We know people didn't want the old one. The old one had lots of utility but: a) The price was high b) The case was ugly
OTOH in the used market you could get some fantastic deals. Which indicates that either: i) The case was ugly was the big problem ii) They just didn't need the power at all. There simply is no high end workstation market anymore. A good quality desktop is good enough for almost everyone.
I don't see any other alternative. What Apple is offering is a unit with terrific aesthetics and high utility relative to apple desktop at about $1000 more. So it offers people a clean choice do they want more utility or not without encumbering them with making an aesthetic sacrifice. If they don't buy the MacPro then we know that ultimately there just isn't a meaningfully sized workstation market and these things need to be made by small OEMs catering to niches. If it does sell then yes aesthetics were the problem.
The original poster was upset about losing some utility for aesthetics where he is defining utility in terms of expansion slots. Given things like thunderbolt chaining I have a hard time seeing why they matter much. And if they did matter then why can I still get such a great deal on a MacPro on eBay?
Yes I understand the numbers. The Microsoft market is huge but was in a serious pattern of decline. Microsoft made a strategic choice which allows for growth. Any choices involve huge numbers.
The bottom of the market represents lots of revenue but often low or even negative margin. They are also the customers most likely to go to Android in 2017-2021 regardless of what Microsoft does for cost reasons. The only thing is losing when they lose the bottom 1/3rd is one sale per at low or negative margin. That may be $35b in revenue per year but it isn't much more than $2b a year in OEM profits. In exchange for losing that segment Microsoft has the capability to raise prices, creating margin and quality again. The have the ability to create a real spread by 2018 between what you get with a Windows x86 laptop and what you get with a Android ARM laptop. A situation where the Windows x86 is simply so much better than the few hundred dollar price difference doesn't matter. Much as exists today.
If this works then Microsoft has created a stable situation for home/small business something like
top 10% Apple OSX mid 60% windows bottom 30% Android and iOS
with that middle 60% replacing every 4 years with gross margins well above 20%. That's a far better situation than what exists today for OEMs. And then of course from there Microsoft can expand out again moving up or down depending on which side is weaker.
once critical mass on "those other systems" is reached, developers will move from windows to "those other systems".
There are likely going to be 10b Android devices in use by 2020. Microsoft can't do anything about critical mass. Critical mass is a done deal. Android is way over critical mass and will be growing much faster than Microsoft for a decade regardless of what Microsoft does. iOS tablets are incredibly popular with developers because of the phone applications. Again they are at critical mass.
Certainly a few hundred million extra PC convert devices are, for the Android market, going to represent the high end. Normally they could very well act as the bridge between good quality Android applications for people who consider Android devices their secondary devices. Which is why normally Microsoft would be much more worried about setting up disruption from below. But... with the Android demographics a huge percentage of the people buying Android have no primary device. In places like China, India, Africa, the demand for Android applications which are more powerful already exists. So the bridge will exist regardless of what Microsoft does.
So that's not a real threat. If you don't agree with the strategy come up with a reasonable 10-15 year plan to fight off Android. Microsoft's plan makes sense. The stick with the existing paradigm plan is one which gives OEMs s few more slightly bad years in exchange for having to fight off Android devices that are comparable to what they are selling in 2018. They just simply get disrupted and lose.
I think Apple considers it to be feature on desktops as well. Again iMac and now the MacPro. I'd agree with you that who cares much about aesthetics in a desktop. But I see a ton of iMac.
1) I didn't say that wasn't true. You may want to reread the original. I more or less said that Microsoft should make it more punitive to help cover the cost of hardware.
2) OK that's fine. That's the 1/3rd of the market that is going to be most resistant to higher prices. No problem dropping that group there is no margin from them.
The used MacPros were an insanely good deal relative to comparable PC workstations or current iMacs. And frankly not a bad deal relative to PCs. So no, that's not true. They didn't run the latest OSX, but they would run Windows or Linux just fine if you didn't want to be stuck.
-- So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?
I'd say yes and I'm an Apple customer. The iPhone makes huge sacrifices for weight and thin. The rMBP makes huge sacrifices for weight and thin. the iMac. Yes, absolutely. aesthetics are a big part of what Apple sells.
We're looking at a nosedive in PC sales for everyone right now. Far worse than ever before.
