Now imagine what the sales numbers would be, if apple priced the laptops right.
I prefer to imagine what discourse would be like if people stopped assuming they know anything whatsoever about product strategy and even more importantly in this thread, product pricing, especially as it relates to profitability and overall brand value. Having taken classes on the subject, I'm certain of one and only one thing regarding pricing: it's not quite the, "reduce the price and sell more" that people ignorantly oversimplify it to be. It's beyond arrogant to assume Apple knows nothing on the subject in light of their profitability and success, but then what troll ever humbly embraced their own ignorance for the purposes of discussion?
Slightly off topic but: I look forward to a head to head comparison of the MacBook Pro to the MacBook.
I don't own a MacBook -- but they seem woefully underpowered to me.
Conversely, they now sound to be very similar machines: very thin & light, limited connectors, great display, etc.
The difference seems to be coming down to speed/power and price. Am I wrong?
They appeal to different customers. Retina Macbook is conceived for ultimate portability and it responds to those users who want full OS X power in an iPad footprint. Since Apple decidedly rejected a touch based OS X, the Retina Macbook is the only solution for those who want to run full OS X on an iPad.
Macbook Pro responds to power users who need more than the Retina Macbook can offer. The two series differ by:
Processor type, cores and speed: Core M in rMB vs Core i in MBP. Core M max 1.3 GHz in rMB. 2 cores in rMB vs. 2 or 4 cores in MBP.
Port type: USB-C in rMB vs Thunderbolt 3 (USB 3.1 included) in MBP
GPU type: Intel HD 515 graphics in rMB vs Intel Iris or HD 530 plus discrete GPU in MBP
Fan type: none in rMB versus usual fans in MBP.
So, the difference is significant: Thunderbolt and USB are two different standards and you get both on MBP. This difference is not negligible. Although the low-speed of Core M is partly compensated by the fastest SSD via NVMExpress in rMB, MBP series offers both CPU speed and the NVMExpress.
The difference seems to be coming down to speed/power and price provided that we compare only to 13" MBP without the Touch Bar. This machine still has Core i5 or i7 and Thunderbolt 3, so it is a significantly different animal than rMB. There is nothing wrong in Apple's product positioning. There are no overlapping or competing models.
Slightly off topic but: I look forward to a head to head comparison of the MacBook Pro to the MacBook.
I don't own a MacBook -- but they seem woefully underpowered to me.
Conversely, they now sound to be very similar machines: very thin & light, limited connectors, great display, etc.
The difference seems to be coming down to speed/power and price. Am I wrong?
And keyboard. The new Pro keyboard is an improvement. I think you ought to go the store and compare them.
And size. The biggest difference is the smaller size of the 13".
"And size" is right! Before my current 11" MBA, the last Apple laptop I personally owned was a 13" Macbook (because a pro version at the time didn't come in the 13" form factor) and it was a great laptop at the time, but this new 13" MBP is so much smaller than that one with much, much, much more to offer.
I bought it. They could have served up a literal steaming piece of dog crap with a Skylake processor and 16GB of ram in a plastic shopping bag for $2k but I still would have bought it to run OSX. This doesn’t make this new model computer a success because it’s caused brand damage to me and probably many others.
...
No doubt there are other things that bug you, but you made three distinct points that cause your seething, passionate hatred of Apple:
1: Too expensive. Well, you bought one. I guess you had the money. Furthermore, it no out of line with MacBook Pros of the past. They have been drifting down in price the last few years. The original 2006 entry-level 15" MBP started at USD $2000. They drifted down to $1800-ish by 2012-ish. Did a little poking around at Everymac on prices before writing this. The new MBPs are the most expensive ever, but they aren't radically out of line with historical prices.
2: Dongle needed. Somewhat inconvenient, I'll grant you. But enough to be this upset?
Like I said, I'm sure you have your reasons for being so upset. Maybe for other reasons than what you wrote in your post.
For me it comes down to feeling nickeled and dimed and not feeling listened to as a customer.
Imagine buying a new Mercedes with less horsepower that costs a massive luxury premium and doesnt have cupholders and after you buy the car you realise they didnt include floor mats thats extra.
Apple used to be a company where you were happy to pay a Luxury tax because of the feeling you are being looked after with a superior customer experience and after care. After killing the headphone jack on the 7 and by not including a usb-c to usb-a connector with every machine they already charge a massive premium for, that feeling has gone away completely for me. They are now just greedy assholes.
Porsche charged me $20 for putting on the tags. I had assumed it was going to complementary since it takes all of 10 seconds to do so when the guy asked I said sure. I still remember that a decade or two later because it was so funny. And no, my 968 didn't come with a cupholder. All season floor mats are extra on Mercedes. If you don't ask they don't include them. I don't recall if they charged for them the last go around.
