Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/01/apple-reports-record-first-quarter-results.html

by ucha • 9 years ago

369 512 9 years ago

nrjames• 9 years ago

I can't even fathom that amount of money.

Analysts remain "concerned" about $AAPL growth because world forests cannot produce enough paper for how much cash $AAPL continues to print.

thecosas2• 9 years ago

One was quoted, saying "The paper shortage due to Apple's enormous cash reserves are overblown; that's why they have Apple Pay."

sparky_z2• 9 years ago

The good news is that the Irish government uses Euros, which are made of cotton fiber, not wood pulp.

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

you know you are in trouble when we start having electron shortages resulting in not enough electrons to erase flash chips so we can program in the large bank balances :-)

deeth_starr2• 9 years ago

$AAPL has requested the mint start making them 1 trillion dollar coins

ricardonunez• 9 years ago

Microsoft and Alphabet are printing money. Apple had to go digital.

ci5er• 9 years ago

It's easily enough to fund the US Federal government for about 3 weeks. A bit over 10 days if state and local are factored in.

Imagine! If the US Federal government were able to find a way to take half of that money, they'd be able to struggle along for almost two more whole weeks!

r00fus• 9 years ago

Imagine if Apple management were a bunch of tax (aka revenue) cutters that also spent all the tax revenue handing it out to their cronies via earmarks and carve-outs in the annual budget?

It's easy to blame the Federal government when it's leadership is hell-bent on breaking it by unfunded mandates, croynism and expensive wars while also cutting the tax revenues.

hasperdi• 9 years ago

Mac sales...

  Q1 2016 5312 units, revenue $6,746m
  Q4 2016 4886 units, revenue $5,739m
  Q1 2017 5374 units, revenue $7,244m

So people are buying more new Macs despite what the press, HN, Reddit crowds are saying?

thecosas2• 9 years ago

I'm guessing the pent up demand for a new Macbook Pro contributed greatly.

5_minutes• 9 years ago

People where just hungry (read: starving) for any kind of update. That's why.

whistlerbrk• 9 years ago

Agreed, sentiment can be down with sales still going strong. I suspect had Microsoft been able to produce something and strongly market it in Dec/Jan the numbers might be a little different.

deeth_starr2• 9 years ago

It's actually down on the trend line. Your numbers average out to 6,576 per quarter, so lower than the first q. So while there was an uptick it was because of delayed demand (ie, people knew a new macbook was coming out). Looking at the number it looks like the new macbooks have actually hurt their sales.

Tanegashima5• 9 years ago

There's "pent up demand" because people were waiting for the MBP and bought it, and didn't buy any PC.

skc2• 9 years ago

Aren't the people complaining about the new Macs mostly geeks?

That's a very vocal but ultimately tiny sliver of their customer base.

ProAm2• 9 years ago

You mean technical people who generally know the topic they are speaking about?

Of course the average person is not complaining, in reality the average person can use a 10 year old PC for what they do with it. Facebook, stream music, maybe email....

kristianc• 9 years ago

It's a 'Pro' laptop and it's people who use their Macs to earn a living that that particular line has typically catered to. So yes, geeks.

izacus5• 9 years ago

Who are the other people that buy 4000EUR laptops then?

pavanky• 9 years ago

Wonder how much of that is enterprises refreshing their Macbook lineups. And compared to Q1 2016, it is just 1% increase.

gdulli• 9 years ago

I think the elephant in the room is that the Q1 2017 number reflects a quarter when they refreshed the Macbook product line for the first time in years. That should have resulted in a big infusion of growth.

matart• 9 years ago

The majority of people do not care about the same things we (HN) do. My friends will by Macs regardless because they are scared of something different.

xiaoma2• 9 years ago

Lots of HN readers are like that, too.

ClassyJacket4• 9 years ago

They might also be buying them because they like them and they're appropriate for their use case.

ultimoo• 9 years ago

This really confused me at first, but upon looking at the data sheet from Apple [1] it's much more clear -- the units are in thousands and the revenue is in millions.

So for this quarter 5,374,000 Macs were sold generating a revenue of $7,244,000,000.

[1] http://images.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q1FY17DataSummary.pdf

hxnjxn• 9 years ago

Macbooks are still considered 'cool' by most and they dont care about the same thing as the HN crowd

dan12343• 9 years ago

That's why it's dangerous to assume the opinion of a particular community is the dominant one.

See also the Brexit and Trump victories nobody saw coming (except everyone who voted for them).

pyrophane4• 9 years ago

Or even that the opinion that dominates the comment threads on a particular issue represents that community. There is a subset of people who have very strong feelings about Apple and the current Mac lineup, and they tend to be the ones participate the most in these threads.

izacus5• 9 years ago

Then again, it's not like Apple laptops have a dominant market share either, people who complained probably just didn't buy them.

Apocryphon2• 9 years ago

Techxit?

nikdaheratik• 9 years ago

In this case, it's not the people who are anti-Apple hardware I'm listening to. I feel like more of the excited Apple people are now just lukewarm. Part of this is the other laptop manufacturers are catching up on some features while still being at a lower price. More of it, IMO, is that Apple doesn't have that performance edge that justifies the higher price that techies are willing to pay.

TL;DR, before you were paying for a Benz and getting a Benz. Now you're paying for a Benz and getting a Saab. While the Corollas of the computer world all got their usual refresh and upgrades.

vacri2• 9 years ago

Perhaps wait a few years before claiming those as victories. Trump has only just started, and Brexit hasn't been triggered yet. We are still yet to see the fall-out from those choices.

thoughtsimple4• 9 years ago

Mac unit sales increases were negligible but revenue was up significantly showing that it was likely MacBook Pros that contributed to the growth. Unit growth was 1.2% while revenue was up 7.4%.

Fiahil2• 9 years ago

We bought 3 of these new MacBooks where I work. There is literally tons of issues, way too much to list them all in a single post. The biggest of all being the drivers for external displays over USB being glitchy and greedy as hell. While some of us hope they will fix that in a future software release, we already moved to xps laptops for newcomers.

So, yeah, people/companies are buying the new Macs. But, if it was my own personal machine I would already have returned it to the store.

plaguuuuuu• 9 years ago

external displays over USB

I wouldn't wish this on anyone

disiplus• 9 years ago

im also switching from mac to xps.

DigitalJack3• 9 years ago

So I finally got around to an Apple store. We have a couple close by, but I haven't had an opportunity for a casual stop. This was my first chance to see the new touchbar Macs.

I thought the touchbar was nice, super responsive, looked better than I expected. I thought the keyboard was great for typical typing. I'm a spacemacs/vim user, and yet I found no problem with the escape key on the touchpad. Not really enough time to truly evaluate, but the first impression was "This is really nice." Like walking into a really nice kitchen, or sitting behind the wheel of a high end car.

My expectations had been tempered by all the naysaying about it, so perhaps because of that I was very impressed.

If my mac were a few years older, I'd buy one in a minute. I actually find myself wishing my mac was a few years older to justify upgrading.

That said, I'm not happy about only having USB-C. Mainly because I really like magsafe. My power cable gets kicked out several times a week, and sometimes a day. And on laptops of ages past (HP), the power socket has been the first thing to break on me. There are options out there for magsafe style USB-C cables, so that might mitigate.

pyrophane4• 9 years ago

They keyboard is pretty nice to type on, even when you are typing a lot. That surprised me, because I thought the low travel would present a serious problem, but for me at least, it does not. I think it has changed the way I type a bit so that I'm not hitting the keys quite as hard as I do with other keyboards, which certainly would help.

