Apple Says Its Sorry. No, Really (Premium)

In a blatant PR stunt that should please no one, Apple this week invited only the friendliest of bloggers to its Campus this week to assure them that they remain committed to the Mac.

Which is notable for a number of reasons. First, in that this is the first time it's ever done such a thing. And because, were Apple actually committed to the Mac, it would never need to explain itself this way.

That this little soiree happened right on the eve of what is expected to be a massive iPad Pro announcement is obviously not coincidental: Apple is about to crap all over PCs of all kinds---including Macs---yet again.

But then Apple is a huge fan of collusion, and its reliance on these public mouthpieces to spread the word to its fans---God forbid anyone from Apple actually write a blog post---is quite telling. The list of publications that were invited reads like a lineup of Batman villains, a group so reliably pro-Apple it would be humorous if it didn't really just happen.

As Brad noted earlier today, Apple is in a curious spot. Its iPhone business is a runaway blockbuster, a perennial blockbuster so big that it accounts for 70 percent of the company's revenues. But that means the rest of its businesses have stalled or, in some cases, actually fallen. The iPad is now considered a disaster, with over three straight years of falling sales. The Apple Watch isn't the hit that CEO Tim Cook so desperately needed to come out from under Steve Jobs's shadow. Apple TV has sputtered in the market, with no 4K support and no amazing TV service, despite the promises. And the Mac?

Oh, the Mac.

Mac sales are so unexciting that they most closely resemble a flat line on a heart rate monitor, and they have been for years. Long eclipsed by even the iPad, the Mac is clearly on the backburner at Apple, as evidenced by the paucity of new releases over the past few years. Meanwhile, the firm has been churning out iOS devices like chiclets.

The issue here is two-fold. Apple rarely updates its major Mac product lines, leading to years of dead time between releases, pissing off its biggest fans. And lately, when it has updated a Mac---as with the high-profile MacBook Pro release from late 2016---it just pisses off its biggest fans.

I wrote about that latter debacle in Putting Apple's New MacBook Pro in Perspective, noting, in effect, that those new MacBook Pro were wildly expensive, but at least they didn't deliver the feature that Apple's customers were asking for.

Yes, that was a joke.

"With the MacBook Pro, I see some decisions that are as provably dumb as they are user-hostile, especially when you consider the intended target market for this product," I wrote back in December. " I think Apple actually got caught up a bit in its own mythology, and felt that it could simply make any radical changes it could dream and have them be not just accepted but loudly applauded by its too-compliant user base. The reaction Apple has received so far is unp...

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