I pay $10 a day for internet and $30 a day for parking at the JW Marriott, Conrad, etc which I get for free at middle tier business suite hotels. Since I don't travel as much as before I don't have diamond tier at any chain anymore.
I'm guessing you don't actually have any experience with luxury brands and services. It all costs money and nobody cares because it's noise at that tier except for the working stiffs that aren't making luxury tier money and getting by on points and business travel.
The fact that the RAM and the SSD are not upgreable is a clear indication
that Apple does has not given a lot of attention to the future proof nature of the new MacbookPro As a software developer I am currently at the edge of the 16GB of RAM of my machine. Giving that a new machine I buy need to last at least 3 years and that the RAM requirements are only growing in time, the new Macbook Pro is for me definitely not a future proof system. Of course your mileage may vary.
As a software developer I used to care about RAM until I had decent devops support. Now I just prefer smaller and lighter to carry on the plane when I do have to travel.
Thinking about just getting an iMac this go around since I already have a top end skylake Core i7 + nvidia Surface Book. I wish that had USB C. Windows 10 is less adept at high dpi displays than OS X so that's a bit annoying.
The MBP, if I pick it, will very future proof from my perspective. An internal 512GB SSD is easily supplemented by external SSDs at TB3 or even at slower USB3 speeds. RAM isn't much of an issue as a developer unless you're running a gazillion docker containers locally rather than deploying them to a internal or AWS instance.
I'm guessing you aren't developing without having high speed intranet and internet access.
Ah yes, But Hillary actually won the popular vote. We'll see, happy dongling.
Actually, we don't know who won the popular vote. If the winning candidate wins by a margin that is greater than the number of mail in ballots, precincts in which they are received never even open them. Thus, the popular vote number you've see the last two days are only tallied from known votes. Therefore, we don't know what the popular vote actually was.
I bought it. They could have served up a literal steaming piece of dog crap with a Skylake processor and 16GB of ram in a plastic shopping bag for $2k but I still would have bought it to run OSX. This doesn’t make this new model computer a success because it’s caused brand damage to me and probably many others.
...
No doubt there are other things that bug you, but you made three distinct points that cause your seething, passionate hatred of Apple:
1: Too expensive. Well, you bought one. I guess you had the money. Furthermore, it no out of line with MacBook Pros of the past. They have been drifting down in price the last few years. The original 2006 entry-level 15" MBP started at USD $2000. They drifted down to $1800-ish by 2012-ish. Did a little poking around at Everymac on prices before writing this. The new MBPs are the most expensive ever, but they aren't radically out of line with historical prices.
2: Dongle needed. Somewhat inconvenient, I'll grant you. But enough to be this upset?
Like I said, I'm sure you have your reasons for being so upset. Maybe for other reasons than what you wrote in your post.
For me it comes down to feeling nickeled and dimed and not feeling listened to as a customer.
Imagine buying a new Mercedes with less horsepower that costs a massive luxury premium and doesnt have cupholders and after you buy the car you realise they didnt include floor mats thats extra.
Apple used to be a company where you were happy to pay a Luxury tax because of the feeling you are being looked after with a superior customer experience and after care. After killing the headphone jack on the 7 and by not including a usb-c to usb-a connector with every machine they already charge a massive premium for, that feeling has gone away completely for me. They are now just greedy assholes.
Porsche charged me $20 for putting on the tags. I had assumed it was going to complementary since it takes all of 10 seconds to do so when the guy asked I said sure. I still remember that a decade or two later because it was so funny. And no, my 968 didn't come with a cupholder. All season floor mats are extra on Mercedes. If you don't ask they don't include them. I don't recall if they charged for them the last go around.
I pay $10 a day for internet and $30 a day for parking at the JW Marriott, Conrad, etc which I get for free at middle tier business suite hotels. Since I don't travel as much as before I don't have diamond tier at any chain anymore.
I'm guessing you don't actually have any experience with luxury brands and services. It all costs money and nobody cares because it's noise at that tier except for the working stiffs that aren't making luxury tier money and getting by on points and business travel.
You're right, but abuses like that are the reason I walked away from one "luxury" brand. I would prefer Apple NOT behave that way.
My recent endorsement of Apple's service was based on the fact that the higher price of entry may be offset somewhat by the fact that Apple has NOT charged me for many after-sale services, resulting in a more reasonable overall cost of ownership.
Now imagine what the sales numbers would be, if apple priced the laptops right.
