Well, maybe it would have been interesting to see Apple continue on such a trajectory... I think the whole company/ history would likely be very different now.
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When do you think the decline of Apple started?
- Thread starter retta283
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Potentially not even around anymore, and perhaps barely even remembered.
Indeed, considering it was focusing on creative professionals that pulled them back from the brink... Possibly they'd (or just the brand) even have been bought by the likes of HP or Dell to become their gaming arm...
The company was almost going out of business anyway and it stopped when the new iMacs came on the market.
As some know, I am fairly critical of Apple but... their decline was long ago and once the "i" line of pods and phones took hold, they continually grew and grew. However, I will be absolutely clear I don't like some decisions they have made and find their "computer" division lacking. There are some smart contenders now in the computer venue but certainly the prices can make one scratch their head to this day. Plenty of PCs with similar or better specs exist at a lower cost. I guess I was right all along where the typical* consumer is concerned -
Windows holds the hardware hostage
while
Apple hardware holds the OS hostage
Windows holds the hardware hostage
while
Apple hardware holds the OS hostage
They stopped being a computer company when they changed their name under Jobs I recall.
Not really a decline but a change in direction that doesn't seem to suit what you want, so they are 'lacking'.
I am not sure you understand Apple as a brand and their direction, but specs are not the priority. Seems to be working for them.
Apple long ago hit a really bad time and there was talk of them being closed to going out of business. Some may recall Gates putting money into Apple around that time. I understand direction etc., I said simply it was not to my liking which makes it neither wrong or right but simply another business path. As for computers, that division is hot cold hot cold rather than we can be better than the last round. Look at the Mac Pro to Mac "mini" Pro (trash can) which really had no true benefit. Look at the Mac Mini that went from its happy fan base to a lot of people questioning why Apple would want to castrate the line (until this last round which was a large jump though crappy video). Well...again, their success didn't remain with computers but they could have done better and captured more computer market if they desired.
I'm just a casual user who likes my phone to look and feel expensive but should be simple to operate.
I go for the new shiny and I'm not really interested in what's under the hood - I expect it to last for as long as I want to carry on using it. Saying that, I'm terrible for buying phones. I had the 7 for a year, the X for 10 months along with an 8 I barely used. Now I've got the Max along with the XR upon which I'm typing this. I don't need 2 iphones, but I've always wanted a white phone, so bought the XR.
All a bit OT but I believe Apple is just suffering a blip. If their phones didn't last so long We'd all be moaning.
I go for the new shiny and I'm not really interested in what's under the hood - I expect it to last for as long as I want to carry on using it. Saying that, I'm terrible for buying phones. I had the 7 for a year, the X for 10 months along with an 8 I barely used. Now I've got the Max along with the XR upon which I'm typing this. I don't need 2 iphones, but I've always wanted a white phone, so bought the XR.
All a bit OT but I believe Apple is just suffering a blip. If their phones didn't last so long We'd all be moaning.
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Apple is like all other American corporations. The ego maniacs (super smart people) have taken over and they won't stop until the victim is on it's death bed. Once the bloodletting is over they'll parachute out and hide all their money in the Cayman Islands where the "leeches of society" won't be able to touch it.
You mean instead of using it to repair roads/bridges, free healthcare and fixing environmental damage?
All this talk about a "decline" is silly. I understand people who think Apple isn't doing what they want product wise might get emotional satisfaction in a decline but it's not going to happen. My favorite is people who say this is caused by something Apple did ten years ago. Look at financial charts and this argument is hilariously wrong. Apple has grown dramatically and this "decline" as people are calling it is a bump in that growth. Maybe Apple makes those iPhones that a few people hate or they didn’t make the latest MacBook with the features a few people wanted but Apple is making decisions based on the market not what a few people want.
Threads like this will exist as long as Apple exists.
Whining about a perceived "decline" of Apple probably started around 1984 with the Macintosh.
You're probably right! I guess MacObserver tracks its "official" Apple Death Knell count as up to 71 now, but starting only in 1995. Obviously that establishment has its own set of criteria for what counts as another tap on that mythical bell though... and individual posts in social media clearly don't count.
I remember being mocked by a few friends at work for having shelled out a used car's worth of dough for a 512k Mac in 1985... and shortly before that we had all kinda wondered where Apple thought they were gonna go with that ten thousand dollar crash-prone precursor, the Lisa.
But just a few years later we were dragging our Macs into work to show the boss how we had come up with working prototypes overnight for our in-house clients, using Hypercard and some XCMDs to access networked data. The clients then went all in agitating for the company to underwrite Macs instead of PCs for a lot of applications at that point, not least because it empowered them and us in the IT group to meet their data collection and reporting requirements so much faster. Eventually the IT tech support chimed in saying the maintenance and OS patching issues were fewer on the Mac side. We left the PCs in charge of stuffy ol' essentials like general ledger and payroll, but at that point otherwise, our local death knell counter was sounding for PC desktops...
