Tech companies these days want to sell you the "ideal device", which to them is a small shiny bauble that you pay a monthly subscription to own. The device itself does nothing of interest, although it has many buttons in its UI that pay the tech company additional money, if you're feeling generous.
This is what happens when you try and sell the same products for several years straight apple. The macbook line is in need of a massive refresh, still no next gen thunderbolt display and again with the single port macbook. Add to that the massive nerf the mac mini got, and the obscene price of the mac pro leaves you with a lot of professionals desperately wanting to upgrade, but having no technological reason to do so. In fact in some cases the new macs are downgrades from last gen, but more efficient. I would have purchases the ipad pro if there had been no camera bump and it included the stylus. Not gonna pay 130 bucks for a bluetooth pen, on top of a severly overpriced tablet. Good news is folks this means price cuts are coming, just watch... in 6 months they'll be hungry to move inventory.
Yeah the last time someone offered the ideal device it was the first gen Core i7's with X25-M's that many people still haven't upgraded from. Boy did Intel learn their lesson with those, offering mediocre improvements since. It only took 6 generations to compel many people to consider upgrading, and the prosumer skylake platform still isn't mainstream outside of Xeon's.
They're waiting on Kaby Lake. I told myself I'd wait for Skylake back in 2012, when it was supposed to be a 2014 release. That didn't happen, and now the technology that Apple would want like Thunderbolt 3 isn't integrated on the chipset until Kaby Lake, which means no new Macs until later this year at the soonest.
It would be worse if CPU performance hasn't been at such a standstill over the last five years, but come on man...
Been sitting here with $2k for over a year now waiting on an updated macbook pro, the money is theirs whenever they get around to it. I do music production, couldn't give less of a shit about how thin or how many hardware ports they managed to remove from it. Put in a better processor, a bigger SSD, and take my money.
Pretty much could not agree more. I run a Mac Pro tower, not because I need that much power but because I refuse to buy a disposable device which costs more than $1,800. When they announced they'd made the iMac thinner and lighter a few years ago, I knew there was no chance I would ever get another user-upgradable Mac desktop. I will run this Mac Pro into the ground and then be forced to jump ship to Windows. All Apple needs to do is admit the 2013 Mac Pro cylinder was a mistake (like the old Power Mac Cube) and go back to a real power-user design and I'll happily stay.
I have to agree with most of what you say. I have a Mac Pro tower from 2006 - updated and updated to the gills with 8 cores, SSD, and a boatload of RAM. I'm keeping it running because
a) It benchmarks pretty close to a modern i5 b) I can't get 24GB of RAM and four drives into any modern Mac c) It would take a lot more work to string together 4 displays like I have currently d) There's still room to upgrade - my boot drive is SSD, I could move my files to an SSD if I really want; I can upgrade from a Radeon 5870 to an R9 if I really want; I can bump myself to 32GB of RAM. Can't do that on a modern machine.
21.5" iMacs are almost completely non-upgradeable, and the only things that can be upgraded on the 27" models is RAM and hard disk. I'm not about to drop $4k on a new Mac Pro that's not much better. MacBook Pros have caught up to my machine on processor performance, but I would only get to run two displays - three, if I want to go all Thunderbolt (I think).
Honestly, my likeliest upgrade is to go from a 2006 Mac Pro to a 2010 model at some point.
A current Mac Pro would blow yours out of the water in CPU and GPU performance. It literally scores twice as high in single and multi core performance. All while using about 1/3 the power.
You do lose some expandability for sure, as the new ones is not a tower with a bunch of bays. But in terms of performance, its not even a comparison.
A new Mac Pro would, yes, but how about a midrange iMac? Over the course of the past four years, I've spent less buying and upgrading this Mac Pro than I would have if I had bought a new iMac in 2012.
Also, in single core performance, Core 2 Duos can't hold a candle to newer architectures, but 8 cores at 3.0 GHz means my multicore score isn't so bad, which is fine by me as the only time it matters is when I'm doing batch processing in Aperture (very multi-core aware). In fact, according to Geekbench, an entry level 4-core nMP only scores about ~13-15000, which is more than the ~11k that my machine gets, but definitely not enough for me to consider spending $3-4k on one.
I just bought a 2012 15" MBPr since there is hardly (15%) difference in performance, battery life, and GPU with the 2015 model. $1.1k used with 256GB SSD, upgradable to 480GB for $200 I think.
