I think this thread has gone beyond it's useful life. Now it has become the standard mac vs PC bullshit.
Yes, I'm quite upset with PPC performance. I'm very willing to pay twice as much for equal performance, simply because I like OS X more than Linux. But I don't see a reason to whine.
--------
To get the record straight, are you even familiar with Porsches, Stag Steve? They are grossly overrated, hugely hyped cars with a bad case of understeer and ridiculous servicing costs. In the 60's they were good because no other nimble cars had any power worthy of note. Now, they're not special. It's ALL image.
Steve Jobs might be a reasonable visionary, but he is a horrible business man.
Steve Jobs has never run a sucessful business, look at Next, at the time Next was 10 years ahead of HP, IBM, Sun and DEC.
The Unix workstation market was ripe for the picking, what became of Next?
It fell apart, became irrelivent and Apple bought it for pennies on the dollar.
What about Pixar, Pixar was hours from death when Disney saved Pixar, now Steve Jobs is doing every thing short of taking a shit on Michael Eisners front lawn to destroy Pixars relationship with Disney.
Now look at Apple, at the height of Apple's death spiral, Apple commanded 10% marketshare, now some years later, Apple's marketshare has fallen below 3% and shows no sign of slowing down. Apple is in the same position today it was in when Steve got fired for the first time. Only this time there isn't someone like John Scully to throw Steve out on his ass.
Remember, the battle between Steve and Scully began when Scully wanted to lower the price of the Macintosh, Steve would rather see the Mac collecting dust in warehouses than sold at a competitive price.
Apple needs a Frank Lorenzo to lead the company, not a middle aged pot smoking freak who has come within a hair of running every company he has been involved with into the ground.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thank you, perfect, yes! Nearly exactly right! I have long held that Steve Jobs was in a rare position to trade on his own iconic status rather than any proven corporate talent. Un/fortunately for Apple, they are now perilously entertwined with the imago of "Steve the saviour". If Steve left, the immediate reactin would be a massive loss of investor confidence and a huge stock dump. It would cause a tremor in the confidence of even the most ardent loyalists.
Apple is not as healthy as it seems, and yet more healthy too. On so many levels they have a very fine balance to maintain.
We seem to suffer from short-term memory here in Appleland. Remember when laptops cost us $5000? When the lowest-end Performa cost as much as a Powermac? Yes, indeed, despite our claims that Jobs has been bad for business, he has actually lowered prices quite a bit.
And I reiterate that none of us will ever, ever, ever, ever see a Mac priced as low as a PC. It will never happen. Get over it and either buy a Mac or something else, because (I repeat once again) the Macs will always cost more. Dems da facts, jack. Accept it, or move on.
I have only ever used iTunes, and it is no better than Windows Media Player
<hr></blockquote>
Actually, it isn't if you want to play mp3s. WMP doesn't play 'em without a plug-in that costs around $30 (IIRC).
Having said that, I tend to agree with what Stagflation says (whats your other alias? Matsu? ;-)
I believe y'all should pay close attention to what madmax559 is saying:
Why, other than OS X, would I buy a Mac?
The hardware is industry-standard for the most part.
Form-factor? Well, the WinTel world can't touch it, so if that's the selling point then nothing I or anyone else says is gonna matter.
The iApps? Lets look at them a bit closer...
iTunes - The first of the iApps, and the most useful, IMHO. However, why does Apple have it set to copy every tune I import by default? Do I, my wife and my son all REALLY need our own copies of the music, in addition to the original? The only real advantage that iTunes has over RealPlayer is the ability to burn. Don't give me that 'Ad-free' mantra, either, 'cause I use ASM to auto-hide apps as I switch between 'em. iTunes is visible ONLY when I'm selecting music.
iPhoto - Very nice app, but again it's a disk hog. Why do I have to have multiple copies of every photo just so my wife and I can share the same set of prints? And don't try to sell me on some piece of free/shareware; the option to have a single repository should be built in to the app. Maybe it is now, I haven't used iPhoto for quite some time. Got a relatively small hard-drive (10GB).
iMovie - Nice app, but I don't have a DV camera, so it's useless to me. Maybe if it allowed analog importing. And have they added QuickTime support for it yet? Read somewhere once-upon-a-time about incompatabilitites between it and Apple's own proprietary QT format. I think that it was that it couldn't import QT video, not sure...
iDVD - Don't have a DVD burner. Useless to me, and to the majority of Mac owners.
