MacBook Pro 13.3- and 15.4-inch versions. A big update is expected later this year. But it's been a... [+]
Apple’s venerated MacBook line isn't quite so venerated these days. So, what's wrong? I asked around.
Apple announced this past week that it sold 4.3 million Macs, an 11 percent drop compared to the same period last year. That comes after a bleak showing in the March quarter when it sold only 4 million Macs, a 12 percent decline over the previous year.
And it gets worse. CEO Tim Cook often boasts about Mac sales growth versus Windows PC stagnation. But he has been silent lately during earnings conference calls. There's a reason for that: in the second quarter, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Asus all saw year-to-year growth, according to market researcher IDC’s most recent figures, released earlier this month. And Asus pushed Apple out of the number 4 spot in overall PC shipments, IDC said.
"MacBooks are some of the best designed products [but] they are no longer...the most interesting products," IDC analyst Linn Huang told me in an email.
Huang pointed to Hewlett-Packard whose laptops and hybrids (aka, 2-in-1s) have been getting good reviews. "HP took home the crown of thinnest laptop," Huang said. And HP is now focusing more on high-end, high-quality portables. One of those is the HP Spectre x360, which has received almost uniformly rave reviews. And then there's a slew of new entrants from China, like Huawei and Xiaomi, as Bob O'Donnell, president of Technalysis Research, pointed out to me. Those two rising PC makers make it "harder for [Apple] to maintain their price premium," he said. Xiaomi, for example, just launched the Mi Notebook Air which starts at $525.
O'Donnell may be right about price pressure. The 2015 version of the 12-inch Retina MacBook -- Apple's only truly new MacBook in years -- has been chronically discounted almost since its inception. This week a top-of-the-line version was discounted by a whopping $550. Best Buy over the last year has also engaged in on-again, off-again fire sales of all of 2015 versions of the 12-inch MacBook.
And let's not forget Chromebooks. They're still a small part of the market but they continue to get better and take market share from Apple as well as Windows.
But problems run deeper than more and better competition. CRN, a respected industry publication that covers computer resellers, talked to a few Apple authorized consultants this week and got an an earful about the Mac and MacBook. I chatted briefly with one of the consultants cited in the story, MacWorks, LLC, based in Madison, Conn.
“It just seems that Apple is ignoring their lineup of desktop and mobile computers," said Jerry Zigmont, owner of MacWorks. "So much time has elapsed and so much has been ignored," Zigmont added.
All Apple's fault? Intel may be part of Apple's stagnation problem, though. Another authorized Apple consultant I talked to said, "it isn't that Apple's just dragging their feet and not innovating. They haven't had the components to make a next-generation-worthy computer. There have not been good enough processors. They don't release something until it can be the best it can be," this consultant said. And Zigmont volunteered that could be also be a reason for the lack of new MacBooks. "There has also been speculation that they have been a bit stalled by Intel's roadmap. And Intel had major problems with the Skylake revision of their processor. Apple, rather than release a buggy product, [decided] to hold off," he said.
But that's hardly the only reason. Apple has made a deliberate decision to shift most of its focus to its iOS-based products, like the iPhone and iPad. At the high end of the iOS line of products sits the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which Apple's CEO Tim Cook calls the “ultimate replacement device for customers switching from PC notebooks.” Cook's salesmanship aside, he's not far from the mark. Despite some initial doubts about its ability to be a laptop replacement, after eight months of pretty constant use, I've found the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, with its Smart Keyboard, an effective replacement.
The point is, OS X/MacOS must now increasingly compete directly with iOS, diminishing the former's importance. While you could call that "neglect" it's more a matter for Apple of establishing priorities in a competitive mobile market.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
