Apple's Annual Sales Fall For First Time Since 2001 (cnn.com) 232
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: Apple just posted its first annual sales decline since 2001, the year it launched the iPod and kicked off a tremendous run of groundbreaking products. The tech company revealed Tuesday that annual sales fell to $216 billion in the 2016 fiscal year ending September 30, from a record $234 billion in 2015. The sales decline is closely connected to the falling sales for the iPhone, which remains Apple's largest source of revenue. Apple sold 45.5 million iPhones in the September quarter, down from 48 million iPhones in the same quarter a year earlier. That marks the third consecutive quarter when iPhone sales and overall revenue have declined from a year prior. Many analysts have raised concerns that the global smartphone market is saturated. Customers are taking longer to replace their phones. And Apple's latest iPhone is a dead ringer for the previous two models, eliminating some of the desire to upgrade. The good news is that this sales decline may prove to be a blip and not the new norm. Apple is projecting that it will post sales of $76 billion to $78 billion in the upcoming quarter, up from $74.8 billion a year earlier.
Nothing of significance (Score:5, Insightful)
"a tremendous run of groundbreaking products"
- removed headphone jack to previous generation phone
- upgraded battery and performance slightly on watch
- released a more performant iPad
Nothing of significance -- and that's coming from an iSheep with several Apple products.
Re: Nothing of significance (Score:5, Interesting)
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That's pretty much the case for most technology offered in the last 5-10 years. Outside of gaming and a few other use cases, there just isn't a real reason to upgrade as rapidly as we did before.
I'm writing this on a late 2013 MacBook Pro. which, for me, is the longest lasting computer I've had, at least as the one I primarily. Short of hardware failure, I don't expect to need to buy a new model til at least 2018. Though, I may need to replace the battery soon, but that's just an effect of the computer bein
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Re: Nothing of significance (Score:4, Insightful)
That's more polite than saying "Apple was peeing awesome sauce until Jobs started pushing up daisies"
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You're not supposed to brag about the jeans, you're supposed to brag about not being stupid enough to waste money on a vanity product.
Re: Nothing of significance (Score:4, Funny)
But if you can figure out how to swing both the 5 gallon tub of Crisco and the wife, you'll get a lifetime of flaky-crust pies to eat.
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released a more performant iPad
"Performant"? [twitter.com]
Re: Nothing of significance (Score:5, Informative)
"Performant" != "Fast". A performant thing is something which performs well, by whatever metrics are applicable to that thing. A performant algorithm is one that has both low time and space complexity. A performant web browser is one that renders the page quickly while also implementing the most web standards. A performant mobile device is one that is fast while drawing a minimal amount of power so that its battery lasts and it doesn't overheat. So "performant" is a very performant word, as it is a single word that means exactly what it needs to mean.
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:%s/performant/good/g
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"released a more good iPad"
No, I don't think that substitution is more performant than the original.
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"released a more good iPad"
No, I don't think that substitution is more performant than the original.
You could choose a better word.
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"Performant" is just the latest in a long history of made up words and phrases intended to differentiate. It doesn't mean anything new or special.
"Perform" and "Performance" don't literally mean "Fast" either, but a "performance car" would be assumed to be fast just as "performant code" would be. Should we now use the term "performant car"? Of course not; we don't need people in the auto industry to look smart doing the same old things. Coders need to be pretentious.
If "performant" is to mean "does it's
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"Performant" is just the latest in a long history of made up words and phrases intended to differentiate. It doesn't mean anything new or special.
LIke people who write "use case" instead of "use"
(for most uses of "use case" on slashdot).
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My conclusion is that your comment does not perform well.
That's because it was posted too performantly
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In their defense, upgrading their watch battery hasn't resulted in said watches getting engulfed in flames. That's pretty good when you think about it.
(Also coming from an iSheep, though I can't imagine ever wanting an iWatch)
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Prior to the last few years, there's been a lot of groundbreaking products with a large portion coming in Apple devices.
