How much longer does the Mac have?

cosmichobo · May 2, 2018, 1:51pm

G’day,

Mac sales only make up 10% of Apple’s revenue. Now, I’d love that 10%, but when you’re a business, something that only attributes 10%, yet I imagine costs a hell of a lot to get to market, may be something you’d consider letting loose…

I gather there’s talk of a move to allow iOS apps to run on macOS… which presumably would marginally increase the sales of apps… though I can’t see it really helping Mac sales…

What do we do when Apple decides it’s not profitable enough to continue the Mac division?

http://www.alunrhysjones.com/images/rainbow%20nooseFINAL1.jpg

cheers

cosmic

FaultyTaco · May 2, 2018, 5:38pm

So you anticipate e2e development of iOS apps on iOS?

cosmichobo · May 2, 2018, 9:22pm

The_Hawk · May 2, 2018, 11:13pm

The whole concept confuses me, especially in the context of Apple and their decision to cut product lines. If it was a case of a fixed amount of resources meaning that this 10% is costing them 15% somewhere else… well sure. Now there is a financial argument that my time/money could be better used elsewhere to drive a higher return. But for Apple, do you believe that they are neglecting iOS software/hardware in order to do Mac things? To put it another way, if they stopped doing Mac things would that “focus” make iOS any better?

Bottom line here I think the Mac in and of itself is a valuable thing for Apple to keep around, even it it wasn’t making a profit it’s probably still worth enough to keep… Since we all believe it IS making a profit I don’t understand why there is a question.

Jongleur · May 3, 2018, 12:34am

Same as when Apple decided not to continue with the Apple// division. . . . .

Move to their alternate platform, or present them with the digitus impudicus and move on. I skipped over the early/mid Mac era, and only returned with the introduction of the OS X beta program.

Depending on what each of us wants to do, we’ll choose different paths, and I’m thinking it’s time to go Linux mainstream - just have to settle on the distro.

cosmichobo · May 3, 2018, 9:43am

I guess there would be a case to be built to offset potential “Mac Department” losses - currently (I presume) you need a Mac to work on iOS / iOS apps… So if they did abandon the Mac, they’d need to retool their iOS software to run on a non-Mac platform.

Perhaps it will more be a matter of slimming down the line up to reduce costs…

The_Hawk · May 3, 2018, 11:26pm

That’s interesting to consider.

For the laptops they could easily drop the Air, although it’s sort of their entry level device these days. The MacBook is their tiny offerings and again comes back to that “because we can” sort of marketing but with a huge price to match. Then there is the Pro in 13 or 15, not a huge amount to slim.

If I was forced to choose I would end up with two or three models in the range. You could drop all colour options and setting on space grey to maintain a brand identifier.

Lower the price point of the MacBook but keep the options for higher storage and RAM. This then becomes your entry level, it’s pretty, it’s tiny and lets Apple put the “Premium” experience in front of more people selling themselves as better than your usual Dell/HP machines.

Drop the 13" MacBook Pro, replacing it with an updated 13" MacBook Air.

Push the 15" MacBook Pro into a higher spec.

You would then have three pretty differentiated products at different price points. If push came to shove you could even drop the 13" completely, although I have no idea what their sales of 13" vs 15" Pros are.

On the desktop side there aren’t alot of options to being. Drop the 21". The rest is all internal config which could be simplified.

The only question then is if Apple are willing to either take a cut on the margins of the new low end model to maintain the same sort of entry point OR are willing to drive up the cost of that entry point. Sadly I think they are just fine with the latter.

snarl · May 4, 2018, 5:32am

What am I missing?
18 million macs sold in the last 12 months. Say an average selling price of at least $1000.
Thats 18 billion $ revenue.

So the mac would be a fortune 200 business in its own right.

AVC · May 4, 2018, 5:37am

A long, long time.

bennyling · May 4, 2018, 10:07am

Everything is relative. Including iMac revenue vs everything else, and iMac revenue vs Apple’s other revenue streams.

Dan · May 4, 2018, 10:13am

I don’t see Mac’s going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

Entropy · May 4, 2018, 7:36pm

Yes, the Mac alone is a profitable, large business. But as was once said about nations, there is a lot of ruin in a corporation.

The angst is about how much bigger sales could have been if Apple had just kept all models up to date, leaving aside some controversial design decisions that limited function in favour of form.

