The point isn't about Windows. The point is that you have the world's largest retailer willing to push something besides Microsoft. That is a lot more rare than you might think. As long as they can give their customers a price break, they will push it hard. Apple should find something to take advantage of that.
<strong>They have lowered the price, tossed out legacy things like floppy and modem and the thing is beyond dirt cheap. Available from Walmart.com
What do you think? Headless classic iMac maybe?
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is a "Loss Leader" with limited use without upgrading...128 RAM with XP is like buying a used Pinto. My research has determined that XP does not run very well even with 512 RAM if one opens many apps. My on-site comparison of an 2.5 P4 HP with 512 with iMac 17 with 256 indicated HP slower on pulling up apps, etc.
Nevertheless, Apple will need to respond to price pressure as the PC market is becoming so price competitive as noted by increased use of using components to PC manufacturer specs (as evidenced by my Dell's video card, motherboard, speakers and hard drive ) to reduce costs as well as subcontracting tech svc (note how Dell service went from very good 2 yrs ago to now average). But, buyers who want HW & SW quality with multi-tasking performance will continue to buy Apple...that is why I am switching!!!!!!!!
Newer Celerons are based on the P4 core and are back to being reasonable budget processors. They don't look nearly as bad as the PIII based Celerons did at their end of life.
The current iMac can't cost them more than 300-350 to make. If it still does after all this time then they are doing something seriously wrong! Anyway, the point of all this is to say that there is a VERY cheap iMac sitting right there in the line-up just waiting to b priced right. So it's only a 15" CRT, is an unupgradable AIO, a G3. This can be tweaked. A slightly sharper CRT, mebbe the same G3/video as the low end iBook, to consolidate design/production costs, bla bla, a cheaper tray loading drive... You get the idea, a few well made tweaks to keep it salable.
I'd buy one for the kitchen counter, the kids room, as a back-up mac or private web/sound/e-mail/print-server. They spent money to work out the colored plastic, why not do a "Swatch" like theme with the iMac. Sell white plus a limited edition of one other colored pattern. Then periodically "retire" the colors. When that color is out, it's out, a new one comes in to replace it and we keep cycling through colors/patterns in this way, you can always get white. For 399, you know there are a few mac heads out there waiting to make collections!
And there it is: Use something you aready make to make profit AND market share. Parents will buy their children an Xbox for 299-399 (controllers games etc) they can certainly buy their families a nice little machine that doesn't break the bank that can contribute something better than FPS/pr0n to your family.
<strong>BTW you CANT pirate Windows XP</strong><hr></blockquote>
i'm on XP right now and i acquired it by...well lets just say i'm borrowing it from a friend (hint hint, wink wink)
i am running it on a 600MHz P3, with 128MB Ram, and 20GB HD...nVidia Geforce2 MX (32MB) and it runs just fine. Truth is, its pretty speedy,, it only seems to slow down alot while i'm installing something or downloading alot of things. Now its definatly not faster then my 733MHz G4 downstairs but this has to do until next yr when i graduate.
If that Duron is anything like the 700MHz Duron in my brother's fiancée's Compaq, it's a dog.
So, what should Apple do to compete with that? Nothing. It's an oversized, overdetermined email station without a monitor that is most likely crushed under the weight of Windows XP. Its profit margins are so thin that they won't even stock it in their retail stores. It's a loss leader at best.
Now, if Apple dropped the eMac down to the iMac CRT's price point, that would do. But I don't see the point of Apple shipping barely-capable desktops just to hit a Wal-Mart price point. Seriously: I'll bet the baseline iBook can outrun that thing.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually I am not a technical hardware guru, but isn't this the same sort of shared "increased system-wide bandwidth" that Apple uses on it's latest machines? Obviously here it is not pseudo DDR but the rest of the machine (PCI bus, video, audio, etc) can use the bandwidth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, it's the opposite: The bus to the CPU can accomodate more bandwidth than the memory can deliver (unless it's a really inefficient bus), so there's nothing left for peripherals.
It really doesn't make any sense.
[quote]<strong>I did this about a year ago and I am sure this motherboard/combo is similar. I bought a integrated everything motherboard at PCclub with 1100 mhz duron. It only had 8 megs of integrated video ram available though (Trident Blade I found out is the chip). I believe this solution uses the S3 solution that is about the same as the TNT2 (old school) but again it is cheap as heck.</strong><hr></blockquote>
8MB of actual video RAM, or 8MB of shared video RAM? The latter (common on cheap PCs) means that the video card has no dedicated RAM. Instead it reserves 8MB of the same ordinary PC133 RAM that that can't even saturate the CPU bus on this machine. In other words, it's s l o w. Fortunately, since it doesn't sound like you're doing anything that requires more than trivial acceleration, and you are doing something (Flash) that for reasons known only to Macromedia runs much better on Windows than on OS X, you're getting pretty much the best case. And in that case, there's no reason not to use the machine you have, as long as it continues to work.
[quote]<strong>Perhaps the reason they don't stock them at the stores is simply they can only make limited quantities.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It's a given that they only make limited quantities, because they don't want to sell something with margins that thin. Retail shelf space is costly, and of course there are distribution and warehousing costs as well. What Wal-Mart is doing is what Dell did: Cutting out the really expensive part of selling PCs.
[quote]<strong>My little boy's computer is hardly an email station. These integrated motherboards come with ATA/66 minimum. Built in sound, networking and 32 meg video matches all of what is available on Apple consumer machines.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The ATA bus used is essentially irrelevant, since a single hard drive can't saturate the bus. The hard drive itself is far more important as far as determining performance. Built in sound is usually crap, but serviceable; 32MB RAM for the video card matches Apple's low end, but this machine doesn't have that. It has "shared" video RAM, which is worse than the video acceleration in every iMac ever sold. In the cheapest PCs, it's not a given that an AGP card will work, either.
Of course, OS X can't really subsist on that kind of video hardware.
[quote]<strong>Apple could do this with their current classic iMac and still be more elegant. Rage 128 would be good enough, cd-rom good enough, 15 inch tube couldn't be more than $40 nowadays. Why the heck is Apple still selling them at $799? They should be $499 maximum.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not going to try explaining Apple's pricing of the iMac CRT. I'm sure they could price it significantly lower if they really wanted to. I can only submit that if it's not priced to sell, it's because they're not convinced that it will sell, so they're making a pretty good profit off the few people who actually do buy them in small enough quantities to pay retail.
[quote]<strong>bIt doesn't matter how perfect these things are because at $199, they are practically an impulse buy for computer geeks.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's not a very big market, and it's probably not the market Wal-Mart's targeting. Just a hunch.
[quote]<strong>Considering 15 inch LCD's are now lower than $199 at times, people could be tossing these in their kid's rooms, living rooms, whatever for under $400. If you add a traditional 15 inch CRT it is under $300 easy. Heck I could toss one into my RV for that cheap.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As long as you don't mind a big, bulky thing sitting in your living room or RV, attached to a blurry analog LCD.
The iMac CRT, neglected as it is, is still more attractive simply for the fact that you can tuck it into a corner and expect it to sit quietly, look good, and work well. Although, to be fair, it won't run Flash as well. But there's not much Apple can do about that.
This is not Apple's market. And thank god it isn't, or they would be as broke as Gateway and HP right now. the 'budget PC' is a saturated market, worthless to apple.
No it isn't. While these are cut rate loss leaders now, they will define an acceptabel and profitable low end in the future. Apple doesn't need to make anything that cheap, but it must keep an eye on developments. Everyone who's anyone selling computers today ought to have a credible sub 500 offering for the public. Something complete and reliable that comes with a display.
Hands up anyone who thinks Apple couldn't sell an iMac "classic" for 399-499 and still make a few bucks on each machine out the door? This is more critical for Apple than any other box builder. Without marketshare the platform will eventually die out, at least for the consumer.
Low-end iBook guts, basic optical and HDD, gum-drop shell, cheap price. Nobody has to lose their shirts selling these.
<strong>No it isn't. While these are cut rate loss leaders now, they will define an acceptabel and profitable low end in the future.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Most every company that has "TRIED" to compete in this sector loses money at it. The one area of the computer market where $ is made is in Enterprise, which is where Apple "SHOULD" be heading.
Guess what?
That's what the Xserve and Xserve RAID are for.
The eventuality is that Apple will focus more on competing with Dell and Sun and SGI and others on the high end with server farms, and in providing "SERVICES" which is where a greater profitability is available.
The margins on these low cost machines are pitiful, and the amount of $ put into producing one vs. what you get out of it in return revenue, not to mention the R&D to produce one, isn't feasible. It's okay for a Korean company like eMachines to build, to try to establish a foothold and expand from, but then again for them... their margins are higher because of the value of the U.S. Dollar to their currency. That's the same reason a Kia or Hyundai or Daewoo is/was so much cheaper. They make more per item then we do because the costs of domestic produced materials, labor, etc. etc. in their country is cheaper than it is here. If you can build something and it costs you $300 and you can sell it for $700 while everyone else builds it for $500 and sells it for $700, you can afford to cut it down and sell it for $500 and still make $200 profit while they merely break even or lose trying to undercut you on slim margins.
Apple can't and "SHOULDN'T" compete with this.
<strong> [quote]Apple doesn't need to make anything that cheap, but it must keep an eye on developments.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree, and if you go by even what Acer (a Korean company) did in trying to compete in this sector, it damn near killed them. Then again, their main competitor at that pricepoint in Packard Bell died a horribly nasty death. True, their machines were total crap... but you get what you pay for a lot of times.
If anything... Apple should take the eMac motherboard, put it in a small, compact desktop case, and sell it for $600-700 to replace the iMac Classic. Ship it with VGA/ADC supporting low-end graphics card via AGP (have integrated Firewire and USB and Audio as usual) that a Mac user could swap for something harder core later on. No PCI slots because you don't need them, if you did you'd buy a pro model. We don't need a sub-$500 entry... but a $600-700 monitorless desktop that I could hook up to my old 21" beige CRT would suit me just fine. Yeah, it's not as expandable... but I still have my 9600 and I don't plan on getting rid of it.
<strong> [quote]Everyone who's anyone selling computers today ought to have a credible sub 500 offering for the public.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I disagree. For under $500 Apple couldn't compete. Think about it... they hold what... 2-5% marketshare? They're not selling in volumes large enough to throwaway R&D money on something that's as much of a loss leader as this. Hell, I'm not even sure a $600-700 eMac-based desktop wouldn't hurt their bottomline. Gateway and Compaq were crippled by this economy, and trust me... the cheap PC's have sold, they just don't turn much of a profit, and in some cases they don't turn a profit at all with the cutthroat pricing they go after each other with. It's like eBay for the executives... try to see who can outdo each other 'til the point it hurts.
Ever heard the term "Loss leader"? Apple is not in a position to produce one of these to drum up sales. They need to follow their BMW approach as Jobs' has used prior. Continue to build a stable, reliable machine that's middle of the road. The eMac/iMac pricing is more than adequate an inroad into the "Near-Luxury" computer buying experience. Lord knows the Pro line and Xserve lines are like poor man's Mercedes at their pricepoints and abilities.
<strong> [quote]Something complete and reliable that comes with a display.</strong><hr></blockquote>
For $500? LoL You can rarely find a PC for less than $700 sans monitor built by a reputable PC builder that is reliable. LoL I mean, a mom and pop shop could probably supply you with a motherboard, processor, minitower case, hard disk, memory, optical drive of some sort, etc. etc. for $500 and it'd be a decent machine if you had all of the drivers and they were all adequately supported.
Then again it'd not come with a licensed OS at that price ($200 for a copy of Windows), or you'd have to have them get you a copy of Linux to put on it, which is a download away but still... nothing is going to guarantee that every piece of "CHEAP" hardware they slap together for you is quality pieces for that sort of $, nor can they guarantee that Linux will autodetect or have the drivers at an earshot to integrate said hardware by default.
There's a definite difference between the low-end burner brands and the brands like TDK, Plextor, and Yamaha, and it's not just price. That's true for monitors. That's true for a lot of computer related components, straight down to PCI cards, PCMCIA/Cardbus cards, and all manners of componentry.
Once again... "You get what you pay for".
<strong> [quote]Hands up anyone who thinks Apple couldn't sell an iMac "classic" for 399-499 and still make a few bucks on each machine out the door?</strong><hr></blockquote>
::keeping hands at sides::
<strong> [quote]This is more critical for Apple than any other box builder.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I disagree... what is more critical is that Apple attack sources of greater revenue and diversify their sources of income so they have greater income, not areas of considerable loss and incredible saturation and haggling. Loss leaders are loss leaders, unless Apple were to be given a factory in Korea on charity wishes, and suddenly struck it rich on a wealth of cheap and quality built components that just happened to fit Apple's hardware, Apple has "NO" volume to be trying to match the PC makers. To sell at a low price point you have to be modularly making things in such a vain that you sell an exorbitant # of the products at a pricepoint that you can "AFFORD" to usher a loss-leader, and hopefully even make it a tiny margin profitable venture. At the price you suggest... it'd be a loss, and Apple needs to increase profitability in all manners more than sustain losses to increase marketshare.
Cannibalizing their bottomline = bad idea.
