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Comment by nr2x | Hacker News Reader

“Apple sells consumer entertainment systems”

So you’ve never seen anybody write code on a Mac?

I write code on a Mac, all day. I still maintain that Apple is primarily a consumer entertainment system provider. The iPhone and iPad drive Apple's revenue. The Mac is to the iPhone and iPad what Visual Studio is to Windows. As Steve Balmer once said, "Developers! Developers! DEVELOPERS!"

Hard disagree, counter point being Nintendo. They make pure entertainment devices, Apple may also be in that market, but nobody is running Excel on a Switch.

For the most recent year I have information, iPhone was 47% of Apple's revenue, services 21%, Mac 13%, wearables and accessories 11%, and iPad 8%. (rounded)

Macs are barely more of a revenue generator than wearables and accessories, which is stuff like Apple Watch, iPod, Apple TV, Beats Electronics and Apple-branded and third-party accessories. Services is iTunes Store, the App Store, the Mac App Store, the iBooks Store, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other services. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re...

Apple is an entertainment device company that happens to also sell the development platform for iOS, and that platform can also be used for other kinds of development, the kind that supports the backend. A good thing, too, because Apple's cloud services and data centers use Linux and a lot of other non-Mac things necessary for Apple's services to generate revenue.

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