I'm always going to defer to speed vs size when it comes to hard drives.
I see people obsess about whether they want to buy the 2.2Ghz model or the 2.4Ghz model which yields likely a 10% max benefit in performance in the same processor family.
Then they stick with the same old 5400 rpm drive it came with which costs them more performance than the processor upgrade brings.
SSD are expensive but they're expensive because they perform and what's the point of buying a shiny new computer if you're hobbling it with slow spinning rust?
Seagate and Western Digital have the right idea. Both companies are working on large high areal density drives that spin at lower rates to conserve power. NAS vendors are using low wattage Freescale, ARM and Intel chips for their boxes. The movement is towards scalable external storage either direct attached or network attached and fast (SSD) storage for the desktop.
Optical drives are not really a necessity anymore for many people and should be optional. I'd rather bump in processor speed or RAM in lieu of yet another slow crappy optical drive being crammed down my gullet.
Affordability is perception based on a ratio of performance/cost. When you begin to see a bunch of features you have no use for the affordability of said device drops.
I don't know about that.
SSDs aren't practical for most people. Their speed is an illusion. Yes, it cuts off a bit of time when starting up. Yes they cut a couple of seconds off opening programs the first time in a session.
But other than that, they don't do anything useful for most people. If you have fairly small files, say 4 MB for MP3s, then they do nothing for you.
If you get one of the cheaper SSDs, then you're wasting ypur money, because it's been shown many times now that they aren't even faster than a decent HDD much of the time.
And they're small, and expensive anyway when compared to a HDD.
If you buy a good SSD, like Intel's "M" series, they are VERY expensive, and small. How many people want to pay $700 for a 160 GB SSD?
As for optical, yes, they are still almost a necessity. Most software still comes on optical. Some can be downloaded, but that's not always useful.
I'm surprised you left yourself out. But if it's any consolation, you're catching me up.
(I thought you'd have at least looked up the 'meaning' of 'what's a lemon bon bon?' in the dictionary...)
Macs are overpriced in the UK. It's a fact.
Macs don't have to be 'cheap'. They have to be 'not' overpriced.
Which they are.
I'm with the 'bullseye', Marv' in this one. It's not like Macs are 'cheap'.
£900 starting price isn't cheap. £329 wintel laptop is 'cheap'.
For those incapable of seeing the 'middle' ground here (especially in this economy...) I refer you Silly Solipses great argument winner 'Aren't Apple entitled (as a greedy, 30 Billion $ in the bank) to make a profit?'.
It works everytime. In fact. I'm hoping Apple put their prices up another £1000 instead of $400 this time. That way even Melgross maybe priced out of the entry model as opposed to the 'too expensive even for him' top end model.
Do Apple need to join reality on their entry pricing? Discuss.
Lemon Bon Bon.
A certainly agree that Mac's are expensive. I don't think they're overpriced though. This is an area in which we've not only beaten the dead horse, but flayed it completely.
I don't think that Apple is greedy. I think that they do make better products, and they must pay for their service somehow.
Apple, as we've said many times, simply doesn't compete in the junk market.
Apple is a financially conservative, and prudent firm. It's been shown, by myself, and others here, that both their gross margins, and their net profits are good but not nearly excessive.
We don't know what they have in mind for the money they have, but no one here can make the claim that they know better what to do with it, though they may try.
With my daughter going to school starting this summer, in England, we asked the school whether we should buy a computer there, rather then pay the high shipping costs from here, or to bother carrying a 24" iMac.
She told us that computers and electronics, in general, were more expensive there, and even with shipping, it would be cheaper to buy it here.
I haven't yet decided how to handle that. I asked if it was mostly Macs that were more expensive (because of our discussions here about that), and she said that all computers, and electronics cost more because of VAT, and import fees the government imposes upon such products.
As far as buying my own Mac Pro went, well, I'm retired. If I still was taking work in, I would have popped for the highest config. as I've always done. Another $1,200 or so pays for itself in a couple of weeks in a "real" working environment.