Microsoft can't make much enroads in Enterprise in comparison to Sun which is faster, better supported, and more reliable. Scott McNealy, the Steve Jobs of Enterprise computing, even knows this. Sun achieves this in the same way Apple does. Their machines are more expensive than some of their competitors (with exception to HP and SGI which follow largely the same lead with their HP-UX and Irix-based Servers and Workstations) from the PC realm, like Dell, like Gateway, like Compaq... but they're more reliable, have less downtime, better service and support. They're also, like SGI, like the HP-UX machines... what we refer to as "Proprietary". True they use some PC-related components, just like Apple... but they use their own OS (Solaris)... like Apple. They use their own processor (Ultra SPARC), like Apple who commissioned buys PowerPC's for their own usage. Apple, SGI, IBM, and even HP in Enterprise (non-Windows) are very similar if you think about it.
"You get what you pay for."
To me, Sun is not only Apple's biggest ally, they're Apple's biggest source of competition this side of Microsoft or Sony or AOL/Time-Warner. Even so, Microsoft is a software company, they're an ally as well as Microsoft loves to make $ and needs Apple nowadays, as they need competition to keep Government off their backs, and to build good will.
Apple needs to compete with Sun, because they can make $ doing it. They have a better OS than Microsoft in terms of being ready for a server environment, and can better integrate with hardware as they build the hardware their OS supports. The more they bolster it, the better off the platform will be.
With products like Xserve and Xserve RAID, we're seeing the "STARTING" of this. They're relatively low-cost, low-maintenance, "LOW-END" servers that don't have the service/support and aren't for the market that Sun is involved in. They're not even "REMOTELY" close to Sun or HP or IBM in this regard... but they need to get closer. This is where the $ is. Higher margin computing.
Apple in eventuality needs to look at making server and rendering farms. To do so... they either need to obtain processors to do that (PPC 970, PPC 9800, Sun UltraSPARC, AMD Hammer, etc. etc.) or do as Sun did... develop their own. The problem Apple faces is that in buying a processor from Sun or IBM, they'd be buying processors from someone they'd be designing machines to compete with. So another potentially worthwhile solution would be to...
Buy Sun Microsystems.
Processor roadmap? Move from PowerPC to UltraSPARC. OS roadmap? Work on the "NEXT" generation of operating systems by merging Sun Solaris and Mac OS X together over the long haul. Apple has the interface wizardry, Sun has the server-level experience. Hell, even a great body of Sun engineers in the past "LOVED" OpenStep. It's a no-brainer.
Other than this... Apple needs to diversify. Microsoft moved into television (MS-NBC), moved into input device and controller manufacturing (mice, trackballs, joysticks, gamepads, steering wheels), moved into Video Game Systems. AOL moved into the media business (AOL-Time Warner). Apple has started to do this as well... iPod. It's a consumer appliance, in the likes of what a Sony, Sonic Blue, Toshiba, or any other consumer electronics vendor makes.
So how about an Airport Wireless home stereo component that automagically (Rendezvous) syncs up with an Airport card equipped Mac from somewhere within the house? How about an Apple deal with the companies that make TiVo or ReplayTV, and make a device that syncs to your mac, and in using iCal (with iSync) on your desktop computer, can sync and time when to record shows for the next month, pooled from an online web-database your cable provider(s) or the stations themselves keep? Perhaps it'll even let you use an updated iDVD in this system to stream, store it on the TV, transfer the file through a high-speed wireless Airport Extreme connection, and record the contents for playback for a minor fee that Apple, the MPAA, and the various cable providers put together.
Apple needs to innovate, just as they have been. Do that rather than try to compete through cannibalization... as that will just leave you chewing your arm off 'til you're less productive than when you started.
<strong> [quote]Without marketshare the platform will eventually die out, at least for the consumer.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Will it? Where's the proof it will? If that's true I presume Sun is already dead... as they have less overall volume marketshare of the computer sector than Apple. Hell, it'd probably take Sun, SGI, and maybe the entire Alpha platform vendors (and the divergent OS's it ran) at it's peak sales to match Apple's marketshare right now! LoL
More than the "MEGAHERTZ" myth... this "MARKETSHARE" moronic tendency/myth is what has you all so ate up you can't see history. Market Analysts left and right told WANG computers, once one of the leaders in the business, along with Leading Edge, what they "NEEDED" to do.
Notice that WANG isn't around anymore in the capacity they once were? They were the Gateway or Dell of their timeframe. Now they're little more than a footnote in history. Buying into this b.s. is RIDICULOUS, yet every skeptical Mac user or knowitall PC user brings it up. Where's the proof that Apple's going to die from it though? Huh? Hell... Apple "WAS" dead by numerous accounts I'd heard before back in 1997. Funny... they look alive to me?!?
Market analysts told Apple to clone and it damn near killed them. Of course if Apple had cloned at the proper time, when they were healthy, strong, and had the marketshare lead or a parity, they could've been successful at it. Yet when you build hardware and software and integrate the two, it's a very hard and daunting task to meet "ALL" of the differing hardware components the clones use. Apple found this out in trying to support Daystar, APSTech, Radius/Umax, Motorola, and Power Computing. If CHRP/PPCP had ever took off... Apple would've been in worse trouble. Microsoft does a pretty impressive job doing it... but then again, that's "ALL" they do. Apple's strength was always intricate hardware support. Going software only would've left Apple in much the same predicament as Microsoft was criticized during the Windows '9x and elder NT 3.x/4 and to some degree, 2000 era. Yet Apple had tooling and components they had to build for their "OWN" hardware, try to keep pace by spending their R&D in 2 places at the same time, while also spending R&D $ on making sure the clones looked good too. Apple didn't just up and give the source code to Mac OS to Power Computing, they did a good percentage of the work themselves. I hated when Jobs had to kill off cloning, but if he hadn't... while I didn't think Apple was remotely dead at the time, they might well have been on the verge of dying today if not for that.
Trust me, you don't know what it's like when a computer company dies. I do, I have an Amiga 500 in storage right now, ever heard of Commodore? When computer companies die... there's usually little fanfare or critique at that point, because most everyone has almost moved on. They just sort of disappear into oblivion. So the more you hear people bicker about Apple, odds are... they're far from dead. Hell, Even the Amiga community is still alive some 10 years and multiple transitions after it's supposed death! I check back in from time to time...
Don't believe all the reality distorting propaganda that's spewed out there. It's bad for your wit.
We have the second largest application's base in computing, and growing! I mean, take the Mac OS API's which support all sorts of good stuff like MS Office and Internet Explorer and Entourage (nee-Outlook), and fuse it with Unix and all of the freely available applications and codebases. I mean... if some company was adept enough, they could "Aquafy" a graphics program called "The GIMP" and fill in the missing blanks, dot the I's, cross the T's, and polish it into one hell of a graphics program to compete with Adobe. See that happening on Windows?
Hell... with x11 support... we can even run applications now from UNIX in all of their roughness. Do you realize there's more applications and widgets for UNIX than there is Windows? LoL
We're not even "REMOTELY" in the shape we once were under Amelio, and worse Spindler, and Sculley. We hold as large or larger a marketshare than BMW and I don't see them floundering and dying. True, you always want to get bigger and better, but you take what you can get when you can get it. Low end hunks of crap that cost $ to develop, and pay minimal dividends is not what Apple is about. I'd rather them gun for Sony and bring out more variations on the iPod, maybe purchase the rights to TiVo or something of that line than build crap like this.
Apple is not Commodore. They are not misjudging their products, marketing the wrong products, and/or sitting a standstill with no knowledge of where to go through mismanagement and misappropriations. Do not offer up the "Chicken Little" cries when we're as far from death or needing to do anything of this colossal precedence.
You want Apple to increase marketshare? Make OS X more efficient and support all of them old beige boxes out there in the world that are "STILL" usable, much as I use my beige 9600 every day. I can run an unsupported install of OS X on my 9600 but the OS is so inefficient and bloated with it's graphics and transitions that it running OS X can't keep up with my 500 Mhz. PIII running XP. Mind you, a 400 Mhz. G3 is "SUPPOSED" to be 3x's faster than a PC at the same speed... which would mean it should be faster, right?
BeOS was efficient, and on the "EXACT SAME" PC hardware... could run up to 2-3x's faster than Windows on the same hardware. Plus it scaled if you had MP.
That said...
Apple is not Be Inc. They are not producing an OS with no visible market to play to. The days of developing a new lower-end personal computer brand that wasn't Wintel were largely over when Be came to market. Apple has shored up their place as of now, Be had no marketshare and no application support. Hell, they can't even match what's left of the Amiga community that "STILL" remains afloat even with Commodore being dead for damn near 10 years.
Apple is largely inventing or lobbying their future as we speak.
Fears of Microsoft dropping IE? No problem... we'll make Safari. Hell, we have more browsers almost than Wintel almost now! LoL A couple of years ago it was "Woe is us... Netscape is dying". Well... now there's Mozilla, Netscape 7 (based on Mozilla), Camino (Chimaera, also based on Mozilla), iCab, Internet Explorer, Safari, and OmniWeb.
Digital hub? We invented it, not to mention Microsoft "STILL" can't match the ease of burning a CD like disc burner or iTunes can do. They can't provide anything close to iPhoto. Their moviemaker is a joke compared to iMovie. iTunes is a far superior MP3 player, both in interface, as well as functionality to "ANYTHING" Microsoft produces. Networking is a tedious chore in Windows, it's a relative blessing on the Mac between Macs, and is still far easier than trying it in Windows.
To shore up some other loose ends....
Fears of Microsoft dropping Office? No problem... we have a presentation program right now, and we can further cannibalize the open-source to produce the missing pieces of the puzzle if necessary. Yes we can pull from the same place we got the KHTML engine from for Safari as they make an integrated office suite for the KDE desktop environment that is "FREE" under the GPL, of which Konqueror serves as the web browser based on KHTML. AtTheOs used the same KHTML that Apple used for much the same thing, and I'm sure Apple could marry the KOffice engine to Cocoa just as they did with Safari and provide interface innovations...
Yes we can work on a port of StarOffice/OpenOffice with Sun that is "Mac-like" and works for us Mac folk and... ::gasping:: is compatible with MS Office.
Yes we can update ClarisWorks and fill in the pieces to make it better, perhaps even pooling from the KOffice source. Or perhaps we ditch ClarisWorks and make a light and free version of the KOffice with Keynote integrated (new AppleWorks and a new Apple Office with named components for each product like MS has in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access; Apple could even re-assimilate Filemaker to go with Keynote, then they'd just need a spread sheet and word processor)... and release a full-blown version. The thing with free software is... what changes we make to their engine we have to note, but what proprietary parts we use of our own, we don't have to. So Apple could well charge for it's own Office, and make a Works derivative that's not as full-featured for those that don't need it.
Yes we can buy DataViz and integrate their translator support into an office suite, as well as into various parts of the OS by default.
Our limits are endless, and with the Mac... you truly get what you pay for.
<strong> [quote]Low-end iBook guts, basic optical and HDD, gum-drop shell, cheap price. Nobody has to lose their shirts selling these.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple sells the iBook for $999, dropping the flatpanel LCD would "NOT" drop that down to below $700. You know it as well as I do. The iMac Classic with a CRT sells for $600 in some configurations if you shop around. That's reasonable enough, although it's a G3 and it's got a tiny, miniscule monitor that some of us are against. The eMac is nicer (and reasonable too), but when I have a 21" external CRT, why would I want to go back to a 17"? Integrated monitors are good for schools... but for consumers who have existing peripherals... a gutted eMac with external monitor support that is configurable in "SMALL" ways makes more sense, and could be made while sustaining "CURRENT" margins. Otherwise, the iMac at it's current price point as well as the eMac at their price points are relative steals for what you get.
Listen, Apple has reached a point where they really can't afford to lose any more market. They have the burden of supporting a platform and that task gets harder and harder with each fraction of a percentage point that one loses.
Amiga IS dead to the consumer, lets not be silly and pretend otherwise. Mac is not dead, never said that. Those who've seen me rant know that I always say it would take Apple about a decade to die out of the consumer scene at the current pace of shrinkage. And then the company would NOT die, but it wouldn't matter to mac buyers because they would be very different.
What I believe is that a platform agnostic future is coming to us all. Then demi-proprietary platforms will begin to appear, consoles, closed systems, whole widgets. If Apple hangs on long enough, write once-read anywhere will make windows/mac/linux debates irrelevant.
If yo don't think that an iMacCRT can sell for 400USD, then you've got your head in the sand. That's 600 Canadian, looking in my local paper I an find dozens of systems selling for 600 Canadian WITH 17" CRT's!!! OK, they use older slow Gfx cards and have small capacity HDD's and slow opticals and weak sound. They're basic computers for what they are, BUT SO IS THE iMac CRT, don't pretend otherwise. To top it off they've been making that thing for 4 years, kif they can't do it cheap buy now, then they have other major problems that require another thread entirely.
iMacG3 should be in competition with these machines already, or it should be dead. Simple.
<strong>Listen, Apple has reached a point where they really can't afford to lose any more market. They have the burden of supporting a platform and that task gets harder and harder with each fraction of a percentage point that one loses.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't think marketshare matters, I said it before, and I'll say it again. Apple can sustain or even lose market share and it won't readily affect them as long as the userbase is at the same strength or increases. Judging by the amount of traffic I've seen at the 2 Apple stores in my area, plus the # of Macs sold at Micro Center... Apple's sales are strong, and they might even be making headway in marketshare as it is.
Judging by their end of 1/4 reports for the last few fiscal 1/4's, they're actually healthier than much of the PC crowd. LoL
If it ain't broke... don't fix it.
Are they necessarily matching the PC juggernaut PC per PC? No. Yet they don't have to, to be successful, especially as more and more cannibalize themselves to death, trying to beat each other on the low-end by undercutting and generating slim margins on machines that "STILL" need R&D, and thereby probably generate miniscule losses.