Like any other company Apple has left some experiments in the dust but not without stashing away the value of having explored this or that road from drawing board to prototype to feasibility and so to market. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The trick is knowing when to build out a product line versus trying another road to giving consumers the next thing they hadn't realized would come in handy -- whether hardware, software or services.
I'll credit Apple with having provided substantial and fairly long term support for its existing product lines while trying to move forward at the same time. Lately though I do wonder about quality and possibly some design decisions on newer hardware.
The keyboard issue on the MBPs seems both overblown and undermanaged to me. Time will tell and I suppose it's an acknowledgment by Apple that it will take time to sort it out since they put up the extended repair program.
Some other issues seem more "let the consumer decide" -- like the right size for a smartphone, and there it would seem that keeping choice in the lineup is the way to go. Apple does seem aware that there's at least an ongoing niche market for the SE-sized phones, so I wouldn't be surprised to see that turn up the post-X iPhone offerings.
Power button on the iPhone 5 not working on thousands, if not millions of iphones, and apple deciding it wasn’t their problem.
The camera bump was definitely the beginning of the end for the once great design team.
The tumor doubling in size for the next iPhone max is just beyond tragic. I’m thinking it’s the final nail.
The camera bump was definitely the beginning of the end for the once great design team.
The tumor doubling in size for the next iPhone max is just beyond tragic. I’m thinking it’s the final nail.
Thanks for the laugh. I guess this will make 74 times Apple has "died"
How ever months of work and other crap you think I'm gonna remember some thread I started when I was probably tired?As in the thread you started?
funny you say that, because I was just about to comment that the decline started when people started thinking of iDevices as status symbols and Apple hired Arhendts.
Reading through this thread, I'd say you'd have to define what you mean be decline in the first place in order to answer the question. I've personally noticed two declines:
#1 Decline in Macintosh
Apple's decline that has affected me personally is their disinterest in Macs, which lead to multi-year gaps between computer updates. Two amazingly ridiculous gaps are 4 years long for the Mac Mini and 6 years for the Mac Pro (will it reach 7?).
That decline obviously started when iPhone made all the money for Apple, making Mac a lower priority. Mac Mini and Mac Pro were my two Macs, and Apple left those behind, so I'm Windows PC now.
"Switcher" used to mean users switching from Windows to Mac. If you look at the Mac Pro forums over the last few years, everyone is switching in the opposite direction back to PC.
Also, the fact that Apple is still using 5400rpm hard drives in iMacs in 2019 is just over the top embarrassing.
#2 Decline in Quality
Apple has doubled-down on a failed butterfly keyboard design. Oh wait, triple-downed on that design.
Correction... quadruple-downed on a failed keyboard design.
I'm amazed that they gave it a third attempt instead of a complete change. If this fourth attempt fails...my eyeballs will roll so hard they'll fly out of their sockets.
Look, I get that the MacBook Air's thinness was marvelous. Competitors publicly made fun of it, then privately scrambled to copy it and compete with it. But the obsession with thinness over the years has gone too far. People need keyboards that, you know, work.
#1 Decline in Macintosh
Apple's decline that has affected me personally is their disinterest in Macs, which lead to multi-year gaps between computer updates. Two amazingly ridiculous gaps are 4 years long for the Mac Mini and 6 years for the Mac Pro (will it reach 7?).
That decline obviously started when iPhone made all the money for Apple, making Mac a lower priority. Mac Mini and Mac Pro were my two Macs, and Apple left those behind, so I'm Windows PC now.
"Switcher" used to mean users switching from Windows to Mac. If you look at the Mac Pro forums over the last few years, everyone is switching in the opposite direction back to PC.
Also, the fact that Apple is still using 5400rpm hard drives in iMacs in 2019 is just over the top embarrassing.
#2 Decline in Quality
Apple has doubled-down on a failed butterfly keyboard design. Oh wait, triple-downed on that design.
Correction... quadruple-downed on a failed keyboard design.
I'm amazed that they gave it a third attempt instead of a complete change. If this fourth attempt fails...my eyeballs will roll so hard they'll fly out of their sockets.
Look, I get that the MacBook Air's thinness was marvelous. Competitors publicly made fun of it, then privately scrambled to copy it and compete with it. But the obsession with thinness over the years has gone too far. People need keyboards that, you know, work.
When people (especially on these forums) started rationalizing solely on profits for Apple’s decisions.
Coincidentally, people around me especially long term Apple customers are not excited about Apple products anymore. People still buy, but the excitement is just not there compared to before, hence why profits is a false positive metric to correlate behavioral spend.
Coincidentally, people around me especially long term Apple customers are not excited about Apple products anymore. People still buy, but the excitement is just not there compared to before, hence why profits is a false positive metric to correlate behavioral spend.