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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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https://lobste.rs/s/qoqkdr/mac_os_catalina_more_trouble_than_it_s#c_dkbbrh
I'll have to take your word on it regarding how much profit they made as that link is paywalled for me.
But in the end, it's not how much money they made last year. It's about how much money they're expecting to make in 5 to 10 years off the Mac and macOS.
I suspect analysts are more clear-eyed/cold-blooded with regards to the long-term prospects of macOS. If Apple were to devote a larger percentage of its resources towards a stagnant or declining product segment, this could lead to bad reports from them.
Money is good to have, but it does not translate directly into developer time. Apple is competing with a lot of other companies for talent and personpower, and those companies also have a ton of money. I think it's rational of them to keep things ticking over on the macOS front, only delegating the bare minimum of resources to keep the yearly release cycle going. This translates into buggy releases which are slowly corrected until the next release.
Even among Apple fans, there's grumbles that more time and resources are devoted to the very high end MacPro with its target market of video pros, rather than the "middle-tier" target market of macOS __developers__. But macOS users are a captive market. There might be a slow bleed to Windows/Linux, and the recruitment of new users can't be very robust - because relatively fewer people are using desktop operating systems. The ones who are left are loyal however, and probably proportionally better customers for the products that actually make money , like the phones and its accessories.
In the end, something will have to give.
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