New iMacs offer more value than competition - report - Page 3

iWork??

really?

+1...

Another lens to look through are the financial results of their product mix. Apple has held on to profitability with its AIO line, Dell's profits are down 50%.

"The Oppenheimer analyst also used his report Tuesday to perform a side-by-side comparison of the new iMacs against all-in-one desktops from Dell and HP. "

You throw out the Quad core as though that automatically means better system performance, which it most certainly does not. The iMac is not competing directly with any of those crap machines sold at Staples.

Its been shown in general a faster dual core processor will have better performance than a slower quad core processor. Only under certain circumstances will the slower quad core have better performance.


It looks as though Apple were more concerned with lowering the price than a major component update. Quad core will be coming to the iMac.


In playing to your audience. I seriously doubt most of the people purchasing iMac will be concerned with Grand Central.


In this comparison the term value can differ. Part of the value of the iMac is in having a the entire machine in one package. Their is no clearly defined way to equate that value to a general desktop.

But we do know that Apple is making more money from the iMac than Dell or HP are making from their desktop lines.

You call this perspective? Perspective is seeing the fact that Windows XP has around 60% of the market. Mac OS X has around 9% of the market. Vista is competing with XP not Mac OS X.

Yes I would call a success, the ability to sell 12 million machines and make more money than a competitor who sells 200 million.

Be careful with the word "Techies" they will call you childish.

If work is paying, then the answer is either MacBook Pro, or Mac Pro.

My workplace bought some (now old) 8-core Mac Pros for the lab, maxed out with RAM and storage. After using them for lab work, it's mighty difficult to return to my everyday XP ThinkPad laptops - waiting for Windows to startup, Outlook to load, PowerPoint to load/save, Windows to sleep, etc.

"Experiencing something better can make what you have feel like torture."

Form over function. Nothing new. The iMac "desktop" has been a laptop on a stick (or in an inverted bowl) for many years.

Apple's profit margins being twice the industry average (and sometimes more) is the direct indicator of the "Apple tax". The value of the Mac over a PC is a perceived one by many people. It's one of simple taste. The intangibles (thus the tax) are made possible by being different through both software and enclosures. Those that are sold by it will accept those perceptions that Apple sells (obviously) despite real-world costs. (i.e. iLife and OSX together are worth only $169 retail and are already figured into the price as Apple sees fit to price it, not the actual several hundred dollar difference between machines of comparable specs.)

The other arguments like "better parts", etc. are often fluff to convince themselves about the value of the purchase they bought. And everything else on the market is crap because they've accepted Apple as their lifestyle brand. Push Pepsi on any hardcore Coke drinker... same thing.

When the math doesn't add up and is dared to be brought up, the argument often gets redirected into what users "need". i.e. You only need the specs that conveniently match that of Apple products, being their bottom line of that circular debate.

My only particular beef with Apple are the huge, gaping holes in the lineup which are beyond excuse IMO... Except of course when Apple's profitability is the iron-clad defense rubbed into my face for wanting something not available in the gimped lineup. As if their profitability (thanks much to said tax and other non-computer products) is some sort of relevant, automagical selling point that makes those people happy to either settle for less than what they wanted, or pay more than what they wanted, thanks to the warped value-add model.

In any event, the gaping holes being:

- No 15" laptop under $2000.
- No 17" laptop under $2800.
- No desktop with upgradable graphics (or any real desktop at all, period) under $2500.
- and others.

I'll say it again only slower....

12m out of 260m (and 12m is generous)

it doesn't matter what Apple do with their computers..... not enough people buy them for them to be vaguely relevant.

Take your point about Vista and XP but XP is still Windows.

I can't argue with you anymore than this, the randomness of your conclusions are mindblowing.

COMPETITION ??? WTF ?

What competion with Apple HW?
This article is pretty disingenuous, you are not allowed to install/use OS/X on other manufactures hardware, more like monopoly.

Not that Apple hardware/software isn't nice, but the premise of this article is crap.

Cpt KLutz

Is there another company whose most devout followers enjoy getting financially shafted so much.???

The ridiculous profit margin is worn like a badge of honour by the mac heads. Do they not realise it is them fuelling it??

..speechless.

You can get the 15" laptop under $2000 and the 17" laptop under $2800 if you're willing to buy clearance (new but last generation) Macs. I got my early 2008 2.5GHz 15" MacBook Pro for $1350 when Amazon was clearing them out right after the unibodies were introduced.


I assume you mean with display. Otherwise the low-end Mac Pro is $2499, and clearance ones will also get under $2500, though not with display included.

