I share your sentiment.
But it may have the added benefit of highlighting that the current $1299 iMac is now 24" 4.5K.
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iMac Pro Will there ever be a 27 inch iMac with the Apple silicon chip and more?
- Thread starter kenoli
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But it may have the added benefit of highlighting that the current $1299 iMac is now 24" 4.5K.
I remember Steve saying that. Apple does great things but it’s a fact that Steve and Tim run Apple differently and with different priorities.
In both of the great Steve biographies, Steve Jobs and Becoming Steve Jobs, it is well documented that Steve was far more interested in building great products than he was on becoming the most valuable company or securing billion dollar quarterly profits. That is all good, but Steve’s primary focus wasn’t on stock performance.
When Tim took over, the executive compensation skyrocketed with all the bonuses and perks that Steve refused to play by. The games that increase stock value but don’t benefit the company also came about such as literally borrowing money to pay for stock buy backs.
Again, Tim is a great CEO and the shareholders were getting great returns until recently. However, putting profits ahead of products and becoming the most valuable company on Wall Street rather than the most valued company on Main Street has its costs.
During the famous iPhone 4 antennagate press conference, Steve emphasized that they want every user to be happy. He pushed Apple to, not only create great products, but to update them regularly. He cited the inability to put a G5 processor in a laptop as a primary reason to move to Intel and was deeply troubled by the inability to deliver.
Steve would have never abandoned the pro world for seven years with the trash can Mac.
Again, I’m no Tim Cook and I have no idea what it’s like to run a trillion dollar business. However, I do know that Apple stance in the computer world has been in decline and it’s not due to rising PC sales; it’s due to Apple focusing far more attention on other things.
The 2000 G4 Cube was a Steve product that failed. Steve knew to call it quits at 150,000 units.
In 2010 Steve said "no one's going to buy that (phablet)" and yet the 2020 iPhone mini only had a 12 & 13 but no 14 version as it sold badly.
If he lived long enough to axe the 6 Plus, Xs Max, 11 Pro Max, etc then Apple wouldn't have shipped that many iPhones when that market for small phones became a niche.
We have to understand why a company that in the past had $100 billion cash hoard still had to borrow money.
To put it simply the US tax system as it was like then and maybe even now it is cheaper to borrow cash in the US than to repatriate that cash back to the US.
This is likely 1 of many reasons why Apple started offering a new high-yield savings account. It is cheaper to solicit the public to deposit with Apple and pay the 4.15% APY than to formally borrow in the US or bring back cash from overseas.
The stock buy back reduces the supply of stocks thus push up the market cap of the company. It keeps institutional investors happy and even individuals like many on MR.
Tim was able to release a lot of great products like the
- Mac Studio
- Watch
- iPad mini
- iPad Air
- iPad Pro
- Phone Plus
- iPhone Max
- Phone Pro Max
- iPhone Plus
- iPhone SE
- Vision Pro
- AirPods
- HomePod
- Apple TV
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1. Steve wasn't perfect. There were lots and lots of mistakes he made. My point is that Steve's vision and Tim's vision are different and that Steve's priorities were different than Tim's.
2. The 100 billion was overseas and, like you said, they borrowed to reduce the supply of common stock, thus arbitrarily raising the price. Steve was against such games and didn't play them.
3. Tim did update lots of great products. The release of Apple Watch was, and remains, a hobby. Yes Apple is the number one smartwatch, but the sales numbers are so low that Apple never released them.
4. Apple TV, HomePod, AirPods are hobbies with low sales numbers. Apple TV was Steve's product and didn't do well. It never really did.
5. The Vision Pro looks great, but it is overpriced for mass consumption and has yet to see real-world use.
Again, I am not a Tim hater. I am not a Steve worshiper. They have differing styles. I am simply frustrated that Tim is so focus on profits that he neglects products. Or, in other words, Tim is only interested in making great products that produce enormous profits, whereas Steve made great products, that could change the world, so long as they could make enormous revenue, be reasonably profitable, and built a more loyal Apple customer-base = increase Mac market share.
Steve didn't have the money to do buy backs.
Apple stopped dividends in 1995. When Steve returned he never allowed it to come back. Tim put it back in again a year after Steve died.
Steve did do stock-backdating. So he isn't as saintly as you frame him to be.
