It's not just due to the recent MacBook Pro controversy; that's just the latest event in at least five years of decline.
At work, we target MacOS as a supported platform and have systems for continuous integration and deployment on this platform. There is no Mac system suitable for this task. Previously Xserve would have been used. Mac Pro is unsuitable and too expensive for the role. Right now we have a few mac minis on shelves in a machine room. They are crap. They are not suited for remote management, they have slow discs and bad performance all around, and the recent models are much worse than older ones. MacOS doesn't allow virtualisation on non-mac hardware so we can't use our beefy VMware infrastructure for the task. Bottom line: supporting MacOS for development and deployment in a serious capacity is not possible without suitable hardware or virtualisation. If Apple allowed MacOS X licensing on VMware ESX on non-Mac hardware, brought out a new Xserve, or even a more capable Mini or proper desktop Pro, we'd buy several tomorrow, because right now it's painful to maintain, and we just about cope with the poor minis which are creaking along while loaded to the max.
Decent graphics support is a problem. My group works on scientific and medical image storage, processing and visualisation, and the state of Mac graphics is sad indeed. Both on the hardware side and the software side. No OpenGL updates for years, and anaemic hardware. I get better graphics support on FreeBSD today... If I need a decent GPU with a decent amount of memory and current OpenGL support, I can buy one for a small fraction of the cost of any Mac, and use it with FreeBSD, Linux or Windows. The Mac is a barren wasteland.
And the software side is also a problem. It's been in continual decline since 10.6. Much of the base system hasn't seen maintenance in a decade at this point. Inter-operability and compatibility with other platforms is becoming increasingly problematic, since it's fallen a decade behind for much of the core tools. If you want a UNIX desktop, it's no longer ticking that box. You can get by with homebrew, but the hassle and poor usability makes it easier to just use Linux or FreeBSD. Right now, I use FreeBSD to debug clang++ C++ code because it's easier to do debugging there than on MacOS...
I'm still using a 2011 Macbook Pro with a matt display, Radeon GPU and lots of ports. It's been due for replacement for some time, but when my boss offered me a new one I said I'd be better sticking with the cheap Dell desktop I dual boot with Windows and Linux. Because other than the superficial aesthetics of the laptop, the desktop is better on all counts, and vastly more productive and more ergonomic--with a good quality monitor and keyboard.
Over a decade ago, at the university I worked at, you saw people dropping serious money on fully loaded Apple G5, then Intel towers for serious computation, and people had them under their desks and also in central compute facilities. Because that was the best you could get at the time, and people pushed them to the limit doing bioinformatics and simulation work. Today, they have nothing in this space. I also saw entire departments shift from 100% Windows to 100% Mac as their benefits and cost were realised. Today, people are moving back, because today's Mac hardware and software no longer has any meaningful advantage; it still has some advantages, but the cost/benefit has declined. If you need decent hardware specs, you can get better from Dell for a faction of the cost, and that's pretty sad to say.
They have increased sales by targeting causal users who want to spend a bit more on a laptop, but they have at the same time seemingly abandoned the high end, and the needs of technical, scientific and professional users entirely. I'd like to be able to purchase a decent mini for home use, and a new laptop for work, and hardware for the datacentre at work. But they aren't producing anything suitable in any of these categories, and haven't for a good while, and if they don't have anything I want to spend money on, I won't be giving them any business. Macs used to be machines I desired greatly but couldn't afford; today they are machines I could afford but don't desire. They've messed up badly.
For the software our group writes, we previously supported Linux, MacOS X and Windows as client and server platforms. We dropped MacOS X as a server platform a while back. For more recent work, we've found MacOS relegated as a client platform as well. Those CI support costs and compatibility problems due to the lack of real MacOS X maintenance resulted in it being deprioritised; Linux and Windows are the two main ones we support now, with MacOS being supported as a lower tier platform. That's a problem entirely of their own making.
We'll see what happens, but I can't help but feel that their current growth from phones and MacBooks is going to plateau and decline; their growth is certainly not from technical users who have been ignored for some time, it's from selling mediocre hardware at high prices as fashion accessories. I'd like to see them turn that around, but I can't see it being tenable to continue to purchase Mac hardware and support MacOS X in the medium to long term with the current trends.