If anything, I seriously hope more and more PC makers go as far as building sub-$300 PC's. Wouldn't that be great? Sell machines for even more of a hit, blow themselves into oblivion?
If there's a side to this... PC makers are the one's that should be worrying about marketshare. Let's face it... you build a PC that is basically a bucket of standardized parts. You have an OS that isn't proprietary or specific to a handful of hardware configurations, and that you license through another company. You have 20 competitors building machines just like yours, using the same versions/variations in OS. Where's your identity in all of this? With no identity... what does it matter? If it's a stable PC, then it's like Oranges and Oranges... may the best man win.
When it's Apple's and Oranges though... it's all about identity, and that's what Apple pushes via better integration, more innovative and easier programs, nicer interface design, the whole 9-yards.
The days of building a computer out of a bucket of parts you buy affordably at your own Radio Shack are over (think Apple I or some of the older Commodore offerings that retailed for $300-400); even though you can build a decent PC out of parts for a probably $500. With that said, for $300-500... you can get a decent PC from Korea (if you sell your life away to MSN or AOL for 3 years; or buy into some other contract). The one's built outside of Korea can only match by tacking on hidden costs. Perhaps Apple could sell iMacs at $400-500... but only if they inked a deal with an Network/ISP like AOL or Earthlink to substantiate some of the costs. Could it be a success?
I still doubt it.
[quote]<strong>Amiga IS dead to the consumer, lets not be silly and pretend otherwise.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I never said it wasn't, but the community still supports it. Hell, for all intensive purposes Be has been dead to the consumer (although it is being developed into PalmOS), yet I'm sure you will find people still running it. The same consumers that would rather run BeOS forever.
If I was "silly" and/or "pretending" as you suggest... I'd be b!tching and ranting about marketshare in a company that couldn't possibly match toe to toe on the bottom end of the market where $ is slim through tight margins. I'd be wearing my "Amiga Forever" t-shirt instead of having a PC and Mac generating heat right now where I sit.
[quote]<strong>Mac is not dead, never said that.</strong><hr></blockquote>
But you do imply that in losing marketshare that they will, do you not? I do not feel marketshare matters. It's a silly little # that we continue to harbor on because the analysts tell us to. Largely because in a world of Apple's and Orange's... they see "Oranges, Oranges, and more Oranges". They don't understand the Mac and it's needs any better than they understand Sun or SGI and their needs. Hell, if not for analysts lobbying for SGI to embrace more marketshare, they'd probably be in decent health right now. Buying into Cray wasn't their healthiest or smartest move, even as they focused on high-end computing. That is, after all, what a mainframe computer is... an extremely high-end computer. Then again, if they would've known Linux was coming, they probably would've just combatted and killed Cray with a few dozen Octanes running in Master/Slave, and still retain their gross margins.
Marketshare is "NOT" the issue, but the size of our "OWN" market is. You see... Apple can increase it's computer sales by 30%, even at that... if the industry as a whole increases by 60%, we lose marketshare. Yet in volume, we are BIGGER" than we were. The companies that support the Mac will generate larger fiscal volume sales because they're selling to more people, even if worldwide marketshare isn't as strong.
That is exactly what Apple is doing now. That is "ALL" they've needed to do all along. Sun Microsystems isn't worried about how much marketshare of the computer industry they have. They just worry about doing well in their key markets and try (keyword: try) to innovate with what R&D $ they have to develop the next killer app. Sort of like what they did with Java, then Jini. Do we see any sub-$500 Sun-built machines running on SPARC?
[quote]<strong>Those who've seen me rant know that I always say it would take Apple about a decade to die out of the consumer scene at the current pace of shrinkage.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That is rampant speculation. I don't feel they will die, and yes that is speculation too... but I feel that I have more chance in backing up my claim than you do via a bunch of industry analysts who work at places that have nothing to do with the "industry" and likely don't or haven't used a Mac in their lives. I mean, they analyze the Mac and PC markets the same way, and both are uniquely different in their own ways, and as a result their "NEEDS". These are the same people that analyze pork bellies and sweet crude for Christ's sakes....
Do they know what Apple needs to do? Where were they when Apple needed a new CEO. Huh? In an industry where a man experienced in the semi-conductor sector, in saving a "National Semiconductor" can come over to try to save an Apple, and teeter-totter's back and forth by listening to analysts, countering-skeptics, and not understanding a damn bit of what he should've been doing... why should we listen to analysts that dreamed him as perfect for the job? Hell... you might as well get a man that sells brown-colored sugar water. I bet he can do damn near as good a job when he isn't betting the farm on a handheld computer that there's "STILL" little market for.
[quote]<strong>And then the company would NOT die, but it wouldn't matter to mac buyers because they would be very different.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Also rampant speculation.
I'm a firm believer that if Apple dies, it'll be from something other than marketshare shrinkage or pricing. I mean if that was the case, Apple would've been dead already. Apple Macs have been more expensive than their counterparts since they first came out.
As far as not dying... if they become irrelavent to their consumer base, they will die. I mean, it's like this... Apple isn't based on overall marketshare, they're based on "THEIR" market. Imagine, if you will, that Apple is the "ONLY" maker of their items, and in theory they really are. Most do not coin a Mac as a PC, even if it is one... because it's "Us vs. Them". That said, if Apple increases the # of people using Macs, they are healthy... if they decrease theat #, they are hurting. If nobody buys them anymore, they are dead. What Compaq/HP, and Gateway, and Dell do have very little importance... that is unless they can build a computer that "Out-Macs" the Mac. That'd be very hard to do based on User Experience Guidelines, and the minute Apple saw Dell putting out a "OurMacOSClone", they'd get hit with a hefty lawsuit to prevent it. Your staunch Mac supporters won't leave if they're happy... and you might well get a few defectors if they can learn the in's and out's of why the Mac is better to them. That is what the Apple store provides an outlet for, and it forces other stores that sell Macs to compete.
Also...
Diversification, as I said earlier, brings in revenues for Apple, especially when they hit a halo homerun. Hell, Apple even makes a Windows-version of the iPod for that reason. They're meeting new markets through innovation, and as a result helping their bottomlien through volume sales which will "EVENTUALLY" lead to cheaper iPods, and then a whole range of iPods. Hell, iPods with color screens, iPods that can play movies, iPod's with a miniaturized OS running on them that can serve as a PDA. Apple doesn't need to compete with Palm right now... but eventually, they might own the whole market.
Stuff like the iPod adds to Apple's bottom-line, builds brand equity, and diversifies their products so they are not strictly a computer company. I'm actually for Apple doing far more of this... and I think they will.
[quote]<strong>What I believe is that a platform agnostic future is coming to us all. Then demi-proprietary platforms will begin to appear, consoles, closed systems, whole widgets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
We all like to dream. I've had that dream before too, as have many of my friends. The thing is... odds are, it won't happen as you think it will. Nothing in the computer industry works as analysts suggest, and analysts jizz over the thoughts of having a market they can understand. Most analysts don't understand and miscalculate the whole 9 yards. Hence the marketshare phenomenon. As Jobs put it... "BMW is not worried about marketshare, why should we?"
There is no reason to as long as you increase sales and provide innovative product without cannibalizing yourself.
It's refreshing to have a CEO that understands Apple. Might have something to do with the fact that he pretty much created it. I'm not privy to say that Jobs is a saint... and Woz, while an incredibly gifted man, is not a "business"-oriented type. Jobs though knows Apple, has a vision, and if there was "ONE" thing he was made for, Apple was it. NeXT was the closest alternative he could come up with, and it holds some of the keys to Apple's future direction (since Apple now = Apple + NeXT). Pixar... was something he could make $ off of while not having to harp on engineers. Consider it a sound investment that largely runs itself.
It's usually some visionary or evolutionary that takes things forward, usually in a way we hadn't thought of. Doesn't necessarily mean we make any forward progress either. Sometimes it's a marketing genius (like a Gates) that makes the difference more than a true visionary.
[quote]<strong>If Apple hangs on long enough, write once-read anywhere will make windows/mac/linux debates irrelevant.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Also speculation. There's also the possibility that Linux could rise up by then and control the whole market. There's a chance everything could be based off Linux, which in and of itself wouldn't be agnostic. There's a chance that what we see as "computers" will lose marketshare as smaller handheld computers (more like extremely shrunken laptops vs. hamstrung PDA's that don't do much more than the original Newton did) take over. There's a chance that .NET will work out and we'll all "STILL" be using Microsoft apps. via subscription and paying entirely too much per month to use some bugprone, crashy, web-based implementation of Word. Even with subscriptions... there'll be pirate accounts and Microsoft and others will watch as 1337 h4x0r d00d5 use Word to type their 4th grade term papers for free.
I mean, we could go on with this all day and still not even peg the future. WIRED magazine can't even do that... but they can dream like the rest of us.
[quote]<strong>If yo don't think that an iMacCRT can sell for 400USD, then you've got your head in the sand.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Did I say it wouldn't sell well? No. Would it be profitable? Doubtful. There *IS* a difference. The sooner you can figure that out, the better off we'll be as this argument will fizzle.
[quote]<strong>That's 600 Canadian, looking in my local paper I an find dozens of systems selling for 600 Canadian WITH 17" CRT's!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
And if you had read earlier... Apple has "SMALL MARKETSHARE" which means a lot of the components that go into their machines, being a "PROPRIETARY" builder are more expensive.
You need to take an economics class and understand the laws of supply and demand, and understand that when you produce something in large volume, the costs come down. PC's are built out of parts bins... as a result of that, and with the Endian vs. Little Endian developments of the platform(s); Macs and PC's share "SOME" parts or share some "TECHNOLOGIES" might even be more accurate (as Apple uses PCI, but their implementation isn't identical to Intel's specs, because of endianess they require proprietary controllers), but not enough that Apple can match the Intel/AMD juggernaut blow per blow on pricing. Then again, they can provide a better user experience at a premium cost.
Sort of like BMW. Are they trying to beat Chevrolet or Hyundai/Kia just because they sell more cars in volume? No. Are they the world's fastest production car, can they beat all Ferrari's? No. They have their genre, they stick to it, and expand based on their abilities to find a way to meet that market, or diversify their portfolio. That is why I suggested earlier that Apple purchase Sun. Fusing the two platforms together would increase marketshare while also increasing dividends and overall sales. That latter being the more important.
Once again... if Sun isn't worried about not having 60,000,000,000 machines on desktops out there... why should Apple? They still have their niche, and need to focus on meeting their niche, not cannibalizing and playing hardball in another arena where slap together machines built out of bucketloads of cheap parts can be sold for a cheap pricing because of the modularity of the other platform. The Mac isn't based around a "STANDARDIZED" architecture, that alone causes the costs to be higher.
That is what Apple has to go on, that is what they have to work with. If Apple can get the firepower in a new processor set, they'll be good to go in their quest at competing where the real $ and profits is at. Apple, as I said earlier, needs to "NOT" focus on the low end, because the low end makes you very little money for what you get out of it. The high-end, while not necessarily skyrocketing your marketshare, solidifies your being through something called "MONEY". It's harder to win at it because the people in this area play hardball, and not just in terms of hardware and software... but services as well, but it's more rewarding if and when you can. The fact Sun continues to raise the bar as Microsoft tries so hard to find a way in (and fails miserably at every juncture as Windows just doesn't scale well) to take over another market just shows that Sun is cagey and strong at what they do.
That's all Apple needs to be. Apple could sustain life on Education, Graphics/Video, and consumer sales on the level of pricepoint and product that they have now, through evolution. When the opportunity comes to produce another iPod... they can even capitalize on the success of that. Marketshare on the Mac side, they own 100% of and have no competition since the clones died. Worry less about PC's because the Mac amongst it's staunchest supporters "ISN'T" a PC. It doesn't run Windows by default. It's not used for games as much as it is productivity. It's not near as bugprone or as easy to get a virus on via exploits that Microsoft "NEVER" is able to end.
Apple would make more $ on customer calls for 3-4 Enterprise clients, not counting hardware and setup fees, than they would for damn near 100 cheap PC's! Just because you want a CHEAP MAC, doesn't mean I don't either (hell I'm on a 9600 running 9.2.2 with a G3 card and an unsupported install)... yet I'm realistic about this.
The PC market focuses there largely because they don't have enough control over software (system) to compete with Sun or SGI or HP in high-end servers. They've hit a brick wall, and aren't able to compete with Sun in software integration, not able to swiftly adapt because they have to deal with Microsoft and Microsoft's problems, which is dealing with all gamut of users and hardware vendors and 20,000+ lines of bug-filled system code that becomes more bloated with each release.
Some are embracing Linux for this reason (as you can make it better yourself, if you want, have the understanding, and the resources), but many don't understand the infrastructure needed to make that happen, and none of the Linux variants have an interface that is "INTUITIVE" like Apple's, much less in some fashions... Windows. IBM stands as one of the few that can do it if they can put the bureacracy behind them. Dell could if they were to embrace Linux and get a body of "SOFTWARE" developers to push it forward enough to match a Sun Solaris or an IBM Linux server for reliability and performance. Dell doesn't do this because they just don't worry about software.
