. . . if apple wants to compete against dell in the underpowered office boxes (and apple will lose that battle bloodily) they could just go with a g3 box...it will run office and email and the internet fine....and the g3 is a cheap cheap chip that apple can get from moto or ibm....
You bring up good issues. Taking the last one, Apple would not be trying to out sell Dell. A very low cost G3 box would simply provide business with an alternative to the PC, since there are some who may like to go with OS X in the office. If Apple doesn't have the right product or price, most businesses will feel forced to stay with the PC. With the right Mac(s), however, Apple could begin to have a presence in the enterprise market. This same low cost G3 would be all that some folks need at home for email and the internet, or for a kid's first computer. Such a Mac is not going to take many sales from higher performance Macs, even today.
However, what many of us really want is the next level up. A better performing, lower priced Mac without a monitor. Such a Mac might use a Motorola G4, or an IBM 970 running at lower voltage, or it may wait for the rumored Mojave CPU with AltiVec.
If Apple doesn't have the right product or price, most businesses will feel forced to stay with the PC. With the right Mac(s), however, Apple could begin to have a presence in the enterprise market.
For more on the enterprise implications of this rumor please see this thread.
I see several possibilities in the following sense/price ratio order:
1. G3@1GHz+. May be cheap and powerful enough for any office needs.
2. Low-power PPC970 at about the same price. Great for cube-like machines, small labs, audio studios and such.
3. [email protected]. Hot, noisy, expensive, well you know what I mean.
Anyway, if you need to switch an office having a hundred of PCs to Macs, Apple has a better chance to sell $600 headless boxes than $800 eMacs. There is definitely a reason to try. Graphic pros will anyway go for DP 970 configurations and schools will more likely to stay with iMacs/eMacs, and gamers are too power-hungry to buy low-end boxes. So I don't think this will hurt sales of other Apple's products more than the MHz myth. Masses always like affordable prices. You just can't deny it.
Anyway, if you need to switch an office having a hundred of PCs to Macs, Apple has a better chance to sell $600 headless boxes than $800 eMacs. There is definitely a reason to try.
I Agree. I think Apple definitely should try something like this. I guess it wouldn't cost them much to develope a bMac of some sort, and they will probably sell a decent amount of such computers even if major companies are not making the switch straight away. You just have to get the option out there. Spice it up over time. Make Apple evangelist contact IT-heads and show them what the OS can do. Make an iOffice application that "seamless" interoperates with office. Bundle most of the apps corporates need. Sell support packages, not that it would need much support anyway. It will probably not cut into powermac sales anyway simply because no corporate buyer even considers powermacs as options. They are too damn expensive. They're overkill for most corporate applications. A nice quiet ppc970 box with a minimum of features would be perfect for office work. Such a mac is not intended for personal or home use, and don't need to be some sort of digital hub box. If they need dig-hub features, then buy a iMac or a powermac. Need power? Expandability? Buy the powermac. People don't need powermacs to type numbers into a spreadsheat.
I posted this over at MacRumors. I think it can totally be done for $599.
I don't see why this can't be done for this price. The eMac currently sells for $799.
Take out the 17" monitor, and you reap large savings. Factor in the lower shipping weight, lower packaging costs for a few bucks more and you've already taken it down to $699. Next, strip out all 3rd party software, and the eMac has quite a bit of it. Sacrifice a little extra margin in exchange for volume sales, slash volume discounts, and you have it down to $599.
Think that's a bit much or optimistic? How about selling it online only. Cut out the middle man. More cost savings.
There's probably more cost savings you can squeeze out of it too.
The box could be made out of cheaper materials; stylish, minimalist, but cheaper. Dell only makes 16% of their money from Consumers. The rest comes from corporations. Apple needs this.
Factor in the lower shipping weight, lower packaging costs for a few bucks more and you've already taken it down to $699.
If they're taking my idea selling it mainly in bulk, they can put like five or ten of them in a single grey cardboard box. No need for fancy packaging here. MISS - Make It Simple Stupid (Apple).
Haven't we all been discussing/hoping/praying for this since... oh before he cube?
It's amazing how long Apple can go without meeting a clear and obvious demand of it's customers.
Well a customer could demand free product too, but that doesn't mean they should get it. Demands don't have to be reasonable to be made, but they must be reasonable to be met. It is arguable that the demand for a low cost headless box has not been reasonable because it doesn't take into account Apple's complete situation.
