Oh, iDunno that Apple can't lower prices and still remain profitable. There's an 899 edu iBook floating around, and that's a helluva decent deal for a well made notebook. You can't tell me that, even with a G4, a 15" LCD iMac couldn't sport the same entry level (sans the expensive battery, 2.5" HDD and laptop drive).
The eMac is really 2 years too late. What's the point now? To frustrate switchers back into the PC camp with half baked analogue boards? Take one LCD iMac, 40GB Hdd, a read only optical (DVD) and 15" TFT, put a thicker "glass" cover on the screen and perhaps lock the arm to prevent kiddies from destroying it. Instant 899 LCD machine. Good for edu (arm optionally locked) or the switcher (arm fully articulating).
And you have to think how much cheaper it would be to build a small single processor tower using AGP and PCI slots and standard drive enclosures sans monitor. 899-1299 budget tower. Better profit margins than any AIO too. You don't pay for an expensive custom case, you don't pay an LCD and the mechanicals to hold it. Just a straightforward small cube/tower with basic expansion (1 AGP, 1 PCI, 1 CPU daughtercard and accessible drive bays)
There's a lot Apple could do to reach more customers with intelligently specified configurations at more acceptable prices.
More combo-drive eMacs are sold than any other model bar the 17" iMac.
Also, the price of the iMac LCD isn't in the industrial design, but the display itself! Turning the iMac back into a "bubble boy" computer isn't going to magically drop the price to $899!!!
Schools don't want read-only drives. They want the students to be able to take home data. I know Matsu, let's use a floppy drive instead to keep the price down! That's what I would call a technological jump!
<strong>More combo-drive eMacs are sold than any other model bar the 17" iMac.
Also, the price of the iMac LCD isn't in the industrial design, but the display itself! Turning the iMac back into a "bubble boy" computer isn't going to magically drop the price to $899!!!
</strong><hr></blockquote>
1. Sales of the eMac have crashed over the last month as dealers refuse to sell them (or scare the hell out of potential customers) because of quality control issues.
2. The LCD iMac uses the least expensive 15" LCD made, the LCD used in the iBook is more expensive than the LCD used in the 15" LCD iMac by almost double
The iBook uses a very high quality high density 12" LCD display, the iMac uses a bargin basement 15" low density LCD display that is rarely seen outside extreme low end LCD displays and 'laptops' like the ECS Desknotes
<strong>And you have to think how much cheaper it would be to build a small single processor tower using AGP and PCI slots and standard drive enclosures sans monitor. 899-1299 budget tower. Better profit margins than any AIO too. You don't pay for an expensive custom case, you don't pay an LCD and the mechanicals to hold it. Just a straightforward small cube/tower with basic expansion (1 AGP, 1 PCI, 1 CPU daughtercard and accessible drive bays)</strong><hr></blockquote>
Now you're talking about new models - not lowering price on existing models.
I do agree that Apple need to make a couple more models, and I would personally love to see the Cube reintroduced as a business computer with a G3, low end GPU and small hard drive.
Who says such a machine should be opnly for business, what about consumner and edu? A G3, get serious, the point of technology is to move forward not backwards. G4's don't cost any more than G3's and heat is not an issue in a desktop machine. NOw a G3 with altivec and a big FSB (Gobi?) that would be OK (essentially a G4). Lets not have any more BS about what we need, we need power, cheap power!!!
The G3 has to go. To blab about the the usefullness of the velocity engine in the G4 since 1999 and still sell G3 in 2003 do look like Apple does not belive their own preachings <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
It really does not matter that VE is not used in many apps and that the G3 is a viable CPU it simply looks bad <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
"and I would personally love to see the Cube reintroduced as a business computer with a G3, low end GPU and small hard drive."
I'd love a Cube. A 1 gig, Gobi edu/Dell busting Cube, £499 inc Vat. Mx2 chipset. 256 megs of ram. Reasonable hard drive. Slot load from front!
I'd tear Apple's arm off. The cube was a show-stopper. Price it to shift and it would have.
Enamel white. No skirt. No grill on top. Ports out back. Slightly bigger. For standard graphics cards/components? Having said that. Look how small Nintendo made the 'Gamecube'...
To me, the Cube...anyday over the eMac. Edu' customers would be able to keep their monitors.
<strong>Oh go scroll a document!</strong><hr></blockquote>
No trouble doing it on my iBook.
[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:
<strong>Who says such a machine should be opnly for business, what about consumner and edu?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why can't Apple make a model suited for business work? I'm not saying that they shouldn't make a cheap consumer model - read my post again.
