How do you sell an eMac - below Steve's stated standard already, in that it has a CRT - without lowering Apple's standards even further?
Apple has built a value-added platform, and it helps Apple as much as it helps their customers. It is vital, from a software planning and development point of view, to know that you can count on FireWire being there, and Ethernet, and various other technologies - not only that, but specific implementations of those technologies. That makes planning, designing, implementing, testing and QA all much easier. From a consumer point of view, an eMac can do almost everything Apple advertises except burn DVDs. There are no second-class citizens in the Mac lineup: A Mac is a Mac, and they all share a wide set of essential qualities and capabiltiies.
In a very real sense, a stripped down machine isn't a Mac.
That doesn't mean Apple shouldn't make it, however. They're already fielding another platform: iPod. There have been murmurs in other threads about a QuickTime-based device. Now, if you think about the use of the machine described in the top of the thread - "email, internet, light word processing" - you don't need a PC. In fact, from a design point of view, the idea of buying a tower and a separate monitor and plugging everything in just to do that is profoundly silly. There are phones that can do that now. They're not ideally suited to the task, but they can do it. Hell, pagers can do email. Pagers!
If a phone can do these things, in terms of technical capability, then these applications have moved from the personal computer space to the appliance/accessory space, and perhaps they are best served by an accessory. It won't be a Mac, because that means a full-featured and highly integrated personal computer. It will be small and suited for the tasks required of it. It can be priced around the same price as the Lindows machines and low-end PCs and succeed there. It would have to be able to stand alone, unlike iPod, but of course it would sync seamlessly with a Mac.
I think this is eminently doable, and the time is right. The idea that light use should require a full, desk-hogging PC and GHz anything besides wireless is flatly absurd.
I believe that people would see such a small device as a toy, that is why they do the little things on a big machine. Plus, their is also that, "if I want to venture into other computing things I can" mentallity to a lot of people.
There is a lot of smack talked about the eMac, but quite frankly, it is an excellent computer for the money.
Sure, us armchair product pricing experts can throw out any price we imagine; $100 iPod Mini, $500 computer, but we haven't a clue what it takes to run a computer factory... or engineering, or any of the thousands of things it takes to produce products.
Hell, I'd like to have a $10,000 Porsche, but it ain't going to happen... unless you recognize the original VW bug as a Porsche design
supposedly computer prices are inching up and up now over the course of time... I think the days of a super cheap computer are numbered... what you all need to consider is dell doesn't sell that many cheap computers. They mainly sell to 800+ market and out of those really 1000+ its just stuff for them to throw out to the masses for people to even consider their other computers as an option...
"hell if they are going to sell a computer for 399, I wonder what they'd offer for a better computer?"
unfortunately, you've fallen under a particularly evil, and insidious spell of misdirection...
why do most people buy computers (personal, as in, 'for the home', because that's what we're talking about)? I'll make it easy for you, it'll be multiple choice.
For one of the following five reasons:
1) To "have the in-ter-net" (includes email, because so many people don't understand the seperation of the two, thanks to A-hole-L).
So you are willing to give up reasonable performance when your browser is loaded down with Javascript and Jave applications? With the spread of broad band do you want your Mac to be limiting the interactive nature of some of the web sites out there? Do you ever have another app running at the same time?
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2) To write (aka 'use Word', general Office work).
Well here is a quick sell for jsut about any PC on the market at the moment. Start up word on the PC right next to a Mac and see how responsive things are. Granted the PC will be slowed down to a crawl 3 month after leaving the store due virus checkers, spyware and other crap. The point remains that the iMac will be precieved as being very slow.
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3) To appease their children (pirate music, IM, some amount of games, etc).
4) All of the above.
5) Two of the above.
I'd bet that a lot of people on these boards would argue with me, possibly even take offense. But We, us godly ones, are the few. We've been so far removed, either be choice or by evolution, that we often have trouble recognizing the herd of our ancestors behind us.
Yeah I take offense. Please don't compare me our any other mortal to god! I'm not by any means religous but I don't have a superiority complex either. You underestimate just how much productivity some PC users get out of their machines. It is not a question of knowing the hardware nor the OS, it is a question of taking a software package and using it as a tool. Many people use these tools to the point of saturating their PC's, that doesn't imply though that they are geeks by any stretch of the imagination.
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So what? Most consumers will NEVER push an iMac (with it's "pathetic" G4 @ 1.25GHz) to its limit. In fact, most consumers would be so much better served in their desired uses, as well as their yet undiscovered uses, by an iMac than any "PC". The simple truth is that through superior design (both form and function) an Apple Macintosh frees the user to attain computer ease, without having to deal with computereeze.
This is completely wrong! The whole reason that the IMac has such a problem in the market place right now is that people consider it to be to slow. It is way to slow to paly games. It is way to slow for a MS Office power user.
There is no ease in a slow computer. It is a major source of frustration.
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Even my father, an alum of WANG, DEC, NEC, Intel, PictureTel, etc... can't keep up with the constant security patches, Ad-Ware, virus threats, and instability of a nice new PC with the "insecure by default" Windows XP Professional. Do you think he's smiling, counting the $400-$500 he saved in not buying a Mac?
I neve said the MS world is a bowl of cherries. In fact that is one of the reasons I make use of Linux. But you know what one of the reasons that Apple doesn't get hit with every know virus is that there is little pay off for the virus writers due to the lack of targetable machines. MacOS/X is not perfect with respect to security. It is certianly better than the latest and greatest from MS but do not underestimate potetnila vulnerbilities.
Guys its nto an issue of clock frequency per say, it is an issue of performance. To not update a machine such as the Imac for over a year is pathetic. What is even more worriesome is that when that IMac was put on the market a year ago it was out dated the day it went on sale.
Now I can understand to a limited extent the Motorola issue but Apple could have done a little more for these machines.
What Apple needs to gain credibility in the consumer market is a machine that doubles performance and is well under $750 dollars. This is a machine that has to ship with atleast 512Meg of memory and a G4 or 970 class procesor running at 2GHz. The goal being to double or better the machines performance. To ship anything less in todays market place is to kill the product before it even leaves the door. Apple neeeds to overcome the image of it has of selling over priced useless hardware. The G5 Towers are a good start as are the new XServes, now Apple needs a consumer machine that people will want to buy.
Look at it this way guys, you all have had a chance to read the sunday papers. There you should have seen the the weekly adds from the "discount retailers". Taking those flier into account somebody point out to me how Apple can justify the prices it has on its consumer hardware. For under six hundred dollar you can walk out of a store with a complete PC system. I'm not asking Apple to deliver that type of system, all I'm asking for is a tower/cube/brick in that price range that has reasonable performance. The printer and the monitor don't need to be included.
