what has happened to apples computer plan?

[satchmo]

Too much blame for no new Macs, have been placed on the availability of Intel chips.
It's not just about power and speed (which more of, is always welcomed), but rather innovative design.

I spent some time today with a Surface Studio. And while the OS and software was rather unrefined, I applaud the concept and new form factor. Apple once had that bold and fearless nature (think G4 iMac and Cube).
Instead of being proactive, they've resigned to safe updates based on Intel's schedule.

 

[deconstruct60]

Hm? In 2013 Intel had a very firm Tick Tock roadmap. They even still conveniently keep it on their own site.

Tick Tock has next to nothing to do with the TDP changes at Gen 4 ( Haswell) and later transitions.
The hiccuped 14nm and the slightly delayed 10nm transitions are not a viable excuse to the wide breadth of comatose updates across the Mac product line up. Only the MBP got a major bump in 2016, but there was nothing impeding the MBA from getting one. Or the Mini. The component parts base of those are as equally tied to what the MBP 2016 used.

And they are adding another Tock to their model for optimization. For those that don't know Tick (Process die shrink), Tock (Architecture improvement), so you see 2 years of the same die size.

There is the same CPU package socket inside the Tick-Tock cycle ; not die size. That is so grossly, fundamentally wrong I'm not sure where to start with that. The dies go inside the package ( perhaps with other chips . e.g, the eRAM of some latest generations of mainstream line up. ). The package pin outs ( socket ) stays the same as the dies may shift.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-core-i74770k-i54560k-tested/5


Additionally the "tock" ( microarchitecture) change has really only being applied regularly to the x86 core subsystem of the 'CPU' die. Intel has been doing updates to the iGPU each cycle regardless of 'tick' 'tock' or additional 'tick'. The bulk of the Mac line up is solely iGPU based. Apple skipping those are skipping upgrades. There isn't really some grand strategically insightful excuse for that other than non application of resources (perhaps on something with a bigger return on investment).

By the way I was completely wrong earlier because I didn't realize how far off the mark Intel actually was. Intels next release Coffee Lake is another optimization Tock using their 14nm process.

Coffee Lake is only being applied to the larger dies in the product line up. Again what is missing here is that the Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake are not on the same 14nm process as Broadwell. Coffee lake is on a 14nm++ process with a different set of FinFet "Fin" heights. The "nm" metric is starting to go out the window because the different fab vendors are not measuring the same thing. The FinFet process is taking the transistor count more 3 dimensional where 'nm' is largely being used as a two dimensional metric. Effectively, there is some "die shrinkage" by going 3D.

https://arstechnica.com/information...ive-by-making-bigger-improvements-less-often/

There is a small amount of market hype with Intel wanting to switch to a newly named metric. But it isn't like the other fab vendors marketers are tap-dancing around "nm" at this point also too.


There is some slowing to the major leaps but there is also also slowing at the rate at which customers buy new stuff also. People buying at slower rates is part of this slow down process too.

Apple being blind sided is an under statement. Intel themselves didn't account for the problems they'd run into which is why they are repeatedly contradicting themselves.

This is ton of hooey. Intel fabs didn't suddenly misfire on fabricating 14nm to their surprise. Intel changed dates on delivery months in advance; which Apple would have explicitly briefed on in an NDA session. Yes Apple's 2-5 year roadmap would have been thrown off a bit but that was aways the case. Folks telling you they can extremely accurately proscribe high tech deliveries 2-5 years out are lying. There is always something that causes things to shift a quarter or two that pop up. Part of being professionally prepared in that business is being able to adapt to changes in schedule. Chunks of the Mac product line up are comatose by years; not quarters. That is plainly Apple's fault.

At the moment, a process optimization bump to AMD Polaris is likely a short term iMac hiccup (suppose to uncork by May - early June). Besides that there is very little in terms of what Intel or GPU vendors or any other major subcomponent of the iMac has that would stop an upgrade. If Apple doesn't deliver anything on iMac by mid-June it is absolutely clearly an Apple owned screw up as to why that didn't Apple. Finger pointing at suppliers is just arm-flapping excuses.

 

[Mac32]

I see some good points here, but overall these excuses for Tim Cook and Apple are misplaced. All Apple had to do was to slightly increase the depth of the iMac casing, put in a slightly more powerful fan+heatsink, and offer up the latest Nvidia mobile GPUs - but, oh no. Apple chooses instead to restrain themselves to much inferior AMD GPUs, and refuses to include the latest Intel CPUs - even though they offer only a moderate upgrade, why not still use them?