The Touch bar I'm less enthusiastic about. There are times when it comes in handy, but I rarely use it and accidentally interact with it quite a bit while typing.

dkonofalski9• 9 years ago

I love Magsafe but, honestly, I haven't really had a need for it. Now that they fixed whatever the initial battery issue is, my tbMBPs (I own two - one personal and one for work/media/appdev) both last me a full day so charging has only been like my cell phone. There are rare occasions where I've had to plug it in during the middle of the day but I usually just do that at lunch and it lasts me the rest of the day. It depends on what apps you're using. Chrome and Slack suck the life right out of the battery but Adobe Audition and Premiere are fine for me. Magsafe was cool, but I think I'd take the USB-C now over Magsafe any day.

tptacek3• 9 years ago

After having owned a new (non-Touchbar) Mac for the last few weeks, I cannot fathom what the meltdown on HN was about this thing. It's the best Macbook I've ever owned --- and I've used nothing but Apple laptops since the Titanium Powerbook.

I hate the USB-C dongle and do miss MagSafe, but I wouldn't trade the new machine for the old one.

After everything I'd heard, particularly about the keyboard, I put off buying a new Macbook. Ultimately, I was forced by circumstance to buy one, or I'd have coasted on my 2-year-old MBP for a few more years. I feel sheepish about that plan now.

acchow2• 9 years ago

How old was your old one. Recent macbooks had HDMI and USB magsafe - you lose all 3 with the USB-C macbook.

What happens when you trip on your charging cord and destroy a USB-C port?

pw• 9 years ago

What makes it the best Macbook you've ever owned?

jclardy2• 9 years ago

I own one and I agree it is great. These seem to be the issues others have with it:

1. The price - Personally I don't think it is justified to essentially bump the "actual" MBP (meaning touchbar and 29w processor) by $500 for what we get. The original retina 13" were similar price wise at release, but the display was a massive upgrade. The touchbar not so much.

2. No kaby lake - this is an intel release timing issue, if you want Kaby Lake wait a few more months.

3. Questionable utility of the touchbar - I own one and it is useful for anything with linear editing...so audio or video. Otherwise I just use it for media functions just like I would with physical keys (I don't use the function keys.) It could be more useful in the future given more software support.

4. Dongles - This is another temporary problem until devices are all USB-C.

5. No magsafe - Sad, but there is one advantage in that you can now do power/display/connectivity all over one port...and I can't go back from that. I have an LG 4k monitor with USB-C so I just plug in one cable and get my 4k display, mechanical keyboard, and speakers just from that. And I can rearrange my desk to put my laptop on either side of the screen. For me I'm either plugged in at my desk or wireless elsewhere, so tripping over a cable was never really an issue for me once we hit the 5+ hour battery mark.

6. The keyboard - I love it, and switch off from my Whitefox with Cherry mx blues on my desk. Most mobile keyboards feel squishy to me but the new switches they are using give a lot of stability and a pretty solid click as well, even though they have such little travel.

bdcravens2• 9 years ago

Keyboard mostly a non-issue, as I use a mech, but it's not bad, just different. My Logitech BT mouse disconnects, but that's a Sierra issue, as it happened on my previous machine (and is a documented issue with Logitech apparently). Monitor support is wonky, but not too bad if you stick with only DisplayPort with a DP->USBC cable or use the official Apple dongle with HDMI. Apple's TB display works great with the TB2->TB3 adapter. (Eagerly anticipating the TB3 docks coming out later in the year)

On TouchBar: Yes, it definitely has its advantages and disadvantages. I dig the touch ID login. Escape key issue only annoyed me a time or two, but I'm not a heavy VIM user, and the ESC key is actually wider than most people realize (space to left of it is actually additional touch target for the key, so you actually have an easier to type ESC key in actuality)

overcast• 9 years ago

I think the biggest contention, is what you have to pay for what you get.

crispinb5• 9 years ago

Ah: 'non-Touchbar'. Apple has gone touchbar-only on the higher-spec'd MB Pros. Those of us who touch type and want a fast developer machine to last a few years have been left behind. MacOS is my OS of choice, but the touch bar makes Apple's hardware irrelevant to me -- I literally have no available Apple option when my current MB Pro needs replacing.

Zelphyr• 9 years ago

Were there negative things said about the keyboard? I was playing around with the new MBP's in the Apple Store last week and I found the keyboards to be fantastic. I was actually surprised because I bought the family an iMac for Christmas and I really don't like the new wireless keyboards. The whole thing feels cheep in part because the keys feel poorly seated.

geerlingguy2• 9 years ago

As one of the people who penned an article slamming Apple, I also wouldn't trade my 2016 Fn-key MBP for anything. But what concerns me more is where this Mac ship is headed, and if the Touch Bar is any indication, I hope Apple course-corrects soon.

The non-Touch Bar laptop with four TB3 ports and Touch ID would've been the _absolute_ best Mac for pretty much everyone who was waiting for a new one (battery life sacrifices for weight/size savings aside).

That 15" users _have_ to get a Touch Bar is a slap in the face to those users, imo.

gshulegaard8• 9 years ago

The meltdown is about the HN audience in particular. From my perspective, the new MBP is not very compelling from a hardware perspective. It's high price is not reflective of the computing power (in my mind). The lack of physical buttons (15" is my preferred size) is annoying to scary considering how many shortcuts I rely on use fn keys or esc (Emacs man myself).

FabHK9• 9 years ago

My (non-Touchbar, 13 inch) MBP loses (2.4 GHz) WiFi when you plug in a USB-C hub, or Apple dongle with hard disk (noise goes up by about 25 to 30 dB -- depending on how good the WiFi is it's barely to not usable). The left shift key is unpleasantly sticky and non-clicky.

It's by no means a bad machine (retina is nice, keyboard is generally quite nice and crisp), but I'm not elated, particularly given that it was some $500 more expensive than the MacBook Air that it replaced.

LandoCalrissian• 9 years ago

Is there a reason they got rid of the MagSafe? I don't own a Mac, but I always thought that was a cool feature.

hoorayimhelping2• 9 years ago

I'm glad to hear that. I've played with the new macbooks a few times at a local Apple Store and have been delighted with them, and can't wait to get a new one at work. The keyboard was probably my favorite part as well, and that black one is really nice looking.

ouid4• 9 years ago

The magnetic power adapter was probably the best feature exclusive to apple products, and I assume that the reason other laptops do not have them was vicious patent guarding. It improves longevity by so much to not have a piece of the motherboard under constant torque.

It was such a superior idea that there can only be one possible philosophy behind the move to abandon it, and that is that longevity is actually bad for apple, especially during the end of Moore's law for personal computing. My 2011 MBP is very unlikely to become obsolete in a technical sense. The battery life is still good, and the processing power is more than sufficient for anything that would not be more cost-effectively computed on a cloud instance or a desktop anyway.

That may seem like a great deal of inference, but I don't think it's unjustified. Why else would they opt for inferior technology?

cletus2• 9 years ago

This is of course subjective but I personally also hate the keyboard (on top of USB-C only and the loss of MagSafe). The new Trackpad sucks as well.

I have seen the Touch Bar in person and I don't hate it but it does seem like an unnecessary cost and battery drain (just like Force Touch come to think of it).

My biggest problem with the latest Macbook "Pros" is that they don't give me what I want. All I wanted is a Macbook Air with a screen that isn't 6 years old. For me the 13" Air was the perfect form factor and compromise between power and portability (eg the 12" Macbook is too much of a compromise).

And while not giving me what I want they went and made everything more expensive.

I'm sitting here typing this on an Dell XPS 15, a laptop I bought late last year when it became clear Apple wasn't going to produce what I wanted. It's reasonably nice but honestly I hate it as it's just not polished like a Mac and OSX is (I'm using Windows 10). Even simple things like forwarding videos with a two finger swipe on a Mac just works (even on VLC). On Windows it's just... horrible.

Then again I do have 32GB of RAM and a 512GB Samsung Pro 850 in it and all up I think it cost like $1400. Oh and I can play Civ6 on it.

