from Hacker News

Apple Products Are Struggling

by samspenc on 3/12/25, 4:58 PM with 27 comments

• by tahoeskibum on 3/12/25, 5:21 PM

  Their products are too reliable. My M1 MacBook is still going great after 4 years. My iPad Pro from 2018 is showing its age, but still has another couple of years of life left.

• by m463 on 3/12/25, 8:26 PM

  Apple could start selling again if it just surrendered control.

  Let their devices become general computing devices that empowered their users.

  It worked well when they relented and went from the more inbred apple powerpc systems to the more interoperable and useful intel systems.

• by r00fus on 3/12/25, 5:45 PM

  I don't see "services/subscriptions" in this list of revenue sources. Is it in the "other" bucket?

  Because that's been growing steadily, IMHO.

• by ein0p on 3/12/25, 6:58 PM

  "Struggling" may be overstating it, Apple still basically prints money. But they now also have a significant services business, and they are pushing it pretty hard. I pay apple for Music family subscription and $3/mo storage tier. That's $22/mo. Some people pay more for Apple TV, Photos, Arcade and more substantial storage tiers. That's quite a bit of money every month even if your users go 4 years between phone upgrades because their phones don't feel old.

• by LouisSayers on 3/12/25, 9:48 PM

  They should copy the Synology Diskstation - "iCloud - your personal cloud"

  Not only does it allow you to backup all your files, but it has all sorts of apps that you can install. You can have your own Dropbox, Google Drive, run your own webserver, docker containers etc

  I bought one this week and it is very cool. I realise Apple have their own "backup to the cloud" etc, but if they had some guts they could sell soo many of these things and create a whole new app marketplace.

  Given the amount of content people create these days we have a big need for storage, and storage in the cloud is too slow - it really doesn't cut it.

  If they did something like this, they'd sell a whole heap of hardware, PLUS app store revenue, PLUS more subscriptions to their cloud as an additional backup. It'd probably be relatively easy for them to do as well.

• by Finnucane on 3/12/25, 5:12 PM

  Are they? There was a big surge during the pandemic lockdowns, as there was for all kinds of PC stuff. When that ended, sales dropped off, it effectively pulled forward a lot of future demand. Now we all have a lot of still fairly new stuff that's entirely adequate for our needs.

• by poobear22 on 3/13/25, 1:40 AM

  I did not view the data as indicating a new product was needed. the charts showed a boost due to the M1 chips. I'm happy with my 2015 vintage Mac. But I do have a high end Studio which should last a long time.

• by aeonik on 3/12/25, 5:56 PM

  Just saying, I'd think about buying their desktop gear if Linux could take advantage of all the hardware.

• by Apocryphon on 3/12/25, 5:58 PM

  > They need a new product. Seems like thats’s what they are going on announce on Feb 19.

  uhhh lol