Yesterday, with the new MacBook Pro, Apple “refined a critical product line in a portion of its business that Apple likely understands is in a permanent decline,” Mark Rogowsky writes for Forbes. “Total PCs sold peaked at 365 million in 2011, falling to 288 million in 2015. There is no turnaround in sight, with 2016 expected to finish the year down another 5% or more.”
“It’s against that backdrop that Apple rolled out the biggest upgrades to the 4-year-old MacBook Pro. Apple, more than many, understands that computing has shifted away from traditional computers to smartphones and tablets,” Rogowsky writes. “Yet it remains loyal to the Mac, which is now approaching its 33 birthday, as do many of its oldest customers. For those reasons, it will continue to update the Mac but is unlikely to ever emphasize it again.”
“Consider what CEO Tim Cook said a year ago, soon after the launch of the iPad Pro: ‘I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one? [T]he iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phone,'” Rogowsky writes. “Cook is betting that Apple can keep satisfying the generation that grew up on PCs with incremental change to the Macintosh while he keeps Apple pointed at younger generations, for whom PCs are less and less important.”
“The company decided several years ago that touchscreen PCs offer a lousy user experience: Whether on a laptop or desktop, the screen is too far away to be easily pressed most of the time,” Rogowsky writes. “Notably, the iPad Pro keyboard solves that [issue] …by being shallower than a laptop, it brings the screen closer to the user, making touching it dramatically easier.”
“Apple already makes about half the PC industry’s profits selling <10% of the world’s 'computers,'" Rogowsky writes. "With the new Macbook Pros it will likely see growth in that segment in 2017 even while the segment itself continues to slowly disappear."
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iOS and iPad are not there yet for power users, but, with every iteration, they get closer, converting great swaths of traditional “personal computer” users into multi-touch users. To see an iPad being used in the hands of kids who’ve only used Multi-Touch computers is to see the future.
Jobs sent not his iPad into the world to condemn the computer; but that the computer through iPad might be saved. — MacDailyNews, February 8, 2010
Ask yourself, “What does the vast majority use a computer for?” Web browsing, email, some word processing, and games. That’s about it. Really. Of course, iPad does all of that and much, much more. — MacDailyNews, June 22, 2012
Welcome to the new world of personal computing for the masses. Given what the average users do, Apple’s iPad is what “personal computing” for the average user should’ve always been, had the technology existed back when Steve Jobs first delivered personal computing to the masses. – MacDailyNews, November 11, 2015
Yes, for anyone who feels that they are forcing themselves to use an iPad where they’d prefer to use their Mac, the iPad is not there, yet. For many, iPad is there already. As iOS and iOS apps continue to evolve and the hardware gets ever more powerful and sophisticated, most of us will get there eventually. — MacDailyNews, November 19, 2015
Traditional PCs (think Windows and even Macs) always were massive, massive overkill for most people. Way, way more complexity, power, and configurability than the vast majority required. The general public needed computing appliances, so that’s what Steve Jobs and his vast legion of patent- and trade dress-infringing imitators gave them. — MacDailyNews, April 12, 2016
