“I can see why there won’t be anymore AirPorts. Apple probably isn’t selling enough units to make a difference, and the market they pioneered is no longer viable for so many players,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “So what is Apple going to ax next?”
“Certainly speculation is rife with possibilities. What about the Mac Pro?” Steinberg writes. “Despite its low sales — and I’m assuming they are low for obvious reasons — there is a loyal market for the Mac Pro. It’s just a matter of what Apple needs to do to continue to serve that market, whether it involves a new design, or keeping the present one with newer parts.”
“In an email to a reader, I predicted there would be another Mac refresh in the spring of 2017, after more versions of Intel’s Kaby Lake processors are available. Certainly the iMac will get some love, but it’s less certain about the Mac mini and the Mac Pro,” Steinberg writes. “It would just take a couple of sentences from Tim Cook to address Mac user contains, and such a statement is long overdue.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple under Tim Cook may not be confused, but they sure as hell look like they are.
We have one question that keeps popping up:
Why can’t a company with 120,000 employees — the world’s most valuable company, in fact — manage to make not only a wholly new iPhone annually (other, far lesser companies manage to do it), but also keep their Mac lineup fresh, have a new 4K Apple TV for Christmas 2016, design an Apple TV remote that looks and feels like a human being tested it for five minutes before it went into production, have new iPads ready for the holiday shopping season, etcetera?
SEE ALSO:
Pundits suspect Apple’s Jony Ive no longer involved in iPhone, Mac product design – November 22, 2016
Apple’s marginalization of the Mac – November 22, 2016
‘The Grand Tour’ smashes Amazon streaming record – November 22, 2016
The pro mac model and the Mac Mini.
There will only be iMacs.
Cook reminds me of the Democrat party that didn’t listen to the working people that built the United States…Cook isn’t listening to the artists, writers, film editors, musicians, journalists, architects, all loyal customers that built Apple.
simpleton partisan remark, nevertheless cook does not seem to have nor commuicate a long term plan, apple seems to have devolved into an iphone only company.
there’s not going to be a long term to plan for the way Pipeline Timmy is going.
Give me a break. Apple is doing just fine. Look at the financials. Any other company would love to have their profits and financial picture.
Apple is innovating on many fronts; you just won’t see it because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Under Jobs, how many years did Apple milk the iPod lineup, offering only incremental innovation? That was when the iPod was their bread and butter. I remember when one year the big deal was that the iPod added the ability to play video! Ooh…aah…that was really a big leap.
Also, products hit a design maturity. A car is going to be the same basic design no matter what, even if internal technologies change. A laptop is going to be the same basic design. A smartphone is going to be the same basic design of a flat touchscreen of a certain basic range of sizes.
Apple is more the victim of unrealistic expectations among some, where every year they are supposed to move heaven and earth and come up with some earth shattering product. That’s not reality; it wasn’t under Steve, it won’t be under Cook or anyone else.
yeah, right…there’s great new products in the pipeline.
I like the products that Apple already has…my iPhone 7 Plus is great, the iPad Pro is wonderful with the Apple pencil…great for drawing and graphic arts…the new MBP seems really nice with the touch bar, very fast and responsive.
And it will only get better over time…
fine, you buy it.
I have and will continue to buy their products…I’m quite happy doing so.
Judging from Apple financials I am not alone.
fine, knock yourself out.
Eugene, we know that you put some paltry sum of money into AAPL and want your money to triple is a month but the stock market is not controlled by Cook or Apple. There is a feeling that has been washing over the market that Apple cannot keep at the top of its game forever (even though it does) and that this quarter (has been called for the last 20 quarters) is the one where Apple will suddenly BlackBerry.
Get out of the market if you think you can buy money. Work for a living.
I also hope MDN rids itself of dickblood72.
Now watch peterblood use his rating hack to suddenly give me 50 negative votes and himself 100 positive. We can all see what you’re doing… you pathetic POS!
Yeah, yeah, yeah and the Earth is flat.
I fear this may be the case, but I certainly hope not. IF we can’t have what we really want (mini, mid, server, Pro), then I’d like to see them merge the Pro and mini. Give it a larger form factor than the mini and allow it to be priced/spec’d from entry level to server/pro. One box to rule them all.
kind of fits the Apple narrative today..
worth the watch.. aprox 2 mins. and imo super funny 🙂
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rQjN_bZEKNQ
Tim Cook, hopefully.
Most of the employees are on sabbatical dealing with emotional trauma over the election and planning their next LGBTQXN protest.
They can axe the CEO.
Next to ax? Personal privacy.