You know, it doesn't matter if the average user will ever use 1/2 the power that a G4 has at 1.25 Ghz because the marketing people long ago turned clock frequency into a tool to sell computers. Even if the consumer could care less the salesmen will use it to sell the computer that they want to sell the consumer, and the consumer will listen because the salesman will say it is a better value. With the iMac's at less than half the speed of competitively priced systems (CompUSA has a 3Gzh PIV w/15"LCD in the paper today for $1249.91) it is not hard to convince a non-Mac user to go with another system. The only thing the iMac has going for it is design, and that isn't keeping isn't sales numbers where they should be. The iMac, as it stands today, should be starting out around $799.
What sells the faster computers is the software that demands all of the CPU's resources. The IMac and its G4 implementation is frankly a dog when it comes to driving the more demanding software.
As to that P4 I willing to bet that it was equiped with a reasonable amount of memory also.
Well here is a quick sell for jsut about any PC on the market at the moment. Start up word on the PC right next to a Mac and see how responsive things are. Granted the PC will be slowed down to a crawl 3 month after leaving the store due virus checkers, spyware and other crap. The point remains that the iMac will be precieved as being very slow.
Are you trying to say you can judge the performance of a computer by using Microsoft Word? Really?
First off, let's be clear: Apple's market share will never be a *big* number, no matter what they do -- they are trying to compete with the sales of a half dozen or more significant hardware manufactures and one giant software manufacturer who often times doesn't play by the rules. If they loaded Macs up with software and gave them away for free there would still be a limit on how much their market share would increase for the years to come...
Ain't it the truth! Windows is the only thing most will ever try, no matter what. Go figure.
The eMac and the Imac where all excellent computers at one time that I will freely admit. But the world does not stand still and demands from users increase as that world turns. The only time it would be reasonable to recomend a eMac is when there is a requirement for an all in one. The machine is otherwise dated and not a good place to be investing ones money. It will not be a machine that will easly run the latest and greatest software package next year. In fact it has trouble with some of the applications people would want to run on the machine today.
Well I think I have more of a clue as to what is possible than the brand consultant that has such high regard for VW. First off; the computers are being built in a place where labor costs are almost nill. Second; I know how much it costs me to have the local computer shop put together a PC, which by the way will use all the same parts as a Mac except for the main board and the CPU. We all know very well that Apple as a large manufacture is getting far better pricing on its component than the local computer store. I also do business with a number of electronics suppliers on a reasonably consistant basis, so I have a good idea of what electronic hardware costs in lower volumns.
I'm not asking for the world or all the capabilities of the G5 Towers. All I want is a box that will hook up to any standard flat panel and a printer of my choice. There is no requirement for PCI slots or other expansion except for possilbly a slot for a second disk drive. All we are talking about is a brick with a fast processor, USB, Firewire, SATA and networking ports. Add to that a slot for a video card. If Apple and IBM can't do this as a SOC then they certainly should be able to do it as a two chip implementation.
It is a new world at 90nm, things that where impossilbe last year are now the new frontier. It really isn't even fair to compare computer manufacture with the manufacture of other hard goods. No other industry has ability to shrink their hardware and at the same time increase performance to the extent that the computer industry can. You have to realize that IBM once had production plants as big as those of GM just to manufacture mainframes, just about all of the PPC's outclass the capabilities of the machines that came out of those old factories. The industry hasn't hit the wall yet, in fact we are at the stage of having another level of integration possible.
Dave
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Originally posted by FormatC2
There is a lot of smack talked about the eMac, but quite frankly, it is an excellent computer for the money.
Sure, us armchair product pricing experts can throw out any price we imagine; $100 iPod Mini, $500 computer, but we haven't a clue what it takes to run a computer factory... or engineering, or any of the thousands of things it takes to produce products.
Hell, I'd like to have a $10,000 Porsche, but it ain't going to happen... unless you recognize the original VW bug as a Porsche design
I actually think the entry level eMac is pretty good value.
The extra cash for a super drive isnt so good, I saw Sony dvd writers at comp usa the other night for 170. They were +/- as well.
They real thing here, is that people understand what it means to buy an up gradable machine.
Im not saying they use it, most people dont, but they understand. It is another feature on their check list. Additionally, most people I know have a monitor that survives at least two machines, if not more. For some reason people struggle on with crap monitors stuck on top of good hardware. They would be better investing in a better monitor. Anyway, people know that in the future their machine will be obsolete, and feel comforted that they can carry some hardware over, or upgrade.
I think that leaves the eMac as a psychological loser. Its not a worse machine, or worse value for money.
Interestingly, Apple does well in the notebook market, why? Because their machines match the features of the competition, for similar prices. Upgrades arent an issue. Most people dont know what a pc-card is ( how do they know what desktop expansion is then ? ). They feel that Apple notebooks dont short change them in anyway.
Unfortunately, Apple has no machine for me. Even paying for an eMac would be tight right now, the fact that I would have to replace it completely in a year or less to get a better machine really puts me off investing now. I will stick with my old iBook, and save for whatever it is that Apple has coming up.
If you are a user of Word and it is importnat ot your operation than yes that is how the machine will be judged. But before we get into an argument about that reality, do realize that MS word is not well done with respect to the Mac.
The same approach would be taken buy someone using a CAD application or a custome piece of modeling software. If both machines support the same app then it is reasonable to compare the performance of the apps.
The problem isn't just with MS Word, many programs simply do not run wel on Apple hardware. Part of that is the programmers and the porting efforts involved. But alot of the problems are hardware related. It is not something that can be denied even though Apple users will try to do so.
In the context of Apples "low cost" line, those machines do not perform well against i86 machines in a similar price range running the same apps. This is not a surprise to anyone I hope. And yes there are exceptions.
Thanks
Dave
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Originally posted by iDave
Are you trying to say you can judge the performance of a computer by using Microsoft Word? Really?
lots of good stuff in this thread (and lots of stuff that's been repeated on the mac web for years now ... :-). i just wanted to highlight 2 comments from earlier posts.
why do most people buy computers (personal, as in, 'for the home', because that's what we're talking about)? I'll make it easy for you, it'll be multiple choice.
For one of the following five reasons:
1) To "have the in-ter-net" (includes email, because so many people don't understand the seperation of the two, thanks to A-hole-L).
2) To write (aka 'use Word', general Office work).
3) To appease their children (pirate music, IM, some amount of games, etc).
well, the real pickle apple's got itself into with consumer hardware is the success of the "digital hub" strategy. now everyone wants to be able to burn DVDs, work with iMovie, import all those 100's of photos into iPhoto, etc., etc. five years ago, email and word were enough - not anymore. my folks are looking to get a new mac in the next year or so. and i'm really unsure what to recommend in the current lineup that won't feel dog slow with these type of applications.
