Six Colors

> Apple is best aligned to be the disruptor. It's this disruptor Apple in the room with us now? Apple's second biggest money source is services. You know, subscriptions. And that source keeps growing: https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/10/charts-apple-caps-off-best-fiscal-y… It's also that same Apple that fights tooth and nail every single attempt to let people have the goose or even the promise of a goose. E.g. by saying that it's entitled to a cut even if a transaction didn't happen through Apple.

I think your conclusion is also wrong. iPad sales are flat, and wearables are actually declining: (Wearables, home, and accessories already surpassed Mac sales, although I don't know what exactly is included in accessories.) Also, I don't think it's useful to compare wearables to Mac, because Watch isn't much of a computing platform, AirPods aren't a computing platform at all, and Vision Pro has almost no sales. This category is mostly accessories to iPhone. https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/10/charts-apple-caps-off-best-fiscal-y…

I liked this measured observation from Dan Moren, who linked to it on Six Colors: "If you’re going to take away anything from this whole episode, I think the most important point is this isn’t a case where either Apple or the EU are wholly on the side of right. Apple may very well care about the security of its users, but it also wants to protect its profit cut from the App Store and the use of its platform. The EU may want to curtail the reach of big technology companies when it comes to their citizens’ best interests, but it also is a large organization that doesn’t entirely understand what’s feasible from a technological perspective and has its own ideological axes to grind. It’s always imperative to interrogate where an argument stems from and who stands to gain." https://sixcolors.com/link/2024/01/breaking-down-apples-dma-response/

That is the more interesting article. Found this dry press release via Jason Snell’s Six Colors RSS feed, https://sixcolors.com Thanks for cross linking to the better one.

The 13 MBP with M2 is almost the same price as the M2 MBA. The MBP is a little more performance when running continuous heavy processing due to its fan. The MBP is also thicker, heavier and has a fan running. The MBA runs almost as fast but is lighter and never has a fan. If you look at the Six Colors review, they show some throttling at 10 minutes on a Cinebench test. The MBP with a fan scored 8638 and the MBA without scored 8211. That kind of difference is not worth adding a fan or putting in some heat pads that make the case get hotter. It just means that the most portable Mac is ever so slightly slower than the low end Pro Mac. I'm happy with that. https://i0.wp.com/sixcolors.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/throttling-… https://sixcolors.com/post/2022/07/m2-macbook-air-review-a-new-era/

Some of what's in my /Applications folder: * Omnigroup's suite of apps for macOS and iOS * Craft * Drafts * Fantastical * Hook * Marked * Mela * Rectangle * Scrivener * Postbox [1]: https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omni-roadmap-2022 [2]: https://www.craft.do [3]: https://getdrafts.com [4]: https://flexibits.com/fantastical [5]: https://hookproductivity.com [6]: https://marked2app.com [7]: https://mela.recipes [8]: https://rectangleapp.com [9]: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview [10]: https://www.postbox-inc.com [11]: https://www.macstories.net [12]: https://sixcolors.com The most useful apps still come from the indie developers; it's just not as high profile as it once was. It's become more artisanal. If you read MacStories [11], Six Colors [12] and other indie Mac websites, you'd see lots of innovative Mac and iOS apps.

This series of articles is a great peek into Mac history. My personal favorite is the iMac G4, another short lived but truly beautiful form factor. Sadly the it didn't scale up to larger display sizes because it was truly an amazing looking machine. https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/10/20-macs-for-2020-9-imac-g4/ It didn't have the historical significance the original iMac did, but the look is timeless and just fantastic. I would still love to have one on my desk. If only that damned display were bigger than 15". I think it made it to 17", but still too small to be practical for dev work when 21-27 inch LCDs are now commonplace.

Yes and every area you posted is about them getting into declining markets - most of which are declining because of the smart phone. Microsoft made $10 billion in revenue last year on the XBox - they don’t mention profit (https://www.geekwire.com/2018/microsofts-record-setting-10b-gaming-yea… Microsoft still probably hasn’t recouped their losses in the Xbox division and the console market isn’t expected to grow. Apple made about 24 billion on the Mac during the previous four quarters (https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/07/apple-third-quarter-2019-results-an… You know Apple doesn’t sell a single Mac where they don’t make a healthy profit. The Mac is nowhere near their best performing segment.