Removing the headphone jack is significant, though I don't agree with Apple on its merits.
Overall there's been a much smaller increment between product generations in the last few years from Apple in particular, and most manufacturers in general.
I can think of a few ideas that may be close, but the tech isn't quite there for. Otherwise - what more would we like cell phones to do for us?
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No headphone jack. Fewer keys than a VT-100 terminal. Lame.
Hey, even my current MacBook Pro, which does have a headphone jack, has fewer keys than a VT100 [deskthority.net], so it's not as if the rumored touch-bar-instead-of-a-function-key-row and might-not-have-a-headphone-jack new MacBook Pro is what put them below the VT100.
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We had those when I was in college. They were popular for certain games because the escape sequences for things like cursor positioning were shorter than VT100s, though they tended to have certain keys being broken like (T)orpedo. They were a bitch to type on with extremely stiff keys and they looked terrible with a 5x7 character matrix.
Courage (Score:3, Funny)
"Because it takes courage to take a fall"
- Tim Cook, 2016
Yes, I'm joking.
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But the Apple users are so compliant, it requires no courage at all to reach any new low.
It's probably from an in joke to see how shit they can make it and still have people lap it up. Baby steps for now but in a few years they'll be really brave and go back to monochrome but on a huge screen.
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"Because it takes courage to take a fall"
- Tim Cook, 2016
From 2012 through 2016, Apple's total revenue was $960 Billion.
I'm sure the pile of money cushioned his fall.
If they'd actually keep up their computer lines (Score:3)
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Details have already been leaked. No Esc key. Will have to switch to emacs :(
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= Been waiting to buy a new Macbook Pro forever now
Better get one before they take the usb of it.
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I've been waiting on a MBP that's worth replacing my mid-2012 with fully upgraded HD and memory. (my own - not apple's $1k upgrade) Every MBP since then has been flat or downhill in terms of hardware. I think I'm going to go System 76 [system76.com] when I finally can't stand my old MBP anymore and need the hardware upgrades.
to bad the new mac pro missed the mark and they (Score:2)
to bad the new mac pro missed the mark and they sat on it. They may of had planes to move faster on it but likely hit to the oh shit we F* up and we need to re plan it wall.
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to bad the new mac pro missed the mark and they sat on it.
Sitting on a 6.6" Mac Pro probably won't be very comfortable. (Yes, I refrained from posting a link to a picture of Kirk Johnson here. :-))
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Cute, you do online banking and watch cat videos on your Linux box. Some people do real work.
Like what?
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I have used linux for twenty years. Slackware on 24 floppies, hours to install and then I had to add a floating point coprocessor, more RAM and a cache module. Cool. Worked like a dream after that. Satisfies just about all my computer needs.
Unfortunately, it won't keep those damn kids off your lawn!
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Play bland music on it?
Phone sales are declining (Score:2)
This doesn't seem like a surprise. You can't expect people to keep replacing $700+ devices every one or two years.
The 6th gen was a spike above the normal trend (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't seem like a surprise. You can't expect people to keep replacing $700+ devices every one or two years.
I think it has more to do with the iPhone 6 generation being a very popular upgrade, mostly due to the larger screen sizes. That was a significant differentiator between the iPhone 4 and 5 generations. The iPhone 7 generation is too similar for many people to want to accelerate their device upgrade plans.
In short its not that sales of the current generation are bad its just that the previous generation was phenomenal, a spike above the trend.
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The iPhone 6 was not a "spike above the trend", it was a catch-up design following a trend that had existed for years. The modern iPhone form factors were established by Apple's competitors first.
That's the root of the problem, of course. Apple once was at the forefront and now isn't. It's most popular upgrades have come from copying its competitors' offerings.
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I'm not sure I'd call having a good size screen that every other manufacturer had been offering for a couple of years "phenomenal".
It's probably the headphone jack. People use it a lot, and they see that the iPhone 7 doesn't have one and the "solution" is a chain of dongles or $120 earbuds they have to charge and void losing, and decide to wait and see what happens next year.