In fact, from a design point of view, the idea of buying a tower and a separate monitor and plugging everything in just to do that is profoundly silly. There are phones that can do that now. They're not ideally suited to the task, but they can do it. Hell, pagers can do email. Pagers!
this is an excellent point, and probably at the heart of the boom in laptop sales over the past 2 years (and also a result of the cell phone revolution). bringing it back to my parents example - they have an imac now. but even though they pay almost no attention at all to tech news, they understand that they can get a DVD-burning laptop now, and combined with Airport they do anything on the computer that they want to ... ANYWHERE. this is a big deal for everyday consumers, and represents a huge leap in everyday utility.
finally, it needs to be said every once in a while here. these issues are not being ignored by apple. i am sure that they're trying to find the sweet spot between power and price for the consumer line. don't you think they know how slow a 1.25 GHz computer sounds to the average consumer ? fortunately for all of us, the IBM partnership should provide them with lots more options for their products across the board - right now, and long into the future.
this is an excellent point, and probably at the heart of the boom in laptop sales over the past 2 years (and also a result of the cell phone revolution).
Exactly what I was getting at. The desktop is dying, because it's overlarge, overcomplicated and immobile when everything else is becoming portable and self-contained and miniaturized. It's an artifact of a vanishing era, at least in the consumer space.
One thing that struck me: Consumers went right from 15" monitors on desktops to... 15" monitors. In laptops, of course. Of course, no-one will buy a desktop with a 15" monitor anymore (which is just one more ding against the current line of iMacs), but it still seems to be a sweet spot with people. It's large enough to seem roomy, but not too large. And that's a point that I think a lot of power users and computerphiles miss: People who don't care about computers that much don't like them to take over, actually or visually. A laptop with a 15" screen is a nice compromise between spaciousness and manageability.
I think it remains to be seen whether people who just want to do "email and internet and a few other things" (something I hear a lot these days) really are interested in a machine that's capable of much more. I think the increasing chorus that wish represents is a response to the increasing complexity of PCs, and thus their increasing inability to efficiently and intuitively do what most people want them to do. I'm willing to bet that a little appliance would take care of a lot of people - and of course, if they wanted a fully featured machine, well, the appliance just happens to work really, really well with a Mac. And then you still have the appliance for when you just want to do a little surfing and emailing.
Of course, no-one will buy a desktop with a 15" monitor anymore (which is just one more ding against the current line of iMacs), but it still seems to be a sweet spot with people.
I must respectfully disagree with that particular point, Amorph. There definitely are people who are satisfied with 15" desktop screens. Heck, there are people who really don't care about the size of the screen, nor the quality, for that matter. I've seen people setup their new bargain basement PCs with new, pathetic 14" monitors, and I've seen contended people use horrendously low refresh rate 15" LCDs. (When I say horrendously low, I mean monitors that have such poor refresh rates I can see the horizontal lines when I look at them in my peripheral vision.) If people are satisfied with 15" laptops, then it's logical that a certain segment of users will find nothing wrong with that size screen on the desktop. Flipping through the channels, I saw the home shopping network pair a terrifically overpriced VAIO with a 15" LCD. So there are definitely people out there prepared to use that on their desktops.
The truth is, if the iMac 15" were decently priced, I myself would pick one up. These aren't bad machines after all. The really strange thing about the iMac's price structure is that its low-end is more expensive than the midrange iBook! At the very least, the low-end iMac should be less expensive than the equivalently featured iBook. There always used to be a portability price premium, but the iMac defies that venerable trend. If it's more expensive to produce a 15" iMac as compared to a 14" iBook, then there's definitely a deficiency somewhere. I can only imagine that the articulated arm is the culprit, as others have often suggested. It also seems that Apple has forgotten what the iMac is supposed to be. The iBook serves the entry level market better than it did before - it has actually gotten cheaper. The iMac, on the other hand, has been made into something that it's not - a midrange machine. (If Apple was hoping to see appreciably improved iMac sales figures due to the iMac 20", the company really has to go into drug rehabilitation.) Because of the iMac's deficiency, Apple is relying upon the eMac to serve the market the iMac was originally introduced for. Hopefully it won't take Apple too many quarters more to realize the iMac needs substantive change.
It also seems that Apple has forgotten what the iMac is supposed to be.
No kidding!
Big Mac, I enjoyed your post. Calling it as it is. Weird how the entry iBook is just a little more expensive than the entry eMac. What with the eMac supposedly being the edu' machine. No wonder Apple is selling more iBooks than iMacs, the iBook offers way more value. Not surprsingly Apple gets those large iBook edu' contracts...
Two iBook models below the entry iMac 2. Er. Strange.
It's a pity Apple can't get a similar value proposition going for its Consumer desktop Macs.
Horrible car analogies aside, I find this debate pretty intriguing. As long as we?re all offering opinions, I?ll take a swag at it.
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Messiahtosh wrote:
?Apple has a lot of highly paid people working for them that study the market and they know all of this a lot better than we do.?
These would be the same highly-paid individuals who created, marketed, and saw the demise of the Macintosh Cube?
These would be the same highly-paid individuals who (through careful analysis and planning) have seen Apple?s overall market share SHRINK in recent years?
Well, at least they?re highly-paid.
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It is (if you dont know) very hard to get a job at Apple. The competition for a job there is very intense, if you have ever looked at the educational backgrounds of their execs, it is intimidating. Harvard MBA's, Stanford, Carneggie Mellon, UCLA, USC, Michigan, Princeton, etc.
It is also very hard to get a job at Motorola. They won?t even speak to you unless you have at least a 3.7 GPA in the Engineering field out of college.
All of that discretion didn?t seem to help them when they closed 3 Motorola plants in Arizona, though.
I?m not trying to single you out, Messiahtosh, but you seem to be operating on the premise that ?educated? equates to ?successful?. It is somewhat of a historical irony, then, that some of the most successful computer industries have been started by, and continue to be successful solely because certain CEOs did NOT finish college.
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Messiah wrote:
?This begs the question, why does Apple have such a small market share?
?Has anybody ever stopped to consider that it's intentional??
Actually, I used to think that Apple was ?small by design?. That is, until Steve jobs proclaimed that greater market share is what Apple Computer was trying to achieve.
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roverone wrote:
?First off, let's be clear: Apple's market share will never be a *big* number, no matter what they do.?
Well, NEVER is a mightly long time.
Even Bill Gates has realized the error of saying ?never?. (?Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM?)
Seems to me that there are MANY successful companies who (at one time or another) were small contenders in the market. History seems to indicate that the management of said companies used a VERY AGGRESSIVE and sometimes SLIGHTLY ILLEGAL business plan to become number one in their respective markets.
Though it may not be honorable, it certainly is POSSIBLE for Apple Computer to draw upon the experiences of other companies in the computer industry to better their market share.
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Amorph wrote:
How do you sell an eMac - below Steve's stated standard already, in that it has a CRT - without lowering Apple's standards even further?
Don?t mean to be rude, but what EXACTLY is an Apple Standard?
Because Apple?s GUI (OSX) doesn?t obey all of the Human Interface Standards.
