Just thought I'd add, the argument Apple doesn't need to increase unit sales, is profitable and can continue it's present course is in direct contradiction to what Apple, themselves, have stated. Yes, Apple is profitable, but they have stated they want to increase market share, were not happy with the iMac sales volume and would like to meet the <$1000 price point.
Question is, "Do they truly believe this or was this just market speak for the benefit of investors?". I think they truly believe what was said and will do what they can about it, but introducing a monitorless consumer desktop won't be in their plans.
If Apple wants more software companies to develop for Mac, they have to increase sales.
Just thought I'd add, the argument Apple doesn't need to increase unit sales, is profitable and can continue it's present course is in direct contradiction to what Apple, themselves, have stated. Yes, Apple is profitable, but they have stated they want to increase market share, were not happy with the iMac sales volume and would like to meet the <$1000 price point.
Question is, "Do they truly believe this or was this just market speak for the benefit of investors?". I think they truly believe what was said and will do what they can about it, but introducing a monitorless consumer desktop won't be in their plans.
If Apple makes statements such as this and they do not deliver over a period of time, or more importantly they do just the oposite, such as raise prices after they have stated to investors that they need to reduce them to meet the market demands, then they run the risk of loosing investor confidence. Not only that, but then any future statments to investors about the future direction of the company will be doubted by investors. Statements such as this could also be used in court against Apple in lawsuits by investors that loose money in Apple's stock due to the price of Apple's stock dropping. Apple's CEO, and other company officers might also be opening themselves up to fraud charges if it could be proved that they made these statments to investors knowing full well that they were never going to deliver on them.
Remember that Apple is a publicly traded company, and no matter how "godly" Steve appears to be, he still has to answer to stock holders, and there are some big investment companies (like mutual funds and retirement funds) that hold Apple stock to make money off of it not becouse they like Apple computers or have some emotional attatchment to the company.
I find it hard to believe that I didn't see this ealier. I'm sure most of you guys did though. Not only is the iMac an AIO, but so is the eMac.
Now that is obvious.
But Apple has 2 (TWO) consumer lines. Why does Apple have 2 Consumer Desktops, which both happen to be AIO. 2 Consumer lines. Both under spec'd and over priced.
1 Pro line, that is worth the money. Why not 1 consumer line? Or why not 2 pro lines?
When the iMac g4 came out, it was no longer a consumer desktop. They realized this very quickly and introduced the eMac, instead of admiting that the iMac was no longer their consumer desktop.
But they kept pushing it and pushing it.
So, I think with the new iMac they have to fix the problems. under spec'd and too expensive.
I still can't get over that Apple has 2 consumer desktops and both are AIO. There simply is NO CHOICE in consumer desktops from Apple. You get CRT AIO or LCD AIO.
Apple is selling less the 15-17-20" iMac models, and fewer of them too. haha, can I say I intended to make funny?
In any case, iMac sales are at an all time low, and I believe that total AIO unit sales are at that same low as well.
Total quaterly sales haven't gone up either. What is happening is movement, reorganization, within Apple's sales. Consumers moving to the few better cheaper deals in the mac line, deciding first that they want to stay with mac, and then figuring which model entails the least comprimise or best cost option. People are not crossing the line from the PC aisle to the mac aisle.
Where are the new mac users? Where are the switchers? Where's the real 999 machine?
One could argue that the introduction of Apple stores around the world and an aggressive "Switcher" ad campaign would offset that, but it didn't. There's many reasons why Apple is not selling more machines. More than just the processor.
If they had anything in stock or that shipped immediately that would help.
Consumers moving to the few better cheaper deals in the mac line, deciding first that they want to stay with mac, and then figuring which model entails the least comprimise or best cost option. People are not crossing the line from the PC aisle to the mac aisle.
Matsu no you're totally wrong here. You want us to believe that it is price that is causing the iMacs to slow. And you are somewhat correct. There should never be an iMac over $1500 unless it has a 20" LCD. The sales numbers accurately show that previous iMac users aren't forgoing purchases by waiting for mythical $999 computers. They are moving to portables. Go look at Apples sales for the portable lineups. They look rosy.
This really isn't hard to believe. We've seen plenty on these boards alone debate a faster desktop versus an iBook with the iBook winning out because of portability.
Again most of you haven't been in sales and you think consumers are brick walls about pricing and that is patently false. Salespeople know when you say "I have a $999 budget" that you have wiggle room to go up %10 or so.
Here's a story from a long time ago that I found interesting. Sorry for the length.
I used to work for The Good Guys(yes I know..I'm embarrassed).
I was talking to this couple about Home Theatre amps and going through the options. The customer said he wanted quality so I showed him some of the more expensive Yamahas. I could tell he started becoming uneasy about the Yamaha being %10-20 higher than the Sony or Kenwoods which actually were rated higher in power. I couldn't get this guy to step off the Kenwood, he was seduced by the specs. On paper the Kenwood amp was superior to the Yamaha. Finally I brought my manager in and he said "come in here to this other room". In this room we had a yamaha receiver and a kenwood receiver. I never knew why we put the kenwood in the room but know if became obvious. It was to show the quality difference between a Yammy and Denon versus mass market Kenwood. Jurassic Park was the demo of choice back then. We didn't focus on the whole sound...that's hard to demo. My manager cleverly stated that where the Kenwood and Yammy differed was DSP and surround chips and amp power supply. He faded the L-CR-R channels down to 0 and played the Yammy. The scene was the first large scene where the dino's are running over the open field..great demo for the rear surrounds. The yammny sounded great..since the front channels were faded all we could here was the pass over sound from front to back. It sounded like it should. When the little girl whispered the reverb on her voice was smooth.