I don't know if Windows has an equivalent app to 'Coconutbattery' which shows you how many cycles and how much total capacity a battery has in a macbook. When I help my friends purchase used MacBooks I make sure the seller posts a screen capture of the app to show the health of the battery. My 4 year old MBPr 15 has only lost about 30 min of it's 6-7 hour battery life and that's after hundreds of charging cycles.
I'm mostly looking forward to TB3 and seeing how it fares with external GPUs. Really want a decent gaming rig, but mostly need a good laptop for college, and the other options (e.g. XPS 13) seem to have at least one glaring flaw. I hope they keep at least a decent amount of ports, but for the most part I hope the rumors of being thinner won't affect its CPU significantly.
It seems like TB3 is what they're waiting for, and that doesn't come native on Intel CPUs and chipsets until Kaby Lake. I don't think we'll be seeing new MBPs until then, which means second half 2016. Shame but it better be worth the wait.
They are fretting because iPhones sales have never fallen like this before. Even bigger roars are coming from investors who hold Apple shares, since share prices is quite correlated with the Income of the company; if their profits really halve, imagine what would happen to the share price.
Who is "fretting" ? People are saying what most of us already knew. Apple has been milking it for years. The lack of compelling upgrades across all product lines is so evident now that even the "apple friendly press" is noticing. That is really all hat has changed in the past few years is that the press is noticing... and even Apple fans are complaining.
If you take the anomaly 2015 quarter out and replace it with their normal trajectory they are actually doing great. But that would be too logical for the market. Everyone knew there were just no way they were going to be able to leap over those record quarters. I am even surprise they were able to beat last quarter, even by 1%. This is like a baseball player hitting 4 homerun in a row and triple in their 5th at bat, but everyone is displease with that triple.
Yup... I was just saying people aren't "fretting" The market is however starting to notice that Apple is milking it. The first ever decline in sales for iPhone isnt going to hurt them financially (in any meaningful way)... But it is telling about how the market and tech press is reacting to their current products and lack of compelling upgrades on them. Even Walt "Apple is the end all be all of the tech industry" Mossberg is occasionally badmouthing Apple these days. Even Apple fans on tech sites like this are complaining.
Based on their current trajectory and what the next gen of products looks like, I would not. They will level off at best. I am not saying that the company is in financial trouble, but the stock isnt likely to rise any time soon.
agreed, buying apple stock at the moment at best will blue chip investment, but most likely lose and level off over the next 8 months. Time to sell and wait for the storm to blow over, or apple to start innovating again,
That's when the denial and spinning about how the product is bad and can never compare to whatever knockoff he's fellating this year.
Google "retrospooty", this guy has spent the last six or seven years talking about doom and gloom for the company. People posting opinions is normal, but the sheer volume this guy does points to a pretty sad existence.
I do remember him talking doom about the stock was when it was bottoming in 2012. He'll get it right someday, stopped clock and everything.
only if you believe that they will have another iphone-like success with something else.
How do you know if the apple car will just be a non-unique product like the watch, in direct competition with Tesla (which has the same brand strength), or if it will have something as revolutionary as good multitouch touchscreen was on phones.
It means no growth which means the stock price will not go up. The lower it gets, the more shares apple will buy back. they are gonna keep throwing that money away to make their stock look like a good performer, when instead, they need to start hoarding their cash. Without a breakthrough new catagory product, it will continue to decline.
Apple employee's over 100,000 people, plus the just spent billions on a new office. apple are pretty arrogant in that they sell bonds like they are risk free, to avoid paying taxes on money they'd like to use overseas, but can't without paying 30% tax on it.
"Revenue for the Mac was $5.1 billion, which is down 12% compared to last year, meaning that Apple is also selling lower cost Macs than a year ago"
Revenue is "only" down by 9% compared to last year ($5.1 versus $5.6 billion), so combined with a 12% drop in unit sales, Apple has actually increased their ASP, not lowered it.
Exactly. Which is why sales dropped they tried to overcharge for extremely minor upgrades, and even downgrades in some cases. They are running the same motherboard/cpu/chipset in the Macbook air, Mac Mini, and iMac... like really do you think people aren't going to notice its the same device in a different package? This is outright hubris and greed trying to exploit their existing customers...people aren't stupid they know apple stuff is expensive to begin with, but when they look at their 4 year old laptop, and it looks the same as the latest model, and offers no significant impact on their day to day usage.... i believe the phrase is "maybe next year" .
