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Would you say Apple is in a slump?
(lemmy.ml)
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I think they've hit a point where they're doing more for shareholder value than for customers.
They're so scared of iPad chewing into Mac sales that they've hobbled iPadOS, leaving it just useful enough to encourage people to buy both. They're continuing to offer base 8gb RAM, despite it costing them pennies to increase that to 16gb, because they like the money they make from charging for upgrades.
They're one of the world's most valuable companies, and they've got there by shortchanging customers as much as possible over the past 15 years.
In many ways, I have no problem with what they charge for their devices. What they make is (generally) very high quality and can last for a long, long time. The likes of Amazon and AliExpress have given us a false sense of how expensive things should be.
But I do have a problem with feeling like I'm not getting the most from my purchase.
Like, I have a 6th gen iPad mini. It's a great little device. But I can't help thinking how much more useful it could be if Apple had allowed Stage Manager and external display support on it. But why would they when a 256gb version of it puts it on par with a Mac mini. For the majority of what I do, I could be happy with my iPad hooked up to a display, with the ability to side load apps, a la macOS, and the ability to be portable. But Apple don't want people buying the cheapest they can work with when they can charge twice for both a Mac and and iPad. So they've intentionally hobbled the iPad.
And that's a problem for me.
Apple has been like this for ages now though. They succeeded despite of it, not because of it. What OP is suggesting (I think) is that there's less positives and those historically outweighed Apple's anti-consumer practices.
They weren't like this under Jobs.
I'm not sure. IIRC pricing structure that pushes you to upgrade to high tier hardware was there under Jobs as well. And they'd solder RAM if it was a thing back then too - they always purposefully gimped base models.