Enter the kenwood. The same scene yielded a muddy surround. It was so startingly different and inferior I could see the disappointment in the gentlemans face. The little girl's whisper had an awkward reverb tail. The finale was that although the yammy was giving up a supposed 20 watts per channel it got louder and cleaner when we cranked it up. This customer had been demonstrated, very well , the reason why a yamaha amp is worth more than a Kenwood or Sony. The parts you can't see perform better and it is demonstrable. Nope I didn't close the sale but I learned a lot about how to demonstrate a premium product versus mass market.
Apple should do the same. With Tiger shipping I'd put a PC in every store(Dell) right next to a Mac running Tiger. I'd train every salesperson to know 20 differences that can be adequately shown to a customer contemplating a PC vs Mac choice. You can't tell someone how superior a Mac is..you have to show them.
unless the pc is crippled in some way, it will probably out perform the mac on most tasks.
Its hard to demonstrate the "user experience" which on the mac I think comes from having a goal and achieving it with the minimium of fuss. For basic surfing, email, photo manipulation etc. (what the imac is supposed to be for) the imac will have not have an edge over the pc because the interfaces and results are the same. And to add to that the pc will be what a non mac user is familiar with.
When I go into a mac store and load up a quicktime video, I am irritated by the fact it cant play full screen, something standard on pc's. The other thing to look at is the internet, wow great, the internet works...
I am still in the market for a mac laptop because I feel that there value lies in reliabilty, which to me is important on the road, when I dont feel like playng with settings, rebooting, etc. And I think mac laptops are still competitive, whenever I go and price an ibm laptop, it usually ends up very close to the price of a powerbook after ive added the things i want.
Oh, and one last thing... could you please tell us 20 things that a mac does better than a pc, I am curious, and it would help me maintain my beliefs in the superiority of the mac platform (and that its worth the price).
unless the pc is crippled in some way, it will probably out perform the mac on most tasks.
No that is not what you'd do in an Apple Store. Benchmarking is useless. What you want to do is identify the top OS features that increase the speed of the person staring at the screen. This is where PCs falter, yet it doesn't show up in benchmarks.
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Oh, and one last thing... could you please tell us 20 things that a mac does better than a pc, I am curious, and it would help me maintain my beliefs in the superiority of the mac platform (and that its worth the price).
I'm basing my post off of Tiger which of course isn't shipping until sometime next year. Plus I don't have OSX as my Macs are too old(7500/604 card at best)
1.This may sound stupid but I've always been been bugged by hte fact the the "I' staff doesn't disappear on PCs when I'm typing in URLs causing me errors in typing.
2. Automator may be the tool to finally bring scripting to the masses. Visual Scripting..finally.
3. Clicking on a background windown in PCs switches to that window and engages whatever you may have hit. I don't like htis because now switching browser windows means that if I hit a advertisement on another page now I have a window spawning that must be closed down. Macs have it where clicking a background window simply makes that window active.
4. Unified stores. Apple is smart to move away from each app containing it's own database. Addressbook is a prime example of a systemwide AB that other programs "actually" use as long as their name isn't Microsoft.
5. Expose- you can't be told how Expose may affect your life you just have to experience it. Most love it some hate it but all are glad for trying.
6. Dock- much more visual than the Taskbar. I thought the "grouping" function of XP would be cool but it's horrible. Now 6 windows open are even harder to find. The Dock or even better Expose are far easier to manage windows with.
7. Spotlight- I'd crow about this until the cows came home. Spotlight is the real deal worthy of any hype Apple can muster.
8. iLife. There is simply nothing that compares for less than $100. Computers aren't typewriters..stop using them like one!
9. Font handling is much better. Font handling in Windows is non existant and wholly dependent on the app you have to purchase.
10. Dashboard. All the hoopla concerning Konfabulator won't change the fact that Dashboard is going to be popular with some people. It's like having a "Workspace" for widgets but the overlay feature is the coupe de'grace
Now if I had Panther on a Mac I'd have much more differences to point out. Also Tiger will certainly have many more touches that aren't worthy of direct attention but mean the world to some people. Any salesperson worth their salt should be able to identify certain personality types and tailor their demonstration to focus on that persons strenght.
If someone came in professing a desire to do graphics I'd highlight Core Image/Video, Quicktime, Quartz Extreme etc.
Quicktime can play full screen videos, what are you talking about?
Not without a $29 'Pro' upgrade it can't.
My take on this is that I won't buy it if it's AIO. I'm not wasting flexability of a 17" TFT. If I want to go to a LAN party with friends, and I don't want to lug my 17" CRT round, I'd much rather have a 17" TFT plugged into my iMac and take that and my gaming machine round.