The optimal would be if Apple enabled Quartz to run like X Window servers and client - that way I would love to have thin Mac clients and some Xserves in out server room serving the clients.
[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:
<strong>A G3, get serious, the point of technology is to move forward not backwards. G4's don't cost any more than G3's and heat is not an issue in a desktop machine. NOw a G3 with altivec and a big FSB (Gobi?) that would be OK (essentially a G4). Lets not have any more BS about what we need, we need power, cheap power!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
A G3 with AltiVec would still be cheaper and use less power than a G4.
But this argument is getting a bit OT. The point of my post was that Apple should make a Mac suited for business and other environments where homedirs are on servers and where you don't need to run the latest game or render 3D.
The G3 is perilously close to being eclipsed by PDA architectures, I wouldn't call it viable for a company with the stated intention of attracting switchers.
"Look honey, this here PDA runs almost as fast as that iBook, 600Mhz vs 800"
<strong>A G3 with AltiVec would still be cheaper and use less power than a G4.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is only true if Moto doesn't ship a 0.13 micron G4. There isn't anything magical about the G3, aside from IBM having better fabs. IBM could probably take Moto's 7457 and produce it as effectively as they produce their G3s (and it would be a superior chip).
On the subject of Apple's pricing / market share / etc:
Lowering prices will undoubtedly increase Mac sales, I don't think anyone would argue that. There is no sudden "magic" threshold, however, so each dollar you shave off the product will get you some number of extra customers and this is very likely a non-linear function (i.e. if you shave off two dollars you don't get exactly twice as many buyers, you either get more or less). Nobody knows what this function looks like, and it changes moment to moment as the economy shifts, the world situation becomes more or less stable, etc. The only data point that is available on this function is what sales were yesterday at yesterday's price point. This prediction stuff is hard, and when the guys at Apple have to order components then need to anticipate numbers of units and every extra unit purchased cuts into the bottom line. This is particularly painful for things like low-end processors where if you don't sell it now you'll probably never be able to sell it for anything close to cost. As a result, companies often stick to what they know and price points they have experience with. Its easy for us to sit here and talk about how Apple should drop its prices by half so that sales will skyrocket, but our ass isn't on the line when the sales don't triple and Apple posts a huge loss as a result.
The PC market has pushed prices as low as they will go (and even lower in some cases), and they are hurting for it. The margins aren't there, nobody is making money, and machines are no longer selling like they used to. Apple surely uses this data in evaluating their price point, and for quite a while now it says "don't go here!"
The guy at the Apple store says that 8 out of 8 people who didn't buy a Mac decided not to because of price. How many would have bought if the price was 10% lower? 20%? 80%? As several people above said, the customer doesn't really care about Apple's profit/loss situation but Apple doesn't have that luxury. And how many people did buy a Mac at the current price point? Apple's prices are sitting somewhere on an unknown continuum, and shifting it up or down will change both the price and the number of sales. Apple juggles this against their supply of parts, their assembly & distribution capacity, their "shelf space", and their production costs. Its extremely complicated and a lot of people don't seem to get that.
Apple probably has their existing designs pretty close to their sweet spots -- i.e. for a given machine decreasing the margin wouldn't increase sales enough to compensate, and increasing margin would harm sales excessively. We're all also aware of the perceived and real performance issues in the current Mac lineup, but until a new processor is available Apple can't do anything about that (and they probably can't cut costs much either with 2 processors in each PowerMac). Apple's current lineup is pretty well established in terms of desktop/portable & consumer/pro, so until real changes are possible (i.e. new processors available) its probably not worth the cost of trying to make small changes. The margins are only ~20%, so cutting it to 10% halves your profits but only lowers your price by 10% which isn't going to double the number of customers.
To increase sales new designs will have to be either more compelling or lower cost. More compelling is Apple's usual approach because lower cost makes them more generic and less differentiated. The eMac (quality issues aside) is a good example of this -- the costs are lower but it isn't so unique & distinctive. These products have their place, and education is clearly one of them. Price conscious consumers is another one. The eMac's price is inflated by the nature of the enclosure & display, however, so a headless variation (cube or pizza box) might have a market waiting for it. There may also be a place (education, geeks, utility machines) for a low cost mini-tower in a plain brown wrapper -- especially when the 970 arrives and they can put the current motherboard into a low-end tower without fear of it heavily cannibalizing PowerMac sales. These lower margin machines are risky, however, because the margin is so small compared to the cost of building them. It doesn't take many lost sales to be losing money.