And Apple?s hardware has had NUMEROUS technological, performance, and cosmetic problems over the years. MacFixIt is a testament to some of them.
So, when we speak of Apple compromising quality, I?m inclined to wonder WHAT quality they?d be compromising.
My Armchair Quarterbacking
Folks, I don't have an MBA. I'm not smart enough to understand the inner-workings of running a successful computer company. And I'm most certainly NOT one of the people that Apple would consider taking advice from.
But I do know that a PC user isn't going to drop $800 for an Apple machine that does LESS than their $450 Dell machine. (Note that "LESS" implies that the user will have to re-invest in productivity and application software native to the MacOS).
Don?t mean to be rude, but what EXACTLY is an Apple Standard?
Because Apple?s GUI (OSX) doesn?t obey all of the Human Interface Standards.
And Apple?s hardware has had NUMEROUS technological, performance, and cosmetic problems over the years. MacFixIt is a testament to some of them.
You just answered your own question: If there was no Apple standard, you'd lose your basis of comparison here.
But I was speaking more in terms of a baseline functionality: Steve proclaimed the death of the CRT, setting the LCD as an Apple standard. The eMac doesn't measure up to that. FireWire, Ethernet, USB, USB 2, now AltiVec, AirPort and Bluetooth capability... that's the "Apple standard" I was referring to.
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So, when we speak of Apple compromising quality, I?m inclined to wonder WHAT quality they?d be compromising.
Consumer Reports just rated them #1 in reliability and support, again, and CR is not a particularly Mac-friendly publication. So, granting all the problems reported at MacFixIt and elsewhere, they're still holding themselves to a higher standard, and succeeding.
But that's a different argument. What I was arguing was that there's a certain Apple standard feature set for Macs, and any Apple machine that doesn't meet that minimum feature set is not going to be a Mac. It's not going to be able to do the things that Apple says Macs can do.
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But I do know that a PC user isn't going to drop $800 for an Apple machine that does LESS than their $450 Dell machine. (Note that "LESS" implies that the user will have to re-invest in productivity and application software native to the MacOS).
That depends on their experience with the $450 Dell.
"What I was arguing was that there's a certain Apple standard feature set for Macs, and any Apple machine that doesn't meet that minimum feature set is not going to be a Mac. It's not going to be able to do the things that Apple says Macs can do."
Ah, gotcha. The "feature set" makes more sense.
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"Consumer Reports just rated them #1 in reliability and support, again, and CR is not a particularly Mac-friendly publication. So, granting all the problems reported at MacFixIt and elsewhere, they're still holding themselves to a higher standard, and succeeding."
Well, I'm not disputing that Apple makes a very good product. Likewise, they do a decent job with support.
Unfortunately, I've been "burned" by Consumer Reports in the past, so I'm unlikely to take "their" word for it.
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But that's a different argument.
Agreed.
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That depends on their experience with the $450 Dell.
That's a good point. What makes the disgruntled Dell user switch to the Macintosh as opposed to staying with Windows on another vendor's hardware?
I'm not certain of the answer, but I'm fairly certain that most "switchers" will not be able to see many differences (aside from the cosmetic) when taking a 10-minute test drive in the corner of their local CompUSA.
It seems that a sure-fire way for a Windows user to appreciate the MacOS is to sit down and use the thing for a few days (perhaps a week). Of course, one must convince a Windows user to abandon all software and competetive pricing to purchase the Apple computer with the OS in the first place.
... What makes the disgruntled Dell user switch to the Macintosh as opposed to staying with Windows on another vendor's hardware?
It's ALL about the software! People will most likely be disgruntled with Windows itself and the attendant problems of using it. That is the pull, and Apple tried to capitalize on that dissatisfaction with the "switcher" ads. Unfortunately they failed to offer an inexpensive, yet competitive, product for those switchers to consider.
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... Of course, one must convince a Windows user to abandon all software and competetive pricing to purchase the Apple computer with the OS in the first place. Kind of "chicken-and-egg" if you ask me.
Most consumers in the "target audience" for the iMac and "switcher" campaign have few commercial grade software titles. These are not your Photoshop users. The stuff they have was bundled with their computer or bought from the bargain bins. This is what iLife is all about. For most people "abandoning all [Windows compatable] software" is their best and most rewarding move.
This same discussion, over and over, and that same stupid, broken car analogy. As always, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Apple is more concerned about profits than anything else. That is as it should be; they're a public corporation, and that's their responsibility to their shareholders.
However, for their long-term profitability (at least until they decide to abandon the Mac as primary revenue-generator) they must maintain a certain "critical mass" of marketshare. That is to say, they don't need 50%, but then they probably couldn't survive at .1% either. Their current consumer product line, with stagnating or decreasing sales, is not holding up its end of the bargain. It doesn't matter if they're nice machines or not. They're not selling enough; in my opinion they're not selling nearly enough.
To me, it's ridiculous to think that Apple can afford to (voluntarily or not) cherry-pick a progressively shrinking percentage of the market in order to maintain arbitrarily high margins. The long-term result of that approach is that Apple's market share shrinks until it eventually collapses. Macs are never going to be for everyone, but they can't be so exclusive that they become irrelevant.
But it's equally silly to think that Apple must have a machine that's twice the performance at half the price of their current models. It'd be nice, of course, but it's not necessary. 2 GHz G5 in a $500 machine? Get real. One day they may get to that level of competitiveness, but they don't need to blow their profit model to smithereens in one shot.
What they need is to address the fact that they have nothing whatsoever to appeal to a huge class of potential customers. Any price drops or performance increases (significant ones) would help. Any headless consumer machine would help, because lots of people want that, regardless of its relative merits vs. an all-in-one. It doesn't have to be dirt cheap and crappy, but, as with the eMac, if they need to make certain compromises than so be it.
Obviously Apple knows that their consumer desktop sales need to improve. But the fact that they've held the line for so long on pricing makes me wonder about their thinking. While they should never abandon profitability, they need to keep the Macs moving out the doors. If that means sacrificing a little short-term profitability in exchange for securing their long-term revenue stream, then IMHO they need to do that.
It's funny that a recent interview with Steve, he said how in the late 80's/early 90's Apple went for profits instead of market share, and it was a big mistake. It sure looks like that's what they're doing now.
But it's equally silly to think that Apple must have a machine that's twice the performance at half the price of their current models. It'd be nice, of course, but it's not necessary. 2 GHz G5 in a $500 machine? Get real. One day they may get to that level of competitiveness, but they don't need to blow their profit model to smithereens in one shot.
No, Apple doesn't need to do this today. However after 2 years of slow speed boosts that (once a year since the introduction of the iMac FP right?) that do not match Apple's historic, let alone the industry standard for timing of speed bumps in a given market make Apple's consumer level computers lagging sorely behind. Apple could probably match the speed bump they gave the PM's when the G5's were released, ~600 mhz, and gain alot of that competativeness back. That would get them up to the performance value that Apple originally brought us with the iMac as long as the PM's only get a 200 mhz bump at the low end.
