I want a second box for surfing the internet, email and word-processing. I've got a decent 19' monitor. I'm looking at either a $600 Athlon tower or a $1300 G4 tower. Given my needs, why in god's name would I buy an Apple?
The silver-lining for Apple is that the $700 dollars saved buying the Wintel box will allow me to get an iBook G4.
Oh, I don't know. The phrase you ascribed to PC laptops, "flimsy or expensive," suits PC AIOs even better. We've seen the gateway, but there are a few generic models out there with plenty of speed and 32-64MB ATI graphics. Just the other day, I saw one at the local office supply. It had a very nice 17" LCD, a DVD burning optical, 64MB of ATI graphics, 512MB of RAM and a 6-in-1 card reader. The case was a simple slab, not very thick, not really beautiful either, but not offensive looking. Unfortunately it costs as much as a 20" iMac (2999 Canadian). A similar PC tower+monitor would cost just over 2000 Canadian, a big difference.
So, if Apple can do such a good job within the limited confines of the AIO, imagine what they could so with the superior price performance possibilities of a small tower/cube-like machine.
Besides portability, what is one advantage a notebook has over a desktop?
Its size and complexity. Even the big 10 and 12 pound laptops don't utterly dominate the desks they're put down on, and you can take it home, set it up yourself easily no matter who you are, and start using it.
Mobility is some part of the appeal, certainly, but the simple fact is that these days a laptop does everything that the bulk of the population requires of a computer in a tidy package that's easier to set up and use than a traditional PC, and smaller and quieter besides.
As for the secondary web-browsing machine, I'd just get the iBook G4 and pocket the $700. But then, after getting an LCD I wouldn't even consider a CRT. Not even one nineteen feet across.
well i hope the next ibooks and powerbooks have a screen like this. sony aio
It doesn't talk too much about it here but it is a thin LCD with a glossy surface on top...the screen quality is amazing, and replicated in sony's portables.
Good logic and good argument are respectable commodities, but once they fail their empirical tests, we have to reconsider them, though not discard them. Otherwise they become polemics of no greater value than that which they seek to discard.
I'll 2nd that.
If Apple can sell 300K worth of towers. I'm sure they should be selling 600K plus worth of iMac2 or eMacs. But they aren't.
PC towers offer flexibility. Power and cheapness.
We know the benefits of Apple's strengths. But they won't be able to put their case unless they can offer more affordable and flexible desktops.
All the schools I know have pizza boxes or towers. Same at colleges. (I know of one college that has eMacs.)
Two lines of AIOs that are essentially the same is a fundamental flaw in Apple's desktop strategy.
Apple should, in my opinion, drop one of the AIO lines and provide a mini-tower that covers the £495 to £1K mark.
Apple's products are insane. Insanely expensive to alot of customers. Premium on the box then you have to buy a monitor for anything from £200-£1300. And I'm wondering why Apple aint experiencing growth. And if you buy one of their AIOs (because there aint a cheap headless whatever under £998 (still pricey in the UK, folks...) then you have to throw out a perfectly good 21inch D2 monitor (hello Apple!) Then you get into switching software in the hundreds to thousands...(and we wonder why 'Switch' campaign didn't create a seismic shift in fortune for Apple?)
PC land may, like Apple, may be selling 'more' laptops. But the amount of towers sold by Dell, HP or Compaq still dwarfs the total of what Apple spits out a quarter.
I see cheap white plastic towers mimicking the white acrylic of Apple's iMac/iBook designs. They don't look as bad as the old beige designs. And you get a LCD monitor to match. From £600-£995. With 'superdrives', upgradeable graphics slots(!) yadda, yadda... Deja Vu?
And those Pentium 4/Athlons don't melt the plastic.
There's nothing stopping Apple sticking single G5s in white acrylic mini-tower/cube/whatevers and bury the AIO(?) for good. (Personally, I think a cheap mini-tower can co-exist. They do in PC land...choice and all that...)
Towers are what sell most. Everyone I know has a tower. A PC tower, heh. It's common sense.
So, if Apple can do such a good job within the limited confines of the AIO, imagine what they could so with the superior price performance possibilities of a small tower/cube-like machine.
Let me try and put this a different way. On the PC side mini-towers usually cost a lot MORE then the full sized tower systems. So why in the world would you expect a mini-tower from Apple to be half the price of the full-sized tower?
