Category: Mac
Macs, iPads and Margins…
So as you’re aware Apple talked about Macs recently.
Seeing as this blog is mostly dedicated to talking about Macs, this piqued my interest.
The M3 chip was introduced, and squeezed into the laptops and iMac.
Highlights for me were few and far between, the main positive being that the ‘touch bar’ no longer exists – yay – and the 24” iMac has missed out the M2 and jumped straight to the M3, albeit just the base M3, not the M3 Pro or Max.
The 27” iMac replacement is already here by all accounts.
A very unsubtle hint was dropped – the 24”, 4.5k screen replaces the 21.5” and 27”.
So it’s official- the true replacement for the 27” iMac, is the Mac Mini with Studio Display.
But it was an odd presentation.
At only half an hour or so, it seemed more suited to just a press release, and a lot of pundits have observed this also.
Until the other shoe dropped.
Apple’s earnings report noted a 34% drop in Mac sales and a 10% drop in iPad sales.
Ouch.
So I think this presentation was rushed into place, with a hastily ‘Halloween’ gimmick applied, to goose Mac sales.
But why are sales falling?
Apple has been more active than ever in the Mac market (the iPad not so much), you’d think that all this effort would bear fruit. But it hasn’t.
For me, the blame cannot be applied to a single person, it’s more the way in which Apple seems to currently operate, now that someone with Steve Jobs’ vision and priorities has long gone.
But having said that, I’m not a big fan of Tim.
He’s a numbers guy.
He’s a share holder value guy.
He’s a channel logistics guy.
He’s a spreadsheet guy.
He’s a margins guy.
And although all these things are important, the most important thing that Apple has, is its brand and how that brand is perceived by its customers, its critics and its staff.
While everyone is looking at the details, no one seems to be looking at the bigger picture – what does Apple mean to people.
As my header states, I love the Mac, but Apple as a company? Not so much.
When Jobs first returned to Apple, he launched the Think Different campaign.
A campaign with one purpose, to make people (including those working at Apple) start thinking and caring about Apple again.
To make Apple more than just the products, the numbers, the bottom line and the margin.
To stop the staff worrying about (and leaving) Apple so that they could get on with making great products.
What Apple has become today, is a company that values and cares more about the details than they care about what Apple means in the abstract.
This is solely Tim’s fault – he should be setting the agenda to move forward, instead he’s letting Apple get bogged down in the details with different departments at odds with each other.
This is clearly illustrated by Apple, for all intents and purposes, operating a siloed business model.
I remember working for a company that operated like this.
The idea is that you task each department in your company with a set of goals, and the theory goes, if properly set and managed then each department doesn’t have to worry about the company as a whole, they just need to worry about their little bit of it.
So one department (or silo) is charged with keeping margins at a set rate, another department is set keeping quality control to the agreed level etc.
What this ends up with though is a spreadsheet.
These departments end up obsessing over a single number in their spreadsheet.
In the company I worked for, these departments had this percentage on a white board and OMG were people in trouble if it went above 5%, or below 2% or some other meaningless operator.
Staff only vaguely knew why that was important – even the manager it seemed. All that mattered was the percentage.
This is where Apple is currently.
The decision to keep old hardware around, even if it confuses the marketing message and makes the product line impossible for a customer to understand does not matter.
All that matters is that they keep this old, outdated hardware around so as to maintain the margin.
Look at the iPad, keyboard and pencils – the sole reason it’s such a mess, is because of Apple’s obsession with margin.
The decision to release your entry level Mac’s with 8gb RAM and a 256GB SSD, which will seriously affect negatively your computing experience, is a margin decision.
The reason why Mac’s are stubbornly high in price is because of Apple’s obsession with margin.
The reason why Mac’s upgrade prices are so high (hundreds of pounds for 8gb memory upgrade) is because of margin.
The reason why Apple struggles so hard with getting into gaming, is because they don’t sell enough Macs for game developers to get interested, and this is because of Mac prices being so high and that’s because of margin.
If Apple was serious about gaming then the entire company would be behind it – individuals clearly are, but as a company they’re demonstrably not.