I prefer to imagine what discourse would be like if people stopped assuming they know anything whatsoever about product strategy and even more importantly in this thread, product pricing, especially as it relates to profitability and overall brand value. Having taken classes on the subject, I'm certain of one and only one thing regarding pricing: it's not quite the, "reduce the price and sell more" that people ignorantly oversimplify it to be. It's beyond arrogant to assume Apple knows nothing on the subject in light of their profitability and success, but then what troll ever humbly embraced their own ignorance for the purposes of discussion?
I don't know much on the subject, but I sure now, that I won't be buying one, not because it's a bad machine (I honestly quite like it), but because of it's price. I'm not alone on this..
Now imagine what the sales numbers would be, if apple priced the laptops right.
I prefer to imagine what discourse would be like if people stopped assuming they know anything whatsoever about product strategy and even more importantly in this thread, product pricing, especially as it relates to profitability and overall brand value. Having taken classes on the subject, I'm certain of one and only one thing regarding pricing: it's not quite the, "reduce the price and sell more" that people ignorantly oversimplify it to be. It's beyond arrogant to assume Apple knows nothing on the subject in light of their profitability and success, but then what troll ever humbly embraced their own ignorance for the purposes of discussion?
I don't know much on the subject, but I sure now, that I won't be buying one, not because it's a bad machine (I honestly quite like it), but because of it's price. I'm not alone on this..
Well, you'd have to wait 4-5 weeks if you did due to the demand of people who aren't put off by the price, and of course there's the whole article to which this thread belongs...
Sometimes we personally get priced out of products, but what's not good for us isn't necessarily bad for the company making those decisions. With this one perhaps we'll see a price reduction (as some have suggested possible) in a year or so, wait a bit and see and hopefully for those that want one but are put off by the price a bit of patience will reward.
Comments
Slightly off topic but: I look forward to a head to head comparison of the MacBook Pro to the MacBook.
I don't own a MacBook -- but they seem woefully underpowered to me.
Conversely, they now sound to be very similar machines: very thin & light, limited connectors, great display, etc.
The difference seems to be coming down to speed/power and price. Am I wrong?
And size. The biggest difference is the smaller size of the 13".
Macbook Pro responds to power users who need more than the Retina Macbook can offer. The two series differ by:
- Processor type, cores and speed: Core M in rMB vs Core i in MBP. Core M max 1.3 GHz in rMB. 2 cores in rMB vs. 2 or 4 cores in MBP.
- Port type: USB-C in rMB vs Thunderbolt 3 (USB 3.1 included) in MBP
- GPU type: Intel HD 515 graphics in rMB vs Intel Iris or HD 530 plus discrete GPU in MBP
- Fan type: none in rMB versus usual fans in MBP.
So, the difference is significant: Thunderbolt and USB are two different standards and you get both on MBP. This difference is not negligible. Although the low-speed of Core M is partly compensated by the fastest SSD via NVMExpress in rMB, MBP series offers both CPU speed and the NVMExpress.The difference seems to be coming down to speed/power and price provided that we compare only to 13" MBP without the Touch Bar. This machine still has Core i5 or i7 and Thunderbolt 3, so it is a significantly different animal than rMB. There is nothing wrong in Apple's product positioning. There are no overlapping or competing models.
I pay $10 a day for internet and $30 a day for parking at the JW Marriott, Conrad, etc which I get for free at middle tier business suite hotels. Since I don't travel as much as before I don't have diamond tier at any chain anymore.
I'm guessing you don't actually have any experience with luxury brands and services. It all costs money and nobody cares because it's noise at that tier except for the working stiffs that aren't making luxury tier money and getting by on points and business travel.
As a software developer I used to care about RAM until I had decent devops support. Now I just prefer smaller and lighter to carry on the plane when I do have to travel.
Thinking about just getting an iMac this go around since I already have a top end skylake Core i7 + nvidia Surface Book. I wish that had USB C. Windows 10 is less adept at high dpi displays than OS X so that's a bit annoying.
The MBP, if I pick it, will very future proof from my perspective. An internal 512GB SSD is easily supplemented by external SSDs at TB3 or even at slower USB3 speeds. RAM isn't much of an issue as a developer unless you're running a gazillion docker containers locally rather than deploying them to a internal or AWS instance.
I'm guessing you aren't developing without having high speed intranet and internet access.
My recent endorsement of Apple's service was based on the fact that the higher price of entry may be offset somewhat by the fact that Apple has NOT charged me for many after-sale services, resulting in a more reasonable overall cost of ownership.
Sometimes we personally get priced out of products, but what's not good for us isn't necessarily bad for the company making those decisions. With this one perhaps we'll see a price reduction (as some have suggested possible) in a year or so, wait a bit and see and hopefully for those that want one but are put off by the price a bit of patience will reward.