No, they do not cost more untill you start adding killer graphics and secondary audio, and overkill overclocking/cooling systems. There are good SFF boards with good (nVidia nForce) integrated graphics and multichannel audio and complete I/O (USB2 and FW400 plus standard A/V) There is literally nothing else to buy and the systems are fast. If you compare to a budget PC, sure tey cost more, but no one here is arguing that Apple needs to make a 500 USD budget machine.
No, they do not cost more untill you start adding killer graphics and secondary audio, and overkill overclocking/cooling systems. There are good SFF boards with good (nVidia nForce) integrated graphics and multichannel audio and complete I/O (USB2 and FW400 plus standard A/V) There is literally nothing else to buy and the systems are fast. If you compare to a budget PC, sure tey cost more, but no one here is arguing that Apple needs to make a 500 USD budget machine.
You will find better normal form factor boards at lower prices then the small form factor ones.
I was thinking about building a SFF computer using a shuttle xpc case and motherboard, but it came out a few hundred dollars MORE then building a normal form factor computer.
On the PC side, the computer manufactures charge more for mini-towers, and for build it yourself types the components cost more. So once again, why do people think a SFF powermac would be cheaper the full sized ones? It just does not make sense.
Of course, even is something does not make sense from a manufacturing stand point, it does not mean that it won't happen. Sometimes marketing concerns will override the logic of manufacturing.
apple is not dell... quit comparing the two, I'm sure we all try and not shop at wal-mart as well, to compare prices between rustler jeans and gap ones.
One thing that gets lost here is that you reduce costs by integrating. Something like the eMac is the logical result of a concerted attempt to build an inexpensive machine.
It doesn't have to implement PCI -> cheaper.
It relies on integrated ASICs rather than PCI cards for features -> cheaper.
It relies on an AGP chipset rather than an AGP slot + card -> cheaper.
The power supply can be sized exactly to fit the fixed requirements of the computer and monitor (and it doesn't have to power PCI) -> cheaper.
The whole thing is assembled in one package with extremely high automation -> cheaper to make, cheaper to ship, easier to inventory.
There are no total cost savings associated with a separate box, especially once you add PCI or AGP expansion options. In fact, I'd expect the additional costs of building a low-price minitower from the starting base of an eMac to more or less cancel out the (extremely low) cost of the CRT. If all you did was stick the existing eMac motherboard in a little box with a bigger power supply (not optional) you might be able to price it $50 cheaper, but only by shaving off features like the speakers.
The reason it's possible to build a perfectly adequate machine for very little on the PC side has to do with the economies of scale they enjoy: Their market is 30x larger than ours, so they can absorb the relative inefficiencies of an essentially modular architecture (but even on the PC low end, you see a fair amount of integration now).
For Apple to offer a lean and mean machine, they basically need to go AIO. (I think the main reason that this doesn't work on the PC side has to do with the ridiculous amount of heat spewed by their CPUs of choice - a Centrino-based AIO, now, that could go somewhere. The first PC maker to shoot for that target and hit it just might usher in a new era on that side of the fence.)
Towers are what sell most. Everyone I know has a tower. A PC tower, heh. It's common sense.
That may be, but I hate towers. Wires everywhere, and no good place to put the darned thing! Since getting a PowerBook for home and an iMac 2 (as you call them) for my office desk, I never want a tower, a cube or whatever again. Just my 2¢.
A shame you don't like towers. I grant, alot do look ugly on the pc side and noisy (got an Athlon right here that proves that...). But the G5 is a work of art.
Although I'm critical of Apple's AIO 'ONLY' strategy for consumer desktops, I don't 'hate' them. I just think they need to make their offerings more diverse to give consumers more choice.
Lose the monitor from the eMac and you have a cheaper product. A hundred quid may mean something to a UK buyer. A student. A small business. Somebody.
Towers don't have to be ugly. Look at the G5. Look at the 'mini-tower' Cube. Computers can be gorgeous. See Apple.
But having two consumer lines that offer the same thing, differentiated only by a chrome arm and an LCD monitor? (And a mild spec bump here or there?)
Anybody can use all the lame logic in the world...but Apple's still got two identical products that are hampering their efforts in my opinion.
This is Apple who made the G5. A work of Art.