[quote]<strong>OK, they use older slow Gfx cards and have small capacity HDD's and slow opticals and weak sound. They're basic computers for what they are, BUT SO IS THE iMac CRT, don't pretend otherwise. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Did I say it wasn't? LoL I said that because of the "PROPRIETARY" nature of the components used, the drivers needed, and the small amounts in which Apple purchases from vendors, they pay a "PREMIUM" for each component compared to PC vendors who can buy the parts by the bushel full at a lower pricing. In fact, companies like ATI "LOVE" the Mac market for the simple fact they can counter-engineer their components to "NOT" be compatible on the PC, and thereby forcibly charging Apple and their customers to pay a premium, and thereby they make more per item than they do on the PC side. Didn't we learn anything from the Voodoo 5500's being Mac/PC cards with separate drivers? ATI could match this... if they wanted to. Yet, why would they?
The same goes for Apple, they're not saints. They make their own, proprietary GeForce cards. Can we just go to a local store and pickup an XTasy GeForce or another brand? No. They aren't supported. Apple can generate some revenues out of this, but they can also make a case for themselves. Apple "DOESN'T WANT" to be non-proprietary, and in honesty... it's probably better off for their well-being if they remain that way. It hurts us as consumers in some ways, but if you love the Mac, you'd not want it any other way. Largely 'cause... if they adopt your idea on marketshare, switch to AMD/Intel, they would be just like any other PC vendor after a few years. A BMW with Chevy or Hyundai/Kia components... ?
Why?
I'd rather see Apple become a BMW with Ferrari components. Ferrari and Apple and BMW aren't so concerned with marketshare. The one that is, is Volkswagen... and their mode of becoming a luxury marque is likely to succeed as well as Microsoft has in Enterprise. In other words... there'll be a few people that buy into it, but the overall market will still be in Unix-based machines favor, like Sun and SGI and maybe even... Apple.
As a result of that level of thinking and proprietary focus... the Apple components and the PC components are "NOT" the same. Try taking an Apple Mac Radeon or a PC Radeon and swapping them between machines. Work? No. In some cases, stuff like bridge controllers, to onboard video and sound, and all manners of other components on the Mac is "DIFFERENT", some out of necessity, some by design (to make $, and to recoup the costs of R&D for making something marginally innovative, like ADC; which makes it so a monitor has one cable to connect rather than 2).
As a result of all that, Apple buys lower volume versions of other components, some of which aren't remotely close to their PC counterparts but perform identically, and are based on the same family but with a different nature to the driver support. Some of that, is because we're on PowerPC. The PowerPC and x86 lines are different in their endianess, and as a result, some chips you have on x86 won't work with the PowerPC, so you have to make "clones" that follow the Mac's particular endianess and work within the architecture. Understanding what that means... it means that because the PowerPC is sold in such miniscule volumes, and you're using proprietary bridges and chips for various tasks... you have a higher-incurred cost as a result. How many computers you see running on G3 or G4 chips outside of Apple anymore, and that come in a non-Apple casing, and weren't manufactured by Apple themselves that compete at the low-end? I bet you are hard-pressed to find one. PPCP all but died the minute Apple pulled the plug on cloning, as it was the "LAST" OS to support the platform. IBM gave up on OS/2, and they use AIX and are pushing Linux more and more (which actually came late to the PowerPC game as PPCP was all but dead and Linux wasn't even on the original roadmap back in the PReP and CHRP days prior)... but the hardware is still expensive as it's focused on ::gasping:: Enterprise. Microsoft made a version of Windows NT for PowerPC, with NT4, but they killed it prior to 2000.
If we were built on Intel/AMD chips, used NForce2 or VIA chipsets/bridges for integrated audio and/or video if supported, etc. etc. we "COULD" do this and likely sell at the same pricepoint. That is because we "WOULD BE" the same, and at that point you could probably buy a version of Mac OS X, get a copy of Darwin that umbrellas all of the hardware, and install OS X with some hacking and haggling (unsupported install, likely developed by a resourceful hacker through reverse-engineering [illegal in this instance]) on a Compaq or Dell. Apple doesn't want that, or else they'd be shipping it themselves.
Then again, a Mac would likely look like a Dell or a Gateway in packaging too because you'd be based off of a generally spec motherboard. If we went with a wholly proprietary motherboard design, we'd see costs rise even with sharing PC componentry (ever notice that laptop pricings, being based on proprietary technologies from vendor to vendor, more closely mimic the Mac than desktops do?). Some PC makers cut the AT board in half for packaging or design reasons... but it's still an AT cut in half. Try fitting that in an iMac and see what happens.
[quote]<strong>To top it off they've been making that thing for 4 years, kif they can't do it cheap buy now, then they have other major problems that require another thread entirely.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah, they have made it for a long time, and as the volume sales haven't exactly skyrocketed... it's probably damn near soon to be end of lifed (killed). Will it be replaced? Probably by another run of price cuts on the eMac which can sustain enough sales without cannibalizing Apple's bottomline. It's still not likely to reach your magical sub-$500 number. Sorry.
Marketshare at a loss is not a good idea. I've said it before, I'll say it again.
[quote]<strong>iMacG3 should be in competition with these machines already, or it should be dead. Simple.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And it probably will die. There's been less and less sales of the machines, as people take their $ and invest in eMacs and iMac G4's and Pro Desktops.
The sub $500 PC in this day and age is a bucket of parts if it's American (if built by a manufacturer like a Compaq/Dell), and if it's Korean it's the best damn near clone of a $700 American PC (likely with some quirks and rough edges), built with components that are made and mfg. in Korea to compensate for costs.
Therefore, to me... a lower priced eMachine can be quite competitive with a $700 PC. Considering I've worked on them prior and know the in's and out's... they're not a bad PC for the $. Can Apple compete with it? No. Should they? I don't think so.
A sub $500 Mac is just ludicrous based on marketshare alone. If Apple embraces Intel/AMD, then "MAYBE". Then again... Apple would "STILL" want to remain proprietary in their motherboard structure to avoid Windows being booted up as the native OS on a Mac. That'd be a hell of a coup if Microsoft went that far (and given the easy opportunity and enough reason to make it sustain, Microsoft would), as it'd mean that if you couldn't run a PC version of the software, just fire up a copy of Windows on your Mac. Softwindows or Virtual PC aside... they aren't your default OS, and there's no "dual-boot" to it.
So it's nice to dream about... but then again my sub-$10,000 Ferrari isn't happening either. Dreams are just that, and in this case... it's a pretty whack dream based on premises that are sure to do more damage than good.
<strong>How about a 5200/75-16/500MB Mac for 29.49 from megamac.com
Now this is a deal!
</strong><hr></blockquote>
ROFL...
[sarcasm]
I think he was upset that Apple couldn't give him the farm and keys to the side door of 1 Infinite Loop for the pricing he wanted.
Then again I'm still waiting for Mr. Schrempf to compete with GM by rebadging the entire Mercedes line at 1/2 cost with Dodge and Chrysler logos. Wouldn't that be neat? I'll take a $20,000 Dodge-badged SLK... be cheaper than the $40,000+ Crossfire that Chrysler is selling. Imagine Mercedes C-class cars with Dodge badges selling for the price of a Kia Rio/Hyundai Elantra? That'd sell extremely well too.
I think he was upset that Apple couldn't give him the farm and keys to the side door of 1 Infinite Loop for the pricing he wanted.
Then again I'm still waiting for Mr. Schrempf to compete with GM by rebadging the entire Mercedes line at 1/2 cost with Dodge and Chrysler logos. Wouldn't that be neat? I'll take a $20,000 Dodge-badged SLK... be cheaper than the $40,000+ Crossfire that Chrysler is selling. Imagine Mercedes C-class cars with Dodge badges selling for the price of a Kia Rio/Hyundai Elantra? That'd sell extremely well too.
Is there anyone else here who isn't tired of car analogies when discussing computers?
First of all in all your posts you mention, Sun, Sun, Sun... there are plenty who believe that Sun is on it's way to becoming the next SGI. They are having to adapt to lowering prices in the server segment, why is Apple somehow exempted from this as well? Apple isn't above market forces.
You cite all the prior examples Apple being declared dead and also other companies (Commodore) dying to just ignore that fact that when the times change, so must Apple.
I think the most amazing thing, that you ignore through all of this is how quickly things happen in technology. You mention companies that are footnotes now, and what you really should consider is that most often they didn't gradually just sort of disappear. They tipped and sank.
Technology, probably more than any other area is hyper-reliant on network effects and relationships. A technology can be doing just fine and suddenly a price point, a simplier solution, a new process, or procedure can just about capsize what was a completely stable market.
So in otherwords I don't care if Apple had nothing but black ink for the past 20 quarters, when the train leaves the station, they are either on it or heading for the dustbin.
3dfx was probably the perfect example of this happening and there are plenty betting that Sun might be next. You have a well developed leading edge technology and you hang just fine for a while. Suddenly though, boom you are gone.
The market isn't standing still. Integration is being pounded by Intel because it may hit the processor 5% harder but you get the feature for free and Intel gets the profit from the faster processor. So the 2 ghz machine may only feel as fast as the 1 ghz machine, but the 2 ghz machine is going to be $399 while the 1 ghz machine was $1499.
Also for those bagging on the share video ram, it isn't any skin off the consumers nose. The same mega-hardware sites that thumb their nose at these solutions but they also thumb their nose at G4 processor speeds and Mac's as well. The graphics speeds are typically 80% of what they would be if they had their own ram instead of shared ram.
This is a perfect example. It is a benchmark from the Intel 845g which is exactly what those companies like Dell are shipping out by the buttload. It ran RTCW at 67.2 fps at 640x480. Sure it isn't the 1600x1200 w/AA that the high end gamer is tossing at his Radeon 9800 but then that card would cost more than this entire PC. That framerate is certainly acceptable for play and likely couldn't be met by the iMacG4 or eMac in performance.
Talk about a technology Apple introduced that could be used to kill it, wireless networking. Intel in introducing a mobile solution called Centrino that has built in wireless. Sure it may be 802.11b instead of 802.11g, but Apple will be charging $99 for g, and Intel will including it free.
I would have no trouble saying these PC's at $200 would be as fast as any of Apple's iMac and eMac offerings.
The point isn't so much that one price point could tip Apple's cart, it is the fact that a number of other factors could be at work and this could be one of the factors that starts the water rushing in when everyone realizes how low in the water the boat already is sitting.
Is there anyone else here who isn't tired of car analogies when discussing computers?
First of all in all your posts you mention, Sun, Sun, Sun... there are plenty who believe that Sun is on it's way to becoming the next SGI. They are having to adapt to lowering prices in the server segment, why is Apple somehow exempted from this as well? Apple isn't above market forces.
You cite all the prior examples Apple being declared dead and also other companies (Commodore) dying to just ignore that fact that when the times change, so must Apple.
I think the most amazing thing, that you ignore through all of this is how quickly things happen in technology. You mention companies that are footnotes now, and what you really should consider is that most often they didn't gradually just sort of disappear. They tipped and sank.
Technology, probably more than any other area is hyper-reliant on network effects and relationships. A technology can be doing just fine and suddenly a price point, a simplier solution, a new process, or procedure can just about capsize what was a completely stable market.
So in otherwords I don't care if Apple had nothing but black ink for the past 20 quarters, when the train leaves the station, they are either on it or heading for the dustbin.
3dfx was probably the perfect example of this happening and there are plenty betting that Sun might be next. You have a well developed leading edge technology and you hang just fine for a while. Suddenly though, boom you are gone.
The market isn't standing still. Integration is being pounded by Intel because it may hit the processor 5% harder but you get the feature for free and Intel gets the profit from the faster processor. So the 2 ghz machine may only feel as fast as the 1 ghz machine, but the 2 ghz machine is going to be $399 while the 1 ghz machine was $1499.
Also for those bagging on the share video ram, it isn't any skin off the consumers nose. The same mega-hardware sites that thumb their nose at these solutions but they also thumb their nose at G4 processor speeds and Mac's as well. The graphics speeds are typically 80% of what they would be if they had their own ram instead of shared ram.
This is a perfect example. It is a benchmark from the Intel 845g which is exactly what those companies like Dell are shipping out by the buttload. It ran RTCW at 67.2 fps at 640x480. Sure it isn't the 1600x1200 w/AA that the high end gamer is tossing at his Radeon 9800 but then that card would cost more than this entire PC. That framerate is certainly acceptable for play and likely couldn't be met by the iMacG4 or eMac in performance.
Talk about a technology Apple introduced that could be used to kill it, wireless networking. Intel in introducing a mobile solution called Centrino that has built in wireless. Sure it may be 802.11b instead of 802.11g, but Apple will be charging $99 for g, and Intel will including it free.
I would have no trouble saying these PC's at $200 would be as fast as any of Apple's iMac and eMac offerings.
The point isn't so much that one price point could tip Apple's cart, it is the fact that a number of other factors could be at work and this could be one of the factors that starts the water rushing in when everyone realizes how low in the water the boat already is sitting.
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
Personally I like using 29 dollar Macs that you can throw out if they stop working right.
For real though, my school use to have some of these things and they actually ran Microsoft Office 2001 (very slowly though).
[Rant]
For computers today it isn't how fast they are but how easy they are to use. Who cares if the $200 windows computer can produce 20 fps faster than an eMac. The eMac won't crash, won't get virus, won't snoop on everything you do, won't crash, won't make you sell your soul to Microsoft, won't crash, won't break in two months etc
Try to make a movie or burn a DVD on the $200 dollar thing and it will probably combust or take years to finish.
For almost every task besides games the eMac would be superior. Plus it looks way better and carriess prestige. Why else by a Mercedes? [/Rant]
Comments
<strong>BTW you CANT pirate Windows XP</strong><hr></blockquote>
And fish can't swim!