I have no income from the machine these days, and so the extra $1,200 will go to a processor upgrade sometime in 2010 when the new, faster, 6 core chips are out for a bit of time. That way, I'll have the fastest config. the machine will be capable of, unless OWC, or someone else decides to make a processor board upgrade path, which is possible for this machine (I've been talking to them about that).
As for optical, yes, they are still almost a necessity. Most software still comes on optical. Some can be downloaded, but that's not always useful.
Someday, it will be different, but not yet.
All the major stuff is still on optical discs, but most of it is also online. You can DL Adobe Photoshop up to CS4 and MS Office online. But I'd say that the majority of software, in general, has been mainly web based for some time now and that it is most likely way consumers are going to access it. I'd say that even AOL is more likely to be downloaded than installed from disc.
Even software sections of stores are shrinking and Apple's Snow Leopard Betas can even be installed without even burning it to a DL-DVD, which is a cost and time savings as installing the Beta involves only the initial download and then essentially the time it takes to move 6GB from one partition to another. But you know how I feel about optical drives already.
Apple is a financially conservative, and prudent firm. It's been shown, by myself, and others here, that both their gross margins, and their net profits are good but not nearly excessive.
What gets me is that the argument that Apple's margins are high compared to struggling PC vendors seems to come across as if they are being altruistic by having lower margins, while the truth is they are unable to compete with higher margins since they focus on the budget sector.
Quote:
With my daughter going to school starting this summer, in England, we asked the school whether we should buy a computer there, rather then pay the high shipping costs from here, or to bother carrying a 24" iMac.
She told us that computers and electronics, in general, were more expensive there, and even with shipping, it would be cheaper to buy it here.
I haven't yet decided how to handle that. I asked if it was mostly Macs that were more expensive (because of our discussions here about that), and she said that all computers, and electronics cost more because of VAT, and import fees the government imposes upon such products.
How long will she be gone for and what is her scholastic focus? In other words, would a MBP be more ideal for her situation? Shipping a 24" iMac and then having to pay the import tax seems quite pricey.
SSDs aren't practical for most people. Their speed is an illusion. Yes, it cuts off a bit of time when starting up. Yes they cut a couple of seconds off opening programs the first time in a session.
....
As for optical, yes, they are still almost a necessity. Most software still comes on optical. Some can be downloaded, but that's not always useful.
Well, Mel'. Maybe 'most' people disagree with you? Seeing as they make up the majority of the PC market where value for money is abundant and where getting 'stiffed' on pricing for less spec is 'less' apparent.
I think that the reason a lot of folk on this forum disagree with you is that, despite your constant whining about Apple's pricing strategy, it seems to be rather successful.
Your loudest and most misinformed whine has been about the Mac's recent UK pricing. Kind of ironic that Gartner has, just today, published figures that suggest that the UK might have have been Apple's brightest spot.
Ooooh the fastest 2.5" SATA HDD you can buy gets slaughtered.
You only need one optical drive on a Mac connected to the network. How many people are constantly using their optical drives?
the random read/writes have always been great for SSDs, even when they failed to out perform HDDs in the other areas, but the reason this is so high is because it is the fastest SLC NAND with means less dense chips of only 32GB and they are using a RAID 0. Not exactly a typical consumer setup.
I think that the reason a lot of folk on this forum disagree with you is that, despite your constant whining about Apple's pricing strategy, it seems to be rather successful.
Your loudest and most misinformed whine has been about the Mac's recent UK pricing. Kind of ironic that Gartner has, just today, published figures that suggest that the UK might have have been Apple's brightest spot.
Drowned only the 'zining' of irrational premium price huggers such as yer good self.
Nothing misinformed about Mac UK prices. Check them out for yourself and take away the price increase of this years base model from the last years entry model.
