Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'
cnbc.com
Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'::A top Apple analyst said Wednesday that shipments for MacBook computers will decline around 30% year over year.
Part of a manufactured recession is that everyone goes broke from getting laid off or suppressed wages, and they can't afford to buy your shit. Whodathunk?
Why is everyone making this a price thing? The way I see it, this is because Apple Silicon is so damn good. I replaced an Intel MacBook Pro with an M2 Air and I’m not going to need another machine until this thing stops working. People shouldn’t need to buy new laptops every couple of years. This is a win in my eyes.
Plus everyone bought new tech during the pandemic, and now it's over people are going outside and touching grass again so they don't need the latest tech just 2.5 years later.
Plus the M2 MBP is barely an upgrade over the M1.
Saying that the market has reached a saturation point for Apple Silicon Macbooks is kinda silly. Apple Silicon is good, but it isn't some miracle tech that defies market dynamics. The only area that Apple Silicon really excels at compared to the competition is battery life, but there's a lot of other laptops that already beat it in terms of CPU and GPU performance.
There's still room for Apple to grow, especially since they're focusing on gaming now. The fact that Mac demand is falling in light of this indicates that there's more at play than just everyone being content with their current Macs. Even if that was the case, why wouldn't something so good be attracting new customers? Apple's userbase is still a tiny fraction compared to Windows. If Apple Silicon is so good, why aren't people flocking over in droves, especially since Windows literally has no answer to Apple Silicon?
Price is a huge motivating factor, especially since the economy's going to shit.
I just plug my laptop in most of the time so I don't need to spend 2k+ for "apple silicon". If I need mobile computing I have an android phone for that.
The amount of things a mobile phone can do is amazing, unless you are a developer who is away from a power outlet the use cases are dwindling by the day.
Or until Apple decides that, for some reason, your M2 can’t run their newest operating system and eventually apps don’t support your operating system anymore.
So like 7-10 years?
You mean in 5-7 years when those devices are completely outdated?
This is going to blow your mind, but your computer doesn't explode when it stops getting updates. You can keep using it as long as the tools you use don't specifically require a new OS. I know, it's crazy, but it's true.
This is going to blow your mind but from a security perspective this is the dumbest thing you can do
Older Macs often get extra security updates even after they stop getting new OS updates. But if you’re the type of person to use a decade-old machine, I suspect that security isn’t your top concern.
Also, you can pretty easily get new versions of MacOS running on unsupported hardware, so it’s a non-issue no matter how you look at it.
That's great but the initial statement was very ignorant
Not really, but you’re welcome to your opinion I guess.
But you already can't install MS 365 on Big Sur.
And? Not everyone uses MS 365.
That was true for windows machines until Win 11 started forcing the TPM requirement
Windows should generally be treated like malware for this sort of reason
It could be that.
My first thought is that it might be the post-lockdown tech demand crash hitting Apple later than it hit the rest of the industry. If I remember right Apple was holding on fairly well when the market first started to crash as society shifted into a "post-Covid" mentality, relative to their competition.
Could be that for whatever reason the drop in demand for Apple was just delayed by about a year.
I replaced my surface pronwith a surface pro 9. So went from February 2013 to Nov 2022. Worked well for me sll that time.
Surface pro 9 won't get replaced until the 30s
Just don't buy cheap shit
For a lot of people that's easier said than done, shits expensive yo
That said, I had bought a Sony Vaio in 2012 that just crapped out last year, and I replaced it with an upper end Lenovo Thinkpad that'll hopefully get similar mileage. Same with phones, I bought a OnePlus 8 Pro in 2020 that is still humming along seamlessly. Before that, I had a Nexus that I had had forever (and kept working thanks to CyanogenMod/LineageOS).
There's a huge benefit in buying high quality stuff in that they usually tend to last a lot longer than middle of the road/low end. Then again, I'm extremely thankful that I've worked my way into a financial position to do so. But alas, it's Vimes Boots Theory at work.
I still have a 2011 MacBook Pro at home, trucking along running Monterey like a champ. Absolutely solid little machine, that, but it ought to be considering how much I paid for it back then.
Save up longer to buy a higher quality device or be prepared to replace the device more often
My surface pro 4 is still awesome and does everything I expect it to be able to do.
I only replaced my original pro because of the battery life. Now I use it in my basement for my 3d printers
Right on! :)
I remember buying a surface pro 2 when it came out. Battery crapped after 2 years of light use. Hinges failed on keyboard. All around very cheaply built. I heard they got better after that but I never bothered going back to the surface lineup. It was a really disappointing product compared to it's apple counterparts.
I had never experienced that. My pro 1 is still working but the battery life after a decade is less than an hour.
Apple has had a slew of problem models like butterfly keyboards and other crapple issues. But of you enjoy them more power to you.
I'm not following — what's the cheap shit you're referring to here?
It's cool that you were able to keep your Surface for so long though. I wish more people would hang onto their tech until it actually needs replacing.
