While we generally don’t really report on Apple rumours (for obvious reasons) I thought the one currently making its rounds across the countless copying/pasting Apple websites is pretty interesting discussion material. According to the ominpresent and omnipotent “people familiar with the matter”, as told by AppleInsider, Apple is preparing to compete on… Price.
The AppleInsider article states that due to the pressure felt by the success of netbooks, Apple is preparing to lower the prices on its most popular offerings in the computer market – the iMac and the MacBook. Supposedly, this move is a temporary measure to bridge the gap between now, and the time Apple’s tablet-like device arrives that is supposed to compete with netbooks. The omnipresent people also say that Apple has no interest in entering the actual netbook market with an Apple netbook.
Profit-wise, netbooks pose little threat to Apple. Companies shipping netbooks aren’t making huge profits on them, but they are increasing their shares of the computer market, at the expense of Cupertino. For instance, even though Acer lowered its netbook sales expectations for the rest of this year, they did see unit shipment growth higher than 50%, all thanks to the Aspire One series.
Whether the rumour has any merit or not, this an interesting point of discussion. Apple has always stated that it is not willing to suffer margins for marketshare growth, so if they were to lower their prices to compete with netbooks, it would constitute a major policy change for Apple.
This brings us to the next question: is this actually a good idea? Well, for us customers, it’s of course a really good idea. The goal of a customer is to pay as little money for as many value as possible, while the goal of a company is to give you as little value for as much money as possible. As such, this rumoured moved would be a win for consumers.
However, for Apple, it could hurt the bottom line. It would be a massive gamble, because what if, despite lowered prices, unit sales would not rise? If that were to happen, the company’s bottom line would suffer, and shareholders would start throwing fits.
Let me reiterate that this is all a rumour, and from AppleInsider no less; I’m just posting this as a way to get a discussion started. Is lowering prices a good strategy for Apple? If so, why? If not, why not? Discuss!
Why would Apple do this? They are selling more now than ever. You only lower prices when you aren’t selling enough. Someone needs to learn some economics.
Only the iphone and ipod are doing well. The mac business is shrinking not growing.
Besides this past quarter [slight drop for Mac sales] the Mac segment has been steadily growing for the past 8 quarters.
And now Mac sales are dropping. The past is irrelevant. The Apple business model was based on the assumption that the economic boom of the past 15 years would continue. Times have changed.
Using your logic – all hardware companies should change their business model since all hardware vendors have shrunk (Acer didn’t on the basis that it included the recent acquisitions of Gateway etc. as ‘growth’).
The world is in a situation of economic decline because of an out of control debt binge thanks to low interest rates, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac giving loans to people who should have gotten them (due to an silly notion of ‘everyone should own a home’ (aka ‘ownership society’) which spurred demand (coupled with the ‘Community Re-Investment Act), higher house prices and people leverageing the equity in their home to fund a lifestyle beyond their means.
What Apple has to do is reduce prices by a small amount (Maybe $200 for iMac and MacBooks) and market based on quality, reliability, long term investment etc. Which convinces people that there is value in Mac’s through the slightly higher price.
Compared to other laptops and desktops, Mac’s aren’t all that expensive; I suggest you go down to Noel Leeming, Dick Smiths or Harvey Norman and compare side by side pricings of machines from big name vendors. Yes, Apple is slightly expensive but I don’t think it is anywhere near your emotionally drive hyperbole of being a ‘failed business model’ which is a nice way of saying, “Mac’s are a rip off – get a PC instead”.
Edited 2009-05-01 02:33 UTC
Since I live in Australia I will answer this. I received a catalogue in the mail two days ago. I actually compared Mac laptops with other several brands and they are 50-100% more expensive than windows machines with the same specifications.
Harvey Norman or Dick Smith typically charge 10-25% more than specialist computer retailers for PCs. This makes Macs seem comparatively less expensive.
Edited 2009-05-01 10:44 UTC
Are they of similar hardware specifications? form factor? battery life? bundled software? All very nice comparing two but if you’re going to play that game I might as well say that buying a Lada is superior to a Holden HSV because the Lada is cheaper; never minding the fact that the Lada isn’t in the same class as a Holden HSV.
