“When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he drastically simplified the product line-up,” Dennis Sellers writes for Apple World Today. “It’s time for the company to do the same again.”
“The Mac line-up will follow Jobs’ vision. There will be one desktop for professionals (the Mac Pro) and one for consumers (the iMac),” Sellers writes. “Under this scenario, the Mac mini will disappear. Of course, Apple could ditch the Mac Pro AND Mac mini (which I think will, unfortunately, happen) and offer an ‘iMac Pro’ (state-of-the-art specs and more expandability than current models) and an ‘iMac.'”
“The laptop line would ditch the MacBook Air and offer the ‘MacBook’ and ‘MacBook Pro,'” Sellers writes. “Of course, the desktop and laptops would be continue to be offered in different sizes.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Okay, who’s up for killing off the Mac mini? And, how about dumping the Trash Can into the trash can and replacing it with a user-configurable mini-tower for actual professional Mac users? As for the MacBook Air, it’s time – and we say that even though our favorite Mac ever was the 11-inch MacBook Air (before the current-gen MacBook appeared).
The Mac mini is good. I’ve been using one as my media server since 2009. The problem is that the base model is hobbled and the next decent unit is $200 more.
So instead of buying that, I am getting the new mbp and using my old rmbp as a replacement for the mini.
So Apple loses out on an additional $700 because the base model mini has limited utility.
Apple need to turn over the Mac to a company who is actually passionate about it. I don’t even understand why they created the trash can. They clearly aren’t interested and happily turning their long-time customers into Windows users.
The iMac has at least been updated with newer chips, but they are bored with that line, too.
I would prefer that Apple put the iMac into a category of it’s own and then have two Mac Desktops, the Mac mini and the Mac maxi.
The Mac mini would be much as it is now, while the Mac maxi would have power similar to the Mac pro, but would be in a modest sized casing with a certain amount of expandability in mind.
They need to remember the education market with laptops. The MacBook is not very handy for that with its port limitations and the MacBook Pro is too expensive for staff and students. The MacBook Air needs to live on for this market, plain and simple. No retina? No problem. But it needs certain features for imaging and for connectivity to a wide range of devices found in every school without costly dongles that individuals can afford but educational institutions will find very off-putting. Keep the Air alive for this market with one boost in specs a year about May and you’ll keep a lot of schools happy. And, in doing so, you’ll create a lot of Mac users. Other than that Macs are superior for education . . . it’s essentially the public subsidizing your users’ first Mac. Don’t f#@& that up, Apple.
I am stunned that Apple has left such an opening in the education market for Chromebooks to penetrate so deeply. Someone was asleep at the wheel. There’s just no good way to spin it.
I agree with you in this regard. Not only did Apple fall asleep, they crashed big time.
not only crashed but frozen, Apple is now primarily a consumer electronics company, cook et al have failed to realize that it’s not luxury but highly professional image and products which rescued Apple under Jobs.
Give Apple a break. They really had no choice if they wanted to keep their Premium image. The price for utility you get with a Chromebook is much closer to what schools require than any Apple or Windows laptop. Any keyboard on iPads would just have been a kludge in comparison and at multiples of the cost of the average Chromebook.
Chevy can somehow meet the market needs from budget junk to electric supermileage cars, sedans, trucks, and the world class sportscar, the Corvette.
So why is Apple only able to sell stylish convertibles at inflated prices?
Perhaps they can’t bring themselves to ‘let go’ features to meet the price and quality required to sell well to schools on a budget. Chevy may not be the best example since they don’t have Apple’s situation of the majority of their product line being in the ‘high’ price range relative to the competition.
I work in a school, and have a computer lab as part of a program that I manage. It deals with many curriculum areas.
I do my administrative work on my own Powerbook because I have been a Mac user since 1988, and it still is better, but the lab has HP desktops. They do have issues, mostly caused by Flash. And the problem they have remembering log-ins.
There is little to be gained in a school system by any expensive computer. The work that 95% of our 1600 students do is so basic that a cheap computer is just fine. Few do any projects that are so sophisticated that they need anything beyond the basics.
I know that is hard to believe, all of these myths about how computer savvy the young are. At home, many have very sophisticated high dollar systems that are used mostly for—-games. But the same ones have a difficult time remembering how to save a Word file, or that they have to. In theory they all produce a website as part of a computer class, but ask them 3 months later if they remember anything about it……”huh? what?”