Nick
IF Apple has saturated its high-income niche market, then they can only grow marketshare by selling to lower demographics.
If Apple has not saturated it's high-income market after 20 years of trying, they should really try some other demographics.
<strong>They have lowered the price, tossed out legacy things like floppy and modem and the thing is beyond dirt cheap. Available from Walmart.com
What do you think? Headless classic iMac maybe?
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
This is a "Loss Leader" with limited use without upgrading...128 RAM with XP is like buying a used Pinto. My research has determined that XP does not run very well even with 512 RAM if one opens many apps. My on-site comparison of an 2.5 P4 HP with 512 with iMac 17 with 256 indicated HP slower on pulling up apps, etc.
Nevertheless, Apple will need to respond to price pressure as the PC market is becoming so price competitive as noted by increased use of using components to PC manufacturer specs (as evidenced by my Dell's video card, motherboard, speakers and hard drive ) to reduce costs as well as subcontracting tech svc (note how Dell service went from very good 2 yrs ago to now average). But, buyers who want HW & SW quality with multi-tasking performance will continue to buy Apple...that is why I am switching!!!!!!!!
The current iMac can't cost them more than 300-350 to make. If it still does after all this time then they are doing something seriously wrong! Anyway, the point of all this is to say that there is a VERY cheap iMac sitting right there in the line-up just waiting to b priced right. So it's only a 15" CRT, is an unupgradable AIO, a G3. This can be tweaked. A slightly sharper CRT, mebbe the same G3/video as the low end iBook, to consolidate design/production costs, bla bla, a cheaper tray loading drive... You get the idea, a few well made tweaks to keep it salable.
I'd buy one for the kitchen counter, the kids room, as a back-up mac or private web/sound/e-mail/print-server. They spent money to work out the colored plastic, why not do a "Swatch" like theme with the iMac. Sell white plus a limited edition of one other colored pattern. Then periodically "retire" the colors. When that color is out, it's out, a new one comes in to replace it and we keep cycling through colors/patterns in this way, you can always get white. For 399, you know there are a few mac heads out there waiting to make collections!
And there it is: Use something you aready make to make profit AND market share. Parents will buy their children an Xbox for 299-399 (controllers games etc) they can certainly buy their families a nice little machine that doesn't break the bank that can contribute something better than FPS/pr0n to your family.
<strong>BTW you CANT pirate Windows XP</strong><hr></blockquote>
i'm on XP right now and i acquired it by...well lets just say i'm borrowing it from a friend (hint hint, wink wink)
i am running it on a 600MHz P3, with 128MB Ram, and 20GB HD...nVidia Geforce2 MX (32MB) and it runs just fine. Truth is, its pretty speedy,, it only seems to slow down alot while i'm installing something or downloading alot of things. Now its definatly not faster then my 733MHz G4 downstairs but this has to do until next yr when i graduate.
<strong>What a random crapshoot of a PC. A 200MHz bus and 133MHz SDRAM? Integrated video? For those curious, the product page is <a href="http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?product_id=2138831&cat=86797&type=19&d ept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3951%3A41937%3A86796%3A86 797" target="_blank">here</a>.
If that Duron is anything like the 700MHz Duron in my brother's fiancée's Compaq, it's a dog.
So, what should Apple do to compete with that? Nothing. It's an oversized, overdetermined email station without a monitor that is most likely crushed under the weight of Windows XP. Its profit margins are so thin that they won't even stock it in their retail stores. It's a loss leader at best.
Now, if Apple dropped the eMac down to the iMac CRT's price point, that would do. But I don't see the point of Apple shipping barely-capable desktops just to hit a Wal-Mart price point. Seriously: I'll bet the baseline iBook can outrun that thing.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Beautiful post.
<strong>
Actually I am not a technical hardware guru, but isn't this the same sort of shared "increased system-wide bandwidth" that Apple uses on it's latest machines? Obviously here it is not pseudo DDR but the rest of the machine (PCI bus, video, audio, etc) can use the bandwidth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, it's the opposite: The bus to the CPU can accomodate more bandwidth than the memory can deliver (unless it's a really inefficient bus), so there's nothing left for peripherals.
It really doesn't make any sense.
[quote]<strong>I did this about a year ago and I am sure this motherboard/combo is similar. I bought a integrated everything motherboard at PCclub with 1100 mhz duron. It only had 8 megs of integrated video ram available though (Trident Blade I found out is the chip). I believe this solution uses the S3 solution that is about the same as the TNT2 (old school) but again it is cheap as heck.</strong><hr></blockquote>
8MB of actual video RAM, or 8MB of shared video RAM? The latter (common on cheap PCs) means that the video card has no dedicated RAM. Instead it reserves 8MB of the same ordinary PC133 RAM that that can't even saturate the CPU bus on this machine. In other words, it's s l o w. Fortunately, since it doesn't sound like you're doing anything that requires more than trivial acceleration, and you are doing something (Flash) that for reasons known only to Macromedia runs much better on Windows than on OS X, you're getting pretty much the best case. And in that case, there's no reason not to use the machine you have, as long as it continues to work.
[quote]<strong>Perhaps the reason they don't stock them at the stores is simply they can only make limited quantities.</strong><hr></blockquote>
It's a given that they only make limited quantities, because they don't want to sell something with margins that thin.
[quote]<strong>My little boy's computer is hardly an email station. These integrated motherboards come with ATA/66 minimum. Built in sound, networking and 32 meg video matches all of what is available on Apple consumer machines.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The ATA bus used is essentially irrelevant, since a single hard drive can't saturate the bus. The hard drive itself is far more important as far as determining performance. Built in sound is usually crap, but serviceable; 32MB RAM for the video card matches Apple's low end, but this machine doesn't have that. It has "shared" video RAM, which is worse than the video acceleration in every iMac ever sold. In the cheapest PCs, it's not a given that an AGP card will work, either.
Of course, OS X can't really subsist on that kind of video hardware.
[quote]<strong>Apple could do this with their current classic iMac and still be more elegant. Rage 128 would be good enough, cd-rom good enough, 15 inch tube couldn't be more than $40 nowadays. Why the heck is Apple still selling them at $799? They should be $499 maximum.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not going to try explaining Apple's pricing of the iMac CRT. I'm sure they could price it significantly lower if they really wanted to. I can only submit that if it's not priced to sell, it's because they're not convinced that it will sell, so they're making a pretty good profit off the few people who actually do buy them in small enough quantities to pay retail.
[quote]<strong>bIt doesn't matter how perfect these things are because at $199, they are practically an impulse buy for computer geeks.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's not a very big market, and it's probably not the market Wal-Mart's targeting. Just a hunch.
[quote]<strong>Considering 15 inch LCD's are now lower than $199 at times, people could be tossing these in their kid's rooms, living rooms, whatever for under $400. If you add a traditional 15 inch CRT it is under $300 easy. Heck I could toss one into my RV for that cheap.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As long as you don't mind a big, bulky thing sitting in your living room or RV, attached to a blurry analog LCD.
The iMac CRT, neglected as it is, is still more attractive simply for the fact that you can tuck it into a corner and expect it to sit quietly, look good, and work well. Although, to be fair, it won't run Flash as well. But there's not much Apple can do about that.
[ 02-25-2003: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
Hands up anyone who thinks Apple couldn't sell an iMac "classic" for 399-499 and still make a few bucks on each machine out the door? This is more critical for Apple than any other box builder. Without marketshare the platform will eventually die out, at least for the consumer.
Low-end iBook guts, basic optical and HDD, gum-drop shell, cheap price. Nobody has to lose their shirts selling these.
[QB] This is more critical for Apple than any other box builder. Without marketshare the platform will eventually die out, at least for the consumer.
Heard that one before
<strong>No it isn't. While these are cut rate loss leaders now, they will define an acceptabel and profitable low end in the future.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Most every company that has "TRIED" to compete in this sector loses money at it. The one area of the computer market where $ is made is in Enterprise, which is where Apple "SHOULD" be heading.
Guess what?
That's what the Xserve and Xserve RAID are for.
The eventuality is that Apple will focus more on competing with Dell and Sun and SGI and others on the high end with server farms, and in providing "SERVICES" which is where a greater profitability is available.
The margins on these low cost machines are pitiful, and the amount of $ put into producing one vs. what you get out of it in return revenue, not to mention the R&D to produce one, isn't feasible. It's okay for a Korean company like eMachines to build, to try to establish a foothold and expand from, but then again for them... their margins are higher because of the value of the U.S. Dollar to their currency. That's the same reason a Kia or Hyundai or Daewoo is/was so much cheaper. They make more per item then we do because the costs of domestic produced materials, labor, etc. etc. in their country is cheaper than it is here. If you can build something and it costs you $300 and you can sell it for $700 while everyone else builds it for $500 and sells it for $700, you can afford to cut it down and sell it for $500 and still make $200 profit while they merely break even or lose trying to undercut you on slim margins.
Apple can't and "SHOULDN'T" compete with this.
<strong> [quote]Apple doesn't need to make anything that cheap, but it must keep an eye on developments.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I agree, and if you go by even what Acer (a Korean company) did in trying to compete in this sector, it damn near killed them. Then again, their main competitor at that pricepoint in Packard Bell died a horribly nasty death. True, their machines were total crap... but you get what you pay for a lot of times.
If anything... Apple should take the eMac motherboard, put it in a small, compact desktop case, and sell it for $600-700 to replace the iMac Classic. Ship it with VGA/ADC supporting low-end graphics card via AGP (have integrated Firewire and USB and Audio as usual) that a Mac user could swap for something harder core later on. No PCI slots because you don't need them, if you did you'd buy a pro model. We don't need a sub-$500 entry... but a $600-700 monitorless desktop that I could hook up to my old 21" beige CRT would suit me just fine. Yeah, it's not as expandable... but I still have my 9600 and I don't plan on getting rid of it.
<strong> [quote]Everyone who's anyone selling computers today ought to have a credible sub 500 offering for the public.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I disagree. For under $500 Apple couldn't compete. Think about it... they hold what... 2-5% marketshare? They're not selling in volumes large enough to throwaway R&D money on something that's as much of a loss leader as this. Hell, I'm not even sure a $600-700 eMac-based desktop wouldn't hurt their bottomline. Gateway and Compaq were crippled by this economy, and trust me... the cheap PC's have sold, they just don't turn much of a profit, and in some cases they don't turn a profit at all with the cutthroat pricing they go after each other with. It's like eBay for the executives... try to see who can outdo each other 'til the point it hurts.
Ever heard the term "Loss leader"? Apple is not in a position to produce one of these to drum up sales. They need to follow their BMW approach as Jobs' has used prior. Continue to build a stable, reliable machine that's middle of the road. The eMac/iMac pricing is more than adequate an inroad into the "Near-Luxury" computer buying experience. Lord knows the Pro line and Xserve lines are like poor man's Mercedes at their pricepoints and abilities.
<strong> [quote]Something complete and reliable that comes with a display.</strong><hr></blockquote>
For $500? LoL You can rarely find a PC for less than $700 sans monitor built by a reputable PC builder that is reliable. LoL I mean, a mom and pop shop could probably supply you with a motherboard, processor, minitower case, hard disk, memory, optical drive of some sort, etc. etc. for $500 and it'd be a decent machine if you had all of the drivers and they were all adequately supported.
Then again it'd not come with a licensed OS at that price ($200 for a copy of Windows), or you'd have to have them get you a copy of Linux to put on it, which is a download away but still... nothing is going to guarantee that every piece of "CHEAP" hardware they slap together for you is quality pieces for that sort of $, nor can they guarantee that Linux will autodetect or have the drivers at an earshot to integrate said hardware by default.
There's a definite difference between the low-end burner brands and the brands like TDK, Plextor, and Yamaha, and it's not just price. That's true for monitors. That's true for a lot of computer related components, straight down to PCI cards, PCMCIA/Cardbus cards, and all manners of componentry.
Once again... "You get what you pay for".
<strong> [quote]Hands up anyone who thinks Apple couldn't sell an iMac "classic" for 399-499 and still make a few bucks on each machine out the door?</strong><hr></blockquote>
::keeping hands at sides::
<strong> [quote]This is more critical for Apple than any other box builder.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I disagree... what is more critical is that Apple attack sources of greater revenue and diversify their sources of income so they have greater income, not areas of considerable loss and incredible saturation and haggling. Loss leaders are loss leaders, unless Apple were to be given a factory in Korea on charity wishes, and suddenly struck it rich on a wealth of cheap and quality built components that just happened to fit Apple's hardware, Apple has "NO" volume to be trying to match the PC makers. To sell at a low price point you have to be modularly making things in such a vain that you sell an exorbitant # of the products at a pricepoint that you can "AFFORD" to usher a loss-leader, and hopefully even make it a tiny margin profitable venture. At the price you suggest... it'd be a loss, and Apple needs to increase profitability in all manners more than sustain losses to increase marketshare.
Cannibalizing their bottomline = bad idea.
Microsoft can't make much enroads in Enterprise in comparison to Sun which is faster, better supported, and more reliable. Scott McNealy, the Steve Jobs of Enterprise computing, even knows this. Sun achieves this in the same way Apple does. Their machines are more expensive than some of their competitors (with exception to HP and SGI which follow largely the same lead with their HP-UX and Irix-based Servers and Workstations) from the PC realm, like Dell, like Gateway, like Compaq... but they're more reliable, have less downtime, better service and support. They're also, like SGI, like the HP-UX machines... what we refer to as "Proprietary". True they use some PC-related components, just like Apple... but they use their own OS (Solaris)... like Apple. They use their own processor (Ultra SPARC), like Apple who commissioned buys PowerPC's for their own usage. Apple, SGI, IBM, and even HP in Enterprise (non-Windows) are very similar if you think about it.