The value proposition is for video and 3D pros, where equivalent accurate monitors can cost tens of thousands. "However, there is a class of users that is currently buying an Eizo monitor for $5,000 to get professional-class image quality, and Apple’s display is so much better that it’s not even close. There are also people who buy Sony reference monitors that cost more than $40,000—and Apple’s display is basically a match for them in terms of quality. By these standards, the Pro Display XDR is either a breakthrough in terms of quality or a staggering breakthrough in terms of price." [1] But if you're a coder and like nice things and money's no issue, then, why not... [1] https://sixcolors.com/

iPad Pro with a Brydge keyboard? https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/12/brydge-pro-keyboard/ The OS has a lot of limitations on doing local development work, but if you're connecting to a remote server you get a great quality screen and remarkably long battery life. Apple lists "Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music." Keyboard has its own battery (default connection is bluetooth, you can use a USB-C cable if that's not reliable enough). It's not clear to me if it can use its battery to charge the iPad or not. Either way, you can always carry a USB-C battery pack to extend the iPad's life even further.

I guess it depends on the meaning of "saving"? iPhone unit sales have been essentially flat but revenue has been rising because of unit prices and increases in services revenue. Six Colors has a great set of charts to show the trends: https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/11/reminder-apple-financial-results-re… I'm pretty sure "just keep raising prices" is not Apple's long term strategy. They'll keep releasing a mix of products, and push the high end with more refined features. AAPL right now is at $172.82, giving it a PE ratio of 14.57. Apple is currently valued way below the S&P 500's PE ratio (21.58), so it's like people expect Apple's forward earnings to tank despite having had 20% revenue growth last quarter and 31% profit growth. It's not clear to me that Apple's future prospects are that bleak.

Macstories has some great graphs with the new (and old) data. [0] SixColors also has some graphs, [1] and a transcript of the conference call. [2] [0] https://www.macstories.net/news/apple-q3-2017-results-45-billion-reven… [1] https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/08/apples-q3-fy17-financial-results/ [2] https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/08/live-transcript-apple-executives-ta…

Sequential change doesn't tell you the real story because sales are seasonal/coincide with new hardware releases, so it's best to look at quarterly YoY comparisons. Look at the quarterly iPhone sales figures (5th chart) to see what I mean: https://sixcolors.com/post/2017/08/apples-q3-fy17-financial-results/

On a slightly related note, my list of favourite non-development blogs which I follow as an iOS developer: - Daring Fireball (http://daringfireball.net/) - The Loop (http://www.loopinsight.com/) - Six Colors (https://sixcolors.com/) - Marco Arment (https://marco.org/) - Mac Rumors (http://www.macrumors.com/)

The problem with this viewpoint, is that's exactly what they've been doing with Logic and Final Cut and that's proved to be a failed strategy (both of those applications have shed users for the last decade, specifically the problem they've both made is prioritizing larger platform priorities over the needs of creators. E.g., they both introduced bundled file formats, bundled file formats are great for long-term platform goals [e.g., cross-device sync], but are terrible for professionals who need to micromanage massive individual media files, that are often edited with several different apps). The reason it's not working is the incentives internal to Apple aren't great, they aren't (significant) revenue generators, so they're seen as disposable, and by choosing the wrong priorities (platform over creators), they end up losing to competitors where it's a primary revenue generator, because those other apps are fighting tooth-and-nail to stay ahead. One way of solving all this is to try and make it a revenue generator, and I don't think a revenue generator at Apple's scale is possible without making it a subscription. Also just note that services has been Apple's most reliable recent growth area https://sixcolors.com/post/2024/05/2024-q1-apple-results-90-8-billion-…

Apple will never intentionally prolong upgrade cycles for expensive laptops by offering you a cheaper device that can “do everything.” If that were the case, they’d be making much more money from laptops than from iPads, right? If they were making just as much money from iPads, though, it would make sense to make the iPad as good as possible. Cannibalizing Mac sales wouldn’t be a big deal. Per the Six Colors breakdown of Apple’s financial results (https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/08/charts-apple-q3-2023-results/) Macs and iPads accounted for 8% and 7% of their revenue. The iPad was conceived as a media consumption device, sitting between a phone and a laptop. Steve Jobs said this at the beginning. They’ve gone back on plenty of things Steve Jobs said (in many cases, Jobs himself was the one who did it). I don’t think they have a religious objection to making the iPad useful, as you seem to be saying; I think they think they are making it useful, that the current design (including its limitations) is the best compromise.

I would argue yes. The two port MacBook Pro, in my opinion, was launched to replace the MacBook Air when it came out in 2016 [1]. It didn’t have a Touch Bar, for example, and based on my conversations with Apple at that time, I feel very strongly it was meant to replace the Air in the lineup (the 12” MacBook was another attempt to replace the Air, that one I think we can blame a lot more of on Intel). Apple never told me this outright, but that was absolutely the impression I got about how it was being positioned against the MacBook Pro with four ports and it was how I reviewed the first release of that model. For a variety of reasons, it didn’t work. Not only was the price higher, the port selection (just two TB3s at a time when the industry hadn’t moved en masse to USB-C, remember, this was four years ago) was really limiting. And of course, the keyboard drama. It is my contention, though I have no proof, that Apple didn’t want to release the redesigned Retina MacBook Air in 2018, but had to based on continued sales of the older model and the lack of love for the Touch Bar free MacBook Pro. (Recall, even after the redesign, Apple was still selling a Broadwell-based MacBook Air, technically into 2019. That was essentially the same MacBook Air that was first released in March 2015.) Once the MacBook Air was redesigned, the two-port MBP never made any sense, even with the re-added Touch Bar. In fact, every single year, when I participate in Jason Snell's Apple Report card…