That bieng said, even Apple has admitted that the iMac needs to start out at below $1000. Every day that Apple lets go by without adjusting their products to reflect this is a potential lost sale.
Comments
Originally posted by Amorph
How do you sell an eMac - below Steve's stated standard already, in that it has a CRT - without lowering Apple's standards even further?
Apple has built a value-added platform, and it helps Apple as much as it helps their customers. It is vital, from a software planning and development point of view, to know that you can count on FireWire being there, and Ethernet, and various other technologies - not only that, but specific implementations of those technologies. That makes planning, designing, implementing, testing and QA all much easier. From a consumer point of view, an eMac can do almost everything Apple advertises except burn DVDs. There are no second-class citizens in the Mac lineup: A Mac is a Mac, and they all share a wide set of essential qualities and capabiltiies.
In a very real sense, a stripped down machine isn't a Mac.
That doesn't mean Apple shouldn't make it, however. They're already fielding another platform: iPod. There have been murmurs in other threads about a QuickTime-based device. Now, if you think about the use of the machine described in the top of the thread - "email, internet, light word processing" - you don't need a PC. In fact, from a design point of view, the idea of buying a tower and a separate monitor and plugging everything in just to do that is profoundly silly. There are phones that can do that now. They're not ideally suited to the task, but they can do it. Hell, pagers can do email. Pagers!
If a phone can do these things, in terms of technical capability, then these applications have moved from the personal computer space to the appliance/accessory space, and perhaps they are best served by an accessory. It won't be a Mac, because that means a full-featured and highly integrated personal computer. It will be small and suited for the tasks required of it. It can be priced around the same price as the Lindows machines and low-end PCs and succeed there. It would have to be able to stand alone, unlike iPod, but of course it would sync seamlessly with a Mac.
I think this is eminently doable, and the time is right. The idea that light use should require a full, desk-hogging PC and GHz anything besides wireless is flatly absurd.
I believe that people would see such a small device as a toy, that is why they do the little things on a big machine. Plus, their is also that, "if I want to venture into other computing things I can" mentallity to a lot of people.
Sure, us armchair product pricing experts can throw out any price we imagine; $100 iPod Mini, $500 computer, but we haven't a clue what it takes to run a computer factory... or engineering, or any of the thousands of things it takes to produce products.
Hell, I'd like to have a $10,000 Porsche, but it ain't going to happen... unless you recognize the original VW bug as a Porsche design
"hell if they are going to sell a computer for 399, I wonder what they'd offer for a better computer?"
Originally posted by concentricity
Dave,
unfortunately, you've fallen under a particularly evil, and insidious spell of misdirection...
why do most people buy computers (personal, as in, 'for the home', because that's what we're talking about)? I'll make it easy for you, it'll be multiple choice.
For one of the following five reasons:
1) To "have the in-ter-net" (includes email, because so many people don't understand the seperation of the two, thanks to A-hole-L).
So you are willing to give up reasonable performance when your browser is loaded down with Javascript and Jave applications? With the spread of broad band do you want your Mac to be limiting the interactive nature of some of the web sites out there? Do you ever have another app running at the same time?
Quote:
2) To write (aka 'use Word', general Office work).
Well here is a quick sell for jsut about any PC on the market at the moment. Start up word on the PC right next to a Mac and see how responsive things are. Granted the PC will be slowed down to a crawl 3 month after leaving the store due virus checkers, spyware and other crap. The point remains that the iMac will be precieved as being very slow.
Quote:
3) To appease their children (pirate music, IM, some amount of games, etc).
4) All of the above.
5) Two of the above.
I'd bet that a lot of people on these boards would argue with me, possibly even take offense. But We, us godly ones, are the few. We've been so far removed, either be choice or by evolution, that we often have trouble recognizing the herd of our ancestors behind us.
Yeah I take offense. Please don't compare me our any other mortal to god! I'm not by any means religous but I don't have a superiority complex either. You underestimate just how much productivity some PC users get out of their machines. It is not a question of knowing the hardware nor the OS, it is a question of taking a software package and using it as a tool. Many people use these tools to the point of saturating their PC's, that doesn't imply though that they are geeks by any stretch of the imagination.
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So what? Most consumers will NEVER push an iMac (with it's "pathetic" G4 @ 1.25GHz) to its limit. In fact, most consumers would be so much better served in their desired uses, as well as their yet undiscovered uses, by an iMac than any "PC". The simple truth is that through superior design (both form and function) an Apple Macintosh frees the user to attain computer ease, without having to deal with computereeze.
This is completely wrong! The whole reason that the IMac has such a problem in the market place right now is that people consider it to be to slow. It is way to slow to paly games. It is way to slow for a MS Office power user.
There is no ease in a slow computer. It is a major source of frustration.
Quote:
Even my father, an alum of WANG, DEC, NEC, Intel, PictureTel, etc... can't keep up with the constant security patches, Ad-Ware, virus threats, and instability of a nice new PC with the "insecure by default" Windows XP Professional. Do you think he's smiling, counting the $400-$500 he saved in not buying a Mac?
I neve said the MS world is a bowl of cherries. In fact that is one of the reasons I make use of Linux. But you know what one of the reasons that Apple doesn't get hit with every know virus is that there is little pay off for the virus writers due to the lack of targetable machines. MacOS/X is not perfect with respect to security. It is certianly better than the latest and greatest from MS but do not underestimate potetnila vulnerbilities.
Quote:
Now I can understand to a limited extent the Motorola issue but Apple could have done a little more for these machines.
What Apple needs to gain credibility in the consumer market is a machine that doubles performance and is well under $750 dollars. This is a machine that has to ship with atleast 512Meg of memory and a G4 or 970 class procesor running at 2GHz. The goal being to double or better the machines performance. To ship anything less in todays market place is to kill the product before it even leaves the door. Apple neeeds to overcome the image of it has of selling over priced useless hardware. The G5 Towers are a good start as are the new XServes, now Apple needs a consumer machine that people will want to buy.
Look at it this way guys, you all have had a chance to read the sunday papers. There you should have seen the the weekly adds from the "discount retailers". Taking those flier into account somebody point out to me how Apple can justify the prices it has on its consumer hardware. For under six hundred dollar you can walk out of a store with a complete PC system. I'm not asking Apple to deliver that type of system, all I'm asking for is a tower/cube/brick in that price range that has reasonable performance. The printer and the monitor don't need to be included.
Originally posted by @homenow
You know, it doesn't matter if the average user will ever use 1/2 the power that a G4 has at 1.25 Ghz because the marketing people long ago turned clock frequency into a tool to sell computers. Even if the consumer could care less the salesmen will use it to sell the computer that they want to sell the consumer, and the consumer will listen because the salesman will say it is a better value. With the iMac's at less than half the speed of competitively priced systems (CompUSA has a 3Gzh PIV w/15"LCD in the paper today for $1249.91) it is not hard to convince a non-Mac user to go with another system. The only thing the iMac has going for it is design, and that isn't keeping isn't sales numbers where they should be. The iMac, as it stands today, should be starting out around $799.
