Mac’s share falls to five-year low

But, if the people who are spending money are using Apple products because they enjoy the integration across the entire product line and they become disillusioned, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down. Alternatively, if people evangelizing Apple fall in this camp and stop recommending them, that could also have adverse affects. I don't know if this will happen, but it's a risk for them for sure.

In the end a killer iPhone can probably solve everything, but Mac users leaving is definitely a drag.

Apple offering an extremely obsolete Mac Pro filters down from a brand standpoint, it hurts them by turning former ambassadors against them (such as myself), and by losing third party support for professional software when the customer base starts asking for alternatives because the hardware is too obsolete.

I'm not as hopeful - Apple will continue to be a behemoth, but I'm afraid the magic is gone. It may not go down the path of HP, but it will be closer to Dell in the future than to Apple at its Zenith.

This is why Apple hired Angela Andrents - who's background is 100% fashion (she re-built Burberry) and 0% technology.

Think about that for a moment: the hired their #1 marketing person with ZERO tech background :).

Who is the 'other' most powerful person at Apple? It's Johhny Ive - a designer - who is very much in the vein of fashion/design, and understands that ethos.

Their store layouts, marketing, pricing strategies - all from luxury fashion.

Yes - the build 'quality' products - I agree - and their products are not too far off the spec pricing for similarly 'quality' gear.

BUT - I would argue that 'high end spec' is just not relevant for most applications even for development.

A decent, middle of the road PC would de-facto provide enough RAM/disk space+speed/CPU to do the job, so long as the form factor is robust enough (and there are a few) - I think they would do just fine.

This is a pretty crude but not unreasonable comparison:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-macbook-pro-13-...

The Macbook is 2x the price across 'mostly' equivalent measurements. (I understand there's more to it, but pragmatically, they are pretty close).

FYI - Luxury brands specifically price on the high end no matter what, they don't ever go on sale - and unlike most other consumer goods - the perception of value goes down if they ever hit mass market appeal. For luxury goods, there has to be an element of 'status' with the purchase, which is what Apple does very effectively, and obviously.

But it's not clothing - so they have to keep up the 'wow' factor, and be 'unquestionably the best', not just in benchmark measurements - but in aspirational terms.

Case and point: 'Siri' - what a useless thing. But they packaged it and sold it in a manner that 'wowed' the consumer market. 'It was the future!'. So this needs to continue in order to hold their pricing model.

That said, I don't think they're going to crash that far. I'm stuck on Mac, I don't want to go through the pain of switching, and eventually I'll bite the bullet and buy a new Mac, but for the first time in a long while I'm thinking of switching.

I'm not doubting that Apple products are pretty good, and that they are not too-too far off given their specs.

Near the end they were in too many product categories with overlapping products. Management had lost the plot and it was showing in inventory, staff, and development. I know everyone likes to believe that Apple was always failing when Steve became iCEO but that was not the way it happened.