No, not everybody wants a Mac Pro, but just a high performance mini tower. The Mac Pro is overkill for those who play games, yet a fast mini tower would be perfect, if I can believe several of the posts I've read. Prosumers would also be targeted by such a Mac mini tower.
Games - buy an Xbox 360
For the rest an iMac is spot on and won't be any slower than a Mac mini tower significantly.
People don't always buy what they need. They buy what they like to think they need.
Or plan for what they might need during the life of that computer. When it comes to the prices Apple is selling at, most can't afford a new Mac every 12-18 months.
I almost entirely agree with Melgross earlier there where he said people buy what they want not what they need and there's often no convincing them that they don't actually need the alleged expandability you get from a big box computer. I think that's getting less of an argument though as more and more people buy laptops and they realise they don't actually ever upgrade computers. Though, saying that, many people don't actually NEED laptops, they WANT them. An iMac would be faster and cheaper if they never need portability.
I don't think it's entirely about design or features though. Too many people buy on price and price alone. Apple doesn't sell on price.
So, I still think people clamouring for a mini tower are asking Apple to do something very un-Apple and that's compete in markets they don't traditionally compete in, Gamer boxes and cubicle jockeys. Unless they've a plan to capture that market, which would be quite an accomplishment, I can't see them doing something half hearted. Apple likes to excel at what it does.
And I just wish consumers were smarter and realised that buying what they NEED instead of WANT and buying on design instead of price is better for them in the long run.
Going by that, All Apple needs to sell is the low end Mac Mini and a cheap $200 19" widescreen display. 99% won't need more than that. As for anti-expandability, have you ever had to deal with things like a budget or actually opening up your case. Apple's lineup is great if you're rich and really don't do all that much with the computer. Example, let's say you have a home business that involves creating custom (not stolen) DVDs or CDs. Do it on an iMac, not only is every done half as fast, one the first unit is kicked out you can't use the second optical drive to duplicate. Then again, what's another couple hundred bucks, we're all insanely rich right?
Going by that, All Apple needs to sell is the low end Mac Mini and a cheap $200 19" widescreen display. 99% won't need more than that. As for anti-expandability, have you ever had to deal with things like a budget or actually opening up your case. Apple's lineup is great if you're rich and really don't do all that much with the computer. Example, let's say you have a home business that involves creating custom (not stolen) DVDs or CDs. Do it on an iMac, not only is every done half as fast, one the first unit is kicked out you can't use the second optical drive to duplicate. Then again, what's another couple hundred bucks, we're all insanely rich right?
Don't worry the iMac is the answer for the market share problem. LOL!
In 10 years time it's gonna be a real popular form factor... Just got to wait for China to catch up with Jobs ideas on style.
And that is a perfect example of why using market share as an indicator of what Apple is doing wrong is stupid. Apple doesn't sell beige budget PCs to China's mass populace. It's simply not in that market and I don't think it even wants to be. The profits are stupidly small.
It's perfectly fine to choose not to be in specific markets for whatever reason you want as a business. That might be based on financial reasons or just that you don't actually want the hassle.
They were saying that when the original iMac came out and AIOs still aren't popular. Face it, it's a niche market.
So are Macs. There's nothing wrong with being in a niche market if you totally own that niche and it's immensely profitable. That's what Apple does well.
So are Macs. There's nothing wrong with being in a niche market if you totally own that niche and it's immensely profitable. That's what Apple does well.
They've put so much effort on promoting the iPod + iTunes that I'm not really surprised that their market share for computers slipped at all. I'm sure it'll pick back up once 10.5 starts shipping with computers.