This is not what I learnt at school!
What I learnt is offer as much value for the price. This is why there are several kinds of products (and matching companies): low-end, middle-end, high-end. Decide what audience you want to target, then decide the corresponding range of product and price. It should be coherent. You won’t sell a netbook at $999 even if it’s written “Apple”. It wouldn’t make sense either to sell an iMac at $499 if the targetted audience is ready to pay much more.
Margaret Fuller to Thomas Carlyle:
“I have decided to accept the Universe”
Thomas Carlyle to Margaret Fuller
“Madam, you had better”
Universe to Apple: “Price matters”.
Apple to Universe: “Yes, I see that now”.
Or, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Apple always does the right thing… after they’ve tried everything else.”
Lowering prices would make a difference, but only in selling numbers. Apple says netbooks are like cheap narcotics – sell in large quantities, but have a small margin of profit. So lowering the artificially overpriced Macs would pretty much balance out in the end or at least in the near future. As a long time approach this temporary decision could potentially bring to Apple a considerable number of new users and fans.
I honestly think this is just a rumour. If Apple does lower, it won’t be something to die for.
Sorry to get off topic, but the whole monetary system is corrupt, and you just sum up it out in one line:
The goal of a customer is to pay as little money for as many value as possible, while the goal of a company is to give you as little value for as much money as possible.
Why do we live in a world of abundance and keep making scarcity articially for profit?
“There is enough in the world for human need but not enough for human greed” – Ghandi
The question is, how you define need and want – where does the line sit and who decides where it is allocated if one doesn’t use market forces? It is about a company giving only what is demanded by the market and no more and the consumer to indicate what he or she wants through their buying patterns.
Why would you provide something that no one wants and ends up costing you more money to produce when compared to your rival? If you’re the only one providing BlueTooth in the market and you absorb the cost of it and no one demands it, you’re $5 worse off per unit because you’ve over delivered by providing something people never demanded.
Yes and true to all you said, except the last thing. Companies always provide things people don’t need. Marketing does the magic to convince them that they do need it; that it’s cool (like the iPhone, I mean, is it cool? I don’t own one, never touched one. In fact, I don’t think I need one); that you are a real man if you have it and a pussy if you don’t; that you are different if you buy the newest and coolest, and just normal and plain vulgar if you don’t. And people will buy. And they aren’t loosing any money, not Apple at least.
True; there is a certain element of creating demand or at least gaining market share through association of ones given product to a certain ‘lifestyle’. With that being said, however, all companies are guilty of that and not all individuals will admit that they purchase something based on impulsiveness that is derived from an emotional reaction to a given advertisement.
Most people here are pretty cold and calculated to these kinds of things but for the vast majority of people – their decisions aren’t based on facts, figures and pragmatism but instead emotional reactions. How many times do you see people who just spontaneously go out and purchase a new TV because it happens to be on special (and there is nothing wrong with the one they have) rather than something they planned to buy? How many couples get married and have kids for the reason of ‘just because’ – they can’t actually nail down an objective reason as to why.
As much as I’d love to be a free-market, libertarian, individualism, rational self interest person – at the same time it is hard to avoid the fact that there are a lot of people who are incredibly simple in their outlook on life.
Slightly off topic, but I think we should start typing People Familiar with the Matter in title case, like I just did. Just seems to make more sense that way
this is fake because it is obviously fake. Apple make the bulk of it’s money (that doesn’t come from its iPod/iPhone division) from hardware mark up.
also Apples sales figures were stellar! why change what isn’t broken?
Edited 2009-04-30 23:12 UTC
Ford and GM were selling lot’s of SUVs and pickup trucks at massive margins. It seemed a good idea at the time but turned out to be a disaster.
Why did they go for SUV’s? because there cars are crap and they weren’t selling – the SUV was meant to be their ‘saviour’. Ask yourself – why are the majority of the cars on the roads in most countries Korean or Japanese? The market was going in one direction and the US car companies went in another.
The day when I see US made cars of good fuel economy and reliability on the road that are priced in the same range as Japanese and Korean ones – then I would have seen the US car industry ‘get it’.
