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As 'free money' is sucked out of the system (by reversing ultra low interest rates and QE), people are going to focus their spending on what they actually need

As 'free money' is sucked out of the system (by reversing ultra low interest rates and QE), people are going to focus their spending on what they actually need - which often is not an Apple product.

HDThoreaun 4y ago
I think it has a lot more to do with everyone who was considering an upgrade jumping on the m1. Apple's macbook pipeline is now dry since most of their customers now have a new computer.
- acdha 4y ago
  I think that’s especially true this far into the pandemic telework shift: that both forced new purchases for a ton of people who had desktops in the office and also pushed more work into cloud services for ease of sharing. Neither of those are absolutes of course but think they line up well with your observation, further reducing the number of people who think that they need a new computer to be more productive.
kmlx 4y ago
or a PC in general: > Global PC shipments tumbled to 56.9 million in the first quarter, down 29% from the same period a year earlier https://www.wsj.com/articles/pc-shipments-fall-29-led-by-drop-in-apple-devices-fc14deec https://www.wsj.com/articles/pc-shipments-fall-29-led-by-dro...
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Yeah, that's my bigger worry: that "desktop" (and then "laptop") are going to become niche platforms that only old-timers use. I dread our only-phone future.
  - brink 4y ago
    Maybe we took our older generation's wisdom for granted.
  - lukevp 4y ago
    If you could dock a phone and use it with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and it had all the software you used, whorls you still be worried? Microsoft did this with Continuum in windows phone 10, and iPadOS is trying to grow up to support more multitasking and a keyboard+mouse. It’s not too far of a leap that the iPhone could do the same thing. This would also be a lot cheaper than also purchasing a laptop.
    - brink 4y ago
      Sure, that sounds fine on paper. But the problem would be that you can't install whatever you want on your iPhone. So iPhones would have to drastically open up before that becomes some kind of utopia. We want a future where people own their hardware, and going to a phones-only world currently wouldn't be a move in that direction.
    - seneca 4y ago
      I would be even more worried, because then they have a bigger excuse to kill off product lines for real computers. The problems isn't just the form factor. It's primarily that phones and tablets are significantly dumbed down, closed, and more user hostile devices. Windows is already trending more toward the phone experience with dumbed down interfaces, forced updates, telemetry, and ads baked in and it has made it all but unusable. I want less of that, not more. Computers need to work for, and be owned by, the user. We had that, and we're rapidly losing ground.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      I doubt they would let me get bored one day and figure out how the Bluetooth stack worked without being told “no, I really can’t be an iBeacon, get over it”. Also, text editor and gcc is all I ever need. How many hoops would I have to jump through to get GPL programs unprohibited on iOS?
    - lloeki 4y ago
      I wanted to love that but it failed for me. My desktop is a dedicated workstation machine that I want to be running even when I lug my phone around the house. You can basically s/phone/laptop above and it still doesn't quite work for me. Doing it with a phone only makes it worse. Maybe for some it can work, it just doesn't for me. I very much prefer the concept of continuity, where I have a number of devices that I can pickup, and whatever I want to do can be carried over in a transparent way across all of them, while having each device be the best at what it is, some able to do unique stuff and some having overlaps in functionality.