And I haven't even mentioned the huge price increases here in Scandinavia, which are bigger than those seen on products from other companies. At this rate the sales from both MBPs and iMacs are going to drop sharply, because fewer and fewer people will be able to afford these products.

 

[Count Blah]

Apple is a function matrix organized company. Just because there are more folks working there doesn't necessarily mean all of the function units got bigger. (for example, could add more function units .... e.g., car electronics , different cameras without necessarily making the OS kernel team any bigger).

One of Apple's dual edge swords has been the relatively fixed sized they have kept the industrial design team ( Ive and his merry band of elves). It gets them design language consistency across the whole product line. However, it is also a choke point. When they sent Ive off doing custom furniture/knobs/doo-dads for the new spaceship even more so.

I'm familiar with matrixed organizations. When you start getting too big for your britches, you damn well better retain a core group for each major business area, and THEN your float around the rest to the areas with the most need. Otherwie you end up with screwed up business areas/products with lots of angry and/or leaving customers. Gee, sound familiar? Apple has basically abandoned the Mac area, other than borrowing a couple folks from the vaunted "industrial design team" to shave a couple millimeters off a 2012 MBP, remove ports, and slap in a rectangle to replace the function keys. WOW!!!!

You don't need a total industrial redesign to upgrade CPU, GPU, ports, etc... You just need to be concerned with keeping your customers happy, until your new redesign fits into your schedule. But obviously, Apple isn't concerned with keeping the Mac customers happy.

 

[deconstruct60]

[QUOTE="Count Blah, post: 24455527, member: 26671" ... Apple has basically abandoned the Mac area, other than borrowing a couple folks from the vaunted "industrial design team" to shave a couple millimeters off a 2012 MBP, remove ports, and slap in a rectangle to replace the function keys. WOW!!!! [/quote]

You are poo-pooing the 'Wow' here .... but results of Q1 a couple months ago where..... [emphasis added to highlight]

" ... set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch, ....
while Mac sales rose slightly to 5.4 million units from 5.3 million units in the year-ago quarter. .... ”
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/

if there is some vast multitude of very unhappy Mac customers, they sure are spending alot of money. "Happy" customers doesn't necessarily mean the exact same set of customers as had 3-10 years ago. So far, Apple is on pace to sell more Macs this year than last year. ( if that continues in Q2 that outcome for year is pretty solid if can deliver anything else new in Q3-Q4..)

Yes Apple is irritating some of their historical customers, but they are also getting new ones. As long as the latter substantively outnumbers the former it is not the crisis you are making it out to be in the short term.

There is a two way issue here. Customers are buying at slower paces. Most customer workloads are not outpacing the systems. So there is a industry wide lengthening of the system usage cycle. That is part of the Mac resource "deallocation" to the point can't deal with usual schedule hiccups and/or personnel changes. But yeah there is a bit of unnecessary neglect going on also. 3-4 year update cycles on a few Mac products... the customers aren't going quite that slower and causes a communication problem ( will get to that below.)

You don't need a total industrial redesign to upgrade CPU, GPU, ports, etc... You just need to be concerned with keeping your customers happy, until your new redesign fits into your schedule. But obviously, Apple isn't concerned with keeping the Mac customers happy.

Yeah but small speed bump upgrades are also going to get wailed on also. There is the cult that will proclaim that Jobs delivered revolution on a regular basis and that Apple is now doomed. Apple holds updates until have major upgrade bump ... again wails of doom from another camp. Apple's customer base is large enough that there always some sub wailing about something at this point.

The balance between the two extremes is way off. Apple's policy about not talking to broader audiences about future products implicitly requires that they do something on a regular basis. Skipping talking about promises they may not be able to keep is doable, but have to 'walk the walk, if not talking the talk. " It really not so much about "happy customers " as Apple failing to communicate with customers through action.

Folks should stop expecting yearly updates on Mac products, but at the same time that doesn't give Apple to disappear down the rabbit hole for 3-4 years at a time either. About 1.25-1.75 cycle would be better match to pace of whether the underlying tech and user update cycles are going. (users buying every 4-6 years but don't want to try to push everyone into that iteration at once. collect up a bit more than year worth of folks coming off their previous iteration onto something new. )

 

[maflynn]

Folks should stop expecting yearly updates on Mac products,

The problem there is, Apple's competition is coming out annually with updates. Apple is still a tiny fish in the PC pond and if they don't continue to innovate, they'll be losing marketshare. Just look at what happened to their laptops, several quarters showed significant declines and while the latest quarter started turning things around. I'm not sure that made up for the lost ground from prior periods.