Cheap laptops. When you buy a quality / smilingly priced windows laptop they can last as long as a Mac book
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I often find myself pushing friends and family to spend a little bit more on laptops (regardless of brand) because I know they could keep them for longer if they did. I always remind them that it's cheaper to buy a good laptop once than it is to buy three shitty ones.
Yup. Buy a $500 windows laptop and kf course it would end up failing before a $2000 Mac book
My personal Mac laptop lost connection from video card to board. It is a well known issue in older models.
That was the last Mac I bought. I didn’t see a reason to drop $3k when I could get something as good for half the price.
But I risked if Linux would run on hardware…
Okay? I don’t get what that has to do with what I said though. I’d love to see the half-the-price-but-just-as-good options today though, I’m not aware of any.
My Asus laptop from 2011 is still running with Linux. But, it's time to change this one after 12 years.
It cost me a huge amount of money at the time but worth it.
The M2 chips and presumably the M3 as well are incredibly sophisticated but they're not powerful exactly, they're just power efficient. They deliver excellent performance for their power draw.
But if I actually want to high performance chip I can get better options as long as I don't care about battery life, and if I need a high performance chip I probably don't actually care about battery life.
So it's good for people that want reasonably good performance on the go but no power use really cares.
The bigger point here is that if you need that kind of power, it comes with compromises to battery life, heat, and device longevity.
Apple silicon is just fast enough for most workloads you want on a laptop, and can handle surprisingly heavy video workloads. For anything more, a desktop is a better idea than a laptop anyways.
There’s definitely a niche for desktop replacement class laptops, but that is a niche. Gaming laptops are still king though. You don’t buy a macbook for gaming.
Gaming laptops are such a terrible way to game that I can’t think of a situation where I’d recommend one.
For budget reasons, get a console or build a couple gen old desktop for a cheaper price.
For portability? Get a Steam Deck.
If you’re gaming at the dining room table, it’d be better if it were a Steam deck. On the couch? Game on your console if you have one; if you instead have a PC, game on it hooked up here.
Doing non gaming stuff? Well, you probably don’t need a gaming laptop for that - a “productivity” laptop makes more sense.
And of course, that’s where MacBooks shine.
Admittedly I am in a weird situation where consoles and steam deck are both off the table. I am a bit of a framerate junkie. 30fps is unplayable.
Amusingly my m1 max macbook can actually hold 120fps in final fantasy xiv and actually has a 120hz screen, but those specs for the price would make no sense if this wasn’t also my main productivity system. The battery life, heat, speakers and screen quality are all huge bonuses in this case.
A steam deck would never satisfy me, so a gaming laptop would have been mandatory for travel if not for my macbook.
Right? Thats what “falling demand” should be attributed to. It’s a computer which will last years because of how capable it is. I’m not sure expecting people to upgrade computers year over year is the right metric for how well a product lineup is doing.
Apple Silicon chips are game changers, the rate of adoption is going to different compared to phones or a different product category however.
I see the ARM Apple machines as less valuable than the Intel ones.
Macbooks from circa 2007 to recently were PC-compatible machines, you could run Windows or a standard version of Linux on them. They were often well-built, and since Apple kept to a fairly limited subset of hardware it was easy to support them.
The M1 and M2 machines cannot run Windows and are pretty incompetent at running Linux, so if your hobby or job requires either of those platforms Apple no longer offers that value to customers.
I'm running Windows ARM just fine with parallels on my M1 MBP. Haven't had any issues, even weird legacy software that needs serial drivers works fine. MS did a great job with the ARM version of Windows.
All the higher ups at work used to run macbooks mostly because they were built well and looked good. But they ran windows because we don't make any software for Mac. An M1 is useless to them (our software is not compatible with parallels as the 3d support just isn't good enough)
It's not even that unusual based on the support queries we get.. still get the occasional salesman who has 'upgraded' to an M1 and has to be given the bad news.
I will say, my one concern for my 15" Air is the shelf life is currently limited to whatever Apple decides it to be. With my previous Intel MacBooks, I could string a few extra years out of them with Opencore, but as it stands that won't be an option when Apple drop OS support for my M2. The same is true of those Intel machines though; what will happen to them once macOS no longer supports non AS hardware?
Perhaps by then, the devs behind Opencore will have figured out how to get AS software working on Intel hardware, and will have cracked being able to run the latest macOS on unsupported M1/2 chips, but we'll have to wait and see.
All that said, my Air is only a few months old, and should reasonably expect to see updates for a good 5/6 years, by which time Asahi Linux ought to be a rock solid alternative if needs be.
Meanwhile I've got a 4th gen Intel Dell sitting behind me that turns ten next June, and it will likely be supported by Linux Mint for several more decades.
I mean, sure, although I think the people who need to do that are a pretty small niche. But you could also just run Parallels and call it a day.