Yes there are a few who are expert users, maybe 5%, just like the rest of the population.
Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but to say that, for the most part, they care only about phones and games, and are no more computer literate than the rest of the population.
Apple could so easily have owned education, but they spent so much time in self-worship, as they do now, and never actually worked the details.
I vote for a Mac Mini tower.
Here is the not too distant future Apple line up:
1. iphone
2. ipad
3. watch
4. MBP
and that’s all, folks…..
😩😩😩
pretty much. How much more simple can they get?
investors will revolt and heads will roll resulting in a much needed management overhaul.
Part of me is so upset with Apple that I would almost like to see the stock nosedive to send a wake up call to the leadership team. But then I’d be pissed off that Apple responded to a plunging stock price rather than ignoring it and focusing on designing compelling products.
I’m not trondude. I am trondud.
Dennis Sellers is talking nonsense. PERSONAL computers are not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Apple needs entry level, mainstream, and pro desktops. The problem Apple has is that every single one of its Macs are old and expensive compared to the competition.
Moreover, if Apple can’t be bothered to make a dedicated Apple Display that matches the iMac, then it might as well stop making all-in-one computers and just replace the iMac with a midrange tower. Then people won’t have to be constrained to Apple’s narrow choice of screen sizes.
You’re thinking as if Apple is a computer company though, right? Think Information Services and Information Appliances, for consumers, not IT or Professional Workstations. The consumer space is vast. The pro space, not so much.
TC says Apple is committed to the Mac. The question is in what way? The only way I can see Apple committed to the Mac is as a more powerful Appliance, for those who just cannot use an iPad. It will be there to keep “Power Users” in the ecosystem, but not to fill the needs the extremely needy Professionals.
I see where you’re going with that. Information Appliance I can agree with. Information Services however is an area Apple is seriously behind on. Most if not all of Apple’s Information Services are eclipsed by the competition and IMO only ‘alive’ because they are exclusive and built (forced as default) in Apple’s HW products. Security is a great platform, but at the expense of the level of convenience consumers are accustomed to, it may be a losing proposition in the future for Apple. I don’t think it’s impossible to find a balance, but that is where I believe Apple has to constantly keep on top of since it is the ‘chains/armor’ that they wrought for themselves.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
Microsoft took the huge boost from Windows 95 as a signal that all its efforts needed to support Windows. Every single product and service it offered for the next 15 years was forced to align with Windows even though most of the underlying technologies were purchased or copied from other companies.
Apple under Jobs made the user the center of the focus. the user chose the device that worked best for him, and all things supported the user. It didn’t matter if you chose to have MobileMe or not. It didn’t matter if you had a Nokia phone or not. Plug anything into a Mac and it just worked.
Apple under Cook thinks that the iCloud is the glue that holds everything together, as Ballmer believed about Windows. Absolutely every product Cook sells is not about the user, its about pushing the user to rent the cloud. Buy an iPhone, the first thing it does isn’t help you to learn to use it. The first thing it asks you to do is set up an iCloud account and give Cook your credit card. Buy a Mac, same thing. Buy a Watch, same thing. Buy an ATV, and nothing just works. you spend hours managing apps and accounts.
the iCloud has taken the Apple experience away from the user and that is why Apple is lost today.
The Mac owners out there like me who remember the old days are disgusted. We will keep using our Macs until they die, but if Apple can’t make the experience superior to what other companies offer and stop shoving iCloud and touch guestures down our throats, then we will replace our old Macs with products from a company that cares first about the user. Who knows what that is, maybe Linux. Maybe some young startup company that looks a lot like Apple did before it grew up into just another greedy corporation.
forget expensive, people will buy when it’s the best computer to help them in their professional and personal lives, that’s the mantra left behind by Cook and BOD
oops. images used to resize.
Every time I see an Article like this I crack up. Apple barely makes anything today. For a large company they have relatively few products and they can’t even manage to those few. Hell at this point just make an iPhone and be done with it. All of Apple’s profits rest on the iPhone anyway
I always wonder what everyone is doing in Cupertino? All those people! Can’t be that difficult to develop a new macMini.
The Apple user of the future is the FaceBook person, the Imgur person, Instagram, Twitter… all the social media. The Future Apple video editor is a guerrilla editor cranking out stuff for Youtube and the like. Writers, knowledge workers, execs, information creators, managers, and such… on the move.