So, of the 4 iApps, only one is useful to me, and used by me on a regular basis. The only real functionality that it provides can be added to/is included in any number of other music players. So I ask again -
Why would I buy a Mac except for OS X?
Apple needs to take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and lower their margins. I guarantee that they would see a rise in market share that would more than make up for any 'loss'. I personally know a couple of people who recently bought WinTels despite being VERY interested in Macs. The reason? Price. Can't argue with that.
This is not intended to be a Mac vs. PC opinion. This is meant to point out ways in which Apple could attract more switchers, and even tempt people such as myself, who plan to purchase a new Mac (for myself, it'll be come tax-return time). When I do make that purchase, however, I'll look first at the 'bargain' and 'refurbished' sites. Why? 'Cause I simply cannot justify the exhorbitant margins that Apple turns (27-30%). I have a family, folks. I'd like to think that SJ would understand.
Indeed, but it's all relative. PC laptops cost an arm and a leg too back then, but they have come further down and faster (as have all products). Relative to their competition macs cost more today than they have in the past, so even with price decreases, they are in a sense moving upmarket.
In the Wallstreet/Lombard/early-Pismo era, Apple made the best laptops in the world, bar none, and considering what you got, the price was pretty good, high, but worth it. Today, the prices have not really dropped from those levels. They've intro'd a consumer laptop, but let's focus on like-products for now. In 98 a PowerBook went from 2799-3999, today they're at 2499-3799, after briefly flirting with a 2199 entry, Apple went right back up to 2499 with the radeon 7500 models.
It's not fair to really beef too much about price here because comparable PC laptops straddle Apple's prices: you can get similar stuff for both more or less. Though with better speed, fuller I/O (bluetooth and airport, 2 PC-cards, same firewire and USB) better displays, stronger GPU. It doesn't help that Apple's laptop CPU has gotten so stale, it hangs in (barely) thanks to SOI and altivec, but it's no longer the performance king it used to be, and for the prices that really grates.
The real issue though involves pricing trends. While Apple's performance issues might be partially excused by factors outside their control, they have a very strange pricing picture. From 2799-3999 in '99 to 2499-3499 Pismos, then down to 2199 entry powerbooks and now, back up to 2499-3799 with a stale product in late 2002. Virtually no improvement. OTOH, the progress in PC laptops has been a revelation both in terms of performance and price.
Rather than pussy-foot around with titanium this or the other, Apple might consider a stronger focus on price-performance. I'm not asking for a 1299 PowerBook, but a little positive progress to maintain a true leadership role. Why isn't there a 1999 Notebook in the Apple line-up? This is a huge sweet spot they got nothing for???
The price thing really is tiresome. What I don't understand is this: If you think something is better than something else, why wouldn't you pay more for it?
IF you like Macs better, IF you think they offer the things you want and PCs don't, doesn't that make them more valuable? Why on God's increasingly brown Earth would you expect to pay the same (or less) for something you think is better?
If the differences between Macs and PCs aren't a big deal to you, then why not buy a PC? There are lots of good deals out there.
As has been stated already, Macs will NEVER be cheaper than PCs. The business models for the two are completely different.
If money is a stronger factor than OSX and all her beautiful iApps not to mention Macs physical form factor, then the PC is for you. (must ... resist ... taking ... Windows ... cheapshot.)
And for everyone who says the two OSs are nearly the same, consider this: My brother-in-law is a teacher and used different PC laptops for quite a while with nearly every flavor of Windows.
He recently began teaching at a school that gave him an iBook with less 'specs' than his last PC laptop. He's in love with it. Why? Not because it's faster (it's not) but because, and I'm quoting here: "The damn thing just works."
I don't mind paying for $$ for a good product...I just paid $500.00 for my iPod. What I don't like is paying top dollar for out dated hardware. Yes I want a faster processor but I really want a better MOBO. I will be buying a new Mac in Feb/March.....all I can do is hope for the best
Fact: macs cost much more than a comparable pc based on specs
At times it is easy to justify paying the premium for a mac..... currently it is much harder because Apple's hardware is lagging. Apple will never be cheaper or even priced competitively with the PC market.... but they have in the past matched feature sets and performance for not much more....