IMHO the real cause of this backlash against the new MBPs is a combination of frustration and even a sense of betrayal. That may sound like hyperbole but people love their Macs. My 13" Air was the best laptop I ever owned and it vexes me no end that Apple (again IMHO) screwed it up.

chm• 9 years ago

    non-Touchbar

I've configured some of the new MBPs with touchbar and I really dislike the bar. No ESC for me is a complete no-go. Otherwise I haven't used the huge trackpad enough to know if I like it or not. And the keyboard, well, I found it just ordinary. For me, especially in a work environment where lots of people move around, MagSafe is essential.

I can understand a company buying the new MBPs simply to replace old ones, but personally I will wait a year. My 2009 MBP still does the job.

ZanyProgrammer• 9 years ago

2 years old? Most people would consider themselves lucky to have such a nice, modern laptop.

agumonkey• 9 years ago

It's not HN specific, many websites reported returning the laptop or being very very disappointed, which was rarely the case before.

Now it's possible that it was just mass web hysteria. My cynical brain thinks that 1) people are gullible and want shiney 2) their previous MBP was getting too old so they bought the new

It's possible that sales != love

jordache• 9 years ago

we all got new mbp 15 touchbar models at work. it was christmas day. Super geeked out. The new mbp is sweet, compared to my 2013 MBA and MBP.

4K video out is flaky as hell. Hope Apple can address this with future software updates

_db4z2• 9 years ago

You only detailed the things you dislike on the new one, so why is the best macbook?

hobr• 9 years ago

Couldn't agree more. I've had my non-Touchbar MBP since just after launch, and I couldn't be happier. The form factor is great and the screen is better than anything I've encountered.

Prior to this machine, I was unhealthily attached to an MBA 11" from 2012 and I was more than dubious that I'd break that attachment. Since I got the new MBP, the MBA hasn't moved once from the spot where is waiting for a re-install ready to give away.

csomar• 9 years ago

People who complain about MacBooks either haven't dealt with other laptops or I just haters. I tried lots of laptops and Macs are a species of their own kind.

The very fact that MacBook pro doesn't make fan noise is enough for me to pay the premium.

megawatthours• 9 years ago

It's the best Macbook I've ever owned

What's so good about it?

pasiaj• 9 years ago

There is no year-over-year growth in Mac unit sales.

It took 2-3 years for Nokia's handset revenues to collapse, from when people started noticing warning signs and complaining that they were falling behind.

thoughtsimple4• 9 years ago

Did you know that Microsoft's Surface line declined in revenue last quarter YOY?

If you are you making a prediction that Apple's total revenues are about to collapse, these results really don't support that idea. PC sales have been declining for years overall.

melling2• 9 years ago

Of course they are. Regular people don't listen to nerds piss and moan. The never ending cacophony of Apple complaints:

"How could they remove legacy USB...."

"How could they remove the headphone jack..."

"Steve Jobs would never ..."

"I need an escape key..."

izacus5• 9 years ago

Except that it was us "nerds that piss and moan" that actually waited for a refresh and ordered them in batches.

Funny how some of you make the quintessential part of the free market - customer feedback - sound like a bad thing.

pcurve• 9 years ago

It's not as rosy as it sounds on paper.

Q1 2017 sale should've benefited from Mac Book refresh, but Apple essentially sold the same number of units as Q1 2016.

Increase in revenue came from higher pricing strategy in US and Europe.

Don't expect that to stick. Apple is in worse shape than these numbers indicate.

djmobley3• 9 years ago

Indeed. There was nothing special about the Mac line-up in Q1 2016.

Q1 2017 should have seen the release of huge pent-up demand with the new MacBook Pro.

thoughtsimple4• 9 years ago

Worse shape? Apple had a record number of phones sold. Mac sales are important but not that important.

How many other companies sold 18,455,000 PCs and tablets last quarter? Sales of PCs and tablets are declining everywhere, not just at Apple. These results look pretty good in that environment. Microsoft Surface revenue was actually down 2% last quarter YOY.

vacri2• 9 years ago

Don't expect that to stick. Apple is in worse shape than these numbers indicate.

Since when has a privately-owned company that pulled in revenues of $78B in a quarter ever been considered in 'bad shape'?

dlevine• 9 years ago

And not only did they sell more Macs, their average selling price per Mac was up significantly.

Probably due in part to pent up demand for the higher-end Macbook Pros, but since the touchbar models are significantly more expensive, likely due to that as well. Will be interesting to see the ongoing trend, but I would guess that people keep buying these machines.

FabHK9• 9 years ago

Plus, since they didn't upgrade the MBA, a number of people might have switched to the "cheap" function-key 13 inch MBP, which was, what, 50% more expensive than the MBA?

tlogan• 9 years ago

Unit growth was 1.2% - but Apple expanded significantly in other non-US markets. What is growth in number of Apple Stores?

eva1984• 9 years ago

They have updated for a while. The demand was accumulating before that. One time thing.

brandon2722• 9 years ago

Have the HN and Reddit crowds been claiming anything about low sales? Disliking a product change and accepting that the product will sell well are not mutually exclusive.

tedunangst• 9 years ago

There were more than a few comments that Apple is doomed, doomed I say, because nobody will ever buy even a single one of these broken toys.

xiaoma2• 9 years ago

Well, yes 5374 is more than 5312, but it's a slower growth rate than boring markets like baking powder, toilet paper or McDonalds meals.

Apple has lost everything that made them special, just as Microsoft did a decade and a half earlier. They'll probably remain quite profitable for the mid-term, though... just like MS did under Balmer.

hajile2• 9 years ago

Ballmer was CEO for windows 7 (perhaps the best windows ever), heavily expanded MS enterprise and cloud and pushed (against Gates) for the creation of an in-house hardware team. Everything MS is succeeding at today is the result of his tenure as CEO.

He had his share of bad/terrible calls (Vista, killing IE, one UI everywhere, missing the smartphone market window, etc) but overall, he wasn't just a lame duck riding on the success of Gates.

jasode• 9 years ago

Of those 3 figures you listed, the more interesting statistic is the YOY comparison (+1.1% increase) of Q1-2016 to Q1-2017 since new Macs are often introduced in the preceding 4th quarter.

Yes, some of the HN crowd may have over-dramatized the decline of the new Macbook Pro. However, the financial report's "Mac" category includes Macbook (not Pro), Macbook Air, iMac, etc. Since all those different Mac variations are baked into one opaque category, it's possible that the new Macbook Pro sales numbers were bad but it was offset by strong iMac sales. A +1.1% increase in sales quantity (+62000 units) may not be all that impressive.

jameslk3• 9 years ago

Are you really surprised that HN and Reddit don't represent the majority? In my experience, most people don't pay a lot of attention to what's inside their laptop and wouldn't mourn the loss of function keys. Brand loyalty, whether it works, is aesthetically pleasing and the learning curve of alternative options are probably more important factors.

matt40773• 9 years ago

Please stop insinuating people buying a MacBook are somehow stupid b/c they're easily manipulated by shiny surfaces or brands, or simply incapable of learning a new system.

There are many many comments you can easily find where Mac users give specific reasons as to why they prefer them, such as macOS and its Unix-ness, build quality, screen quality, attention to detail, battery live, and the sorry state of Linux on the desktop.

To insist on the reasons you're giving is acting in bad faith.

cptskippy• 9 years ago

Considering this is the first real upgrade since 2014, I really would have expected Q1 2017 sales to stomp all over Q1 2016. Sales are up but just barely.

adventurer• 9 years ago

With such a small market share, my bet is the publicity from the complaints probably helped gain visibility more than anything. Combine that with users waiting to upgrade for 2-3 years and a price increase, then you will have record sales.

cletus2• 9 years ago

The interesting part of all this is $7.2B in revenue on 5.37M Macs giving an ASP of $1347 (compared to $1174 for Q4 and $1269 for Q1 for the two other numbers you mention).

Let's look at the models below that ASP:

- 13" Macbook Air for $999/1199 for 128/256GB

- 12" 256GB Macbook for $1299

- 21.5" iMac for $1099/1299 for 1.6/2.8GHz and 1/2TB HD

- Mac mini for $499/699/999

So, the only current generation Mac on that list is the 12" Macbook and the entry level model barely makes it in. So assuming the ASP here isn't too far from the median it seems to suggest the majority of Mac sales are last generation tech.