Same motherboard/chipset in all of their mainstream consumer machines. Honestly, this is usually fine - it means you have one set of target thermals to engineer for, or set of chips to write for, and economies of scale in purchasing. It should make things cheaper for them and more bug-free for us. It's the same reason Toyota and Nissan each have one V6 for their entire (non-truck)lineup. The problem only shows up when this one platform becomes stale - Intel hasn't really been quick about releasing new chips/chipsets, so everyone downstream ends up suffering as well.
"Four year old laptop, looks the same as the latest model" (Paraphrasing). Yep, here's where Apple's gotten really, really lazy. Apple used to update their chassis every few years to keep it fresh. The 15" model was redesigned in: - 2001 Titanium (from 14") - 2003 Aluminum - 2008 Unibody (with a sealed-battery refresh in 2010) - 2012 Retina
It's been four years, Apple. If you can't make the internals better, at least make the externals different - slimmer bezels maybe? or easier internal access? how about more space between USB ports so you can actually use a flash drive and a mouse at the same time?
The Air has looked the same since 2010, the 13" Pro is a zombie machine from 2008 when it was introduced as the aluminum MacBook. Three to five years is the typical upgrade cycle, and people like seeing something that's at least different when they go back to the store. Seeing a 2016 MacBook that looks exactly like your 2012 MacBook, which looks exactly like your 2008 MacBook, isn't going to get anybody excited.
There is an important point here I think most of you are missing. That point is that smart phones are now where desktop PC's reached a few years ago i .e. they are "good enough" for most people. there is only so far you can go with constantly adding new features. Users eventually reach the point where the phone (like the PC) does everything they want it to do so unless something changes in their world where they suddenly want it to do something else, they don't need a new one. Faster processors, etc? Once again, once its fast enough to satisfy the need this is no longer a reason to buy a new one.
Of course there will always be some who insist on having the latest and greatest, but as with all technology products, once they are fully mature, the incentive to go spend a bunch of money on a new one every year or two goes away. So this is no surprise at all, or at least shouldn't have been. Technology publications just tend to have no sense of history or they would have seen this comming, as many of us did.
in PC gaming the software and hardware push each other indefinitely (better graphics and higher monitor resolution -> better GPU/CPU -> even more demanding graphics) and so the upgrades keep coming quickly.
This appears to not be happening in the smartphone sectors, but they can still race to increase the display resolution and camera quality. I guess battery life is where technology is hitting a wall. It doens't get better as fast and so phones have to stay the same.
I'm not an Apple expert. Certainly not an expert in Investment Relations. Apple is on a downward spiral because the man's ideas have all been used. I'm referring to Steve Jobs. I'm not an Apple fan but, the man was a genius. When he took the stage and introduced new tech. Everyone sat up in the tech industry,looked and copied. He saw things in a way not many people could. He had a knack for creating something in a simple,classy and quality way. I'm not really the type to stick to one brand. If it's a well made product I'll buy it. I like Android. I like iOS. I like Windows. Some things just work better on certain platforms. I do miss the innovation of Steve Jobs though. He pushed the smartphone market to where it is now. It's been kinda stagnant w/o him. I remember when the IPhone 4 launched and how much further along it seemed than any other phone! The best thing Apple could come up w/o him is 3D Touch. A huge Pro version of the IPad. An iMac w/ a 5k screen. Hold on still thinking.....Oh hold on the Apple Watch? The iPhone 6 is really the only radical new design they've had since his exit. They tried with the 5c...fail...They tried with the iPhone SE...fail??? This industry needs another Steve Jobs and so do I!!!
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osxandwindows - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
I don't care about the iPhone, I want new macs.stephenbrooks - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Tech companies these days want to sell you the "ideal device", which to them is a small shiny bauble that you pay a monthly subscription to own. The device itself does nothing of interest, although it has many buttons in its UI that pay the tech company additional money, if you're feeling generous.dsumanik - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
This is what happens when you try and sell the same products for several years straight apple. The macbook line is in need of a massive refresh, still no next gen thunderbolt display and again with the single port macbook. Add to that the massive nerf the mac mini got, and the obscene price of the mac pro leaves you with a lot of professionals desperately wanting to upgrade, but having no technological reason to do so. In fact in some cases the new macs are downgrades from last gen, but more efficient. I would have purchases the ipad pro if there had been no camera bump and it included the stylus. Not gonna pay 130 bucks for a bluetooth pen, on top of a severly overpriced tablet. Good news is folks this means price cuts are coming, just watch... in 6 months they'll be hungry to move inventory.Samus - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Yeah the last time someone offered the ideal device it was the first gen Core i7's with X25-M's that many people still haven't upgraded from. Boy did Intel learn their lesson with those, offering mediocre improvements since. It only took 6 generations to compel many people to consider upgrading, and the prosumer skylake platform still isn't mainstream outside of Xeon's.Flunk - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Apple doesn't seem to care about Macs anymore.KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, May 1, 2016 - link
They're waiting on Kaby Lake. I told myself I'd wait for Skylake back in 2012, when it was supposed to be a 2014 release. That didn't happen, and now the technology that Apple would want like Thunderbolt 3 isn't integrated on the chipset until Kaby Lake, which means no new Macs until later this year at the soonest.It would be worse if CPU performance hasn't been at such a standstill over the last five years, but come on man...