It's 'successful' in a very limited market. And the fact they went backward in the US market sez they hit the ceiling. If they're happy there...then they're pricing alot of people...more than the few that disagree with me on this forum out of the Mac market. (What? Did you count all of them, yourself included..?) If Apple want to break out of the 'club' (something they managed to do with the iPod and iPhone line to a degree...) and become the people's computer I believe it is...they're going to have to make their entry models cheaper.
Shrugs.*
If they were so unbothered about marketshare...they'd never have plunged the sub-k market back in the day. But they did.
As for recent UK sales figures. We'll see when the £250-£400 price hike beds in. It's not like Apple had 'marketshare' here anyhow? Eh. Guess they refreshed the models...and they 'bumped' sales a little. We'll see how the next quarter does. I'm sure their sales figures will double. Nobody likes buying expensive stuff they can't afford more than UK consumers...well. Apart from US consumers...
'Alot' of UK buyers find Macs expensive. Only 'Pinot' seems surprised by this.
Even Melgross was given food for thought regarding UK prices.
A certainly agree that Mac's are expensive. I don't think they're overpriced though. This is an area in which we've not only beaten the dead horse, but flayed it completely.
I don't think that Apple is greedy. I think that they do make better products, and they must pay for their service somehow.
Apple, as we've said many times, simply doesn't compete in the junk market.
Apple is a financially conservative, and prudent firm. It's been shown, by myself, and others here, that both their gross margins, and their net profits are good but not nearly excessive.
We don't know what they have in mind for the money they have, but no one here can make the claim that they know better what to do with it, though they may try.
With my daughter going to school starting this summer, in England, we asked the school whether we should buy a computer there, rather then pay the high shipping costs from here, or to bother carrying a 24" iMac.
She told us that computers and electronics, in general, were more expensive there, and even with shipping, it would be cheaper to buy it here.
I haven't yet decided how to handle that. I asked if it was mostly Macs that were more expensive (because of our discussions here about that), and she said that all computers, and electronics cost more because of VAT, and import fees the government imposes upon such products.
As far as buying my own Mac Pro went, well, I'm retired. If I still was taking work in, I would have popped for the highest config. as I've always done. Another $1,200 or so pays for itself in a couple of weeks in a "real" working environment.
I have no income from the machine these days, and so the extra $1,200 will go to a processor upgrade sometime in 2010 when the new, faster, 6 core chips are out for a bit of time. That way, I'll have the fastest config. the machine will be capable of, unless OWC, or someone else decides to make a processor board upgrade path, which is possible for this machine (I've been talking to them about that).
Yeah. Oft flayed. But arguments to be repeated...as people who want to be in Apple's target market get stung by £250-£400 price hikes. If they were expensive before the 'hike' then I'd have to disagree with you and say that now they are overpriced. For a variety of reasons.
'Make better products'. Sure. The cases look nice. They have a great OS. And the whole widget thing sprinkled with Mac Eco System...yes. We know what's good. But how much to pay for that. I don't thing anyone is seriously suggesting that Apple makes a £329 laptop. But a £900+ one as the entry price? A tower starting at £1895.
Those kind of sticker prices put people off in the UK. Just like Apple's iPhone pricing in the UK did. They didn't 'get it'. And were forced to think again with cheaper models. Proving that Apple's 'greed' elastic only stretches so far.
But their specs are just about competitive when the models 1st appear. Then date badly after several months...because we know how Apple like to congratulate themselves for prolonged periods between updates.
Oh. I've got my iMac now. But it's proof of my argument. Macs are expensive. I had to buy last years top model on sale. I'm glad I did. This years high end iMac is a rip-off.
Hey. If you said they were expensive. I'd take that as some sort of concession of seismic proportions. *Writes down the date.
What gets me is that the argument that Apple's margins are high compared to struggling PC vendors seems to come across as if they are being altruistic by having lower margins, while the truth is they are unable to compete with higher margins since they focus on the budget sector.