If you’re serious about gaming, you wouldn’t be releasing your base level hardware with 8gb RAM and a 256gb SSD with upgrades being borderline exploitative.
If you’re serious about gaming then your Mac App store wouldn’t be selling Tomb Raider 2013 for £29.99, whilst it’s less than £5 on Steam.
If you’re serious about the education market, then you’d release a comprehensive ecosystem, backed up by rock solid iPads that were competitively priced with Chromebook’s. Apple isn’t and actually can’t do this because of margins.
This obsession with margins is damaging to the company’s growth.
And that is because the siloes in the department don’t care about education, gaming, or selling more Macs, or creating great products – all they care about is their silo and their little spreadsheet.
Tim and the board? Well they don’t care, all they care about is all their little siloes making sure that their spreadsheets are all hitting their targets.
Tim’s job is to steer the ship into uncharted waters, but he’s down in his bolthole, looking at the numbers, because if the numbers add up – he must be doing a good job – right?.
Now, I’m not saying that margin isn’t important, it clearly is, but if your myopic obsession with margin is damaging the brand (and now sales it seems), then Tim needs to seriously stop looking at his spreadsheets, take a long walk and have a good think about what Apple is trying to do.
He’s made Apple employees lose sight of what it all means and what they go to work for.
To create insanely great products that people want to buy.
The real world, Apple…
I’m currently in a long term contract as a graphic design freelancer for a solidly PC-based company.
As I’ve said before, the means me having to use Windows exclusively.
This isn’t a problem as I’ve used Windows on and off throughout my career.
Through my career I’ve usually had to manage a suite of Macs that sit within larger PC-based businesses.
I’ve only really seen fully Mac-based businesses in design agencies and even then, there’s always a smattering of PCs around.
For the most part, I’ve managed this by keeping Macs and PCs separate.
Separate servers, separate workflows and the 2 worlds only cross when they have to, email, internet, networking etc.
I’ve done it this way because despite Apple advertising, connecting Macs to PC environments is frustrating at best and impossible at worst.
Yes – everybody tries to get along, but Apple’s SMB implementation is lacklustre and its Active Directory support is laughable.
Even though SMB is the officially supported file sharing protocol at Apple, and it’s ok Mac-to-Mac, it doesn’t use the latest version and is comically slow when connecting to PC shares, to the point where you have to disable features via the Terminal to get it to work.
I’ve always avoided connecting via Active Directory simply because it can’t be relied upon. It just doesn’t really work and from what I can glean online Apple are dropping support for it.
Apple are just not interested in playing nicely, or just don’t see the point of it.
This is why the Mac share of the wider PC market and its share of their internal revenue at Apple is stubborn in its growth.
Their advertising waxes lyrically about how fast, intuitive and productive their Macs are, but they say nothing about actually how you can incorporate Macs into your business.
They just don’t want to put the effort into this.
This was brought into sharp relief recently when out of the blue I was asked about the issues my workplace are having in the design department where I’m contracted, what could be done about it and whether moving to the Mac would help?
Now a bit of background on where I’m working currently.
There’s 5 graphic designers here and 2 marketing assistants. All using Windows.
We use an outside design agency for video work (which is Mac based) and this agency is part owned by the owner of the company
You can see where this is going.
We have lots of issues here and they all centre around the fact that their IT team, just don’t understand the size and complexity of the files and workflows the we use daily.
Storage is the main issue.
We create about 5 gigabytes of content a week and we store all that on an old networked PC in a locked room somewhere.
We connect to it using 10-baseT Ethernet.
Yes you read that right.
Their IT department are full of clever, qualified people, but in terms of large scale deployment of professional design workstations they are dangerously arrogant.
They are used to a world of ignorant users who use Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams and push tiny Microsoft Office documents around, all on the back of a Microsoft cloud based storage system.
The storage for the studio is a spinning HD of about 1TB and it fills up fast, so we have to constantly move this somewhere else so we can keep working.
IT flatly refused to invest in more robust local storage – their solution to all this is to use Microsoft SharePoint.
This of course isn’t a solution.
It’s cloud based and syncs back and forth as needed.
Fine if you’re using Office documents, small JPEG’s etc.
