The original Macbook Air launched at $1,799. That's $2,437 in 2023. But you can get the M1 Air for $800 on sale frequrntly.
So the prices for the Air has definitely dropped.
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Mac sales fall by 40%
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So the prices for the Air has definitely dropped.
One of ROG's very underestimated features, some games can see 100+ FPS in Silent mode. Newer AAA games just punch it up to Overboost. As long as I can get 60+ FPS I'll settle for the lower power levels and also makes for a hell of a portable workstation.
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I had that version, but upgraded to the newer Ryzen 6000 series. Definitely my favorite series of Windows laptops. It's very loud when gaming, though. But I generally have headphones on anyway.
Right conclusion (hang on to what you have), but false premise. Inflation means that at the same nominal price points Macs have become cheaper.
iMac (15", G3, 1998) $1,299
iMac (24", M1, 2021) $1,299
one gallon of milk (1998) $2.61
one gallon of milk (2021) $3.55
Now 2023 prices including the inflationary effects of the Ukraine war:
iMac $1,299
milk $4.09
Zero chance mate. The MBA/MBP form factor is superior to iPads is so many ways I don't know where to start.
Price of Mac's in some regions is becoming ridiculous as are many other more important things. The Mac is now far better for Apple Silicon, yet far more inflexible as a direct result which will deter many from venturing as needing to own both a PC & a Mac can be tedious at times.
A drop in sales was inevitable, Think Apple is doing it's best to keep the price of the Mac stable versus inflation and may explain the change to single Nand SSD's.
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Recapping:
SixColors did a nice write up of Apple numbers with easy to digest charts:
- Apple Fiscal Year End (FYE or FY) is end of September of a given year. FY23 is the fiscal year that ends at the end of September 2023.
- IDC is reporting units on a CY quarterly basis
- Apple is reporting revenue on a FY quarterly basis (and their policy seems to be "report as little financial information as legally possible"). We can re-label time periods to make comparisons easier.
- Apple reported mac revenue dropped from 10.9B to 7.7B for 2021CY4Q vs 2022CY4Q
- IDC reported mac units sold dropped 7.7M to 7.5M for 2021CY4Q vs 2022CY4Q
- That implies average selling price also dropped from $1,415 to $1,026 for those same periods.
- Maybe Apple went from selling higher priced Pros and Studios at the end of 2021, compared to more Minis at the end of 2022?
- Apple reported mac revenue changed from 10.4B to <TBD> for 2022CY1Q vs 2023CY1Q (need to wait for Apple's earnings call on 5/4)
- IDC reported mac units sold dropped 6.9M to 4.1M for 2022CY1Q vs 2023CY1Q
- That implies that the average selling price was $1,500 for 2022CY1Q
- Still selling M1Pro/Max laptops and studios?
- Since Apple started selling M2Pro/Max laptops in 2023CY1Q, I'd bet that product mix will lean towards the pricey side - say ~1,400 - for a guestimated mac revenue of $5.8B... We'll find out in a few weeks. Probably one reason why Apple signaled the market by saying they're cutting M2 chip orders.
Apple results and charts: $117.2B quarter is still a step back
Apple on Thursday announced its fiscal first-quarter results, and it was a step backward. The company’s year-over-year revenue fell $6.7 billion, though with total revenue of $117.2 billion i…sixcolors.com
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Interestingly, profit % was at a near-record high for 2021CY4Q while revenue was down. Apple is choosing higher profits vs increasing Mac market share. This revenue variation has to be giving Tim some major heartburn.
Does IDC data make sense?
Per IDC - 4.1m Macs sold in the quarter.
Per Apple, Mac revenue of 7,200m for the quarter (94,800m revenue * 7.6%)
That recalculates to an average selling price of $1,756 in a quarter where Apple introduced a new $599 mac mini... Does that make sense? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They only refreshed the Mac mini from M1 to M2. But they introduced a new Mac mini with M2 Pro for $1,299. Add to that keyboard and mouse and maybe the occasional Apple Studio Display ... and your average Mac selling price is still dominated by 80% laptop sales.
Apple is at risk of pricing out their core audience. consider the AR headset - its rumored to be priced at 3,000. That's not going to be very successful - not in this market. MBPs, Studios, their Studio displays are very expensive and in this economy its getting harder and harder to justify.