More to the point I believe, the Windows OEMs compete within what is essentially a commodity market. Since the products they sell all work the same way (as dictated by Microsoft), they are forced to compete mainly on the basis of price.
the random read/writes have always been great for SSDs, even when they failed to out perform HDDs in the other areas, but the reason this is so high is because it is the fastest SLC NAND with means less dense chips of only 32GB and they are using a RAID 0. Not exactly a typical consumer setup.
Note that the system was indeed compared to the fastest 2.5" HDD available (Seagate Momentus 7200.4 in a RAID 0 configuration) and the HDD got obliterated.
SLC is certainly the extreme choice for performance and it's costly but even the Vertex stuff and Intel MLC based SSD outperform hard drives in Random Read/Write and with features like TRIM and better controllers coming it's clear that this year will be a watershed year for SSD.
Consumers should start thinking about performance as it relates to storage and and density in two different manners. Expecting everything in one drive is not going to happen.
Drowned only the 'zining' of irrational premium price huggers such as yer good self.
I am not hugging anything. You, in the other hand, keep clinging on to the notion that Apple operates in some kind of vacuum, shielded from the vagaries of national economies and fluctuating currency markets.
Quote:
Nothing misinformed about Mac UK prices.
Sure About that?
Quote:
Check them out for yourself and take away the price increase of this years base model from the last years entry model.
iMac base model: Less Vat (15%)
2008 £ 680.00
2009 £ 825.22 Price difference = £145.22 MORE.
Is that what you are talking about?
Want to try the same exercise in dollars? You do know Apple is a US company?
iMac base model: Less Vat (15%) Converted to $ using exchange rate on day of release.
So yes, you are right Lemon. The UK Pound got dumped in the shitter! Apple put there UK prices up on NEW models and yet they are taking home LESS dollars.
It seems like they must have done it... just to annoy you.
So yes, you are right Lemon. The UK Pound got dumped in the shitter! Apple put there UK prices up on NEW models and yet they are taking home LESS dollars.
It seems like they must have done it... just to annoy you.
All the major stuff is still on optical discs, but most of it is also online. You can DL Adobe Photoshop up to CS4 and MS Office online. But I'd say that the majority of software, in general, has been mainly web based for some time now and that it is most likely way consumers are going to access it. I'd say that even AOL is more likely to be downloaded than installed from disc.
Even software sections of stores are shrinking and Apple's Snow Leopard Betas can even be installed without even burning it to a DL-DVD, which is a cost and time savings as installing the Beta involves only the initial download and then essentially the time it takes to move 6GB from one partition to another. But you know how I feel about optical drives already.
I can't agree with that. don't even begin to think about downloading CS4, or office, or any other big program or suite.
Several years from now, when most people have really fast connections it will be different, but that's years from now.
Store stocks are shrinking because people are buying online, from Newegg, Amazon, etc, not because they're downloading the software. Almost no one I know does that except for smaller programs.
What gets me is that the argument that Apple's margins are high compared to struggling PC vendors seems to come across as if they are being altruistic by having lower margins, while the truth is they are unable to compete with higher margins since they focus on the budget sector.
How long will she be gone for and what is her scholastic focus? In other words, would a MBP be more ideal for her situation? Shipping a 24" iMac and then having to pay the import tax seems quite pricey.
She's going for a four year degree. A BFA in photography.
A MBP isn't the best computer for that, but a 24" iMac is really good for that. We won't need the computer until she starts the actual school year in early September. The summer is for a long orientation course for foreign students.
Ooooh the fastest 2.5" SATA HDD you can buy gets slaughtered.
You only need one optical drive on a Mac connected to the network. How many people are constantly using their optical drives?
You do know how much those enterprise drives cost don't you? From Newegg, each 32 GB drive costs $393.
You also didn't mention that this was with TWO of these drives.
As BF also says:
Quote:
The bad news is that the X25-Es are expensive and limited to 64G capacity each. There are larger capacity SSDs currently shipping such as the Intel X25-M, but the write speed is an unimpressive 80MB/s per drive. And non-Intel SSDs have major stuttering issues in random write mode.