Ok, besides some experiments in Atari ST and the like, I am a Windows user for ages now. But am I happy with that? Not really, and I assume a number of people here know why. So what's preventing me from buying a Mac and help to move the 2.x share to 20.x or more? Because Apple, besides having a really outstanding design and really fundamentally good ideas, they just do not do the last step! People like me are just waiting for Apple to support more open standards (even Microsoft has to learn this lesson these days ), and to make the products not only outstanding but breathtaking. With multimedia Apple has the unique chance to break the games frontier Microsoft has built, so this terrain is really to pave the way for Apple. Examples: Apple TV to support standards like AVI for 50 bucks more - I'm in. Better integration with my Windows office pc via a tool like iPhone - I'm in. iTunes to offer MP3 (well, the big multimedia companies may need to approve, but even they should have learnt the lesson by now) - I'm in. And this forum has reacted pretty much the same way after the new announcements, so Apple just need to read it. Ok, maybe I miss some options that are there but just not obvious - but believe me, people today look for simplification, and it has to be obvious. At least I have bought an iMac for my wife now for the standard stuff, maybe that's a start...
They've put so much effort on promoting the iPod + iTunes that I'm not really surprised that their market share for computers slipped at all. I'm sure it'll pick back up once 10.5 starts shipping with computers.
Q4 saw exceptional sales and was artificially higher so the slight drop to Q1 makes it appear that their share dropped if you only look at share quarter-to-quarter and pay no attention to what the CFO said in the results. It appears this analyst has merely looked at the figures and not paid any attention to Q4 being out of line with the trend for the year.
Knock off the 100,000 sales in Q4 Apple said were not expected, and their share grew Q4 to Q1. If you look at their share over the entire year it's grown.
They're selling 28% more Macs than this time last year - that's way ahead of the rest of the industry. The previous year they were selling 19% more macs than the year before - again, ahead of the industry. Before that 24% more. Get it yet? Their market share is going up and up.
It does however take a HUGE change in sales to shift your market share significantly. Apple may have sold 1.6 million Macs this quarter but the entire PC industry sold 65.6 million according to Gartner.
In other words, Apple's share is 2.5% of the industry according to Gartner. To get to 5% they'd have to more than double their sales.
apple just doesn't try hard to compete on price. They sell a very good cheap, consumer machine (mini, imac) and a great high level professional workstation. They don't have anything in between.
We can go back and forth all we want about why they don't have anything in between, but the fact is that they don't. I can't figure out why not. I really can't. I can see the arguments about margins and all that, but the fact is that there are a lot of people who want a desktop computer but already own a monitor, and a mini is a joke of a machine due to the size limitations on HD, ram, video card.
So, what is apple going to do? Will they release an xmac? Probably not. Should they? Probably.
I think apple is in a unique position right now in their history. They have a lot of cash coming in, a lot in the bank, and truly superior products. I know lots of people who are interested in OSX after undergoing windows fatigue, and for a lot of them, they want a desktop mac. So they look around, and what do they see? A 2600$ buy-in. For their purposes this compares to a $1000 dell-replacement POS.
1600$ is enough to go on vacation with your wife for like 3 weeks.
Apple should take some of their profits from their ipod sector and buy their way into a greater marketshare. Their products are truly superior at this moment, it won't always be the case. The increase in marketshare down the road will pay dividends like OSX sales, software sales, repeat customers, platform stability, increased developer interest, etc.
So what's preventing me from buying a Mac and help to move the 2.x share to 20.x or more? Because Apple, besides having a really outstanding design and really fundamentally good ideas, they just do not do the last step! People like me are just waiting for Apple to support more open standards (even Microsoft has to learn this lesson these days ), and to make the products not only outstanding but breathtaking. With multimedia Apple has the unique chance to break the games frontier Microsoft has built, so this terrain is really to pave the way for Apple. Examples: Apple TV to support standards like AVI for 50 bucks more - I'm in. Better integration with my Windows office pc via a tool like iPhone - I'm in. iTunes to offer MP3 (well, the big multimedia companies may need to approve, but even they should have learnt the lesson by now) - I'm in. And this forum has reacted pretty much the same way after the new announcements, so Apple just need to read it. Ok, maybe I miss some options that are there but just not obvious - but believe me, people today look for simplification, and it has to be obvious. At least I have bought an iMac for my wife now for the standard stuff, maybe that's a start...
Huh? You say Apple needs to support more open standards but the things you indicate above are actually all closed Microsoft standards.