. . . It is arguable that the demand for a low cost headless box has not been reasonable because it doesn't take into account Apple's complete situation.
Oh, I don't know about that. Apple could have made it gutless enough to not take a significant number of sales from higher priced, higher performing Macs. I believe many such Macs would have sold for general office use, to those who only want to do email and internet at home, for a kid's first computer and don't forget some schools too.
Your first point is well taken, however. A demand must be reasonable to be met.
It is arguable that the demand for a low cost headless box has not been reasonable because it doesn't take into account Apple's complete situation.
Which is? Producing overpriced desktops with outdated and underperforming parts? With ever decreasing sales which you can blame on Quark (but hey, Apple are running out of people to blame...MS...then it was Adobe...now Quark...)
...and PC marketshare is holding up in a saturated market. Apple can't seem to make a dint in M$'s market dominance. Gee, I wonder why dat is...?
Maybe we can't all lash out the lolley on an underperforming and outdated dual 1.25. No superdrive. Ancient CPU. Fat case. Noisy. Low-end graphics card. Crap sound. No sodding monitor.
And we wonder why the 'beige' PC, take the 'not bad' looking Advent Tower. Or any other Advent tower. Superdrive in. Decent LCD monitor. 3 gig processor. Twice the ram etc. For the same or a couple hundred less. And we wonder why Apple's marketshare is rump like 2%. If you price premium...you better be good at extolling the virtues of 'X'. Which, Programmer, Apple aint. In fact. I can't ever remember an Apple advert targeted at PC users from a premise of the 'X' OS being better. 'Our products look cool'/entropic style adverts? Sorry. Not good enough.
Lots of people said Apple couldn't make a 1K tower. Then Apple cut prices (what with 'power'Mac sales crashing more drastically than Windows...) and we've almost got a 1K tower. With a 35% price cut on 970s over G4 Motos (see latest 'pinch of salt' rumor over at Macwhispers...) then no reason we couldn't see a tower for £999 inc Vat.
eMac sales suck. Pure and simple. They aint fit to tie the boot laces of classic iMac sales before the iMac2's intro'. Furthermore, we're only a 'get rid of the monitor' stone throw from the said 'Headless eMac/X-Mac/iCube/Slab blah.' The eMac looks like a lard-ass. (That's purely subjective though.)
Apple slashed monitor prices to unbelievable levels.
I think they could surprise us with a new 'low cost' Mac. Cos the eMac aint it. It looks like a white-elephant.
Edu' market seems to agree. (Just how much of an Edu' hosing does Apple have to bath in to get the hint?) The eMac. Made. Just for them.
Still, I have no idea why many people cry out for headless Macs. Why would they do that?
Maybe Apple should do something about the CPU problem enabling them to have a broadened desktop range...instead of obtuse, rigid and ill-fitting desktop products.
I like Apple...but we have the iMac2 and the eMac which could be rolled into one. Or just replace the eMac and replace it with a cheap iCube headless Mac.
Price? That's where alot of the 98% went. It's not that simple. But it's a big kind of simple of Apple's 'complete situtation' for the last four years.
PS. I like the Cube design above. Ports on back please. CD tray at bottom and the Apple logo in the middle. Just right.
I guess it wouldn't cost them much to develope a bMac of some sort, and they will probably sell a decent amount of such computers even if major companies are not making the switch straight away. You just have to get the option out there. Spice it up over time. Make Apple evangelist contact IT-heads and show them what the OS can do. Make an iOffice application that "seamless" interoperates with office. Bundle most of the apps corporates need. Sell support packages, not that it would need much support anyway. It will probably not cut into powermac sales anyway simply because no corporate buyer even considers powermacs as options. They are too damn expensive. They're overkill for most corporate applications. A nice quiet ppc970 box with a minimum of features would be perfect for office work. Such a mac is not intended for personal or home use, and don't need to be some sort of digital hub box. If they need dig-hub features, then buy a iMac or a powermac. Need power? Expandability? Buy the powermac. People don't need powermacs to type numbers into a spreadsheat.
I agree 100%. If Apple is serious about gaining some marketshare, a good sized portion of marketshare is business, and Apple needs to seize the moment, take the bullet and produce a cheap, fast and attractive machine for less than the eMac. I'd buy two in a heartbeat, even though it would just be for home use.