That's the cause of Windows 8 not an effect. And you can tell that by the fact that the nosedive started 5 years ago, Windows 8 had little impact on the trajectory. The problem is:
a) a drop in ASP for desktops and laptops b) an increase in the recycle time c) alternatives which are driving up (b)
and soon (though not yet for most)
c') alternatives completely replacing x86.
Microsoft wants to fight this battle in 2013 rather than fighting it in 2017, before Android was ready. The Windows OEMs are not onboard a strategy of driving up price and features since mostly they were successful in living in the low margin / high volume world that Microsoft used to want. Getting the OEMs onboard fully is something that Microsoft will accomplish.
The OEMs are being pressured to release Windows 8 hardware: touchscreens, hinged or removable screens, ultra light weight.... Those systems benefit from Windows 8. The problem is the OEMs are insisting on selling Windows 7 systems with Windows 8 OS. I think Microsoft should have just made those sorts of features semi-mandatory (i.e. you pay a lot extra for the Windows 7 license but you don't need those features) but they didn't do that.
Still I'm glad they are holding the line. They have a very conservative customer base and ecosystem partners with a ton of bad habits.
Yes. Paying $200 to upgrade my iPhone from 16g to 64g which probably ran Apple about $30... Apple is usually overall high but reasonable but on some things total robbery.
It will eventually get really hard to ignore the corporate world and continue to explain that to shareholders. There's no way they're going to capture say >30% market share there without actually listening to what corporations need... The corporate world wants a platform that is dependable, easy to administer, doesn't arbitrarily break, and continues running crap internal software written by monkeys as long as possible. It's the almost the opposite of cool...
Jobs may be dead but Tim Cook is very much alive. The entire group of executives at Apple agrees with Job's philosophy regarding enterprise customers. Moreover at least in phones and tablets their "we'll show you what you want" does seem to be working for enterprise as well. I agree longterm it may not. I suspect that corporations that are standardizing in iPhone have no idea what their longterm maintenance costs are going to look like.
But that doesn't bother Apple. Apple announced that effective Feb 1, 2014 any applications submitted not optimized to the iOS7 graphics standards will not be accepted. That is Jan 31st is the last day to even give them updates to iOS6 apps that haven't undergone a GUI overhaul. iOS 7 was released September 2013. Or another example Feb 2012 Apple released OSX 10.7.3. By October many standard OSX applications were written using iOS 10.7.3 features. Apple is encouraging this behavior in their ecosystem. Right now enterprises are dealing with that speed of upgrade and incurring costs whenever Apple wants them to incur costs.
Obviously enterprises would prefer the world they have now. But they also seem to want a world of good software and higher quality. They are conflicting interests within an enterprise that have conflicting goals. Ownership may want maximum profits. Cutting administrative costs in IT may require a locked down unpleasant environment like many employees experience on their work Windows computers. But working in a locked down unpleasant environment might sap employee productivity so much that it doesn't make financial sense. That's what many companies are finding that encouraged a BYOD policy originally.
Moreover Microsoft is shifting towards Apple's model. Enterprises may not have any options. Enterprises by cutting their spend on desktops also reduced their influence. If they were pending $2k / desktop every 30 mo then more people would care about what they wanted. At $1k / desktop ever 60 mo there isn't that much money to be made (on selling them the desktops). I can easily see a cycle happening where enterprises have to boost their spend to become an influential enough market again for people to chase them as they cut their spend.
You understand that Microsoft's goal is to get "unscrewed".
Look at your syllogism: Increases in technology don't save money therefore companies have no reason to invest in new tech therefore Microsoft is going to see falling revenue and profits
The best thing for Microsoft to do is shatter the first premise. Increasing the cost of remaining on XP helps them create a reason for people to move to newer technology. That's my point. The more IE 6 costs in effort and money the more business sense it makes for the customers to revise those applications. That is it is in Microsoft's interests to drive up the cost of legacy software. It isn't in their interests to keep them low.
I happen to think that Microsoft has the potential for another generation of technology based savings for most of their customers. But for those customers to realize that they are going to need to start spending on IT again, not living in a world where the choice is between doing little and doing nothing.
Institutionally AT&T increased the spread between their subsidy and non-subsidy plans so that they can do subsidies. They fixed the problem but in the other direction.
In the last 18 mo USA telcos have boosted their standard subsidies and restructured their pricing to support it. It doesn't look like they intend to move away from a high subsidy model.