What sells the faster computers is the software that demands all of the CPU's resources. The IMac and its G4 implementation is frankly a dog when it comes to driving the more demanding software.
As to that P4 I willing to bet that it was equiped with a reasonable amount of memory also.
Quote:
Originally posted by wizard69
Well here is a quick sell for jsut about any PC on the market at the moment. Start up word on the PC right next to a Mac and see how responsive things are. Granted the PC will be slowed down to a crawl 3 month after leaving the store due virus checkers, spyware and other crap. The point remains that the iMac will be precieved as being very slow.
Are you trying to say you can judge the performance of a computer by using Microsoft Word? Really?
Originally posted by roverone
First off, let's be clear: Apple's market share will never be a *big* number, no matter what they do -- they are trying to compete with the sales of a half dozen or more significant hardware manufactures and one giant software manufacturer who often times doesn't play by the rules. If they loaded Macs up with software and gave them away for free there would still be a limit on how much their market share would increase for the years to come...
Ain't it the truth! Windows is the only thing most will ever try, no matter what. Go figure.
Excellent post, by the way.
Well I think I have more of a clue as to what is possible than the brand consultant that has such high regard for VW. First off; the computers are being built in a place where labor costs are almost nill. Second; I know how much it costs me to have the local computer shop put together a PC, which by the way will use all the same parts as a Mac except for the main board and the CPU. We all know very well that Apple as a large manufacture is getting far better pricing on its component than the local computer store. I also do business with a number of electronics suppliers on a reasonably consistant basis, so I have a good idea of what electronic hardware costs in lower volumns.
I'm not asking for the world or all the capabilities of the G5 Towers. All I want is a box that will hook up to any standard flat panel and a printer of my choice. There is no requirement for PCI slots or other expansion except for possilbly a slot for a second disk drive. All we are talking about is a brick with a fast processor, USB, Firewire, SATA and networking ports. Add to that a slot for a video card. If Apple and IBM can't do this as a SOC then they certainly should be able to do it as a two chip implementation.
It is a new world at 90nm, things that where impossilbe last year are now the new frontier. It really isn't even fair to compare computer manufacture with the manufacture of other hard goods. No other industry has ability to shrink their hardware and at the same time increase performance to the extent that the computer industry can. You have to realize that IBM once had production plants as big as those of GM just to manufacture mainframes, just about all of the PPC's outclass the capabilities of the machines that came out of those old factories. The industry hasn't hit the wall yet, in fact we are at the stage of having another level of integration possible.
Dave
Originally posted by FormatC2
There is a lot of smack talked about the eMac, but quite frankly, it is an excellent computer for the money.
Sure, us armchair product pricing experts can throw out any price we imagine; $100 iPod Mini, $500 computer, but we haven't a clue what it takes to run a computer factory... or engineering, or any of the thousands of things it takes to produce products.
Hell, I'd like to have a $10,000 Porsche, but it ain't going to happen... unless you recognize the original VW bug as a Porsche design
The extra cash for a super drive isnt so good, I saw Sony dvd writers at comp usa the other night for 170. They were +/- as well.
They real thing here, is that people understand what it means to buy an up gradable machine.
Im not saying they use it, most people dont, but they understand. It is another feature on their check list. Additionally, most people I know have a monitor that survives at least two machines, if not more. For some reason people struggle on with crap monitors stuck on top of good hardware. They would be better investing in a better monitor. Anyway, people know that in the future their machine will be obsolete, and feel comforted that they can carry some hardware over, or upgrade.
I think that leaves the eMac as a psychological loser. Its not a worse machine, or worse value for money.
Interestingly, Apple does well in the notebook market, why? Because their machines match the features of the competition, for similar prices. Upgrades arent an issue. Most people dont know what a pc-card is ( how do they know what desktop expansion is then ? ). They feel that Apple notebooks dont short change them in anyway.
Unfortunately, Apple has no machine for me. Even paying for an eMac would be tight right now, the fact that I would have to replace it completely in a year or less to get a better machine really puts me off investing now. I will stick with my old iBook, and save for whatever it is that Apple has coming up.
The same approach would be taken buy someone using a CAD application or a custome piece of modeling software. If both machines support the same app then it is reasonable to compare the performance of the apps.
The problem isn't just with MS Word, many programs simply do not run wel on Apple hardware. Part of that is the programmers and the porting efforts involved. But alot of the problems are hardware related. It is not something that can be denied even though Apple users will try to do so.
In the context of Apples "low cost" line, those machines do not perform well against i86 machines in a similar price range running the same apps. This is not a surprise to anyone I hope. And yes there are exceptions.
Thanks
Dave
Originally posted by iDave
Are you trying to say you can judge the performance of a computer by using Microsoft Word? Really?
lots of good stuff in this thread (and lots of stuff that's been repeated on the mac web for years now ... :-). i just wanted to highlight 2 comments from earlier posts.
concentricity said:
__________________________________________________ ______________________
why do most people buy computers (personal, as in, 'for the home', because that's what we're talking about)? I'll make it easy for you, it'll be multiple choice.
For one of the following five reasons:
1) To "have the in-ter-net" (includes email, because so many people don't understand the seperation of the two, thanks to A-hole-L).
2) To write (aka 'use Word', general Office work).
3) To appease their children (pirate music, IM, some amount of games, etc).
4) All of the above.
5) Two of the above.
__________________________________________________ ______________________
well, the real pickle apple's got itself into with consumer hardware is the success of the "digital hub" strategy. now everyone wants to be able to burn DVDs, work with iMovie, import all those 100's of photos into iPhoto, etc., etc. five years ago, email and word were enough - not anymore. my folks are looking to get a new mac in the next year or so. and i'm really unsure what to recommend in the current lineup that won't feel dog slow with these type of applications.
and amorph said:
__________________________________________________ ______________________
In fact, from a design point of view, the idea of buying a tower and a separate monitor and plugging everything in just to do that is profoundly silly. There are phones that can do that now. They're not ideally suited to the task, but they can do it. Hell, pagers can do email. Pagers!
__________________________________________________ ______________________
this is an excellent point, and probably at the heart of the boom in laptop sales over the past 2 years (and also a result of the cell phone revolution). bringing it back to my parents example - they have an imac now. but even though they pay almost no attention at all to tech news, they understand that they can get a DVD-burning laptop now, and combined with Airport they do anything on the computer that they want to ... ANYWHERE. this is a big deal for everyday consumers, and represents a huge leap in everyday utility.
finally, it needs to be said every once in a while here. these issues are not being ignored by apple. i am sure that they're trying to find the sweet spot between power and price for the consumer line. don't you think they know how slow a 1.25 GHz computer sounds to the average consumer ? fortunately for all of us, the IBM partnership should provide them with lots more options for their products across the board - right now, and long into the future.
ok - back to lurking mode.