How many people have regretfully left Mac for the dark side, or at the very least delayed purchases due to the neglect or strange decisions on form or price? And importantly, how many people are moving across from the dark side?

kyte · May 4, 2018, 8:26pm

Hand up, here. Considering Linux for future, but waiting to see what Apple does with it all. Seems like a mess right now.

The_Hawk · May 5, 2018, 5:37am

My 2013 MBP still performs very well. 512GB SSD + 16GB RAM means it’s still got plenty of life left in it too. The $4K for the modern replacement is just far too much vs the additional benefits I might see in my usage. The only downside is that my battery is 5.2 years old and showing 79% health.

My Wifes 2011 MBA has been upgraded to 512GB SSD but otherwise still pretty much does everything she needs, although the fans really spin up when she starts doing much of anything. I’ve dusted it out, but it’s just an older and hotter CPU and the thermal paste could probably do with a refresh too… but that’s a whole lot of effort. Really though, she is pretty happy and doesn’t really want an upgrade.

As for the dark side… I’ve considered it. Last time around I largely arrived at the decision that if I really wanted Windows 10 I should just install that in boot camp and run it on 2013 MBP since it’s hardware really is very very nice.

To be honest, the only thing that is stopping me is iMessages. If there ever was a Windows client (or web client) I think there would be nothing holding me to the Mac. Most things I actually use are cross platform like Chrome, Filezilla and the Microsoft Office Suite (even if Excel for Mac still sucks major balls).

I still run Parallels and now have a couple of Windows apps in my Launch Bar which run the VM in “coherence mode” which means I just get a Windows window on my Mac so it’s sort of the best of both worlds, although it comes with a decent battery life penalty thanks to the CPU overheads of runnings a fulll VM just so I can run some basic apps. Plan B is to run up a VM on my server and just RDP into that when I need things, but that sort of sucks too.

Orestes · May 5, 2018, 1:15pm

The day that Macs and the Mac OS are no longer a thing is the day I sail off into the sunset and build my own fully independent Unix box. I’m only really here anymore because I don’t like Windows. In fact I hate it… But OS X allows the best of both worlds for the moment.

Where it doesn’t I’ll buy a Unix box instead. I’ve crossed the road with Windows somewhere in between Windows XP and Windows 7. I have no reason to go back there. I will not be going back there any time soon.

This whole thing with smart UIs and ribbons does not fit with my design philosophy so… Windows is a definite no for me It’s just an ugly mashup of widgets and buttons and when you want to do something all of a sudden in the next program release that button isn’t where it was in the last version of the software.

The whole issue about the Start button is the perfect example of everything that sums up what I’ve said above. I am quite content that no one in the Windows division at Redmond knows anything about what they’re doing.

kionon · May 8, 2018, 1:07am

I was able to sell my 2012 MacBook Pro because I am running Linux Mint with a near-macOS feel on my 2008 MacBook White and 2006 MacBook Black while I save up some money to make a decision on my next laptop. They’ve both come back to real, actual modern usage. I’m on the MBW right now.

My biggest concern is video editing. I just don’t feel there is YET a Premiere/Final Cut class non-linear editor yet for Linux (although we are a long way from the original release of Cinelerra). And as good as GIMP is, it’s still not up to Photoshop CS3 and higher levels.

Linux is way better now than it was when I first tried to use it full time in 2000, but it still needs a few more years to be a viable macOS or Windows replacement for all of my purposes.

For office/internet kind of tasks though? I’m taking this 2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook White to an Australian accredited international education certification course I’m doing in Vietnam for 5 weeks and we shall see if it can keep up with my school work, internet, social media, and vlogging/blogging needs. It’ll be a good test run.

kyte · May 8, 2018, 2:08am

Are you running these natively or inside a VM? If native, please tell a simpleton how to do it. I really like Mint and would love to be able to run it on my 2010 Macbook (White). I’ll still be using my Mac Mini with OSX

kionon · May 8, 2018, 2:32am

Natively, and it was quite simple. I just popped the CD into the CD drive, booted into the Live CD, and installed it. Then I’ve slowly been modifying the Cinnamon UI/GTK/Metacity UI elements to be comfortable to me as a Mac User.

kyte · May 8, 2018, 3:04am

Does Mint like SSDs? If yes, then I think I will be cloning the drive and installing this coming weekend

Only 53GB? Are you dual booting?

kionon · May 8, 2018, 3:12am

This is a 60GB SSD (53GB user accessible, because of swap space, etc) I had lying around. I also initially installed it on the MB Black, which is why it is 32-bit, and not 64-bit, a change I probably need to make as there are some programs I can’t install because they have no 32-bit version.