Apple is starting to look like just another money-grubbing corporation. How many corporations in the UK will stop their government from implementing the new security measures? Not one, and that includes Apple.
Tim Cook will make a secret deal to give the NSA a back door, and Apple will sell it as some kind of advanced security feature.
Just another reason not to put your secrets into anybody’s “cloud.”
This is one of the few things that keep me in the Apple ecosystem. I still like Apple because of the ecosystem, it is no longer the hardware. And my belief that Apple will better protect me in their ecosystem than Google will in their ecosystem keeps me loyal to Apple.
But if Apple looses me with privacy, well, crap, everything is falling to pieces. Why is Apple making such weird decisions lately?
“Why is Apple making such weird decisions lately?”
that’s the $64,000 dollar question…WHY?
I can only presume Cook has been a sleeper all these years, nothing much else makes much sense
I am flummoxed…every CEO makes mistakes, but this is beginning to look like an intentional gutting.
Yes…Cook is really gutting the company…they keep making record profits…adding to their cash reserves…still the most valuable company on the planet…
I am sure most companies wish they had a CEO that gutted the company like Cook has to Apple.
son, you’re just not paying attention…the problem is a girl was sent to do a man’s job and now the fruitlessness of that decision is just now manifesting itself, as you’ll see in the next quarterly report and the next and the next.
in fact. I’ll make a prediction: assuming that Cook is still CEO, by New Year’s Day of 2018, Apple will drop out of the the top five most valuable companies.
I’ll make another prediction, that huge concrete and glass doughnut in SF will be a veritable millstone around the neck of Apple. It will haunt them for decades to come.
“whats apple going to ax next”?
Even More customers.
This. And most likely the Minis.
Funny how MDN take has come around since this article and being lambasted by the commenters. To MDN’s credit, at least they are not tone deaf, like Apple.
From that article…
“Apple in 2009 had about 34,000 employees, and spent 1.33B on R&D, about 1/4 IBM’s budget. It updated: iPods, iPhone, laptops, iMacs, Mac minis, Airports, Mac Pros, iLife, iWork, iOS, macOS, and introduced the iPad (a few months into 2010), etc.; and it updated it all annually.
Apple today has about 4X the employees. Apple spent $10B on god knows what (about 2x IBM’s budget (pdf)). And what do we get for it?”
https://www.macobserver.com/columns-opinions/devils-advocate/apple-has-missed-the-plot/
Everything other than iphone, ipad and the new MBPs. Lean and mean (and abandoned in droves) Apple.
Hopefully Eddy Cue!
The product line is becoming commoditized as computers become sealed, unable to be upgraded by the user. The ‘Pro’ being in Pro models are the Corporate professional, and the prosumer. The motivation for commoditizing seems to be profit margins; the accountants are in charge. The ecosystem is evolving, the macOS line is dying, iOS will replace it. Hope I am wrong. I’d like to se the macOS line continue with real Pro models that are user upgradable. Are you listening !?
Apple can kiss my Royal Canadian Ass!
Once the new Kaby Lake processors are out, I’m going to build a PC that can run Windows 10 Pro, and I’m going to “Hackintosh” it to run macOS 10.12 Sierra. You no longer need hacked drivers if you are buying a motherboard from Gigabyte, ASUS, ASRock or MSI. Runs right out the box!
https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/november/2016
Bravo MDN! You hit the nail on the head with respect to customers. 120K employees and apathy in Cupertino with respect to timely and engaging product releases. Next, let’s address stockholders.
Apple tying so much of the senior executives compensation to stock *is* a significant part of the problem.
Once upon a time stock value actually reflected company value (think between mid 1930s and mid 1980s). Since the mid 1990s at the latest stock value has not had any direct correlation to the overall, real value of the company. Look at book value (in short, the value of the company if you sold all its bits and pieces on the open (non stock) market and ended up with a pile of cash, i.e., How much do I get for that used desk?). None of the current stock valuations of the major information industry (everything from Alphabet to Xylinx) are tied to the actual financial value of the company. It’s all fluff and posturing.
So what do executives do when they have 100s of millions or billions of dollars tied up in stock in their company? They do everything possible to make Wall Street love that stock no matter the condition of that company or their customers. Stock price becomes *everything*. Absolutely *nothing* else matters.
They chase flashy stuff that dazzles the eyes of large fund managers. They borrow money because Wall Street firms get a cut of that transaction and then proclaim to other Wall Street entities how smart it is to be doing that. The old boring stuff that no Wall Street analyst would every use (or understand) die on the vine.
Basically, the Apple rots from the inside out while the executives keep polishing it for Wall Street.
What is Apple going to ax next?
