I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one? …The 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 phones. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, November 10, 2015
“It’s a new fiscal year, and Apple’s latest financial results, announced Tuesday, suggest that the story of Apple in 2017 will be different [than 2016],” Jason Snell writes for Macworld. “The company took a page out of its 2015 playbook, setting an all-time record for revenue, and provided guidance that it will likely show year-over-year revenue growth again next quarter. The company broke a bunch of other records, too–for Apple Watch, Services, and the Mac.”
“Another quarter, another disappointing result for the iPad, which was down a bunch year-over-year, with average selling price taking a big hit. Nope, the iPad still hasn’t hit rock bottom,” Snell writes. “Given that only one new iPad model shipped all of last year–the 9.7-inch iPad Pro–maybe it’s not too surprising that it wasn’t a hot holiday item.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Why Apple couldn’t have new iPads ready for Christmas is as perplexing as why they couldn’t have enough (or any) Apple Watches at launch (or for Christmas, either), or the iMacs for Christmas a few years ago, or enough Apple Pencils at launch, or any AirPods, or… You get the idea.
Perhaps Apple’s resident “Operations Genius” should give a little tutoring to Apple’s current COO Jeff Williams? Is this really the best Apple can do? Why can’t a company with a $260 billion mountain of cash make enough product, or any product, to meet launch and holiday demand? What’s the problem and why the hell hasn’t it been fixed by now?
Who gets fired when your company routinely fails to have enough or any product to sell at launches and during holiday shopping seasons? It seems like a basic tenet of business: Have product to sell on the shelves. Who’s responsible? Anybody? What, besides a bunch of multimillionaires missing out on a bit of a bonus that they’ll never even notice, are the ramifications for failing to properly do their job(s)?
That said, wonderful quarter, Apple! But, the fact remains: You eked out a record in spite of yourselves. For about 95% of it, you can thank the momentum and products created by Steve Jobs, not to mention the extra week in the quarter.
Here’s to significantly better execution in 2017!
MDN stop it, you sound like a Dead President.
Actually, MDN sounds more like a Dead Apple CEO.
I long for a bit of Steve Jobs’ brand of kick-ass. Apple needs it badly.
Seriously! It’s getting REALLY old. First have a top-notch site and app before you start armchair quarterbacking as though you know better, MDN!
Yes, well, the iPad is great for a few things but awful for many more. Until it becomes a Mac it will never replace a Mac for most people who use a Mac for real work.
I use all the features of Mac mail including smart mailboxes, archives and rules. Mail on the iPad is pathetic. And I type a lot – my finger is a poor pointer for editing text.
Even Safari is lousy on the ipad. I guess it doesn’t have enough memory to maintain multiple tabs simultaneously.
I think the iPad is brilliant for made-to-measure apps in retail, health, factories and so forth. But it just doesn’t hack it for general purpose computing.
Am I correct that on iOS, there’s no Junk mail rules? I know I get all the junk in my Inbox which creeps up to 300 unread messages sometimes because I just don’t feel like going through them. Then I can fire up on the Mac and it seems like the Junk isn’t there.
If I wanted the iPad to be more like a Mac I’d buy a Mac Book (but I already have a Mac Book Pro). I like the form precisely like it is (for browsing, reading and entertainment). Surface Book crapola exists only because Microsoft is limited in it’s vision to only seeing full-on Windows on everything. The differentiation between iPad’s and portable Macs is exactly perfect to me. It’s possible Apple may make an iPad hybrid that sports two operating systems based on a current need but wouldn’t have to do that on my account.
You are too kind to the iPad. IOS truly sucks for just about anything but consumption. If you create and share data across platforms, you absolutely need a Mac. Shame that Pipeline Timmy doesn’t get it.
Just bought a new iPad air over the weekend for my daughter to take notes for classes beside her MacBook Air, iPhone. She is so happy, she thanks me for million times.