At work, we target MacOS as a supported platform and have systems for continuous integration and deployment on this platform. There is no Mac system suitable for this task. Previously Xserve would have been used. Mac Pro is unsuitable and too expensive for the role. Right now we have a few mac minis on shelves in a machine room. They are crap. They are not suited for remote management, they have slow discs and bad performance all around, and the recent models are much worse than older ones. MacOS doesn't allow virtualisation on non-mac hardware so we can't use our beefy VMware infrastructure for the task. Bottom line: supporting MacOS for development and deployment in a serious capacity is not possible without suitable hardware or virtualisation. If Apple allowed MacOS X licensing on VMware ESX on non-Mac hardware, brought out a new Xserve, or even a more capable Mini or proper desktop Pro, we'd buy several tomorrow, because right now it's painful to maintain, and we just about cope with the poor minis which are creaking along while loaded to the max.
Decent graphics support is a problem. My group works on scientific and medical image storage, processing and visualisation, and the state of Mac graphics is sad indeed. Both on the hardware side and the software side. No OpenGL updates for years, and anaemic hardware. I get better graphics support on FreeBSD today... If I need a decent GPU with a decent amount of memory and current OpenGL support, I can buy one for a small fraction of the cost of any Mac, and use it with FreeBSD, Linux or Windows. The Mac is a barren wasteland.
And the software side is also a problem. It's been in continual decline since 10.6. Much of the base system hasn't seen maintenance in a decade at this point. Inter-operability and compatibility with other platforms is becoming increasingly problematic, since it's fallen a decade behind for much of the core tools. If you want a UNIX desktop, it's no longer ticking that box. You can get by with homebrew, but the hassle and poor usability makes it easier to just use Linux or FreeBSD. Right now, I use FreeBSD to debug clang++ C++ code because it's easier to do debugging there than on MacOS...
I'm still using a 2011 Macbook Pro with a matt display, Radeon GPU and lots of ports. It's been due for replacement for some time, but when my boss offered me a new one I said I'd be better sticking with the cheap Dell desktop I dual boot with Windows and Linux. Because other than the superficial aesthetics of the laptop, the desktop is better on all counts, and vastly more productive and more ergonomic--with a good quality monitor and keyboard.
Over a decade ago, at the university I worked at, you saw people dropping serious money on fully loaded Apple G5, then Intel towers for serious computation, and people had them under their desks and also in central compute facilities. Because that was the best you could get at the time, and people pushed them to the limit doing bioinformatics and simulation work. Today, they have nothing in this space. I also saw entire departments shift from 100% Windows to 100% Mac as their benefits and cost were realised. Today, people are moving back, because today's Mac hardware and software no longer has any meaningful advantage; it still has some advantages, but the cost/benefit has declined. If you need decent hardware specs, you can get better from Dell for a faction of the cost, and that's pretty sad to say.
They have increased sales by targeting causal users who want to spend a bit more on a laptop, but they have at the same time seemingly abandoned the high end, and the needs of technical, scientific and professional users entirely. I'd like to be able to purchase a decent mini for home use, and a new laptop for work, and hardware for the datacentre at work. But they aren't producing anything suitable in any of these categories, and haven't for a good while, and if they don't have anything I want to spend money on, I won't be giving them any business. Macs used to be machines I desired greatly but couldn't afford; today they are machines I could afford but don't desire. They've messed up badly.
For the software our group writes, we previously supported Linux, MacOS X and Windows as client and server platforms. We dropped MacOS X as a server platform a while back. For more recent work, we've found MacOS relegated as a client platform as well. Those CI support costs and compatibility problems due to the lack of real MacOS X maintenance resulted in it being deprioritised; Linux and Windows are the two main ones we support now, with MacOS being supported as a lower tier platform. That's a problem entirely of their own making.
We'll see what happens, but I can't help but feel that their current growth from phones and MacBooks is going to plateau and decline; their growth is certainly not from technical users who have been ignored for some time, it's from selling mediocre hardware at high prices as fashion accessories. I'd like to see them turn that around, but I can't see it being tenable to continue to purchase Mac hardware and support MacOS X in the medium to long term with the current trends.