Apple doesn’t care about making computers anymore
I've recently begun moving away from Apple products due to the unreasonable restrictions they place on their mobile platform developers. The more I take a step back and look at Apple's product lines, the more it's clear to me that they don't care about making traditional computers anymore. In some ways, this should be expected: this quarter, the iPad (a brand new product) sold almost as many units as the entire lineup of Macs. But I feel that by doing this, Apple is neglecting their core customer base, and this may end up hurting them in the long run.
Exhibit A: The Mac Pro
The Mac Pro has not seen a new release since March 3, 2009. According to the MacRumors Buyer's Guide, this is the longest span between Mac Pro releases ever. Let's take a quick look at the specs. The Xeon 5500 series processors that the Mac Pro uses were obsoleted 4 months ago with the release of the 5600 series. The 3GB of memory included is woefully inadequate for a machine with a base price of US$2499. This is especially true for a machine running Mac OS X, which in my experience likes to use lots of RAM. This is also especially true for power users who will likely be using this machine to multitask and/or do lots of heavy lifting. In fact, I would argue that the amount of memory included was laughable even in March of 2009 when the machine was released, since memory is cheap and prices have not changed much since then. The video card, an Nvidia GT120, is in many cases only marginally better than the Nvidia 9400M that is offered in Apple's lower-end machines that cost one-half to one-third as much as the Mac Pro.
Exhibit B: The iMac
The iMac was last updated on October 20, 2009, making it just over nine months old. While this is more recent than the Mac Pro, nine months is still a long time in the computer hardware world. The transition from the old mobile Core 2 processors to the newer Core i3/i5/i7 processors is mostly complete in the PC world, but Apple doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. They only offer the Core i5, and only in one model, the most expensive model, which costs US$1999. All iMac models include 4GB of RAM, which is better than the base Mac Pro (hello, anybody home, Apple?) and is probably adequate for the iMac's target market. The cheapest iMac costs US$1199 and does not include a discrete video card. The integrated Geforce 9400M is inadequate for all but the most basic games. The discrete video cards included in the more expensive models have been obsoleted by the Radeon 5000 series, and are probably too slow given the high resolution of the display.
So it's clear that Apple is neglecting their line of computers. It seems they are especially neglecting the pro market, which I believe over the coming years will have a trickle-down effect on the general public's impression of Apple computers. I know that when I was in college a decade ago, Macs were very popular among the artsy and techie crowds, despite their low market share. This may have contributed to the higher market share Macs now enjoy. Now, many of my friends, like me, are starting to get rid of their Macs, and I feel that this could be a precursor to a drop in overall market share for the Mac platform.
It's disheartening to see Apple move away from selling what was their bread-and-butter, a well-built and well-designed series of personal computers that were free to develop on and create new programs for, to a series of nice-looking but sometimes functionally flawed mobile computers for which Apple is the sole arbiter of what software you can and cannot use. I was never one to complain about Macs being pricier than PC's, because I understand that Apple can and does charge a premium for its superior user experience and design. However, it's disappointing to know that when John Q. Public buys an Apple computer, it's increasingly likely that he is buying long-obsolete technology at a grossly inflated price.
IT firm pulls 50% paid healthcare benefits for its employees
Over at Jeff Cutler's blog, Jeff writes about a company named Aspiant based in Cambridge, MA, who pulled their company-paid healthcare and travel reimbursement (?!) benefits for all employees just hours after the November 4th elections.
I'm merely posting it here to do my small part in exposing Mirko Geffken (the CEO).