auralcircuitry - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Been sitting here with $2k for over a year now waiting on an updated macbook pro, the money is theirs whenever they get around to it. I do music production, couldn't give less of a shit about how thin or how many hardware ports they managed to remove from it. Put in a better processor, a bigger SSD, and take my money.FreihEitner - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
Pretty much could not agree more. I run a Mac Pro tower, not because I need that much power but because I refuse to buy a disposable device which costs more than $1,800. When they announced they'd made the iMac thinner and lighter a few years ago, I knew there was no chance I would ever get another user-upgradable Mac desktop. I will run this Mac Pro into the ground and then be forced to jump ship to Windows. All Apple needs to do is admit the 2013 Mac Pro cylinder was a mistake (like the old Power Mac Cube) and go back to a real power-user design and I'll happily stay.aliasfox - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
I have to agree with most of what you say. I have a Mac Pro tower from 2006 - updated and updated to the gills with 8 cores, SSD, and a boatload of RAM. I'm keeping it running becausea) It benchmarks pretty close to a modern i5
b) I can't get 24GB of RAM and four drives into any modern Mac
c) It would take a lot more work to string together 4 displays like I have currently
d) There's still room to upgrade - my boot drive is SSD, I could move my files to an SSD if I really want; I can upgrade from a Radeon 5870 to an R9 if I really want; I can bump myself to 32GB of RAM. Can't do that on a modern machine.
21.5" iMacs are almost completely non-upgradeable, and the only things that can be upgraded on the 27" models is RAM and hard disk. I'm not about to drop $4k on a new Mac Pro that's not much better. MacBook Pros have caught up to my machine on processor performance, but I would only get to run two displays - three, if I want to go all Thunderbolt (I think).
Honestly, my likeliest upgrade is to go from a 2006 Mac Pro to a 2010 model at some point.
Stuka87 - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
A current Mac Pro would blow yours out of the water in CPU and GPU performance. It literally scores twice as high in single and multi core performance. All while using about 1/3 the power.You do lose some expandability for sure, as the new ones is not a tower with a bunch of bays. But in terms of performance, its not even a comparison.
aliasfox - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
A new Mac Pro would, yes, but how about a midrange iMac? Over the course of the past four years, I've spent less buying and upgrading this Mac Pro than I would have if I had bought a new iMac in 2012.Also, in single core performance, Core 2 Duos can't hold a candle to newer architectures, but 8 cores at 3.0 GHz means my multicore score isn't so bad, which is fine by me as the only time it matters is when I'm doing batch processing in Aperture (very multi-core aware). In fact, according to Geekbench, an entry level 4-core nMP only scores about ~13-15000, which is more than the ~11k that my machine gets, but definitely not enough for me to consider spending $3-4k on one.