Cook is delusional if he really thinks that iPads are the replacement. If that is really so, why are they still selling desktops and laptops?
It’s the software. Where are Final Cut, Logic Pro and Xcode for iPad?
And how exactly are you connecting your media to the iPad? It might be software for some but not Final Cut users.
The problem is the iPad HAS replaced my Mac for most, but crucially not all my computing tasks. I use it at home for most of my leisure computing, and it replaces my work PC for most of my work.
But for the five to ten percent of my work that requires more than an iPad I’m in a quandary. At work I switch to my Windows laptop. But at home my Mac mini is feeling its age, and I can’t replace it entirely with an iPad. But neither can I really justify buying a new Mac for that little bit of stuff I need Mac OS power for. I even find myself wondering if a cheap Windows PC would be a better choice.
Agreed, the iPad has taken up the “casual” workload stuff. Its also been a nice way to check through email during TV commercials … and if there’s anything that requires more than a terse Yes/No, one can then walk over to the Mac desktop (waste way too much time searching for the email, because Apple MAIL is still profoundly inferior to MS-Outlook) to answer it.
However, I do believe that a lot of the reason why the iPad has been struggling is because its now 7 years old and effectively a matured product that’s no longer worth the price that it was when it was totally groundbreaking.
One of our household’s iPads is a relatively ancient iPad 3 (first retina; pre-lightning cable) and we’ve been thinking about replacing it “Just Because” its getting old.
But at a minimum price of $400 (32GB iPad Air2, wifi only), the interest in replacing the hardware simply isn’t compelling enough — we’ll just keep on using it until it dies instead.
> But at home my Mac mini is feeling its age, and I can’t replace it entirely with an iPad.
Our home node is a 2012 Mac Pro, with over 10 TB of storage, plus another ~40TB in remote/offline backups. Apple’s apparent business model plan of “Pay Us to Rent Cloud Space Forever” simply doesn’t scale well, even if we had an ISP whose fees weren’t outrageous.
Look, I love my iPad Air 1, but it’s no (traditional) computer replacement. I still prefer a real keyboard (not the half-assed ones that get attached to iPads) and the power of the i7, despite the i7 not getting more impressive after 3 years.
Since the iPad has proven to be mostly a content-consuming device (read: watch stuff, read stuff, and play stuff), I don’t need to replace it nearly as often as any other computer. In fact, despite the niceness of the latest iPad Pro (screen and 4 speakers), there’s nothing about iOS on the iPad that has made me NEED to have it. So, in that regard iOS is boring. I don’t want the limitations of a phone OS on a tablet as my MAIN system.
I’m a fan of the idea of the “screen of a MacBook” being an iPad when disconnected, and a full-fledged MacBook (Pro) when connected.
The iPad is struggling because Apple hasn’t yet made it a serious contender for a technical workstation replacement, which is how many on this forum use their Macs. iPad has penetrated about as far as it can for the casual Mac/PC user. Apple will need to push the iPad and iOS much further if they are to have any hope of moving us away from the classic Mac/PC. I am unsure if Apple’s leadership understands this yet.
Eh I need a truck and the iPad is no truck.
The iPad is great for a lot of things and for some people it probably works as their primary computer.
I don’t see the iPad filling all the gaps or meeting a full blown PC/Mac and I don’t see a problem with that. It dosent need to be everything to be a success.
My iPad mini just hangs around the house. That’s all it’s really good for. I some times take it with me on trips, but between my iPhone and two computers (iMac and MacBook), the iPad wanders. For example, when I get home from work, I throw the iPhone on the charger. I always keep the ringer on vibrate, when I hear a new email or text come in, I grab the iPad to read and respond. I have only a few apps on the thing and don’t like that I can’t open more than about one app and one tab on Safari or it will force reload. Other than that, that’s about all it’s good for. A bigger screen with some tech I need, but mostly a lot of tech I don’t need at other times during my routine. Bottom line, it’s a viewer not a production device of any kind.