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posted by n1 on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the year-of-the-linux-desktop dept.

The Macintosh line of personal computers will soon be 32 years old. It has a venerable past… but what kind of future does it have in a declining market?

On the surface the Mac appears to be thriving. If ‘Macintosh Inc.’ were an independent company, its $22.8B in revenue for Apple’s 2016 accounting year (which ended in September) would rank 123rd on the Fortune 500 list, not far below the likes of Time Warner, Halliburton, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon

But there’s more to the Mac’s future than its current good numbers. After enjoying a good time in the sun, the Mac is on the same downward slope as the rest of the PC market.

[...] Instead of racing to the bottom as the market plummets, Apple appears to be taking the “high road”, in a sense: They’re taking refuge at the high end of the market by introducing new, more expensive MacBook Pros, with a visible differentiating feature, the Touch Bar. This is known, inelegantly, as milking a declining business, although you shouldn’t expect Apple to put it that way.

Apple’s recognition that the PC market is declining also explains why the company has been slow in updating its laptops and desktops. The iPhone, with $136B in revenue for 2016, is a much higher priority and gets more development resources. In a war, the top general puts more and better troops on the most important battle.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:38PM (#434465)

    Turns out walled gardens are way more profitable, and they've got their own in iOS. Why let people have truly general purpose computers - which they don't fully control, even though newer versions of OSX seem to have joined the telemetry party - when you could instead guide the market away from them entirely?

    I dislike almost everything Apple stands for today. Writing from my Dell XPS 13 with Linux fully supported, which happens to be superior for general purpose computing to everything Apple now manufactures.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday November 29 2016, @03:10PM

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @03:10PM (#434484) Journal
    I don't think that's quite it. There are a few issues:

    First, a lot of stuff has moved onto the web. I was speaking to someone a few days ago who was complaining about IT support upgrading her computer to Windows 10. She hates the UI and only ever uses the machine for email, web browsing, and running MS Word. All of these work fine on her iPad and the end result is that now she uses the iPad instead of her laptop. She wouldn't buy a Mac, because she doesn't have a need for any of the other things that it does, any more than she uses most of the things that her Windows machine can do. This is a similar problem to Microsoft: Windows XP was good enough for most people, the only reason to upgrade is that XP won't run more modern apps or doesn't get security updates, and most people aren't willing to pay a subscription for security updates.

    The other factor is the relatively short lifespan of iOS devices rather than Macs. I have a MacBook Pro that's just over three years old. I'd happily buy one with more RAM, but the latest Intel CPUs are not noticeably faster or more power efficient than the three-year-old ones. For most people, the machine that it replaced is fast enough. If I weren't using this machine for development, the 8-year-old one before that would still be fast enough. Again, this is the same problem as other PC manufacturers: new computers hit diminishing returns a while ago. In contrast, a new tablet or phone is smaller / thinner / longer battery life / has a better screen. And, best of all for Apple, they only support iOS on a device for about three years, after which it doesn't take long before new apps stop working and users have a big incentive to upgrade.

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    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ramze on Tuesday November 29 2016, @08:12PM

      by Ramze (6029) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @08:12PM (#434660)

      Bingo. If new computers aren't significantly more advanced than older models, then they've unintentionally extended the lifespan of those older models. The reason the PC market is declining is generally due to market saturation. Everyone that wanted one got one, and it's good enough. Laptops have largely become "desktop replacements" and tablets and smartphones have filled the mobile niche that laptops were too bulky/heavy for.

      PCs and laptops have become more like cars -- nearly everyone that wants one has one, and most people are fine with a 10 year old model if it does what they need, but many would shell out extra for a newer one if it has significantly better features or will impress their social group.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday November 29 2016, @04:54PM

    by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @04:54PM (#434538) Journal

    You can't make apps for an iPad on an iPad. You need a Mac.

    You can, however, make apps for an Android tablet on an Android tablet [android-ide.com].

    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday November 29 2016, @05:10PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @05:10PM (#434542)

      It's not so much that it's not "self-hosting", it's that iOS is intentionally crippled in a variety of ways.

