Simon
November 4
Apple shouted from the rooftops when they sold more Macs than PCs.
I don’t ever remember reading or hearing anything about Macs having more unit sales than PCs, even for one quarter. Please provide a respected source for this claim. It’s my day job to know this stuff, and I do need to know specifics. I couldn’t find anything in a quick search.
Now we just saw Apple sell fewer Macs while during the same quarter several PC manufacturers sold many more units. It’s the same metric.
Manufacturer to manufacturer is a totally different story. To make a valid comparison about unit sales, you need to look at specific products within a price range. Otherwise it’s like comparing cubic zirconia to diamonds, or the cheapest car to the $13 million Rolls Royce Sweptail.
There is no narrative. This is not politics. It’s applying the same metric and not choosing which side to come down on depending on which brand had the plus sign and which had the minus sign in front of their numbers. Apple has always made more revenue and that’s great if you’re one of their shareholders. But Apple making more revenue does not make the Mac user experience any better.
Apple couldn’t even cover its derrière for quite a few years while they focused on lower end pricing and licensed Mac OS out to even cheaper manufacturers. It took Steve Jobs to focus Mac back to the high end premium range and broaden the product line to include mobile devices and services for the company to become healthy once again.
Hence, their revenue is not was this thread was ever about. This thread was about Mac users and Mac buyers, and what has changed as of lately for them.
Apple is making big profits off of Macs because people are willing to pay more for them. If they once again moved from their focus on premium products and services. And there is the chance that services could become so popular that Apple changes its privacy and security policies to start selling data and advertising like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, and prices of Apple products go down.
Apple wasn’t able to maintain number of Macs sold (their numbers, not Gartner’s, not mine)—obviously fewer people wanted to buy a new Mac.
I’m sorry that you feel bad about this; like you and most other consumers, I’m not happy about shelling out mega bucks for Macs too. But whenever I have used a PC over the years, it has made my life totally miserable and my time considerably less productive. Though I’d rather spend the money I’ll be doling out for a new Mini or Air in the next few months on fashion and entertainment, a cheaper PC is not a good option for me. And I do realize that in order to remain in the black Macs have to necessarily cost more than PCs, and that there are people like me that are willing to spend more for what is the better system for me.
In the past it had been suggested that that was because all manufacturers were selling fewer computers. But as we just witnessed, that is not the case. Apple sold fewer units while their competitors sold more. To somebody who’s interested in using Macs (as opposed to making money off Apple shares) that’s a bad sign.
In economic terms, what it means is that Macs are more profitable than PCs and Apple is not a non or not for profit company. Although many fewer people are willing to pay a lot more for Macs, they are extremely more profitable than PCs. It’s one of the reasons why Apple is very profitable while still sitting on mega billions of dollars in cash and is the first trillion dollar US company, and is currently the only trillion dollar firm in the world.