Until that day comes the vast majority will see US cars as big. bulky, boxy and ugly gas guzzlers. I look at cars today from the US and they look as ugly and fuel inefficient as the garbage I saw in on the roads in America when I was there in the 1980s.
You can thank protectionism for the failure of GM to change.
How does this relate to Apple? Apple isn’t selling over priced garbage that no one wants to buy – and they’re not going out to release a super expensive computer in a vein hope that banking in on guys masculine insecurities compelling them to purchase the ‘over priced model’.
Apple’s prices can be justified and there is no parallel events within Apples history that duplicate the mistakes the car industry has done – thus you analogy is wrong.
Edited 2009-05-01 02:49 UTC
Apple’s prices can be only justified because they sell less than PC makers. The hardware is the same. The software is the only thing that might get a good price, but not as much. So the buyers pay more because Apple doesn’t sell in quantity. Their prices are also overinflated. Lets see how they manage to survive in this world going through a crisis and having even more competitors each year with ever nicer and cheaper products.
Edited 2009-05-01 04:12 UTC
I say bull. The reason why I purchase it because I like using Mac OS X. Mac OS X makes using a computer a pleasant experience – it has the grunt of UNIX (not the half baked hack called ‘UNIX Subsystem’ that is bundled with Windows which still saddles me with all the problems of Windows) when I want it and yet I have access to all the big mainstream applications.
Apple either have two choices; lower their price, lower the quality of their software, off shore all their technical support to a place where the call centre workers barely know English and are earning barely above subsistence – or maintain the price and continue injecting millions into developing iLife and Mac OS X (and price them at a reasonable cost rather than the rip off 85% profit margins that Microsoft demand – and YOU whine about Apple at 27% profit margins?) along with many other products that could be in the pipe line, having a call centre for support and sales staffed with people who understand and speak English clearly and maintain a moderate pricing.
Mac’s are not expensive; go down to Noel Leeming, Harvey Norman, and Dick Smiths – compare the big names with Mac’s on offer and then you tell me that they’re a rip off. I don’t care about what is on offer in the United States, what I care about is what I can get in NZ, so US prices will be irrelevant if you quote them.
Hello? The world is not only about english speaking countries. Where does Apple fit in our world of different languages? Apple is mostly a US vendor with not much presence in other countries.
And who the hell are those people?
I don’t f–king care about US prices and I’ve never quoted any price at all. I speak from my position, from where I live, not from where you live. There are Apple stores here and the prices are almost a joke (a bad one) if you compare what’s inside the machines they sell and what’s inside competitors offerings.
So all in all, what you say is the two most important things for you is the OS and the support, because that’s what you mentioned. That means two things:
1) You pay for an overpriced product when the actual thing you want to pay for is the OS (and many people would want a PC compatible OS X).
2) You will need support after all. So either the hardware works horribly that you need support or the software is not that good or you are a plain idiot that doesn’t know how to use a computer designed with idiots in mind.
Note to everybody on osnews: Apparently we need to write substitute language of choice here instead of English or whatever our native language happens to be, because some can’t make the proper deductions to handle this on their own.
You seriously need to chill out. Go have a beer or something before commenting…
Oh I’m so sorry you felt so touched by my comment. You are free to ignore it, as it was not intended for you. Have a beer.
Open forum, buddy, anyone is free to jump in at any time. If you didn’t want that, you should have sent a pm to the op.
Actually, the parent poster has a heck of a good point. A large majority of OSNews regulars come from English-speaking countries and some make some weird assumptions about the rest of the world.
As anyone outside the US and some wealthier countries on Europe knows, Apple products are ridiculously overpriced for what they are. And when people living on wealthy countries complain about the price, I guess that it is obvious we’re talking about niche prices for everybody else here. It has better to be a premium product, which clearly it is not in Apple’s case.
I am not talking about iPods and iPhones as these, for the time being, do have something that make them stand out slightly from the competition (although there are times that I wish I had a cheaper brand music player instead of an iPod Touch so that I could use it easily with Amarok without having to resort to hacks that don’t always work). I am talking about Mac desktops and laptops, that these days are made of the same components found on any brand name offering but that they will charge you an arm and a leg for it.
