Apple may be eying sub-$1000 notebook market - Page 2

LOL. The imagery of science fiction, particularly when it comes to visualizing multiple, rich information sources, and intangible dimensions, etc. has been so ingrained in our psyche for decades now. So much so that that NASA one looks really, really lame. It's just a frickin' ball hung over carpet and probably uses chunky expensive projectors which require a lot of maintenance.

I support funding for Science 100%. But to capture the public's imagination, we need to see stuff like the iPhone and these:

(Sunshine - "Icarus")



(I was going to throw in Minority Report but I'm really avoiding anything Cruise nowadays)

...
I know the NASA one had specific surface-spherical visualization in mind, but really the Holy Grail is full 3D imagery of arbitrary shape, texture, etc. then full interaction with this. Cf. Iron Man movie.

"Star Trek" holodecks is a different level, because that involves arbitrary manipulation of matter itself, which is, shall I just say, I'll have my nice super touch thin MacBook Pro-esque 16" ... then I'll start to fantasise about manipulating matter at will at a subatomic level.

If you'll bear with loading the images, come to think of it, all science fiction references to any sort of "visualisation" has to be somebody looking at a big globe like thing:

(Sunshine - "Earth Room")



(Linkin Park's video - "Leave out all the rest")

Thank you thank you, you're far too kind.

No, as far as I know. We want to handle NATIVE files with animations, transitions, etc. For that Keynote and PowerPoint applications must open on the device.

You folks have got to stop looking for Apple the re-do the AppleTV, it is what it is. What it's not is a Tivo. It's a TV-based, self-aware iPod.

My query was raised on the statement made that, "These technologies, particularly SSD will cut into profit margins enough as it is without lowering the prices."

Oppenheimer said that, "We have been introducing state of the art new products that have technologies and features that competition can't match." Apple has no exclusivity on the SSD, so for its inclusion to affect profit margins negatively, the price of including it (SSD) would have to be lower.

Something new, with less margin? Could we imagine
- a MacBook mini, close to the EEE PC?
- or the introduction of Blu-Ray at an aggressive price?
Wait and see

product transition at a price competitors can't match...
goodbye hard drives in all apple laptops, ipods [and imacs?], hello ssd.
maybe?

i agree that dropping 100 bucks off the macbook isn't a transition.
sheathing everything in aluminum isn't something the competition can't match.

multitouch laptop would be nice i guess, but i don't care, just keep making the overall size smaller / screen bigger, the weight lighter, the components faster, and the battery life longer. that will make me keep buying products and shares. like my brother says, i buy anything apple puts in a cool white box. [he forgets the good things come in black boxes...]

Which Eee PC? The $300-400 one, or the $600-700 model that no one wants?
The netbook market is pretty saturated ATM, Acer's Aspire One just came out, and is looking pretty nice, and the MSI Wind and Dell E-series should around shortly, and those are also in the $300-400 range. The Eee PC is slipping, as it's too expensive for what it is, but the Acer and Dell should do well.

I don't see Apple doing well if they plan on going the netbook route, with just a Atom CPU. Besides, they have the MBA.

BR would be nice I guess, but you can already buy those (interal and external models).

A $1000 MB wouldn't impress me in the slightest, unless it was 3-4 GB, 250 GB HD, and DVD burner standard. Those 3 things are absolutely dirt cheap at the moment. All of Apple's PCs should have a DVD buner standard anyway.

There is also the $1000 Eee.

There is? I've lost track of all of them...the Eee idea sounded really good at one time, but ASUS has mucked it up good.

