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Posted by Andy Brice
Jun 12, 2019 at 04:01 PM
satis wrote:
>I don’t see Apple “ignoring” the Mac at all. PC sales overall are
>stagnating, and iOS devices have easily outsold the Mac (which is less
>than 10% of Apple’s business) but Apple sells 3 laptop lines, two
>desktop lines, and two all-in-one lines, and five of those models have
>been refreshed within the last year.
The overall trend in Mac sales look pretty flat in recent years in this graph (up to end 2018):
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/
Also I detect from talking to my peers that the Mac is gradually losing mindshare among developers (that is only anecdotal, I don’t have any data to back that up).
>
>For someone who is a Mac developer (I own your app, by the way, though I
>don’t use it) you seem to be dismissing out of hand the considerable
>attention and focus Apple has consistently provided to Mac devs. This
>year’s Catalyst framework intro alone will allow huge numbers of iOS
>devs to create Mac apps with the same code with relative ease. (Twitter
>migrated and tweaked its iOS app to Mac using that framework, using a
>small team, in 3 days.). Apple ported 40 frameworks from iOS to Mac, and
>almost the entire iOS API set with only a few exceptions, by adapting
>UIKit as a native framework and integrating it directly into macOS.
I was referring more to the hardware. The major changes there seem to be to remove ports, make the keyboard worse and add a ‘touchbar’, which I’m not sure many people use. I don’t see many signs of the hardware innovation that the Mac used to be known for. A lot of the PC laptops now have aluminium cases and high res displays.
—
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com
Posted by satis
Jun 12, 2019 at 04:18 PM
As I pointed out, 5 of Apple’s 7 Mac models were refreshed in the last year. Sales have not declined. It rose in the rankings of shipped laptops during a period of overall worldwide PC decline. The macOS is not being given short-shrift either. And individual discussions with some developers don’t amount to more than some self-selected data points that ppear to mainly reinforce an opinion that is otherwise debatable.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 12, 2019 at 05:32 PM
As a committed Apple user, I must nevertheless agree that Apple haven’t dealt well with a couple of issues:
- the Keyboard Thing!
- the ridiculous Touch Bar
- the lack of ports, in particular of SD card ports.
My various Macs date from an era before they did away with so many ports; my SD port is a vital part of my backup strategy.
But the latest developers’ shindig did appear to be a big turnaround, with the introduction of a genuine Mac workstation and a genuine Mac professional monitor at prices that are highly competitive with other professional workstations (despite the sad, deluded press wittering on about how expensive the Mac Pro is: detail’s in the name, people). Plus a fantastic boost to macOS, and the exciting hiving-off of iPadOS.
I’m hoping they’ll have been listening to their users’ views on laptops, too. We’ll see.
One thing Apple have always got right: their laptops are built like tanks and last for ever (apart, it appears, from the keyboard). Long may that continue!
Posted by Paul Korm
Jun 12, 2019 at 07:34 PM
I am one of the 3 people in North America who likes the TouchBar. I think there’s a fellow in Uruguay who likes it, also, and a doctoral candidate in Kazakhstan who depends on it for her thesis work.
Otherwise, not widely used.
Posted by Simon
Jun 13, 2019 at 08:39 PM
satis wrote:
>
>Simon wrote:
>
>>Apps are more expensive now than ever before.
>
>Simply saying “apps are more expensive” is overbroad and incorrect. In
>2009 the average price in the App Store is $1.39 for games and $2.58 for
>all apps, and that average has dropped every year since the App Store
>was opened in 2008. As of 2018 9 of 10 apps in the App Store are free or
>freemium, and the average prices are $1.01 and the average game price is
>$0.49, according to Statista. The popularity of cheap/free apps (led by
>the cheapness of customers) has driven down prices over the years, and
>this is something any developer on any platform can attest to.
>
>
You know what they say, “there are lies, damn lies and statistics”. Many “free” apps are not actually free and have fairly hefty IAPs or extremely intrusive ads or collect all your data and sell to the highest bidder or a mixture of the three. Stats on prices are too simplistic. In terms of the end user, most I know attest that software is more expensive on their monthly budget than it has ever been. Again, I know others have quoted prices, “back in the day”, but development cycles were further apart and the quantity of software purchased by the average user was not nearly as high as today. Plus most users did not upgrade with every new version. OS’s could run two or three iterations between upgrades as could applications such as Wordperfect or MSOffice. All these options are disappearing. I would happily pay for a stable Tiger OSX rather than the beachball version of today. Plus devs are now selling beta versions allowing the customer to pay to iron out the bugs, some of which never get fixed.
In this endless debate (which I started and apologise for!), my personal experience is that it is costing me more now than it did before. That is my bottomline. It feels a bit like things were in the day of post (you know, the envelopes you put stamps on and send off). You knew once that letter was sent it was at least 3-5 days before you had to deal with that again. With the advent of email the reply comes when you sleep the same day. Software use to be purchased, used for a good while, upgraded at your leisure, costs where manageable, but now this has all gone. It’s push push push, spend spend spend. Of course you don’t have to, but in the CRIMPing world you always feel there’s a better piece of software around the corner! Someone once said that it was better to use a few programmes well than have many that gain occasional use. Perhaps CRIMPing has a lifespan after which one loses interest realising that that one app we’re all looking for will never materialise, or maybe cost finally catches up with each of us or that in the myriad of apps we can no longer find the information we need!