I can't believe they couldn't do the same for a 'consumer' tower.
Before Apple made their laptops, the iPod and the G5 tower...the Cube, the iMac2...I wouldn't have thought such products possible.
Apple still aint perfect. And their consumer desktops are the weak spot. They should be selling way more. I believe they could do this if they give the Apple (and PC) consumer a choice to use what monitor they want. A choice to upgrade the graphics...if they want. Doesn't have to be a lot...but a little more expandability would be nice. Apple don't have to be dollar for dollar as cheap as Dell. But they need to get closer and THEN let the value added extras do the talking. 'Closer' is a piece of string. You can argue about its length all day. I don't think Apple is there yet...
Is there a need for a 'new' prosumer line. I don't like the thread title. I think there are genuine holes in Apple's line-up. Drop single G5 towers underneath the 'all dual' G5 line and you've got the pro' and prosumer tower market between 1K-2K sewn up.
Make an 'iBook' equivalent for the consumer tower to cover the £495-999 market. I think they'd sell by the truck load. (I don't think this necessarily rules out iMac3 and redesigned eMacs which can be complimentary products to Apple's line.) But it would be interesting to see which sold more...
I guess we won't know 'who's right' until Apple actually do it, eh?
Any "prosumer" model runs into a fairly serious question: What justifies the lower price?
The "prosumer" market is actually two categories: What I call the "broke power user" market, which consists of people (many of them students) trying to get professional work out of consumer goods, and the "loaded consumer" market, which consists of people blowing untold amounts of money on machines that essentially send and receive email and browse the web.
There is also photo/video effects shops that like to save money by populating the studio with lower cost "assistant" workstations. Also, the market is showing that basic video editing and photo manipulation are becoming as important as web and email.
Personally, I'd love to see a divide in the PowerMac line, with the lower end machines being smaller, with slower dual G5s, and just one PCI slot. The upper-end would then have the faster CPUs, and four internal SATA "slots."
It would be more economical for Apple to use the same case with a "lite" motherboard which only had one CPU, an AGP slot, and 1-2 PCI slots. That way they at least get a volume discount of the common components, as well as the $ savings from not designing and building a new enclosure, and only have the expense of 2 "similar" motherboards.
Say each PM case costs $100 in volume of 100,000. If they increase the volumen to 125,000 then they might be able to negotiate a 5% or $5 discount for each case, and save the cost of designing a new one, which due to lower volume might cost as much, or more than the PM cases with the discount. Apple's price for 125,000 cases is $1,1875,000 vs. $12,250,000 (based on $100 for each PM case and $90 for each "mini-tower" case for a total savings of $375,000 for the entire order which could go to increase profit margin or lower prices of each computer.
Comments
The silver-lining for Apple is that the $700 dollars saved buying the Wintel box will allow me to get an iBook G4.
So, if Apple can do such a good job within the limited confines of the AIO, imagine what they could so with the superior price performance possibilities of a small tower/cube-like machine.
Originally posted by Ompus
Besides portability, what is one advantage a notebook has over a desktop?
Its size and complexity. Even the big 10 and 12 pound laptops don't utterly dominate the desks they're put down on, and you can take it home, set it up yourself easily no matter who you are, and start using it.
Mobility is some part of the appeal, certainly, but the simple fact is that these days a laptop does everything that the bulk of the population requires of a computer in a tidy package that's easier to set up and use than a traditional PC, and smaller and quieter besides.
As for the secondary web-browsing machine, I'd just get the iBook G4 and pocket the $700. But then, after getting an LCD I wouldn't even consider a CRT. Not even one nineteen feet across.
It doesn't talk too much about it here but it is a thin LCD with a glossy surface on top...the screen quality is amazing, and replicated in sony's portables.
Good logic and good argument are respectable commodities, but once they fail their empirical tests, we have to reconsider them, though not discard them. Otherwise they become polemics of no greater value than that which they seek to discard.
I'll 2nd that.
If Apple can sell 300K worth of towers. I'm sure they should be selling 600K plus worth of iMac2 or eMacs. But they aren't.
PC towers offer flexibility. Power and cheapness.
We know the benefits of Apple's strengths. But they won't be able to put their case unless they can offer more affordable and flexible desktops.