Something that the Acer would be perfect if I still needed a small laptop to take notes with:
Color\tSeashell white
Operating System\tLinpus Linux Lite version
CPU Type\tIntel Atom N270(1.60GHz)
Screen\t8.9" WSVGA
Memory Size\t512MB (onboard)
Hard Disk\t8GB Solid-State Disk
Graphics Card\tIntel GMA950
Video Memory\tshared memory
Battery Life\t3.0 hours
Dimensions\t9.8" x 6.7" x 1.14"
Weight\t2.19 lbs.
Other Features\tStorage expansion: SD Card reader
CPU
CPU Type\tIntel Atom
CPU Speed\tN270(1.60GHz)
CPU FSB\t533MHz
CPU L2 Cache\t512KB
Display
Screen Size\t8.9"
Wide Screen Support\tYes
LCD Features\tLED backlight & Acer CrystalBrite Technology
Display Type\tWide SVGA
Resolution\t1024 x 600
Operating Systems
Operating System\tLinpus Linux Lite version
Graphics
GPU/VPU\tIntel GMA950
Video Memory\tShared system memory
Graphic Type\tIntegrated Card
Hard Drive
HDD\t8GB SSD
HD Spec\t8GB NAND flash memory (SSD)
Memory
Memory Slots\t1 x SO-DIMM
Memory\t512MB (onboard)
Max Memory Supported\t1.5GB
Communications
LAN\t10/100Mbps
WLAN\t802.11b/g Wireless LAN
Ports
USB\t3
Video Port\t1 x VGA
Audio Ports\t1 x Microphone jack; 1 x Headphone jack
Audio
Audio\tHigh-definition audio support
MS-Sound compatible
Built-in digital microphone
Speaker\tTwo built-in stereo speakers
Input Device
Touchpad\tTouchpad pointing device with two buttons
Keyboard\t84-key keyboard with 1.6 mm (minimum) key travel
Supplemental Drive
Card Reader\tMulti-in-1 card reader
Supporting Secure Digital (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick PRO (MS PRO), xD-Picture Card (xD)
Webcam\tYes

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115489

$380 bucks. Just too bad about the Atom and battery life.

Sure, this was an extremely limited and simplified example. My point was to illustrate that market share was not the end all be all. Gross profit is easier to conceptualize.

And of course there are plenty of other fine points you could bring in, like increasing market share would increase long term revenues from OS upgrades...

But the bottom line is that market share means squat without profitability. Apple may not have dazzled with market share in the past, but it has such a high market capitalization primarily because of its exemplary profits (as a result of its high profit margin) and its capacity for growth. Growth by itself doesn't impress.

It appears I am incorrect as I can't back that up with any internet-proof. Perhaps I saw the 1000H model, not a $1000 model. The most expensive I found as in the $600 range.

I saw an HP touch screen computer today, and it did have noticeable fingerprints on it. I think the glossy screen made them most obvious, though glossy might be easier to clean, I don't know.


I'm pretty sure you're quite behind on that. For one, I'm not sure if Celeron is still around, but Centrino-derived Celerons were pretty good. It was the older models that deserved derision, but newer ones weren't so hamstrung and hardly had a performance penalty clock-for-clock.

So, in other words, they're going back to the PowerPC price points.

i was thinking that as i was reading.

Apple inc. is changing from a niche market elitist company to a more mass oriented company.

They have realized they simply cannot get the market share - which is ultimately what makes most MS sales - by maintaining the great margins they have been able to preserve.

Remember that they are creating this new paradigm shift of changing from desktop to handheld mobile. This means they will change from selling 2.5 million Macs per quarter to something like 25 million or even 50 million "insert product name here". Right now with the iPhone they are pretty much setting themselves up to reach that volume in 2009 or 2010.

Now those of you who will dismiss my words out of fear for not feeling special for having a Mac anymore, wake up and smell the coffee. You will still be special because Macs will always be special and fun no matter how many millions are out there.

We all know that Apple likes to make a nice profit. But what if Apple made a product with specifications similar to sub-$1k PC notebooks. Here's a couple of ideas:

Aluminum MacBook:
-2.0GHz C2D or CD processor
-2 GB RAM
-100-120 GB Hard Drive
-Superdrive
-Price...$799 or $899
I doubt the difference in price from a Combo Drive to Super Drive is more than $30-40, a less powerful processor would probably run $100-150 less, a smaller HD may save $40, and an Aluminum shell would probably run close to the cost of the plastic shell, with Apple sacrificing $40-50 in profit. Let's say production runs $200 less than the current $1090 MB. The competitors would be furious. People looking at cheap computers (which we Mac users must admit is a large portion of computer buyers) would look at a $899 PC with its crappy cheap plastic shell (nothing near the quality plastic of the MB); 150 keys; super glossy,plastic display; and Vista and choose the MB with its sleek aluminum shell, simple key layout, lack of bloatware, & easy-to-use OS. Imagine yourself as someone limited to spending <$1k for a computer...which would you choose? We hear $999 thrown around a bit...why not a little lower? Maybe they could throw in iWork...Apple has probably already reaped enough from it to cover its development costs.