Also, Dell is horribley expensive for the PC market. Dell loves to overcharge on any upgrades you put on, heavily. They show you the lowest price, but you'll soon find yourself burning money on what you thought were menial upgrades.
Another thing, the poster that said a Radeon 9000 could do Americas Army @ full res is totally BSing. Sorry, buti t's true, unless full res is 16 pixels by 9.
999 is the magic number. 1299 is more than 10% beyond the wiggle room. You can actually can get them to spend more than 10% beyond that, but you have to have something at 999 to draw them in, in order to sell them something for 1299. A 999 eMac ain't it.
Apple simply bucks too many conventions with its consumer desktop. The AIO is not popular as a desktop option, the OS is "non-standard", the graphics and CPU are not upgradable, the RAM and HDD alotments are relatively stingy... and it comes at a price premium. That's just one too many psychological barriers to overcome in one aisle hopping visit.
The goodness is in the OS when you really boil it down, but most people won't get to see it because Jobs and co. insist on heaping on the difference. You can get away with the OS, it's an asset actually; you can get away with the inherent inflexibility; you can get away with the basic underspecification of RAM, HDD, and sometimes GPU/CPU, and you can get away with the price too, but you can't get away with all of them at the same time.
999 is the magic number. 1299 is more than 10% beyond the wiggle room. You can actually can get them to spend more than 10% beyond that, but you have to have something at 999 to draw them in, in order to sell them something for 1299. A 999 eMac ain't it.
My feeling is the education iMac will be 999, but initially it won't be available to the general public, like when the eMac was born.
I used to on the iMac-boat (those pre-slotload models)...After using the DP PowerMac G4.. I want to stick with DP in the future unless I get a PowerBook.
Actually people I can give you the magic number that appeals to people concerning computer purchases. That numbers is
..the available credit on their credit card. Don't let any bozos tell you it's $999 or 499. These people never sold for a limit. There is no magical amount that causes humans to start salivating and wallets to pop open. If people like what they see the do whats necessary to purchase.
One could argue that the introduction of Apple stores around the world and an aggressive "Switcher" ad campaign would offset that, but it didn't.
How could one argue that? If you only have so many CPUs, you can only sell so many machines no matter what sort of initiatives you're taking.
When Apple releases sales numbers, it's for machines shipped. They can't charge your credit card or your account, or cash your check, before they ship the product, so only shipped products count as sales. Whether they get orders for 50,000 PowerMacs or 50,000,000 in a given quarter, if they build and ship 50,000 then 50,000 is what counts in their quarterly results, that's what's listed in their SEC filing, that's what's used to compute their market share.
This is why Apple keeps saying that iPod mini sales are lower than they could be. They could sell untold numbers of minis, but their actual sales results are constrained by Hitachi's 1" hard drive output. No amount of marketing can change the number of hard drives that Hitachi's plant spits out in a given quarter so any potential sale beyond that hard limit is either wasted or punted one or more quarters ahead. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only thing that will result in more sales (that is, shipments to customers) of minis is higher volume production of 1" drives. Likewise, the only thing that will increase PowerMac sales is higher volume production of the 970fx.
If, hypothetically, the floodgates open at IBM and the PowerMac finds a new resistance level sales-wise, then you can point to sales and marketing efforts.
Great... using a multiple step process for something that can be accomplished in wmp or mplayer in one step... thats the intuitive user experience i was looking for !
Quicktime player with full screen capability shouldnt cost anything, its supposed to advertise their format and help the sales of high end media servers.
Hmurchison, thank you for taking the time to make a list... for what its worth, here what I think
1.This may sound stupid but I've always been been bugged by hte fact the the "I' staff doesn't disappear on PCs when I'm typing in URLs causing me errors in typing.
my reply: No idea what you're on about, and I doubt a potential customer would be impressed by such a trivial "feature".
2. Automator may be the tool to finally bring scripting to the masses. Visual Scripting..finally.
my reply: Right, and its also not out yet, and we dont know when it will be.
3. Clicking on a background windown in PCs switches to that window and engages whatever you may have hit. I don't like htis because now switching browser windows means that if I hit a advertisement on another page now I have a window spawning that must be closed down. Macs have it where clicking a background window simply makes that window active.
my reply: Ive never noticed this behaviour on windows, I could be wrong, but again, see number one about triviality.
4. Unified stores. Apple is smart to move away from each app containing it's own database. Addressbook is a prime example of a systemwide AB that other programs "actually" use as long as their name isn't Microsoft.
my reply: This is a great feature, if you can put togethor a nice demo of this then its a great selling point.
5. Expose- you can't be told how Expose may affect your life you just have to experience it. Most love it some hate it but all are glad for trying.
my reply: yes, it is a neat trick isnt it.
6. Dock- much more visual than the Taskbar. I thought the "grouping" function of XP would be cool but it's horrible. Now 6 windows open are even harder to find. The Dock or even better Expose are far easier to manage windows with.
my reply: This is probably the only part of the OS that windows users see and say wow, whats that, and want to play with it.