Apple sold a little over 8 million machines in 2008. My point is in the end what is the advantage of selling more if you aren't making more (in some cases less)money.

If Apple weren't relevant why are so many people talking about it?

I'm not sure what's random about my conclusions they are in direct response to yours.

I really don't understand why you care. If you are the enlightened one, why come here and complain about those of us who are not as visionary as yourself?

Thank you for just proving my point. That even will all the millions of PC's sold compared to Apple, the PC makers can't seem to make enough revenue to support their model yet Apple is in great financial health given the current market conditions.

Well, there's nothing wrong about agreeing or disagreeing publicly in forums like this.

At the end of a day, it is in AppleInsider interest to attract as many readers as they can, and if it turns out that significant number of readers prefers unbiased articles, that is reality AI has to accept... or decrease it's readers' base.

Regarding this article, whatever the source is, it simply does not hold the ground. iMac is the only mid-level desktop option for Apple, and as such it competes with desktop PCs in general. AIO PCs are so insignificantly represented in PC market that even calling them niche would be overstatement of the century. Plus, HP Touchsmart is AIO desktop with touch screen and as such represents category of it's own; all the advertising materials we are receiving from HP resellers are orbiting around the fact that it is freakin' touch screen device.

Apple's higher margins largely come from Apple not playing in the low cost low margin market.


I think most everyone will agree a laptop body machined from one solid block of aluminum is a better part than a laptop body made from molded plastic snapped together.


People want to simplify the debate around specs. Specs are not the only consideration and alone don't make a good computer. Every computer has to make some compromise one way or another, what makes for the best compromise is subjective.



Profitability is the reason why Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft and everyone else are doing any of what they do. Profitability is the whole point.

Apple has offered a wider computer line in the past and it proved less profitable than Apple's currently limited line.

Nope! just an everyday worker bee....but my time is worth $150 an hour and I don't want to be mucking about with a windows machine.... been up till 2am trying to "fix" windows machines too many times!

Whether the iMac is good value or nor in comparison with the competition, depends on what OS you want to run.

If you want to run OS X, and work with pictures, you want a good picture on screen. And one that does not change with time. That means today you should be using LED lighting because is more stable (less resyncing/calibration of your screen).

Second, you want a faster machine, and Apple has chosen to use dual core CPUs only. And this is at a time when they have shown the next version of the OS, due in few months, where one of the main features will be Grand Central, a rewrite of significant portions to make various tasks run in parallell.

The current iMac will not be able to take advantage of Grand Central as effectively as a Quad core.

So the message as I read the facts, is wait a while before you buy your next one, at least until Snow Leopard has become available.

What's your view?

peter

Yeah, pretty much every market has a higher-end product or service that represent the pinnacle of excellence that all the others are measured against. But that does mean that the others are striving to copy their every move. These companies, while popular in their own right and profitable, almost never make up the majority of the units or profit made in that market.

Whether they have 10% or 5% or 2% of a market, they have that market and they have it with merchandise that make them money. Your assertion that Apple won't be a worthwhile company until it has corner the other 210M PCs to be sold this year is ludicrous.

Thanks!

Appleinsider did not make the conclusions, if you don't like what's being said, don't bother reading this site.

Is it really necessary to keep calling people at an Apple site fanboy? Wouldn't your points be better-made without stooping down to that level?

sell more machines, attract more devs who will make more software thus driving better sales. I take the point about why do more to make less but surely a better balance can be struck??

Apple aren't relevant, in the general real world no one is talking about them, unless its iphone or ipods...or their ridiculous prices of course.

I agree...

This is an excellent point to consider for those who claim that Mac OS X is "worth" $200
or $169 or whatever. Compare the amount of time spent on the care and feeding of
Mac OS X versus the amount of time for any variety of Windows, and then ask yourself
how much your time is worth. The real or imagined savings on PC hardware is quickly
swamped by the losses incurred in user time wasted.

you seem to have conveniently forgotten the profits derived from the other devices...you might have heard of them....you know ipods and the like?

If the main competitor in the market royally screws up then you would expect the competition to do well. You could argue that Apple could have done better.

That will come as a surprise to Fortune magazine:http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/...une/index.html

Frankly I'm willing to pay whatever Apple charges as long as I don't have to use Windows. We are tired of fighting our machines because of viruses, we want to use our computers, not fight it. I was in a computer shop a couple of days ago and the amount of Dell machines in the shop there, the owners were just frustrated with having to fight the machines, they were infected with viruses and they couldn't get anything done. One guy was finding to do his course because his computer was always in the shop because of viruses. Good thing Mac users don't have to do deal with this crap. No wonder Apple has the highest satisfcation rates in the industry, while the likes of Dell and HP are near the bottom. These days nobody gives a crap about how much ghz, gigabytes their computer has, they just want a computer that does what they need to do with the right software and something they don't have to have fight Apple is providing this choice for a lot of people. Dell can keep their 300 dollar virus ridden computers.

