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This is a very clever analysis. Thanks for that, it makes a lot of sense. It also explains why it's shifted from being a computer company that makes gadgets (J

This is a very clever analysis. Thanks for that, it makes a lot of sense. It also explains why it's shifted from being a computer company that makes gadgets (Jobs) is now becoming a gadget company that happens to make some computers as well (Cook). In all this, the gates are wide open for Microsoft to score some good points here towards devs.

triangleman 10y ago
How do you figure there has been a "shift" like you said? In 2007 Jobs was using the phrase "post-PC", and by the time he died in 2011, more than half of Apple's revenue was iPhone/iPad/etc. To me it seems that Cook is just continuing the trend.
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Precisely. Continuing Steve's vision as best they can imagine it (not well). Don't forget when he used the post-PC phrase he was very clear PCs are still going to be needed and valued. It wasn't supposed to be either-or. Pretty sure in 6 years Jobs would have picked up some new trends, details and directions. Pretty sure we'd not be stuck in some infinte repeat loop. Thinner. Groundhog Day. Repeat.
- wineisfine 10y ago
  The shift is the pure neglect towards the dev community. Something that most likely would not have happened so blatant and fast under Jobs. It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware. Why should one exclude the other?
  - caconym_ 10y ago
    How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?
    - Lio 10y ago
      Well a computer with enough GPU performance to work with VR would be a nice start. Apple don't currently have anything available other than hacking an eGPU set up together. The "current" Mac Pro is over 3 (4?) years old now. Users can't upgrade it because of the proprietary GPU cards and Apple don't seem able to keep it relevant themselves. It's difficult to have a professional relationship with a supplier where the best options for macOS are either a dodgy Hackintosh or a used 2012 Mac Pro with a new GPU.
      - nilkn 10y ago
        VR is a subset of PC gaming right now, and Apple has never offered hardware sufficient for high-end PC gaming.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        intoverflow2 10y ago
        GPUs are for more than VR. All 3D rendering is moving to GPUs, All machine learning development needs GPUs. GPU is the future of professional computing in many emerging sectors. Apple currently ships no hardware compatible with any of this.
        toyg 10y ago
        GPU nowadays is almost a misnomer. They are more like supercharged versions of the old "floating-point calculation" chips. As such, they have plenty of applications beyond VR - bitcoin, data analysis, encryption etc etc etc.
    - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      Here's one piece of anecdata, not for a "dev" but for another high-end use case: professional photography. My wife is a professional photographer. Her current photo-editing computer is a Windows 7 desktop with 16 GB of RAM. We know Windows 7's days are numbered, so we're starting to think about her next editing computer. The two most obvious options are (a) some Apple product, or (b) a computer running Windows 10. Here are the major criteria for the replacement, which need to remain true for 3+ years after the computer's purchase: (1) It must legally run current Adobe products. (2) Can support > 16 GB RAM during its lifetime. (3) There must be minimal unplanned downtime. (4) The price can't be exorbitant, relative to a medium-high end PC. TCO should also be reasonable. (5) It must be convenient to transfer photos from her camera's SD card. (6) We'd like to minimize the time and attention we put into initial setup and maintenance. So the most obvious options (currently) are: * Apple: MacPro, iMac, or MacBook Pro * PC: Windows 8 or Windows 10 Here's how I score the options, although perhaps someone will correct me: (1) Easily satisfied by all options listed. (2) No MacBook Pro satisfies this. Fast SSD for swap is helpful but sub-optimal. (3) Windows 10 (non-enterprise) fails this, because of unavoidable updates. MacPro and iMac fail this because (AFAIK) Apple doesn't offer loaners for these during warranty work. (4) For initial purchase cost, the MacPro is a fail, and the MacBook Pro is nearly a fail. However, all current Apple products are potential TCO fail given the lack of user-replaceable components. (5) AFAIK the desktop Macs fail this, although connecting an external USB reader should be easy enough. I suspect the MacBook Pro would be more hassle, given its ports/dongles mess. (6) All of the options should satisfy this criterion well-enough. As far as I can tell, the winner is a Windows 8 PC. Why is no Apple product a viable winner, given our criteria? - Nothing in the current lineup meets all our criteria. - We don't know if/when something will be added that meets our criteria. - We're not sure what Apple's longer-term plans are, so we don't want to invest time/money into a PC-to-Apple transition, just to need to reverse it in a few years. The three issues listed immediately above strike me as a pointless fail in Apple's strategy, at least relative to my wife's business's needs.