7. Spotlight- I'd crow about this until the cows came home. Spotlight is the real deal worthy of any hype Apple can muster.
my reply: again, not out yet, and who knows how useful it really will be, some of us already organize our stuff where we know where it is on all of our systems, work.. home.. windows... linux.. mac.
8. iLife. There is simply nothing that compares for less than $100. Computers aren't typewriters..stop using them like one!
my reply: yes good free software is a great selling point, i think sony and others give away software for "using" your computer too.
9. Font handling is much better. Font handling in Windows is non existant and wholly dependent on the app you have to purchase.
my reply: neither agree nor disagree, fonts are something that I use in office and I have no desire to manage my fonts at all. if you show this to a customer they may or may not care depending on their needs, but it may seem a little lame to them (I know it would to me) if they are not concerned with fonts past the fact that they have some to choose from.
10. Dashboard. All the hoopla concerning Konfabulator won't change the fact that Dashboard is going to be popular with some people. It's like having a "Workspace" for widgets but the overlay feature is the coupe de'grace
my reply: another neat trick, except this one isnt out yet.
so a lot of your things that the mac can do better than the pc are, either not out yet, or simple visual effects, that yes add to user experience but probably wont help you in convincing that person to spend 10% more than their allocated budget on an AIO computer that they've never tried before.
Macs need to make their consumer model just like other companies consumer models, affordable for consumers, and focus the profit making on their professional products.
If they can try this strategy for schools (selling cheaper computers hoping to sell higher profit servers, software and support services) why cant they try it for consumers too...
And they can do everyone (schools, consumers, pros) a favour by ditching the whole AIO thing. Maybe adopt a manufacturing and distribution system similar to dells (dell wasnt always the worlds biggest computer manufacturer).
There is no magical amount that causes humans to start salivating and wallets to pop open. If people like what they see the do whats necessary to purchase.
True. I was once reading about how you could buy a $1000 USD computer every three years if you save about $28 USD per month and bla bla. I thought it was a good idea, and it probably is. So I told my friend about it and he disagreed and basically told me you buy the computer you like even if that's above the $1000 USD mark. So yeah, people do what they need to do in order to afford something more expensive. Everyone has a different magic number.
I specifically said that I would wait for Tiger before attempting such comparisons.
Regading "Triviality"- Sales/Marketing is pretty straight forward however, you must never make the mistake of calling something "trivial" because you have no idea what little thing gets that customers "motor" running. You don't want to focus on highly technical things. You want to make a statement that Macs have "attention to detal" that you just don't find on PCs. You don't spend 5 minutes talking about "I Beams" and their action but you "quickly" go through a few and move on. The idea is to quickly and easily support your thesis that Apple computers have that extra polish that makes computing enjoyable.
Regarding Spotlight- Your reply is famous. "I already organize my computer and know where everything is". Sounds great if you're trying to talk yourself out of spending $129 on Tiger. But the truth is closer to Spotlight is more than just a search facility. Even the most well organized Mac user cannot match the speed of Spotlight for managing data. I can find EVERY file on my computer that is over a certain size or from a project or any attribute of my choosing. Organizating doesn't give you smart folders that update automatically. These are easy things to show. Spotlight makes even the sloppy user just as quick to access files as the neat freak. That's something that sells.
Regarding iLife- Your retort is Sony gives away software too. Sony's Multimedia Line please point me to Sony's iLife. I can piecemeal a free Photo manager, a cheap recording app, a DVD burning app and video editor together but how well to they communicate together? Do my iTunes files show up for use in the DVD Recorder or iMove? Chances are unless you can find a package from one vendor this won't be the case.
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so a lot of your things that the mac can do better than the pc are, either not out yet, or simple visual effects, that yes add to user experience but probably wont help you in convincing that person to spend 10% more than their allocated budget on an AIO computer that they've never tried before.
Well before deciding on what will help me convince people I'd like to know how many Macs you've sold in your lifetime. I'm well above 5000. I speak from practical experience rather than theoretical. I don't get the sense that you have much sales experience because nothing is "Trivial" when discussing someones hard earned money.
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And they can do everyone (schools, consumers, pros) a favour by ditching the whole AIO thing. Maybe adopt a manufacturing and distribution system similar to dells (dell wasnt always the worlds biggest computer manufacturer).
You guys make this mistake all the time. You fail to look at both sides. Apple indeed loses sales to people because of AIO system but they "gain" sales as well. I can't tell you how many times I sold iMacs to people who had severe space requirements. If the iMac G5 looks like a beefy monitor it will do well in areas that don't have space for for a floor mounted tower and seperate screen.
Again I will say I don't run OSX. By this time next year I will have a much better comparison. I'll be running Tiger and I'll make sure I know it inside and out. Tiger represents an opportunity for Apple to market directly against PCs. They simply have to take advantage of it. There are plenty of people that can easily afford Macs. The trick is getting them into the stores and giving good demonstrations of the Mac platform benefits.
The AIO market is a very important market. My mom still refers to the CRT monitor as the computer...and she doesn't know what the heck that rectangular box with the Apple logo on the side is. I keep telling her, "the rectangular box is the computer, not the monitor"...but a month later she'll still say the monitor is the computer.