Second idea, more in line with the "transitional" & "products and features that others can match" quotes:
Aluminum MacBook Touch
-2.0,2.2, 2.4GHz processors
-2GB RAM
-120,160, &200GB HDs
-13"Multitouch display
-.0.9-1in thin
-SuperDrive
-$1199, $1399, &$1799 (assuming the specs of MBs change or MB price drop)
I assume Apple has earned enough from iPhone sales to make up for Multitouch development (although it will need to be changed a bit for the computer-based OS X). Look around at today's tablet PCs...few have good specs, and most are ~$1k. If Apple brings in a far superior & ascetically-pleasing product for a couple hundred more, it would certainly have "products and features that others can't match".

I would imagine both have great potential for success...if Apple would just cut features a little to create a cheaper entry-level product. (And sorry for the long post)

Last I heard, the actual difference was $5 or less. A DVD writer is supposed to be one of those upsell features.

I, too, don't see what's horribly wrong about Apple selling more Macs.
Cons:
-We won't be an elite market
-Apple may face more problems, malware, etc.
-The Genius Bars will need to be expanded, they're already overcrowded.
-Apple will face more criticism (the MobileMe problems would be in every newspaper in America)
Pros:
-It would be a wonderful "humanitarian aid" effort...liberating the world from the form of enslavement known as "Windows"
-I won't have people roll their eyes or say no one available knows how to use a Mac when I take my MBP to Tech Support (and I go to a school named: [insert state] Institute of Technology above all else!!)
-More OS X-compatible software!!!!!!
-The chance to demonstrate our knowledge of OS X to Mac newcomers.
-It won't be awkward when people look at my display and are like WTF is this, I explain about OS X, then they think it's some extra-special or super expensive machine.
-People won't say: "I once used a Mac" and "...I didn't like them" or "...they're hard to use" or something along those lines (everyone that says this used OS 9 or earlier 10 or more years ago...ignorant fools who think times don't change!!!

Add more, but the point is clear...More users is better for we Mac users as it is for Apple's bottom line.

Combo drives are such a low-volume item they're typically more expensive than DVD burners.

I wish Apple would have done this a few months ago...would've made used MB prices drop lower.

If they bought them now, that would be true. However, they're a pretty good indication that Apple stockpiles things like optical drives and LCD panels.

Alas, I misread the headline and thought for one joyous moment that it was predicting that Apple would have a subnotebook rather than a Sub-$1000 notebook.

The Mac world really needs a subnotebook with an iPhone-like touch screen. Come on Steve, give it to us.

HEY APPLE, get over the fear of dedicated GPU's already, would yaa! It's 2008, time to face that the smallest market share of PRO's (less than <1% of retail) don't make your bread and butter.

Release a sub tower and macbook with gaming and motion (Illustrator, Motion, Unreal 3, Doom), so the mac store people don't have to keep telling us, yeah, we know already, its the graphic card, then make the MBPro a quad core machine and be done with it, that's what separates them, a 4 core vs 2 core.

Man oh man, sure you won't find all the specs on a PC, but a PC for $599 can run doom and if hacked enough can even run OSX.

Geeesh.

In Soviet Russia, iPod turn YOU on.

OK, so there's no touch screen, but the MSI Wind (a.k.a the Advent 4211 in PC World / Dixons in the UK) can run OSX. Even with the extra 75 bucks for a copy of Leopard it's still great value.

Advent 4211 (re-badged MSI Wind)
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/219404

Mmm... Not to rain on anyone's parade, but all these new fandangled mini-notebooks with an Atom CPU, has anyone really tested that? Say in comparison to the MacBook Air C2D? I mean in this day and age, for something more in the "laptop" category rather than "phone" category, that MacBook Air CPU is the *bare minimum* for any sort of portable computing.

