Why Macs matter to Apple, even when they aren’t selling well

Engadget:

Between dropping sales and controversial products, what does the Mac means to Apple in 2018? Yes, it’s the company’s first flagship product, but it’s also an increasingly small portion of its business. Pretty much everything that Apple sells, from streaming music and wireless headphones to the Apple Watch and HomePod, is designed with iOS in mind. The days of the Mac serving as your “digital hub,” as Steve Jobs famously put it way back in 2001, are long gone.

If that’s the case, what does the Mac mean to Apple (besides about 10 percent of last quarter’s revenue)? The answer can be found by looking at the one product category going through explosive growth: Apple’s services segment.

Many people will say Apple is ignoring the Mac and using the 13 percent drop compared to a year ago as evidence but here is the argument that the Mac is integral to Apple’s Services numbers.