I think it would be splendid if Apple developed similar software as Office that would read and open Office documents with no problem, and Microsoft Office on Macs & PCs could open and read Apple's office software without a problem, almost ridding Microshaft.
Apple has so much potential, I only get frustrated at what they haven't done yet. They're so close to getting it right.
I agree. I'd buy one if they were cheap enough. But Apple's desktop kit is overpriced for what it is. Customers can smell 'rip off'.
It aint compelling enough. And if it isn't then Apple isn't doing their job.
The educational market is a bad example, because they're getting IT people in. Those guys wouldn't by Macs if they offered literal supercomputer performance and 21" CRTs for $1 apiece with all educational software bundled free of charge and a lifetime warranty.
Quote:
Can...Apple just get this. Long term over short term. Mind/market share over steep profits.
Apple's been going that way for the last year and a half. Where's the increase in market share?
As for the "Cold War" on the low end consumer, it's pretty simple: Apple doesn't want to sell people crap. You have to spend a certain amount of money to produce a quality product, and you have to spend more money to make a user-friendly product than to slap together an expert-friendly product. That unfortunately drives the price up, but what's a company to do?
Quote:
You can't make a profit on a £495 computer? That's b*ll*cks. Commodore was doing that way back in the late 80s/early 90s.
And look where it got them.
Apple's problems are not just technological. If they can crack business and IT, they can sell lots and lots of machines, because that's where the overwhelming majority of PCs are sold. If they can show off an OS X version of Quark (and if you don't believe that's a real problem, go read the Macintouch reader reports) they can start selling again into the one corner of the business and corporate market that they still dominate. Then, they have to get past the "buy what you know," and "it's what everyone else uses" mentalities, not to mention the "it's what I use at work, and I don't want to have to learn two operating systems" mentality.
This box, if it in fact appears, might account for a few hundred thousand extra sales a year (LBB has guaranteed at least one sale!) - if Apple can find a way to make it look and act like a Mac (remember, the market does have expectations about Apple; they'll be ridiculed for anything that doesn't meet their usual standards for design and manufacture). Anyone looking for a single product that will magically launch Apple's market share up toward 10% is dreaming. It's not there. Apple is going to have to fight for every tenth of a percent, and fight on multiple fronts, and be patient. Network effects take time to manifest, but once they do they're powerful.
The educational market is a bad example, because they're getting IT people in. Those guys wouldn't by Macs if they offered literal supercomputer performance and 21" CRTs for $1 apiece with all educational software bundled free of charge and a lifetime warranty.
I think that's a little to broad of statement. Maybe "most" or "many" people in the position to recomend or buy are pure m$ IT people. But the DNA of apple still runs deep.
I think that's a little to broad of statement. Maybe "most" or "many" people in the position to recomend or buy are pure m$ IT people. But the DNA of apple still runs deep.
The people who want Macs are the teachers, who are steadily losing their authority to purchase and maintain machines. Do they still want Macs? Yes. Does what they want matter any more? Not really. Does IT have any interest in a platform that teachers could order, set up and maintain without any support from IT? No.
Expect MS - er, excuse me, the Gates Foundation - to throw lots of money at schools as this trend continues.
A computer in a school is still approached in a manner not unlike the apes to the monolith. Teachers don't know what to do with them, and admins feel they need them in order to add relevance, but everybody is too afraid of "breaking" them to get close to the machines without administrative support. I know teachers who knew what they were doing that were shouted down for fixing their own machines because either it was a union issue, or a security issue, yadda yadda... School bureacracies are the most ridiculous of all.
The best thing to do would be to eliminate computers from the classroom altogether and then bring them back ONLY in relevant areas -- digital arts classes, web/library kiosks, maybe, just maybe, some science/computer classes. Students should be writing out their reports/labs by hand pretty much up untill their last year anyway. Technology remains more of a distraction than a help.
Shit, did my science teacher FLIP when I chose the OS X boot volume on her G4...Sysprefs weren't there, so i had to use an OS 9 install CD. Big DEAL! She thought that the computer was dead, like I had punched through the thing or something. It just goes to show how timid everyone is. Not to mention that almost no schools use OS X throughout.
again too broad. not all the people who want macs are teachers. nor are 100% of the people m$ IT.
I'd buy your other argument if 20-40% (i forget the market share) of edu sales weren't going to apple.