- matt
Originally posted by matty-o
this is an excellent point, and probably at the heart of the boom in laptop sales over the past 2 years (and also a result of the cell phone revolution).
Exactly what I was getting at. The desktop is dying, because it's overlarge, overcomplicated and immobile when everything else is becoming portable and self-contained and miniaturized. It's an artifact of a vanishing era, at least in the consumer space.
One thing that struck me: Consumers went right from 15" monitors on desktops to... 15" monitors. In laptops, of course. Of course, no-one will buy a desktop with a 15" monitor anymore (which is just one more ding against the current line of iMacs), but it still seems to be a sweet spot with people. It's large enough to seem roomy, but not too large. And that's a point that I think a lot of power users and computerphiles miss: People who don't care about computers that much don't like them to take over, actually or visually. A laptop with a 15" screen is a nice compromise between spaciousness and manageability.
I think it remains to be seen whether people who just want to do "email and internet and a few other things" (something I hear a lot these days) really are interested in a machine that's capable of much more. I think the increasing chorus that wish represents is a response to the increasing complexity of PCs, and thus their increasing inability to efficiently and intuitively do what most people want them to do. I'm willing to bet that a little appliance would take care of a lot of people - and of course, if they wanted a fully featured machine, well, the appliance just happens to work really, really well with a Mac. And then you still have the appliance for when you just want to do a little surfing and emailing.
Originally posted by Amorph
Of course, no-one will buy a desktop with a 15" monitor anymore (which is just one more ding against the current line of iMacs), but it still seems to be a sweet spot with people.
I must respectfully disagree with that particular point, Amorph. There definitely are people who are satisfied with 15" desktop screens. Heck, there are people who really don't care about the size of the screen, nor the quality, for that matter. I've seen people setup their new bargain basement PCs with new, pathetic 14" monitors, and I've seen contended people use horrendously low refresh rate 15" LCDs. (When I say horrendously low, I mean monitors that have such poor refresh rates I can see the horizontal lines when I look at them in my peripheral vision.) If people are satisfied with 15" laptops, then it's logical that a certain segment of users will find nothing wrong with that size screen on the desktop. Flipping through the channels, I saw the home shopping network pair a terrifically overpriced VAIO with a 15" LCD. So there are definitely people out there prepared to use that on their desktops.
The truth is, if the iMac 15" were decently priced, I myself would pick one up. These aren't bad machines after all. The really strange thing about the iMac's price structure is that its low-end is more expensive than the midrange iBook! At the very least, the low-end iMac should be less expensive than the equivalently featured iBook. There always used to be a portability price premium, but the iMac defies that venerable trend. If it's more expensive to produce a 15" iMac as compared to a 14" iBook, then there's definitely a deficiency somewhere. I can only imagine that the articulated arm is the culprit, as others have often suggested. It also seems that Apple has forgotten what the iMac is supposed to be. The iBook serves the entry level market better than it did before - it has actually gotten cheaper. The iMac, on the other hand, has been made into something that it's not - a midrange machine. (If Apple was hoping to see appreciably improved iMac sales figures due to the iMac 20", the company really has to go into drug rehabilitation.) Because of the iMac's deficiency, Apple is relying upon the eMac to serve the market the iMac was originally introduced for. Hopefully it won't take Apple too many quarters more to realize the iMac needs substantive change.
It also seems that Apple has forgotten what the iMac is supposed to be.
No kidding!
Big Mac, I enjoyed your post. Calling it as it is. Weird how the entry iBook is just a little more expensive than the entry eMac. What with the eMac supposedly being the edu' machine. No wonder Apple is selling more iBooks than iMacs, the iBook offers way more value. Not surprsingly Apple gets those large iBook edu' contracts...
Two iBook models below the entry iMac 2. Er. Strange.
It's a pity Apple can't get a similar value proposition going for its Consumer desktop Macs.
Something is wrong somewhere...
Lemon Bon Bon
Messiahtosh wrote:
?Apple has a lot of highly paid people working for them that study the market and they know all of this a lot better than we do.?
These would be the same highly-paid individuals who created, marketed, and saw the demise of the Macintosh Cube?
These would be the same highly-paid individuals who (through careful analysis and planning) have seen Apple?s overall market share SHRINK in recent years?
Well, at least they?re highly-paid.
It is (if you dont know) very hard to get a job at Apple. The competition for a job there is very intense, if you have ever looked at the educational backgrounds of their execs, it is intimidating. Harvard MBA's, Stanford, Carneggie Mellon, UCLA, USC, Michigan, Princeton, etc.
It is also very hard to get a job at Motorola. They won?t even speak to you unless you have at least a 3.7 GPA in the Engineering field out of college.
All of that discretion didn?t seem to help them when they closed 3 Motorola plants in Arizona, though.
I?m not trying to single you out, Messiahtosh, but you seem to be operating on the premise that ?educated? equates to ?successful?. It is somewhat of a historical irony, then, that some of the most successful computer industries have been started by, and continue to be successful solely because certain CEOs did NOT finish college.
Messiah wrote:
?This begs the question, why does Apple have such a small market share?
?Has anybody ever stopped to consider that it's intentional??
Actually, I used to think that Apple was ?small by design?. That is, until Steve jobs proclaimed that greater market share is what Apple Computer was trying to achieve.
roverone wrote:
?First off, let's be clear: Apple's market share will never be a *big* number, no matter what they do.?
Well, NEVER is a mightly long time.
Even Bill Gates has realized the error of saying ?never?. (?Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM?)
Seems to me that there are MANY successful companies who (at one time or another) were small contenders in the market. History seems to indicate that the management of said companies used a VERY AGGRESSIVE and sometimes SLIGHTLY ILLEGAL business plan to become number one in their respective markets.
Though it may not be honorable, it certainly is POSSIBLE for Apple Computer to draw upon the experiences of other companies in the computer industry to better their market share.
Amorph wrote:
How do you sell an eMac - below Steve's stated standard already, in that it has a CRT - without lowering Apple's standards even further?
Don?t mean to be rude, but what EXACTLY is an Apple Standard?
Because Apple?s GUI (OSX) doesn?t obey all of the Human Interface Standards.
And Apple?s hardware has had NUMEROUS technological, performance, and cosmetic problems over the years. MacFixIt is a testament to some of them.
So, when we speak of Apple compromising quality, I?m inclined to wonder WHAT quality they?d be compromising.
My Armchair Quarterbacking
Folks, I don't have an MBA. I'm not smart enough to understand the inner-workings of running a successful computer company. And I'm most certainly NOT one of the people that Apple would consider taking advice from.