<strong>PC OEMs don't do the R&D... Remember, Apple does the OS, the hardware, the design of all the cases and mobos, the chip sets, the packaging, the marketing....etc. etc.... They literally *touch* everything, including the power supplies. The list goes on.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
So what? As long as the final price of a product is too high for sustaining a healthy market share, it doesnt matter who is making what part of the product. Apple is still not making memory-chip,LCDs, harddrives..
And while Dell dont do much R&D ( well.. actually they do), Intel is still putting a lot of R&D effort in their chip design. And Microsoft is putting a lot of R&D into Windows OS. In the end, a PC got this R&D baked into the price.
Now you're talking about new models - not lowering price on existing models.
I do agree that Apple need to make a couple more models, and I would personally love to see the Cube reintroduced as a business computer with a G3, low end GPU and small hard drive.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The G3 is like 5 1/2 years old. Time to throw it away from new computers. Wasnt it competing against P-MMX and P-Pro when the first G3 products appeared?
<strong>8 out of 10 serious customers who are interested in buying Macs leave empty handed from my store, we are the only store in the region and we sell at the MSRP.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If that is representative of the overall market, and if the other two "serious customers" are leaving your store with Macs, then Apple's market share is set to quintuple. I'm sure Apple would be delighted to hear that they had a 20% share.
Not that I think that's the case. I'm just pointing out that, in Apple's current circumstances, 2 out of 10 would-be purchasers is a much better share than they currently have. So without further information, it could even be good news.
[quote]<strong>8 out of 8 who don't buy a mac say price was the reason they didn't do so. As one woman said before Christmas "I don't hate Windows that much...."
I have not heard a person raise a compatability issue as their reason for not buying a mac in two years.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I've heard it every time I've suggested a Mac. I doubt the people who are afraid of incompatibility even look at one. None of the people I talked to did, apart from glancing at their pages on the Apple web site. Those that went with the safe option ordered Dells, too, so they won't appear on retail radar.
As far as lowering prices, Steve himself has gone on record saying that he'd sell iMacs for $199 if he could. If you can figure out a way for Apple to sell cheaper Macs that a) are still Macs (not machines that are so cheaply packaged and feature-crippled that they're distinguishable from low-end PCs only by their incompatibility), and b) will not cause Apple to lose their shirts, I'm sure they'd love to hear it.
Excellent analysis of the situation Programmer, especially pointing out the difficulty of finding the right price for most profit. Considering the poor performing processors Apple must use now, reducing price is not likely to help sales enough. I could see a price drop when the 970 appears, and makes a much more appealing PowerMac. At that time, a little price cut may indeed generate still more sales resulting in a high profit and a healthy boost in market share. Personally, I think this would be the way to go. An alternative strategy is to "skim the cream" for a while with a new, better product. I hope Apple does not do that, unless there is an initial supply problem with 970 processors. In that case, "skimming the cream" is the best strategy. It gets the most profit when there is limited supply, and it's better than having frustrated buyers who are upset because Apple cannot deliver.
1) Individuals pay for the OS. Every point-update has been $129 so far. Even if the OS came with your Mac, you more than pay for that if you upgrade for $129 every year.
The truth is this:
The market has priced computers 15 to 50 percent LOWER than Apple's prices.
Part of that price is loss-leading by Dell, etc (They sell some products at an "accounting" loss to hold or increase marketshare).
The long-term result of the loss-leading is bankruptcy and destruction of the competition. Think Compaq, who got eaten by HP. At some time, Dell will decide it has enough of the market to be invulnerable to PC competition. Dell will either achieve this goal, collapse financially, or scale back on the losses. Right now, Dell appears to be doing exactly what they want, when they want.
So, if the artificially-low prices disappeared, where would PC prices be? The answer probably lies within the pricing structure of Apple's MOST COMPETITVE Model: the iBook.
I am ignoring the G3 iMac, since it is so old.
The iBook usually compares very well with comparable PC laptops. I think it is about 10-15 percent overpriced (due to limited standard RAM, Graphics, mostly). In some cases, such as the $1299 model, it is only a few percentage points high.
Every other model is priced too high (yes, even the PowerBook).
Relatively speaking, then, the willingingness of Switchers to switch is, as someone else said, related to how much they "hate Windows." What's it worth to kick out MS? Apparently not $300 a unit. How about $100? I'm sure it depends on how terrible your experiences with Windows are.
