The Mac business continues to grow as Apple has released decent machines in the last few months since 2016. Not to say that all the Macs in the last four years were bad but they had major flaws. Also, the fact that most people are staying and working from home has resulted in people buying more Mac computers. As a result, the revenue of the Mac has risen by 50% year-over-year in Q3 of 2020.
The MacBook Pro packed a butterfly keyboard which in many cases would stop working with even a small amount of dust settling in. The MacBook Air’s design required the CPU to throttle while the fan inside was only cosmetic and did not serve any purpose, as said by many tech experts. The 15” MacBook Pro was too thin to dissipate heat and, similar to the MacBook Air, did not have a proper cooling system.
The Mac is great again!
Things started to change for the Mac when Apple launched the 16” MacBook Pro in 2019. It fixed most of the major flaws of the 15” MacBook Pro. The butterfly keyboard was replaced with a new “Magic Keyboard”, the body slightly thicker to pack a more robust cooling mechanism, the Esc key returned, a larger battery, better speakers, better microphones.
“While near-term demand indications are strong, we continue to be cautious on PC demand looking into FY’21 as COVID driven replacement acceleration begins to wane and comps get more difficult,” said Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall.
Apple is likely to see a major increase in sales of the Mac as it has launched very competitive Macs powered by its own M1 chip.
“We believe that this shift is likely to move in the other direction as vaccine deployment drives re-opening in 2021 and that this shift is likely, in turn, to put incremental pressure on PC demand by the middle of next year,” Hall added.