All the schools I know have pizza boxes or towers. Same at colleges. (I know of one college that has eMacs.)
Two lines of AIOs that are essentially the same is a fundamental flaw in Apple's desktop strategy.
Apple should, in my opinion, drop one of the AIO lines and provide a mini-tower that covers the £495 to £1K mark.
Apple's products are insane. Insanely expensive to alot of customers. Premium on the box then you have to buy a monitor for anything from £200-£1300. And I'm wondering why Apple aint experiencing growth. And if you buy one of their AIOs (because there aint a cheap headless whatever under £998 (still pricey in the UK, folks...) then you have to throw out a perfectly good 21inch D2 monitor (hello Apple!) Then you get into switching software in the hundreds to thousands...(and we wonder why 'Switch' campaign didn't create a seismic shift in fortune for Apple?)
PC land may, like Apple, may be selling 'more' laptops. But the amount of towers sold by Dell, HP or Compaq still dwarfs the total of what Apple spits out a quarter.
I see cheap white plastic towers mimicking the white acrylic of Apple's iMac/iBook designs. They don't look as bad as the old beige designs. And you get a LCD monitor to match. From £600-£995. With 'superdrives', upgradeable graphics slots(!) yadda, yadda... Deja Vu?
And those Pentium 4/Athlons don't melt the plastic.
There's nothing stopping Apple sticking single G5s in white acrylic mini-tower/cube/whatevers and bury the AIO(?) for good. (Personally, I think a cheap mini-tower can co-exist. They do in PC land...choice and all that...)
Towers are what sell most. Everyone I know has a tower. A PC tower, heh. It's common sense.
Unless, 'you work for Apple'.
Lemon Bon Bon
So, if Apple can do such a good job within the limited confines of the AIO, imagine what they could so with the superior price performance possibilities of a small tower/cube-like machine.
I think that's what I was really trying to say.
Lemon Bon Bon
Smaller foot print = higher price.
Originally posted by Matsu
No, they do not cost more untill you start adding killer graphics and secondary audio, and overkill overclocking/cooling systems. There are good SFF boards with good (nVidia nForce) integrated graphics and multichannel audio and complete I/O (USB2 and FW400 plus standard A/V) There is literally nothing else to buy and the systems are fast. If you compare to a budget PC, sure tey cost more, but no one here is arguing that Apple needs to make a 500 USD budget machine.
You will find better normal form factor boards at lower prices then the small form factor ones.
I was thinking about building a SFF computer using a shuttle xpc case and motherboard, but it came out a few hundred dollars MORE then building a normal form factor computer.
On the PC side, the computer manufactures charge more for mini-towers, and for build it yourself types the components cost more. So once again, why do people think a SFF powermac would be cheaper the full sized ones? It just does not make sense.
Of course, even is something does not make sense from a manufacturing stand point, it does not mean that it won't happen. Sometimes marketing concerns will override the logic of manufacturing.
apple needs to build boxes with more of the goodies that professionals want.
they dont need to try and compete with dell for the cheapest box.
sheer lunacy.
for instance.
what if apple built a box with fw1600 in it,or fiber channel,or a breakout box?
what,god forbid,if apple built a genuine slot moster like the 9600?
what if they put 4 processors in a box?
this is what people want.
some anyways.
It doesn't have to implement PCI -> cheaper.
It relies on integrated ASICs rather than PCI cards for features -> cheaper.
It relies on an AGP chipset rather than an AGP slot + card -> cheaper.
The power supply can be sized exactly to fit the fixed requirements of the computer and monitor (and it doesn't have to power PCI) -> cheaper.
The whole thing is assembled in one package with extremely high automation -> cheaper to make, cheaper to ship, easier to inventory.
There are no total cost savings associated with a separate box, especially once you add PCI or AGP expansion options. In fact, I'd expect the additional costs of building a low-price minitower from the starting base of an eMac to more or less cancel out the (extremely low) cost of the CRT. If all you did was stick the existing eMac motherboard in a little box with a bigger power supply (not optional) you might be able to price it $50 cheaper, but only by shaving off features like the speakers.
The reason it's possible to build a perfectly adequate machine for very little on the PC side has to do with the economies of scale they enjoy: Their market is 30x larger than ours, so they can absorb the relative inefficiencies of an essentially modular architecture (but even on the PC low end, you see a fair amount of integration now).