My 5 year old 2015 model macbook pro still works the same as the day I bought it. I have zero need for upgrading to a newer model.
Same with my 2012 one! However I am a video editor, so the M1 Max is my current system. Not sure my 2012 mbp could handle 4k video unfortunately! 😂
If you’ve gotten on apple silicon there really isn’t any reason to upgrade within the ecosystem yet. M1 is still amazing in terms of processing power to battery.
And with Macs fetching premium prices, people are going to use their device longer and longer
M1 Macbooks were also the first "Not Completely Shit" Macbooks after many years of awful problems so there was pent up demand from Apple users for something worth buying. Now that the demand is satisfied, sales will return to a baseline.
I think we can probably also toss in demand from the pandemic. Lots of people suddenly had need for a new computer and now with return to school/office lots of those machines are probably seeing a lot less use. A couple of years ago the articles were "record demand for MacBooks."
That’s pretty much describes me. I was a notorious macOS hater for a long time. But the battery life, quiet cooling, and overall power of the m1/2 has totally converted me.
Eh, I have a MB from work and I'm still an unrepentant Mac hater. All the badass hardware in the world won't save you from crippled software. MacOS will never be keyboard friendly and "MacOS UNIX" will never hold a candle to real Linux.
This is just not correct. Keyboard support in particularly is a checkbox or two in prefs, and then you have out of the box support for mapping/remapping any menu command, remapping mod keys, text expansion macros, remapping all kinds of OS controls like spotlight/mission control, etc, easily typing your favorite symbols like º or ® just by holding a modifier... Toss in Keyboard Maestro and Raycast/Launchbar/Alfred, and you're going to have difficulty finding any GUI OS that handles keyboards as well.
This is another just purely nonsense statement. "Real" Linux is itself an open source reimplementation of Unix, more or less, and macOS is posix compliant. Idk what this comment is even supposed to mean - open a terminal, install whatever packages you like, carry about your day. I've had to spend a significant amount of time in linux/macOS terminals, and in practice all that I usually have to remember is which package manager I have to use or whether it's bash/zsh.
Does this mean
brew install nvidia-driversworks for you?"Posix compliant"? I'm not sure you fully understand the gap here. Linux has containers, performant and feature rich virtualization, robust networking, user friendly GNU utils, case sensitive filesystems, etc. It's not stuff you can duct tape on by recompiling Linux tools and be all set. You're trying to keep up with a Ferrari using a Fiat.
Apple hasn't shipped with an Nvidia GPU in like a decade, and has only shipped a machine that can add a third party GPU twice in as long, so I am going to guess no? I'm not sure what the point of this comment even is? If I can find a package you can't install on linux do I win the argument? And of all things in the world you want to count as a win for Linux, you're going with Nvidia drivers? Lol.
Most of the rest that you're describing are also mostly optional packages on most Linux distros/macOS or things you're just getting wrong. Case-sensitive filesystems on macOS are an option. You don't think macOS has containers, virtualization, robust networking or can't use GNU utils? You don't know what posix compliance is, and you're trying to convince me that GNU utils, many/most of which likely existed before Linux somehow can't be "duct-taped" on.
It's entirely clear you don't understand the gap. Linux is a kernel. All of the things you're describing are packages or pieces of software that are going to differ from distro to distro. Most of coreutils ship in macOS out of the box. All of the things you count as wins are easily added on macOS (where they aren't out of the box already.)
like, you can just say "I don't like macOS." This set of comments read like "Well all of Linux is garbage because Mint doesn't ship with Solitaire, a game and program invented by Microsoft."
As much as I love making fun of Apple, isn't it all Apple silicone made in house? If they're not coming with Nvidia cards and Apple is not open to the idea of people modifying their computers it shouldn't matter how easy it is to install Nvidia graphics (not to mention Nvidia Drivers are a pain on Linux sometimes too).
POSIX is just a set of Unix-like standards for software. Mac is based on BSD if I recall correctly, they had Xorg and stuff as an option to install and things aren't 1 to 1 compatible but closely related.
Dude you just gave me flashbacks to traumatic times trying to get Wifi to work on Linux
The Nvidia thing was a subtle way to point out that you can't "brew install" your way out of every bit of missing OS functionality. The subtly was sadly too subtle.
"Posix" is such a trivial set of APIs that until recently Windows claimed to be Posix compatible (and basically still is???). Darwin, the MacOS kernel, lacks pretty much everything above that slim foundation. No user or network namespaces. No capabilities. Even if you switch to GNU coreutils (ls, ps, netstat, etc), you get a reduced featureset because Darwin lacks /proc, /sys, ioctls, and other knobs&levers to make stuff work the way it does on Linux. Xorg works because X11 was common across all Unixen back then. And on the built in BSD utils, stuff gets weird like
ls ~/Downloads -ldoesn't work and case insensitivity leads to weird bugs in things like shell wildcards (likels ~/downlo*/*).The Linux network stack is complicated because it can do absolutely everything, at insane speeds and scales. MacOS' network features are geared towards being a laptop and not much else. I won't defend Linux as user friendly but it's been my daily desktop for 25 years, I guess I've figured it out. I use and appreciate stuff like VLANs, bridging, nftables, ebtables, etc. If you need to change behavior, there's probably a /proc/net flag that will do it. It's stuff that MacOS hides or simply doesn't have.