Also bear in mind that we don't precisely know what this number includes. Does it include peripherals for Macs? Possibly not. It probably includes AppleCare though you'd think. So the hardware ASP is likely lower.

I honestly don't think these numbers are as good for Apple and a testament to the success of the latest refresh as some would suggest.

Probably by this time next year the Macbook Air will probably be gone. The USB-C landscape will be better no doubt. I really wonder how those numbers will look.

ndesaulniers• 9 years ago

The Mac grew surprisingly little in terms of units (+1%) but a bit more in terms of revenues (+7%). I say "surprisingly little" because Q1 FY2017 included the launch of the new MacBook Pros.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4041244-observations-apples-...

1290cc• 9 years ago

I recall that MacRumors still have a forum thread from the first iPod release in 2001. The commentary is almost identical to the vitriol we see online today.

Here it is: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.50...

revelation• 9 years ago

Not sure how you get to that conclusion, 1% more units of unknown markup sold doesn't mean "people are buying more new Macs despite the press, HN, Reddit crowds" despite this being a popular meme.

nodesocket• 9 years ago

As an AAPL shareholder I'm not surprised. Just because the masses seem to be complaining, it does not represent the actual masses. They are just the loudest at complaining.

ozaark• 9 years ago

Also the same community of professionals most vocal and sharing of AAPL products.

What happens when those same professionals are jumping ship to alternatives (After Effects>FCP, mbp wait-outs,etc) and those advocates no longer give that same support?

Personally, I hope that they can continue true to their pro advocates.

tombiro• 9 years ago

Beyond recent news, there's got to be something related to the length of time people are able to use a Mac and have it be very viable. I'm getting 5-7 years from any I've purchased, vs. 2-4 for most of the Windows machines I had been purchasing prior to getting on the Mac train. While I think the Windows machines have upped the ante on that a bit, at least from what I hear anecdotally, you can likely track some of these sales to seasonality, new products, etc. and get a legit handle on how sales are truly going.

skc2• 9 years ago

Which, funny enough, is what we've been saying about PC's for years but everybody discounts that and assumes PC's are just being decimated by phones and tablets.

I bought my Lenovo developer laptop in 2014. It now runs Windows 10 and is even snappier than when it ran Windows 7.

taobility• 9 years ago

Before Trump be elected, most HN users wouldn't believe it as well.

antoniuschan99• 9 years ago

I have been using the mac pro 13 inch w/ touchbar. Replaced a 2012 air.

It's fast and touchbar is fun to use. Was reserved b/c of donglegate but it's not a big issue.

People are missing out with charging their laptops with usb c. I have a 265000 mah battery that I can use to charge the laptop.

Spooky232• 9 years ago

Those sorts of groups are the worst about personal computers. Enthusiasts care about shit that nobody cares about.

My team is responsible for tech specs for a huge global enterprise. We A/B survey people for different hardware starting with our Windows 10 rollouts. Very, very few people, even tech people report any difference in satisfaction with PCs with 8GB vs 16GB or more, price optimized i5 vs fast i7, etc.

The three things that most affect satisfaction are SSD, not telling people what the specs are, and giving them Macs.

Normal people give no shits about 95% of the handwringing complaints.

glhaynes• 9 years ago

Interesting. Could make for a good article.

Tanegashima5• 9 years ago

Enthusiast?

If they were real enthusiasts, they would be for things like the Thunderbolt 3.0, the TPM, the touchbar, the excellent battery life and noise levels...

If they were real enthusiasts, they would know about USB-C more than "Hurr durr dongles"

gurkendoktor3• 9 years ago

Over what time span do you survey users? For example, I was completely happy with my 16 GB iPhone for the first two years and now I feel like an idiot for not getting a larger model. I'm perfectly fine with a 8GB computer now, but what in two years? I think a lot of the enthusiast outrage is about future-proofing, which wouldn't even be a thing if machines were still upgradable.

mickronome• 9 years ago

Not all, or even most complaints I've seen is from 'those' groups, whatever that is supposed to mean exactly, are enthusiast really the worst issue with persobal computers ?

Back to the issue, most complaints I've seen/heard are from actual professionals who wants - or needs - magsafe, more RAM, more ports, more storage, more speed, or better batterylife.

The new MBP doesn't give you much more than what you already have, and for people having machines starting to wear out, buy another of essentially the same thing feels like a bad deal.

For me personally the biggest issues are magsafe and no RAM upgrade beyond 16GB. I simply run out of RAM all the time, but I would prefer not having to switch to windows simply to get more than 16GB RAM, with all the pain that would entail. Magsafe because it have saved my machine several times while on the road or working from home with kids running around.

rusk• 9 years ago

I agree - sometimes we forget that Apple caters to my mother and my nephew just as much as it does to us - this is a segment which still has growth potential (still plenty of elderly ladies out there without computers; and new teenagers produced all the time). For these types of people Apple is just fine.

I think though what many of us are complaining about is that "Pro" used to mean a machine that was targeted at us, i.e. Professionals. I guess now it just means "high end" but I remember a few years ago the Macbook Air was targeted at the "pretty things" market.

I remember about 5 years ago my brother a professional animator complaining about how Apple dumbed down Final Cut Pro X to the point it wasn't usable in his domain. These days his shop doesn't use Macs any more (typically a staple industry).

I've a friend too, who works in automotive industrial design who won't touch a mac because it just doesn't have the power he needs.

My sister is a professional photographer and up until a few months ago I wouldn't have hesitated to recommend her a MBP but in all conscience nowadays I can not. This dilemma actually forced me to look at Windows laptops and I'm amazed how much they've come along in the last while.

So it's not just "us" that feel abandoned by Apple, but professionals from other walks of life. It's fair enough, if its a segment that doesn't make as much money for Apple as it used to, and as a business they have to make business decisions.

As professionals we have to make these decisions too, and if Apple isn't the right tool for the job we need to source one that is. But, there was a few years there where it felt like Apple was our friend. They made some amazingly pro-friendly gear. It seems those days are waning, and that relationship is coming to an end, and some of us feel a little jilted.

On the one hand, we hope that this "friend" will hear our protests and change their ways but we know deep down that won't happen. On the other we have to give the best advice to our friends and acquaintances as to what is a good device for them. We, as in "those sorts of groups" have a responsibility to critically evaluate new hardware in this light.

hocuspocus• 9 years ago

Normal people have absolutely no need for a $2~3000 laptop so I'm not really sure about what you're trying to prove here. Your argument would work with Chromebooks too.

Note, I never had one and I really don't give a crap about what Apple does with its product line. But you can't deny that a lot of developers, particularly people who post on HN, have been predominantly MBP users for the past decade. And I can understand they care about connectivity[1] and battery life, and probably a lot less about the TouchBar.

Also you have a weird definition of "enthusiasts". The ones I know don't buy laptops, much less Apple computers.