When a company promotes its products as a premium product, and is priced accordingly, people don't want to pay for an old design or older parts that no one else is using.

Just my $.02 but I agree with others that Macs do not seem to be Apple's focus, and how they've been treating the Mac and OS X shows that imo

 

[Lesser Evets]

Just my $.02 but I agree with others that Macs do not seem to be Apple's focus, and how they've been treating the Mac and OS X shows that imo

And the problem is that there is NO reason why Macs shouldn't have their own dedicated focus at Apple.

It's not like they don't have the money, or sales, to support a steady steam of updates (however insignificant they might be).

 

[maflynn]

And the problem is that there is NO reason why Macs shouldn't have their own dedicated focus at Apple.

Agreed, but I do wonder about Apple's commitment with the Mac under Cook's leadership.

 

[JMacHack]

Agreed, but I do wonder about Apple's commitment with the Mac under Cook's leadership.

Probably not as strong as it was under Jobs, but I doubt the "sky is falling" posters have any merit.
There's a lot of outside circumstances that contribute to the delay in updates to the Mac line, and there's a lot of internal things going on that make the delays even worse. Apple could probably overcome most of these by throwing their money around, but I dunno what's going on internally.

The point is that I don't think Apple would just quietly abandon the Mac line, and I'm certain that there's some internal BS going on that's causing the delays we're seeing. It's in Apple's nature to stay mum about such things, so it comes off as aloofness.

 

[CWallace]

I spent some time today with a Surface Studio. And while the OS and software was rather unrefined, I applaud the concept and new form factor. Apple once had that bold and fearless nature (think G4 iMac and Cube). Instead of being proactive, they've resigned to safe updates based on Intel's schedule.

That "bold and fearless" nature that gave us the failure of the G4 Cube is the one that has given us the failure of the current Mac Pro - a form factor that appears to be incapable of handling the CPUs and GPus inside it. Result - no upgrades for three years because anything newer and faster (and therefore hotter) would increase the (rumored) high failure rate even more so.

If we get a new Mac Pro (and I believe we will), it's going to be a new form factor and that is probably why it's taking so long (lack of available design resources for it).

As for the Surface Studio, it's great if you illustrate for a living. I don't, so it's terrible for me.

I see some good points here, but overall these excuses for Tim Cook and Apple are misplaced. All Apple had to do was to slightly increase the depth of the iMac casing, put in a slightly more powerful fan+heatsink, and offer up the latest Nvidia mobile GPUs - but, oh no. Apple chooses instead to restrain themselves to much inferior AMD GPUs, and refuses to include the latest Intel CPUs - even though they offer only a moderate upgrade, why not still use them?

The 27" iMac has been on the latest Intel CPU since October 2015 and while they could have upgraded the 21.5" to Skylake-R in October 2016, all the 27" would have seen was a move to USB-C and TB3 as there were no CPU and (AMD) GPU upgrades. I'm guessing Apple didn't want to only update one member of the family (and if the 4K model is not the most popular model, that's even less reason to update it because it would have had a price increase to cover the more expensive CPU and the likely would have depressed sales even more). So by waiting until October 2017, they can update both models with better CPUs and GPUs.

nVidia GPUs are nice if you play games, but gaming is not the Mac's forte. Even companies like Blizzard who invest in Mac are slowing down that - Overwatch didn't come to the Mac even though it plays fine on my 5K in Boot Camp and Diablo 3 was updated to a 64-bit Windows client while still on the 32-bit client on Mac (and the latest patch on Mac is having issues).

AMD, on the other hand, has better optimization for the apps Mac use, though Apple's (effective) abandonment of Open CL hurts that (things would be better if Apple used the latest version of Open CL or even better had moved to Vulkan support). But Apple seems committed to forcing everyone to Metal and AMD does Metal better than nVidia right now.

The problem there is, Apple's competition is coming out annually with updates. Apple is still a tiny fish in the PC pond and if they don't continue to innovate, they'll be losing marketshare.

Apple will always be a tiny fish in the PC pond no matter what. Their price points will insure that. It's also why they make more money with Mac then any PC vendor does - they don't churn through their stock every six months fire-sale discounting hundreds of thousands of units per year because they have something that is a few months newer and a few percentage points better that they are selling for the same price.

Agreed, but I do wonder about Apple's commitment with the Mac under Cook's leadership.

Probably not as strong as it was under Jobs, but I doubt the "sky is falling" posters have any merit.