Apple does not release shipment numbers.
It appears that 1 quarter of Apple Watch shipments is more than 1 year of Mac shipments.
Top 5 Wearable Device Companies by Shipment Volume, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q1 2022 (shipments in millions)
| Company | 1Q22 Shipments | 1Q22 Market Share | 1Q21 Shipments | 1Q21 Market Share | Year-Over-Year Growth |
| 1. Apple | 32.1 | 30.5% | 30.1 | 27.7% | 6.6% |
| 2. Samsung | 10.9 | 10.3% | 12.1 | 11.1% | -9.9% |
| 3. Xiaomi | 9.8 | 9.3% | 12.9 | 11.9% | -23.8% |
| 4. Huawei | 7.7 | 7.3% | 8.6 | 7.9% | -10.8% |
| 5. Imagine Marketing | 3.2 | 3.0% | 3.0 | 2.8% | 5.2% |
| Others | 41.7 | 39.6% | 41.9 | 38.6% | -0.5% |
| Total | 105.3 | 100.0% | 108.6 | 100.0% | -3.0% |
Source: https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS49250022
Mac Pro is heading towards the relevance as mainframes.
It matters to those whose use case still cannot be satisfied with other cheaper devices.
I’m sorry.
Most of the world still uses desktops as that’s how work gets done. People don’t make a living editing videos or even making spreadsheets while sitting at home on a laptop. Yes, it can be done, but if you go into any office, people work at a desk. They may use laptops in clamshell mode but it’s being done in a stationary place.
No doubt that ~20% PC shipped annually are desktops.
But many of these desktops do not have any PCIe slots or more than 1-2 PCIe slot.
Apple realized this hence the G4 Cube, Mac mini and now the Mac Studio.
Many of them used Atoms, laptop chips and non-Xeon chips like a i3, i5, i7 and i9.
Full sized ATX cases? Its the domain of mostly PC gamers and tower workstations.
Many laptop users do not walk around while using their laptops. More often than not they are seated on a chair.
Mac Studio gets frequent refresh as most pro desktop users do not want to pay for PCIe slots they'll never use.
The Mac Pro benefits from the Mac Studio's popularity. I look forward to 2025 M3 Extreme to hopefully push up RAM to 0.5TB or higher.
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![qOlIXrTNYN3oXkftUJ2LIKKsa3m8NHwS.jpg]()
No doubt that ~20% PC shipped annually are desktops.
But many of these desktops do not have any PCIe slots or more than 1-2 PCIe slot.
Apple realized this hence the G4 Cube, Mac mini and now the Mac Studio.
Many of them used Atoms, laptop chips and non-Xeon chips like a i3, i5, i7 and i9.
Full sized ATX cases? Its the domain of mostly PC gamers and tower workstations.
Many laptop users do not walk around while using their laptops. More often than not they are seated on a chair.
Mac Studio gets frequent refresh as most pro desktop users do not want to pay for PCIe slots they'll never use.
The Mac Pro benefits from the Mac Studio's popularity. I look forward to 2025 M3 Extreme to hopefully push up RAM to 0.5TB or higher.
I think that discrete GPU sales aren't doing well though that may be due to pricing moreso than demand.
My former workplace was all laptops unless you put in an exception to justify a desktop. You're supposed to be available to work from home or on vacation so a laptop is much better for the company.
Even though Nvidia charges more than AMD it appears team green ships more dGPU than team red.
Even if that were the case we're now at a 20Y low for desktop dGPUs probably because people upgrading or replacing are preferring laptops with or without APU/SoC or game consoles like PS, Xbox & Switch.
A lot of hospitality, convenience, gas, forecourt & specialty stores use PC-based point of sales. These are considered "desktops".
Prior to COVID our non-tech employer refused to move our people from desktops to laptops as they did not want them bringing the laptops home for personal use. I told them they could attach laptop security locks on them to keep them stationary. It was refused out of fear of "hurting the user's feelings".
It wouldn't use more than 65W of power... no sale.
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Even though Nvidia charges more than AMD it appears team green ships more dGPU than team red.
![ga4ysdRtWufiCuUx3tFmHD.png]()
We're not at a 20Y low for desktop dGPUs probably because people upgrading or replacing are preferring laptops with our without APU/SoC or game consoles like PS, Xbox & Switch.