There are very FEW points that, marketing-wise, push the price of Macs up. There are many market points that push the price down (value perception, compatibility, service, learning curve, the urban, effete image of Macs v. the strictly business image of Windows PCs and more).
A really cool-looking computer will sell better, but if that's your only advantage - take the money and run.
Apple, LOWER YOUR MARGINS to 20% and reward your loyal buyers while you gain new users!
Comments
The eMac is really 2 years too late. What's the point now? To frustrate switchers back into the PC camp with half baked analogue boards? Take one LCD iMac, 40GB Hdd, a read only optical (DVD) and 15" TFT, put a thicker "glass" cover on the screen and perhaps lock the arm to prevent kiddies from destroying it. Instant 899 LCD machine. Good for edu (arm optionally locked) or the switcher (arm fully articulating).
And you have to think how much cheaper it would be to build a small single processor tower using AGP and PCI slots and standard drive enclosures sans monitor. 899-1299 budget tower. Better profit margins than any AIO too. You don't pay for an expensive custom case, you don't pay an LCD and the mechanicals to hold it. Just a straightforward small cube/tower with basic expansion (1 AGP, 1 PCI, 1 CPU daughtercard and accessible drive bays)
There's a lot Apple could do to reach more customers with intelligently specified configurations at more acceptable prices.
More combo-drive eMacs are sold than any other model bar the 17" iMac.
Also, the price of the iMac LCD isn't in the industrial design, but the display itself! Turning the iMac back into a "bubble boy" computer isn't going to magically drop the price to $899!!!
Schools don't want read-only drives. They want the students to be able to take home data. I know Matsu, let's use a floppy drive instead to keep the price down! That's what I would call a technological jump!
Barto
[ 12-30-2002: Message edited by: Barto ]</p>
...Or they could just update the current hardware and lower prices some. I mean come on its been almost a year.
knock knock!
Oh yes..Who is IT!
Oh its just your customers.
Who?
You know the guys who buy your computers...
oh... Why are you bothering me? GO away.
...
<strong>More combo-drive eMacs are sold than any other model bar the 17" iMac.
Also, the price of the iMac LCD isn't in the industrial design, but the display itself! Turning the iMac back into a "bubble boy" computer isn't going to magically drop the price to $899!!!
</strong><hr></blockquote>
1. Sales of the eMac have crashed over the last month as dealers refuse to sell them (or scare the hell out of potential customers) because of quality control issues.
2. The LCD iMac uses the least expensive 15" LCD made, the LCD used in the iBook is more expensive than the LCD used in the 15" LCD iMac by almost double
The iBook uses a very high quality high density 12" LCD display, the iMac uses a bargin basement 15" low density LCD display that is rarely seen outside extreme low end LCD displays and 'laptops' like the ECS Desknotes
<strong>And you have to think how much cheaper it would be to build a small single processor tower using AGP and PCI slots and standard drive enclosures sans monitor. 899-1299 budget tower. Better profit margins than any AIO too. You don't pay for an expensive custom case, you don't pay an LCD and the mechanicals to hold it. Just a straightforward small cube/tower with basic expansion (1 AGP, 1 PCI, 1 CPU daughtercard and accessible drive bays)</strong><hr></blockquote>
Now you're talking about new models - not lowering price on existing models.
I do agree that Apple need to make a couple more models, and I would personally love to see the Cube reintroduced as a business computer with a G3, low end GPU and small hard drive.
Arghh!!!
<strong>"...with a G3..."
Arghh!!!
You don't need a G4 in a business environment.
Who says such a machine should be opnly for business, what about consumner and edu? A G3, get serious, the point of technology is to move forward not backwards. G4's don't cost any more than G3's and heat is not an issue in a desktop machine. NOw a G3 with altivec and a big FSB (Gobi?) that would be OK (essentially a G4). Lets not have any more BS about what we need, we need power, cheap power!!!
It really does not matter that VE is not used in many apps and that the G3 is a viable CPU it simply looks bad <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
I'd love a Cube. A 1 gig, Gobi edu/Dell busting Cube, £499 inc Vat. Mx2 chipset. 256 megs of ram. Reasonable hard drive. Slot load from front!
I'd tear Apple's arm off. The cube was a show-stopper. Price it to shift and it would have.
Enamel white. No skirt. No grill on top. Ports out back. Slightly bigger. For standard graphics cards/components? Having said that. Look how small Nintendo made the 'Gamecube'...
To me, the Cube...anyday over the eMac. Edu' customers would be able to keep their monitors.
Ah...the Cube...