We also won't know if the claims from other drive manufacturers will be upheld. They've made claims before that all sites testing the drives have found to be false, so we'll see.
In addition, as I said before, with smaller files you won't notice a difference. Even 5400 HDDs are fast enough so that the extra speed here won't be noticed, not matter how much faster they may be.
For most people this is a waste of money at this time.
Drowned only the 'zining' of irrational premium price huggers such as yer good self.
Nothing misinformed about Mac UK prices. Check them out for yourself and take away the price increase of this years base model from the last years entry model.
It's 'successful' in a very limited market. And the fact they went backward in the US market sez they hit the ceiling. If they're happy there...then they're pricing alot of people...more than the few that disagree with me on this forum out of the Mac market. (What? Did you count all of them, yourself included..?) If Apple want to break out of the 'club' (something they managed to do with the iPod and iPhone line to a degree...) and become the people's computer I believe it is...they're going to have to make their entry models cheaper.
Shrugs.*
If they were so unbothered about marketshare...they'd never have plunged the sub-k market back in the day. But they did.
As for recent UK sales figures. We'll see when the £250-£400 price hike beds in. It's not like Apple had 'marketshare' here anyhow? Eh. Guess they refreshed the models...and they 'bumped' sales a little. We'll see how the next quarter does. I'm sure their sales figures will double. Nobody likes buying expensive stuff they can't afford more than UK consumers...well. Apart from US consumers...
'Alot' of UK buyers find Macs expensive. Only 'Pinot' seems surprised by this.
Even Melgross was given food for thought regarding UK prices.
6%. Whoop. That showed me.
Lemon Bon Bon.
They only went backwards in he US market because of really cheap netbooks, which are almost, but not quite full computers, though they are counted such because they run a computer OS, even though so far, it's an old one.
This has lowered the marketshare of PC companies that haven't fully jumped on the netbook bandwagon also, it's not just Apple.
And Apple does have the least loss from last years sales of all these companies, esp. when netbooks are taken out of the equation..
Yeah. Oft flayed. But arguments to be repeated...as people who want to be in Apple's target market get stung by £250-£400 price hikes. If they were expensive before the 'hike' then I'd have to disagree with you and say that now they are overpriced. For a variety of reasons.
'Make better products'. Sure. The cases look nice. They have a great OS. And the whole widget thing sprinkled with Mac Eco System...yes. We know what's good. But how much to pay for that. I don't thing anyone is seriously suggesting that Apple makes a £329 laptop. But a £900+ one as the entry price? A tower starting at £1895.
Those kind of sticker prices put people off in the UK. Just like Apple's iPhone pricing in the UK did. They didn't 'get it'. And were forced to think again with cheaper models. Proving that Apple's 'greed' elastic only stretches so far.
But their specs are just about competitive when the models 1st appear. Then date badly after several months...because we know how Apple like to congratulate themselves for prolonged periods between updates.
Oh. I've got my iMac now. But it's proof of my argument. Macs are expensive. I had to buy last years top model on sale. I'm glad I did. This years high end iMac is a rip-off.
Hey. If you said they were expensive. I'd take that as some sort of concession of seismic proportions. *Writes down the date.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I'm really not an extreme person, and my views as expressed here are not extreme. Let's get that out of the way please.
Yes, I said that they are expensive. But it's not just the expensive cases, though that certainly is part of it. Service, which they have plenty of (how much do the genius bars cost apple over a years time?) costs a lot more too.
I don't know exactly why everything cost so much more in England, though VAT of 16% and up certainly doesn't help. Neither do the high import fees. Both of these tax amounts depend on where the product is engineered, manufactured, how many middlemen there are in the distribution channel etc, so it's tough for a consumer to know what to expect. We have far less taxes on everything here, and have few import taxes and fees.
Apple is conservative in their hardware as well. They are much more concerned that everything work and be reliable then get the very latest for an extra 5% every three months or so.