Anything other than
iPhone
Apple Watch
iPad (maybe)
Ecosystem be damned.
Mac mini is very likely the first one. They could have refreshed it at the same time they refreshed the MacBook Pros. They could even have done a very quiet, non announcement update, which Apple sometimes does. Hell, they could have even used the newest Kaby Lake processors in it as the highest end ones of those currently shipping can work well in the Mac mini.
Time will tell on the rest.
I must admit I’m a bit worried that the next refresh on the iMac will include Skylake processors even though by March 2017 at the latest Intel will be shipping Kaby Lake processors that will fit well with that platform.
Apple *could* come out with a new Mac Pro in late spring of 2017 as the Skylake E variants should be available by then. The question is, “Will Apple even bother?”
“design an Apple TV remote that looks and feels like a human being tested it for five minutes before it went into production,”
This is one of the best lines from MDN I’ve heard in a long time. I laughed out loud!
It’s good to hear you guys offering criticism here and there. I’ve said it before, but it DOES raise your credibility rating. Glad to know you can still be SuperFans AND objective all at the same time. 🙂
Keep it up!
With any luck, Apple will axe half of its BOD, Cook, Ive, Ahrendts, Cue, Maestri, Riccio, Schiller, Srouji, Williams, Dye, Myhren, and Smith.
These people have all forgotten what personal computing is, and what Apple used to stand for. It is time to cut the bloated self serving ivory tower dwellers and hire people who live in the real world. A few dozen user studies would show them how bad iOS is and how far behind every other product is.
Especially the Macs.
an “inconvenient truth.” well said.
Make no mistake – Apple will axe any product that doesn’t lead directly to growth in cloud services.
With respect to the Mac, I think they’ll continue to keep integrating MacOS with services, and focus the line on things their mobile platforms can’t (currently) do. Think iMacs, Laptops. Say goodbye to under-powered Mac Mini’s, and hello to similarly-priced iPad Pro’s.
Also, I think Apple is slowing development on Macs until they can put their own CPU in – probably in their next generation (A12?). I think we’ll be frustrated with incremental updates (or no updates) to Macs until then.
You unfortunately speak the truth. For many years Microsoft forced every project to be linked to Windows. The dream was for all gadgets to use windows under the bonnet. The result is that windows is now so complicated with so many layers of legacy code that it will never be efficient. But thanks to powerful cpus, most people don’t know or care. And windows still has the defacto monopoly on most businesses’ computers. There are just so many programs that are windows only.
Now along comes Cook and he has decided to follow Google, Amazon, and Microsoft at cloud computing. But Apple is going to do it on the cheap, by renting servers from its rivals and overcharging its own customers for the privilege of a kludged mess of cloud services that are not reliable. And like MS forced everyone to Windows, Apple is trying to force everyone to iCloud. You pay a premium price for your Apple hardware and the first thing it does is attempt to move all your digital files to its server. Accessing them again is a slow hit and miss proposition, it’s useless for multi-program or multi-platform users, and it requires an always on internet which mobile users actually don’t always have. So Apple is beating a dead horse that will never win the race. The iCloud is Cook’s one and only answer to everything. Soon he will see that it really isn’t the way to win customers. Giving users choice is what wins customers. That is why Microsoft and its windows, bad as it is, earns more money and wins more new customers than just about anything apple makes. The one exception is the iPhone walled garden, which was jobs’ parting gift and the source of revenue that has detached current Apple leaders from reality.
If Apple was truly still an innovative company, it would have one of the top few products in every category it currently operates. Instead Apple has stopped updating over half of its products, its Macs are overpriced embarrassments, and the only accessories Apple makes money on are fuc&ing dongles. Airports and time capsules are 3 years obsolete. Apple TV4 was obsolete the day it was released. The watch , MacBooks, all half baked. Fashion, not engineering, is what goes to market and the result has been a 5 year snooze fest of underperforming crap that doesn’t do anything without phoning home to Apple constantly.
It isn’t anyone else’s fault that Apple now finds itself as the iPhone maker Nothing else it makes is current or user friendly–unless you love iCloud glitches and emoji.
Re: the MDN Take: Why can’t a company with 120,000 employees — the world’s most valuable company, in fact — manage to make not only a wholly new iPhone annually (other, far lesser companies manage to do it)…
You mean a far lesser companies like… Samsung?
The company that gives consumers exploding phones and washing machines.
Puhleeeeze, MDN.
The hubris to think you have a clue as to how best to run Apple is cute. You got all that business acumen from where again? Oh, running a blog, bloated with irrelevant ads, that has a terrible app. Oh yeah.