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Why Apple Should Kill Off the Mac

posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 01 2015, @07:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the have-you-tried-programming-on-a-tablet? dept.

HughPickens.com writes:

Christopher Mims writes at the WSJ that Apple like all ambitious companies occasionally strays from its focus. According to Mims the iPhone is just coming into its prime, the iPad is an immature platform and the iWatch is in its infancy, yet Apple continues to invest in one-of-a-kind feats of engineering like the Mac Pro, which ships in volumes that are a rounding error on pretty much everything else Apple makes. "Something's got to give," writes Mims. "Showpieces like iMacs with screens that have more pixels than any PC ever (and four times the average selling price of a PC) are impressive, but what is Apple trying to prove? Is it really a good idea for Apple to continue to put resources against being king of a last-century technology?"

According to Mims the world's best tech companies can be the best at two things at once, maybe three and even a company as mighty as Apple gets to be the best at only a handful of things. "In a world in which the cloud is increasingly the hub of everything individuals and businesses do, and our mobile devices its primary avatar, what on Earth is Apple doing running victory laps around a dying PC industry? Personally, I'd rather see Apple push the envelope on what's next."

takyon: Paywall buster.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by M. Baranczak on Wednesday July 01 2015, @04:27PM

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @04:27PM (#203817)
    No, the answer is even simpler than that: because Apple is still making money on Macs. Business isn't sports. Beating your competitors (by whatever arbitrary metric you choose) isn't the point of the game, the point is profit. As long as you're profitable, you're winning.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:35AM (#204140)

    Dominating a growing market the way iPhone does leads to absolutely ridiculous profits. Not doing so leads to mediocre profits. Profit-wise, nothing else should matter to Apple besides ensuring that dominance.

    Thus we get:
    Mac business hurts iOS business -> ditch macs
    Mac business supports iOS business -> give macs some extra help (if need be, although they seem to be doing fine)
    Mac business is completely irrelevant with regard to iOS business as well as whatever is the next big thing -> spin it off