[1] I have to admit, it's funny they still haven't understood that Apple never did.

foobarian• 9 years ago

Why is this labeled Q1 2017? It's still January. Is the convention to use this to report results for Oct, Nov, Dec of the previous year?

kalleboo• 9 years ago

http://investor.apple.com/faq.cfm

What is Apple's fiscal year? Apple’s fiscal year 2017 runs from September 25, 2016 through September 30, 2017.

chenster• 9 years ago

Fuck the press, I LOVE my Mac!

tbrock• 9 years ago

As if everyone in this thread isn't going to buy one... all the complaining is for show.

pjmlp3• 9 years ago

HN and Reddit crowds complaining are using Macs as replacement for pretty GNU/Linux, *BSD, they aren't Mac devs.

isarat• 9 years ago

What press always talks about are the problematic part. In fact these are true too in many cases. Apple has larger goods in it, inherently part of every product. These are getting polished on upgrades and everything else becomes secondary.

tatoalo2• 9 years ago

Where are all the people criticizing Cook right now? I mean, I honestly think that the majority of the things that have been told about Apple in the last month are complete BS, he was seen as the CEO in crisis not able to do his job, abandoning the Mac, iPhone 7 was a joke etc... Marvelous.

toyg3• 9 years ago

Nobody ever said he didn't know how to make money. But look at the number of shifted Mac units, and you won't see much good news there. Despite a year or more of pent-up demand and a much-hyped MBP refresh, the Mac line is up a paltry 1% over what was a pretty lean year. That's stagnation.

shams93• 9 years ago

Yeah my old music teacher has to have a Mac because he has to run Digital Performer, if you write tv and movie music for a living you have to be on a Mac with Digital Performer, its industry stadard. For developers it still makes more sense to have a Mac as well because you can write for ios/android and the web all on the same system. But if you work for an early stage startup like me you probably have a chromeos device like I do rather than a Mac unless you're an investor rather than an employee.

stephenr2• 9 years ago

despite what the press, HN, Reddit crowds

Tech press and internet forums foaming at the mouth over <insert change here> don't represent reality when it comes to people actually using and buying <insert product name>. News at 11.

dev_256• 9 years ago

Content marketing?

ebbv• 9 years ago

Considering the machines available in Q1 2016 had not received an update in quite some time and the machines available now are brand new the increase of 62k units sold is not a home run.

Shivetya• 9 years ago

some of the meltdown is people bemoaning the fact that updates to the three desktop lines are all over due, two of them jump the shark over due

sfifs2• 9 years ago

Now take out the IBM laptop replacement contract & see how many are really buying.

trymas• 9 years ago

The best thing for Apple is that 1% increase in sales generated 7% increase in revenue. Pretty good from business point of view.

ldev• 9 years ago

Surprise, "technical smart people" do not matter - they're just vocal crybabies.

kriro• 9 years ago

More Macs...sure. There was a new MBP released after a long wait after all. The question is...was a bigger increase expected.

johnsmith21006• 9 years ago

Do realize Apple did add 7 days to the quarter this year compared to 2015. Apple started quarter on Sept 25 and ended on Dec 31 in 2016 or 97 days versus their 2015 only 90 days.

Apples to apples the Mac declined as did iPhones.

euyyn• 9 years ago

From the first paragraph, record results mean the company keeps growing. How does the YoY growth compare to other years, and to other tech companies?

BoorishBears• 9 years ago

For me the screen almost made me impulse buy in-store, it's so much more vivid than my 2015

crispinb5• 9 years ago

Terrible news for developers.

crispinb5• 9 years ago

OK I'll add nuance: it's terrible news for this developer (and anyone much like him) that Apple is not facing enough commercial pressure to ever produce another laptop that will serve his needs as well as his current MB Pro does. This makes him sad.

tcfunk• 9 years ago

I wanted to upvote your original post sooner, but it was previously flagged.

I am feeling some serious dissonance here as well.

I have been a MBP fan for quite some time now. I have watched the recent Apple conferences with distaste as I see the target audience for MBP shift away from me. I don't want to find an alternative, and I sincerely hoped the market would not take well to the newest iteration. Looks like that's not going to be the case.

ihuman• 9 years ago

If you want more graphs and comparisons, MacStories created some nice visuals for the new data

https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q1-2017-results-billio...

djrogers2• 9 years ago

Since September I've been reading nothing but how much of a failure the iPhone 7 is, and how removing the headphone jack was going to be the final straw for Apple. Similar story for the new MacBook Pros.

It seems that the geekerati have very different priorities from the rest of the world, and maybe Apple still knows what's it's doing.

arethuza5• 9 years ago

I've been very pleased with my iPhone 7 - yes requiring the headphone adapter is mildly annoying but that's all. I tried my previous iPhone, a 5S which I had donated to a relative, again recently and thought my 7 was well worth the upgrade.

ashark3• 9 years ago

How I feel about the latest Apple devices is that they're good despite the "innovation". Touchbar, removing headphone jack, and going all-usb-c (but not on the iphone?) all either sucks or fails to add value, but the spec bumps are still good enough and the build quality's still great, and, crucially, the competition still doesn't have its sh*t together.

austenallred5• 9 years ago

Try it with the airpods. I know it's cliche, but it's a fantastic experience. Truly worth the $ (for me, at least; can't say what $170 is worth to you)

Apocryphon2• 9 years ago

So unfortunately, that means further postponing of a substantial upgrade to the Mac Mini and Mac Pro.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr• 9 years ago

Here is a guy that upgraded his Mac Pro with standard components without making it a Hackintosh[1]. Maybe his tips are useful for you.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNd5_kxpPc4

hoorayimhelping2• 9 years ago

I love my iPhone 7. I've had it for a little over a month and I've already taken some of the best photos of the last ten years, including dslr photos I've taken.

seibelj• 9 years ago

Every 2 years I upgrade my iPhone, and every 2 years I get to buy the best phone I've ever owned. Not worth arguing in these places about religious wars. I try to appreciate how amazing everything is rather than lose my mind over a plug changing formats.

joering2• 9 years ago

But have you had any others? I have to be honest around 2010 I had Samsung i997... the photos from it are still far better (in terms of catching light, and general sharpness and the feeling of good photos) than the one I take with 6s.

martin-adams• 9 years ago

I just upgraded to the 7 plus from a Samsung S6 on Monday. I agree, the camera is very, very good. I love the live photos and the portrait mode is beautiful.

I was actually underwhelmed when the phone was announced, and the lack of a headphone jack seemed inconvenient (and those ear pods refuse to stay in my ears). But, the wired headphone adapter works, and fortunately I don't charge and listen at the same time much.

So much like the new Macbook, I wonder how much these notable backwards steps really matter. With Apple products my thinking is, is it worth the switch? Most likely. Is it worth a yearly upgrade? Nope.

chocolatebunny• 9 years ago

Every time I hear criticism of an Apple product that I agree with, I think of this: https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

ianai• 9 years ago

That is seriously classic stuff right there

devmunchies• 9 years ago

I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.

haha. this is good stuff.

seanmcdirmid3• 9 years ago

I upgraded to conductive wireless headphones and really really like my iPhone 7 now. I won't miss the headphone jack at all.

azinman24• 9 years ago

What's the advantage of the bone conductive over in ear? How's the sound?

czstrong• 9 years ago

We don't know what percent of those units are 6S and SE. iPhone 7 could have worse adoption than previous whole-numer releases even with overall sales up.

megablast2• 9 years ago

You need to change where you read.

Razengan• 9 years ago

I'm sure that most of the ruckus raised by people who haven't even used the Apple product they criticize can be safely raced to PR firms of competing companies. See [1].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+students+fake+review...

mi100hael• 9 years ago

That dude on Reddit must be having a melt-down.

grepthisab• 9 years ago

I just checked because I remembered something about that. It turns out the guy was faking having taken those AAPL short positions, as expected.

curiousgal• 9 years ago

It's fake.

adrr• 9 years ago

Fake. Pretty sure he's taking the opposite side. He's actually really good at predicting the market if you take the inverse.

pfarnsworth2• 9 years ago

fscomeau has been a fake for several years. He accidentally revealed his IB account, which was a demo numbered one, so yes even this was fake. It was expected. But the live stream was funny as hell.

fiatmoney• 9 years ago

Who's "that dude on reddit"?

Gustomaximus• 9 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/5qprhh/by_p...

Dramatize3• 9 years ago

My new laptop is the buggiest Apple product I've owned.

Programs are always crashing, has issues waking up, and has connection issue with the new LG monitor.

rak00n• 9 years ago

I'm surprised you're downvoted.

davnn• 9 years ago

Implicitly attributed to user error probably.

diminoten• 9 years ago

I've had no issues, and am pleasantly surprised by how happy I am with the new keyboard.