Samsung must really be kicking themselves for screwing up with the Note 7, at a time when Apple screwed up its flagship product too.
Re:The 6th gen was a spike above the normal trend (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it has more to do with the iPhone 6 generation being a very popular upgrade, mostly due to the larger screen sizes.
Am I the only one who remembers the pre-iPhone6 fanbois sneering at the Samsung phone large screen and insisting that the iPhone was "right-sized"? That goes to show the level of iPhonyness of the Apple zealots.
I only have a 6 because I needed it for development, it is at the upper limit of what I consider pocket sized. 6P no way. I still prefer the 5 since it is more convenient to carry around. I'll probably get an SE next, its basically an updated 5. I'll use an iPad if I want to watch TV/movies not the phone.
I've met quite a few 6 users who miss the more convenient size of the 5. Nearly all agree there is something nice about everything being easily reachable by your thumb and that the 6's hack to scroll the screen down on demand is awkward. So you may find many 6 owners still of the opinion that the 5 was "right sized".
Re:The 6th gen was a spike above the normal trend (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, you are not. The idea that iPhones were "right-sized" was purely Jobs spin. Remember that Steve Jobs also said that people used email and no one wanted SMS (and certainly not MMS) when the fact was he simply didn't know how to text (and didn't even use a cell phone at the time). Jobs also said that no one wanted Apps on a cell phone and that they were a catastrophic security risk. This is the actual history of "right-sized".
Apple's string of success is as much to do with pure luck as it is excellenc
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Jobs also said that no one wanted Apps on a cell phone and that they were a catastrophic security risk.
Well, he was half right.
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I think it has more to do with the iPhone 6 generation being a very popular upgrade, mostly due to the larger screen sizes.
Am I the only one who remembers the pre-iPhone6 fanbois sneering at the Samsung phone large screen and insisting that the iPhone was "right-sized"?
That goes to show the level of iPhonyness of the Apple zealots.
The millions of iPhone SE sales probably mean that some of those small screen fans really were fans of small screens, and still buy small screened iPhones.
Phones have reached good enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
Phones are like computers.
From the 80s to mid-late 2000s, businesses and later people (when it reached commodity prices) often brought new computers every 3 years, despite the massive cost, because the speed bump was so subsequent that it affected productivity. Other than a McD's cashier or Bank Teller at work, almost no one used a10 year old PC if they didn't have to, even if was $5,000 when new and worked as well as the day it came out of the fatory.
Outside of gamers/artists and other niches, a good (at the time) 2010 computer would fit the masses just fine and the experience would be mostly the same. The same couldn't be said for a 1993 computer in 2000 or a 1999 computer in 2006. Notebooks are a different story due to form factor but getting there. In fact, the biggest upgrade most people will anticipate in a desktop won't be CPU but screen resolution -- soon 4k, but the vast majority of PCs are still using 1080p which probably was the same story in 2010.
Phones have reached the good enough with iPhone 6. In both screen resolution and speed/ram. I have a iPad 2 from 2011, total PITA for daily use and not suitable for anything but netflix. Browsing is molasses. But I could see using my iPhone 6 for 3 more years without major hassle. Or a modern Samsung for 7, due to super screen res.
Phones ARE computers (Score:4, Insightful)
Phones are like computers.
They aren't "like computers" they ARE computers. They are computers that happen to be able to make phone calls.
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Especially when they're courageously REMOVING features from the new device.
FTFY.
PRO hardware needs to come back they killed (Score:4, Insightful)
PRO hardware needs to come back they killed so much like.
Mac mini server
Mac mini with quad core cpus
Xserve and they did not at least say it's ok to run Mac OS X Server in a vm on any base hardware you can run it that way but the licensing restrictions say no.
imacs with easy to get to disks
laptops with easy to get to disks.
a pro workstation (the new mac pro really missed the mark)
They payed lip service to gameing by making some of a deal of trying to push mac os for gameing but not really having the video cards for it to work well. Say big imac screens with weak video cards, the 2012 old mac pro only had a ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB in the base system.