Oh, please. Most people use their laptop to surf the web, check their email, and type resumes. You've got a seriously warped view of computing if you thing the Macbook Air's CPU is the "bare minimum" for stuff like that.

So the base $1099 MacBook is going to get a SuperDrive!
A thousand dollar laptop that can burn DVDs.
Lets see DELL and HP match that!


Of course this will eat into their margins as SuperDrives are far more expansive than Combo Drives.
But think of the market share growth this will drive.

Imagine if they put a SuperDrive in the $599 Mac mini!
My head is about to explode!

Expansive or expensive? They aren't expensive anymore.

My poor spelling aside, it was sarcasm.

Seriously, what I would love to see is 2 things...

MacBook mini = $999 11" sub notebook/tablet with SuperDrive
Mac mini = $499 with SuperDrive (add SSD option)

Here's why...
Let's say that you were in watch sales (for a living) and were given the choice to sell Rolex or Timex. Clearly more Timex watches are sold than Rolex. Clearly it is easier to sell Timex than Rolex. However, you have to sell several thousand Timex watches to realize the same profit (not revenue, but profit, like the $$$ you get to keep) you realize by selling a single Rolex. Both business models work, but one is easier.

I hope Apple continues to do what it does best and I hope that Steve Jobs has a long and happy life because my life is better because of their strategy.

There is another issues that Apple must deal with in regards to market share that many are not considering. GROWTH and how to manage it.

Apple sold 41% more Macs this past quarter than they did a year ago.
Apple sold 10% more iPods this past quarter than they did a year ago.
Revenue at its Retail stores grew 58% year over year.

40% growth is great but it is hard to manage.
If Apple suddenly drops their prices and demand increases, this will put added pressure on Apple's supply chain, more crowded stores, longer hold times on tech support lines, longer repair times, require increased staffing, etc...

Quality could suffer as well as the user experience.
Apple has worked hard to create a positive image after the debacle of the 1990s.
I'm all for lower prices but not at the expense of quality and excellence.

they should drop that MB model. 1gig of ram and a combo drive. please. what a waste. dump it and drop the price on the other two $100-200

along with that move, I can see investigations into a better, more smudge resistant surface for touch devices as well as a shift into more of the solid state drives like they have in the Air as the prices come down.

No, look, dropping models is the problem. I'll use the Mac mini as an example. It started out (on Intel) with a 1.5GHz Core Solo processor, then up to 1.66GHz Core Duo, then to Core 2 Duo finally up to 2.0GHz. Pretty much the only change has been the CPU, the prices have remained the same- $599 and $799.

Now imagine if, instead of getting dropped, that 1.5GHz model had gotten a price cut. And another. And another, until you've got a $349 1.5GHz single-core mini. Sure, it's slow, but it's fast enough for the crap most people use computers for (myself included). And you can still spend $799 if you want 2.0GHz.

This presumes that it is cheaper to make the older model. That simply isn't the case. In fact the cost of producing the older model often actually increases or becomes impossible once the components are no longer in mass production for the rest of the industry (i.e. the Core was replaced by the Core 2).

Yes. You're taking what I said far too literally. Intel sells slow, cheap, modern single core processors. That 1.5GHz Core Solo was replaced by Intel with a 1.6GHz Core 2 model, which costs $30, compared to the 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo used by the base mini at about $200. Those are retail prices, Apple pays less of course.

But what if Intel doesn't make 1.6 Core 2 models anymore?

Then Apple can't just cut the price for the model - they HAVE to update the processor.

So your logic would work for 6 months or maybe a year after initial release, but then Apple would have to possibly re-increase the price point when they are forced to use a newer model, which looks bad, or simply always have the Mac mini using 1 year old technology, which also looks bad.

You're still taking me too literally here. What I'm saying is that Intel always has processors at that bottom-end price point, $25 or $30 or whatever. Apple won't use them because, for whatever reason, Apple seems to think that every generation must be faster than the previous generation.

Which is fine, faster is good. But it means that the one thing Apple does not do, that every other computer manufacturer does, is offer cheaper products in addition to faster ones. Because god forbid Apple actually try to sell computers to people who don't have a lot of money to spend.