Re:Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip
by stetrain on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @10:31AM
(#45593206)
You can't build iPhone or iPad apps on iPhones or iPads yet, so a decent chunk of that revenue currently relies on the Mac as well.
Even without that, calling a $30B business an "insignificant historical afterthought" is a bit of an exaggeration, no?
Re:Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip
by spogbiper on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @10:42AM
(#45593386)
This is by design of course. The only major platform that requires a specific minor platform from the same vendor to target, at least that I know of. Apple knows how to make money.
Re:Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip
by stetrain on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @10:43AM
(#45593404)
Of course it's by design, and it's part of their business. Saying they aren't in that business isn't accurate.
Re:Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip
by kibwen on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @01:06PM
(#45595565)
> You can't build iPhone or iPad apps on iPhones or iPads yet, so a decent chunk of that revenue currently relies on the Mac as well.
This is both entirely true and still manages to miss the point. Yes, Apple keeps the Mac around exclusively to accommodate the creation of iOS apps. No, they are not financially incentivized to create new categories of hardware that cater toward productivity when instead they could lock them down and milk that cow for all it's worth via the app store tax.
This is both true and completely irrelevant, because the point of the above comment is that Apple is not in the business of catering to this use case.
Look at the annual revenues: $225 billion from iPhone/iPad, $100 billion from "services" (which Apple mostly characterizes as "app store stuff"), $40 billion from accessories (watch, airpods, etc), $30 billion from desktops. The Mac segment comes out to 7.9% of their overall revenue. And this number is shrinking in both the absolute and relative sense, as "services" continues to grow and as Mac units shipped peaked in 2022.