Try explaining to her that she needs this thing connected to the monitor for *anything* to work and she'll panic. iMacs, iMacs 2 and iMacs 3 are here to stay people.
Comments
Originally posted by rickag
Just thought I'd add, the argument Apple doesn't need to increase unit sales, is profitable and can continue it's present course is in direct contradiction to what Apple, themselves, have stated. Yes, Apple is profitable, but they have stated they want to increase market share, were not happy with the iMac sales volume and would like to meet the <$1000 price point.
Question is, "Do they truly believe this or was this just market speak for the benefit of investors?". I think they truly believe what was said and will do what they can about it, but introducing a monitorless consumer desktop won't be in their plans.
If Apple wants more software companies to develop for Mac, they have to increase sales.
Originally posted by rickag
Just thought I'd add, the argument Apple doesn't need to increase unit sales, is profitable and can continue it's present course is in direct contradiction to what Apple, themselves, have stated. Yes, Apple is profitable, but they have stated they want to increase market share, were not happy with the iMac sales volume and would like to meet the <$1000 price point.
Question is, "Do they truly believe this or was this just market speak for the benefit of investors?". I think they truly believe what was said and will do what they can about it, but introducing a monitorless consumer desktop won't be in their plans.
If Apple makes statements such as this and they do not deliver over a period of time, or more importantly they do just the oposite, such as raise prices after they have stated to investors that they need to reduce them to meet the market demands, then they run the risk of loosing investor confidence. Not only that, but then any future statments to investors about the future direction of the company will be doubted by investors. Statements such as this could also be used in court against Apple in lawsuits by investors that loose money in Apple's stock due to the price of Apple's stock dropping. Apple's CEO, and other company officers might also be opening themselves up to fraud charges if it could be proved that they made these statments to investors knowing full well that they were never going to deliver on them.
Remember that Apple is a publicly traded company, and no matter how "godly" Steve appears to be, he still has to answer to stock holders, and there are some big investment companies (like mutual funds and retirement funds) that hold Apple stock to make money off of it not becouse they like Apple computers or have some emotional attatchment to the company.
Now that is obvious.
But Apple has 2 (TWO) consumer lines. Why does Apple have 2 Consumer Desktops, which both happen to be AIO. 2 Consumer lines. Both under spec'd and over priced.
1 Pro line, that is worth the money. Why not 1 consumer line? Or why not 2 pro lines?
When the iMac g4 came out, it was no longer a consumer desktop. They realized this very quickly and introduced the eMac, instead of admiting that the iMac was no longer their consumer desktop.
But they kept pushing it and pushing it.
So, I think with the new iMac they have to fix the problems. under spec'd and too expensive.
I still can't get over that Apple has 2 consumer desktops and both are AIO. There simply is NO CHOICE in consumer desktops from Apple. You get CRT AIO or LCD AIO.
This needs to be corrected!
In any case, iMac sales are at an all time low, and I believe that total AIO unit sales are at that same low as well.
Total quaterly sales haven't gone up either. What is happening is movement, reorganization, within Apple's sales. Consumers moving to the few better cheaper deals in the mac line, deciding first that they want to stay with mac, and then figuring which model entails the least comprimise or best cost option. People are not crossing the line from the PC aisle to the mac aisle.
Where are the new mac users? Where are the switchers? Where's the real 999 machine?
Originally posted by bborofka
One could argue that the introduction of Apple stores around the world and an aggressive "Switcher" ad campaign would offset that, but it didn't. There's many reasons why Apple is not selling more machines. More than just the processor.
If they had anything in stock or that shipped immediately that would help.
Consumers moving to the few better cheaper deals in the mac line, deciding first that they want to stay with mac, and then figuring which model entails the least comprimise or best cost option. People are not crossing the line from the PC aisle to the mac aisle.
Matsu no you're totally wrong here. You want us to believe that it is price that is causing the iMacs to slow. And you are somewhat correct. There should never be an iMac over $1500 unless it has a 20" LCD. The sales numbers accurately show that previous iMac users aren't forgoing purchases by waiting for mythical $999 computers. They are moving to portables. Go look at Apples sales for the portable lineups. They look rosy.
This really isn't hard to believe. We've seen plenty on these boards alone debate a faster desktop versus an iBook with the iBook winning out because of portability.
Again most of you haven't been in sales and you think consumers are brick walls about pricing and that is patently false. Salespeople know when you say "I have a $999 budget" that you have wiggle room to go up %10 or so.
Here's a story from a long time ago that I found interesting. Sorry for the length.
I used to work for The Good Guys(yes I know..I'm embarrassed).