Not fine when you’re using InDesign with large placed files, Character Animator files which number in the 100s per project or huge Adobe Dimension, After Effects or Dimension files for instance.
So I quickly managed to convince them not to go down that road.
A design studio needs fast, local, networked storage that’s backed up.
So I was asked about this problem, and because the owner owns an agency that use Macs, I’ve been asked to come up with a solution, potentially using Macs.
I’ve deliberated long and hard about this and I’ve come to a sad conclusion.
I can’t recommend the Mac.
Despite me banging on about how good Macs are for 3 decades, in the real world your computer isn’t an isolated asset.
It has to exist in an ecosystem.
It has to play nice.
That ‘it just works’ mentality that Apple has, must apply in all circumstances.
But it doesn’t.
Yes, if you’re buying a Mac for personal use or you’re a start-up or a (very) small business then a Mac is a good choice.
I don’t need to tell you that I consider Macs the best computers around, they’re fast, reliable and the OS is simply the pinnacle of excellence.
But in larger corporations, none of that matters.
Putting a Mac in place would mean a huge amount of training, infrastructure changes, strict workflows and staff on hand to handle issues.
There will be less issues for the user for sure, but it’s a huge change for the company’s IT team.
Unless you delegate an experienced Mac user to act as the IT go-between.
This is what I’ve done in the past, but it’s not something I want to do in the future.
So I’m recommending that the company stick to Windows, and just beef up their storage.
A NAS RAID is obvious here that’s connected locally on the network. It’s not that difficult to figure this out.
So what lessons can be learnt from this?
Well in some alternative timeline where Apple thought that this was important, it means working closely with Microsoft.
Much more closely.
Close, as in having Mac staff actually on site with Microsoft to make all this networking bulletproof and ‘just work’ out of the box.
I think Microsoft of today is ideally placed to help here – this isn’t Ballmer’s & Gates show anymore.
The new Microsoft wants their tech to work everywhere.
But we don’t exist in that timeline.
We exist in the timeline where Apple just aren’t seeing that the Mac is an area of growth.
We have the Apple that’s obsessed with service revenue and the entertainment arena and of course, the iPhone.
Not one that wants to grow the market share and mind share of the Mac.
As my bio states, I’ll defend the Mac until the end of my days because Apple certainly won’t.
If someone like me wants to recommend the Mac, but can’t due to Apple’s intransigence, what does the future hold for it?
It’s time to let the MacPro…. go….
So Apple, after much deliberation have released their latest stab in the dark at the MacPro.
I say stab in the dark, because Apple just doesn’t know what to do with their once flagship Mac.
Although you can’t fault them for trying, they just haven’t a clue what to do.
Their effort seems to be shoehorning a Mac Studio chip into the existing case, removing the ability to add GPUs, and having fans that aren’t needed – that’s about it.
It used to be so different.
The last time I used a MacPro Tower was in 2015.
The MacPro Tower was the staple of the agency I worked for.
If you did serious design work, a modular, expandable tower was the obvious choice.
The Cheesegrater Mac was one of Jony Ive‘s greatest achievements.
It was produced to dissipate heat – the PowerPC chip was red hot and needed an efficient cooling system to keep it from overheating.
The whole design was based around 5 cooling zones, with small, noiseless, dedicated and independent fans.
Apple was so proud of it, they allowed you to take the side off and using a clear plastic cover, view the internals as you used it.
But in the end the PowerPC was a dead end and Apple switched to Intel.
But the Cheesegrater remained.
The internals changed but that form factor prevailed.
It prevailed because the computer industry ordained that was what a powerful computer looked like.
It allowed modularity, and especially with the switch to Intel, enabled you to use standard PC parts (if you had the drivers of course).
But it also allowed comparisons.
So Apple got into the comparison conversation, instead of talking about why you should choose a Mac, they just allowed themselves to get caught up in macho posturing about how fast their computers were in comparison with Windows based PCs.
Something they still do to this day.
As I explained in my previous article this is a pointless dead end conversation, especially now with the switch to Apple Silicon.
The PC will always be faster because it evolves all the time and their users are used to tinkering and upgrading.
Apple found that for the most part, Mac users just didn’t do that.
