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Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

What I mean by that is do people make quality waterproof cases for macs?

I wonder why Apple has never considered making a toughbook type machine for real field work.

Volume, I’m sure. They sell a large volume of a small number of SKUs so go for the minimum feature set that can get them out a couple of sigmas of the target market. Anything else is aftermarket (special case) or just “buy something else”.

There are a few exceptions. I wonder how many Mac pros they really sell. I assume it’s really a “halo” product that sells more Mac studios and MacBook pros.

Also the Mac in general is a low volume product for Apple. It’s 10% of units in the PC market (but what % of profit?) and about 10% of their revenue. (If they were truly run with a bean counter mentality would they even ship Macs?)

Half of developers in North America, and especially those at top tier companies, use Macs. You can't buy that kind of top tech mindshare with marketing. Also now with the M-series CPUs, Macbooks aren't PC Clones anymore, they're back in the game of being an exclusive platform, which will get even more exclusive as they add other specialized chips. Their sales share of the market and as you mention, their profit share of the market keeps increasing, so even on that alone, why would a bean counter decide to drop them?

Don't forget Apple's size... the AirPod business, stood alone, would be a Fortune 500 company. Even if an Apple business is a bit small compared to the iPhone, it's still a humongous business by any other comparator.

I'm not an Apple fanboy (e.g. I use an old Chinese Android phone) but I'm still awed by their business.

> Their sales share of the market and as you mention, their profit share of the market keeps increasing, so even on that alone, why would a bean counter decide to drop them?

Apple at the moment doesn't have any marketshare in rugged, "out in the field" laptop computers. Obviously if any company can brute force an entry into any market it's Apple, but they would need significant investments into third parties that hold potential customers hostage to Windows, and Apple Just Does Not Do That unless the third party in question is a direct supplier of theirs.

Toughbooks are not fashionable and look like tools.

Macbooks are supposed to look like jewelry.

In a way, Toughbooks are the exact opposites of MacBooks.

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