OSX is a nice OS and I realize that it does have some great features, like better accessibility than Windows and FOSS desktop environments which might be an important reason for some people among a few other things but then people should come out straight and say that they’re actually paying a higher price because of OSX and drop the “Apple makes better hardware” line because it is bullshit.
Kaiwai stated clearly that he does not care for the prices charged anywhere other than on NZ and that a English-speaking helpdesk tailored specifically for his kiwi accent was a must as if those requirements were the same for everybody else. It might be true for him but to use that to justify Apple’s prices is ridiculous and gets tiring after a little while…
Huh?
I stand corrected. some cuts are infact comming. just wait till you see the Apple’responce and address to Microsoft afterwards.
This sounds awfully reminiscent of the way Microsoft pushed the xbox, by running at a loss initially.
Apple certainly has enough cash on hand to operate at a short term loss to gain market share. But, the logic there is cloudy. They wouldn’t see a return on their investment for 3-5 years until new customers upgraded their hardware.
Or, perhaps that’s just what the want, to quickly expand their market share… I’m sure the all-knowing Steve will explain it to everyone in full reality distorting glory if they do pursue this.
Somehow I think it’s more than a bit of a stretch to think that Apple would want to, or even consider trying to, operate at a loss in the attempt to increase market share. That’s not just a change of operation ; that is a reversal of their outlook on marketing.
It seems more likely to me that they would try to hit a price sweet spot, probably temporarily, where they might reduce unit margins but increase market share. You know, win-win, not try to buy some of the low end with their cash reserves.
Most discussion around the cost of Apple’s products is based on US prices, but Apple already prices much more agressively in the US than in Europe. That’s probably why Macs are so much less popular on the left side of the pond.
The article mentions the Acer Aspire One, so I’ll use that as an example. Google shopping suggests that the A110 model can be picked up for £138 or $258. In the US, a Mac Mini is $599, 2.3 times the price of the Aspire, but in the UK you could buy 3.6 Aspire Ones for the cost of a Mac Mini. By this measure, Apple is gouging each of its UK customers for £180, or 36% of the selling price.
When my Mac Mini died a few months back, I bought an EeeBox. I could afford the extra for a Mini, but the Eeebox was good enough so I had some fun with the cash instead.
Even affluent consumers are price sensitive.
Absolutely. Just because I can afford to pay a higher price, doesn’t mean I’m going to. If I can get a good-enough laptop for half the price of the premium branded one, well, I now have some extra cash I could spend on a new camera, or a mountain bike, or whatever.
I don’t think the mini is overpriced in the UK. I looked at the other products available which also matched my requirements. The mac mini was the best match, so i bought one. The cost difference was not that great between it and its direct competitors (again, based on MY needs)
Actually it mostly is nowadays, I have upgraded my mini to the latest model, but given the fact that already there are cheaper machines by asus and msi which also offer blue ray, it will be the last mini, I guess.
On the other hand if apple was to offer something like a mac midi or maxi tower in the range of 800-1500 which also is expendable I probably would buy it in an instant. But Apple has refused to produce mac Midis for years now and the MacPros (which once were the midis from form factor) are so overpriced nowadays that even many ad agencies refuse to buy them and those were the core markets for those machines!
Europe is on the right side of the pond, not the left
I think my feeling on Apple reducing prices are mixed.
If they release an Atom based mac mini for example, Great! Same high quality hardware just cheaper components.
If on the other hand they reduce prices by using lower quality component I think it would do them (and their brand) more harm than good.
One point that I’ve not seen made (anywhere) about the reduced netbook sales projections by various manufacturers than expected is that it is quite likely that none of these individual manufacturers anticipated the large number of competitors bringing a netbook to market. Each vendor likely anticipated higher sales based on having a much higher market share in the category due to fewer competitors.
Hence, each vendor could be reducing their sales predictions while the overall sales in the netbook market are exceeding predictions.
You make me very angry! huff huff huff
J/K.
Like that would happen.. lol
Mac nano or Core i7 Mac Pro?
Apple is more likely to introduce a new lower-priced Mac than cut prices.
In the early to middle 1990s, Apple sold the Performa line as a budget line and they sold fairly well, as they were priced equivalently to a typical DOS/Windows 3.x machine.