I think the underlining angst from both of us resides from the fact that we BOTH think apple should have more market share in edu yet it does not. hopefully june 23rd will give us an idea what apple intends to do about it.
The G4 is an expansive chip : approximatively the same die size than the 970 (the 7455 is on 0,18 micron process and the 970 is on 0,13, it means 1,9 more transistors per square millimiter of silicum), and bad yields.
So there is no advantage in term of prize for the chip. However the mobo will be certainly less expansive.
If it's true don't expect something better than the good old G4 tower at one ghz with no L3 cache, a geforce 4mx card and a 80 GB hard drive with a CD RW for the prize of 1000 $ free of taxes. Apple will not develop a specific new case for this computer, he will use the old tower case in order to spent the less money in R&D and have descent margins.
again too broad. not all the people who want macs are teachers. nor are 100% of the people m$ IT.
I'd buy your other argument if 20-40% (i forget the market share) of edu sales weren't going to apple.
The share is declining as IT takes control of more and more schools. This is a trend, I noted, not a given.
I've said elsewhere that this trend might help explain Apple's sudden interest in courting IT. The MSCEs and their ilk aren't evil slavering monsters who congenitally prefer Windows, they're just people implementing what they paid a goodly amount of money and time to learn, and looking out for their own hides. It'll be interesting to see how Apple courts them without alienating the qualities of their platform that attracted teachers (chief among them, the fact that any teacher could set them up, network them and maintain them).
Quote:
I think the underlining angst from both of us resides from the fact that we BOTH think apple should have more market share in edu yet it does not. hopefully june 23rd will give us an idea what apple intends to do about it.
The new emphasis on IT at the next WWDC will indeed be interesting. And, I have to say, even though the 970 is probably not going to appear in eMacs and iBooks any time soon, the hype might give Apple a little more respect. Who knows?
Matsu, your last post should be printed out and framed and put on the desk of everyone bringing technology into education, because it's absolutely true. Computers are tools that solve problems; they are not intrinsically beneficial. Even a "cheap" $400 Dell consumes money that could buy a lot of textbooks and paper and pencils...
At least it looks like Gov. Young in Maine did it right.
Comments
Originally posted by thegelding
. . . if apple wants to compete against dell in the underpowered office boxes (and apple will lose that battle bloodily) they could just go with a g3 box...it will run office and email and the internet fine....and the g3 is a cheap cheap chip that apple can get from moto or ibm....
You bring up good issues. Taking the last one, Apple would not be trying to out sell Dell. A very low cost G3 box would simply provide business with an alternative to the PC, since there are some who may like to go with OS X in the office. If Apple doesn't have the right product or price, most businesses will feel forced to stay with the PC. With the right Mac(s), however, Apple could begin to have a presence in the enterprise market. This same low cost G3 would be all that some folks need at home for email and the internet, or for a kid's first computer. Such a Mac is not going to take many sales from higher performance Macs, even today.
However, what many of us really want is the next level up. A better performing, lower priced Mac without a monitor. Such a Mac might use a Motorola G4, or an IBM 970 running at lower voltage, or it may wait for the rumored Mojave CPU with AltiVec.
Originally posted by snoopy
If Apple doesn't have the right product or price, most businesses will feel forced to stay with the PC. With the right Mac(s), however, Apple could begin to have a presence in the enterprise market.
For more on the enterprise implications of this rumor please see this thread.
bMac, or Apple Invades the Enterprise
1. G3@1GHz+. May be cheap and powerful enough for any office needs.
2. Low-power PPC970 at about the same price. Great for cube-like machines, small labs, audio studios and such.
3. [email protected]. Hot, noisy, expensive, well you know what I mean.
Anyway, if you need to switch an office having a hundred of PCs to Macs, Apple has a better chance to sell $600 headless boxes than $800 eMacs. There is definitely a reason to try. Graphic pros will anyway go for DP 970 configurations and schools will more likely to stay with iMacs/eMacs, and gamers are too power-hungry to buy low-end boxes. So I don't think this will hurt sales of other Apple's products more than the MHz myth. Masses always like affordable prices. You just can't deny it.
Originally posted by costique
Anyway, if you need to switch an office having a hundred of PCs to Macs, Apple has a better chance to sell $600 headless boxes than $800 eMacs. There is definitely a reason to try.