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laptops with easy to get to disks.
Apple still sells laptops with disks? News to me....
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and some business don't want data to go out when a system needs to be sent in for warranty work. Dell, HP, and other even let them destroy HDD's / ssd's and still get replacement under warranty.
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Apple still sells one laptop with a hard drive - the 13" non-Retina version of the MacBook Pro.
OK, that one was a bit hidden, but if you go to the bottom of the MBP page, and click on "Compare Mac notebooks", it's currently on the left-hand side of the second row.
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Which would basically end up being a rounding error in Apple's revenues.
The pro machines never sold well. The Mac Pro had laughable sales,a s does the Mac Mini. Apple really kept them along because of the small by very vocal community who can be guaranteed to buy a few thousand units.
And if you say Apple keeps sucking at the specs, well, Apple is limited by what Intel has. The Mac Mini i7 dual core is the only processor using the same socket as the i5
Re:PRO hardware needs to come back they killed (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of pro machines isn't to sell well. The purpose of pro machines is bragging rights—specifically, being able to say that you build machines that are some of the best on the market, and being able to say that people do amazing things with your machines. But sure, if you want OS X to turn into a passive media consumption platform like iOS, keep dumbing down the hardware. Pro users will start using other platforms to do real, creative work, and eventually OS X will wither and die.
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I've said it before, without Jobs they're toast (Score:5, Insightful)
I've said it before and I will say it again: Without Jobs Apple is toast. Just like the last time Jobs left. They will continue for some years due to momentum but there is no stopping their fall. Without Jobs they are rudderless.
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jobs didnt leave he was removed cause of all the problems he caused almost tanked the company before the soda pop generation
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Well, that's sort of true.
Jobs quit. He was not fired. However, after trying to have Scully fired, the board basically made him Senior Chief Executive Director In Charge of Nothing (i.e., a nice title but no real power or control over anything.) So after spending a few months getting his ducks in a row, he quit and started NeXT, taking various Apple employees with him and entering "the workstation market."
Re:I've said it before, without Jobs they're toast (Score:5, Informative)
I've said it before and I will say it again: Without Jobs Apple is toast. Just like the last time Jobs left.
The original Mac under Jobs' tenure was an utter failure. Lots of press, disappointing sales. Many years after the Mac's introduction the Apple II was still paying the bills at Apple, carrying the Mac project. Jobs' Apple III (note 3 not 2) was a failure. Job's NeXTcube was a failure.
The Mac only became successful after Jobs was gone, when design features he opposed were introduced. An open box, slots, etc.
The iMac G3 of 1998 was Jobs' first successful computer. Prior to that he misread the market, the customers wants/needs over and over again.
That said what really made Macs popular was the shift to Mac OS X, which Jobs deserves some credit for since it was a fork of NextOS, combined with the shift to Intel CPUs. Basically once people no longer had to make a choice between Mac OS or Windows, but could dual boot or effective emulate (the cpu architecture no longer had to be emulated so performance was many times faster) so they could have both operating systems on the same machine. This is when Apple's Mac sales rapidly doubled.
In short while his record with digital music players and mobile devices is pretty damn good, Jobs' record with computers is pretty spotty, more likely a failure than a success. The Apple II was successful in part because Wozniak ignored Jobs on important design decisions and the Apple II had to carry Jobs for many years when he was able to bully people to get his way and those projects failed.
Flower Power and Dalmatian themed iMacs. (Score:2)
The iMac G3 of 1998 was Jobs' first successful computer. Prior to that he misread the market, the customers wants/needs over and over again.
I guess it would be fair to say he misread the market during that era too at times, ex: Flower Power and Dalmatian themed iMacs.
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Actually, I'll add another one: iMac DV.
When everyone was making mix-CDs, Apple created iMovie and desktop video was going to be the next big thing. Unfortunately, it didn't work out all that well. That's when Apple jumped into music.