Agreed, I've never been into the Apple ecosystem, but last time I needed a new laptop I bought an open box M1 MacBook Pro from Best Buy. I boight it solely off the Apple silicon being Arm based for power and efficiency. It's been a great laptop and probably won't need to upgrade it for a long time. When the battery finally gives out I'll just replace that myself and keep going. Plenty of compute power to keep it going for what I do with it.
They're definitely going to overheating or slow older Mac's with the next OS update while adding very little.
At max usage, an m1 has a hard time overheating. The hardware is really good this time, and the previous overheating was due to insufficient cooling hardware.
Even if apple adds features that run the cpu/gpu/neural cores as hard as possible, overheating is not really on the table the same way it was on x86 macbooks.
That isn't how Apple handles it. Macbook models have a finite update support window. They will receive security updates after that window closes but no longer get major MacOS versions. That is how they incentivise upgrades.
No need, they’ve already stopped receiving macOS updates
I… what? No. This is patently incorrect and can be disproven with a simple google search. I know it’s cool to hate apple, but misinformation is never cool. Idk where you got this information, but it’s not true.
I partly think m1 is just so good no one has any appetite to upgrade. But also shit do be expensive. For me it’s repairability. I’m seriously considering not getting another Mac at my next upgrade cycle unless something changes soon.
It's between Apple and framework for me for my next laptop. The question is do I want a laptop that I can infinitely repair and upgrade, or do I want a laptop that actually has battery life when I pull it out of my bag because it has a functioning sleep mode. Thanks Intel. Maybe make sure your processors are actually power efficient before axing S3 sleep.
People give apple a lot of crap and I get it. But they are still by far the best user experience laptop. There’s a reason with all that walled garden stuff. It’s good hardware and software when used by anyone with the purpose of just using it and not needing to tinker with it.
I’m at a point where I don’t mind the idea of diversifying my time with Linux more. I have an older pc I have mint for fun and a steam deck. Just worried one of these days apple will mess macOS up to the point of no return and Linux will be my lifeline.
Yeah, their wallets.
As someone who uses macos every day my worthless internet opinion is that the Gnome 4 desktop experience is far better for productivity. I mainly use a web browser, email, and ssh, so I tend to value windowing and multidesktop fluidity highly. This is also coming from a linux certified tech though.
AFAIK sleep issues were fixed. Anyway, since AMD framework motherboards exist, you can buy them.
Oh no people can't afford anything how can we fix this? Maybe more pizza parties? Or how about forcing people to come back to the office and burn their own money in gas and other expenses? Maybe try raising prices more while keeping wages low, that will fix it!
I've never seen companies do more user- and employee-hostile shit than in the last couple of years.
These companies, who stayed afloat because almost everyone worked from home during the pandemic and got shit done while millions of humans died, are now trying to say WFH doesn't work. Let me just check your earnings reports. Oh look, billions and billions of dollars per quarter while you lay off staff to bump your bottom line.
This shit makes me so angry.
They should make hardware people want to buy.
Hardware that’s worth the price.
Lately they failed on both counts and failed 1st means never had a chance at 2nd.
Exactly. The price keeps inching upward and the last generation of MacBooks was awful. After getting burned by one of those things I’m not about to buy another one even if the new processor is awesome.
Not to mention, the OS has become junk over the years. It used to be great for developers. They still ship crusty old versions of programming languages, window management sucks, and it’s just a pain in the ass to work with. These days, I would rather be on a Linux machine. Plus, most games work on Linux now, which is something Apple still hasn’t figured out.
I use Linux for home and Mac for work. My Mac is older Intel based with software bar for F keys. If in the past 10 years ago I was into Mac and owned one… I no longer see the reason for Mac.
Hardware choices are not a selling point
Context bar makes it harder to use for programming. It is not a sell for me.
Mouse pad frequently jumps cursor.
Keyboard feedback is cheap.
Software is not impressive either
Usability wise Gnome is better than OS X for me. No ctrl key on right side is terrible.
Due to Windows subsystem for Linux v2 I am starting to think Windows is better for Linux development than Mac.
MAC M1, M2 laptops have good battery life going for them.
The keyboard's on macs have always been crap. They're even crap on desktop, they've taken their awful, but I suppose understandable, laptop keyboard and stuck it on a desktop keyboard base. Why?
Why are Apple allergic to the concept of keys having three dimensions to them, why are they all flat with zero travel.