I Agree. I think Apple definitely should try something like this. I guess it wouldn't cost them much to develope a bMac of some sort, and they will probably sell a decent amount of such computers even if major companies are not making the switch straight away. You just have to get the option out there. Spice it up over time. Make Apple evangelist contact IT-heads and show them what the OS can do. Make an iOffice application that "seamless" interoperates with office. Bundle most of the apps corporates need. Sell support packages, not that it would need much support anyway. It will probably not cut into powermac sales anyway simply because no corporate buyer even considers powermacs as options. They are too damn expensive. They're overkill for most corporate applications. A nice quiet ppc970 box with a minimum of features would be perfect for office work. Such a mac is not intended for personal or home use, and don't need to be some sort of digital hub box. If they need dig-hub features, then buy a iMac or a powermac. Need power? Expandability? Buy the powermac. People don't need powermacs to type numbers into a spreadsheat.
I don't see why this can't be done for this price. The eMac currently sells for $799.
Take out the 17" monitor, and you reap large savings. Factor in the lower shipping weight, lower packaging costs for a few bucks more and you've already taken it down to $699. Next, strip out all 3rd party software, and the eMac has quite a bit of it. Sacrifice a little extra margin in exchange for volume sales, slash volume discounts, and you have it down to $599.
Think that's a bit much or optimistic? How about selling it online only. Cut out the middle man. More cost savings.
There's probably more cost savings you can squeeze out of it too.
The box could be made out of cheaper materials; stylish, minimalist, but cheaper. Dell only makes 16% of their money from Consumers. The rest comes from corporations. Apple needs this.
Originally posted by Nebrie
Factor in the lower shipping weight, lower packaging costs for a few bucks more and you've already taken it down to $699.
If they're taking my idea selling it mainly in bulk, they can put like five or ten of them in a single grey cardboard box. No need for fancy packaging here. MISS - Make It Simple Stupid (Apple).
It's amazing how long Apple can go without meeting a clear and obvious demand of it's customers.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
Haven't we all been discussing/hoping/praying for this since... oh before he cube?
It's amazing how long Apple can go without meeting a clear and obvious demand of it's customers.
Well a customer could demand free product too, but that doesn't mean they should get it. Demands don't have to be reasonable to be made, but they must be reasonable to be met. It is arguable that the demand for a low cost headless box has not been reasonable because it doesn't take into account Apple's complete situation.
Originally posted by Programmer
. . . It is arguable that the demand for a low cost headless box has not been reasonable because it doesn't take into account Apple's complete situation.
Oh, I don't know about that. Apple could have made it gutless enough to not take a significant number of sales from higher priced, higher performing Macs. I believe many such Macs would have sold for general office use, to those who only want to do email and internet at home, for a kid's first computer and don't forget some schools too.
Your first point is well taken, however. A demand must be reasonable to be met.
It is arguable that the demand for a low cost headless box has not been reasonable because it doesn't take into account Apple's complete situation.
Which is? Producing overpriced desktops with outdated and underperforming parts? With ever decreasing sales which you can blame on Quark (but hey, Apple are running out of people to blame...MS...then it was Adobe...now Quark...)
...and PC marketshare is holding up in a saturated market. Apple can't seem to make a dint in M$'s market dominance. Gee, I wonder why dat is...?
Maybe we can't all lash out the lolley on an underperforming and outdated dual 1.25. No superdrive. Ancient CPU. Fat case. Noisy. Low-end graphics card. Crap sound. No sodding monitor.
And we wonder why the 'beige' PC, take the 'not bad' looking Advent Tower. Or any other Advent tower. Superdrive in. Decent LCD monitor. 3 gig processor. Twice the ram etc. For the same or a couple hundred less. And we wonder why Apple's marketshare is rump like 2%. If you price premium...you better be good at extolling the virtues of 'X'. Which, Programmer, Apple aint. In fact. I can't ever remember an Apple advert targeted at PC users from a premise of the 'X' OS being better. 'Our products look cool'/entropic style adverts? Sorry. Not good enough.