Apple III, Lisa, original Mac, NeXTcube all failed (Score:2)
The original Mac under Jobs' tenure was an utter failure. Lots of press, disappointing sales. Many years after the Mac's introduction the Apple II was still paying the bills at Apple, carrying the Mac project. Jobs' Apple III (note 3 not 2) was a failure. Job's NeXTcube was a failure.
And of course the Lisa too.
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The original Mac under Jobs' tenure was an utter failure. Lots of press, disappointing sales. Many years after the Mac's introduction the Apple II was still paying the bills at Apple, carrying the Mac project. Jobs' Apple III (note 3 not 2) was a failure. Job's NeXTcube was a failure.
And of course the Lisa too.
The Lisa was a spectacular machine. Best monochrome monitor in history. A very well designed business-oriented computer. Just too damned expensive, and too far ahead of its time.
I used one a little. When my friend upgraded his Profile to 10M I bought the 5M and put it on my Apple //e. No more swapping out assembler and source code floppies.
Beside the $10K price tag (1980s dollars) it also suffered from Jobs mentioning something better and incompatible was under development (the Mac).
I used a NeXTcube a little at school too, also nice. But like the Lisa also limited due to Jobs' "vision" and design decisions. They were what he wanted, not what the market wanted/needed. Ahead o
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I've said it before and I will say it again: Without Jobs Apple is toast. Just like the last time Jobs left. They will continue for some years due to momentum but there is no stopping their fall. Without Jobs they are rudderless.
They were rudderless with Jobs, they just cant hide it under the RDF any more.
Apple fanboys bang on about the UI, but it's positively horrible. I have two phones, a Nexus 5x on Android 7 (Nougat) and a Galaxy Nexus on Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean). I had to use an Ipad at a bank recently, brand new, latest model Ipad on the latest IOS and using the keyboard was like going back to Android 1.1. It was positively in the dark ages. No tab key, no long press options, numbers were a pain in the backside to get to (
Bravery, indeed (Score:2)
Obviously (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
Apple's Q4 has been the weakest or second weakest quarter since 2012. New iPhones are released only during the final month of the quarter and are supply-constrained, limiting the revenue that can be pulled from there. Cook said that Q1 2017 (Oct-Dec 2016 for reasons only known to accountants) will see a return to profitability, and Apple has consistently been spot-on with their numbers. Q1 has consistently been Apple's biggest since the iPhone eclipsed the Mac in revenue.
Now, if Apple undershoots its tar
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Revenue dropped from Q4 2015 to Q4 2016, comparable quarters. That Q4 is their slowest quarter is irrelevant.
In addition, revenue for the entire fiscal year 2016 was lower than fiscal year 2015.
"return to profitability"? They are quite profitable, they won't be returning to something they already are.
Apple chooses their end of year to come shortly after the introduction of new phones for a reason, it lets them manage their Q4 revenue and earnings in order
to make their numbers without pulling too much reve
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In addition, revenue for the entire fiscal year 2016 was lower than fiscal year 2015.
And it's noteworthy (as the article mentions, it's the first time sales have fallen in fifteen years). I just don't take it as a sign of Apple's impending doom, or that they're doing something inherently wrong.
They are quite profitable, they won't be returning to something they already are.
Yeah, that was poor wording on my part. I meant to say something more like "sales growth". Q1'17 improving over Q1'16 (and maybe Q1'15, who knows).
Apple chooses their end of year to come shortly after the introduction of new phones for a reason, it lets them manage their Q4 revenue and earnings in orderto make their numbers without pulling too much revenue into Q4 from the next year. Tim Cook is about managing Wall Street, they don't forecast more than a quarter out and make their forecast when the quarter is already 1/3rd done.
Thanks for helping clear that up a bit.
there is going to be an end high priced, high margin phones.
Maybe? Pundits have been declaring inexpensive, "good enough" phones to be the death of high-priced phones for y
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Q1 2017 (Oct-Dec 2016 for reasons only known to accountants)
A couple of reasons I can imagine:
Apple has been going downhill since jobs died :( (Score:2)
Don't Cry for Apple yet. (Score:2)
Note: Yes, I am an Apple shareholder (since 1983). No, I'm not even close to being rich.
