Apple reports surprise dip in iPhone sales

Apple had it and lost it

Yeah they only sold 50 million iPhones and had a revenue increase. Failures.

strangerland:

Apple goes down every year, don't you know that? Haters just can't explain how it gets richer everytime it goes down LOL

there are those waiting for a new mac pro since the last released was 2013.

Don't expect it anytime soon - Apple erred by running themselves into the computer-equivalent of an architectural dead-end with the Mac Pro

Apple: "We're sorry for what happened with Mac Pro", but new version isn't coming this year

https://www.neowin.net/news/apple-we039re-sorry-for-what-happened-with-mac-pro-but-new-version-isn039t-coming-this-year

Many Apple users and fans have been hoping that the company would finally release a new version of its Mac Pro desktop PCs this year. The most recent Mac Pro was introduced in December 2013, featuring a distinctive cylindrical design, but while Apple has since introduced several new generations of its iPhones, iPads and Mac notebooks, the Mac Pro line has stagnated over the last few years.

The frustration over Apple's apparent lack of commitment to its pro-users intensified last year, when Microsoft unveiled its Surface Studio all-in-one PC, targeting creative professionals, which led some to declare that Microsoft had "out-Apple'd Apple".

*Today, Apple clarified its position on the Mac Pro, reaffirming its commitment to the machine, and promising great things to come - *but they won't be coming anytime soon.

Significantly, though, Apple also admitted that the current design of the Mac Pro is no longer suitable for customers' needs. Apple's Craig Federighi explained:

*I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will. We designed a system with the kind of GPUs that at the time we thought we needed, and that we thought we could well serve with a two GPU architecture. That that was the thermal limit we needed, or the thermal capacity we needed. But workloads didn’t materialize to fit that as broadly as we hoped.*

*Being able to put larger single GPUs required a different system architecture and more thermal capacity than that system was designed to accommodate. So it became fairly difficult to adjust.** At the same time, so many of our customers were moving to iMac that we saw a path to address many, many more of those that were finding themselves limited by a Mac Pro through next generation iMac. And really put a lot of our energy behind that.*

*As we’ve said, we made something bold that we thought would be great for the majority of our Mac Pro users. And what we discovered was that it was great for some and not others. Enough so that we need to take another path. *One of the good things, hopefully, with Apple through the years has been a willingness to say when something isn’t quite what we wanted it do be, didn’t live up to expectations, to not be afraid to admit it and look for the next answer.

Apple had it and lost it

Yep. Keep repeating this year, after year, after year...

and there are those waiting for a new mac pro since the last released was 2013.

Good news! It's in the pipeline!

However, it's at least a year away, so a modicum of patience is required.

In the meantime, the new iMacs will include a pro level machine.

It's the talk of the tech last month - there's an internal conflict inside Apple about which direction to take the company - niche high-end vs. mainstream:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/is-it-time-for-high-end-pros-to-dump-the-mac/

As Apple transitions into a mass-market consumer electronics giant, high-end professionals, especially creative types, are being left out in the cold.

"There appears to be a growing rift among Apple executives when it comes to Mac strategy. Apple Industrial Design and Apple management have spent the better part of the past 10 years focused on devices designed to move hundreds of millions of people beyond the Mac. However, this strategy did not address 30M Apple users dependent on pro Mac hardware and software. While this segment only accounts for 4% of Apple's user base, it is responsible for creating content consumed by the other 96% of Apple users. These content creators have played a major role in Apple's mobile success."

The success of the iPod made it clear that Apple's future lay in mass-market consumer electronics devices that had a fixed lifecycle and zero upgradeability... And Apple was right. But that success has led it to isolate and alienate that small pro Mac market.

As to what Apple will do, my guess is that it will try in the short to medium term to appease that 4% by throwing them tidbits in the form of upgrades and a new Mac Pro, while at the same time trying to convince those who can to move to more mainstream Macs or the iPad.

However, in the longer term, it's clear that Apple's heart just isn't in developing and supporting high-end niche hardware anymore. If you need a high-end system like the Mac Pro then you'd better get used to updates being few and far between.

It's a tricky time for high-end Mac users. While I don't think that the Mac is going to vanish overnight, there's a lot of uncertainty in the air. And the worst part is that I'm no longer sure if Apple itself knows where it's going with the Mac. The emergency damage control meeting the company held last week suggested division within the company as to the direction Apple should take, and even going so far as to hint at gross incompetence, both in seemingly forgetting about its high-end market, and serious design problems with the Mac Pro.

If your company is running and relying on Apple hardware, these are not the sorts of things you want to be hearing from the executives.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/apples-desperate-mac-damage-limitation-message-hints-at-a-divided-company/

Earlier this week Apple held what can only be described as an emergency damage control press conference meant to reassure customers that the company hasn't forgotten about the desktop Mac. But instead of feeling reassured, I feel the meeting highlighted divisions within Apple.

The first thing that struck me was the Apple executives who were and weren't present at the meeting... Not present were CEO Tim Cook and Chief Design Officer Jony Ive... It also raises an eyebrow when the CEO decides to avoid a press conference of this magnitude. Again, it suggests that he wants to distance himself from the debacle.

Another thing that struck me was how unusual it was for Apple to hold a press conference where executives fell on their sword over past mistakes, promised to do better, and made assurances that new, better stuff is coming at some point in the future.

The apology is a new direction for Apple... There was also something else that you don't normally see from Apple -- desperation. It was so palpable that Mashable's Ulanoff even commented on it: "Part of the reason Schiller and company are talking to us in between product cycles is an almost desperate need to communicate to Mac Pro users Apple's continuing commitment to the market."

Despite this emergency damage control press conference, I still think that pro-grade Macs are on the way out. Apple didn't just forget that it had an old Mac Pro festering in its lineup, and Apple didn't just forget to offer a MacBook Pro with 32-gigabytes of RAM. The truth is that high-end stuff just isn't bringing in the dollars. And with iPad sales nose-diving and iPhone sales showing signs of going soggy, I'm guessing that at some point in 2015/16 Apple decided to focus on the stuff bringing in the bulk of the revenue (iPhones, mainstream Macs, cheap iPads), and deprioritize the high-end Macs.

... it doesn't change the realities of the situation -- Apple is a mainstream tech company, and high-end niche stuff just isn't a priority compared to the iPhone and cheap Macs.

I'd also wager that there's a split at Apple as to its future, with Cook and Ive, along with Eddy Cue (SVP internet software and services) and Jeff Williams (COO) seeing the future belonging to the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, while Schiller, Federighi, and Ternus still seeing a future -- and profits -- in high-end Macs.