I was talking to this couple about Home Theatre amps and going through the options. The customer said he wanted quality so I showed him some of the more expensive Yamahas. I could tell he started becoming uneasy about the Yamaha being %10-20 higher than the Sony or Kenwoods which actually were rated higher in power. I couldn't get this guy to step off the Kenwood, he was seduced by the specs. On paper the Kenwood amp was superior to the Yamaha. Finally I brought my manager in and he said "come in here to this other room". In this room we had a yamaha receiver and a kenwood receiver. I never knew why we put the kenwood in the room but know if became obvious. It was to show the quality difference between a Yammy and Denon versus mass market Kenwood. Jurassic Park was the demo of choice back then. We didn't focus on the whole sound...that's hard to demo. My manager cleverly stated that where the Kenwood and Yammy differed was DSP and surround chips and amp power supply. He faded the L-CR-R channels down to 0 and played the Yammy. The scene was the first large scene where the dino's are running over the open field..great demo for the rear surrounds. The yammny sounded great..since the front channels were faded all we could here was the pass over sound from front to back. It sounded like it should. When the little girl whispered the reverb on her voice was smooth.
Enter the kenwood. The same scene yielded a muddy surround. It was so startingly different and inferior I could see the disappointment in the gentlemans face. The little girl's whisper had an awkward reverb tail. The finale was that although the yammy was giving up a supposed 20 watts per channel it got louder and cleaner when we cranked it up. This customer had been demonstrated, very well , the reason why a yamaha amp is worth more than a Kenwood or Sony. The parts you can't see perform better and it is demonstrable. Nope I didn't close the sale but I learned a lot about how to demonstrate a premium product versus mass market.
Apple should do the same. With Tiger shipping I'd put a PC in every store(Dell) right next to a Mac running Tiger. I'd train every salesperson to know 20 differences that can be adequately shown to a customer contemplating a PC vs Mac choice. You can't tell someone how superior a Mac is..you have to show them.
unless the pc is crippled in some way, it will probably out perform the mac on most tasks.
Its hard to demonstrate the "user experience" which on the mac I think comes from having a goal and achieving it with the minimium of fuss. For basic surfing, email, photo manipulation etc. (what the imac is supposed to be for) the imac will have not have an edge over the pc because the interfaces and results are the same. And to add to that the pc will be what a non mac user is familiar with.
When I go into a mac store and load up a quicktime video, I am irritated by the fact it cant play full screen, something standard on pc's. The other thing to look at is the internet, wow great, the internet works...
I am still in the market for a mac laptop because I feel that there value lies in reliabilty, which to me is important on the road, when I dont feel like playng with settings, rebooting, etc. And I think mac laptops are still competitive, whenever I go and price an ibm laptop, it usually ends up very close to the price of a powerbook after ive added the things i want.
Oh, and one last thing... could you please tell us 20 things that a mac does better than a pc, I am curious, and it would help me maintain my beliefs in the superiority of the mac platform (and that its worth the price).
unless the pc is crippled in some way, it will probably out perform the mac on most tasks.
No that is not what you'd do in an Apple Store. Benchmarking is useless. What you want to do is identify the top OS features that increase the speed of the person staring at the screen. This is where PCs falter, yet it doesn't show up in benchmarks.
Oh, and one last thing... could you please tell us 20 things that a mac does better than a pc, I am curious, and it would help me maintain my beliefs in the superiority of the mac platform (and that its worth the price).
I'm basing my post off of Tiger which of course isn't shipping until sometime next year. Plus I don't have OSX as my Macs are too old(7500/604 card at best)
1.This may sound stupid but I've always been been bugged by hte fact the the "I' staff doesn't disappear on PCs when I'm typing in URLs causing me errors in typing.
2. Automator may be the tool to finally bring scripting to the masses. Visual Scripting..finally.
3. Clicking on a background windown in PCs switches to that window and engages whatever you may have hit. I don't like htis because now switching browser windows means that if I hit a advertisement on another page now I have a window spawning that must be closed down. Macs have it where clicking a background window simply makes that window active.
4. Unified stores. Apple is smart to move away from each app containing it's own database. Addressbook is a prime example of a systemwide AB that other programs "actually" use as long as their name isn't Microsoft.
5. Expose- you can't be told how Expose may affect your life you just have to experience it. Most love it some hate it but all are glad for trying.
6. Dock- much more visual than the Taskbar. I thought the "grouping" function of XP would be cool but it's horrible. Now 6 windows open are even harder to find. The Dock or even better Expose are far easier to manage windows with.
7. Spotlight- I'd crow about this until the cows came home. Spotlight is the real deal worthy of any hype Apple can muster.
8. iLife. There is simply nothing that compares for less than $100. Computers aren't typewriters..stop using them like one!
9. Font handling is much better. Font handling in Windows is non existant and wholly dependent on the app you have to purchase.
10. Dashboard. All the hoopla concerning Konfabulator won't change the fact that Dashboard is going to be popular with some people. It's like having a "Workspace" for widgets but the overlay feature is the coupe de'grace
Now if I had Panther on a Mac I'd have much more differences to point out. Also Tiger will certainly have many more touches that aren't worthy of direct attention but mean the world to some people. Any salesperson worth their salt should be able to identify certain personality types and tailor their demonstration to focus on that persons strenght.
If someone came in professing a desire to do graphics I'd highlight Core Image/Video, Quicktime, Quartz Extreme etc.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Quicktime can play full screen videos, what are you talking about?
Not without a $29 'Pro' upgrade it can't.
My take on this is that I won't buy it if it's AIO. I'm not wasting flexability of a 17" TFT. If I want to go to a LAN party with friends, and I don't want to lug my 17" CRT round, I'd much rather have a 17" TFT plugged into my iMac and take that and my gaming machine round.