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Apple has cash offshore that they can't bring back without losing a huge chunk of it, so that's more or less virtual money. In America they have less than 20 billions (which is not even 1/3 of their debt).
Walmart has more cash than Apple in the USA and a lot less debt (about 2/3 of Apple debt).
Microsoft has 4x more cash than Apple in the country and only 1/3 of their debt.
It's probably time to sell your Apple stock. Holding to that position for 30 years won't mean a thing once it gets back on a nosedive.
I don't think you can compare the two. (Score:3)
Apple of 2001 made computers.
Apple of 2016 makes phones. The fact that they're now making fewer phones just means the phone market is maturing as the computer market matured. The real question can the revolutionize yet another industry? Steve Jobs? Perhaps. He was smarter than me so maybe he could've come up with something.
Not an Apple fan in general but now I feel a bit sad.
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Apple of 2001 made computers. Apple of 2016 makes phones. The fact that they're now making fewer phones just means the phone market is maturing as the computer market matured. The real question can the revolutionize yet another industry? Steve Jobs? Perhaps. He was smarter than me so maybe he could've come up with something.
Not an Apple fan in general but now I feel a bit sad.
I've said it before, but most of Apple's customers are already Apple customers. 4 out of every 5 iphones is sold to replace an iphone.
They stopped growing a while ago in existing markets and have run out of new markets to join, they would have started shrinking years ago if they hadn't of started out in the China and India markets. Now that they've been everywhere for a few years their sales are dropping because they've become passe. There are now more people leaving Apple than joining it. All but the mo
2 person case study (Score:2)
That does not bode well for a company that has to operate in a free market. And consumer electronics is about as free a market as exists in today's global economy.
Hire better staff in the US (Score:2)
Its not a consumer issue, really great staff would have predicted an emerging downturn and been ready to make a profit in any market conditions.
A great company needs skilled staff to design the future not provide happy work to average staff today.
A company top heavy with a policy of been inclusive and hire average staff cant be great with ever fewer really skilled staff.
Fix software and hardw
::shrug:: (Score:2)
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We are entering into a major recession. (Score:2)
Umm, before you jump to any conclusion it's important to realize that we are heading into a major recession. According to the Buffet Indicator the value of the Market is over 2 standard deviations above the mean. This means we are in a bubble, and according to the Federal Reserve the bubble is presently in the process of popping...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
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Furthermore, to back up the previous statement here is the Fed's graph for the Velocity of M2 Money Stock. Velocity measures the rate at which money changes hands, so if it's low that means everyone is hoarding any money they might have. Looking at the graph you will see that we are at the lowest it has ever been in the 60 years they've been charting this metric...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
Anecdotally, I have a family member who is a small business owner, and she has stated to me this is the worst ye
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don't want to feel troubles of Walnut [mi7.edu] found 4erspective, the for the project. So on, FreeBSD went [goat.cx]
D00d, you might want to check those links - goat.cx is now a parked domain. You'll need to find the new home for pictures of Mr. Johnson's [gawker.com] world-famous anus [knowyourmeme.com].
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Believe me, believe me!
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I think most consumers do feel Apple has the best quality, or at least quality equal to any competitors in design and quality. (neckbeards may not, but the 99% do)
The phone market is going where the PC market did. The smartphone market is mature. The tech has exceeded for the moment our ability and the networks' ability to utilize it.
There are few reasons to upgrade your phone year to year, as there once were.
(One wonders if the thinner/lighter trend and the trend of putting slick curved edges on these dain
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Seriously. People are talking about it. Very important people. Experts!
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Our profits are YUUUUUUGE!!!
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Our design and products are the BEST.
Designed in California
Made in China
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Even so, I still expect people to go for the slave labour Macbook at $1699 instead of the $1899 "proudly manufactured in the USA" model, when given a choice. Especially when no one is looking.
