Sadly iPhone sales and revenue saturated like 4 years ago (and the same for Mac, Wearables and iPad [0]). They focus now a lot on growing revenue from services. Which is kind of sad because they have still much room to grow Mac and iPad:
- just make iPad more useful and support MacOS - it's not gonna canibalize Mac, they sale each year 2x more iPads than Macs and 12x more iPhones than Macs.
- make macbook Pro standard with 32GB RAM / 1TB drive (macbook air with 500GB) and cheaper upgrades. It's not like those chips are expensive. Better to sell 2x more devices with smaller margin than holding to your margin like virginity.
As for services they could go other way:
- be AI gateway like OpenRouter and charge user 10% for token credits topup like electricity bill. Devs then don't have to setup back-end, protect API key, setup billings, auth etc or charge end user more with subscription.
- make powerful Apple TV or cheaper Mac Mini for all users. Create a distributed computing platform that user can opt-in. Now you are competing with CloudFlare. Those devices normally do nothing during night but could generate/compute stuff, execute some lambda in sandbox, work as a proxy. Give 30-50% for device upgrades for such users that opted-in for 2 years.
[0] https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/metrics/revenue-by-seg...
They don't put MacOS on iPad because they want MacOS to slowly die and make App Store the only way to install software. This has nothing to do with cannibalizing Mac.
It is worrying that the machines many of HN rely on are the minority of their revenue so they'd not even flinch financially to mess up that product line. TF for Linux/x86/arm as an alternative ecosystem that is not controlled by one party.
If they did, I would also replace my iPhone, and I'd help family do the same.
It’s astonishing to me that even so many long-term Apple observers don’t see this, even though they are sorta obvious about it. “Now that the hardware is so close, the systems converge, etc., there is really no reason iPad will not eventually run macOS” – No, macOS will continue to be dumbed and locked down (“security!!11”) until the point where the Macs can be safely switched over from the terribly open legacy OS.
You might be right, but if MacOS dies, how will Apple develop for iOS etc?
And app developers too. Maybe sister comment about something cloud. Can fleece devs for more money too, bonus!
probably some subscription cloud environments
They could improve the development environment on iPadOS, or make it possible to develop for iOS on Linux.
Have a iPadOS version of a development environment?
A grown up version of Playground.
probably some sort of "ai" app builder interface. They've always flirted with the layperson programming with their languages like hypertalk. I wouldn't be surprised if they figure out a way to achieve even greater lock-in capture
A cheaper Mac Mini? $599 for the entry level is a pretty great deal (assuming you view macOS and the ecosystem as a feature and not a bug).
Genuine question: is there a comparable Windows machine in a mini desktop form factor at a similar or lower price?
If you just need a desktop for random browsing and run-off-the-mill office work, there are $250-300 mini PCs you can get for that no problem.
Anything that beats a refurb m1 mac mini for $250?
This is easily disapproved by just looking at their charts. Especially if you remove the Covid bump.
https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/11/apples-fiscal-2025-in-cha...
And even a little bit of analysis will show none of your ideas will grow the bottom line.
your chart shows total revenue but not per category but even so it shows the last 4 years revenue didn't grow that much as before and its mostly growing because grow in services revenue.
The last chart
https://i0.wp.com/sixcolors.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2...
you can see in your linked chart that everything is pretty much flat except services in the last 4 years. iPhone revenue in 2022: 205B, then next to years down (201B) and in 2025: 210B.
Where is the analysis?
What’s the average price of a laptop? Hint: it’s much less than $1000. Do you think that people are going to start buying more expensive laptops?
For the iPad, how have the convertible Windows Surfaces been doing?
You really don’t see a problem with creating a “token router”? He also wants to create a distributed CDN where every computer is a node - ignoring the fact that most people have asymmetric internet access with low upload speeds and the entire value proposition of a CDN is that there are colocated servers at ISPs. Bit torrent (basically what he is proposing) is not exactly fast.
I do think that people will buy more expensive laptops if they are higher quality. People spend multiple thousands of dollars on laptops, especially if they are powerful.
I own a Windows Surface. I personally find it very convenient, although I'll concede this point if you say the economics aren't working out.
I don't see the problem with creating a token router. Openrouter exists and seems to be doing fine. I'd love if you could actually elaborate on your concerns.
I agree that the CDN idea is pretty weak, but you could make it a bit better by rewarding users based on uptime. Rather than basing the rewards on total time opted in, base it off of total successful requests.
Apple made 112 billion dollars in profit fof the fiscal year that just ended. Do you really think an idea like open router would even sell as much as the AppleTV?
A CDN’s entire purpose for existing is high bandwidth colocated in ISPs data center.
Microsoft Surface sales peaked at $6.7 billion in 2022.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/26/microsoft-surface-is-nearly-...
With a 3% market share and it’s been declining since.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/30/24209519/microsoft-q4-202...
by saturated i think you mean saturated the market. i would argue that almost every person that is their target has in iPhone.
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/04/09/teen-iphone-ownership-c...
That’s in the US. Also I’m their target, but given their trajectory I’m increasingly inclined to switch to the other side, and I know that others are too.
if only the other side did not have their own trajectory
Give me iCloud++ or something that costs me $20/mo and shits off all the fucking ads and I’ll help grow the revenue.
+ Make iPhones as powerful as iPads when plugged into docking stations. That would cannibalize everything
Maybe they should stop focussing on 'growing'. Isn't nearly $100bn in profit per year enough??
Timmy is too worried about the goddamn stock price for that. They could easily just transition to a company that isn’t promising stupid growth every quarter and just pays fat dividends on a portion of the profits.
By adding macOS to it, I can't get it for my parents anymore because it's way too complicated for them. That's bad for business for Apple since the iPad is designed to be a bigger iPhone.
But wait.. what if you can choose iPad/macOS mode? Ehh... so what should iPad hardware/software engineers optimize for? They're totally different use cases. The market for people wanting to run a hybrid iPad is likely much smaller than you think. Tech communities on the internet is loud but I'm going to guess that 95% of iPad users do not care/want macOS on it.
Macbook Pros already provide excellent value. Where else can you find the fastest and most efficient chips, outstanding high solution display, excellent metal build quality, keyboard, speakers, touchpad, and a polished OS in one? They make the margins on RAM/SSD upgrades. I have no problem with that. The base models provide outstanding value. Ok if you do that, you'd have to increase warranty cost, calculate complex formulas for electricity, bandwidth for profitability since each customer will have different parameters. I fail to see how this is more efficient than just doing things in the cloud. I don't think customers want this stuff. I think mac Minis are cheap enough. I got my M4 Mini for $500. It's a steal.> They focus now a lot on growing revenue
Explain like I'm five, how does a multi trillion dollar company expect to keep growing revenue forever? Are they planning to keep enshittifying user experience until revenue dives?
No one knows, they are just trying to kick the can as far as they can and escape the inevitable coming back to Eartb of the stock price. P/E is currently 36. Everything plateaus. The human population is plateauing. The SP500 is now 2 standard deviations from the mean and that’s as far as it has ever gone.
https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...
you omitted the most important 2 words from my quote: "growing revenue from services". If you read other part of my post I shared ideas how they could grow revenue without enshitification.
After that saturate they can keep innovating like xiaomi - they build plenty of useful home products so apple can as well.