Also, Dell is horribley expensive for the PC market. Dell loves to overcharge on any upgrades you put on, heavily. They show you the lowest price, but you'll soon find yourself burning money on what you thought were menial upgrades.
Another thing, the poster that said a Radeon 9000 could do Americas Army @ full res is totally BSing. Sorry, buti t's true, unless full res is 16 pixels by 9.
Apple simply bucks too many conventions with its consumer desktop. The AIO is not popular as a desktop option, the OS is "non-standard", the graphics and CPU are not upgradable, the RAM and HDD alotments are relatively stingy... and it comes at a price premium. That's just one too many psychological barriers to overcome in one aisle hopping visit.
The goodness is in the OS when you really boil it down, but most people won't get to see it because Jobs and co. insist on heaping on the difference. You can get away with the OS, it's an asset actually; you can get away with the inherent inflexibility; you can get away with the basic underspecification of RAM, HDD, and sometimes GPU/CPU, and you can get away with the price too, but you can't get away with all of them at the same time.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Quicktime can play full-screen videos, what are you talking about?
Originally posted by aldo
[B]Not without a $29 'Pro' upgrade it can't.
Drop it into iMovie, problem solved.
Originally posted by Matsu
999 is the magic number. 1299 is more than 10% beyond the wiggle room. You can actually can get them to spend more than 10% beyond that, but you have to have something at 999 to draw them in, in order to sell them something for 1299. A 999 eMac ain't it.
My feeling is the education iMac will be 999, but initially it won't be available to the general public, like when the eMac was born.
I used to on the iMac-boat (those pre-slotload models)...After using the DP PowerMac G4.. I want to stick with DP in the future unless I get a PowerBook.
..the available credit on their credit card. Don't let any bozos tell you it's $999 or 499. These people never sold for a limit. There is no magical amount that causes humans to start salivating and wallets to pop open. If people like what they see the do whats necessary to purchase.
Originally posted by bborofka
One could argue that the introduction of Apple stores around the world and an aggressive "Switcher" ad campaign would offset that, but it didn't.
How could one argue that? If you only have so many CPUs, you can only sell so many machines no matter what sort of initiatives you're taking.
When Apple releases sales numbers, it's for machines shipped. They can't charge your credit card or your account, or cash your check, before they ship the product, so only shipped products count as sales. Whether they get orders for 50,000 PowerMacs or 50,000,000 in a given quarter, if they build and ship 50,000 then 50,000 is what counts in their quarterly results, that's what's listed in their SEC filing, that's what's used to compute their market share.
This is why Apple keeps saying that iPod mini sales are lower than they could be. They could sell untold numbers of minis, but their actual sales results are constrained by Hitachi's 1" hard drive output. No amount of marketing can change the number of hard drives that Hitachi's plant spits out in a given quarter so any potential sale beyond that hard limit is either wasted or punted one or more quarters ahead. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only thing that will result in more sales (that is, shipments to customers) of minis is higher volume production of 1" drives. Likewise, the only thing that will increase PowerMac sales is higher volume production of the 970fx.
If, hypothetically, the floodgates open at IBM and the PowerMac finds a new resistance level sales-wise, then you can point to sales and marketing efforts.
Originally posted by Messiahtosh
Drop it into iMovie, problem solved.
Great... using a multiple step process for something that can be accomplished in wmp or mplayer in one step... thats the intuitive user experience i was looking for !
Quicktime player with full screen capability shouldnt cost anything, its supposed to advertise their format and help the sales of high end media servers.
Hmurchison, thank you for taking the time to make a list... for what its worth, here what I think
1.This may sound stupid but I've always been been bugged by hte fact the the "I' staff doesn't disappear on PCs when I'm typing in URLs causing me errors in typing.
my reply: No idea what you're on about, and I doubt a potential customer would be impressed by such a trivial "feature".
2. Automator may be the tool to finally bring scripting to the masses. Visual Scripting..finally.
my reply: Right, and its also not out yet, and we dont know when it will be.
3. Clicking on a background windown in PCs switches to that window and engages whatever you may have hit. I don't like htis because now switching browser windows means that if I hit a advertisement on another page now I have a window spawning that must be closed down. Macs have it where clicking a background window simply makes that window active.
my reply: Ive never noticed this behaviour on windows, I could be wrong, but again, see number one about triviality.
4. Unified stores. Apple is smart to move away from each app containing it's own database. Addressbook is a prime example of a systemwide AB that other programs "actually" use as long as their name isn't Microsoft.
my reply: This is a great feature, if you can put togethor a nice demo of this then its a great selling point.
5. Expose- you can't be told how Expose may affect your life you just have to experience it. Most love it some hate it but all are glad for trying.
my reply: yes, it is a neat trick isnt it.
6. Dock- much more visual than the Taskbar. I thought the "grouping" function of XP would be cool but it's horrible. Now 6 windows open are even harder to find. The Dock or even better Expose are far easier to manage windows with.
my reply: This is probably the only part of the OS that windows users see and say wow, whats that, and want to play with it.