Sure, there were a few die-hard and niche cases where the users demanded modularity, but for the majority of users all-in-one Macs and laptops were preferred.
Apple started to change that conversation and began the very long road of speeding up their all-in-one systems – the iMac.
So in 2015, I gutted my studio of towers and replaced everything with slimline 27” iMacs, save a MacPro tower I used as a very reliable server.
And all was good.
The screens were amazing, the hardware was fast.
But it was the footprint that took me by surprise.
I’d gotten used to cables – cables everywhere.
With the iMacs, there were just a couple of cables per workstation to worry about and that fact alone was worth the switch.
Despite even my own previous protestations, I never upgraded them, I just got on with using them to create things.
I’ve never looked back and I still work on an Intel 27” 5k iMac today, which I’m looking to replace with the fabled 30”+ M3 iMac.
So to the present day.
Apple have had roundtable discussions, rethinks, relaunches and endless dithering about what computer they can make for the high end creative market.
What I realised is although I thought I was ‘high-end’, I actually wasn’t.
Even though I create complex designs, animation and a bit of video, I didn’t need a tower to do that, an iMac was fine.
Apple realises this too but the market stubbornly isn’t having it.
There’s a high-end user that thinks they want a tower, and I can see their point of view.
Apple keeps chipping away at this user, releasing products like the MacStudio, but they only seem to get half of the remaining users each time.
With that equation, you’ll never get them all. There will always be some that demand that ultimate tower computer.
But Apple isn’t going to make it.
Especially now that they’ve moved to Apple Silicon, that modular, choose-your-own GPU, tower type of PC isn’t going to happen.
So what should Apple do?
Well if they stick to their Apple Silicon approach, and they really want to give that high end what they really want (which is a good looking box with plenty of slots) then Apple would have to make their own GPUs and allow RAM upgrades.
But those GPUs and RAM are integrally linked to the CPU, so they would have to have socketed systems where you can buy your good looking box, and later on buy a whole new CPU/GPU/SSD/RAM combo to ‘upgrade’ it.
Which is ridiculous. I know – I’m just making a point.
In all seriousness though what can Apple do?
Well I think they should just give up.
Yes, just give it up Apple…
Just let the tower go.
The MacPro Tower as a concept just doesn’t work for Apple anymore.
Without a complete chip strategy volt-face, it’s not even possible.
Apple need to concentrate on what differentiates them from the competition so they don’t get mired in dead end conversations that just don’t make sense for them, and the majority of their users and potential users don’t even care about.
Apple Silicon should help here, it creates a USP, and separates Apple from the rest of the industry.
But what really differentiates them is the macOS and its tight integration to the the rest of their ecosystem and hardware.
That old approach from Apple that they need reminding of:
If you want to make great hardware you have to make the software. You have to make the whole widget.
Yes – that means letting another slice of the high end market fall to Windows, but they lost that market the moment they made the decision to create sealed off, non-upgradable systems based upon Apple Silicon.
We all just need to accept that and let it go.
Unique selling points…
There’s been a recent YouTube post on Linus Tech Tips that’s ruffled a few feathers.
The post was highlighting Apple’s marketing in connection with their performance claims.
Although there was some confusion over some of Linus’ stats and he’s had to clarify some genuine mistakes, he is totally correct in his conclusion.
The PC is faster than the Mac.
Of course it is.
You have to buy what Apple wants to sell you.
There’s very little (and increasingly less), configuration.
On the PC you can do whatever you like.
You can spend as much as you like and make it as fast as you like and upgrade it whenever you like.
As soon as you buy a Mac, even if you spend a fortune, it’s set in stone. You can never upgrade it. It immediately deprecates, because the PC is continually evolving.
You can upgrade the PC as soon as a faster GPU is released, leaving the Mac increasingly in the dust.
You’ll buy a new Mac every 5 years.
You’ll upgrade your PC whenever you need to. Every week if you like.
So Linus and all those PC users are right. The Mac will never compete with the PC.
Because of Apple decision of making sealed machines, the days of macho speed posturing are over.
If you want a computer and speed is vital – choose the PC.