I have no problem paying more for a mac but I don't think I should pay more for less.... I'll pay more for equal or more. The OS is great, software is great, but it's still extremely hard for me to justify spending 3000 dollars on a laptop that is 800Mhz or 3000 on a powermac at dual1.25 Ghz and a 167Mhz Bus and doesn't include what you'll find in a PC for half the price.
What we are saying is Macs have to be price competitive or the mass market will never give them a second glance.
A $3299 "Pro" system that is raped by $999 Compaq's and Dell's isn't price competitive.
20% more expensive, or maybe even 50% more expensive would be reasonable in some cases, but when your getting into the situation where macs are anywhere from 200% to 500% more expensive than a contemporary PC, that is where the problem develops.
and as cool as the mac might be, you aren't going to be able to bring that many "switchers" on side when you first have to convince them that a mac is worth three times the price of a much faster PC
They not only can't be cheaper, they can't make it to the same price range (within $200). That's just the way it is. Apple will live or die with that fact.
<strong>He's in love with it. Why? Not because it's faster (it's not) but because, and I'm quoting here: "The damn thing just works."</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>They not only can't be cheaper, they can't make it to the same price range (within $200). That's just the way it is. Apple will live or die with that fact.
A little fatalistic, no? But, if those indeed are the only two possible outcomes, AAPL will die with that fact, they'll take their time about it, but they won't last in their current form.
When you?re at ~3% market share, that?s a real psychological impediment for consumers, developers, investors.. I just hope that when the market turns around, a new processor is available and osX matures enough, Apple will be able to leverage these to the max (even at a loss). They must increase market share and mind share on all fronts: consumer, developer, investor. We need to be at 10-15% to start bringing some real confidence in the platform.
ps. Until now and then, I think we will be at $5-10/share before we will be at $20/share. The market doesn?t really buy these IBM rumors yet. Or maybe it has discounted these as being too far to the future. Apple will bleed cash until then.
Comments
Yes, I'm quite upset with PPC performance. I'm very willing to pay twice as much for equal performance, simply because I like OS X more than Linux. But I don't see a reason to whine.
--------
To get the record straight, are you even familiar with Porsches, Stag Steve? They are grossly overrated, hugely hyped cars with a bad case of understeer and ridiculous servicing costs. In the 60's they were good because no other nimble cars had any power worthy of note. Now, they're not special. It's ALL image.
ok im a pure pc user (mainly win2k & unix)
for telecom stuff & r&d
here why i bought my one & only mac to date
(ti800 + 1gb ram)
1.form factor & styling
2.great lcd
3..& the biggest reason of all...it runs bsd..period
soo...would i ever buy another mac say a g4
nope...a fully loaded one is over 4k whereas
i can asssemble a fast pc for 2k so the price
diff is actually quite high on the towers & to
a lesser extent on the laptops
(ipod is another story..it could be cheaper by 50$ & would be very well worth it at that price point for a 20gb)
apples actually gaining a lot of support precisely due to its unix underpinings in the r&d
community
if they wish to remain high end only then so be it
but if they want to make it for everyone then it should be more practical...
nb: to all those who think pc users are whiners....they are not....its a tight economy
so purchasing decisions are highly dependent on
cost & percieved value & this is precisely where
apple will get its butt kicked
btw if they do have excess inventory of pbooks
dropping the prices by $500 they would sell out.
im willing to bet they recouped their r&d costs on
the powerbooks long ago...just as sony did with the ps2.
as i posted in another thread...just walk into
any frys & you will always see people crowding
around the apple 22 & 23" lcds & you will hear
atleast a few people say they would get one if
the price was a little saner.....
if these regular people arnt good enough for
apple's business then i dont know what is.
<strong>
Steve Jobs might be a reasonable visionary, but he is a horrible business man.
Steve Jobs has never run a sucessful business, look at Next, at the time Next was 10 years ahead of HP, IBM, Sun and DEC.
The Unix workstation market was ripe for the picking, what became of Next?
It fell apart, became irrelivent and Apple bought it for pennies on the dollar.
What about Pixar, Pixar was hours from death when Disney saved Pixar, now Steve Jobs is doing every thing short of taking a shit on Michael Eisners front lawn to destroy Pixars relationship with Disney.
Now look at Apple, at the height of Apple's death spiral, Apple commanded 10% marketshare, now some years later, Apple's marketshare has fallen below 3% and shows no sign of slowing down. Apple is in the same position today it was in when Steve got fired for the first time. Only this time there isn't someone like John Scully to throw Steve out on his ass.