They've been a form over function company since the iMac days with the round mouse with a single button completed with PC mice thatwere commonly two button with scroll wheel and in a shape that fit the hand and let you know which way it was oriented.
Apple was known for the one-button mouse in 1983, 15 years before the iMac
Yeah but the iMac was when they introduced the completely symmetrical mouse that you couldn't tell which was it was pointing without looking for where the cord was. The previous one-button mice were just lacking functionality but looked as bad as most mice did in those days. The round one-button mice looked nicer but functioned worse, hence form over function.
That said, I should have probably added an "at least" to my original statement.
Hmm. What ide do you use? I develop mostly C#, and I use rider on an m1 MBP (not my main pc of course, but nice for not sitting at my desk my whole life) and I’ve got access to the latest .Net framework (which is still old as MS has stopped releasing framework versions) as well as .Net 7 and the .Net 8 RC.
Again I pretty much only develop with C# .Net and JS/TS, but I’ve not had issues with support for current development.
By lately, do you mean the M2 chip compared to M1?
My M2 laptop with 8GB of ram?
My wife's 3 years old MacBook with the software bar is such a nightmare to use. I get really pissed off whenever I get close to this thing. Between the poorly placed bar and the weird touchpad, never again.
i mean i want the m2 Chip but like the reasonable person i am, i wait for the competition to catch up and then buy it at a fair price, and install an actual OS on it. like holy hell.. they make decent hardware and then on top of that totally ignore that vulkan is the best thing that happened to graphics apis in 20 years
New MacBook: M1 RISC 8GB RAM 250 SSD 1440x900 resolution Touchbar that prevents touch typing? No touch screen $2200+
Decline in demand is sooooo mysterious.
Weird take.
Even the lowest end MacBook Air is 2560x1600. The touch bar got dropped years ago when they transitioned away from Intel. Pricing for the specs you listed starts at $999.
There plenty to criticise. No need to make shit up.
Weird take indeed, but I personally don't understand why macs don't have touch screens yet. I'm using laptops with touchscreens for over 8 years now and can't imagine using one without it.
1400x900 what? I though they all have those Retina displays something?
But in general yeah. A time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones.
First they've been building reputation and product image, then those became so strong that their actions, useful or harmful, had no apparent effect, and then it turns out they no longer know how to build reputation, product image and the product itself.
It's funny how many things can be explained just in control theory terms, with feedback loops, response times, sensitivity etc.
1440x900 is the native resolution of a brand new MacBook. I don't follow gibberish terms used in Macintosh hardware. Retina is eye tissue.
Even the lowest end MacBook Air is 2560x1600.
I meant that's a 2k display. I may agree about eye tissue, but we humans often repeat terms used by others so to not explain ourselves every time.
All pc sales are down. Other PC companies profits are terrible. Everyone stocked up for work from home and now are good.
Plus everyone buying Mac in 2020 were buying the new (at the time) M1 MacBooks which are phenomenal and will easily last a long ass time. M2 has been a marginal upgrade over the M1 and really only applies to people who need to upgrade now, but won’t be a real upgrade for people who just bought an M1.
Plus they’re soon to announce the M3 chips so I would wager a lot of people are hanging on to what they have to see what that’s gonna look like before pulling the trigger.
I think people can't afford Apple hardware and not at the numbers Wall Street wants
Maybe we would buy their shit if our housing didn't cost more than an entire paycheck
I this case, they are probably suffering from success. Shitty manufacturing and unrepairability aside, the M macbooks are the first competent macbooks in quite a while, so most people probably bought the first versions and now they have no desire to upgrade, because why would they? I have an M1 Pro and aside from gaming performance there is absolutely no reason for me to upgrade.
Istn that the case for every notebook these days?
But if they're that good,why don't people buy 2 or 3 of them? Don't they like apple anymore?
They are expensive for the general public. But the M1 chip is actually very performant.
I have the same model, use it for music production and it's the sound of my piano via Pianoteq and my synth via Arturia Pigments. It's going great.
I wonder how this compares to PC sales, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is an industry-wide decline.
I'll be that guy: MacBooks are PCs.
But yes it's industry wide. There was a huge boom of computer and computer accessory sales during the pandemic due to work from home and other factors. Now a lot of people have stuff that's only 2 or 3 years old and they have no need to upgrade.
Why be so unnecessarily pedantic though? Mac/PC has been a ubiquitous colloquial distinction for 20+ years, and it’s one that both Mac and non-Mac vendors have leaned into for a very long time. This is in no way a new trend, and you’re not going to change a single person’s vernacular with this ackchyually, so why go out of your way to be that guy? Sometimes language evolves in ways that defy logic. Just accept it and move on.
Because sometimes prople don't want to play into biggest corp's in the world marketing scheme. It is a personal computer.
