I'm not alone in looking at the 16" one and thinking it was neat but just too big. So maybe the acid test is going to be seeing what happens to sales when they update the smaller models with the new keyboard.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    > just too big I pointed out in another comment that the 16" is actually slightly smaller on every dimension than the 15" 2015 MBP, even with the extra diagonal-inch of screen space: 358.9 mm × 247.1 mm × 18.0 mm vs 357.9 mm x 245.9 mm x 16.2 mm Although I do believe it is slightly bigger than the 2016-2018 15"
    - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
      You're right -- by "just too big" I meant my personal preference. :) If it's feasible I'll go down to the Air from the 13" MBP that I currently have!
- 1123581321 7y ago
  I am also excited about the Mac Pro. However, at a $10k average configuration, it would need to sell several tens of thousands to comprise 20% of Mac line revenue, which would be at least half of the video editors in the US.

pastor_elm 7y ago

16" pros are not popular. Nobody wants to lug that thing around. The Mac Pro is just too expensive. I know people who used to buy Mac Pros and were forced to get iMacs.

_bxg1 7y ago
> 16" pros are not popular Clearly you've been living under a rock. I see 15"/16" all over the place. > The Mac Pro is just too expensive For hobbyists. Not for its target market.
- bcrosby95 7y ago
  > For hobbyists. Not for its target market. The mac pro is somewhere between "too expensive" and "too little, too late". The standard line is that if you make $$$ using the Mac Pro - e.g. production companies - the cost is peanuts. However, they took so long to upgrade the Pro lineup that some of those would-be-buyers have already moved on to non-Apple products because working on old hardware for so long was more expensive than jumping off Apple's ship. Certainly many stayed. But I have several friends that work in production in LA and more than one of them left Apple's ecosystem during that dry spell. They aren't coming back for an overpriced machine.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    From what I've heard it's not really overpriced at that scale, but yeah, I'm sure there are some that switched for whom the cost of switching back just wouldn't be worth it
whycombagator 7y ago
As someone who has been wanting to buy a MBP for several years, the 16" MBP is the best laptop they've made since the 2015 MBP. That being said, I agree with you. It's too large. There's also still a lot of stuff I don't care for (bezel size, massive trackpad, still has an underwhelming keyboard, lack of port diversity, touchbar), but it's decent enough for me to pull the trigger if it were in a smaller package. They gave us the esc key back, and moved away from the butterfly mechanism, etc. If it was just in a form factor similar to that of comparable dell/lenovos (<= 14"), I'd buy one and I feel like I'm not the only one. That being said, I also echo the price concerns. You can easily spec out a 16" to over $3k - that's a lot for a laptop.

eigenvalue 7y ago

I think the fact that Macs don't have touch screens (like MS Surface) is really starting to hurt them. I don't understand it at all... they clearly have the tech know-how. Maybe they are worried that doing that would kill iPad sales?

_bxg1 7y ago
macOS isn't suited for a touch-screen and it would create a bad experience in many contexts, which Apple has a history of steering clear of. Anyway, I've never understood the purpose of a touch-screen on a laptop if it can't transform completely into a tablet.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  Even if it can, it's barely useful when it's not in tablet form. We have Dell touchscreen laptops at my office and the only reason people use the touch screen is to scroll with their thumb in the bottom right corner. That hardly seems like a good use case to make the whole screen touch responsive.
- reggieband 7y ago
  > I've never understood the purpose of a touch-screen on a laptop Me neither BUT I noticed both my Dad and a friend try to touch my laptop screen when I was showing them something. They did so in a way that clearly they weren't even thinking about it and they just expected it to work, especially for scrolling. People's constant use of phones, tablets and newer windows portables that support touch are changing people's expectations. People who primarily use the keyboard + touchpad/mouse are soon to be a minority (if the are not already when the wide world is considered).
  - riversflow 7y ago
    My dad used to do this before I bought him a Mac. He’d had touch screen windows laptops since they first appeared on the market. I’d yell at him and say, don’t put your grubby fingers on my screen. Now that he has a Mac, he feels it is significantly superior to not touch the screen for this exact reason. The trackpad scrolling experience on a Mac more than makes up for it. I think no touch screens is a brilliant design wisdom that falls right in line with Apple’s design philosophy, if it becomes more of a differentiator in that Mac have clean screens, that’s good, subtle marketing. I have never heard someone who owns a Mac in the wild say, why doesn’t it have a touch screen?

busymom0 7y ago

I have been using a 9 year old MacBook (non retina either) and really want to upgrade but the new ones are too out of my price range. Plus the tons of keyboard issues with them has discouraged me. The MacBook I am still using was bought at $1000 new (back to school offer plus student discount) and I manually upgraded the ram to 16GB and replaced the harddrive as well as the optical drive with 2 SSDs. So overall, it probably costed me around $1400 for 740 GB of SSD space. Getting these specs on the new macs is way too expensive for me personally. I might just end up buying an old 2015 one. Retina display is the only thing I really want.

mxcrossb 7y ago
My MacBook Air is over 7 years old now, and I feel similar. Mostly because I’m thinking to myself “I need to buy a machine that will last me another 7”.
scrumbledober 7y ago
I have a new touchbar mbp at work, and feel absolutely no difference when using it or my personal 2015 retina. Any mbp's without the retina feel ancient.
- l33tman 7y ago
  Maybe you don't feel the difference, but everybody around you might hear the difference :) The smatter of the keys of the thinner MBP keyboards is horrible in a cafe or office or train etc.. :/ Did they make them more silent in the latest iteration?
  - samatman 7y ago
    From a couple days with the new keyboard, it feels basically identical to the pre-2016 keyboards. I narrowly preferred the feel of the butterfly keys, and I like clicky keyboards in general. But I was one of the many who had keypress failures, which was infuriating. I've beaten the crap out of this style of keyboard, from Apple, without problems, so I'm optimistic that they've fixed the problem. This is my eighth Apple keyboard, and of them all, I've had keypress failures only on the seventh. And yes, to answer your question, it's considerably quieter. And has an escape key. And t-shaped arrow keys. I'm pleased.

hinkley 7y ago

I expect that a lot of people who didn't already know to avoid the 1st rev of Apple hardware learned it due to the keyboard fiasco. I'm looking forward to getting a 2nd gen 16". It's likely to line up with my upgrade cycle.