I've been doing upgrades for companies for two decades. I understand what's involved. I also understand that prior to XP it was an expected reoccurring expense. As does Microsoft.
As for people switching platforms. A platform switch is 20x the cost or more quite often. Reread your own arguments and consider them in light of a platform switch.
And IT departments vigilant enough that they carefully monitor for any signs of compromise are likely the same IT departments that are not being taken by surprise (or laziness) by their OS being EOLed.
Laziness. And yes. This year they finished upgrading department of labor to Win7. Had a few more things gone wrong.... Pfizer last year was on XP with no clear upgrade path and all sorts of IE6 dependencies. Both of them had fairly good IT departments. They just allowed themselves to get stuck on a particular version of Windows.
Those in denial are going to gradually improve though, they already have. Microsoft's not backing down has finally forced them to start spending again on desktop infrastructure, particularly application conversion, at a faster rate. Those ISVs that didn't want to migrate their product have heard from their most stables customers, now or never. It is working.
How does Microsoft benefit from allowing a business to contribute less to the ecosystem financially and hold development back? I understand the benefit to the company but how does this behavior you've outlined benefit Microsoft? Microsoft very much wants to break the habits this company has formed of seeing their desktop platform as stable and moving towards a low cost support model. That's precisely the business model that existed among IBM, DEC, Unisys customers that caused PCs to replace mainframes and minis at the individual worker and department level.
They've allowed there to exist an expectation that IE6 is going to exist forever. They need to break that expectation.
But more importantly they want their developer community to be able to target Windows 7 and have the applications evolve. They want the PC space to go back to a world of rapid improvement.
It removed command line tools breaking my build setup... and when I added that back I find there's no gdb with Mavericks. My build environment is crippled on lldb until the third party stuff can sort that out.
port install gdb If you are using gdb you should be using macports or fink.
until Apple gets the message.
Apple will never get the message. They expect their developers to get the betas and release updates for the new OS. They do not want to encourage a culture of backward compatibility like Microsoft has. They want developers to be able to use new features and new standard immediately.
They aren't going to support those customers. Those customers were told the day they bought it when they needed to be upgraded by. They expect enterprise customers to be responsible.
Slashdot Mirror
Well then:
We know people didn't want the old one. The old one had lots of utility but:
a) The price was high
b) The case was ugly
OTOH in the used market you could get some fantastic deals. Which indicates that either:
i) The case was ugly was the big problem
ii) They just didn't need the power at all. There simply is no high end workstation market anymore. A good quality desktop is good enough for almost everyone.
I don't see any other alternative. What Apple is offering is a unit with terrific aesthetics and high utility relative to apple desktop at about $1000 more. So it offers people a clean choice do they want more utility or not without encumbering them with making an aesthetic sacrifice. If they don't buy the MacPro then we know that ultimately there just isn't a meaningfully sized workstation market and these things need to be made by small OEMs catering to niches. If it does sell then yes aesthetics were the problem.
The original poster was upset about losing some utility for aesthetics where he is defining utility in terms of expansion slots. Given things like thunderbolt chaining I have a hard time seeing why they matter much. And if they did matter then why can I still get such a great deal on a MacPro on eBay?
Yes I understand the numbers. The Microsoft market is huge but was in a serious pattern of decline. Microsoft made a strategic choice which allows for growth. Any choices involve huge numbers.
The bottom of the market represents lots of revenue but often low or even negative margin. They are also the customers most likely to go to Android in 2017-2021 regardless of what Microsoft does for cost reasons. The only thing is losing when they lose the bottom 1/3rd is one sale per at low or negative margin. That may be $35b in revenue per year but it isn't much more than $2b a year in OEM profits. In exchange for losing that segment Microsoft has the capability to raise prices, creating margin and quality again. The have the ability to create a real spread by 2018 between what you get with a Windows x86 laptop and what you get with a Android ARM laptop. A situation where the Windows x86 is simply so much better than the few hundred dollar price difference doesn't matter. Much as exists today.
If this works then Microsoft has created a stable situation for home/small business something like
top 10% Apple OSX
mid 60% windows
bottom 30% Android and iOS
with that middle 60% replacing every 4 years with gross margins well above 20%. That's a far better situation than what exists today for OEMs. And then of course from there Microsoft can expand out again moving up or down depending on which side is weaker.