  - 999900000999 4y ago
    To be fair, a Bluetooth keyboard/ mouse , plus HDMI out gets you to what most people use computers for. I'm more afraid of laptops turning into phones, via Microsoft Store/ App Store, scary "unknown publisher" warnings, etc. It's getting harder and harder to run what you want on computers.
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > (...) "desktop" (and then "laptop") are going to become niche platforms (...) Will desktop and laptops become niche, or are smartphones/tablets finding a far broader and popular market? You can grab your smartphone and even tablet while you're riding the subway/train/bus/whatever, but you would never use a desktop I'm that scenario. Same goes for the line in your supermarket, a quick trip to the restroom, during lunch, etc. The smartphone didn't replaced the desktop. It replaced the newspaper/magazine/mobile phone The truth of the matter is that the smartphone form factor is far more suited for a broader range of usages than your desktop/laptop, and the combination of those use patterns with technology limitations do warrant specialized app life cycles and UX patterns. Desktop/laptops are suited for entirely different use patterns.
zamalek 4y ago
Not to forget the recession that we may or may not be past. Repo rates might be one of the earlier signals of a recession, but I'd wager that declining boutique tech sales would occur even earlier (even if they are only reported later).
mihaaly 4y ago
Weird having an insightful factual beginning of a sentence just to conclude with weak and hugely incomplete speculation ignoring the bulk of the picture (Apple's all other products, what actually needed actually entails, ...).
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  Apple have been wildly successful in selling Rolls-Royces to the masses. In pretty much all categories they've entered, Apple are considered to be the premium brand. However the masses generally don't need the level of engineering that Apple products typically feature - people have been compelled into forking out for it in order to status match with their peers (e.g. the green/blue text thing). Now times are tight, the Rolls stay on the forecourts. (I love their design, engineering and attention to detail - Bauhaus for nerd stuff - and their mission to bring high quality to all. But I object to their walled garden, their cultishness, lack of configurability and, yes, the inordinate waste of natural/engineering resources going in to make what should be commodity devices, coupled with sucking money out of people who really can't afford it)
  - acdha 4y ago
    > Apple have been wildly successful in selling Rolls-Royces to the masses This analogy doesn’t make any sense: a Rolls Royce comes with a significant price premium, whereas Apple products tend to cost about the same as equivalent quality PC/Android devices, often cheaper in the M1 era, and most of the cost factors directly benefit the core function of the device whereas what makes a Rolls cost an order of magnitude more tends to be a lot of bespoke luxury details which don’t help you get somewhere faster, safer, or proportionately more comfortably. If you want a car comparison, I’d go with Audi/BMW – premium but still a mass market manufactured good which marks you as at most upper middle class. Also, you’re not doing your argument any favors by repeating Google’s marketing push about blue/green text message colors. Green was the original color on the iPhone 1 and hasn’t changed. What did change was Google trying to make a play to get governments to bail them out of their decision to throw the messaging business to competitors like Facebook. They have plenty of pricey PR people getting paid to dissemble about that, there’s no need to contribute your time pro bono.

