I agree... the profits a company just made are a reflection of the past.
Only time will tell (in a year or two) how good or bad the current line of products actually is
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When do you think the decline of Apple started?
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Only time will tell (in a year or two) how good or bad the current line of products actually is
As a company, they are doing great. As a company provide a wide range of products I will buy, they are hit or miss. I love my iPhone, AirPods and MacBook Pro, but will be hard pressed to pay the Apple tax when my MacBook needs to be replaced.
Their products are by and large great, no doubt. Their marketing incurred decisions and other things (denying Nvidia drivers) are not that great...
Yes yes, the "they're making money hand over fist so they can't possibly be wrong" argument. I've seen it many, many times here.
The decline started when the stock price became more important than the product.
The 1980s. Steve Jobs brought them out of it in the early 2000s.
Anyone who thinks Apple is declining now is just wrong.
Anyone who thinks Apple is declining now is just wrong.
We'll see. Time will tell. I see a few good things (Software, mostly) and a number of things - a number too big for my liking - that are really bad.
Not sure which direction will prevail ultimately
They still do too many things well for me to be concerned. Macs and iPhones are as brilliant as they have ever been and iPad and Watch are the leading products in their category (and no one else really comes close in either case). I admit the prices are concerning, but Apple devices can be kept running longer than their competitors by and large, so many are willing to pay a premium.
The services play is huge right now.
Listen, even if Apple is never back at its peak, to use the term "decline" is alarmist and inaccurate.
I'd say the "decline" happened internally sometime around 2011-2014. That would put it right around the time that they were designing the trash can MP, butterfly keyboards and just neglecting the Mac overall. There were a few good products still upcoming such as the 5K iMac and the yet-to-be-released retina MacBooks Pro, but I think we can all agree, and Apple itself have said as much, that they took their eyes off the ball when it came to delayed releases, bad and/or neglected products and buggy software.
However (and this is a big however), I think the trend is starting to turn itself around, most notably with the Mac lineup. I'm not saying it's perfect, because as long as the butterfly keyboard exists in a current product, it's not. But the new Mac Mini, iMac Pro, Mac Pro, and even the flawed MacBook Air and recently-updated-but-still-flawed MacBooks Pro, I think, are signs that Apple is taking the Mac seriously again.
Even on the keyboard front, I'd be willing to bet that Apple is working hard on a completely new keyboard design in tandem with a new case design. Until the case design is ready, we won't see the new keyboard, but instead Apple will roll out whatever interim fixes they can (just like with the 2019 laptops).
However (and this is a big however), I think the trend is starting to turn itself around, most notably with the Mac lineup. I'm not saying it's perfect, because as long as the butterfly keyboard exists in a current product, it's not. But the new Mac Mini, iMac Pro, Mac Pro, and even the flawed MacBook Air and recently-updated-but-still-flawed MacBooks Pro, I think, are signs that Apple is taking the Mac seriously again.
Even on the keyboard front, I'd be willing to bet that Apple is working hard on a completely new keyboard design in tandem with a new case design. Until the case design is ready, we won't see the new keyboard, but instead Apple will roll out whatever interim fixes they can (just like with the 2019 laptops).
I have to disagree. If they'd take the Mac seriously and/or listen to customers they:
1) Would not have soldered CPU and SSD on and make RAM difficult to access/exchange (Mac Mini)
2) The iMac Pro would, again, be at least somewhat upgradeable (RAM not upgradeable? How come Apple dubs this as "Pro"? You kidding? At that price this is simply a no-go!)
3) They wouldn't have shifted the Mac Pro so far upmarket price-wise its now simply unaccessible and/or just terrible value for 90 % of its targed market (professionals in general rather than megacorp movie creators)
Thats all part of the plan, they want all the non-Hollywood Pros to move to the iMac so that they can't upgrade their hardware at a later date.
I am sure the sales representatives appreciate that line of thought. I am talking about sales representatives at Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc of course
Ok, WTF is with this attitude? There were always nay-sayers and the "macs suck" attitude is largely gone, but with Steve Jobs return up through about 2012, the idea of apple declining was pretty much mute. Apple's products were something else. Now they're increasingly becoming "meh", but we stick with apple because we're in their ecosystem, and b/c we like apple's stance on privacy.
We don't stick with the Mac b/c we know it's something better.
I personally and many others don't observe a decline, quite the contrary.
Overall, both as a company and as far as the products are concerned, Apple has been constantly doing better and better ever since the return of Steve Jobs. That didn't stop with his death as many like to proclaim. IMHO.