The sales did take a large hit, but I doubt that it was as much of a hit as IDC claimed.
This is why I have largely exited the Apple ecosystem. I just need one laptop (if it can game), iPad Pro, and an iPhone. Now multiply by 4 (my family). Those macs add up. And I can always find deals on windows stuff. And like you said, that was all before the $3k headset. $12k for 4 headsets? Yeah, no.
Apple’s regularly changing their core audience, that’s one reason why they can continue to make the profit they do. In any given year, half of folks buying Macs are new to Macs… that person that just paid that high price for that device is a part of the “newer” core market. This leads millions to exit the Apple ecosystem, most definitely, but as long as Apple are able to replace those with millions of new customers, it’s at worst a wash, and, at best, a benefit because these new “core” customers will pay more for what they want.
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Something is evidently going wrong as the Mac market has always been small, so a 40% drop in sales either means the core audience (whatever that means) is happy to keep their Macs several years longer, or they are out off by increased costs and have gone elsewhere without being replaced.
IDCs numbers reflect Macs SHIPPED, not sold. So that also includes units shipped to resellers such as Best Buy and local authorized resellers. Furthermore, Best Buy has been holding less inventory overall ever since COVID hit (just walk into any Best Buy and you can see the half-empty shelves), so they are likely ordering fewer units like they are ordering less of everything else. The other consideration is that IDC's numbers are really a best guess estimate, rather than hard verifiable data. They just have refined their methodology to the point where their numbers are within the margin of error of actual shipments.
I'm not sure how they manage 'resellers' - but for all the fuzziness of Apple's reporting, there are principles that require Apple to recognize a sale when they ship to a third party like Best Buy.
TBH doubt Apple's core audience is up for that, unless on the never, never, which is the game at hand. Personally I just want a Mac it's HW and core OS, rest I deal with myself. Probably one of Apple's worst customers in 2023 as I dont want or need all the BS of their services. I just need a Mac plain and simple and that still works...
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Today I purchase the cheapest Mac I can get away with. Apple has decided to make make Mac's time limited products. I'm buying computers not phones, so this is my solution.
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macOS turns coin I'm good, if not Windows or Linux exists. Dont care about Apple, or it's ecosystem. I only care what the Mac can do for me, and that's what counts...
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I would do the same except it‘s such a worse deal. People compare full price Macs to full prince Windows PCs. The problem is that Open Box discounts exist. Discount codes at Dell and Lenovo exist. So if I want the cheapest computer that can run mac and I still want to game then I have to buy two things that run me around a grand. If I accept that MacOS isn’t really anything special these days (since they iOSified it especially) then I can literally cut my costs in half by only buying the windows gaming laptop.
So if I go with the setup that is the cheapest I can get away with, I just eliminate the “cheap” mac altogether.
It’s the same thing that’s happening across the market. If the public is buying fewer computers as a whole, then Apple’s percentage of that smaller number of sold computers will drop by a proportionately similar amount.
Remember, half of those computers were purchased by people that were NOT in the audience at all. People seem to think that only people that have Macs buy new Macs. And long ago, that may have been true. Today, one out of every two Macs are sold to someone that:
Has no legacy Apps
Knows little about butterfly keyboards
Has no experience with BootCamp
Does not expect to internally upgrade RAM or storage
Thinks the price is fair
And this group, that didn’t previously own a Mac, has consistently been half of Mac sales for years now.
Well that happens and that's on Apple. I bought a base model Acer Switch 5 in 2017, it's still good as new. $600 with a large micro SD card. It's never failed me, never crashed. Apple could learn a lot. Multi touch, pen, full desktop OS with included detachable KB. Despite the Switch 5's low spec it delivers...
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My guess is we saw a huge bump when M1 was announced, and you have a big wave of upgraders around the time of the pandemic. This drop in sales suggests that everyone who wants to get an M-series Mac has gotten one, and we are back to regular upgrade cycles.
That could well be the explanation. My wife is still using a 2017 MacBook Pro and putting it through its paces, to which it’s handling everything fine. I suppose these computers aren’t needing regular upgrades anyway much like the iPad line.
I am similarly still using a 2017 5k iMac at home as well. In part because it's still going strong, and in part because I am unsure of what I would even upgrade to at this juncture.