But there’s more to the choice than that, and Linus (and all PC users) think it’s of little importance and worryingly, I’m not sure Apple fully understands it either.
I do enjoy watching Linus Tech Tips because it’s sometimes nice to get out of the Apple ecosystem and his posts are genuinely interesting.
He’s always been critical of Apple and I respect that, because I am too.
My header states, “I’ll defend the Mac until the end of my days, Apple slightly less so”.
But my statement needs clarifying.
The Mac is more than the hardware and it always has been.
The macOS is Apple’s crown jewel, and when I say I’ll defend the Mac, I really mean the macOS.
But when you praise the macOS, you’re also praising its symbiotic connection with the hardware.
When anyone talks about PC performance, they only focus on the hardware, they never mention the WindowsOS.
Windows has been commoditised, it just sits on top of the hardware and to its credit it manages to support just about every configuration extremely well.
It’s just accepted. You put up with all of its issues (and there are many – I use Windows every day). You forgive it because the hardware and its speed is your priority.
The Mac is different. You buy a Mac because it’s the macOS that’s important (whether you realise it or not). The hardware is secondary. It looks pretty, lasts ages, it’s fast enough and you never have to touch it.
On Windows it’s the opposite. The users that Linus is talking to, buy a PC because it’s the hardware that’s important. You upgrade it, reconfigure it and tweak it. The OS is secondary. It’s Windows and it’s good enough.
So when anyone (like Linus) states that the PC is faster than the Mac they are right, but it’s missing the crucial part that Mac users always consider (even subconsciously).
It’s the OS. The OS is important to a Mac user. It’s more important than the hardware speed.
So there’s a PC that’s faster than the fastest Mac. So what? – I don’t want to use Windows.
But the issue here is that Linus cannot be blamed for comparing things in this way, because that’s not what Apple was saying.
Apple was comparing Mac and PC hardware with their questionable and admittedly misleading graphs and completely ignoring their OS.
I don’t know why they do this.
Mac users and those users that Apple wants to attract, don’t care about speed.
They don’t upgrade their PC hardware. They buy a PC and replace it every few years.
So why does Apple go on about things that don’t concern the users they are advertising to?
I’m really not sure.
As Linus says, just say that the hardware is a incrementally better and leave it at that.
Which brings me to the second part of my header, “I’ll defend the Mac until the end of my days, Apple slightly less so”.
The macOS is the computer.
That first all-in-one 1984 Mac was created by people that understood that.
It was an ‘all-in-one’. The clue is in the title.
The Finder, the file system, the settings, control panels, the desktop, the applications, all developed with love, care and all with a common mindset and direction.
It’s the reason why people chose it – the OS is everything, the hardware looks great on your desk and it’s fast enough for your needs.
Apple as a company, have since made decisions on the hardware side (Apple Silicon) that suit their business goals and that also benefits all Mac users.
But Apple’s decisions on the software side have been worrying – they clearly don’t consider the macOS to be special and because of the increasingly shared code base with iOS, it’s becoming commoditised, just like WindowsOS.
It looks rushed, lacking in whimsy, attention to detail, buggy and seemingly lacking in direction or focus.
They are forgetting what makes them different from the rest.
They are forgetting their unique selling proposition.
It’s the macOS and it’s tight hardware integration that’s important, not a misleading graph or to show how clever your chip team are.
Apple used these graphs originally to justify their move to Apple Silicon, but that’s done now.
We know, it’s the right choice, the power savings alone for laptops are a good enough reason, we get it. Move on Apple.
They need to shift their marketing focus to remind customers why they should choose a Mac over a PC.
They need to realise that their USP is not speed – it’s the OS and it’s integration with the hardware.
They need to discard those graphs, get back on track, fix the bugs, start caring about the OS, advertise the reasons why it’s better, and stop talking in depth about the hardware.
The ‘speed and feeds’ days are over and good riddance to them along with all those pointless graphs.
Click, click, click… the death of creativity.
Many years ago, I was reading the latest issue of MacUser magazine and came across an opinion piece by the editor that has stayed with me my entire career.
At the time, the world was very different; the internet was in its early stages, technologies such as downloadable software, the cloud, messaging apps, tablets and even email in some cases were things in some far away, promised future.
