It's waaaay more profitable to sell the same device for three years without updates: it costs nothing in r&d. This wholy explains the mind boggling profit margins doesn't it?
No, because while those ancient computers probably do have amazing margins at this point, they don't sell in sufficient quantities to make a big impact on quarterly earnings. Those mind boggling margins and profits really do come from mostly new devices. It really is just a matter of either poor multitasking by the organization, a very depressing long-term strategy, or both.
It's weird- the practice of never talking about product roadmaps started in an era when whatever customer angst and uncertainty it generated was vastly outweighed by customer and media delight when the next step in that roadmap was finally revealed, which at the time happened like clockwork at 6-month intervals. Now people want them to talk about product roadmaps not because they're excited to know when/what the next great Mac is going to be, but because they're worried that there won't BE any Macs anymore (at least not any that they would want to buy). :(
Sounds short-sighted. You assume they continue to sell the same number of devices per quarter. I argue the quarterly number declines with outdated specs. Taken to the extreme, 40% profit margin on 1k sold units is nothing compared to 30% of a million sold units. Also, how hard can it be to put new CPUs and more RAM in? You don’t need a design team for that.
It's weird- the practice of never talking about product roadmaps started in an era when whatever customer angst and uncertainty it generated was vastly outweighed by customer and media delight when the next step in that roadmap was finally revealed, which at the time happened like clockwork at 6-month intervals. Now people want them to talk about product roadmaps not because they're excited to know when/what the next great Mac is going to be, but because they're worried that there won't BE any Macs anymore (at least not any that they would want to buy). :(