AVI is not an open standard unlike the H.264 MPEG standards Apple uses for almost all video now.
Microsoft's Exchange email system is not an open standard unlike Apple's use of IMAP as the basis of it's push email on the iPhone and it's pushing of the iCalendar, Open Directory, LDAP and CalDAV standards it's using for groupware.
AAC as used by iTunes *IS* as open a standard a standard as MP3 is. What you mean is for Apple to drop digital rights management. That is unlikely given the record companies. iTunes and iPods will of course play MP3 files so you're free to buy MP3s elsewhere.
Apple 'breaking the games frontier' is both near impossible and pointless IMHO when you've console companies that do it just fine.
Microsoft's current idea of supporting open standards isn't to actually support existing open standards but to try and get their closed standards ratified as open standards. They make them so complex that their competitors are left with years and years of work to support the new open standard. For example, OpenOffice.org creates an open office document format, various governements back it as a standard so they have documents that may still be read in 20 years time instead of having to reverse engineer Microsoft's formats. Microsoft creates a new Office format with an XML heirarchy so complex even the Mac Business Unit inside Microsoft say it'll take them years to implement. Then they push this complex format as an open standard with the standards bodies so that "Hey, we do open standards too". It's just another way to squash competition not a way to support free and open data interchange between applications.
This has moved on from their 'embrace & extend' policy where they took an open standard and then completely made it their own by adding some proprietary extension that only worked on Windows. See Internet Explorer for example.
Really, support of open standards is one of Apple's strong points.
i think the point he was making with ipod/itunes was that itunes doesn't sell mp3 formatted songs, which would let you play them DRM or no on other mp3 players.
You can't possible argue that itunes/ipod isn't restrictive. There are plenty of good reasons to apple to do this (why would they let their competitors use their SW and store for free), but you can't say its not a major restriction.
As for who is more "open", who knows. I know that M$ windows sucks chunks. Isn't that enough?
I think apple is in a unique position right now in their history. They have a lot of cash coming in, a lot in the bank, and truly superior products. I know lots of people who are interested in OSX after undergoing windows fatigue, and for a lot of them, they want a desktop mac. So they look around, and what do they see? A 2600$ buy-in. For their purposes this compares to a $1000 dell-replacement POS.
And Apple would try to suggest that what they actually NEED at that price is an iMac. It's a desktop Mac, it's probably as fast as a $1000 dell-replacement POS, is better built, takes up less room and doesn't look like an 80s Hifi. And wouldn't you know it, but it comes with a fresh new widescreen monitor too instead of having to put up with that 2 year old monitor you really should junk.
Or you could, you know, plug your old monitor into the port on the back of the iMac.
Comments
No, not everybody wants a Mac Pro, but just a high performance mini tower. The Mac Pro is overkill for those who play games, yet a fast mini tower would be perfect, if I can believe several of the posts I've read. Prosumers would also be targeted by such a Mac mini tower.
Games - buy an Xbox 360
For the rest an iMac is spot on and won't be any slower than a Mac mini tower significantly.
I agree with that.
People don't always buy what they need. They buy what they like to think they need.
Or plan for what they might need during the life of that computer. When it comes to the prices Apple is selling at, most can't afford a new Mac every 12-18 months.
I almost entirely agree with Melgross earlier there where he said people buy what they want not what they need and there's often no convincing them that they don't actually need the alleged expandability you get from a big box computer. I think that's getting less of an argument though as more and more people buy laptops and they realise they don't actually ever upgrade computers. Though, saying that, many people don't actually NEED laptops, they WANT them. An iMac would be faster and cheaper if they never need portability.
I don't think it's entirely about design or features though. Too many people buy on price and price alone. Apple doesn't sell on price.
So, I still think people clamouring for a mini tower are asking Apple to do something very un-Apple and that's compete in markets they don't traditionally compete in, Gamer boxes and cubicle jockeys. Unless they've a plan to capture that market, which would be quite an accomplishment, I can't see them doing something half hearted. Apple likes to excel at what it does.
And I just wish consumers were smarter and realised that buying what they NEED instead of WANT and buying on design instead of price is better for them in the long run.