"You get what you pay for."
To me, Sun is not only Apple's biggest ally, they're Apple's biggest source of competition this side of Microsoft or Sony or AOL/Time-Warner. Even so, Microsoft is a software company, they're an ally as well as Microsoft loves to make $ and needs Apple nowadays, as they need competition to keep Government off their backs, and to build good will.
Apple needs to compete with Sun, because they can make $ doing it. They have a better OS than Microsoft in terms of being ready for a server environment, and can better integrate with hardware as they build the hardware their OS supports. The more they bolster it, the better off the platform will be.
With products like Xserve and Xserve RAID, we're seeing the "STARTING" of this. They're relatively low-cost, low-maintenance, "LOW-END" servers that don't have the service/support and aren't for the market that Sun is involved in. They're not even "REMOTELY" close to Sun or HP or IBM in this regard... but they need to get closer. This is where the $ is. Higher margin computing.
Apple in eventuality needs to look at making server and rendering farms. To do so... they either need to obtain processors to do that (PPC 970, PPC 9800, Sun UltraSPARC, AMD Hammer, etc. etc.) or do as Sun did... develop their own. The problem Apple faces is that in buying a processor from Sun or IBM, they'd be buying processors from someone they'd be designing machines to compete with. So another potentially worthwhile solution would be to...
Buy Sun Microsystems.
Processor roadmap? Move from PowerPC to UltraSPARC. OS roadmap? Work on the "NEXT" generation of operating systems by merging Sun Solaris and Mac OS X together over the long haul. Apple has the interface wizardry, Sun has the server-level experience. Hell, even a great body of Sun engineers in the past "LOVED" OpenStep. It's a no-brainer.
Other than this... Apple needs to diversify. Microsoft moved into television (MS-NBC), moved into input device and controller manufacturing (mice, trackballs, joysticks, gamepads, steering wheels), moved into Video Game Systems. AOL moved into the media business (AOL-Time Warner). Apple has started to do this as well... iPod. It's a consumer appliance, in the likes of what a Sony, Sonic Blue, Toshiba, or any other consumer electronics vendor makes.
So how about an Airport Wireless home stereo component that automagically (Rendezvous) syncs up with an Airport card equipped Mac from somewhere within the house? How about an Apple deal with the companies that make TiVo or ReplayTV, and make a device that syncs to your mac, and in using iCal (with iSync) on your desktop computer, can sync and time when to record shows for the next month, pooled from an online web-database your cable provider(s) or the stations themselves keep? Perhaps it'll even let you use an updated iDVD in this system to stream, store it on the TV, transfer the file through a high-speed wireless Airport Extreme connection, and record the contents for playback for a minor fee that Apple, the MPAA, and the various cable providers put together.
Apple needs to innovate, just as they have been. Do that rather than try to compete through cannibalization... as that will just leave you chewing your arm off 'til you're less productive than when you started.
<strong> [quote]Without marketshare the platform will eventually die out, at least for the consumer.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Will it? Where's the proof it will? If that's true I presume Sun is already dead... as they have less overall volume marketshare of the computer sector than Apple. Hell, it'd probably take Sun, SGI, and maybe the entire Alpha platform vendors (and the divergent OS's it ran) at it's peak sales to match Apple's marketshare right now! LoL
More than the "MEGAHERTZ" myth... this "MARKETSHARE" moronic tendency/myth is what has you all so ate up you can't see history. Market Analysts left and right told WANG computers, once one of the leaders in the business, along with Leading Edge, what they "NEEDED" to do.
Notice that WANG isn't around anymore in the capacity they once were? They were the Gateway or Dell of their timeframe. Now they're little more than a footnote in history. Buying into this b.s. is RIDICULOUS, yet every skeptical Mac user or knowitall PC user brings it up. Where's the proof that Apple's going to die from it though? Huh? Hell... Apple "WAS" dead by numerous accounts I'd heard before back in 1997. Funny... they look alive to me?!?
Market analysts told Apple to clone and it damn near killed them. Of course if Apple had cloned at the proper time, when they were healthy, strong, and had the marketshare lead or a parity, they could've been successful at it. Yet when you build hardware and software and integrate the two, it's a very hard and daunting task to meet "ALL" of the differing hardware components the clones use. Apple found this out in trying to support Daystar, APSTech, Radius/Umax, Motorola, and Power Computing. If CHRP/PPCP had ever took off... Apple would've been in worse trouble. Microsoft does a pretty impressive job doing it... but then again, that's "ALL" they do. Apple's strength was always intricate hardware support. Going software only would've left Apple in much the same predicament as Microsoft was criticized during the Windows '9x and elder NT 3.x/4 and to some degree, 2000 era. Yet Apple had tooling and components they had to build for their "OWN" hardware, try to keep pace by spending their R&D in 2 places at the same time, while also spending R&D $ on making sure the clones looked good too. Apple didn't just up and give the source code to Mac OS to Power Computing, they did a good percentage of the work themselves. I hated when Jobs had to kill off cloning, but if he hadn't... while I didn't think Apple was remotely dead at the time, they might well have been on the verge of dying today if not for that.
Trust me, you don't know what it's like when a computer company dies. I do, I have an Amiga 500 in storage right now, ever heard of Commodore? When computer companies die... there's usually little fanfare or critique at that point, because most everyone has almost moved on. They just sort of disappear into oblivion. So the more you hear people bicker about Apple, odds are... they're far from dead. Hell, Even the Amiga community is still alive some 10 years and multiple transitions after it's supposed death! I check back in from time to time...
Don't believe all the reality distorting propaganda that's spewed out there. It's bad for your wit.
We have the second largest application's base in computing, and growing! I mean, take the Mac OS API's which support all sorts of good stuff like MS Office and Internet Explorer and Entourage (nee-Outlook), and fuse it with Unix and all of the freely available applications and codebases. I mean... if some company was adept enough, they could "Aquafy" a graphics program called "The GIMP" and fill in the missing blanks, dot the I's, cross the T's, and polish it into one hell of a graphics program to compete with Adobe. See that happening on Windows?
Hell... with x11 support... we can even run applications now from UNIX in all of their roughness. Do you realize there's more applications and widgets for UNIX than there is Windows? LoL
We're not even "REMOTELY" in the shape we once were under Amelio, and worse Spindler, and Sculley. We hold as large or larger a marketshare than BMW and I don't see them floundering and dying. True, you always want to get bigger and better, but you take what you can get when you can get it. Low end hunks of crap that cost $ to develop, and pay minimal dividends is not what Apple is about. I'd rather them gun for Sony and bring out more variations on the iPod, maybe purchase the rights to TiVo or something of that line than build crap like this.
Apple is not Commodore. They are not misjudging their products, marketing the wrong products, and/or sitting a standstill with no knowledge of where to go through mismanagement and misappropriations. Do not offer up the "Chicken Little" cries when we're as far from death or needing to do anything of this colossal precedence.
You want Apple to increase marketshare? Make OS X more efficient and support all of them old beige boxes out there in the world that are "STILL" usable, much as I use my beige 9600 every day. I can run an unsupported install of OS X on my 9600 but the OS is so inefficient and bloated with it's graphics and transitions that it running OS X can't keep up with my 500 Mhz. PIII running XP. Mind you, a 400 Mhz. G3 is "SUPPOSED" to be 3x's faster than a PC at the same speed... which would mean it should be faster, right?
BeOS was efficient, and on the "EXACT SAME" PC hardware... could run up to 2-3x's faster than Windows on the same hardware. Plus it scaled if you had MP.
That said...
Apple is not Be Inc. They are not producing an OS with no visible market to play to. The days of developing a new lower-end personal computer brand that wasn't Wintel were largely over when Be came to market. Apple has shored up their place as of now, Be had no marketshare and no application support. Hell, they can't even match what's left of the Amiga community that "STILL" remains afloat even with Commodore being dead for damn near 10 years.
Apple is largely inventing or lobbying their future as we speak.
Fears of Microsoft dropping IE? No problem... we'll make Safari. Hell, we have more browsers almost than Wintel almost now! LoL A couple of years ago it was "Woe is us... Netscape is dying". Well... now there's Mozilla, Netscape 7 (based on Mozilla), Camino (Chimaera, also based on Mozilla), iCab, Internet Explorer, Safari, and OmniWeb.
Digital hub? We invented it, not to mention Microsoft "STILL" can't match the ease of burning a CD like disc burner or iTunes can do. They can't provide anything close to iPhoto. Their moviemaker is a joke compared to iMovie. iTunes is a far superior MP3 player, both in interface, as well as functionality to "ANYTHING" Microsoft produces. Networking is a tedious chore in Windows, it's a relative blessing on the Mac between Macs, and is still far easier than trying it in Windows.
To shore up some other loose ends....
Fears of Microsoft dropping Office? No problem... we have a presentation program right now, and we can further cannibalize the open-source to produce the missing pieces of the puzzle if necessary. Yes we can pull from the same place we got the KHTML engine from for Safari as they make an integrated office suite for the KDE desktop environment that is "FREE" under the GPL, of which Konqueror serves as the web browser based on KHTML. AtTheOs used the same KHTML that Apple used for much the same thing, and I'm sure Apple could marry the KOffice engine to Cocoa just as they did with Safari and provide interface innovations...
Yes we can work on a port of StarOffice/OpenOffice with Sun that is "Mac-like" and works for us Mac folk and... ::gasping:: is compatible with MS Office.
Yes we can update ClarisWorks and fill in the pieces to make it better, perhaps even pooling from the KOffice source. Or perhaps we ditch ClarisWorks and make a light and free version of the KOffice with Keynote integrated (new AppleWorks and a new Apple Office with named components for each product like MS has in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access; Apple could even re-assimilate Filemaker to go with Keynote, then they'd just need a spread sheet and word processor)... and release a full-blown version. The thing with free software is... what changes we make to their engine we have to note, but what proprietary parts we use of our own, we don't have to.
Yes we can buy DataViz and integrate their translator support into an office suite, as well as into various parts of the OS by default.
Our limits are endless, and with the Mac... you truly get what you pay for.
<strong> [quote]Low-end iBook guts, basic optical and HDD, gum-drop shell, cheap price. Nobody has to lose their shirts selling these.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Apple sells the iBook for $999, dropping the flatpanel LCD would "NOT" drop that down to below $700. You know it as well as I do. The iMac Classic with a CRT sells for $600 in some configurations if you shop around. That's reasonable enough, although it's a G3 and it's got a tiny, miniscule monitor that some of us are against. The eMac is nicer (and reasonable too), but when I have a 21" external CRT, why would I want to go back to a 17"? Integrated monitors are good for schools... but for consumers who have existing peripherals... a gutted eMac with external monitor support that is configurable in "SMALL" ways makes more sense, and could be made while sustaining "CURRENT" margins. Otherwise, the iMac at it's current price point as well as the eMac at their price points are relative steals for what you get.
[ 03-07-2003: Message edited by: IVIIVI4ck3y27 ]
[ 03-07-2003: Message edited by: IVIIVI4ck3y27 ]</p>
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Listen, Apple has reached a point where they really can't afford to lose any more market. They have the burden of supporting a platform and that task gets harder and harder with each fraction of a percentage point that one loses.
Amiga IS dead to the consumer, lets not be silly and pretend otherwise. Mac is not dead, never said that. Those who've seen me rant know that I always say it would take Apple about a decade to die out of the consumer scene at the current pace of shrinkage. And then the company would NOT die, but it wouldn't matter to mac buyers because they would be very different.
What I believe is that a platform agnostic future is coming to us all. Then demi-proprietary platforms will begin to appear, consoles, closed systems, whole widgets. If Apple hangs on long enough, write once-read anywhere will make windows/mac/linux debates irrelevant.
If yo don't think that an iMacCRT can sell for 400USD, then you've got your head in the sand. That's 600 Canadian, looking in my local paper I an find dozens of systems selling for 600 Canadian WITH 17" CRT's!!! OK, they use older slow Gfx cards and have small capacity HDD's and slow opticals and weak sound. They're basic computers for what they are, BUT SO IS THE iMac CRT, don't pretend otherwise. To top it off they've been making that thing for 4 years, kif they can't do it cheap buy now, then they have other major problems that require another thread entirely.
iMacG3 should be in competition with these machines already, or it should be dead. Simple.
<strong>Listen, Apple has reached a point where they really can't afford to lose any more market. They have the burden of supporting a platform and that task gets harder and harder with each fraction of a percentage point that one loses.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't think marketshare matters, I said it before, and I'll say it again. Apple can sustain or even lose market share and it won't readily affect them as long as the userbase is at the same strength or increases. Judging by the amount of traffic I've seen at the 2 Apple stores in my area, plus the # of Macs sold at Micro Center... Apple's sales are strong, and they might even be making headway in marketshare as it is.
Judging by their end of 1/4 reports for the last few fiscal 1/4's, they're actually healthier than much of the PC crowd. LoL
If it ain't broke... don't fix it.
Are they necessarily matching the PC juggernaut PC per PC? No. Yet they don't have to, to be successful, especially as more and more cannibalize themselves to death, trying to beat each other on the low-end by undercutting and generating slim margins on machines that "STILL" need R&D, and thereby probably generate miniscule losses.