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Why rag on Apple about this? Maybe I'm mistaken, but can you name a smartphone maker who manufactures in the US? Or PC vendor? But Apple alone is the fall guy?
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I had a motorola atrix once. Easily my least favorite/least durable phone ever. I had an otter box case even, it slipped out of my hand from two feet above the ground, landed on the top corner of the phone, and entire screen turned into a spiderweb of cracks. Maybe other motorola's faired better?
Seems like the future for manufacturing in the US is the Elon Musk approach - factories employing as much automation as possible; those will provide jobs for the contractors that build them, but thereafter not so mu
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What would it actually cost to produce a MacBook in the USA? My guess is that it'll be more expensive, but not by a factor 4. And in case of iPhones, which are sold at 3x the cost of manufacturing, I bet they could sell them at only a slightly higher price if they *gasp* would accept a lower markup.
Even so, I still expect people to go for the slave labour Macbook at $1699 instead of the $1899 "proudly manufactured in the USA" model, when given a choice. Especially when no one is looking.
My prediction is that as robots become more prevalent in industry there will be a gradual shift of manufacturing/assembly back to the US. It's already slowly happening in the auto industry.
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Robots continue to be more and more prevalent in manufacturing. There's a grey area in which you have to look at the cost of a task-specific robot vs. the product lifecycle though...and calculate X # of man-hours @ $ vs custom robot that costs $millions.
The more universal the robots are, the more they can be used across production lines and the simpler to adapt them when they are.
It doesn't, however, solve the problem of employment for the displaced workers. Yes, yes, I know...all the crying and politics.
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Steve Ballmer actually delivered constant, massive profits at Microsoft. To this date he has been the most successful CEO in that organization.
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Yup. Apple products used to be focused around (Score:5, Interesting)
enabling the user to do things they otherwise wouldn't know how to do or be able to do. Since Jobs left, they've steadily slid into the old game from the '90s and '00s that the tech majors (HP, Compaq, and so on) used to play—"innovation" becomes another word for "throw gadgety gimmicks at the wall and see what sticks," but without well-thought-out reasons why users might want the device, or an understanding of the ways in which UX friction impacts the device's usability.
Compared to the rest of the marketplace and competing products at the time, the original iPhone, the original iPod, the original Intel Power Macs, the original LaserWriter, the original Macbook Pro models, the original iPad, etc. were all towering improvements that enabled users far more than competing products did.
Now, the trend is the opposite.
On the consumer end, iOS phones and tablets feel arbitrarily constrained next to Android ...and so on.
Current Mac OS machines are generally limited in serious software and upgradeability again relative to Windows machines
On the pro end, Apple's application ecosystem is weak once again compared to pro-level Windows applications
It used to be that you paid a premium for Apple products but got much more or at the very least something highly differentiated for your money (esp. in the cases of early iPods vs. other MP3 players, iPhone 1 vs. other smartphones, iPad vs. other contemporary tablets, etc.).
Now you pay a premium either for less or for something that is largely undifferentiated (and often negatively so in the minor differences that do exist).
It hasn't always been the case that you're simply paying double for brushed metal and a glowing Apple logo, but it certainly feels that way now. People still want to pay for quality (hey, the aluminum case and better QA are nice), but now they have to consider the tradeoff—I can pay a lot more and get a nice metal Apple device, or I can pay a lot less and get a phone that's more configurable and flexible.
That's my own feeling, anyway. I'd love to have the nice finish of an iOS device, but even if there was price parity I couldn't give up the flexibility of Android. I don't want to be tied down to Apple's visuals, Apple's icon positioning, Apple's version of KHTML, Apple's take on the (non-)filesystem and so on. I love Mac OS as well, or at least I have done since OS X, but the new Macbook Pros are limiting and I'm seriously considering getting a Windows laptop for my next purchase, just so that I can access hard drive, memory, and so on.
Apple has begun to fetishize itself, rather than fetishize overall UX.