That’s revisionist history. “Mac” and “Linux machine” were used to distinguish them from the overwhelming majority of windows computers that were commonly referred to as PCs years before the “I’m a Mac/Im a PC” ads. As I said, Apple simply leaned into that already established trend. I remember when I was in high school around the turn of the Millenium, vendors like CompUSA would have an Apple section separate from the PC section. Apple was nowhere close to the largest corp in the world back then, and they did not have the selling power to make any retailer follow their ample propaganda until much much later.
Laptop sales are expected to rise year on year.
This is an Apple problem, likely because of their price point. Apple's previous advantage was usability, but they pivoted to luxury. Luxury demand goes down when markets are surpressed, but the demand for utility does not.
No, most computer sales are way down this year compared to last year.
IDC shows Apple's sales are down 23% year over year this most recent quarter (Q3 2023), worse than the overall market of down 7.6%.
But in Q2 2023, the last quarter before that, Apple was the only manufacturer to show an increase, up 10.3% when the overall market was down 13.4%.
In Q1 2023, Apple's shipments dropped 40.5%, while the market as a whole dropped 29%.
Q4 2022, Apple was down 2.1% while the industry as a whole was down 28.1%
If I were at a computer I'd be able to pull these things up more comprehensively, but you get the point. Apple is in a weird position because they released a big change right in the middle of the pandemic when demand for computers was already through the roof, but they're still in the same basic boat as everyone else, with the booms of 2021 to 2022 giving less demand for upgrades so soon afterward.
I was looking at total revenue, for the global market, but you're right that I probably should have been looking at units.
Slightly different picture it seems.
I’ve been wanting to buy one for a while, but they are a bit too expensive.
If the base model had at least 512gb ssd and 16gb ram, then I would have purchased one. I just keep waiting to buy until this is the case.
Meanwhile prices only seem to go up and wages stagnate.
I don't know if they've increased the price so much that people are no longer buying it or that they made the M1 models so good that people don't need to upgrade.
I have an M1 Mac Mini and I really don't see myself needing to upgrade for at least another 3 years.
…another 3 years.
So, a pretty standard update cycle.
No, it got 2 years shorter. It was 5 years before.
I've already had it for one and half years. But yeah, still fairly standard.
Which is why Apple should have followed a 2 year refresh cycle for Macs. But they started moving to M3 within a year of launching M2.
Well the M3 isn’t released yet. So we aren’t on a yearly cycle. The M2 was released in June 22.
Besides this, I don’t think the intention of the “yearly” updates isn’t to push everyone to also update yearly. People are on different “update cycles”. If this one isn’t for you, it might be for someone els.
I always hated the UI/UX of Mac. I find it annoying and ineffective to work on without heavy modification and third party tools.
I stopped using Macs years ago because with every update I lost more control over the computer, making even basic configurations difficult. It felt like walls closing in.
If all specialized software would work there, I'd be 100% in Linux now because it's just the superior OS - stable, easy to use, flexible and accessible (aside from Wine).
I was the same way.. It's been about 20 years since I last owned a mac. I skipped the intel years entirely. I was given an M1 mbp for my current job though and its honestly fantastic.. One of the best machines I've used in years. The chip is a huge part of it.
Since there are so many developers on mac these days, there is a ton of tooling around there to customize the UI enough to be flexible. I'm quite happy on it.
The cause could be that they're lasting longer. Or it could be the fact that they're not repairable, don't support virtual machines or windows, have cut corners internally to increase profits margins and for the most part don't play games. The company I work for, previous the ARM CPU switch bought MacBooks exclusively and either ran windows in parallels or used boot camp. We can no longer do that to run any of the tools we use for machine programming or troubleshooting so we buy razer blade 15s now. That battery isn't as great but they're powerhouses and have awesome repairability.
Apple and repairability are two opposites. Am not convinced about lasting longer either. Gluing and soldering everything doesn't help with replacing parts, especially since they fought tooth and nail to ban independent repairs.
Why can’t you run Parallels?
I am not sure if you can not, but ARM doesn't come with hardware level virtualization features many of the solutions today depend on. VBox for example doesn't want to run until I enable those in BIOS. It's certainly is possible to emulate anything, but probably less efficiently.
This is hilariously wrong. I have run virtual machines on Apple Silicon myself. They literally built a virtualization framework for the product in question.
We can use parallels, just not to run x86 windows.
For the same reason you can't run Windows 11 Pro on your phone. The chip architecture.
As weird as it sounds you can (with poor performance). With something like Limbo or Termux you can actually get Windows or any x86 OS running underneath Android on a phone.
Fun project maybe, but not really utilitarian though. Never used apple so can't actually report on how well their emulation and/or translation layer is working on Arm.
You might want to tell that to the people who make Parallels.
You can run Windows on Apple Silicon in a VM. These people are just wrong. Also Windows for ARM exists.
You can run virtual machines on Apple Silicon. I have done it myself. Also Razer are known for bad reliability.
We've had no problems with them so far and the fact that they can be easily dusted and cleaned has made them more reliable than the MBPs we were using. In a dirty environment they fill with dust and don't live long.