If anything, I seriously hope more and more PC makers go as far as building sub-$300 PC's. Wouldn't that be great? Sell machines for even more of a hit, blow themselves into oblivion?
If there's a side to this... PC makers are the one's that should be worrying about marketshare. Let's face it... you build a PC that is basically a bucket of standardized parts. You have an OS that isn't proprietary or specific to a handful of hardware configurations, and that you license through another company. You have 20 competitors building machines just like yours, using the same versions/variations in OS. Where's your identity in all of this? With no identity... what does it matter? If it's a stable PC, then it's like Oranges and Oranges... may the best man win.
When it's Apple's and Oranges though... it's all about identity, and that's what Apple pushes via better integration, more innovative and easier programs, nicer interface design, the whole 9-yards.
The days of building a computer out of a bucket of parts you buy affordably at your own Radio Shack are over (think Apple I or some of the older Commodore offerings that retailed for $300-400); even though you can build a decent PC out of parts for a probably $500. With that said, for $300-500... you can get a decent PC from Korea (if you sell your life away to MSN or AOL for 3 years; or buy into some other contract). The one's built outside of Korea can only match by tacking on hidden costs. Perhaps Apple could sell iMacs at $400-500... but only if they inked a deal with an Network/ISP like AOL or Earthlink to substantiate some of the costs. Could it be a success?
I still doubt it.
[quote]<strong>Amiga IS dead to the consumer, lets not be silly and pretend otherwise.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I never said it wasn't, but the community still supports it. Hell, for all intensive purposes Be has been dead to the consumer (although it is being developed into PalmOS), yet I'm sure you will find people still running it. The same consumers that would rather run BeOS forever.
If I was "silly" and/or "pretending" as you suggest... I'd be b!tching and ranting about marketshare in a company that couldn't possibly match toe to toe on the bottom end of the market where $ is slim through tight margins. I'd be wearing my "Amiga Forever" t-shirt instead of having a PC and Mac generating heat right now where I sit.
[quote]<strong>Mac is not dead, never said that.</strong><hr></blockquote>
But you do imply that in losing marketshare that they will, do you not? I do not feel marketshare matters. It's a silly little # that we continue to harbor on because the analysts tell us to. Largely because in a world of Apple's and Orange's... they see "Oranges, Oranges, and more Oranges". They don't understand the Mac and it's needs any better than they understand Sun or SGI and their needs. Hell, if not for analysts lobbying for SGI to embrace more marketshare, they'd probably be in decent health right now. Buying into Cray wasn't their healthiest or smartest move, even as they focused on high-end computing. That is, after all, what a mainframe computer is... an extremely high-end computer. Then again, if they would've known Linux was coming, they probably would've just combatted and killed Cray with a few dozen Octanes running in Master/Slave, and still retain their gross margins.
Marketshare is "NOT" the issue, but the size of our "OWN" market is. You see... Apple can increase it's computer sales by 30%, even at that... if the industry as a whole increases by 60%, we lose marketshare. Yet in volume, we are BIGGER" than we were. The companies that support the Mac will generate larger fiscal volume sales because they're selling to more people, even if worldwide marketshare isn't as strong.
That is exactly what Apple is doing now. That is "ALL" they've needed to do all along. Sun Microsystems isn't worried about how much marketshare of the computer industry they have. They just worry about doing well in their key markets and try (keyword: try) to innovate with what R&D $ they have to develop the next killer app. Sort of like what they did with Java, then Jini. Do we see any sub-$500 Sun-built machines running on SPARC?
[quote]<strong>Those who've seen me rant know that I always say it would take Apple about a decade to die out of the consumer scene at the current pace of shrinkage.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That is rampant speculation. I don't feel they will die, and yes that is speculation too... but I feel that I have more chance in backing up my claim than you do via a bunch of industry analysts who work at places that have nothing to do with the "industry" and likely don't or haven't used a Mac in their lives. I mean, they analyze the Mac and PC markets the same way, and both are uniquely different in their own ways, and as a result their "NEEDS". These are the same people that analyze pork bellies and sweet crude for Christ's sakes....
Do they know what Apple needs to do? Where were they when Apple needed a new CEO. Huh? In an industry where a man experienced in the semi-conductor sector, in saving a "National Semiconductor" can come over to try to save an Apple, and teeter-totter's back and forth by listening to analysts, countering-skeptics, and not understanding a damn bit of what he should've been doing... why should we listen to analysts that dreamed him as perfect for the job? Hell... you might as well get a man that sells brown-colored sugar water. I bet he can do damn near as good a job when he isn't betting the farm on a handheld computer that there's "STILL" little market for.
[quote]<strong>And then the company would NOT die, but it wouldn't matter to mac buyers because they would be very different.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Also rampant speculation.
I'm a firm believer that if Apple dies, it'll be from something other than marketshare shrinkage or pricing. I mean if that was the case, Apple would've been dead already. Apple Macs have been more expensive than their counterparts since they first came out.
As far as not dying... if they become irrelavent to their consumer base, they will die. I mean, it's like this... Apple isn't based on overall marketshare, they're based on "THEIR" market. Imagine, if you will, that Apple is the "ONLY" maker of their items, and in theory they really are. Most do not coin a Mac as a PC, even if it is one... because it's "Us vs. Them". That said, if Apple increases the # of people using Macs, they are healthy... if they decrease theat #, they are hurting. If nobody buys them anymore, they are dead. What Compaq/HP, and Gateway, and Dell do have very little importance... that is unless they can build a computer that "Out-Macs" the Mac. That'd be very hard to do based on User Experience Guidelines, and the minute Apple saw Dell putting out a "OurMacOSClone", they'd get hit with a hefty lawsuit to prevent it. Your staunch Mac supporters won't leave if they're happy... and you might well get a few defectors if they can learn the in's and out's of why the Mac is better to them. That is what the Apple store provides an outlet for, and it forces other stores that sell Macs to compete.
Also...
Diversification, as I said earlier, brings in revenues for Apple, especially when they hit a halo homerun. Hell, Apple even makes a Windows-version of the iPod for that reason. They're meeting new markets through innovation, and as a result helping their bottomlien through volume sales which will "EVENTUALLY" lead to cheaper iPods, and then a whole range of iPods. Hell, iPods with color screens, iPods that can play movies, iPod's with a miniaturized OS running on them that can serve as a PDA. Apple doesn't need to compete with Palm right now... but eventually, they might own the whole market.
Stuff like the iPod adds to Apple's bottom-line, builds brand equity, and diversifies their products so they are not strictly a computer company. I'm actually for Apple doing far more of this... and I think they will.
[quote]<strong>What I believe is that a platform agnostic future is coming to us all. Then demi-proprietary platforms will begin to appear, consoles, closed systems, whole widgets.</strong><hr></blockquote>
We all like to dream. I've had that dream before too, as have many of my friends. The thing is... odds are, it won't happen as you think it will. Nothing in the computer industry works as analysts suggest, and analysts jizz over the thoughts of having a market they can understand. Most analysts don't understand and miscalculate the whole 9 yards. Hence the marketshare phenomenon. As Jobs put it... "BMW is not worried about marketshare, why should we?"
There is no reason to as long as you increase sales and provide innovative product without cannibalizing yourself.
It's refreshing to have a CEO that understands Apple. Might have something to do with the fact that he pretty much created it. I'm not privy to say that Jobs is a saint... and Woz, while an incredibly gifted man, is not a "business"-oriented type. Jobs though knows Apple, has a vision, and if there was "ONE" thing he was made for, Apple was it. NeXT was the closest alternative he could come up with, and it holds some of the keys to Apple's future direction (since Apple now = Apple + NeXT). Pixar... was something he could make $ off of while not having to harp on engineers. Consider it a sound investment that largely runs itself.
It's usually some visionary or evolutionary that takes things forward, usually in a way we hadn't thought of. Doesn't necessarily mean we make any forward progress either. Sometimes it's a marketing genius (like a Gates) that makes the difference more than a true visionary.
[quote]<strong>If Apple hangs on long enough, write once-read anywhere will make windows/mac/linux debates irrelevant.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Also speculation. There's also the possibility that Linux could rise up by then and control the whole market. There's a chance everything could be based off Linux, which in and of itself wouldn't be agnostic. There's a chance that what we see as "computers" will lose marketshare as smaller handheld computers (more like extremely shrunken laptops vs. hamstrung PDA's that don't do much more than the original Newton did) take over. There's a chance that .NET will work out and we'll all "STILL" be using Microsoft apps. via subscription and paying entirely too much per month to use some bugprone, crashy, web-based implementation of Word. Even with subscriptions... there'll be pirate accounts and Microsoft and others will watch as 1337 h4x0r d00d5 use Word to type their 4th grade term papers for free.
I mean, we could go on with this all day and still not even peg the future. WIRED magazine can't even do that... but they can dream like the rest of us.
[quote]<strong>If yo don't think that an iMacCRT can sell for 400USD, then you've got your head in the sand.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Did I say it wouldn't sell well? No. Would it be profitable? Doubtful. There *IS* a difference. The sooner you can figure that out, the better off we'll be as this argument will fizzle.
[quote]<strong>That's 600 Canadian, looking in my local paper I an find dozens of systems selling for 600 Canadian WITH 17" CRT's!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
And if you had read earlier... Apple has "SMALL MARKETSHARE" which means a lot of the components that go into their machines, being a "PROPRIETARY" builder are more expensive.
You need to take an economics class and understand the laws of supply and demand, and understand that when you produce something in large volume, the costs come down. PC's are built out of parts bins... as a result of that, and with the Endian vs. Little Endian developments of the platform(s); Macs and PC's share "SOME" parts or share some "TECHNOLOGIES" might even be more accurate (as Apple uses PCI, but their implementation isn't identical to Intel's specs, because of endianess they require proprietary controllers), but not enough that Apple can match the Intel/AMD juggernaut blow per blow on pricing. Then again, they can provide a better user experience at a premium cost.
Sort of like BMW. Are they trying to beat Chevrolet or Hyundai/Kia just because they sell more cars in volume? No. Are they the world's fastest production car, can they beat all Ferrari's? No. They have their genre, they stick to it, and expand based on their abilities to find a way to meet that market, or diversify their portfolio. That is why I suggested earlier that Apple purchase Sun. Fusing the two platforms together would increase marketshare while also increasing dividends and overall sales. That latter being the more important.
Once again... if Sun isn't worried about not having 60,000,000,000 machines on desktops out there... why should Apple? They still have their niche, and need to focus on meeting their niche, not cannibalizing and playing hardball in another arena where slap together machines built out of bucketloads of cheap parts can be sold for a cheap pricing because of the modularity of the other platform. The Mac isn't based around a "STANDARDIZED" architecture, that alone causes the costs to be higher.
That is what Apple has to go on, that is what they have to work with. If Apple can get the firepower in a new processor set, they'll be good to go in their quest at competing where the real $ and profits is at. Apple, as I said earlier, needs to "NOT" focus on the low end, because the low end makes you very little money for what you get out of it. The high-end, while not necessarily skyrocketing your marketshare, solidifies your being through something called "MONEY". It's harder to win at it because the people in this area play hardball, and not just in terms of hardware and software... but services as well, but it's more rewarding if and when you can. The fact Sun continues to raise the bar as Microsoft tries so hard to find a way in (and fails miserably at every juncture as Windows just doesn't scale well) to take over another market just shows that Sun is cagey and strong at what they do.
That's all Apple needs to be. Apple could sustain life on Education, Graphics/Video, and consumer sales on the level of pricepoint and product that they have now, through evolution. When the opportunity comes to produce another iPod... they can even capitalize on the success of that. Marketshare on the Mac side, they own 100% of and have no competition since the clones died. Worry less about PC's because the Mac amongst it's staunchest supporters "ISN'T" a PC. It doesn't run Windows by default. It's not used for games as much as it is productivity. It's not near as bugprone or as easy to get a virus on via exploits that Microsoft "NEVER" is able to end.
Apple would make more $ on customer calls for 3-4 Enterprise clients, not counting hardware and setup fees, than they would for damn near 100 cheap PC's! Just because you want a CHEAP MAC, doesn't mean I don't either (hell I'm on a 9600 running 9.2.2 with a G3 card and an unsupported install)... yet I'm realistic about this.
The PC market focuses there largely because they don't have enough control over software (system) to compete with Sun or SGI or HP in high-end servers. They've hit a brick wall, and aren't able to compete with Sun in software integration, not able to swiftly adapt because they have to deal with Microsoft and Microsoft's problems, which is dealing with all gamut of users and hardware vendors and 20,000+ lines of bug-filled system code that becomes more bloated with each release.
Some are embracing Linux for this reason (as you can make it better yourself, if you want, have the understanding, and the resources), but many don't understand the infrastructure needed to make that happen, and none of the Linux variants have an interface that is "INTUITIVE" like Apple's, much less in some fashions... Windows. IBM stands as one of the few that can do it if they can put the bureacracy behind them. Dell could if they were to embrace Linux and get a body of "SOFTWARE" developers to push it forward enough to match a Sun Solaris or an IBM Linux server for reliability and performance. Dell doesn't do this because they just don't worry about software.