Tim Cook believes in the iPad a fair bit better than Steve Jobs did, but he's still maintaining a clear functional definition between what an iPad can do and what a Mac can do. An iPad developer recently created an app that brought Finder-like windowing to iOS and Apple shot that down immediately and evidently raised a bit of a stink over the attempt to bridge iOS and macOS functionality. Apple also refuses to open up the file system to end-user viewing, much less manipulation, which is critical to make iOS work like macOS.

 

[Count Blah]

if there is some vast multitude of very unhappy Mac customers, they sure are spending alot of money.

Not from me, nor any friends/family who I have aided in switching to the Mac, over the years. Just imagine, it could have been even MORE $$$ on needed upgrades!!!!

Yes Apple is irritating some of their historical customers, but they are also getting new ones. As long as the latter substantively outnumbers the former it is not the crisis you are making it out to be in the short term.

So a steady stream of long time Mac users leaving is A-OK, as long as fly-by-night buyers replace them. AWESOME!!! So what happens when those fly-by-night customers fall in love with the next non-apple shiny object?

There is a two way issue here. Customers are buying at slower paces. Most customer workloads are not outpacing the systems.

What about simply system failure? If my Macs die, or my friends/family members die, they are certainly not getting replaced by 2-3 year old, full prices Macs.

Yeah but small speed bump upgrades are also going to get wailed on also.

I'm willing to try. I'm sure the gobs of Mac Pro users who have flown the coop would have stayed with incremental increases. Oh wait, maybe they wouldn't have, give the middle finger Apple gave them with the trash can design, versus what Pros really needed.

The balance between the two extremes is way off. Apple's policy about not talking to broader audiences about future products implicitly requires that they do something on a regular basis.

Agreed 100% Lets just end and agree upon this point.

 

[LorenK]

This may be a neither here nor there, but maybe there is no need to upgrade as frequently as we may want (though granted it does seem that Apple has been taking an exceedingly long time). I was looking at Wintel boxes because my mother's computer died and that's all she knows, and I was dumbfounded at the number of different configurations out there. Trying to wade through the pages of these on NewEgg was mind numbing.

It's easy to see why Apple wants to keep the variations at a minimum, to avoid customer confusion and make selling their boxes simpler. It still would be nice if they made an attempt to keep up within the last couple of generations of processors and look at their user bases and keep them in mind a bit more, so the processor/video card configurations keep up with the industry as a whole.

 

[purpletalon55]

The current 21.5 inch I Mac is perfectly powerful matter of fact the 5250u outperforms both skylake U and kabylake U series Cpus by a large margin both in single and multithreaded applications. So its not like were going to suddenly become obsolete because the only real change is a minor clock speed increase I plan to keep my iMac until software support is dead. Then get another I only paid like $750.

 

[CWallace]

Not from me, nor any friends/family who I have aided in switching to the Mac, over the years. Just imagine, it could have been even MORE $$$ on needed upgrades!!!!

Mac sales are higher now than they ever have been. Plus most folks on this forum want an open tower form factor so they only have to buy a Mac once a decade and can upgrade the guts with newer parts. So if anything, Mac sales would probably be less if they gave us exactly what we want.

What about simply system failure? If my Macs die, or my friends/family members die, they are certainly not getting replaced by 2-3 year old, full prices Macs.

If you had AppleCare, it wouldn't matter since Apple would be picking up the tab, not you.

 

[purpletalon55]

Mac sales are higher now than they ever have been. Plus most folks on this forum want an open tower form factor so they only have to buy a Mac once a decade and can upgrade the guts with newer parts. So if anything, Mac sales would probably be less if they gave us exactly what we want.




If you had AppleCare, it wouldn't matter since Apple would be picking up the tab, not you.

I have apple care because I'm smart, and want this pc to last till 2020 at the absolute least. Its my new daily driver since I have given up on gaming mostly, I wanted to have a Mac for a better general computing device and for the video editing software.

I am glad that I am a Mac owner. I walked into the Apple Store, told them heres what I'm going to pay and walked out with a iMac for a good deal less than full retail.

 

[EnderBeta]

I believe you mean downgraded 2014 Mac Mini.

Yes and no.

The 2014 was a step up from the base 2.5ghz i5 2012 model. But the high end trims where a big let down.

I wish they would update it so I could upgrade from my 2012 mid tier model but Apple couldn't be bothered.

The funny thing is I already have a IMac and Mac Book Pro and they fill different roles. Giving me a better Mac Mini wouldn't kill the need for a iMac without in effect making the company as much money as a iMac would bring in. Sometimes I just don't understand Apples logic.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Major releases are carefully planned.