Going by that, All Apple needs to sell is the low end Mac Mini and a cheap $200 19" widescreen display. 99% won't need more than that. As for anti-expandability, have you ever had to deal with things like a budget or actually opening up your case. Apple's lineup is great if you're rich and really don't do all that much with the computer. Example, let's say you have a home business that involves creating custom (not stolen) DVDs or CDs. Do it on an iMac, not only is every done half as fast, one the first unit is kicked out you can't use the second optical drive to duplicate. Then again, what's another couple hundred bucks, we're all insanely rich right?
Games - buy an Xbox 360
For the rest an iMac is spot on and won't be any slower than a Mac mini tower significantly.
No offense, but you always seem to simplify things to general terms. A game is a game and a computer is a computer. The world is much more complex.
In 10 years time it's gonna be a real popular form factor... Just got to wait for China to catch up with Jobs ideas on style.
Don't worry the iMac is the answer for the market share problem. LOL!
In 10 years time it's gonna be a real popular form factor... Just got to wait for China to catch up with Jobs ideas on style.
They were saying that when the original iMac came out and AIOs still aren't popular. Face it, it's a niche market.
They were saying that when the original iMac came out and AIOs still aren't popular. Face it, it's a niche market.
Niche joke too!
Going by that, All Apple needs to sell is the low end Mac Mini and a cheap $200 19" widescreen display. 99% won't need more than that. As for anti-expandability, have you ever had to deal with things like a budget or actually opening up your case. Apple's lineup is great if you're rich and really don't do all that much with the computer. Example, let's say you have a home business that involves creating custom (not stolen) DVDs or CDs. Do it on an iMac, not only is every done half as fast, one the first unit is kicked out you can't use the second optical drive to duplicate. Then again, what's another couple hundred bucks, we're all insanely rich right?
You're totally distorting what we've said.
They were saying that when the original iMac came out and AIOs still aren't popular. Face it, it's a niche market.
So, you disagree with us, AND you agree with us.
Don't worry the iMac is the answer for the market share problem. LOL!
In 10 years time it's gonna be a real popular form factor... Just got to wait for China to catch up with Jobs ideas on style.
And that is a perfect example of why using market share as an indicator of what Apple is doing wrong is stupid. Apple doesn't sell beige budget PCs to China's mass populace. It's simply not in that market and I don't think it even wants to be. The profits are stupidly small.
It's perfectly fine to choose not to be in specific markets for whatever reason you want as a business. That might be based on financial reasons or just that you don't actually want the hassle.
They were saying that when the original iMac came out and AIOs still aren't popular. Face it, it's a niche market.
So are Macs. There's nothing wrong with being in a niche market if you totally own that niche and it's immensely profitable. That's what Apple does well.
So are Macs. There's nothing wrong with being in a niche market if you totally own that niche and it's immensely profitable. That's what Apple does well.
Not if the Niche market is shrinking.
Not if the Niche market is shrinking.
It's not shrinking. It's like the 90s where Mac Sales are growing at a slower rate.
They've put so much effort on promoting the iPod + iTunes that I'm not really surprised that their market share for computers slipped at all. I'm sure it'll pick back up once 10.5 starts shipping with computers.
Q4 saw exceptional sales and was artificially higher so the slight drop to Q1 makes it appear that their share dropped if you only look at share quarter-to-quarter and pay no attention to what the CFO said in the results. It appears this analyst has merely looked at the figures and not paid any attention to Q4 being out of line with the trend for the year.
Knock off the 100,000 sales in Q4 Apple said were not expected, and their share grew Q4 to Q1. If you look at their share over the entire year it's grown.
They're selling 28% more Macs than this time last year - that's way ahead of the rest of the industry. The previous year they were selling 19% more macs than the year before - again, ahead of the industry. Before that 24% more. Get it yet? Their market share is going up and up.
It does however take a HUGE change in sales to shift your market share significantly. Apple may have sold 1.6 million Macs this quarter but the entire PC industry sold 65.6 million according to Gartner.