michael2k - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
I just bought a 2012 15" MBPr since there is hardly (15%) difference in performance, battery life, and GPU with the 2015 model. $1.1k used with 256GB SSD, upgradable to 480GB for $200 I think.fanofanand - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Just so I understand correctly, you paid $1100 for a 4 year old used laptop????Murloc - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
yeah that's just nuts, also the battery life is a crapshoot when you buy something that old.Pneumothorax - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
I don't know if Windows has an equivalent app to 'Coconutbattery' which shows you how many cycles and how much total capacity a battery has in a macbook. When I help my friends purchase used MacBooks I make sure the seller posts a screen capture of the app to show the health of the battery. My 4 year old MBPr 15 has only lost about 30 min of it's 6-7 hour battery life and that's after hundreds of charging cycles.kefkiroth - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
I'm mostly looking forward to TB3 and seeing how it fares with external GPUs. Really want a decent gaming rig, but mostly need a good laptop for college, and the other options (e.g. XPS 13) seem to have at least one glaring flaw. I hope they keep at least a decent amount of ports, but for the most part I hope the rumors of being thinner won't affect its CPU significantly.KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, May 1, 2016 - link
It seems like TB3 is what they're waiting for, and that doesn't come native on Intel CPUs and chipsets until Kaby Lake. I don't think we'll be seeing new MBPs until then, which means second half 2016. Shame but it better be worth the wait.lilmoe - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
lol even if there sales and profits were halved, they're still making a killing. why's everyone fretting over this all over the web?lilmoe - Tuesday, April 26, 2016 - link
their******deepblue08 - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
They are fretting because iPhones sales have never fallen like this before. Even bigger roars are coming from investors who hold Apple shares, since share prices is quite correlated with the Income of the company; if their profits really halve, imagine what would happen to the share price.boozed - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
I think the iPhone 6 exposed a huge latent demand that is now satisfied and we've returned to the mean.lilmoe - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
the signs were in the charts pretty early on, as far as shares are concerned.Kvaern2 - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Nothing new. They always fret when Apple release earnings and it doen't seem to make much difference what the actual figures are.retrospooty - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Who is "fretting" ? People are saying what most of us already knew. Apple has been milking it for years. The lack of compelling upgrades across all product lines is so evident now that even the "apple friendly press" is noticing. That is really all hat has changed in the past few years is that the press is noticing... and even Apple fans are complaining.toukale - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Here is what Apple did in the year over year the past few years in billions.2012 - $39.2
2013 - $43.6
2014 - $45.6
2015 - $58.0 (47.8)
2016 - $50.1
If you take the anomaly 2015 quarter out and replace it with their normal trajectory they are actually doing great. But that would be too logical for the market. Everyone knew there were just no way they were going to be able to leap over those record quarters. I am even surprise they were able to beat last quarter, even by 1%. This is like a baseball player hitting 4 homerun in a row and triple in their 5th at bat, but everyone is displease with that triple.
retrospooty - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Yup... I was just saying people aren't "fretting" The market is however starting to notice that Apple is milking it. The first ever decline in sales for iPhone isnt going to hurt them financially (in any meaningful way)... But it is telling about how the market and tech press is reacting to their current products and lack of compelling upgrades on them. Even Walt "Apple is the end all be all of the tech industry" Mossberg is occasionally badmouthing Apple these days. Even Apple fans on tech sites like this are complaining.dagnamit - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
In other words, buy Apple stock immediately.retrospooty - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Based on their current trajectory and what the next gen of products looks like, I would not. They will level off at best. I am not saying that the company is in financial trouble, but the stock isnt likely to rise any time soon.dsumanik - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
agreed, buying apple stock at the moment at best will blue chip investment, but most likely lose and level off over the next 8 months. Time to sell and wait for the storm to blow over, or apple to start innovating again,Murloc - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
the problem is being able to tell that they're about to come out with the next big thing before the rumors start.KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, May 1, 2016 - link
That's when the denial and spinning about how the product is bad and can never compare to whatever knockoff he's fellating this year.Google "retrospooty", this guy has spent the last six or seven years talking about doom and gloom for the company. People posting opinions is normal, but the sheer volume this guy does points to a pretty sad existence.
I do remember him talking doom about the stock was when it was bottoming in 2012. He'll get it right someday, stopped clock and everything.
Murloc - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
only if you believe that they will have another iphone-like success with something else.How do you know if the apple car will just be a non-unique product like the watch, in direct competition with Tesla (which has the same brand strength), or if it will have something as revolutionary as good multitouch touchscreen was on phones.
jasonelmore - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
It means no growth which means the stock price will not go up. The lower it gets, the more shares apple will buy back. they are gonna keep throwing that money away to make their stock look like a good performer, when instead, they need to start hoarding their cash. Without a breakthrough new catagory product, it will continue to decline.Apple employee's over 100,000 people, plus the just spent billions on a new office. apple are pretty arrogant in that they sell bonds like they are risk free, to avoid paying taxes on money they'd like to use overseas, but can't without paying 30% tax on it.
antihelten - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
"Revenue for the Mac was $5.1 billion, which is down 12% compared to last year, meaning that Apple is also selling lower cost Macs than a year ago"Revenue is "only" down by 9% compared to last year ($5.1 versus $5.6 billion), so combined with a 12% drop in unit sales, Apple has actually increased their ASP, not lowered it.