There are likely going to be 10b Android devices in use by 2020. Microsoft can't do anything about critical mass. Critical mass is a done deal. Android is way over critical mass and will be growing much faster than Microsoft for a decade regardless of what Microsoft does. iOS tablets are incredibly popular with developers because of the phone applications. Again they are at critical mass.
Certainly a few hundred million extra PC convert devices are, for the Android market, going to represent the high end. Normally they could very well act as the bridge between good quality Android applications for people who consider Android devices their secondary devices. Which is why normally Microsoft would be much more worried about setting up disruption from below. But... with the Android demographics a huge percentage of the people buying Android have no primary device. In places like China, India, Africa, the demand for Android applications which are more powerful already exists. So the bridge will exist regardless of what Microsoft does.
So that's not a real threat. If you don't agree with the strategy come up with a reasonable 10-15 year plan to fight off Android. Microsoft's plan makes sense. The stick with the existing paradigm plan is one which gives OEMs s few more slightly bad years in exchange for having to fight off Android devices that are comparable to what they are selling in 2018. They just simply get disrupted and lose.
I think Apple considers it to be feature on desktops as well. Again iMac and now the MacPro. I'd agree with you that who cares much about aesthetics in a desktop. But I see a ton of iMac.
1) I didn't say that wasn't true. You may want to reread the original. I more or less said that Microsoft should make it more punitive to help cover the cost of hardware.
2) OK that's fine. That's the 1/3rd of the market that is going to be most resistant to higher prices. No problem dropping that group there is no margin from them.
W/hat do you think I'm lying about.
Which companies are those in terms of desktops?
The used MacPros were an insanely good deal relative to comparable PC workstations or current iMacs. And frankly not a bad deal relative to PCs. So no, that's not true. They didn't run the latest OSX, but they would run Windows or Linux just fine if you didn't want to be stuck.
-- So, Apple's typical customer cares more about aesthetic than usefulness?
I'd say yes and I'm an Apple customer. The iPhone makes huge sacrifices for weight and thin. The rMBP makes huge sacrifices for weight and thin. the iMac. Yes, absolutely. aesthetics are a big part of what Apple sells.
That's the cause of Windows 8 not an effect. And you can tell that by the fact that the nosedive started 5 years ago, Windows 8 had little impact on the trajectory. The problem is:
a) a drop in ASP for desktops and laptops
b) an increase in the recycle time
c) alternatives which are driving up (b)
and soon (though not yet for most)
c') alternatives completely replacing x86.
Microsoft wants to fight this battle in 2013 rather than fighting it in 2017, before Android was ready. The Windows OEMs are not onboard a strategy of driving up price and features since mostly they were successful in living in the low margin / high volume world that Microsoft used to want. Getting the OEMs onboard fully is something that Microsoft will accomplish.
The OEMs are being pressured to release Windows 8 hardware: touchscreens, hinged or removable screens, ultra light weight.... Those systems benefit from Windows 8. The problem is the OEMs are insisting on selling Windows 7 systems with Windows 8 OS. I think Microsoft should have just made those sorts of features semi-mandatory (i.e. you pay a lot extra for the Windows 7 license but you don't need those features) but they didn't do that.
Still I'm glad they are holding the line. They have a very conservative customer base and ecosystem partners with a ton of bad habits.
They aren't going to. 17" macbook didn't sell well. There isn't the demand.
Yes. Paying $200 to upgrade my iPhone from 16g to 64g which probably ran Apple about $30... Apple is usually overall high but reasonable but on some things total robbery.
I don't see it. Just to test I configured a dell workstation and I'm within about 12% with a few things still worse.
People aren't buying the old one. Apple's customers don't want the size.
Jobs may be dead but Tim Cook is very much alive. The entire group of executives at Apple agrees with Job's philosophy regarding enterprise customers. Moreover at least in phones and tablets their "we'll show you what you want" does seem to be working for enterprise as well. I agree longterm it may not. I suspect that corporations that are standardizing in iPhone have no idea what their longterm maintenance costs are going to look like.