Late 2013.

Late 2015.

Late 2017.

Simple logistics.

 

[redheeler]

Major releases are carefully planned.

Late 2013.

Late 2015.

Late 2017.

Simple logistics.

You forgot the Late 2014 between 2013 and 2015, and in fact if you look at the full iMac timeline, 2016 is literally the first missed year since the original iMac. Sure some of the updates were minor spec bumps, but those do count for something.

The Late 2015 is not a bad choice still, but the fact there wasn't so much as a quiet minor spec bump in 2016, to guarantee iMac buyers the latest GPUs and a couple USB-C ports for example, as well as SSDs standard across all models (at least you can hope / dream for this), does show a changing focus at Apple; waiting so long between releases was NOT their previous policy.

 

[CWallace]

The Late 2015 is not a bad choice still, but the fact there wasn't so much as a minor spec bump in 2016, to guarantee iMac buyers the latest GPUs and a couple USB-C ports for example, does show a changing focus at Apple; waiting so long between releases was NOT their previous policy.

I do not believe there were better GPUs available for the 5K, just as there were not better CPUs available. I do not believe AMD has released mobile versions of the RX470 and RX480 yet (they certainly were MIA when the Touch Bar MacBook Pro was launched - and the tbMBPs GPUs are worse than the GPUs in the current 5K).

 

[JohnnyGo]

Very interesting discussion here.

I guess most points are valid but one should be careful and look at Apple's perspective.

1) annual updates: lash back from current owners that Apple was making their HW obsolete

2) annual CPU updates: lash back from community that Apple was not innovating, only doing "spec bumps"

3) form factor changes: lash back from the other part of the community that wanted same design, only spec bumps !!!

Damn Apple. Damn it if they do, damn if they don't.

We should also take a step back from our "need" for updates given Intel marketing machine and new "names" for similar CPUs.

Case in point the Mac Mini 2014 "update". Was it a better CPU ? No. Another example is the Kaby Lake fiasco.

All those that said Intel thrown a monkey wrench at Apple's plan are right: more than the 10nm delay (which has been known for a while), Apple has been receiving and testing new CPUs and have been disappointed (to say the least) in their performance.

It is frustrating for me and for the Mac community that there are no updates to Mac Mini and Mac Pro, and the other members of the Mac lineup have extended lives. But if Apple only upgraded the GPU sub-system OR the storage sub-system OR only changed the ports, there would be a majority who would hold out waiting for v2... again, it's impossible for Apple to "win".

iPhone is selling like hotcakes. Competition in the smartphone space is incredible. Apple cannot afford not to innovate there. Case in point the iPhone 7 ("it's the same design sans audio jack).

Remember when everyone wanted Apple to release an iPad mini ? They did. It failed on the long run (see recent Fiksu data).

I like Apple when it's bold. Kudos for the Mac Pro and the touch bar. I believe Apple priced the Mac Pro to the wrong audience. The real PROs need more power and flexibility. But I still like the innovation behind it.

Complaints aside, collectively we should get used to the idea that iPhones (12 month), iPads (18-24 months) and Macs (24-36 months) are in different innovation cycles inside Apple.

 

[tyche]

Apple should spin off a new company called, I don't know, maybe Apple Computer Inc., that can focus on making computer hardware for home, office, and schools. Mobile and tablets seems to Apple's Inc. focus and I'm sure a separate business would be very happy with a $5 billion sales quarter and see it worth steady improvements.

 

[willmtaylor]

Well this entire conversation must be reframed with Apple's "pro" roundtable a few select journalists were invited to

 

[CWallace]

Apple should spin off a new company called, I don't know, maybe Apple Computer Inc., that can focus on making computer hardware for home, office, and schools.

That would be a bad idea. As a separate company it would have it's own Profit and Loss schema that would mean each model would have to justify it's own existence because it would not have the scores of billions of iOS revenue to draw from and cover it. So the Pro and Mini would be dead (instead Apple just confirmed both would continue and see updates) and most of the focus would be on the MacBook Air and MacBook ((as the most popular models in terms of sales). And the iMac and MacBook Pro would move to a 2-3 year upgrade cycle as standard rather than what is probably an anomaly this round.

 

[sfwalter]

Now that Apple has confirmed a new iMac is coming this year we need the rumor mill to start churning and get us some details.

 

[Icaras]

Now that Apple has confirmed a new iMac is coming this year we need the rumor mill to start churning and get us some details.

It's great news they came out with a public statement again. Can't wait to see what the pro oriented iMac will be like.