What a smackdown.

He means Apple's comptuers don't have the highest gigaherz, gigabytes, the rest of the crap. Funny thing is most people don't really buy their computers based on that and Apple knows that.

Really these guys can't even read Apple online documentation. No where in the iMac documentation do the mention the use of LED backlights. Believe me I looked as is should be expected in this price range. We could hope that Apple forgot this important detail but the iMac upgrade is such a screwing that no reasonable person would allow themselves to think that.

The number one problem with the so called iMac upgrades is that they cost Apple NOTHING and really just reflect drops in prices on the various components upgraded. It is like they want to milk every dollar they can out of the platform and offer nothing real in the way of performance increases. At least at the low end they did lower the units price a bit to reflect the substantial drop in prices, but that is hardly bringing new hardware to the market.

In a nut shell I think that is what will drive many people away from the iMac. Apple here had a chance to offer up reasonably competitive machines based on a number of possible processor architectures. They could have gone Penryn, or the new small form factor chip, or even i7. Instead they delivered a ""NEW"" platform that barely offers anything in the way of a performance increase. Rather sad and exploitive if you ask me.

In effect if you buy a new iMac today you are getting performance that is comparable to last years machines and really is much different than buying a used machine that has had a memory upgrade. The iMac upgrades are pretty much an example of Apple at its worst, at least in the days of the G4 they had an excuse, the only reason I can see now is greed.

In any event I don't see what the Analyst here is saying as anymore than advertising. In this case they serve the same basic function as the "models" at the car show. In the case of Detroit any ways they are there to distract you from the fact that the product is shit.

Dave

Couldn't have put it better, I would rather save up for a mac rather than go buy one of the cheap windows boxes. No wonder Apple has the industry's highest satisfaction ratings and to top it off, I have 4 Apple store I can visit, one I can even walk it off to, if I have any questions or any problems with any of my Apple products.

read much....??

I didn't assert anything, merely stated that for a company that sells (relatively) few computers they get a lot of accolades that they maybe don't deserve. The perception (which is a big part of what Apple is) is that they are a big player..when in reality they are niche....at best.

If Windows 7 comes out and is what Vista should have been then with current prices and hardware the switching trend will slow and probably reverse.

I think you are right about Apple though. They don't really want a bigger marketshare for loads of reasons, not least of which is the 'cool,hip' factor of being 'small'. I suspect they are trying to get a bigger wallet share of their existing base rather than making the base larger and obtaining less per user.

Just if I was a major investor I'd want them to be doing something with that cash warchest to generate more income or give it back to me. The markets will always want growth after all.

really...??

with a bit of knowledge the difference in time spent is non existent.

osx isn't worth the hardware price premium or the limiting choices (IMO)

Apple can only charge what people are willing to pay. People are willing to pay because they are brainwashed, or they gain enough value to offset the extra up-front cost.

I use XP on a ThinkPad (required work machine), Leopard on a MacBook Pro, Tiger on a G4, and Vista on an eMachines laptop. (The eMachines was $299 - primarily for my kids so I wouldn't care if they broke it. They also use the Macs but don't move them around.)

For me, using iLife and other apps on Mac OS X have clearly been worth the extra cost. The amount of time wasted on XP is embarrassing. [By the way, I was writing this earlier, but XP (running Firefox, Outlook, and Excel only) crashed, and I had to pull the battery out. I'm using the ThinkPad because my kids are camped out on the Macs.]

No doubt there are many who bought Macs as fashion, or due to hype. But they are by no means the majority.

so you think (as a consumer I guess) that its good that Apple can be applauded by business leaders.??

you do realise that its because of the profit margin they can mantain and still grow sales.?

profit at your expense....besides that article isn't computer specific. The margins on phones and ipods is much greater.

What if Apple licensed OS X to 3rd partys on generic hardware. They could quadruple profits overnight andf really shake up the industry. The business leaders would love them more but I'm guessing you and other APple loyalists wouldn't be happy.

once again...

12m out of 260m.....

if you are happy being fleeced then fair play and good luck to you, I'll just stay happily in the 248m camp.

If you are on a budget you shouldn't be looking at any of Apple's products seriously.