  - visarga 10y ago
    > It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware. You bet! all those billions sitting in their coffers and they still couldn't pull their asses to achieve progress. It is like Microsoft of the XP era. I was pulling my hairs in 2003 cursing at Bill Gates, then switched to Mac until now. But I think the Mac era is over as well and Bill Gates is cool again. He's really great in his humanitarian work.
    - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      > He's really great in his humanitarian work. I'm sure a lot of what Gates is currently doing is praiseworthy. But to be even-handed, we should also remember the means by which he obtained a lot of the money he's giving away.
- sjwright 10y ago
  Indeed Jobs himself described computers as like trucks (large ute/pickup), whereas most people only need a regular car.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    Jobs was a salesman. He said a lot of stuff - and not all of it stood up to scrutiny. He said no one would use phablets and called them the 'Hummers' of phones - this was back when a 5-inch phones were considered huge. He also denigrated 7-inch tablets by saying users would need to file-down their fingers to use them (and yet iPhone users could comfortably use 3.5-inch screens). Apple proceeded to profitably venture into both product categories with the iPhone 6+ and the iPad mini. We are now in a post-'Post-PC' world: iPad sales have plateaued/slumped over the last couple of years. If there is money to be made selling computers, Apple will sell them regardless of what they said in the past.
    - icantdrive55 10y ago
      He was also a gadget guy, who loved computers, has a deep appreciation for music, and from a humble backround. Yea--he said a few things, but less than a lot of CEOs. He was so much more than a Salesman. I will never forget some of his last thoughts. This one always haunted me, 'Tim is not a gadget guy, and that was my only concern.' Steve won me over to Apple. I never thought I would be that guy. As it stands now, I doubt I would buy a new Apple Product ever again.
- gubbe 10y ago
  Looks more like post-MBP
gutnor 10y ago
Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along. The true value of Steve Jobs is the reality distortion field. That's really was is missing here with the new Mac. All the discutable decisions about the Mac that people complain about are just similar to the trends set under Jobs, the difference is that he would make the people believe that Apple was 100% behind the Mac. There would no need for Jobs to write twice in a month to employee and the press to say that Apple was committed to it. I'm not sure what is missing exactly, but the MBP failed at delivery rather than feature. For example, did Apple really need to can all their Mac related accessories at the same time, building up a negative climate. They could have rebranded the LG monitor. Somehow give the people a hint that Apple is behind the USB-C, not just picking up and leave it up to the third party to sort out. (which is BTW what Apple has always really done, it just seemed handled better) Apple strategy is to keep everything secret until they do a big delivery event. They are utterly bad at delivery since Jobs is gone, and the lengthy secrecy they keep around everything is now not building hype, just building apprehension.
- leoc 10y ago
  > Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along. That's not the case: back in 2001 post-PC thinking was popular too, and Jobs stood out against it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvmtmqqbeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvmtmqqbeI . That's evidently why Jobs was so reluctant to make the iPod work with Windows PCs: his whole plan for the iPod was to have it sell his intended Digital Hub, the Mac. He did eventually come around to post-PC thinking of course, but only quite late: even in the D 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PMSYAguZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PMSYAguZ8 he and Gates were quite resistant to it.