But I do know that a PC user isn't going to drop $800 for an Apple machine that does LESS than their $450 Dell machine. (Note that "LESS" implies that the user will have to re-invest in productivity and application software native to the MacOS).
Respectfully,
-Antithesis
Originally posted by Antithesis
[snip lots of good points]
Don?t mean to be rude, but what EXACTLY is an Apple Standard?
Because Apple?s GUI (OSX) doesn?t obey all of the Human Interface Standards.
And Apple?s hardware has had NUMEROUS technological, performance, and cosmetic problems over the years. MacFixIt is a testament to some of them.
You just answered your own question: If there was no Apple standard, you'd lose your basis of comparison here.
But I was speaking more in terms of a baseline functionality: Steve proclaimed the death of the CRT, setting the LCD as an Apple standard. The eMac doesn't measure up to that. FireWire, Ethernet, USB, USB 2, now AltiVec, AirPort and Bluetooth capability... that's the "Apple standard" I was referring to.
So, when we speak of Apple compromising quality, I?m inclined to wonder WHAT quality they?d be compromising.
Consumer Reports just rated them #1 in reliability and support, again, and CR is not a particularly Mac-friendly publication. So, granting all the problems reported at MacFixIt and elsewhere, they're still holding themselves to a higher standard, and succeeding.
But that's a different argument. What I was arguing was that there's a certain Apple standard feature set for Macs, and any Apple machine that doesn't meet that minimum feature set is not going to be a Mac. It's not going to be able to do the things that Apple says Macs can do.
But I do know that a PC user isn't going to drop $800 for an Apple machine that does LESS than their $450 Dell machine. (Note that "LESS" implies that the user will have to re-invest in productivity and application software native to the MacOS).
That depends on their experience with the $450 Dell.
Originally posted by Amorph
"What I was arguing was that there's a certain Apple standard feature set for Macs, and any Apple machine that doesn't meet that minimum feature set is not going to be a Mac. It's not going to be able to do the things that Apple says Macs can do."
Ah, gotcha. The "feature set" makes more sense.
"Consumer Reports just rated them #1 in reliability and support, again, and CR is not a particularly Mac-friendly publication. So, granting all the problems reported at MacFixIt and elsewhere, they're still holding themselves to a higher standard, and succeeding."
Well, I'm not disputing that Apple makes a very good product. Likewise, they do a decent job with support.
Unfortunately, I've been "burned" by Consumer Reports in the past, so I'm unlikely to take "their" word for it.
But that's a different argument.
Agreed.
That depends on their experience with the $450 Dell.
That's a good point. What makes the disgruntled Dell user switch to the Macintosh as opposed to staying with Windows on another vendor's hardware?
I'm not certain of the answer, but I'm fairly certain that most "switchers" will not be able to see many differences (aside from the cosmetic) when taking a 10-minute test drive in the corner of their local CompUSA.
It seems that a sure-fire way for a Windows user to appreciate the MacOS is to sit down and use the thing for a few days (perhaps a week). Of course, one must convince a Windows user to abandon all software and competetive pricing to purchase the Apple computer with the OS in the first place.
Kind of "chicken-and-egg" if you ask me.
-Antithesis
Originally posted by Antithesis
... What makes the disgruntled Dell user switch to the Macintosh as opposed to staying with Windows on another vendor's hardware?
It's ALL about the software! People will most likely be disgruntled with Windows itself and the attendant problems of using it. That is the pull, and Apple tried to capitalize on that dissatisfaction with the "switcher" ads. Unfortunately they failed to offer an inexpensive, yet competitive, product for those switchers to consider.
Quote:
... Of course, one must convince a Windows user to abandon all software and competetive pricing to purchase the Apple computer with the OS in the first place. Kind of "chicken-and-egg" if you ask me.
Most consumers in the "target audience" for the iMac and "switcher" campaign have few commercial grade software titles. These are not your Photoshop users. The stuff they have was bundled with their computer or bought from the bargain bins. This is what iLife is all about. For most people "abandoning all [Windows compatable] software" is their best and most rewarding move.
Apple is more concerned about profits than anything else. That is as it should be; they're a public corporation, and that's their responsibility to their shareholders.
However, for their long-term profitability (at least until they decide to abandon the Mac as primary revenue-generator) they must maintain a certain "critical mass" of marketshare. That is to say, they don't need 50%, but then they probably couldn't survive at .1% either. Their current consumer product line, with stagnating or decreasing sales, is not holding up its end of the bargain. It doesn't matter if they're nice machines or not. They're not selling enough; in my opinion they're not selling nearly enough.
To me, it's ridiculous to think that Apple can afford to (voluntarily or not) cherry-pick a progressively shrinking percentage of the market in order to maintain arbitrarily high margins. The long-term result of that approach is that Apple's market share shrinks until it eventually collapses. Macs are never going to be for everyone, but they can't be so exclusive that they become irrelevant.
But it's equally silly to think that Apple must have a machine that's twice the performance at half the price of their current models. It'd be nice, of course, but it's not necessary. 2 GHz G5 in a $500 machine? Get real. One day they may get to that level of competitiveness, but they don't need to blow their profit model to smithereens in one shot.
What they need is to address the fact that they have nothing whatsoever to appeal to a huge class of potential customers. Any price drops or performance increases (significant ones) would help. Any headless consumer machine would help, because lots of people want that, regardless of its relative merits vs. an all-in-one. It doesn't have to be dirt cheap and crappy, but, as with the eMac, if they need to make certain compromises than so be it.
Obviously Apple knows that their consumer desktop sales need to improve. But the fact that they've held the line for so long on pricing makes me wonder about their thinking. While they should never abandon profitability, they need to keep the Macs moving out the doors. If that means sacrificing a little short-term profitability in exchange for securing their long-term revenue stream, then IMHO they need to do that.
It's funny that a recent interview with Steve, he said how in the late 80's/early 90's Apple went for profits instead of market share, and it was a big mistake. It sure looks like that's what they're doing now.
Originally posted by neilw
But it's equally silly to think that Apple must have a machine that's twice the performance at half the price of their current models. It'd be nice, of course, but it's not necessary. 2 GHz G5 in a $500 machine? Get real. One day they may get to that level of competitiveness, but they don't need to blow their profit model to smithereens in one shot.
No, Apple doesn't need to do this today. However after 2 years of slow speed boosts that (once a year since the introduction of the iMac FP right?) that do not match Apple's historic, let alone the industry standard for timing of speed bumps in a given market make Apple's consumer level computers lagging sorely behind. Apple could probably match the speed bump they gave the PM's when the G5's were released, ~600 mhz, and gain alot of that competativeness back. That would get them up to the performance value that Apple originally brought us with the iMac as long as the PM's only get a 200 mhz bump at the low end.
That bieng said, even Apple has admitted that the iMac needs to start out at below $1000. Every day that Apple lets go by without adjusting their products to reflect this is a potential lost sale.