Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 27th Mar 2009 19:59 UTC, submitted by shaneco
In a move that shouldn't surprise anyone, Microsoft has finally started to run an ad that's a direct attack against Apple. Previous marketing campaigns by Microsoft have always more or less ignored Apple, but the company's latest commercial is a direct attack on Apple in a place where it should hurt Apple the most: price.
Permalink for comment 355539
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2006-01-17
I think the perception of Macs being more expensive is mostly from the fact that if you limit yourself to any one particular hardware manufacturer, you have much less choice in what features* you get, and generally have to pay more for features you don't need in order to get the features you want.
(*features in this post includes things like quality and stuff, not just Ghz and ram)
Say you want a laptop with features X, Y, but not Z. If you don't limit your self to one company, it's easy to find one with those features at a reasonable price. But if you limit yourself to one particular brand, then it's possible that they will have one model with X, but not Y (or Z). The next higher up model will have X and Y, but also Z. So if you get the lower end one, you don't get all the features you want. If you get the higher end one you're paying more that you should for the features you actually care about.
In the ad she wanted a 17". The Mac she could afford didn't have this feature. The Mac that has this feature has a bunch of other crap she doesn't need and so was overpriced, compared to other computers that had just what she needed and no more.
The last time I was looking at a Mac there was a similar thing. The cheapest version had everything I wanted except a DVD burner. The next level up had the DVD burner, but also had a larger hard drive and more ram, which was useless to me. If I went for the more expensive option I would be paying hundreds of dollars more just to have the DVD burner. So, for what I wanted it was cheaper to get a non-Apple.
The same thing is likely to happen if you limit yourself to only buying Lenovo, or Sony or Fujitsu or even Dell. I was recently trying to decide between two Lenovos. One was under my budget but didn't have the features I wanted. The other had the features I wanted, plus many more, but was too expensive. I went with another brand that had the same features I wanted. No more, no less.
So while it may be true that a similarly spec-ed non-Mac is about the same price as a Mac, that's only relevant if the Mac has the exact features I want. If it has less features then it's not good enough. If it has more, then it costs too much for what I want.
Too bad some people are determined to buy exclusively from one company.