Lots of people said Apple couldn't make a 1K tower. Then Apple cut prices (what with 'power'Mac sales crashing more drastically than Windows...) and we've almost got a 1K tower. With a 35% price cut on 970s over G4 Motos (see latest 'pinch of salt' rumor over at Macwhispers...) then no reason we couldn't see a tower for £999 inc Vat.
eMac sales suck. Pure and simple. They aint fit to tie the boot laces of classic iMac sales before the iMac2's intro'. Furthermore, we're only a 'get rid of the monitor' stone throw from the said 'Headless eMac/X-Mac/iCube/Slab blah.' The eMac looks like a lard-ass. (That's purely subjective though.)
Apple slashed monitor prices to unbelievable levels.
I think they could surprise us with a new 'low cost' Mac. Cos the eMac aint it. It looks like a white-elephant.
Edu' market seems to agree. (Just how much of an Edu' hosing does Apple have to bath in to get the hint?) The eMac. Made. Just for them.
Still, I have no idea why many people cry out for headless Macs. Why would they do that?
Maybe Apple should do something about the CPU problem enabling them to have a broadened desktop range...instead of obtuse, rigid and ill-fitting desktop products.
I like Apple...but we have the iMac2 and the eMac which could be rolled into one. Or just replace the eMac and replace it with a cheap iCube headless Mac.
Price? That's where alot of the 98% went. It's not that simple. But it's a big kind of simple of Apple's 'complete situtation' for the last four years.
PS. I like the Cube design above. Ports on back please. CD tray at bottom and the Apple logo in the middle. Just right.
Lemon Bon Bon
Originally posted by NETROMac
I guess it wouldn't cost them much to develope a bMac of some sort, and they will probably sell a decent amount of such computers even if major companies are not making the switch straight away. You just have to get the option out there. Spice it up over time. Make Apple evangelist contact IT-heads and show them what the OS can do. Make an iOffice application that "seamless" interoperates with office. Bundle most of the apps corporates need. Sell support packages, not that it would need much support anyway. It will probably not cut into powermac sales anyway simply because no corporate buyer even considers powermacs as options. They are too damn expensive. They're overkill for most corporate applications. A nice quiet ppc970 box with a minimum of features would be perfect for office work. Such a mac is not intended for personal or home use, and don't need to be some sort of digital hub box. If they need dig-hub features, then buy a iMac or a powermac. Need power? Expandability? Buy the powermac. People don't need powermacs to type numbers into a spreadsheat.
I agree 100%. If Apple is serious about gaining some marketshare, a good sized portion of marketshare is business, and Apple needs to seize the moment, take the bullet and produce a cheap, fast and attractive machine for less than the eMac. I'd buy two in a heartbeat, even though it would just be for home use.
I think it would be splendid if Apple developed similar software as Office that would read and open Office documents with no problem, and Microsoft Office on Macs & PCs could open and read Apple's office software without a problem, almost ridding Microshaft.
Apple has so much potential, I only get frustrated at what they haven't done yet. They're so close to getting it right.
It aint compelling enough. And if it isn't then Apple isn't doing their job.
Ergo? They'll have to try harder.
Give me a headless iCube for £495 and Apple have one sale.
Mindshare. Dell does it.
Can...Apple just get this. Long term over short term. Mind/market share over steep profits.
Their greed and crass stupidity got them where they are today re: 2%.
They aint stupid anymore...and recent price cuts suggest a softening on the coldwar towards the 'low end' consumer.
It's easy.
You can't make a profit on a £495 computer? That's b*ll*cks. Commodore was doing that way back in the late 80s/early 90s.
Lemon Bon Bon
Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon
I agree. I'd buy one if they were cheap enough. But Apple's desktop kit is overpriced for what it is. Customers can smell 'rip off'.
It aint compelling enough. And if it isn't then Apple isn't doing their job.
The educational market is a bad example, because they're getting IT people in. Those guys wouldn't by Macs if they offered literal supercomputer performance and 21" CRTs for $1 apiece with all educational software bundled free of charge and a lifetime warranty.
Can...Apple just get this. Long term over short term. Mind/market share over steep profits.
Apple's been going that way for the last year and a half. Where's the increase in market share?
As for the "Cold War" on the low end consumer, it's pretty simple: Apple doesn't want to sell people crap. You have to spend a certain amount of money to produce a quality product, and you have to spend more money to make a user-friendly product than to slap together an expert-friendly product. That unfortunately drives the price up, but what's a company to do?
You can't make a profit on a £495 computer? That's b*ll*cks. Commodore was doing that way back in the late 80s/early 90s.
And look where it got them.