      • (Score: 2, Disagree) by TheRaven on Tuesday November 29 2016, @06:16PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @06:16PM (#434582) Journal

        The crippling is down to a difference in philosophies. Google regards an Android device as a computer, Apple regards an iOS device as a thing that you have to complement your computer. Work bought me an Android tablet, which I rarely used, and an iPad, which I use a lot. The problem with the Android tablet was that it did mostly the same things as my laptop, less well. It had all of the problems associated with a general-purpose OS. The iPad does a lot less, but it does a few things much better than the laptop: it's better for reading PDFs, it's better for reading the news, it's more comfortable for passive web browsing (not so much for sites like this where I type a lot). It's good for reading MS Office documents from other people (though, again, not great for editing). It's trivial to copy files to and from it (AirDrop - just drag and drop from the laptop, no need for an Internet connection).

        My slightly rambling point is that the 'crippling' is, for a lot of users, a feature. The lack of multitasking means that the battery isn't being flattened by a background app. The lack of a global filesystem makes malware a lot harder to spread between apps.

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        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 4, Touché) by Nerdfest on Tuesday November 29 2016, @06:31PM

          by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @06:31PM (#434594)

          From what I've seen, there are exceedingly few things that iOS does better than Android, and rafts of things that Android does that you're not "allowed" to do in iOS. Things like running alternative browsers, installing from alternate software sources, etc. For usability it seems to be a preference, and nothing more, which in the case of iOS also required you to give up hardware choices, software choices, standard connectors and a variety of other things. The best you can really do when defending intentional crippling of iOS is state "it doesn't affect me", to which you should probably add "yet".

          • (Score: 2, Disagree) by arslan on Tuesday November 29 2016, @10:26PM

            by arslan (3462) on Tuesday November 29 2016, @10:26PM (#434709)

            Majority of folks don't care about tinkering or choice, us geeks do for sure. The fragmentation problem with Android is a real problem for those folks. Buy a Sony phone today and upgrade to a LG 3 years later and guess what the Sony Experience app you have on your desktop that you've learned to use to manage your media doesn't work anymore.

            Yes, you and me are technically adapt at not needing to use the bloatware that comes from the manufacturers, but most folks don't, they just follow the instructions. Sure they can stick to the same brand, but they're out shopping for an Android phone, not a Sony/LG/Samsung phone.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30 2016, @04:18AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30 2016, @04:18AM (#434803)
              The majority also don't care about IOS. They care about price and support from friends/relatives. The former is why the majority are on Android and not IOS; and the latter is why they're not on Windows phones.

              They really don't care about the fragmentation problem. There isn't one to them. It hardly affects the majority - most of my relatives wouldn't even know what you're talking about- there's nothing extra installed on their PC* for their phones, just copy via USB.

              In contrast the iphone headphone jack going missing affects a higher percentage of iPhone market.

              * FWIW I have a relative who has iDevices but she doesn't even have iTunes or similar installed. She finds it easier to use Google drive/Photos to keep files in sync with their PC... That's the "phone as a tool and not religious object" market for you.
          • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday November 30 2016, @12:04AM

            by Mykl (1112) on Wednesday November 30 2016, @12:04AM (#434737)

            It depends on what your priorities for your device are.

            Your priorities are, if I'm correct, to have the power to install whatever you want from wherever you want on your device.

            Others priorities are to be protected from Malware (software installation from multiple sources is fundamentally incompatible with this), to have one consistent way of using the system (multiple browsers etc work against this) and to not have to worry about software conflicts, version compatibility etc. For those people, iOS works better than Android.

            We should be careful not to assume that, as technically savvy people, our requirements are inherently superior to everyone else. They're just different and fortunately the market is providing solutions for both geeks and 'norms'. iOS is not better. Android is not better. They are both different and more suitable for different audiences.

            • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday November 30 2016, @12:29AM

              by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday November 30 2016, @12:29AM (#434748)

              There's an easy solution to malware from alternate software sources. Don't do it if you don't want to risk it. Isn't choice wonderful?

              I see replies like this and other talking about "tinkering", and hacking and other things with Android, and iOS being easier to use. Bullshit. Both of these platforms are simple to use for you average person. Babies can use either one quite readily. It comes down to whether or not you fund a future where you have no choice in what you can do. Giving money to Apple is rewarding them for taking your freedom away. It encourages others to do the same. How about you all get back to me in five years and see whether or not you can install anything under Windows without a developer licence or Microsoft's permission. I don't think I'm being particularly hyperbolic here, we're just about at the point of no return, and the media is making it worse with free drooling advertising.

              • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday November 30 2016, @12:31AM

                by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday November 30 2016, @12:31AM (#434749)

                I should add that I'm not even overly fond of Android, it's just a relative thing. One option is mainly open source and allows choice, and the other is ... not.