I believe they must have lost money of every one of them. Most of the early models used SCSI drives and included a keyboard, mouse, and monitor so they had more equipment than the equivalent Quadra model from which they were derived.
The only way I see that Apple can put out inexpensive machines and keep quality high is to use older and lower speed processors, older, less speedy RAM, and remove the subsidy that helps pay for development of Mac OS X.
Otherwise, they’ll have to lose money, but then, they’ve supposedly hired someone from Microsoft’s Xbox group and they’ve lost money on every one, correct?
Macs are just generic PCs. If Dell. HP etc can make a profit at much lower prices so can Apple.
Perhaps you haven’t priced hardware in the last year or two. Slower RAM actually costs significantly more than newer faster units. But Intel processors using slower older units can be less expensive and this may not be a big turn-off to typical Apple customers, but it won’t gain converts who are hardware savvy. Again, this reverses Apple’s primary marketing thrust ; they migrated to Intel to provide cost effective high-speed mainstream CPUs.
We’ve read some reviews recently where Apple notebooks were compared against similiarly-spec’d PC notebooks, and Apple came out parity or better. So if Apple starts trying to lower prices, it seems to me that that would come with a reduction in quality. Of course, it’s one thing if they start making new models that are cheaper (and therefore less capable), but if they start making stuff that’s less reliable or make the MacBook Pro with cheaper and less capable parts, I’m going to be very unhappy.
I’ve not had an entirely trouble-free Mac experience, but when I compare my experience to what my friends tell me about their Dells, I feel really fortunate.
Macs are made in the same Chinese factories using exactly the same generic parts (CPUs, hard drives, displays, memory etc) as used by other PC makers. So by definition Macs can’t be of higher quality than a PC.
Don’t pull the curtains back! The truth is never as good as the lie!
oh, of course, and apparently Mac OS X are written by 4 foot Munchkins running around to all hours of the night typing on keyboards and creating iLife – all to get a pat on the head from Uncle Steve Jobs.
iLife and Mac OS X cost money; when you purchase a Mac you are also subsidising the cost of Mac OS X and iLife development. I don’t know what land you occupy but these cost money to develop.
All the big PC OEM’s do is get a third party to assemble it, dump an image onto it – and that’s it. The OEM’s do no R&D of their own nor do they bundle anything of any value with their computers besides what crapware which vendors shovel to them for a set price.
There is no difference between an HP, Dell or Toshiba laptop; they’re all machines with Windows dumped on them with no value added provided by the said companies; if they all merged together overnight I don’t think anyone would notice a difference.
Atleast in the case of Mac you get iLife, Mac OS X, cheaper operating system upgrades when compared to Windows (based on NZ pricing – I don’t care how cheap you get it in the US because US prices are of NO relevance to me what so ever) and local technical support – the phone number goes through to a call centre located in Australia to a person who understands English rather than the experience I had with one American company where I got directed to a US call centre where no one could understand my NZ accent!
Edited 2009-05-01 03:03 UTC
It’s funny, but nothing of what you cite has anything to do with the hardware. Basically, the innards of a Mac are “beige box” PC parts. So the contention that the quality of the working parts can’t be higher than (but can be equal to) the innards of other PC manufacturers is a correct one.
Apple does do some serious exotic stuff with their casings, so the casings might be of far better quality than the tin can and plastic ones I see so often on non-apple machines.
When it comes to the peripheral quality of the software and the service Apple delivers, that is a different matter altogether. This maybe higher than what others are providing and that very well can explain the higher retail price of a Mac.
MS Windows and MS Works serve a similar purpose as the standard Mac software package, though. Irrespective of the quality, it remains a fact that you pay for OS X and iLife and you pay for MS Windows and Works and both packages make the computer usable.
Mate, show proof or retract: where did I state that Mac’s had superior quality hardware? I’ve scanned through my post 4 times whilst viewing each sentence from multiple angles and not once did I claim that Mac’s had superior hardware by way of quality.
True, but again, I never talked about quality: I made a post and now you’re bring a topic and making claims about what I said – which I never said: an attempt to poison the well if one were to use a turn of phrase.