Dramatize3• 9 years ago

I also like the keyboard. The hardware is lovely to use, it's just the software letting the experience down.

chadcmulligan• 9 years ago

yes, I'm the same (15" MBP). I think it's the nicest laptop I've ever owned. It's thin, light, incredible battery life, very powerful. I really like the keyboard, the travel once you get used to it makes other keyboards feel heavy. Trying to use the touchbar but maybe it will become useful as time goes by. I use it for swift coding and I can't fault it.

DigitalJack3• 9 years ago

My macbook pro is having problems waking up lately--very annoying. It's a 2015 15" model... I think they must have something screwy going on with a recent update.

izacus5• 9 years ago

Oh yes, my 15" tMBP is the same - not as much monitor issues, but TouchBar is buggy as heck. Randomly not waking up after sleep, buttons not being properly repainted, it froze a few times....

Before 10.12.2 I also got random kernel panics and graphical corruption. By far one of the most buggy laptops I've owned - it seems that Apple really rushed the software part.

10.12.3 did fix most of the issues though.

dan12343• 9 years ago

Is your LG monitor the new 5K display? If so, you'll probably want to read about the shielding problems[0]

[0]https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/apple-lg-5k-display-...

Dramatize3• 9 years ago

Thanks, that sounds like some of the issues I'm having. Sometimes the LG monitor will glitch out for a few seconds (or half the screen will show green).

gaelian• 9 years ago

I have a new MacBook Pro, got two new LG 5K monitors with it and ran into this issue:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/271120/connect-2-lg...

I haven't had any issues so far with crashing/instability except it once didn't wake from sleep properly and restarted its self. Still trying to work out if it was anything I did.

chillacy• 9 years ago

I had to disable sleep on my macbook + 5k monitor to prevent it from having a kernel panic every time I wanted to use my computer first thing in the morning. Seems to be fine for now, but of course that also means I'm running nonstop.

lukasb• 9 years ago

I only have issues with SizeUp and Notational Velocity crashing. SizeUp just released a new update that fixes that issue. NV will probably never have another release :(

(nvALT isn't as pretty)

matt40773• 9 years ago

If you're experiencing programs crashing at a rate of more than 1/day, it is almost invariably a hardware defect.

adventured3• 9 years ago

I fail to see how this was a dynamite quarter, in Cook's words.

Net income shrank year over year

Operating income shrank year over year

China sales imploded by another 12%

Margins contracted

Sales growth was a piddling 4% (it didn't contract granted, I don't see how that's "dynamite")

iPad sales continue to implode, down 19%

And there's Cook cheering on the results. It reminds me of the Steve Ballmer days under Microsoft. The profits were there, the sales were there, and yet you could easily spot the icebergs on the horizon.

fisherjeff• 9 years ago

I think the most interesting category to watch is going to be services: 2 straight years of 20% growth, and it's now virtually tied for second largest revenue source with Mac.

adventured3• 9 years ago

There's no great profit in their services division, compared to their historically incredible margins and sales scale in hardware. Which is why their net income is contracting. You could double their services sales and it'll only just move the needle on that $17.x billion in net income.

Apple is also going to need very substantial device sales growth to keep moving services growth over time at that pace (a given user is only going to consume so much, you need a lot more of them) - I don't see where the device growth is going to come from (China's boom days are long over in that regard; India could maybe pick up some of that slack).

If you're melting off 3 million iPad units year over year, at an asp of $400 to $450, that becomes a large hole for services growth to fill. Worse yet, it's very likely China is going to become more hostile as a market for the iPhone / Apple in the next few years (both politically and in terms of the domestic competition that is shrinking the iPhone's position there). Total device contraction, which is pretty likely over the next few years, will put pressure on services growth.

Cook is doing a great job at managing the spigots of sales and profit that Jobs left for him to operate. The sooner Apple can move to its post Ballmer era and stop being a sales collections company (surfing the past until the wave's energy dissipates), the better.

criddell2• 9 years ago

iPad sales continue to implode, down 19%

I'm a bit surprised by this. I got to try out a iPad Pro with the pencil yesterday for the first time and came away very impressed.

OkGoDoIt• 9 years ago

But it also costs more than a mid-range computer.

adamlett• 9 years ago

Apple didn't just introduce a new iPad coming in to this quarter like they did last year.

someguydave• 9 years ago

For a computer company with so many billions in the bank it's amusing how Apple has married itself to the iPhone.

Why not try to leverage the relatively secure walled garden of iOS to open a business selling hardware and software to enterprises? Why not make Unix servers with distinguishing features? Management could get away with it while they were surfing the iPhone wave but it was always obvious that it wouldn't last forever.

emdowling• 9 years ago

The interesting takeaway for me is that services is now the equal second biggest revenue centre at 9%. It is still way behind iPhone, but it is growing at a phenomenal rate. By all accounts Apple is just getting started with services (e.g.: rumoured original video content, video streaming service) so we can expect this to grow even more.

Finally Apple is capitalising on its install base to sell more addons after sale. This offsets slowing hardware upgrade rates, although not sure if it is enough to offset iPad declines.

The narrative often heard is that if they want to shift to being a services company, Apple would need to dramatically change its org structure. I may be wrong, but no one has ever monetised consumers with recurring monthly revenue as successfully as Apple has (utility companies and mortgage brokers excluded!). And it didn't even need an org restructure!

adventured3• 9 years ago

Services, basically digital content consumption (whether songs, or movies, or apps), is a very low profit business compared to hardware.

You're competing with Netflix, Google and Amazon there. Netflix and Amazon have near zero margin in their content businesses. Most of your profit is eaten up by licensing (or production as well now for AMZN & NFLX), and that is guaranteed not to change.

$20 billion in services sales, with $3 billion in operating income, won't scratch a $638 billion market cap (and won't compensate for tanking China iPhone sales if that doesn't immediately stop getting worse).

hyperbovine2• 9 years ago

By all accounts Apple is just getting started with services ... so we can expect this to grow even more.

That's a very ... charitable way to put it. Another take would be that Apple, whose former CEO, over a decade ago, simultaneously oversaw Pixar and sat on the board of Disney, complete and totally missed the boat on streaming, original content, and cloud services. Think back to 2006: Netflix was a service that mailed DVDs, Amazon Prime was a year old, Dropbox was not around, Spotify was not around, Google was still focused on core services like maps and mail. Considering who their CEO was at the time, his connections, and their first mover advantage on digital entertainment and cloud, it absolutely amazes me that every single one of these companies was allowed to come in and eat Apple's lunch in some form or another.

macrael• 9 years ago

The common explanation for this is that the content owners did not let them. Terrified of what iTunes did to the music business, they cut deals with not-Apple to prevent a monopoly from becoming more important than they were.

I don't know how to prove that, but it's a story that resonates. For a while I bought all my music exclusively from iTunes but now I subscribe to three different video services.

minikites• 9 years ago

I think the issue was partially with the content owners (as mentioned in another reply to your comment) but mostly about internet speeds and processing power available at the time. Remember what YouTube videos looked like in 2006?

maverick_iceman2• 9 years ago

To be fair, the man did revolutionize hand-held computing. You can't blame him for failing to be omniscient.

nilkn• 9 years ago

That's probably because in 2006 he was busy creating the iPhone.

breatheoften2• 9 years ago

I bought into apple after falling for osx during college right around the financial crisis. I've been a fan of their approach to products since then.

But the new macbook pro's are pretty revolting to me -- I used one at the apple store for a few minutes and could barely type on the (horrible) keyboard. I played with the touchbar and immediately found myself trying to touch the screen -- something that as a fan I definitely knew would not work.

Even with just a few moments use, it was immediately utterly clear to me that to the extent that the touchbar is a good idea, a touchscreen would have been a better idea ... The good idea within the touchbar is the attempt to 'augment' the keyboard/mouse user interface with touch -- augment, not replace. Microsoft tried to make touch/keyboard-mouse interchangeable but in real-life not all elements on the screen should be touchable -- the touchbar realizes this and deserves props for getting that much right. But even after acknowledging that success, the touchbar is just ... wrong -- its not any easier to lift your hands from the keyboard and use the touchbar than it would be to touch the screen -- its actually harder because you have to take your eyes from the screen and look somewhere you would not normally look to aim your fingers.