I like 2019's Apple (the company, but in particular the products) much better than 2009's Apple or 1999's Apple. That I say as a passionate collector of vintage Apple products.
I think you never appreciated apple products at the time then, or at least the context of the greater tech industry.
Tbh, few people did. That’s why the Mac marketshare was so low.
The attention to detail is lacking. Jony Ive is right, Tim Cook is completely ignoring/replacing core competency, I think b/c he has none himself. Instead he’s taking apple down this happy-go-lucky direction. It’s a nice distraction, but it’s a distraction nonetheless.
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Attention to detail is what sets Apple products apart today no less than 10 or 20 years ago. They've gotten more and more complex yet at the same time much more elegant and refined, both in engineering and ID. Especially talking Macs, it's not like competitors were catching up in that regard. Except maybe Razer who are at least getting close to 2012+ era Mac laptops. But there's nothing like the 2016+ models when it comes to the sheer elegance of engineering and industrial design.
Also whatever you may think of Tim Cook or his competencies, he isn't running the company single-handedly.
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Last week I had the opportunity to work on a HP Z1 all-in-one computer and I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it was to work on!
Does it have the Apple sex appeal of an iMac Pro? No. It does have expandability options like no other all-in-one though.
I think the decline is real, I use mac for work and home since 2010 and some things are better, and some things have really started to suck, especially file sharing and Permissions. I think it's due to a balance they had tipping from innovative to greedy.
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If you are the only person experiencing the problem then it highly unlikely it is something "planned" by Apple to make MacBooks obsolescent.
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Oh, probably around the time people stopped writing about the Apple Death Knell every other week.
See it got to the point that no one was bothering to freak out when someone tapped on the Be Serious bell one more time. Now we're back to the glory days, where someone predicts the death of Apple at least every couple months. That's just about often enough so the echo never quite fades away but we still hear it when it sounds again.
Let that hammer fall. Let that Death Knell peal on.
Every time it does, somewhere in Cupertino they laugh and tap their pencils on that crystal ball that says "Not Dead Yet" and another something special falls off the drawing board and into the prototype stage.
The company of Apple is never going to die. They have and still earn enough that they won't go away any time soon. But this thread was mostly to gauge what the community thought about this topic. I would definitely redo this with a poll, and have an option of "No decline". It just comes down to the quality of their product, not the business. Only a fool would think Apple is diving into financial ruin.Oh, probably around the time people stopped writing about the Apple Death Knell every other week.
See it got to the point that no one was bothering to freak out when someone tapped on the Be Serious bell one more time. Now we're back to the glory days, where someone predicts the death of Apple at least every couple months. That's just about often enough so the echo never quite fades away but we still hear it when it sounds again.
Let that hammer fall. Let that Death Knell peal on.
Every time it does, somewhere in Cupertino they laugh and tap their pencils on that crystal ball that says "Not Dead Yet" and another something special falls off the drawing board and into the prototype stage.
LOL ok then I'll stick up for quality via my latest purchase which happens to be the XR iPhone. Matchless ease of use for my eyes compared to my other gear... and I love the sunflower yellow color. Sure it's too big for my hand or pocket as a phone per se, so it gets used as what I call my narrow iPad mini... but it's the one device sure to be in the room I'm in when I'm in my house. Yeah the SE gets to go on walks and rides but that XR is queen of the household to me.
As to laptops, jury's out for me. I'm still using a mid-2012 13" MBP bought as an Apple refurb in 2016. I'm not unaware of complaints about the keyboards and the touchbar in models since then. Time will tell what the future brings, for them and for me in that department.
I'm not going to be one of those people you see going into threads trashing people's new Apple purchase because it's "inferior to older products" If they are happy with it, then great. Doesn't mean I have to like everything they do, though. I think the XR is actually a good phone, and would be my pick for a notched phone. Not a fan of OLED panels. But I'm a light user so my 6S is good enough for some time.
Again, this is a totally subjective topic. I see people on this thread that think that Apple is the best it's ever been, and others who curse the company out as pure trash. I'm in the middle of this, and Apple has actually been surprising me again recently. The new Mac Pro is a great computer, and iOS 13 looks good so far. I also think they currently are selling good products (Mac mini, XR, iMac) but they are slacking in some areas still. I hope the new MacBooks are what is rumored, because they have a chance at actually being good machines too. I do think overall though, Apple is not as good as it was in the 2000s, but of course their focus has shifted, and that has left users like me behind. For those that make better use of their current lineup, their opinion is surely going to be different.
Well, perhaps that was a poor wording. Apple won't die within the current era of technology. I will wager on that. I doubt Macrumors will even be around when they close their doors. They have enough money to bleed.