[quote]<strong>OK, they use older slow Gfx cards and have small capacity HDD's and slow opticals and weak sound. They're basic computers for what they are, BUT SO IS THE iMac CRT, don't pretend otherwise. </strong><hr></blockquote>
Did I say it wasn't? LoL I said that because of the "PROPRIETARY" nature of the components used, the drivers needed, and the small amounts in which Apple purchases from vendors, they pay a "PREMIUM" for each component compared to PC vendors who can buy the parts by the bushel full at a lower pricing. In fact, companies like ATI "LOVE" the Mac market for the simple fact they can counter-engineer their components to "NOT" be compatible on the PC, and thereby forcibly charging Apple and their customers to pay a premium, and thereby they make more per item than they do on the PC side. Didn't we learn anything from the Voodoo 5500's being Mac/PC cards with separate drivers? ATI could match this... if they wanted to. Yet, why would they?
The same goes for Apple, they're not saints. They make their own, proprietary GeForce cards. Can we just go to a local store and pickup an XTasy GeForce or another brand? No. They aren't supported. Apple can generate some revenues out of this, but they can also make a case for themselves. Apple "DOESN'T WANT" to be non-proprietary, and in honesty... it's probably better off for their well-being if they remain that way. It hurts us as consumers in some ways, but if you love the Mac, you'd not want it any other way. Largely 'cause... if they adopt your idea on marketshare, switch to AMD/Intel, they would be just like any other PC vendor after a few years. A BMW with Chevy or Hyundai/Kia components... ?
Why?
I'd rather see Apple become a BMW with Ferrari components. Ferrari and Apple and BMW aren't so concerned with marketshare. The one that is, is Volkswagen... and their mode of becoming a luxury marque is likely to succeed as well as Microsoft has in Enterprise. In other words... there'll be a few people that buy into it, but the overall market will still be in Unix-based machines favor, like Sun and SGI and maybe even... Apple.
As a result of that level of thinking and proprietary focus... the Apple components and the PC components are "NOT" the same. Try taking an Apple Mac Radeon or a PC Radeon and swapping them between machines. Work? No. In some cases, stuff like bridge controllers, to onboard video and sound, and all manners of other components on the Mac is "DIFFERENT", some out of necessity, some by design (to make $, and to recoup the costs of R&D for making something marginally innovative, like ADC; which makes it so a monitor has one cable to connect rather than 2).
As a result of all that, Apple buys lower volume versions of other components, some of which aren't remotely close to their PC counterparts but perform identically, and are based on the same family but with a different nature to the driver support. Some of that, is because we're on PowerPC. The PowerPC and x86 lines are different in their endianess, and as a result, some chips you have on x86 won't work with the PowerPC, so you have to make "clones" that follow the Mac's particular endianess and work within the architecture. Understanding what that means... it means that because the PowerPC is sold in such miniscule volumes, and you're using proprietary bridges and chips for various tasks... you have a higher-incurred cost as a result. How many computers you see running on G3 or G4 chips outside of Apple anymore, and that come in a non-Apple casing, and weren't manufactured by Apple themselves that compete at the low-end? I bet you are hard-pressed to find one. PPCP all but died the minute Apple pulled the plug on cloning, as it was the "LAST" OS to support the platform. IBM gave up on OS/2, and they use AIX and are pushing Linux more and more (which actually came late to the PowerPC game as PPCP was all but dead and Linux wasn't even on the original roadmap back in the PReP and CHRP days prior)... but the hardware is still expensive as it's focused on ::gasping:: Enterprise. Microsoft made a version of Windows NT for PowerPC, with NT4, but they killed it prior to 2000.
If we were built on Intel/AMD chips, used NForce2 or VIA chipsets/bridges for integrated audio and/or video if supported, etc. etc. we "COULD" do this and likely sell at the same pricepoint. That is because we "WOULD BE" the same, and at that point you could probably buy a version of Mac OS X, get a copy of Darwin that umbrellas all of the hardware, and install OS X with some hacking and haggling (unsupported install, likely developed by a resourceful hacker through reverse-engineering [illegal in this instance]) on a Compaq or Dell. Apple doesn't want that, or else they'd be shipping it themselves.
Then again, a Mac would likely look like a Dell or a Gateway in packaging too because you'd be based off of a generally spec motherboard. If we went with a wholly proprietary motherboard design, we'd see costs rise even with sharing PC componentry (ever notice that laptop pricings, being based on proprietary technologies from vendor to vendor, more closely mimic the Mac than desktops do?). Some PC makers cut the AT board in half for packaging or design reasons... but it's still an AT cut in half. Try fitting that in an iMac and see what happens.
[quote]<strong>To top it off they've been making that thing for 4 years, kif they can't do it cheap buy now, then they have other major problems that require another thread entirely.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah, they have made it for a long time, and as the volume sales haven't exactly skyrocketed... it's probably damn near soon to be end of lifed (killed). Will it be replaced? Probably by another run of price cuts on the eMac which can sustain enough sales without cannibalizing Apple's bottomline. It's still not likely to reach your magical sub-$500 number. Sorry.
Marketshare at a loss is not a good idea. I've said it before, I'll say it again.
[quote]<strong>iMacG3 should be in competition with these machines already, or it should be dead. Simple.</strong><hr></blockquote>
And it probably will die. There's been less and less sales of the machines, as people take their $ and invest in eMacs and iMac G4's and Pro Desktops.
The sub $500 PC in this day and age is a bucket of parts if it's American (if built by a manufacturer like a Compaq/Dell), and if it's Korean it's the best damn near clone of a $700 American PC (likely with some quirks and rough edges), built with components that are made and mfg. in Korea to compensate for costs.
Therefore, to me... a lower priced eMachine can be quite competitive with a $700 PC. Considering I've worked on them prior and know the in's and out's... they're not a bad PC for the $. Can Apple compete with it? No. Should they? I don't think so.
A sub $500 Mac is just ludicrous based on marketshare alone. If Apple embraces Intel/AMD, then "MAYBE". Then again... Apple would "STILL" want to remain proprietary in their motherboard structure to avoid Windows being booted up as the native OS on a Mac. That'd be a hell of a coup if Microsoft went that far (and given the easy opportunity and enough reason to make it sustain, Microsoft would), as it'd mean that if you couldn't run a PC version of the software, just fire up a copy of Windows on your Mac. Softwindows or Virtual PC aside... they aren't your default OS, and there's no "dual-boot" to it.
So it's nice to dream about... but then again my sub-$10,000 Ferrari isn't happening either.
[ 03-07-2003: Message edited by: IVIIVI4ck3y27 ]</p>
Now this is a deal!
<a href="http://www.megamacs.com/v1/?action=view&pid=1382810"; target="_blank">http://www.megamacs.com/v1/?action=view&pid=1382810</a>;
<strong>How about a 5200/75-16/500MB Mac for 29.49 from megamac.com
Now this is a deal!
</strong><hr></blockquote>
ROFL...
[sarcasm]
I think he was upset that Apple couldn't give him the farm and keys to the side door of 1 Infinite Loop for the pricing he wanted.
Then again I'm still waiting for Mr. Schrempf to compete with GM by rebadging the entire Mercedes line at 1/2 cost with Dodge and Chrysler logos.
[/sarcasm]
[ 03-07-2003: Message edited by: IVIIVI4ck3y27 ]</p>
<strong>
ROFL...
[sarcasm]
I think he was upset that Apple couldn't give him the farm and keys to the side door of 1 Infinite Loop for the pricing he wanted.
Then again I'm still waiting for Mr. Schrempf to compete with GM by rebadging the entire Mercedes line at 1/2 cost with Dodge and Chrysler logos.
[/sarcasm]
[ 03-07-2003: Message edited by: IVIIVI4ck3y27 ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
Is there anyone else here who isn't tired of car analogies when discussing computers?
First of all in all your posts you mention, Sun, Sun, Sun... there are plenty who believe that Sun is on it's way to becoming the next SGI. They are having to adapt to lowering prices in the server segment, why is Apple somehow exempted from this as well? Apple isn't above market forces.
You cite all the prior examples Apple being declared dead and also other companies (Commodore) dying to just ignore that fact that when the times change, so must Apple.
I think the most amazing thing, that you ignore through all of this is how quickly things happen in technology. You mention companies that are footnotes now, and what you really should consider is that most often they didn't gradually just sort of disappear. They tipped and sank.
Technology, probably more than any other area is hyper-reliant on network effects and relationships. A technology can be doing just fine and suddenly a price point, a simplier solution, a new process, or procedure can just about capsize what was a completely stable market.
So in otherwords I don't care if Apple had nothing but black ink for the past 20 quarters, when the train leaves the station, they are either on it or heading for the dustbin.
3dfx was probably the perfect example of this happening and there are plenty betting that Sun might be next. You have a well developed leading edge technology and you hang just fine for a while. Suddenly though, boom you are gone.
The market isn't standing still. Integration is being pounded by Intel because it may hit the processor 5% harder but you get the feature for free and Intel gets the profit from the faster processor. So the 2 ghz machine may only feel as fast as the 1 ghz machine, but the 2 ghz machine is going to be $399 while the 1 ghz machine was $1499.
Also for those bagging on the share video ram, it isn't any skin off the consumers nose. The same mega-hardware sites that thumb their nose at these solutions but they also thumb their nose at G4 processor speeds and Mac's as well. The graphics speeds are typically 80% of what they would be if they had their own ram instead of shared ram.
<a href="http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/motherboards/article.php/10703_1141511__8"; target="_blank">Intel 845g benchmarks</a>
This is a perfect example. It is a benchmark from the Intel 845g which is exactly what those companies like Dell are shipping out by the buttload. It ran RTCW at 67.2 fps at 640x480. Sure it isn't the 1600x1200 w/AA that the high end gamer is tossing at his Radeon 9800 but then that card would cost more than this entire PC. That framerate is certainly acceptable for play and likely couldn't be met by the iMacG4 or eMac in performance.
Talk about a technology Apple introduced that could be used to kill it, wireless networking. Intel in introducing a mobile solution called Centrino that has built in wireless. Sure it may be 802.11b instead of 802.11g, but Apple will be charging $99 for g, and Intel will including it free.
I would have no trouble saying these PC's at $200 would be as fast as any of Apple's iMac and eMac offerings.
The point isn't so much that one price point could tip Apple's cart, it is the fact that a number of other factors could be at work and this could be one of the factors that starts the water rushing in when everyone realizes how low in the water the boat already is sitting.
Nick
<strong>
Is there anyone else here who isn't tired of car analogies when discussing computers?
First of all in all your posts you mention, Sun, Sun, Sun... there are plenty who believe that Sun is on it's way to becoming the next SGI. They are having to adapt to lowering prices in the server segment, why is Apple somehow exempted from this as well? Apple isn't above market forces.
You cite all the prior examples Apple being declared dead and also other companies (Commodore) dying to just ignore that fact that when the times change, so must Apple.
I think the most amazing thing, that you ignore through all of this is how quickly things happen in technology. You mention companies that are footnotes now, and what you really should consider is that most often they didn't gradually just sort of disappear. They tipped and sank.
Technology, probably more than any other area is hyper-reliant on network effects and relationships. A technology can be doing just fine and suddenly a price point, a simplier solution, a new process, or procedure can just about capsize what was a completely stable market.
So in otherwords I don't care if Apple had nothing but black ink for the past 20 quarters, when the train leaves the station, they are either on it or heading for the dustbin.
3dfx was probably the perfect example of this happening and there are plenty betting that Sun might be next. You have a well developed leading edge technology and you hang just fine for a while. Suddenly though, boom you are gone.
The market isn't standing still. Integration is being pounded by Intel because it may hit the processor 5% harder but you get the feature for free and Intel gets the profit from the faster processor. So the 2 ghz machine may only feel as fast as the 1 ghz machine, but the 2 ghz machine is going to be $399 while the 1 ghz machine was $1499.
Also for those bagging on the share video ram, it isn't any skin off the consumers nose. The same mega-hardware sites that thumb their nose at these solutions but they also thumb their nose at G4 processor speeds and Mac's as well. The graphics speeds are typically 80% of what they would be if they had their own ram instead of shared ram.
<a href="http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/motherboards/article.php/10703_1141511__8"; target="_blank">Intel 845g benchmarks</a>
This is a perfect example. It is a benchmark from the Intel 845g which is exactly what those companies like Dell are shipping out by the buttload. It ran RTCW at 67.2 fps at 640x480. Sure it isn't the 1600x1200 w/AA that the high end gamer is tossing at his Radeon 9800 but then that card would cost more than this entire PC. That framerate is certainly acceptable for play and likely couldn't be met by the iMacG4 or eMac in performance.
Talk about a technology Apple introduced that could be used to kill it, wireless networking. Intel in introducing a mobile solution called Centrino that has built in wireless. Sure it may be 802.11b instead of 802.11g, but Apple will be charging $99 for g, and Intel will including it free.
I would have no trouble saying these PC's at $200 would be as fast as any of Apple's iMac and eMac offerings.
The point isn't so much that one price point could tip Apple's cart, it is the fact that a number of other factors could be at work and this could be one of the factors that starts the water rushing in when everyone realizes how low in the water the boat already is sitting.
Nick</strong><hr></blockquote>
Personally I like using 29 dollar Macs that you can throw out if they stop working right.
For real though, my school use to have some of these things and they actually ran Microsoft Office 2001 (very slowly though).
[Rant]
For computers today it isn't how fast they are but how easy they are to use. Who cares if the $200 windows computer can produce 20 fps faster than an eMac. The eMac won't crash, won't get virus, won't snoop on everything you do, won't crash, won't make you sell your soul to Microsoft, won't crash, won't break in two months etc
Try to make a movie or burn a DVD on the $200 dollar thing and it will probably combust or take years to finish.
For almost every task besides games the eMac would be superior. Plus it looks way better and carriess prestige. Why else by a Mercedes? [/Rant]