Remember, the battle between Steve and Scully began when Scully wanted to lower the price of the Macintosh, Steve would rather see the Mac collecting dust in warehouses than sold at a competitive price.
Apple needs a Frank Lorenzo to lead the company, not a middle aged pot smoking freak who has come within a hair of running every company he has been involved with into the ground.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thank you, perfect, yes! Nearly exactly right! I have long held that Steve Jobs was in a rare position to trade on his own iconic status rather than any proven corporate talent. Un/fortunately for Apple, they are now perilously entertwined with the imago of "Steve the saviour". If Steve left, the immediate reactin would be a massive loss of investor confidence and a huge stock dump. It would cause a tremor in the confidence of even the most ardent loyalists.
Apple is not as healthy as it seems, and yet more healthy too. On so many levels they have a very fine balance to maintain.
And I reiterate that none of us will ever, ever, ever, ever see a Mac priced as low as a PC. It will never happen. Get over it and either buy a Mac or something else, because (I repeat once again) the Macs will always cost more. Dems da facts, jack. Accept it, or move on.
I have only ever used iTunes, and it is no better than Windows Media Player
<hr></blockquote>
Actually, it isn't if you want to play mp3s. WMP doesn't play 'em without a plug-in that costs around $30 (IIRC).
Having said that, I tend to agree with what Stagflation says (whats your other alias? Matsu? ;-)
I believe y'all should pay close attention to what madmax559 is saying:
Why, other than OS X, would I buy a Mac?
The hardware is industry-standard for the most part.
Form-factor? Well, the WinTel world can't touch it, so if that's the selling point then nothing I or anyone else says is gonna matter.
The iApps? Lets look at them a bit closer...
iTunes - The first of the iApps, and the most useful, IMHO. However, why does Apple have it set to copy every tune I import by default? Do I, my wife and my son all REALLY need our own copies of the music, in addition to the original? The only real advantage that iTunes has over RealPlayer is the ability to burn. Don't give me that 'Ad-free' mantra, either, 'cause I use ASM to auto-hide apps as I switch between 'em. iTunes is visible ONLY when I'm selecting music.
iPhoto - Very nice app, but again it's a disk hog. Why do I have to have multiple copies of every photo just so my wife and I can share the same set of prints? And don't try to sell me on some piece of free/shareware; the option to have a single repository should be built in to the app. Maybe it is now, I haven't used iPhoto for quite some time. Got a relatively small hard-drive (10GB).
iMovie - Nice app, but I don't have a DV camera, so it's useless to me. Maybe if it allowed analog importing. And have they added QuickTime support for it yet? Read somewhere once-upon-a-time about incompatabilitites between it and Apple's own proprietary QT format. I think that it was that it couldn't import QT video, not sure...
iDVD - Don't have a DVD burner. Useless to me, and to the majority of Mac owners.
So, of the 4 iApps, only one is useful to me, and used by me on a regular basis. The only real functionality that it provides can be added to/is included in any number of other music players. So I ask again -
Why would I buy a Mac except for OS X?
Apple needs to take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and lower their margins. I guarantee that they would see a rise in market share that would more than make up for any 'loss'. I personally know a couple of people who recently bought WinTels despite being VERY interested in Macs. The reason? Price. Can't argue with that.
This is not intended to be a Mac vs. PC opinion. This is meant to point out ways in which Apple could attract more switchers, and even tempt people such as myself, who plan to purchase a new Mac (for myself, it'll be come tax-return time). When I do make that purchase, however, I'll look first at the 'bargain' and 'refurbished' sites. Why? 'Cause I simply cannot justify the exhorbitant margins that Apple turns (27-30%). I have a family, folks. I'd like to think that SJ would understand.
(tig)
i use delphi & c++ builder very heavily under win32 for some of my front end stuff
apple would do well to get borland to port over
its world class tools to os x
note: we are already getting oracle which is a
kick ass db
yes i am aware of project builder etc etc
but the point is to make it easy for people
to do ports ...delphi & kylix allow you to do
just that between win32 & linux
In the Wallstreet/Lombard/early-Pismo era, Apple made the best laptops in the world, bar none, and considering what you got, the price was pretty good, high, but worth it. Today, the prices have not really dropped from those levels. They've intro'd a consumer laptop, but let's focus on like-products for now. In 98 a PowerBook went from 2799-3999, today they're at 2499-3799, after briefly flirting with a 2199 entry, Apple went right back up to 2499 with the radeon 7500 models.