Yeah Apple products aren't exactly durable. Still I hope you have a service contract with razor.
You can, but with emulationb for anything needing x86 (like Windows). Which means it's slow and unusable
Nope, they use Windows for ARM
Right which still isn't the x86 version of windows that basically every vendor I've come across requires for tooling software and machine programming. It's okay to be wrong fan boy.
My god you're calling me a fanboy long after I sold the only Apple device I owned. Like it's actually hilarious in how off the mark you are. It wasn't long ago I was getting downvoted on Reddit for suggesting someone not buy their girlfriend a macbook.
I am well aware of the compatibility issues, it's why I sold my M1 machine. The thing is you were specifically talking about Windows as an example of something that needs emulation, which it doesn't. It's specific applications that need "emulation", which isn't even a normal emulator. For macOS applications they mainly use static recompilation, and for Windows apps dynamic recompilation (dynarec) is used. Windows for ARM translation layer basically acts like a JIT compiler.
Apple's implementation is actually shockingly good because they built an x86 like memory coherency mode into the M family SoCs (specifically in the performance cores) and because they are using the static recompilation that I mentioned. Apps running in a Windows for ARM VM couldn't use that last time I owned a MacBook.
I was out when they did the thunderbolt only thing. and of course when they realized it was a mistake, they not only fixed it but also added a massive unnecessary notch in the display to make it match the iphone. it's like the joke writes itself in my case.
short apple
Tech companies aren't hiring. They're firing.
Still rocking my M1 Air. Battery is good and it's so much more powerful than I'll ever need for my casual use. There is literally zero reason for me to buy another Macbook right now and I'm betting that's the case for most Mac users.
Same machine, but even with the desire to upgrade, it just seems like Apple themselves don't want me to.
A MacBook Air M1, with the upgraded 8-Core CPU, 16gb ram and 512Gb storage ran me just shy of £1400 2 years ago and has been an excellent device for all my needs.
A similarly specced M2 machine is closer to £1700, and that's not even the 15in model! Why would I upgrade when the price increase is so drastic? I would've happily sold my current MacBook Air and considered the 15in Air, but it simply doesn't add up.
The base M1 Air as you and many others said, is already such a powerful machine that it really doesn't need updating, especially when you consider that subsequent machines don't provide a meaningful boost to productivity from M1 to M2, as intel to M1 did.
Hah. I'm still running my MacBook Air from 2013.
Ha Lenovo T430 here! But I've probably needed to upgrade mine way more than the MacBook over the years 🤔
Similar. MacBook pro from mid 2014 for personal stuff
If the Mac were half as repairable as a Framework and could run Windows VMs without crashing when they run my default tools, I might be interested in one again.
I've never had any issues running windows VMs on any of my macs. And our office is full of developers running windows VMs on Macs.
One part of the issue is the m1s where so damn good, people aren’t itching to replace every 3 years. With intel every year people were desperate for cores and better battery because it was so bad.
Maybe if they weren’t so expensive…
Honestly the base price of Macbooks has stayed right around $1000 for the past TWENTY YEARS. So the price has kind of gone down if you take inflation into account.....
The cost of the higher end models, however, has gone up.
The base models are practically useless though. 8gb ram and a low storage (both of which unupgradable) means they become irrelevant quickly. To upgrade to something more usable like 16gb ram and 1tb storage you'd have to pay 600 dollars extra.
Simply depends on your use case. They’re definitely not useless and more than enough for probably a vast amount of the population.
Eh, I've been using my 8GB M1 with 256GB storage that I got from work for 3 years now. It has not filled up, slowed down, or become irrelevant.
The issue isn't the processor on the Mac, but that stuff like the ram and internal storage is not user upgradeable which is the bottle neck if users need more. To no surprise users who want more aren't happy with upgrade premium. But, that's Apple. It's why their stocks are good to have.
The base model is fine as a base model. Most people are perfectly fine with 8 gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage to browse the internet.
It's mostly their upgrades that get stupid expensive.
8 is too small. You load up a browser and a few tabs these days and you're already almost full. Lots of webapps these days chew 400MB easy. Some I load use 1.1GB. For a single tab.
Our office is filled with these base model Macbook Pros, and PCs with 8 gigs of ram. It's plenty.
It's all in your use case. If you work for an office where your job requires you to do word processing and look at a single web page then yes it is. I usually make my browser cry with the amount of tabs I have. I'm frequently switching between different projects and it's not as simple as just closing and reopening tabs. Not to mention the other applications I use..
Sure, for you and I 8 gigs of ram isn't enough. I have 32 gigs of ram and an eGPU for my mac Mini and I make that i5 cry.
But you and I aren't normal people. We're nowhere close.
Memes aside, stop using chrome lawl
I don't use Chrome. It's just the way I work and research. Lots of tabs. I also have data from hundreds of machines where average ram usage is definitely around or above 8 GB.