7. Spotlight- I'd crow about this until the cows came home. Spotlight is the real deal worthy of any hype Apple can muster.
my reply: again, not out yet, and who knows how useful it really will be, some of us already organize our stuff where we know where it is on all of our systems, work.. home.. windows... linux.. mac.
8. iLife. There is simply nothing that compares for less than $100. Computers aren't typewriters..stop using them like one!
my reply: yes good free software is a great selling point, i think sony and others give away software for "using" your computer too.
9. Font handling is much better. Font handling in Windows is non existant and wholly dependent on the app you have to purchase.
my reply: neither agree nor disagree, fonts are something that I use in office and I have no desire to manage my fonts at all. if you show this to a customer they may or may not care depending on their needs, but it may seem a little lame to them (I know it would to me) if they are not concerned with fonts past the fact that they have some to choose from.
10. Dashboard. All the hoopla concerning Konfabulator won't change the fact that Dashboard is going to be popular with some people. It's like having a "Workspace" for widgets but the overlay feature is the coupe de'grace
my reply: another neat trick, except this one isnt out yet.
so a lot of your things that the mac can do better than the pc are, either not out yet, or simple visual effects, that yes add to user experience but probably wont help you in convincing that person to spend 10% more than their allocated budget on an AIO computer that they've never tried before.
Macs need to make their consumer model just like other companies consumer models, affordable for consumers, and focus the profit making on their professional products.
If they can try this strategy for schools (selling cheaper computers hoping to sell higher profit servers, software and support services) why cant they try it for consumers too...
And they can do everyone (schools, consumers, pros) a favour by ditching the whole AIO thing. Maybe adopt a manufacturing and distribution system similar to dells (dell wasnt always the worlds biggest computer manufacturer).
Originally posted by hmurchison
There is no magical amount that causes humans to start salivating and wallets to pop open. If people like what they see the do whats necessary to purchase.
True. I was once reading about how you could buy a $1000 USD computer every three years if you save about $28 USD per month and bla bla. I thought it was a good idea, and it probably is. So I told my friend about it and he disagreed and basically told me you buy the computer you like even if that's above the $1000 USD mark. So yeah, people do what they need to do in order to afford something more expensive. Everyone has a different magic number.
I specifically said that I would wait for Tiger before attempting such comparisons.
Regading "Triviality"- Sales/Marketing is pretty straight forward however, you must never make the mistake of calling something "trivial" because you have no idea what little thing gets that customers "motor" running. You don't want to focus on highly technical things. You want to make a statement that Macs have "attention to detal" that you just don't find on PCs. You don't spend 5 minutes talking about "I Beams" and their action but you "quickly" go through a few and move on. The idea is to quickly and easily support your thesis that Apple computers have that extra polish that makes computing enjoyable.
Regarding Spotlight- Your reply is famous. "I already organize my computer and know where everything is". Sounds great if you're trying to talk yourself out of spending $129 on Tiger. But the truth is closer to Spotlight is more than just a search facility. Even the most well organized Mac user cannot match the speed of Spotlight for managing data. I can find EVERY file on my computer that is over a certain size or from a project or any attribute of my choosing. Organizating doesn't give you smart folders that update automatically. These are easy things to show. Spotlight makes even the sloppy user just as quick to access files as the neat freak. That's something that sells.
Regarding iLife- Your retort is Sony gives away software too. Sony's Multimedia Line please point me to Sony's iLife. I can piecemeal a free Photo manager, a cheap recording app, a DVD burning app and video editor together but how well to they communicate together? Do my iTunes files show up for use in the DVD Recorder or iMove? Chances are unless you can find a package from one vendor this won't be the case.
so a lot of your things that the mac can do better than the pc are, either not out yet, or simple visual effects, that yes add to user experience but probably wont help you in convincing that person to spend 10% more than their allocated budget on an AIO computer that they've never tried before.
Well before deciding on what will help me convince people I'd like to know how many Macs you've sold in your lifetime. I'm well above 5000. I speak from practical experience rather than theoretical. I don't get the sense that you have much sales experience because nothing is "Trivial" when discussing someones hard earned money.
And they can do everyone (schools, consumers, pros) a favour by ditching the whole AIO thing. Maybe adopt a manufacturing and distribution system similar to dells (dell wasnt always the worlds biggest computer manufacturer).
You guys make this mistake all the time. You fail to look at both sides. Apple indeed loses sales to people because of AIO system but they "gain" sales as well. I can't tell you how many times I sold iMacs to people who had severe space requirements. If the iMac G5 looks like a beefy monitor it will do well in areas that don't have space for for a floor mounted tower and seperate screen.
Again I will say I don't run OSX. By this time next year I will have a much better comparison. I'll be running Tiger and I'll make sure I know it inside and out. Tiger represents an opportunity for Apple to market directly against PCs. They simply have to take advantage of it. There are plenty of people that can easily afford Macs. The trick is getting them into the stores and giving good demonstrations of the Mac platform benefits.
Try explaining to her that she needs this thing connected to the monitor for *anything* to work and she'll panic. iMacs, iMacs 2 and iMacs 3 are here to stay people.