It's not fair to really beef too much about price here because comparable PC laptops straddle Apple's prices: you can get similar stuff for both more or less. Though with better speed, fuller I/O (bluetooth and airport, 2 PC-cards, same firewire and USB) better displays, stronger GPU. It doesn't help that Apple's laptop CPU has gotten so stale, it hangs in (barely) thanks to SOI and altivec, but it's no longer the performance king it used to be, and for the prices that really grates.
The real issue though involves pricing trends. While Apple's performance issues might be partially excused by factors outside their control, they have a very strange pricing picture. From 2799-3999 in '99 to 2499-3499 Pismos, then down to 2199 entry powerbooks and now, back up to 2499-3799 with a stale product in late 2002. Virtually no improvement. OTOH, the progress in PC laptops has been a revelation both in terms of performance and price.
Rather than pussy-foot around with titanium this or the other, Apple might consider a stronger focus on price-performance. I'm not asking for a 1299 PowerBook, but a little positive progress to maintain a true leadership role. Why isn't there a 1999 Notebook in the Apple line-up? This is a huge sweet spot they got nothing for???
... <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
[ 10-27-2002: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
IF you like Macs better, IF you think they offer the things you want and PCs don't, doesn't that make them more valuable? Why on God's increasingly brown Earth would you expect to pay the same (or less) for something you think is better?
If the differences between Macs and PCs aren't a big deal to you, then why not buy a PC? There are lots of good deals out there.
As has been stated already, Macs will NEVER be cheaper than PCs. The business models for the two are completely different.
If money is a stronger factor than OSX and all her beautiful iApps not to mention Macs physical form factor, then the PC is for you. (must ... resist ... taking ... Windows ... cheapshot.)
And for everyone who says the two OSs are nearly the same, consider this: My brother-in-law is a teacher and used different PC laptops for quite a while with nearly every flavor of Windows.
He recently began teaching at a school that gave him an iBook with less 'specs' than his last PC laptop. He's in love with it. Why? Not because it's faster (it's not) but because, and I'm quoting here: "The damn thing just works."
Fact: macs cost much more than a comparable pc based on specs
At times it is easy to justify paying the premium for a mac..... currently it is much harder because Apple's hardware is lagging. Apple will never be cheaper or even priced competitively with the PC market.... but they have in the past matched feature sets and performance for not much more....
I have no problem paying more for a mac but I don't think I should pay more for less.... I'll pay more for equal or more. The OS is great, software is great, but it's still extremely hard for me to justify spending 3000 dollars on a laptop that is 800Mhz or 3000 on a powermac at dual1.25 Ghz and a 167Mhz Bus and doesn't include what you'll find in a PC for half the price.
<strong>what a waste of time and space this thread is..
</strong><hr></blockquote>
applenut = yoda ?
What we are saying is Macs have to be price competitive or the mass market will never give them a second glance.
A $3299 "Pro" system that is raped by $999 Compaq's and Dell's isn't price competitive.
20% more expensive, or maybe even 50% more expensive would be reasonable in some cases, but when your getting into the situation where macs are anywhere from 200% to 500% more expensive than a contemporary PC, that is where the problem develops.
and as cool as the mac might be, you aren't going to be able to bring that many "switchers" on side when you first have to convince them that a mac is worth three times the price of a much faster PC
[ 10-27-2002: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>
<strong>
.
.
.
It's ALL image.</strong><hr></blockquote>
So, you're saying it's a good time to buy AAPL stock?
mika.
On the 4th day of business school we learned something very basic,
"Increased sales offset lower margins"
Lower prices, sell more macs, make more money and increase marketshare.
<strong>He's in love with it. Why? Not because it's faster (it's not) but because, and I'm quoting here: "The damn thing just works."</strong><hr></blockquote>
ahh ... sweet mac envy ...
<strong>They not only can't be cheaper, they can't make it to the same price range (within $200). That's just the way it is. Apple will live or die with that fact.
[ 10-27-2002: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
A little fatalistic, no? But, if those indeed are the only two possible outcomes, AAPL will die with that fact, they'll take their time about it, but they won't last in their current form.
ps. Until now and then, I think we will be at $5-10/share before we will be at $20/share. The market doesn?t really buy these IBM rumors yet. Or maybe it has discounted these as being too far to the future. Apple will bleed cash until then.