As 'free money' is sucked out of the system (by reversing ultra low interest rates and QE), people are going to focus their spending on what they actually need - which often is not an Apple product.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

I think it has a lot more to do with everyone who was considering an upgrade jumping on the m1. Apple's macbook pipeline is now dry since most of their customers now have a new computer.

acdha 4y ago
I think that’s especially true this far into the pandemic telework shift: that both forced new purchases for a ton of people who had desktops in the office and also pushed more work into cloud services for ease of sharing. Neither of those are absolutes of course but think they line up well with your observation, further reducing the number of people who think that they need a new computer to be more productive.

kmlx 4y ago

or a PC in general: > Global PC shipments tumbled to 56.9 million in the first quarter, down 29% from the same period a year earlier https://www.wsj.com/articles/pc-shipments-fall-29-led-by-drop-in-apple-devices-fc14deec https://www.wsj.com/articles/pc-shipments-fall-29-led-by-dro...

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Yeah, that's my bigger worry: that "desktop" (and then "laptop") are going to become niche platforms that only old-timers use. I dread our only-phone future.
- brink 4y ago
  Maybe we took our older generation's wisdom for granted.
- lukevp 4y ago
  If you could dock a phone and use it with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and it had all the software you used, whorls you still be worried? Microsoft did this with Continuum in windows phone 10, and iPadOS is trying to grow up to support more multitasking and a keyboard+mouse. It’s not too far of a leap that the iPhone could do the same thing. This would also be a lot cheaper than also purchasing a laptop.
  - brink 4y ago
    Sure, that sounds fine on paper. But the problem would be that you can't install whatever you want on your iPhone. So iPhones would have to drastically open up before that becomes some kind of utopia. We want a future where people own their hardware, and going to a phones-only world currently wouldn't be a move in that direction.
  - seneca 4y ago
    I would be even more worried, because then they have a bigger excuse to kill off product lines for real computers. The problems isn't just the form factor. It's primarily that phones and tablets are significantly dumbed down, closed, and more user hostile devices. Windows is already trending more toward the phone experience with dumbed down interfaces, forced updates, telemetry, and ads baked in and it has made it all but unusable. I want less of that, not more. Computers need to work for, and be owned by, the user. We had that, and we're rapidly losing ground.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    I doubt they would let me get bored one day and figure out how the Bluetooth stack worked without being told “no, I really can’t be an iBeacon, get over it”. Also, text editor and gcc is all I ever need. How many hoops would I have to jump through to get GPL programs unprohibited on iOS?
  - lloeki 4y ago
    I wanted to love that but it failed for me. My desktop is a dedicated workstation machine that I want to be running even when I lug my phone around the house. You can basically s/phone/laptop above and it still doesn't quite work for me. Doing it with a phone only makes it worse. Maybe for some it can work, it just doesn't for me. I very much prefer the concept of continuity, where I have a number of devices that I can pickup, and whatever I want to do can be carried over in a transparent way across all of them, while having each device be the best at what it is, some able to do unique stuff and some having overlaps in functionality.
- 999900000999 4y ago
  To be fair, a Bluetooth keyboard/ mouse , plus HDMI out gets you to what most people use computers for. I'm more afraid of laptops turning into phones, via Microsoft Store/ App Store, scary "unknown publisher" warnings, etc. It's getting harder and harder to run what you want on computers.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > (...) "desktop" (and then "laptop") are going to become niche platforms (...) Will desktop and laptops become niche, or are smartphones/tablets finding a far broader and popular market? You can grab your smartphone and even tablet while you're riding the subway/train/bus/whatever, but you would never use a desktop I'm that scenario. Same goes for the line in your supermarket, a quick trip to the restroom, during lunch, etc. The smartphone didn't replaced the desktop. It replaced the newspaper/magazine/mobile phone The truth of the matter is that the smartphone form factor is far more suited for a broader range of usages than your desktop/laptop, and the combination of those use patterns with technology limitations do warrant specialized app life cycles and UX patterns. Desktop/laptops are suited for entirely different use patterns.

zamalek 4y ago

Not to forget the recession that we may or may not be past. Repo rates might be one of the earlier signals of a recession, but I'd wager that declining boutique tech sales would occur even earlier (even if they are only reported later).

mihaaly 4y ago

Weird having an insightful factual beginning of a sentence just to conclude with weak and hugely incomplete speculation ignoring the bulk of the picture (Apple's all other products, what actually needed actually entails, ...).

somewhereoutth 4y ago
Apple have been wildly successful in selling Rolls-Royces to the masses. In pretty much all categories they've entered, Apple are considered to be the premium brand. However the masses generally don't need the level of engineering that Apple products typically feature - people have been compelled into forking out for it in order to status match with their peers (e.g. the green/blue text thing). Now times are tight, the Rolls stay on the forecourts. (I love their design, engineering and attention to detail - Bauhaus for nerd stuff - and their mission to bring high quality to all. But I object to their walled garden, their cultishness, lack of configurability and, yes, the inordinate waste of natural/engineering resources going in to make what should be commodity devices, coupled with sucking money out of people who really can't afford it)
- acdha 4y ago
  > Apple have been wildly successful in selling Rolls-Royces to the masses This analogy doesn’t make any sense: a Rolls Royce comes with a significant price premium, whereas Apple products tend to cost about the same as equivalent quality PC/Android devices, often cheaper in the M1 era, and most of the cost factors directly benefit the core function of the device whereas what makes a Rolls cost an order of magnitude more tends to be a lot of bespoke luxury details which don’t help you get somewhere faster, safer, or proportionately more comfortably. If you want a car comparison, I’d go with Audi/BMW – premium but still a mass market manufactured good which marks you as at most upper middle class. Also, you’re not doing your argument any favors by repeating Google’s marketing push about blue/green text message colors. Green was the original color on the iPhone 1 and hasn’t changed. What did change was Google trying to make a play to get governments to bail them out of their decision to throw the messaging business to competitors like Facebook. They have plenty of pricey PR people getting paid to dissemble about that, there’s no need to contribute your time pro bono.