I hope the idea of 'augmenting' the macOS user interface introduced with touchbar evolves to the main display -- where it might be a good idea ... I don't know how this would be accomplished though -- maybe the api's created for touchbar could be re-targeted towards user interface elements on the main touch display ...

freyir3• 9 years ago

But the new macbook pro's are pretty revolting to me -- I used one at the apple store for a few minutes

Thank you for your in-depth review. Many people judged the new MacBook Pro based on its press release alone, but you went the extra mile and used one at the Apple Store for a few minutes.

breatheoften2• 9 years ago

To be fair to me, I wasn't trying to lie or mislead about the thoroughness of my experience ... I suppose I was talking into a void but I at least was conveying the truth of my experience.

My use at the apple store was enough to know I didn't want one -- which made me glad because I sort of need a new macbook and was worried I'd buy one on impulse.

I immediately did not like the keyboard (never happened on an apple laptop for me before the one port Macbook which I bought for my girlfriend right when it was announced sight unseen -- when using it I tried my best not to voice my (immediate) criticism of the keyboard hoping that she would like my present ... She came from an old dell so anything was better than that monstrosity. But at some point after having the macbook one for awhile she used my macbook pro and commented how much easier the keyboard on my machine was to type on ...). I found myself unconsciously touching the display while playing around with touchbar. Attempting to use the display as a touchscreen is something I've never done before - even when playing with a microsoft laptop that had a touchscreen on it.

Touching the little bar just 'felt wrong' to me ... This is certainly an unfair assessment -- but I'm not used to that feeling with apple products - the experience just legitimately felt bad to me.

I'm open to having changing my mind in the future or having it changed -- I'm not really a cargo cult'er.

jessewmc• 9 years ago

When the chiclet keyboards came out, I immediately liked typing on them and thought they were as good or better than any previous laptop keyboard.

I ordered a 2016 Macbook Pro, but when I tried the keyboard out in store I didn't like it very much. I was about 10-20% slower typing on it, and made far more mistakes than normal. I'm a fast typist so it was a big deal to me that the keyboard wasn't good. It just didn't feel right.

I didn't cancel my order, against my better judgement, thinking that I might get used to the new keyboard. While waiting for it I went back to the store a couple times and spent 30 minutes typing on the new keyboard, but still it didn't feel right.

When my laptop arrived, same feeling. After a week I was ready to return it, but had holiday return window so didn't rush it. Finally after 2 weeks it clicked, and I was typing up to speed and it felt good. Now when I go back to chiclet the keys feel heavy and squishy.

Something about the keyboard was a very big adjustment from any other I've used, and my first impression of it was quite bad. But now that I've gotten used to it I actually prefer it to anything else.

Maybe it's Stockholm syndrome, take that for what you will.

lolive• 9 years ago

Christmas 2016 was my first time in an apple store since forever (i.e the iphone 5). I went in and bought the last iphone with a headphone jack: the iphone 6s.

I firmly believe a looot of people did exactly that too.

So, imho, the iphone 6s is the absolute best seller ever at Apple (especially since iphone 7 announcement :).

nicky03• 9 years ago

Actually the last phone with a headphone jack was the SE. (The best phone they've ever made, imho.)

freyir3• 9 years ago

So, imho, the iphone 6s is the absolute best seller ever at Apple

I know it's 2017, but "best selling" is really more a matter of fact than opinion.

pfarnsworth2• 9 years ago

You would be completely wrong. This is evidence by the ASP, which was over expectations, which means it was mainly iPhone 7s.

knlje4• 9 years ago

I will never buy a computer again. You can find lots of very powerful computers in trash bin (e.g. my current 2013 MBP). People buy a piece of very precious materials and throw it away in 2 years. I think this is one of the most unethical things a man can do.

You think that you need your computers up to date because you are a geek and you must stay up to date to remain competent. This is not true. You can manage with less and you more than anyone else know how to handle a computer with slightly less resources.

These kind of numbers from a company advocating this throw away culture makes me very sad.

BOBOTWINSTON• 9 years ago

For development, sure. For VR, yeah I need to basically be at the bleeding edge right now.

santaclaus• 9 years ago

For development, sure

As a developer, I say give me more cores and more ram! Faster build and test times means more development time.

intoverflow23• 9 years ago

I don't think you can put people with modular high end PCs in the same box as people throwing away smartphones every year and laptops every 2-3.

At least modular PCs can be valuable again (or repaired) with a single component upgrade and those old components usually go straight onto ebay for other people to take advantage of.

seanmcdirmid3• 9 years ago

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or real but...new computers (a) get faster over time, so upgrading is worth it, but old computers also (b) become damaged over time, for many of us at least, though this is less of a problem with MBPs than say with Lenovo's.

Yes, I could do my work with 10 year old hardware, but no, I wouldn't really want to. These days, I don't feel the need to upgrade very often, 3-4 years seems to work out, but something new and faster is always nice.

As for the environmental costs, these are real and should be considered. That being said, it is difficult to not consume while remaining competitive with your peers that are at the same time (they have a faster computer -> get work done faster than you -> you get a pink slip).

alimbada• 9 years ago

You must live in some super privileged place; I wish I could find a 2013 Macbook Pro in a trash bin...

knlje4• 9 years ago

I must say that I was slightly surprised of it as well. I had to replace a fuse on the motherboard (screen was black) but otherwise it was in a pristine condition. Before this I had a 2011 Thinkpad x200s which is a more typical finding at waste electronics racks.

quickben2• 9 years ago

You think that you need your computers up to date because you are a geek and you must stay up to date to remain competent.

Nah, I think I need a new computer because the $900 one I have (4 core haswell oc to 4.6 Ghz, 16 GB ram, 3 drives) and the $600 server I have (4 core Sandy, xeon, 32 GB ram, 5 drives), take anywhere between 2 days and 3 weeks to finish the tasks I throw at them regularly.

Between the MLC SSDs, tons of RAM, ton of CPU power, for $1500, I wouldn't even look at MBP from the current batch, let alone one from the last one.

I am a geek, I am competent, and I am fully planning on two new computers this year. Just waiting to see how Zen turns out.

64GB Ram / ea. 1 GB SSDs, probably on ZFS, 8 cores / 16 threads (to stay in the cheap consumer range). This will probably be doable for under $2k.

So, as a geek, this is what I do to remain competent, hardware wise.

TLDR: You can't just assume that because you don't need a more powerful hardware for blogging or what have you, that the rest of us also don't need one.

I can't manage with less, because life is short.

knlje4• 9 years ago

I don't assume that people blog only. I do HPC for a living and pay for resources on demand. Not everyone can manage but more of you could if you wanted.

toor2• 9 years ago

Can't you just use AWS or an equivalent cloud service instead of owning a server?

kstrauser• 9 years ago

These kind of numbers from a company advocating this throw away culture makes me very sad.

When did they advocate that? They just now EOL'ed my 2011 MBP.

Also, where do you suppose your discarded computer came from if not from someone who bought it new a few years ago?

knlje4• 9 years ago

They soldered my ram and ssd to the motherboard. I don't mind if its made by a particular company as long as I don't give them money.

bdcravens2• 9 years ago

At the end of the day, the MBP isn't built only for developers and creatives. We're a subset of the customer base, always have been. (I suspect they sell more to soccer moms and college kids than "pros")

paulcole• 9 years ago

Pro does not only mean "for professionals." In the average person's mind it just means "better." Nobody says "oh I'm using this at home, can't get the pro."

matt40773• 9 years ago

This "professional" narrative is seriously annoying. I work on software 10h+ a day, some of it is (hopefully) at the cutting edge of biology. I even get paid. Use neural nets. And vim. So I should probably fall within the "professional" category. At least more than "soccer mom", with regards to gender, reproductive status, and offsprings' choice of sports.

