Apple CEO Tim Cook Reaffirms Commitment To Macs And Says ‘Great Desktops’ Are Incoming

Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, once likened the desktop PC to a truck in a world full of cars. In his opinion, the PC was on its way out in favor of alternate form factors, in particular the iPad. This was part of his infamous post-PC era dialogue and if he was still in charge of Apple, we might be looking at a very different product lineup right now. But it is Tim Cook that is in charge, and in case anyone is wondering, desktops are still very much a part of Apple's future.

"Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we're committed to desktops. If there's any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that," Cook wrote in a post to an employee message board.


Analysts can be forgiven for thinking otherwise. After all, Apple has not exactly been swift about updating is desktop solutions, whereas year after year it brings a new iPhone model to market. And for a period of time, Apple seemed smitten with its iPad family, though things have changed in more recent times—it is no longer making new iPad mini models nor is there any significant chatter about another iPad Air tablet.

Cook's opinion of the desktop is very different than the one Jobs voiced six and a half years ago. While Jobs may have thought the market was transitioning away from desktop PCs in rapid fashion, more than half a decade later Cook has made it a point to trumpet what's still great about them, including superior performance, bigger and more varied screen sizes, a variety of input options, and so forth. For a number of reasons, Cook views desktops as "really important, and in some cases critical, to people."

He also referred to the current generation iMac as the "best desktop" Apple has ever made, adding that its 5K Retina display is also the "best desktop display in the world." Be that as it may, overall Mac sales only accounted for 12.1 percent of Apple's revenue last quarter, with Apple selling only 4.9 million Macs last quarter.