This would have been true for any other laptop, but macs have a hardware-software symbiosis that fits it like a glove and keeps it competitive 10+ years down the line.
That's the advantage of having everything made in house, I guess.
While true most won't see this benefit. Nobody is going to notice a difference loading Facebook on a Mac, windows, or Linux. Most of the population will not notice.
I disagree, even with the facebook example you used - you can have two browser windows with ten tabs each and still browse comfortably on an OLD mac - any other machine of comparable specs, linux or windows, would be somewhere between annoying and damn impossible to use.
This. I'm already knocking on the limits of 16GB of RAM. Base mac with 8 is not even a contender for my needs.
The key part of that is that it’s not enough for your needs. For many people, 8gb is more than enough. It’s not for me, so I didn’t buy that config. It sounds like you just bought the wrong machine and now you’re looking for someone to pin your mistake on.
I don't even own a mac. My desktop has 64GB. I have no complaints. I frequently go over 32GB. I can definitely tell you from my years in managed IT services and having the data of hundreds of machines in front of me, 8GB was definitely not enough for a majority of the users.
So you’re just complaining that they’re selling a base machine that’s not specced to your needs?
Oh, and yes, 8gugs is plenty for a lot of people. Obviously not everyone, but for a bigger chunk of the population than most people think.
My complaint is that 8GB is not enough for anyone that uses a computer for more than 3 tabs of internet browsing and a few applications these days. And that the cost of 8GB of RAM right now is dirt cheap but apple wants to charge you a premium for it, like triple or quadruple the cost it actually is on the consumer market. And with many macs not having easily serviceable ram compartment, they're steering you towards hundreds of dollars more for a meager 8GB.
You’re definitely exaggerating about how limited an 8GB machine is. Until last year I used an 8GB intel MacBook Pro from 2016 and it handled all sorts of stuff simultaneously. Photoshop, figma, dozens of massive text document and 100+ page pdfs, several browser windows with upwards of 20 tabs each. Was it using swap? Probably, but that’s what it’s there for. The one thing that did bring it to a grinding halt was compiling/running stuff in Xcode, but that’s not exactly the kind of thing that every person needs to be able to do.
I know someone who uses a base M1 Air to record and produce music, do graphic design, and edit 4K video.
These machines are plenty capable. Maybe not for ultra heavy workloads, but for far more than you give them credit for.
And hey, you can always buy more ram if you think you’ll need it. It’s expensive but over the life of the machine it’s worth it. Or just don’t buy a Mac. If it’s really such a deal breaker, buy something that better fits your needs.
But don’t make sweeping statements about how perfectly capable machines are somehow unusable under a workload that wouldn’t have stressed a computer from nearly a decade ago. It’s simply not true.
What keeps me away from them is more the inability to upgrade even the storage. 256 is just too small and what smartphones come with these days, and stepping up starts increasing the price real quick.
For work I have no issue with 256GB. For my personal needs, 256gb might as well be zero storage 🤣
So don’t buy the base config? Or get an external drive? Or run a home server? Or use cloud storage?
There are plenty of options out there.
And I wouldn't want to deal with an external drive for a laptop. Less extra things I have to carry and have dangling around the better.
They aren't. They're premium, for sure, but you'll struggle to find a similarly specced Windows machine beating it by much, if at all (and when I say similarly specced, I don't just mean a shitbox with a big, slow SSD and a ton of budget ram, I mean something with a decent display, good build quality, fast storage and ram, a powerful and efficient CPU, and silent/fanless if comparing to the Air).
I will grant you that Apple has lost their fuckin' minds with ram and storage upgrade pricing, but the machines as a whole are not that expensive relative to the competition.
When they were still on Intel you could literally build one with the same hardware, and the cost was substantially cheaper. Is the OS really worth >1K? Nah.
You could build a laptop? That’s news to me.
Macbook SE - M1 Chip for 599. Problem solved.
Did they ever redesign those awful keyboards from a few years back? Is the power cord still a motherfucking USB C plug?
What's wrong with usb c power? It's the greatest thing about the MacBook. I plug my s22 with it, and then i plug my MacBook with it. No extra effort, no extra plug.
Also yes their keyboards are good now
They're just delicate. Unless they make the back ones super high quality and durable. But I love the old magnet ones that just fall right out with no bending. I suppose the best of both worlds would be include a mag plug and also allow the USB ports to charge.
no to both, they are actually one of the best computers you can buy now. they brought the magnetic connector back, there are plenty of ports and the keyboard is good again.
Wanted to add that the touchbar is also gone, for anyone who wasn't aware.
I'm honeslty just wating till they bring out a new lineup without the ugly ass rounded corners they introduced with the M2 models. Also it would be nice if there was a clean version without all the legacy ports they added back on.
I ain't paying for Apple R&D. I'll consider them when they are cheap.
The M1 Air is the best deal in computing.