But that doesn't bother Apple. Apple announced that effective Feb 1, 2014 any applications submitted not optimized to the iOS7 graphics standards will not be accepted. That is Jan 31st is the last day to even give them updates to iOS6 apps that haven't undergone a GUI overhaul. iOS 7 was released September 2013. Or another example Feb 2012 Apple released OSX 10.7.3. By October many standard OSX applications were written using iOS 10.7.3 features. Apple is encouraging this behavior in their ecosystem. Right now enterprises are dealing with that speed of upgrade and incurring costs whenever Apple wants them to incur costs.
Obviously enterprises would prefer the world they have now. But they also seem to want a world of good software and higher quality. They are conflicting interests within an enterprise that have conflicting goals. Ownership may want maximum profits. Cutting administrative costs in IT may require a locked down unpleasant environment like many employees experience on their work Windows computers. But working in a locked down unpleasant environment might sap employee productivity so much that it doesn't make financial sense. That's what many companies are finding that encouraged a BYOD policy originally.
Moreover Microsoft is shifting towards Apple's model. Enterprises may not have any options. Enterprises by cutting their spend on desktops also reduced their influence. If they were pending $2k / desktop every 30 mo then more people would care about what they wanted. At $1k / desktop ever 60 mo there isn't that much money to be made (on selling them the desktops). I can easily see a cycle happening where enterprises have to boost their spend to become an influential enough market again for people to chase them as they cut their spend.
So I don't see the situation as that clear cut.
You understand that Microsoft's goal is to get "unscrewed".
Look at your syllogism:
Increases in technology don't save money
therefore companies have no reason to invest in new tech
therefore Microsoft is going to see falling revenue and profits
The best thing for Microsoft to do is shatter the first premise. Increasing the cost of remaining on XP helps them create a reason for people to move to newer technology. That's my point. The more IE 6 costs in effort and money the more business sense it makes for the customers to revise those applications. That is it is in Microsoft's interests to drive up the cost of legacy software. It isn't in their interests to keep them low.
I happen to think that Microsoft has the potential for another generation of technology based savings for most of their customers. But for those customers to realize that they are going to need to start spending on IT again, not living in a world where the choice is between doing little and doing nothing.
Institutionally AT&T increased the spread between their subsidy and non-subsidy plans so that they can do subsidies. They fixed the problem but in the other direction.
In the last 18 mo USA telcos have boosted their standard subsidies and restructured their pricing to support it. It doesn't look like they intend to move away from a high subsidy model.
I've been doing upgrades for companies for two decades. I understand what's involved. I also understand that prior to XP it was an expected reoccurring expense. As does Microsoft.
As for people switching platforms. A platform switch is 20x the cost or more quite often. Reread your own arguments and consider them in light of a platform switch.
Laziness. And yes. This year they finished upgrading department of labor to Win7. Had a few more things gone wrong.... Pfizer last year was on XP with no clear upgrade path and all sorts of IE6 dependencies. Both of them had fairly good IT departments. They just allowed themselves to get stuck on a particular version of Windows.
Those in denial are going to gradually improve though, they already have. Microsoft's not backing down has finally forced them to start spending again on desktop infrastructure, particularly application conversion, at a faster rate. Those ISVs that didn't want to migrate their product have heard from their most stables customers, now or never. It is working.
How does Microsoft benefit from allowing a business to contribute less to the ecosystem financially and hold development back? I understand the benefit to the company but how does this behavior you've outlined benefit Microsoft? Microsoft very much wants to break the habits this company has formed of seeing their desktop platform as stable and moving towards a low cost support model. That's precisely the business model that existed among IBM, DEC, Unisys customers that caused PCs to replace mainframes and minis at the individual worker and department level.
They've allowed there to exist an expectation that IE6 is going to exist forever. They need to break that expectation.
Not really. Anyone on XP is pretty cheap.
But more importantly they want their developer community to be able to target Windows 7 and have the applications evolve. They want the PC space to go back to a world of rapid improvement.
port install gdb
If you are using gdb you should be using macports or fink.
Apple will never get the message. They expect their developers to get the betas and release updates for the new OS. They do not want to encourage a culture of backward compatibility like Microsoft has. They want developers to be able to use new features and new standard immediately.
Apple drops support for machines after about 3-4 years. They mostly drop support for OSes usually about 2 years after release.
I use OSX but Microsoft gives far better long term support.
Prior to the release of XP support was scheduled to end in 2008. It got extended.
They aren't going to support those customers. Those customers were told the day they bought it when they needed to be upgraded by. They expect enterprise customers to be responsible.