I feel like the problem is that it isn't a huge market opportunity (at least by Apple scale). Checking out these graphs about Apple's revenues, apparently Mac revenues are pretty flat, while iPhone revenues continue to skyrocket (currently 5X Mac revenues!): https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/01/fun-with-charts-a-decade-of-apple-g… So sure, a hobbyist-approved Mac desktop would please you and me and plenty of other geeks, but they'd also cannibalize their Mac Pro sales somewhat, and when it's all said and done, their Mac revenues would still probably be in the same ballpark. So, why do that when they can pour effort into new phones or TV services or AirPods or whatever? The thing that worries me is that the hobbyist/geek is often the one who turns lots of others onto a technology. I'm probably where I am right now because my geek uncle passed down his used Mac to me and showed me Hypercard. And I'm pretty sure there are people who own Macs today that wouldn't if it not for me. I think appeasing the geeks is worth more than the direct profit or revenue that such a model would bring in, but in ways that aren't as immediately evident on the quarterly report.

>That is Apple's primary revenue stream by far, Apple earns twice as much revenue from selling iPhones ($210B per year) than it does from "Services" ($109B). https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/11/apples-fiscal-2025-in-charts/ https://bullfincher.io/companies/apple/revenue-by-segment However, I do see the incentive for Apple to push subscriptions due to the enormous scalability and thus resilient margins.

Charts: https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/04/apple-announces-record-fiscal-secon…

Add this to your list if things you try: https://sixcolors.com/link/2021/02/a-hyperrealistic-typewriter-font-fo… Article links right to the font.

There's a nice graph in this Six Colors article: https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/03/apple-introduces-colorful-macbook-n… Single Core performance: the A18 Pro is faster than an M3! Multi Core performance: The A18 Pro is essentially the same as an M1. This balance seems right for the target market of a $599 laptop.

Yes, I know this sounds conspiratorial, but I think the whole Liquid Ass thing was a rush to put some other software in Apple products to appease the Trump admin. For example, it is new in Tahoe that they store your filevault encryption key in your icloud keychain without telling you. https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/09/filevault-on-macos-tahoe-no-longer-…

Sure, but these are all mere statements. You don't know if they fully back that until there's a public standoff with law enforcement/administration and there weren't any in recent years. Yet at the same time it's hard to believe there were no attempts from that government to decrypt some devices they needed. So the fact we hear nothing about it is also an information to me. Sure, this is all speculation, but all things considered... Besides, they fully comply with Chinese requirements, so... PS. Others report Filevault keys are also being backed to iCloud since September and they didn't tell anyone: https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/09/filevault-on-macos-tahoe-no-longer-…

In Apple's case, starting with macOS Tahoe, Filevault saves your recovery key to your iCloud Keychain [0]. iCloud Keychain is end-to-end encrypted, and so Apple doesn't have access to the key. As a US company, it's certainly true that given a court order Apple would have to provide these keys to law enforcement. That's why getting the architecture right is so important. Also check out iCloud Advanced Data Protection for similar protections over the rest of your iCloud data. [0] https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/09/filevault-on-macos-tahoe-no-longer-…

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-charts/ And even a little bit of analysis will show none of your ideas will grow the bottom line.

> Tahoe now escrows your FileVailt key to the iCloud keychain, even if that is something you explicitly opted out of before. Yes and no according to Glenn Fleishman. Storing FileVault recovery keys in iCloud Keychain wasn't a choice before. The old iCloud recovery method wasn't end to end encrypted. But iCloud Keychain is. So calling it escrow is debatable. And old recovery keys aren't added to iCloud Keychain. But new recovery keys are stored in iCloud Keychain if enabled.[1] [1] https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/09/filevault-on-macos-tahoe-no-longer-…

> The A18 Pro is 46% faster than the M1 in single-core tasks, and almost identical to the M1 on multi-core and graphics tasks. https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/07/about-that-a16-macbook-rumor/ With many people saying that they don't see a need to upgrade their existing M1 Mac, a big bump in single core performance would make a viable entry level option.

https://sixcolors.com/member/2021/01/export-your-apple-notes-in-bulk/ https://zapier.com/blog/export-apple-notes/ There are ways to export, definitely not as straightforward as other tools.