I have never felt the need to plug in 6+ peripherals. 16GB work fine even with a Linux and a Windows 10 virtual machine running. If I run out of battery after 12h of working on a flight, I sleep – but I don't dream of replaceable batteries.

Whatever all these self-professed "professionals" are doing, it sounds a lot more like what I did in high school: spending weeks swapping components, recompiling Linux kernels for 2% higher values at some useless benchmark, building incredibly-convoluted setups to really finally create a media centre rivalling Fleet Street etc.

mark_l_watson• 9 years ago

I agree, for my workflow. I just bought a new laptop, and didn't even go for a pro model. If I need more resources, I have a 60gig ram, 16 core VPS I can spin up, but for most Java, Haskell, and other dev work, and for writing my books, a plain MacBook is quite sufficient (after 1 week to get used to, and like, the keyboard). I did toss my old external monitor for a LG 4K, a purchase I am also really happy with.

For fun, I am writing iOS and Android app versions of my cookingspace web app, and the MacBook also performs well enough for that.

EGreg• 9 years ago

Looks like Tim Cook worked hard to claw his salary back :)

jhack• 9 years ago

So nothing's going to change. Great...

samfisher832• 9 years ago

China Iphone sales took a pretty big dip, but US sales looked good and their ASP hasn't gone down. The Chinese Market is more price sensitive than US market.

bitmapbrother• 9 years ago

Talk about setting expectations low so that they can beat the street again.

Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2017 second quarter: revenue between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion

bekman• 9 years ago

Well the coming quarter is a non-holiday.

erickhill• 9 years ago

How many Macs sold from the Apple refurb-shop helped push those Q1 Mac sales figures? I bought my brand new (2015) refurb model the week the new Macs were shown, as did several of my colleagues.

andai• 9 years ago

For everyone asking about magsafe, you can buy a usb-c to magsafe adapter. (2 parts which separate)

arrty88• 9 years ago

I have the 2016 touch bar pro 15 inch. Love it

keyle• 9 years ago

I wonder how much if "services" is due to the iCloud revenues because iPhone keep getting bigger, and the free hosting is not getting bigger..... Bugging people constantly to increase storage.

MarkMc2• 9 years ago

Meh. A bank account earning compound interest will achieve "all-time record quarterly revenue" every single quarter.

Apple's quarterly profit is only up by 2.4% per share. Let's look at earnings per share for each calendar year [1]:

2016: $8.35 (down 11%)

2015: $9.42 (up 27%)

2014: $7.42 (up 29%)

2013: $5.76 (down 9%)

2012: $6.30

Looks to me like Apple's growth spurt is over.

[1] Note 12 in annual reports at http://investor.apple.com/sec.cfm?DocType=Annual&ndq_keyword...

bduerst• 9 years ago

I've always wondered why people use EPS - What if Apple issued more outstanding shares during this timeframe?

Wouldn't that skew this metric without representing that?

bkjelden• 9 years ago

EPS is only really relevant if given in the same breath as share price.

P/E ratio is the more meaningful (and shares-outstanding-invariant) metric.

sumedh• 9 years ago

You can look at the EPS trend for many years and form your conclusions. If its going up that is good, if its down or flat you should be asking why.

qeternity• 9 years ago

When a company does something dilutive (or anti-dilutive) then previous metrics are recalculated (split adjusted) for comparison. Also, as someone else mentions, EPS in its own right is meaningless. P/E ratios are a more common (albeit flawed) way to compare companies' relative valuations.

azinman24• 9 years ago

Where can I get a bank account with compound interest that isn't 0.001%?

mastax• 9 years ago

Online banks. Ally, Barclays both are at 1.0% APY right now.

intopieces• 9 years ago

A bank account earning compound interest will achieve "all-time record quarterly revenue" every single quarter.

And a car will get you from A to B faster than any marathon runner. There's no real comparison here -- even your yearly EPS comparisons lack the context to make them insightful. What were Apple's competitors doing, EPS wise, in those years? What was the market doing in general?

MarkMc2• 9 years ago

I'm not claiming that a bank account is a better investment, just saying that "all-time record quarterly revenue" is pretty meaningless.

And yes, a thorough analysis of Apple's performance would offer more insight than just 5 years of EPS figures.

econner• 9 years ago

Possibly a dumb question, but doesn't 2017 Q1 end in 2 months? How are they already reporting results?

stuckagain• 9 years ago

Financial calendars are not necessarily aligned with actual calendars.

aetherson• 9 years ago

And, yes, specifically Apple's year ends with Q3 of the "real" calendar. Their fiscal year is aligned with their iPhone release cycle, which is probably a good idea.

scottmcleod• 9 years ago

Now if only they would leverage their piles and piles of cash for humanity.

yig• 9 years ago

It was a 14 week quarter rather than the typical 13 week quarter. Multiply all the numbers by 13/14 and you'll see it was a year over year decline.

qqrsmith• 9 years ago

Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out.

For accounting purposes, a firm is allowed to define a "quarter" as either a span of 3 months or else a span of 13 weeks. A "year" is then four quarters. ... Consequently, a firm that defines its quarters in terms of weeks needs to hold a 14-week quarter every four or five years. [1]

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/02/06/_14_week_quar...

alanfalcon• 9 years ago

Except you're adding a weak week, not a week that's expected to compete on an even basis with a typical holiday-quarter week, so that math isn't exactly telling/accurate either.

retromario• 9 years ago

From CFO Maestri on the Q&A call with analysts: "2:15 pm: We had the benefit of a 14th week, but this was offset by several factors including less channel fill than last year and a one-time $548 million patent judgment receipt last year."

http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/31/q1-2017-results/

toyg3• 9 years ago

Channel fill is fairly irrelevant (whose fault is it that your distributors don't want more of your stuff "just in case"?) and the cash is also fairly irrelevant - what matters for momentum is the number of units shifted and that's lagging everywhere except iPhones (and, if you trust them, the Watch).

freshyill• 9 years ago

I searched and searched to find an Apple Watch for my wife for Christmas. I got lucky and got one on Christmas Eve at Target. I'm not shocked at all they they made bank this quarter.

piyush_soni2• 9 years ago

Wait. Isn't the revenue number supposed to grow each year as long as things are just going as they were? I've never understood Apple's fixation with the word 'ever' for everything which is supposed to grow organically. Guess what? Every year I get my 'highest ever' salary.

piyush_soni2• 9 years ago

People giving negative votes, do you have an objective reason for that, or you just don't like someone bashing Apple for their hyperbole?

jpalomaki• 9 years ago

Mac might be a victim of the high profit margins. Frequent updates and competitive pricing do no good for the profit margin. Much easier to maintain those if you sell a bit outdated hw (thinking about Mac Pro and Mini).

What would the "markets" think if Apple sold more Macs, maintained the same absolute profits but let the margins slip? Would that be considered as a bad thing?

nkkollaw• 9 years ago

I don't know if I would describe 3-year-old hardware as "a bit outdated" :-/

mpweiher• 9 years ago

So why hasn't the stock price tanked yet? What's wrong with the Universe?

coldcode• 9 years ago

17B profits should count for something. That more than 7 months of Facebook's total revenue. Apple made more in service revenue than FB made in total.

wildchild2• 9 years ago

This is actually bad news because Apple will continue this weird strategy of pushing fancy crap for fortune.

dashoffset2• 9 years ago

If you think their products are fancy crap, would it make a difference if they suddenly decided to sell them for half the price?

wildchild2• 9 years ago

Yes, because price and quality matters. I have luxury leather goods and they worth every penny because awesome quality and the rest of goods just junk.

Does not work with Mac, you pay a lot and a chance that you will be in a trouble with it is very high. Like with last MBP. Apple must spend more money for QA and offer better hardware. I will look on their new mac mini if it will be updated this or next year, probably it will be my last device from this company.

Apple business is one of the greatest bubbles.

Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

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