The comment that struck me went something like this:
“When you can walk up to a Mac and say, ‘create me a new flyer, with a similar layout as that one I did last Thursday, with the fonts from campaign 12, suggest some appropriate imagery and just pick some nice colours’, that’s not progress, that’s the death of creativity…”
TLDR; Not all progress is good or desirable and maybe the Luddites had a point (look it up).
I’ve always had that statement nagging me in the back of my mind, and I knew that as technology progressed there was a chance that the future that MacUser warned us about would steadily and inevitably become true.
To explain, you need to understand that working as a freelance designer is all about “knowledge-gap” filling.
If your client has a gap in their knowledge then you can fill it, charge for it and make a career out of it.
But, once that gap is filled, it’s gone forever.
Gaps are filled by progress.
Examples of progress are everywhere and everywhen.
- The desktop publishing revolution allowed unskilled people to do the work that skilled people used to charge for.
- Inexpensive printers hit the printing industry hard and destroyed the small-run single colour print market.
- Photo-inkjet printers put photography printers out of business.
- Websites like SquareSpace and Wix are hitting web designers, who don’t bother even quoting for static 6 page websites anymore.
- Logo creation websites have effectively driven down the cost of logo design to next to zero. There’s no point even bidding.
Slowly but surely that future is coming and the latest attack is from a company that indirectly protected us from it, Adobe Creative Cloud Express.
A web-based cookie cutter design emporium where you pick from some templates, change the text, press a few big colourful, buttons and your design is done.
And so is your freelance designer.
The reason it exists is because of Canva.
I’d heard about Canva.
I don’t like Canva.
I’d heard because I was constantly losing out to clients saying “we’ll just do it in Canva”.
I was being asked by clients to do work in Canva so they could edit it themselves later.
I lost work because clients were asking their untrained marketing departments to use Canva and not pay a freelance designer.
I got work because clients started work in Canva and then asked me to finish it off (I usually just redid it in illustrator).
So Canva is gaining traction.
Enter stage left – Adobe with their offering.
It’s basically a carbon copy of Canva. A “me-too” moment to try and draw Canva people into the Adobe ecosystem and stop Adobe people moving to Canva.
But I’m not here to review these 2 competing services.
I’m here to comment on what they mean in the wider context of the design industry.
These knowledge-gaps I spoke of are becoming harder and harder to find.
One gap that been protected is good, solid, competent creative design skills.
Despite all this ‘progress’ clients would always pay for good design (at least the ones worth having).
Progress in efficiency, speed and cost are worth pursuing.
Progress in creative efficiency is not because people misunderstand what creativity actually is.
It’s apps like Canva and Adobe CCE that have made this worse.
Here’s an example:
That cereal box you see every morning.
Look at the logo, look at the where it’s positioned and how it dominates.
Look at the name, see how it’s positioned to draw your eye down to the illustration.
Look at the illustration, see how it compliments the age group and blends or contrasts with the colour scheme.
Now look at the sides and back. See how the less important text fills the space.
See how that dense, large amount of info has a hierarchy and invites you to read it.
Every side of that box, has had care and attention paid to it.
Yes, even the small print on the side. Even the nutritional information.
It’s not easy – and it’s not meant to be.
All those decisions, all those choices were made by a trained designer, who understands colour, branding, contrast and hierarchy.
That’s creativity. That’s layout. That’s design.
In our brave new Canva world an untrained person will just pick from some templates, type a few phrases, paste in the boring stuff on the back and press done.
That’s not creativity. That’s not layout. That’s not design.
Adobe is not immune to this either. Look at the Photoshop splash screen.
Some may say, “hmm that looks nice”.
But this hasn’t been designed.
A photo that has been made monochrome.
Click.
Paste in some flowers.
Click.
Paste in some leaves.
Click.
Change the colour.
Click.
Invert some things.
Click.
Anyone can do this with zero effort. Click. Click. Click.
A few more years when Canva and it’s competitors are voice activated, we will be eerily close to that future that MacUser warned us about, creativity is dying – death by a thousand clicks.
Canva and it’s competitors are not creativity.
They are the death of creativity.
The Mac at work . . . 