I see you've moved the goals posts from Apple is circling the drain to 'not a powerful growth driver'.

Totally agree that Mac servers ( they went years ago ) and Mac desktops ( and desktops in general ) are on the decline.

I just think you are basing your opinion on the past. Sure in the past, when Apple hardware was worse overall than the Wintel offering, Apple heavily relied on the Mac specific software, and your right that's less important now more than ever.

But the point here is right now, and for the last few years, Apple hardware is significantly better! And because of this in turns your argument on it's head.

I think we both agree that the landscape in terms of mix of devices may change in the future - I just think Apple is following that market, not 'forcing' Mac users into an iPad-esque experience.

And right now I think the laptop market is still pretty healthy - I can't see Apple moving away from it unless sales drop, and as I said sales are actually rising.

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bigyabai a day ago | parent [-]

I didn't say Apple is circling the drain. I'm saying that their hardware advantage has driven close to zero growth when compared with AMD, Nvidia or even Intel. That investment is only worth it if they can sell more services, so from Apple's POV it's all hunky-dory to lose the datacenter and professional customers. From the user POV, there's not much reason to reward Apple over Microsoft if they both load up their OSes with ads and crapware. Apple has the advantage, but they're losing to the underdogs simply because of their arbitrary business choices. It's a profoundly dumb strategy to invest your hardware advantage into selling subscriptions. That's the issue.

What I meant by "Apple's Last Stand" was referring to the Mac. Their destiny is to become "the iPhone company", and their inability to support the Mac as a competitive product has basically guaranteed that fate. The landscape of computing already changed, and when Apple was confronted with the opportunity to invest in GPGPU products, Vulkan or PCIe hardware support, they forced those customers to pound sand. That is not an optimistic outlook for their future ambitions, at least from where I'm standing. The "my way or the highway" philosophy is hemorrhaging market share.

	▲	DrScientist 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The "my way or the highway" philosophy is hemorrhaging market share. The data says the opposite. In the only non-phone markets that matter - laptops and tablets - Apple is doing very well - and as I said, in the laptop market it is growing market share. It's fine not to like Apple, Apple products or the choices they have made - but you need to ground your arguments on the facts. Yep you might not be their target customer - and they may have lost you - but overall their laptop market share is growing.