Not just the quality but what they deliver. We can talk about quality all day but debating quality would be like me saying that ‘Foobah is a superior piece of software to Wamboo because I haven’t experienced a crash once’ whilst ignoring the fact that foobah is just a ‘hello world’ programme.
I purchase a Mac because I like how Mac OS X operates; I like the UI, the menu at the top of the screen, the dock, the way the file system is laid out, the fact that I can have a full out, hard core, no compromises UNIX under the hood, the drag and drop installation of software, the free to use for all development tools, their support for such projects as webkit, llvm, sqlite and so forth.
So it goes well beyond the superficial junket that you took the reader on – it is more than just “well, there are 2 widgets bundled with the computer so therefore it is the same”. Sorry to rain on your parade but it doesn’t make the two equal any more than if you had two females, one is overweight and one a healthy size – and you claiming that they’re both ‘equal’ because they happen to be wearing the same attire.
Edited 2009-05-02 02:13 UTC
Find a Chinese made PC with a case made from Aluminium and polycarbonate, that you don’t have to assemble yourself, that comes completely pre-loaded and ready to run when you pull it out of the box, with a full version of the OS rather than the cheap home version with half its guts missing, with all the connectivity (including bluetooth, high res webcam, etc) onboard, and you’ll find a PC that’s equivalently priced or more expensive than the similarly spec’d Mac.
I suspect Ferrari don’t make their own brake components or tyres either, but a Ferrari, like a Mac, is more than just the sum of its parts, regardless of how generic those parts are.
Interesting, though, that Ferrari – like every other premium car brand – is owned by a mass market manufacturer. The fixed costs of R&D, supply chain maintenance and developing channels to market are only affordable when volumes are very high.
Outside the US Apple isn’t even in the top 5 PC manufacturers, and it’s trying to sell very expensive product in the face of both a global economic meltdown and a rapidly developing low-cost netbook market.
I smell trouble ahead for Macs.
Ferrari is a true premium brand. Despite what Apple wants its fans to believe, Apple is NOT a premium brand. You only have to look at Apple’s terrible handling of massive defects as wlel as their short warranty periods to realise that they are NOT a premium company.
Thanks for pointing that out. If I buy a Ferrari which has a design defect. Ferrari calls in the car and repairs it no matter how bad the defect is.
As for Apple, it depends on whether the defect is fixable without a huge sum on their side or not.
Apple has had a history of leaving users with half working machines standing in the rain even if they bought apple care.
The most recent example is the mac mini with its infamous kernel thread problem which was never fixed. Instead of it apple rolled another update of the machine which also did not really fix it leaving thousands of users standing in the rain with 2500 dollar machines, at a time when a recall and a real fix would have been appropriate!
I think the first incident of such handlign was the Apple III and every few years such a huge design mistake crawls up leaving users standing in the rain!
There is a reason why everyone says never buy a 1.0 revision from Apple, and the reason is justified.
If you are lucky you might get a recall, but the chances are high that Apple leaves you standing in the rain!
Uups I meant Macbook Air not MacMini.
The mac mini is a fine workign machine!
Ferrari are owned by Fiat. Lamborghini by VW and Aston Martin by Ford.
Making these cars isn’t even profitable. They are built primarily as technology test beds.
However a Ferrari isn’t a cheap Fiat with a different body. A Mac is a generic PC in a different case – nothing more.
Er, no, actually. A Mac is a generic PC in a different case with a different operating system. It’s the cost of developing the OS whilst maintaining compatibility with a rapidly changing ecosystem of hardware, software and peripherals that’s the real issue.
And don’t forget third party apps – without a large market footprint, there’s no incentive to develop for OS X: a premium product with limited software compatibility isn’t exactly premium. Anyone up for a bit of Mac gaming? Thought not…
That’s why I smell trouble ahead for Macs. In the boom years, Apple basked in the glory of its media player products, raked in a few aspirationally hip converts to its PCs and converted this into mass market growth. It then moved up market and culled its low-end products – compare the price of the aluminium bodied Macs to the previous generation – but the recession is now cutting the legs from under its business model. That’s why Apple is losing market share.
The high end cases by manufacturers such as Antec and Lian Li are equal or better than anything Apple makes.
