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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: 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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  • (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.