![9hGBfdHQBWtrbYQKAfFZWD.png]()
A lot of hospitality, convenience, gas, forecourt & speciality stores use PC-based point of sales. These are considered "desktops".
Prior to COVID our non-tech employer refused to move our people from desktops to laptops as they did not want them bringing the laptops home for personal use. I told them they could attach laptop security locks on them to keep them stationary. It was refused out of fear of "hurting the user's feelings".
It wouldn't use more than 65W of power... no sale.
I have a plumber over today and he had this little square device that he dropped. I thought it was a night light. He said that it was a credit card reader. He did the transaction on his iPad.
I see more and more point-of-sales done on tablets, particularly in stores where you don't have fixed registers.
The most obvious example is The Apple Store.
I'm a big desktop fan and my desk usually has 4-5 monitors. But I prefer a laptop or two everywhere else.
I am quite happy to be out of the game of building Windows desktops because of the GPU pricing issues that started in 2020. I could run 4 monitors off an M1 Max MacBook Pro but that doesn't leave a lot of ports for all of the other stuff I plug in. If we do get a big M3 iMac, then I hope that they put in at least the ports that they have in the Studio.
The thing about desktops is that there are tons of them for sale in the used market and they have far fewer of the problems that laptops have. You can get a usable Dell or HP system for $30, $40, $50 for web browsing and editing documents. I bought a 2015 iMac 27 last week for $200 with i5, 32 GB RAM, 2 GB GPU, Apple keyboard and mouse. I love the system on my desk and I think that an M3 big iMac would sell well. So desktops compete with the used market because there's less likelihood of damage and you don't have to deal with the issue of dead or weak batteries.
Indeed the post-PC era has made desktops with PCIe slots approaching a mainframe in import.
Personally I want a larger iMac M2 Pro/M3 Pro as late as Valentines 2023.
Sadly it is almost as unpopular as the Mac Studio.
Indeed the post-PC era has made desktops with PCIe slots approaching a mainframe in import.
Personally I want a larger iMac M2 Pro/M3 Pro as late as Valentines 2023.
Sadly it is almost as unpopular as the Mac Studio.
All of my stuff is 27 inches and I like all of my displays to be the same size, even if the resolutions aren't the same all around. I'd really like Apple to do a 27 just because a lot of places use that size. Maybe because Apple used it so much. They've had the 30 inch form factor too but they got a lot of people used to 27 with their successful iMac line. I wouldn't mind 27, 32, 40 but Apple is stingy on sizes.
I'm pretty annoyed that they dropped the iPhone mini.
Discrete GPU sales have dropped as quite simply for most people then the iGPU is good enough.
in the same way that up you have i3, i5, i7, i9 cpus from Intel then if you go back to Nvidia 6 series in 2004 then had
6100
6150
6200
6500
6600
6700
6800
6800 Ultra
compare to Nvidia 40xx series
4060
4060ti
4070
4070ti
4080
4090
the entry level has disappeared and the mid entry has less as well then had 20 years ago.
the entry level disappeared as now handled by the igpu in intels CPU
contrary to gamers belief then Nvidia actually made the majority of profits on the entry and mid level cards that sold to people such as Dell/HP and the like
yes an individual 6800 ultra made more then individual entry GPU however the volume of entry level GPUs shipped meant that they made more then the high end GPU’s.
whilst the iGPU won’t compete with a dGPU in terms of outright performance the majority of people don’t need the high end GPU for there tasks.
hence lower volumes of cards sold but increased pricing.
in the same way that up you have i3, i5, i7, i9 cpus from Intel then if you go back to Nvidia 6 series in 2004 then had
6100
6150
6200
6500
6600
6700
6800
6800 Ultra
compare to Nvidia 40xx series
4060
4060ti
4070
4070ti
4080
4090
the entry level has disappeared and the mid entry has less as well then had 20 years ago.
the entry level disappeared as now handled by the igpu in intels CPU
contrary to gamers belief then Nvidia actually made the majority of profits on the entry and mid level cards that sold to people such as Dell/HP and the like
yes an individual 6800 ultra made more then individual entry GPU however the volume of entry level GPUs shipped meant that they made more then the high end GPU’s.
whilst the iGPU won’t compete with a dGPU in terms of outright performance the majority of people don’t need the high end GPU for there tasks.
hence lower volumes of cards sold but increased pricing.