Apple's problems are not just technological. If they can crack business and IT, they can sell lots and lots of machines, because that's where the overwhelming majority of PCs are sold. If they can show off an OS X version of Quark (and if you don't believe that's a real problem, go read the Macintouch reader reports) they can start selling again into the one corner of the business and corporate market that they still dominate. Then, they have to get past the "buy what you know," and "it's what everyone else uses" mentalities, not to mention the "it's what I use at work, and I don't want to have to learn two operating systems" mentality.
This box, if it in fact appears, might account for a few hundred thousand extra sales a year (LBB has guaranteed at least one sale!) - if Apple can find a way to make it look and act like a Mac (remember, the market does have expectations about Apple; they'll be ridiculed for anything that doesn't meet their usual standards for design and manufacture). Anyone looking for a single product that will magically launch Apple's market share up toward 10% is dreaming. It's not there. Apple is going to have to fight for every tenth of a percent, and fight on multiple fronts, and be patient. Network effects take time to manifest, but once they do they're powerful.
The educational market is a bad example, because they're getting IT people in. Those guys wouldn't by Macs if they offered literal supercomputer performance and 21" CRTs for $1 apiece with all educational software bundled free of charge and a lifetime warranty.
I think that's a little to broad of statement. Maybe "most" or "many" people in the position to recomend or buy are pure m$ IT people. But the DNA of apple still runs deep.
Originally posted by keyboardf12
I think that's a little to broad of statement. Maybe "most" or "many" people in the position to recomend or buy are pure m$ IT people. But the DNA of apple still runs deep.
The people who want Macs are the teachers, who are steadily losing their authority to purchase and maintain machines. Do they still want Macs? Yes. Does what they want matter any more? Not really. Does IT have any interest in a platform that teachers could order, set up and maintain without any support from IT? No.
Expect MS - er, excuse me, the Gates Foundation - to throw lots of money at schools as this trend continues.
The best thing to do would be to eliminate computers from the classroom altogether and then bring them back ONLY in relevant areas -- digital arts classes, web/library kiosks, maybe, just maybe, some science/computer classes. Students should be writing out their reports/labs by hand pretty much up untill their last year anyway. Technology remains more of a distraction than a help.
The people who want Macs are the teachers,
again too broad. not all the people who want macs are teachers. nor are 100% of the people m$ IT.
I'd buy your other argument if 20-40% (i forget the market share) of edu sales weren't going to apple.
I think the underlining angst from both of us resides from the fact that we BOTH think apple should have more market share in edu yet it does not. hopefully june 23rd will give us an idea what apple intends to do about it.
So there is no advantage in term of prize for the chip. However the mobo will be certainly less expansive.
If it's true don't expect something better than the good old G4 tower at one ghz with no L3 cache, a geforce 4mx card and a 80 GB hard drive with a CD RW for the prize of 1000 $ free of taxes. Apple will not develop a specific new case for this computer, he will use the old tower case in order to spent the less money in R&D and have descent margins.
Originally posted by keyboardf12
again too broad. not all the people who want macs are teachers. nor are 100% of the people m$ IT.
I'd buy your other argument if 20-40% (i forget the market share) of edu sales weren't going to apple.
The share is declining as IT takes control of more and more schools. This is a trend, I noted, not a given.
I've said elsewhere that this trend might help explain Apple's sudden interest in courting IT. The MSCEs and their ilk aren't evil slavering monsters who congenitally prefer Windows, they're just people implementing what they paid a goodly amount of money and time to learn, and looking out for their own hides. It'll be interesting to see how Apple courts them without alienating the qualities of their platform that attracted teachers (chief among them, the fact that any teacher could set them up, network them and maintain them).
I think the underlining angst from both of us resides from the fact that we BOTH think apple should have more market share in edu yet it does not. hopefully june 23rd will give us an idea what apple intends to do about it.
The new emphasis on IT at the next WWDC will indeed be interesting. And, I have to say, even though the 970 is probably not going to appear in eMacs and iBooks any time soon, the hype might give Apple a little more respect. Who knows?
Matsu, your last post should be printed out and framed and put on the desk of everyone bringing technology into education, because it's absolutely true. Computers are tools that solve problems; they are not intrinsically beneficial. Even a "cheap" $400 Dell consumes money that could buy a lot of textbooks and paper and pencils...
At least it looks like Gov. Young in Maine did it right.