Lemon Bon Bon
<strong>Oh go scroll a document!</strong><hr></blockquote>
No trouble doing it on my iBook.
[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:
<strong>Who says such a machine should be opnly for business, what about consumner and edu?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Why can't Apple make a model suited for business work? I'm not saying that they shouldn't make a cheap consumer model - read my post again.
The optimal would be if Apple enabled Quartz to run like X Window servers and client - that way I would love to have thin Mac clients and some Xserves in out server room serving the clients.
[quote]Originally posted by Matsu:
<strong>A G3, get serious, the point of technology is to move forward not backwards. G4's don't cost any more than G3's and heat is not an issue in a desktop machine. NOw a G3 with altivec and a big FSB (Gobi?) that would be OK (essentially a G4). Lets not have any more BS about what we need, we need power, cheap power!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
A G3 with AltiVec would still be cheaper and use less power than a G4.
But this argument is getting a bit OT. The point of my post was that Apple should make a Mac suited for business and other environments where homedirs are on servers and where you don't need to run the latest game or render 3D.
"Look honey, this here PDA runs almost as fast as that iBook, 600Mhz vs 800"
Doesn't matter if it's true or not.
<strong>You don't need a G4 in a business environment.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Especially when Apple is about to flip Moto the bird. But they better have something as good, or much better in the wings...
<strong>A G3 with AltiVec would still be cheaper and use less power than a G4.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is only true if Moto doesn't ship a 0.13 micron G4. There isn't anything magical about the G3, aside from IBM having better fabs. IBM could probably take Moto's 7457 and produce it as effectively as they produce their G3s (and it would be a superior chip).
On the subject of Apple's pricing / market share / etc:
Lowering prices will undoubtedly increase Mac sales, I don't think anyone would argue that. There is no sudden "magic" threshold, however, so each dollar you shave off the product will get you some number of extra customers and this is very likely a non-linear function (i.e. if you shave off two dollars you don't get exactly twice as many buyers, you either get more or less). Nobody knows what this function looks like, and it changes moment to moment as the economy shifts, the world situation becomes more or less stable, etc. The only data point that is available on this function is what sales were yesterday at yesterday's price point. This prediction stuff is hard, and when the guys at Apple have to order components then need to anticipate numbers of units and every extra unit purchased cuts into the bottom line. This is particularly painful for things like low-end processors where if you don't sell it now you'll probably never be able to sell it for anything close to cost. As a result, companies often stick to what they know and price points they have experience with. Its easy for us to sit here and talk about how Apple should drop its prices by half so that sales will skyrocket, but our ass isn't on the line when the sales don't triple and Apple posts a huge loss as a result.
The PC market has pushed prices as low as they will go (and even lower in some cases), and they are hurting for it. The margins aren't there, nobody is making money, and machines are no longer selling like they used to. Apple surely uses this data in evaluating their price point, and for quite a while now it says "don't go here!"
The guy at the Apple store says that 8 out of 8 people who didn't buy a Mac decided not to because of price. How many would have bought if the price was 10% lower? 20%? 80%? As several people above said, the customer doesn't really care about Apple's profit/loss situation but Apple doesn't have that luxury. And how many people did buy a Mac at the current price point? Apple's prices are sitting somewhere on an unknown continuum, and shifting it up or down will change both the price and the number of sales. Apple juggles this against their supply of parts, their assembly & distribution capacity, their "shelf space", and their production costs. Its extremely complicated and a lot of people don't seem to get that.
Apple probably has their existing designs pretty close to their sweet spots -- i.e. for a given machine decreasing the margin wouldn't increase sales enough to compensate, and increasing margin would harm sales excessively. We're all also aware of the perceived and real performance issues in the current Mac lineup, but until a new processor is available Apple can't do anything about that (and they probably can't cut costs much either with 2 processors in each PowerMac). Apple's current lineup is pretty well established in terms of desktop/portable & consumer/pro, so until real changes are possible (i.e. new processors available) its probably not worth the cost of trying to make small changes. The margins are only ~20%, so cutting it to 10% halves your profits but only lowers your price by 10% which isn't going to double the number of customers.