Competing on price would be a major strategically mistake for Apple.
Yes apple does use x86/x64 components, however as with the great things about the PC industry, there are still varying degree’s of quality even with these generic pc parts.
You can’t compare a cheap windows laptop with a mac laptop from a hardware perspective. The quality of the components are much higher. From the chipset to audio to casing and keyboard.
As for the topic in hand i think there is a price point for apple to introduce a mac computer in a tower/mini tower configuration. the iMac is a great machine, however i can see why a great many people would like to have a desktop mac without having it all in one, so they could upgrade the HDD, GPU etc. without having to spend ALOT of money on the Mac Pro.
I believe the mac pro would still enjoy sales as most people purchasing this computers are professionals that benefit from having an x86/x64 workstation (i.e. XEON Processors, fast FSB, large total RAM capacity and speed.)
Of course a $1500 mac laptop will be better than a $600 windows laptop. However a Windows laptop will almost always have (far) better specs than a Mac at the same price point.
…But still run slower. Windows is simply not as efficient as OS X, which is also not preloaded with a ton of crapware.
I often find that a cheap high-spec machine on paper is still dog-slow because of poor quality harddisk, memory bottlenecks, or simply terrible GPUs.
There is a reason a Mac is one of the fastest computers for running Windows, and it’s not just the spec printed on the box. It is a quality, custom motherboard, chipset & GPU and it is EFI instead of BIOS.
You get what you pay for, and the Mac is still value-for-money in a market of over-inflated numbers.
Not that EFI matters to Windows, of course, since it runs in BIOS compatibility mode in any case. Vista has limited EFI support, but doesn’t really use it except in the case of Itanium systems.
Edited 2009-05-01 12:56 UTC
Sorry to disappoint you but Mac hardware is mostly low to mid-range generic stuff. You won’t find high end gear such as Seagate Raptor drives, Crucial RAM or NVidia Quadro cards in Macs.
Raptor drives are made by Western Digital.
Don’t tarnish an awesome drive with the Seagate name. The rest of your points are spot on, the os and the case are the main differences between Macs and PCs aside from the use of EFI on the motherboard, which I wish would be adopted by PCs as well. When you get right down to it, Macs are overpriced, slightly above average hardware in an awesome case.
I apologise to Western Digital. My AMD “whitebox” cost a hell of a lot less two years ago than any comparably performing Mac yet it has a better MB (Asus), RAM (Corsair), keyboard (MS Comfort Curve) and a far better case (Antec Sonata) and power supply (ChannelWell).
If they were aiming to secure a particular market niche in the currently depressed circumstances, but does anyone see Apple springing a new hardware format on us (unless this “iPhone is a NetBook” thing really is a bit of a smokescreen laid down by Jobs to disorient the opposition).
It might also be an opportunity for Apple to strike in the transition between Vista and Windows 7, to gain further footholds at that juncture: you never know, Windows 7 just might turn out to be something that consumers will be happy with, and switchers may dry up (and it would be useful to correlate the number of switchers to Macs with the period of Vista introduction and with the emergence of the iPod and iPhone brands – I wonder which was more significant in getting people to decide to give the Mac ‘a go’).
There might also be certain geographical markets where lowering relative price now to get penetration might stand Apple in good stead for when the economy in those areas does pick up.
If price would be the only topic to compete in the market, Apple wouldn’t sell many iPods. However, they do.
For me it’s pretty realistic to see something between a MacBook and an iPhone in Apple’s future. It has to be reasonably priced, but it hasn’t to be cheap. Let’s say a 10″ touchscreen tablet running full Mac OS X for $799.
The price difference between an Ipod and a similar MP3 player is very small. However there is a huge price difference between a $700 laptop and a $1500 laptop.
Sorry Steve but I won’t buy another Mac if the price is lowered to the same price as a PC. I refuse to associate with riff-raff.
It is obvious that Steve Jobs will never be returning to the helm of Apple. So now decisions will be made on a rational basis. This most likely means looking at a reduction in prices and a substantial increase in marketshare.
Edited 2009-05-02 03:55 UTC
makes sense for MacMinis. I hope for a Dual Core Celeron version.