dsumanik - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Exactly. Which is why sales dropped they tried to overcharge for extremely minor upgrades, and even downgrades in some cases. They are running the same motherboard/cpu/chipset in the Macbook air, Mac Mini, and iMac... like really do you think people aren't going to notice its the same device in a different package? This is outright hubris and greed trying to exploit their existing customers...people aren't stupid they know apple stuff is expensive to begin with, but when they look at their 4 year old laptop, and it looks the same as the latest model, and offers no significant impact on their day to day usage.... i believe the phrase is "maybe next year" .aliasfox - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
You bring up a couple of good points.Same motherboard/chipset in all of their mainstream consumer machines. Honestly, this is usually fine - it means you have one set of target thermals to engineer for, or set of chips to write for, and economies of scale in purchasing. It should make things cheaper for them and more bug-free for us. It's the same reason Toyota and Nissan each have one V6 for their entire (non-truck)lineup. The problem only shows up when this one platform becomes stale - Intel hasn't really been quick about releasing new chips/chipsets, so everyone downstream ends up suffering as well.
"Four year old laptop, looks the same as the latest model" (Paraphrasing). Yep, here's where Apple's gotten really, really lazy. Apple used to update their chassis every few years to keep it fresh. The 15" model was redesigned in:
- 2001 Titanium (from 14")
- 2003 Aluminum
- 2008 Unibody (with a sealed-battery refresh in 2010)
- 2012 Retina
It's been four years, Apple. If you can't make the internals better, at least make the externals different - slimmer bezels maybe? or easier internal access? how about more space between USB ports so you can actually use a flash drive and a mouse at the same time?
The Air has looked the same since 2010, the 13" Pro is a zombie machine from 2008 when it was introduced as the aluminum MacBook. Three to five years is the typical upgrade cycle, and people like seeing something that's at least different when they go back to the store. Seeing a 2016 MacBook that looks exactly like your 2012 MacBook, which looks exactly like your 2008 MacBook, isn't going to get anybody excited.
Brett Howse - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Sorry I fixed up the text - had too many numbers in my head when I wrote that I guess.Ratman6161 - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
There is an important point here I think most of you are missing. That point is that smart phones are now where desktop PC's reached a few years ago i .e. they are "good enough" for most people. there is only so far you can go with constantly adding new features. Users eventually reach the point where the phone (like the PC) does everything they want it to do so unless something changes in their world where they suddenly want it to do something else, they don't need a new one. Faster processors, etc? Once again, once its fast enough to satisfy the need this is no longer a reason to buy a new one.Of course there will always be some who insist on having the latest and greatest, but as with all technology products, once they are fully mature, the incentive to go spend a bunch of money on a new one every year or two goes away. So this is no surprise at all, or at least shouldn't have been. Technology publications just tend to have no sense of history or they would have seen this comming, as many of us did.
Murloc - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
in PC gaming the software and hardware push each other indefinitely (better graphics and higher monitor resolution -> better GPU/CPU -> even more demanding graphics) and so the upgrades keep coming quickly.This appears to not be happening in the smartphone sectors, but they can still race to increase the display resolution and camera quality.
I guess battery life is where technology is hitting a wall. It doens't get better as fast and so phones have to stay the same.
ElecDroid - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
I'm not an Apple expert. Certainly not an expert in Investment Relations. Apple is on a downward spiral because the man's ideas have all been used. I'm referring to Steve Jobs. I'm not an Apple fan but, the man was a genius. When he took the stage and introduced new tech. Everyone sat up in the tech industry,looked and copied. He saw things in a way not many people could. He had a knack for creating something in a simple,classy and quality way. I'm not really the type to stick to one brand. If it's a well made product I'll buy it. I like Android. I like iOS. I like Windows. Some things just work better on certain platforms. I do miss the innovation of Steve Jobs though. He pushed the smartphone market to where it is now. It's been kinda stagnant w/o him. I remember when the IPhone 4 launched and how much further along it seemed than any other phone! The best thing Apple could come up w/o him is 3D Touch. A huge Pro version of the IPad. An iMac w/ a 5k screen. Hold on still thinking.....Oh hold on the Apple Watch? The iPhone 6 is really the only radical new design they've had since his exit. They tried with the 5c...fail...They tried with the iPhone SE...fail??? This industry needs another Steve Jobs and so do I!!!Meteor2 - Monday, May 2, 2016 - link
So true!