To increase sales new designs will have to be either more compelling or lower cost. More compelling is Apple's usual approach because lower cost makes them more generic and less differentiated. The eMac (quality issues aside) is a good example of this -- the costs are lower but it isn't so unique & distinctive. These products have their place, and education is clearly one of them. Price conscious consumers is another one. The eMac's price is inflated by the nature of the enclosure & display, however, so a headless variation (cube or pizza box) might have a market waiting for it. There may also be a place (education, geeks, utility machines) for a low cost mini-tower in a plain brown wrapper -- especially when the 970 arrives and they can put the current motherboard into a low-end tower without fear of it heavily cannibalizing PowerMac sales. These lower margin machines are risky, however, because the margin is so small compared to the cost of building them. It doesn't take many lost sales to be losing money.
<strong>PC OEMs don't do the R&D... Remember, Apple does the OS, the hardware, the design of all the cases and mobos, the chip sets, the packaging, the marketing....etc. etc.... They literally *touch* everything, including the power supplies. The list goes on.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
So what? As long as the final price of a product is too high for sustaining a healthy market share, it doesnt matter who is making what part of the product. Apple is still not making memory-chip,LCDs, harddrives..
And while Dell dont do much R&D ( well.. actually they do), Intel is still putting a lot of R&D effort in their chip design. And Microsoft is putting a lot of R&D into Windows OS. In the end, a PC got this R&D baked into the price.
<strong>
Now you're talking about new models - not lowering price on existing models.
I do agree that Apple need to make a couple more models, and I would personally love to see the Cube reintroduced as a business computer with a G3, low end GPU and small hard drive.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The G3 is like 5 1/2 years old. Time to throw it away from new computers. Wasnt it competing against P-MMX and P-Pro when the first G3 products appeared?
Time to move on!
<strong>8 out of 10 serious customers who are interested in buying Macs leave empty handed from my store, we are the only store in the region and we sell at the MSRP.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If that is representative of the overall market, and if the other two "serious customers" are leaving your store with Macs, then Apple's market share is set to quintuple. I'm sure Apple would be delighted to hear that they had a 20% share.
Not that I think that's the case. I'm just pointing out that, in Apple's current circumstances, 2 out of 10 would-be purchasers is a much better share than they currently have. So without further information, it could even be good news.
[quote]<strong>8 out of 8 who don't buy a mac say price was the reason they didn't do so. As one woman said before Christmas "I don't hate Windows that much...."
I have not heard a person raise a compatability issue as their reason for not buying a mac in two years.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I've heard it every time I've suggested a Mac. I doubt the people who are afraid of incompatibility even look at one. None of the people I talked to did, apart from glancing at their pages on the Apple web site. Those that went with the safe option ordered Dells, too, so they won't appear on retail radar.
As far as lowering prices, Steve himself has gone on record saying that he'd sell iMacs for $199 if he could. If you can figure out a way for Apple to sell cheaper Macs that a) are still Macs (not machines that are so cheaply packaged and feature-crippled that they're distinguishable from low-end PCs only by their incompatibility), and b) will not cause Apple to lose their shirts, I'm sure they'd love to hear it.
[ 12-31-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]
[ 12-31-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
The truth is this:
The market has priced computers 15 to 50 percent LOWER than Apple's prices.
Part of that price is loss-leading by Dell, etc (They sell some products at an "accounting" loss to hold or increase marketshare).
The long-term result of the loss-leading is bankruptcy and destruction of the competition. Think Compaq, who got eaten by HP. At some time, Dell will decide it has enough of the market to be invulnerable to PC competition. Dell will either achieve this goal, collapse financially, or scale back on the losses. Right now, Dell appears to be doing exactly what they want, when they want.
So, if the artificially-low prices disappeared, where would PC prices be? The answer probably lies within the pricing structure of Apple's MOST COMPETITVE Model: the iBook.
I am ignoring the G3 iMac, since it is so old.
The iBook usually compares very well with comparable PC laptops. I think it is about 10-15 percent overpriced (due to limited standard RAM, Graphics, mostly). In some cases, such as the $1299 model, it is only a few percentage points high.
Every other model is priced too high (yes, even the PowerBook).
Relatively speaking, then, the willingingness of Switchers to switch is, as someone else said, related to how much they "hate Windows." What's it worth to kick out MS? Apparently not $300 a unit. How about $100? I'm sure it depends on how terrible your experiences with Windows are.
There are very FEW points that, marketing-wise, push the price of Macs up. There are many market points that push the price down (value perception, compatibility, service, learning curve, the urban, effete image of Macs v. the strictly business image of Windows PCs and more).
A really cool-looking computer will sell better, but if that's your only advantage - take the money and run.
Apple, LOWER YOUR MARGINS to 20% and reward your loyal buyers while you gain new users!
".... but the beat goes on
da-da-dum, da-dum-da-dum, dum-da-da."