triangleman 10y ago

How do you figure there has been a "shift" like you said? In 2007 Jobs was using the phrase "post-PC", and by the time he died in 2011, more than half of Apple's revenue was iPhone/iPad/etc. To me it seems that Cook is just continuing the trend.

anexprogrammer 10y ago
Precisely. Continuing Steve's vision as best they can imagine it (not well). Don't forget when he used the post-PC phrase he was very clear PCs are still going to be needed and valued. It wasn't supposed to be either-or. Pretty sure in 6 years Jobs would have picked up some new trends, details and directions. Pretty sure we'd not be stuck in some infinte repeat loop. Thinner. Groundhog Day. Repeat.
wineisfine 10y ago
The shift is the pure neglect towards the dev community. Something that most likely would not have happened so blatant and fast under Jobs. It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware. Why should one exclude the other?
- caconym_ 10y ago
  How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?
  - Lio 10y ago
    Well a computer with enough GPU performance to work with VR would be a nice start. Apple don't currently have anything available other than hacking an eGPU set up together. The "current" Mac Pro is over 3 (4?) years old now. Users can't upgrade it because of the proprietary GPU cards and Apple don't seem able to keep it relevant themselves. It's difficult to have a professional relationship with a supplier where the best options for macOS are either a dodgy Hackintosh or a used 2012 Mac Pro with a new GPU.
    - nilkn 10y ago
      VR is a subset of PC gaming right now, and Apple has never offered hardware sufficient for high-end PC gaming.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - intoverflow2 10y ago
        GPUs are for more than VR. All 3D rendering is moving to GPUs, All machine learning development needs GPUs. GPU is the future of professional computing in many emerging sectors. Apple currently ships no hardware compatible with any of this.
      - toyg 10y ago
        GPU nowadays is almost a misnomer. They are more like supercharged versions of the old "floating-point calculation" chips. As such, they have plenty of applications beyond VR - bitcoin, data analysis, encryption etc etc etc.
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    Here's one piece of anecdata, not for a "dev" but for another high-end use case: professional photography. My wife is a professional photographer. Her current photo-editing computer is a Windows 7 desktop with 16 GB of RAM. We know Windows 7's days are numbered, so we're starting to think about her next editing computer. The two most obvious options are (a) some Apple product, or (b) a computer running Windows 10. Here are the major criteria for the replacement, which need to remain true for 3+ years after the computer's purchase: (1) It must legally run current Adobe products. (2) Can support > 16 GB RAM during its lifetime. (3) There must be minimal unplanned downtime. (4) The price can't be exorbitant, relative to a medium-high end PC. TCO should also be reasonable. (5) It must be convenient to transfer photos from her camera's SD card. (6) We'd like to minimize the time and attention we put into initial setup and maintenance. So the most obvious options (currently) are: * Apple: MacPro, iMac, or MacBook Pro * PC: Windows 8 or Windows 10 Here's how I score the options, although perhaps someone will correct me: (1) Easily satisfied by all options listed. (2) No MacBook Pro satisfies this. Fast SSD for swap is helpful but sub-optimal. (3) Windows 10 (non-enterprise) fails this, because of unavoidable updates. MacPro and iMac fail this because (AFAIK) Apple doesn't offer loaners for these during warranty work. (4) For initial purchase cost, the MacPro is a fail, and the MacBook Pro is nearly a fail. However, all current Apple products are potential TCO fail given the lack of user-replaceable components. (5) AFAIK the desktop Macs fail this, although connecting an external USB reader should be easy enough. I suspect the MacBook Pro would be more hassle, given its ports/dongles mess. (6) All of the options should satisfy this criterion well-enough. As far as I can tell, the winner is a Windows 8 PC. Why is no Apple product a viable winner, given our criteria? - Nothing in the current lineup meets all our criteria. - We don't know if/when something will be added that meets our criteria. - We're not sure what Apple's longer-term plans are, so we don't want to invest time/money into a PC-to-Apple transition, just to need to reverse it in a few years. The three issues listed immediately above strike me as a pointless fail in Apple's strategy, at least relative to my wife's business's needs.
- visarga 10y ago
  > It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware. You bet! all those billions sitting in their coffers and they still couldn't pull their asses to achieve progress. It is like Microsoft of the XP era. I was pulling my hairs in 2003 cursing at Bill Gates, then switched to Mac until now. But I think the Mac era is over as well and Bill Gates is cool again. He's really great in his humanitarian work.
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    > He's really great in his humanitarian work. I'm sure a lot of what Gates is currently doing is praiseworthy. But to be even-handed, we should also remember the means by which he obtained a lot of the money he's giving away.
sjwright 10y ago
Indeed Jobs himself described computers as like trucks (large ute/pickup), whereas most people only need a regular car.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8
- sangnoir 10y ago
  Jobs was a salesman. He said a lot of stuff - and not all of it stood up to scrutiny. He said no one would use phablets and called them the 'Hummers' of phones - this was back when a 5-inch phones were considered huge. He also denigrated 7-inch tablets by saying users would need to file-down their fingers to use them (and yet iPhone users could comfortably use 3.5-inch screens). Apple proceeded to profitably venture into both product categories with the iPhone 6+ and the iPad mini. We are now in a post-'Post-PC' world: iPad sales have plateaued/slumped over the last couple of years. If there is money to be made selling computers, Apple will sell them regardless of what they said in the past.
  - icantdrive55 10y ago
    He was also a gadget guy, who loved computers, has a deep appreciation for music, and from a humble backround. Yea--he said a few things, but less than a lot of CEOs. He was so much more than a Salesman. I will never forget some of his last thoughts. This one always haunted me, 'Tim is not a gadget guy, and that was my only concern.' Steve won me over to Apple. I never thought I would be that guy. As it stands now, I doubt I would buy a new Apple Product ever again.
gubbe 10y ago
Looks more like post-MBP

gutnor 10y ago

Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along. The true value of Steve Jobs is the reality distortion field. That's really was is missing here with the new Mac. All the discutable decisions about the Mac that people complain about are just similar to the trends set under Jobs, the difference is that he would make the people believe that Apple was 100% behind the Mac. There would no need for Jobs to write twice in a month to employee and the press to say that Apple was committed to it. I'm not sure what is missing exactly, but the MBP failed at delivery rather than feature. For example, did Apple really need to can all their Mac related accessories at the same time, building up a negative climate. They could have rebranded the LG monitor. Somehow give the people a hint that Apple is behind the USB-C, not just picking up and leave it up to the third party to sort out. (which is BTW what Apple has always really done, it just seemed handled better) Apple strategy is to keep everything secret until they do a big delivery event. They are utterly bad at delivery since Jobs is gone, and the lengthy secrecy they keep around everything is now not building hype, just building apprehension.

leoc 10y ago
> Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along. That's not the case: back in 2001 post-PC thinking was popular too, and Jobs stood out against it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvmtmqqbeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvmtmqqbeI . That's evidently why Jobs was so reluctant to make the iPod work with Windows PCs: his whole plan for the iPod was to have it sell his intended Digital Hub, the Mac. He did eventually come around to post-PC thinking of course, but only quite late: even in the D 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PMSYAguZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PMSYAguZ8 he and Gates were quite resistant to it.