For Apple to offer a lean and mean machine, they basically need to go AIO. (I think the main reason that this doesn't work on the PC side has to do with the ridiculous amount of heat spewed by their CPUs of choice - a Centrino-based AIO, now, that could go somewhere. The first PC maker to shoot for that target and hit it just might usher in a new era on that side of the fence.)
Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon
Towers are what sell most. Everyone I know has a tower. A PC tower, heh. It's common sense.
That may be, but I hate towers. Wires everywhere, and no good place to put the darned thing! Since getting a PowerBook for home and an iMac 2 (as you call them) for my office desk, I never want a tower, a cube or whatever again. Just my 2¢.
That may be, but I hate towers
A shame you don't like towers. I grant, alot do look ugly on the pc side and noisy (got an Athlon right here that proves that...). But the G5 is a work of art.
Although I'm critical of Apple's AIO 'ONLY' strategy for consumer desktops, I don't 'hate' them. I just think they need to make their offerings more diverse to give consumers more choice.
Lose the monitor from the eMac and you have a cheaper product. A hundred quid may mean something to a UK buyer. A student. A small business. Somebody.
Towers don't have to be ugly. Look at the G5. Look at the 'mini-tower'
But having two consumer lines that offer the same thing, differentiated only by a chrome arm and an LCD monitor? (And a mild spec bump here or there?)
Anybody can use all the lame logic in the world...but Apple's still got two identical products that are hampering their efforts in my opinion.
This is Apple who made the G5. A work of Art.
I can't believe they couldn't do the same for a 'consumer' tower.
Before Apple made their laptops, the iPod and the G5 tower...the Cube, the iMac2...I wouldn't have thought such products possible.
Apple still aint perfect. And their consumer desktops are the weak spot. They should be selling way more. I believe they could do this if they give the Apple (and PC) consumer a choice to use what monitor they want. A choice to upgrade the graphics...if they want. Doesn't have to be a lot...but a little more expandability would be nice. Apple don't have to be dollar for dollar as cheap as Dell. But they need to get closer and THEN let the value added extras do the talking. 'Closer' is a piece of string. You can argue about its length all day. I don't think Apple is there yet...
Is there a need for a 'new' prosumer line. I don't like the thread title. I think there are genuine holes in Apple's line-up. Drop single G5 towers underneath the 'all dual' G5 line and you've got the pro' and prosumer tower market between 1K-2K sewn up.
Make an 'iBook' equivalent for the consumer tower to cover the £495-999 market. I think they'd sell by the truck load. (I don't think this necessarily rules out iMac3 and redesigned eMacs which can be complimentary products to Apple's line.) But it would be interesting to see which sold more...
I guess we won't know 'who's right' until Apple actually do it, eh?
Lemon Bon Bon
Gosh.
If they did that? Single G5? I'd be there. I would also love to see it in iBook enamel white.
It would make an ace consumer tower. A real answer to the PC Shuttle!!!
Bet it would look gor-geous..!
I think Apple would shift shed loads...
Lemon Bon Bon
Originally posted by Amorph
Any "prosumer" model runs into a fairly serious question: What justifies the lower price?
The "prosumer" market is actually two categories: What I call the "broke power user" market, which consists of people (many of them students) trying to get professional work out of consumer goods, and the "loaded consumer" market, which consists of people blowing untold amounts of money on machines that essentially send and receive email and browse the web.
There is also photo/video effects shops that like to save money by populating the studio with lower cost "assistant" workstations. Also, the market is showing that basic video editing and photo manipulation are becoming as important as web and email.
Personally, I'd love to see a divide in the PowerMac line, with the lower end machines being smaller, with slower dual G5s, and just one PCI slot. The upper-end would then have the faster CPUs, and four internal SATA "slots."
Lemon Bon Bon
Say each PM case costs $100 in volume of 100,000. If they increase the volumen to 125,000 then they might be able to negotiate a 5% or $5 discount for each case, and save the cost of designing a new one, which due to lower volume might cost as much, or more than the PM cases with the discount. Apple's price for 125,000 cases is $1,1875,000 vs. $12,250,000 (based on $100 for each PM case and $90 for each "mini-tower" case for a total savings of $375,000 for the entire order which could go to increase profit margin or lower prices of each computer.