Apple doesn't care lol. Unfortunate? Naw, not at all from Apple's viewpoint when looking at the ticker scroll along the bottom of a tv channel/stock.
Under powered machine and mine is in it's box now. It was a beauty.
Apple TV and HomePods were not meant for the masses because of their ties to the ecosystem. The Airpods were by no means a "hobby" and if they were, they changed the industry of pods.
I agree if it had the same PowerPC & dGPU of the top end Power Mac G4 at the time it may have done better than 150,000 units.
It is also possible that the concept was too advanced for the time.
A year later the G4 Cube inspires the first modern SFF PC, the Shuttle SV24
Steve at the time had the data showing that there was a significant Power Mac user base that never used any PCI expansion slots. Hence the attempt to service that segment.
Below was the config & price points of these 2000 Power Mac G4
- $2499 Power Macintosh G4 450 DP (Gigabit) 450 MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4) x2
- $1799 Power Macintosh G4 450 Cube 450 MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4)
- $3199 Power Macintosh G4 500 DP (Gigabit) 500 MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4) x2
- $2299 Power Macintosh G4 500 Cube 500 MHz PowerPC 7400 (G4)
Hence these other more successful attempts with the 2005-2024 Mac mini, 2013 Mac Pro, 2017 iMac Pro and now with the 2023 Mac Studio.
I bought the later model of that Shuttle PC model due to its novelty factor.
I wish that was the predominant PC form factor in the 80s & 90s rather than 1980s' AT & 1995's ATX form factor.
You're likely buying into expansion slots the majority of humanity will never ever used. This to me is literal e-waste to subsidize the minority of users who'd need it.
Ideally I'd have wanted an mini-ITX tower with at most 1 expansion slot. My buddy and cousin had this Compaq Presario All-in-One. To me this was perfect in the decade of 3 year replacement cycles.
Half a decade after the Shuttle PC led to a purchase of nettop, the Acer AspireRevo, as a low power p2p machine attached to an external 3.5" 1TB drive.
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New iMacs (codenamed J433 and J434) with 24-inch screens, like the current models. The company is also conducting early work on an iMac with a screen over 30 inches, I’m told.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/news...-m3-macs-ipad-air-vision-pro-headset-ljbftjwx
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/news...-m3-macs-ipad-air-vision-pro-headset-ljbftjwx
And, when it doesn’t ship, the fine folks of the big hack will say, “Oh, they were TOTALLY going to, but just weren’t able to make it work for some reason.”
No, they don't. Anyone "needing" a 27-inch iMac is just as served by the pairing of a Studio Display and any other desktop Mac, ranging from a base model M2 Mac mini to a maxed out M2 Ultra Mac Studio/Pro. No one "NEEDS" a 27-inch all-in-one that isn't served just as well by that combination.
No differently, than a Studio display paired with any of the aforementioned.
Price out any Mac Studio configuration and the price point would've been similar to a 2020 27-inch iMac priced out with that same RAM amount, worse graphics, and a worse CPU. The only way in which it's more expensive is in the RAM needing to be pre-configured at the time of purchase rather than being able to be upgraded aftermarket.
Furthermore, you can get a Mac mini with an M2 Pro or a standard M2 (or, for that matter, any M1 Mac mini) and pair it to the Studio Display and then that's your lower-end 27-inch iMac replacement; again, similar pricing.
M1 iMacs already exist. Because you can't tolerate a small little box hanging off of your display, your only option is a 24-inch model. But, be open to a box hanging off your display (the size of a standard Thunderbolt dock), and you have even MORE options than before.
The problem with APPLE is that while your iMac is still running like a charm after 10 years, the O.S. is outdated,
because no longer upgradable, and the software has become a chain of limitations: my 27" of 2013 was stuck on
Catalina, but also refused to run beyond JAVA 14 and thus beyond ECLIPSE 26, etc., etc.
So, to sit well for another decade I bought a Studio with enough memory and space. Waiting for an iMac 27
was no option, because I never buy a just released new machine (the studio was 12 months 'mature').
And what will it be after 10 years? Nobody knows.
;JOOP!