[OT] mobile rising

[Joakim]

On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 10:42:37 UTC, Tony wrote:
> On Wednesday, 8 November 2017 at 09:34:39 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>>>>>> Why did they fund development of a new iMac Pro which is 
>>>>>>> coming this December as well as the new MacBook Pros that 
>>>>>>> came out this June? That's a contradiction of "milk it 
>>>>>>> like an iPod".
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Because their userbase was rebelling?  I take it you're 
>>>>>> not that familiar with Mac users, but they were genuinely 
>>>>>> scared that Apple was leaving them behind, since they 
>>>>>> weren't refreshing Mac and Macbooks much anymore and all 
>>>>>> Apple's focus is on iOS:
>>>>>
>>>>> So, let them rebel. You said that they would like to see it 
>>>>> go away, and/or they want to milk it. If you have to spend 
>>>>> money on development to keep selling it, then you can't 
>>>>> "milk it".
>>>>
>>>> You and I and Jobs may've let them rebel, but Apple is a 
>>>> public corporation.  They can't just let easy money go, 
>>>> their shareholders may not like it. Perhaps you're not too 
>>>> familiar with legacy calculations, but they're probably 
>>>> still making good money off Macs, but it just distracts and 
>>>> keeps good Apple devs off the real cash cow, iPhone.  Even 
>>>> if the Mac financials aren't _that_ great anymore, you don't 
>>>> necessarily want to piss off your oldest and most loyal 
>>>> customers, who may stop buying iPhones and iPads too.
>>>
>>> It would either be you and Jobs, or just you, letting them 
>>> rebel. I would keep the line.
>>
>> That's funny, as I was responding to your statement above, 
>> "So, let them rebel." :D
>
> "Let them rebel" was with regard to your point of view. As 
> demonstrated by the sentence I put after it: "You said that 
> they would like to see it go away, and/or they want to milk 
> it." You said that Apple would be happy to see it go away. Then 
> you added that they were "milking" the line while they could. 
> Satisfying rebelling users doesn't jive with either position. 
> They rebel and you want to get rid of it - and you get rid of 
> it. They rebel wanting changes, and you only want to keep milk 
> it while you can - then you get rid of it, because you can't 
> milk what you have.

Your logic is extremely confused.  Let me spell it out for you: 
the Mac is all but dead, particularly when compared to the mobile 
computing tidal wave, since they sell 10 iPhones + iPads for 
every Mac, according to the sales link I gave you before.  They 
have cut investment in that legacy Mac product, but they would 
like to keep selling a lower-quality product at high prices to 
the few chumps that still maintain the old Mac aura in their 
heads.

So that is what they do, milk the suckers still paying high 
prices for a rarely refreshed product with a lot more bugs.  I 
don't know what's hard to understand about this for you.  When 
the Mac userbase rebels, they try to calm them down and say 
they're coming out with a new Mac Pro _next year_, five years 
since the last one!

Apple is a business.  As long as the Mac faithful are still 
willing to pay a lot of money for lower-quality products, they 
will gladly take their money, even though it's now just a 
sideline for their real business, the iPhone.  Of course, they'd 
rather just focus on the iPhone, but if they can take a lot of 
devs off macOS and still milk those suckers, why wouldn't they?

Apple is all about making money, which is why they're the largest 
company in the world, with some forecasting that they will soon 
be the first company to have a market cap of... one trillion 
dollars!!! insertDoctorEvilPinkie();

>>> The large Apple profit comes from offering quality products 
>>> and then pricing them at the highest gross profit margin in 
>>> the industry. In order to get people to pay a premium for 
>>> their products it helps to have a mystique or following, and 
>>> the macOS line helps to maintain their mystique and it is 
>>> small potatoes next to their phone business.
>>
>> I've already said repeatedly that they're not going to drop 
>> the Mac line anytime soon, so I don't know why you want to 
>> write a paragraph justifying keeping it.
>
> My post was in response to this statement of yours "Simple, 
> they see the writing on the wall, ie much smaller sales than 
> mobile, SO THEY WANT THE LEGACY PRODUCT TO GO AWAY, which means 
> they can focus on the much bigger mobile market." That seems to 
> be a contradiction to "they're not going to drop the Mac line 
> anytime soon".

No contradiction: they want the Mac to go away, but are happy to 
keep supplementing their bottom line while pulling engineers off 
of it, just like the iPod Touch.

You seem to be confused by the fact that a business sometimes has 
contradictory goals- should we focus exclusively on the iPhone 
and make more money there or keep the Mac limping along too?- and 
tries to balance the two as long as it makes sense.

>> As for mystique, it is laughable that you think this outdated 
>> Mac line that practically nobody buys compared to the iPhone 
>> provides any. :) More likely, they will keep milking the 
>> Mac-buying chumps till they stop, or when they can just tell 
>> them to buy an iPhone with a multi-window option instead.
>
> "Nobody buys" Rolls Royces, but they have a lot of mystique. 
> Mystique isn't measured by sales volume.

On the contrary, Apple people have long talked about a halo 
effect from the iPod and iPhone, where their new, exciting, and 
much more popular mobile products have helped raise sales for 
their old and flagging Mac line:

https://www.cultofmac.com/22331/apples-iphone-halo-effect-boosts-mac-sales-16-4-percent/

> If people ever get so cost-conscious that they decide to buy a 
> $150 companion for their phone, instead of a $400 laptop, it's 
> unlikely they will be using iPhones. You can get a nice Android 
> phone with plenty of RAM/ROM for half the price of an  iPhone.

Sure, the hypothetical iPhone with multiwindow/dock and the iPad 
Pro replace the expensive Macbook or Surface Pro, while the 
Android phone you already have along with something like 
Dex/Sentio replaces cheaper Windows PCs.  I already made this 
point earlier.

On Friday, 10 November 2017 at 10:50:52 UTC, rikki cattermole 
wrote:
> On 10/11/2017 10:42 AM, Tony wrote:
>> If people ever get so cost-conscious that they decide to buy a 
>> $150 companion for their phone, instead of a $400 laptop, it's 
>> unlikely they will be using iPhones. You can get a nice 
>> Android phone with plenty of RAM/ROM for half the price of an  
>> iPhone.
>
> You can do pretty decently for $60-80usd if you know where to 
> look with Android. But the reality is for developers, desktops 
> are going no where. If anything, we'll see more server 
> workstations becoming standard for developers. I know, I have 
> one. Well worth it if you do anything decent.

And yet I'd guess that the majority of developers already do most 
of their work on laptops, which are in turn being eclipsed by 
mobile chips, as I'm able to get by just fine writing and 
building C++/D code on an Android/ARM tablet.  So while you and a 
few others may need a core i7, 32 GB RAM desktop, most devs 
already don't use those.

I'm sure there are a few people out there still buying Sun, 
HP-UX, or UNIX workstations, the guy running a honking core i7 
desktop PC is going to become like them: an antique.