Right tool for the job. MacBook iPad iPhone Cloud services (including non-Apple offerings).
Editing the latest version of Toy Story? Nah. Being on the bleeding edge with new stuff like Virtual Reality? Nah.
Owning the massive global consumer market? Yeah.
I had always been an IBM type, and suffered Microsoft as their heir apparent, so I didn’t have a dog in this fight. I picked up Apple later on and learnt them as they were adopted by businesses with whom I consulted, but I never had the luxury of pledging my troth to any computing platform, as if they were religions. I still don’t understand the vitriol, the angst, the urge to become a suicide bomber when it comes to computers. The violence has to be about more than just tools, and if you can enlighten me, I would be most grateful.
survival …passion and belief…. same things most all conflicts arise from in life,
That is the point and I agree Herself. In a computer for the work I do I want the tool to be the most functional tool above everything, even if the next Mac Pro becomes ugly as hell and also heavier than the trash can. So those arguing in favor of Apple on the Mac future don’t know what they are talking about.
Even if Apple goes the wrong with the workstation market they will have to come back again. Once the dust settles the need for a workstation will remain intact, even regarding low sales and profits. They are tools and they are the ones for the high demanding computational work done seated on a desk.
Also I would prefer Apple to start selling the Mac OS license apart again as I suspect Apple lost the purpose for it. They may be thinking the OS is free so the user can’t complain much about it.
With Tim Cook in charge Apple’s future prospects are not good.
If Apple simplifies it any more, they’ll be just another phone company.
Dennis Sellers writes for Apple World Today. “It’s time for the company to do the same again.”
NO it’s not. It’s time for Apple to GROW UP some more and figure out how to do 10 things at once, just like every other mature large business.
Apple is apparently having growing pains to the point of inducing atrophy into some of its very nicely selling products. That’s stupid (to quote myself).
What’s needed is improved management and some disciplining of the usual delusional people in marketing who don’t have enough perspective to see the potential future of Apple.
I am morally certain that many Apple personnel are watching and listening to sites like MDN. Yet I am uncertain that Apple brass are paying attention to anything other than their internal politics and their generous personal compensation—just as happens in any other corporate entity. It sickens me. I once believed, in my naïve youth, that they opposed the old regime. Perhaps they did, but as with Napoleon Bonaparte, once you become the regime, the rebellious freedom evaporates and there comes into being a new sawtooth edge that everyone seeks to avoid.
My intuition says that Apple is, at least in part, falling for the current ‘Spirit of the Age’, which is Corporatocracy with the customer treated as the conquered enemy combined with Short-Term Thinking; Long-Term Disaster, combined with the process of denial I’ll dub The Ass Hat Reflex. If you want to play with the #MyStupidGovernment and the Corp-u-tards that puppet them, you have to play their games their way. Thus we all ride The FAIL Boat.
But I may be wrong. It’s time for a coffee break.
my mac mini is my iTunes server, with Audirvana plus and Cambridge audio DAC it is doing very good. All music is lossless. It has a 7″ hdmi screen connected..
This is what I want and need.
Not across the board.. mainly laptops..at this time …imo
If anything else fill up all the holes in the line up.
Creat a clear “level” distinction in each catagory… minimum 2 , max 3 levels:
average person … looking for simple solutions.
the enthusiast /Pro/Power user
and
the inbetween
While Acknowledging that ths Pro/power user is the one that brings true credibilty to the platform…without which Apples premiums are just fashion… not legitimate investment.(very short sighted and disjointed ..imo )
Ignoring the Pro/Power user/ the enthusiast is the most stupid thing Apple is doing,
Every thing is not about direct profit Apple..
Its about the Big Picture… and you are betraying your biggest advocates….. and also the true Apple Spirit>>>>>>>>Coherent and Complete.! Clear and Simple !
Apple does not need fewer products; just fewer variations of each product. Keeping the year-old version at a cheaper price point only confuses the customer. Having high-end, limited edition versions goes against what the company values are. Having BOTH MacBook AND MacBook Air is silly, and a MacBook Pro should have expandable memory and disk. I’d even eliminate memory choices on iPad and iPhone: give the purchaser the max and if the price needs to be higher accordingly, so be it.
Quit selling products to customers that they question themselves whether they bought the “right” one. Only SELL the RIGHT one! THAT is what Apple USED to do; THAT is the concept Apple has lost. If Apple wants to remain at the top, THAT is what Apple need to rediscover and embrace.