In other words, Apple's share is 2.5% of the industry according to Gartner. To get to 5% they'd have to more than double their sales.
We can go back and forth all we want about why they don't have anything in between, but the fact is that they don't. I can't figure out why not. I really can't. I can see the arguments about margins and all that, but the fact is that there are a lot of people who want a desktop computer but already own a monitor, and a mini is a joke of a machine due to the size limitations on HD, ram, video card.
So, what is apple going to do? Will they release an xmac? Probably not. Should they? Probably.
I think apple is in a unique position right now in their history. They have a lot of cash coming in, a lot in the bank, and truly superior products. I know lots of people who are interested in OSX after undergoing windows fatigue, and for a lot of them, they want a desktop mac. So they look around, and what do they see? A 2600$ buy-in. For their purposes this compares to a $1000 dell-replacement POS.
1600$ is enough to go on vacation with your wife for like 3 weeks.
Apple should take some of their profits from their ipod sector and buy their way into a greater marketshare. Their products are truly superior at this moment, it won't always be the case. The increase in marketshare down the road will pay dividends like OSX sales, software sales, repeat customers, platform stability, increased developer interest, etc.
I really don't get it.
So what's preventing me from buying a Mac and help to move the 2.x share to 20.x or more? Because Apple, besides having a really outstanding design and really fundamentally good ideas, they just do not do the last step! People like me are just waiting for Apple to support more open standards (even Microsoft has to learn this lesson these days
Huh? You say Apple needs to support more open standards but the things you indicate above are actually all closed Microsoft standards.
AVI is not an open standard unlike the H.264 MPEG standards Apple uses for almost all video now.
Microsoft's Exchange email system is not an open standard unlike Apple's use of IMAP as the basis of it's push email on the iPhone and it's pushing of the iCalendar, Open Directory, LDAP and CalDAV standards it's using for groupware.
AAC as used by iTunes *IS* as open a standard a standard as MP3 is. What you mean is for Apple to drop digital rights management. That is unlikely given the record companies. iTunes and iPods will of course play MP3 files so you're free to buy MP3s elsewhere.
Apple 'breaking the games frontier' is both near impossible and pointless IMHO when you've console companies that do it just fine.
Microsoft's current idea of supporting open standards isn't to actually support existing open standards but to try and get their closed standards ratified as open standards. They make them so complex that their competitors are left with years and years of work to support the new open standard. For example, OpenOffice.org creates an open office document format, various governements back it as a standard so they have documents that may still be read in 20 years time instead of having to reverse engineer Microsoft's formats. Microsoft creates a new Office format with an XML heirarchy so complex even the Mac Business Unit inside Microsoft say it'll take them years to implement. Then they push this complex format as an open standard with the standards bodies so that "Hey, we do open standards too". It's just another way to squash competition not a way to support free and open data interchange between applications.
This has moved on from their 'embrace & extend' policy where they took an open standard and then completely made it their own by adding some proprietary extension that only worked on Windows. See Internet Explorer for example.
Really, support of open standards is one of Apple's strong points.
You can't possible argue that itunes/ipod isn't restrictive. There are plenty of good reasons to apple to do this (why would they let their competitors use their SW and store for free), but you can't say its not a major restriction.
As for who is more "open", who knows. I know that M$ windows sucks chunks. Isn't that enough?
I think apple is in a unique position right now in their history. They have a lot of cash coming in, a lot in the bank, and truly superior products. I know lots of people who are interested in OSX after undergoing windows fatigue, and for a lot of them, they want a desktop mac. So they look around, and what do they see? A 2600$ buy-in. For their purposes this compares to a $1000 dell-replacement POS.
And Apple would try to suggest that what they actually NEED at that price is an iMac. It's a desktop Mac, it's probably as fast as a $1000 dell-replacement POS, is better built, takes up less room and doesn't look like an 80s Hifi. And wouldn't you know it, but it comes with a fresh new widescreen monitor too instead of having to put up with that 2 year old monitor you really should junk.
Or you could, you know, plug your old monitor into the port on the back of the iMac.