An example is my new Mac Pro. Intel specs 1333 memory for Xenons at 2.5 GHz and above, yet, Apple only uses 1066. Why? Likely they found some stability problems with the faster memory. So they not only don't supply 1333, but they force it to 1066 should you use it.
How much of a performance drop will that have? Likely 5% or so. Big deal.
Comments
I'm always going to defer to speed vs size when it comes to hard drives.
I see people obsess about whether they want to buy the 2.2Ghz model or the 2.4Ghz model which yields likely a 10% max benefit in performance in the same processor family.
Then they stick with the same old 5400 rpm drive it came with which costs them more performance than the processor upgrade brings.
SSD are expensive but they're expensive because they perform and what's the point of buying a shiny new computer if you're hobbling it with slow spinning rust?
Seagate and Western Digital have the right idea. Both companies are working on large high areal density drives that spin at lower rates to conserve power. NAS vendors are using low wattage Freescale, ARM and Intel chips for their boxes. The movement is towards scalable external storage either direct attached or network attached and fast (SSD) storage for the desktop.
Optical drives are not really a necessity anymore for many people and should be optional. I'd rather bump in processor speed or RAM in lieu of yet another slow crappy optical drive being crammed down my gullet.
Affordability is perception based on a ratio of performance/cost. When you begin to see a bunch of features you have no use for the affordability of said device drops.
I don't know about that.
SSDs aren't practical for most people. Their speed is an illusion. Yes, it cuts off a bit of time when starting up. Yes they cut a couple of seconds off opening programs the first time in a session.
But other than that, they don't do anything useful for most people. If you have fairly small files, say 4 MB for MP3s, then they do nothing for you.
If you get one of the cheaper SSDs, then you're wasting ypur money, because it's been shown many times now that they aren't even faster than a decent HDD much of the time.
And they're small, and expensive anyway when compared to a HDD.
If you buy a good SSD, like Intel's "M" series, they are VERY expensive, and small. How many people want to pay $700 for a 160 GB SSD?
As for optical, yes, they are still almost a necessity. Most software still comes on optical. Some can be downloaded, but that's not always useful.
Someday, it will be different, but not yet.
I'm surprised you left yourself out. But if it's any consolation, you're catching me up.
(I thought you'd have at least looked up the 'meaning' of 'what's a lemon bon bon?' in the dictionary...)
Macs are overpriced in the UK. It's a fact.
Macs don't have to be 'cheap'. They have to be 'not' overpriced.
Which they are.
I'm with the 'bullseye', Marv' in this one. It's not like Macs are 'cheap'.
£900 starting price isn't cheap. £329 wintel laptop is 'cheap'.
For those incapable of seeing the 'middle' ground here (especially in this economy...) I refer you Silly Solipses great argument winner 'Aren't Apple entitled (as a greedy, 30 Billion $ in the bank) to make a profit?'.
It works everytime. In fact. I'm hoping Apple put their prices up another £1000 instead of $400 this time. That way even Melgross maybe priced out of the entry model as opposed to the 'too expensive even for him' top end model.
Do Apple need to join reality on their entry pricing? Discuss.
Lemon Bon Bon.
A certainly agree that Mac's are expensive. I don't think they're overpriced though. This is an area in which we've not only beaten the dead horse, but flayed it completely.
I don't think that Apple is greedy. I think that they do make better products, and they must pay for their service somehow.
Apple, as we've said many times, simply doesn't compete in the junk market.
Apple is a financially conservative, and prudent firm. It's been shown, by myself, and others here, that both their gross margins, and their net profits are good but not nearly excessive.
We don't know what they have in mind for the money they have, but no one here can make the claim that they know better what to do with it, though they may try.
With my daughter going to school starting this summer, in England, we asked the school whether we should buy a computer there, rather then pay the high shipping costs from here, or to bother carrying a 24" iMac.
She told us that computers and electronics, in general, were more expensive there, and even with shipping, it would be cheaper to buy it here.
I haven't yet decided how to handle that. I asked if it was mostly Macs that were more expensive (because of our discussions here about that), and she said that all computers, and electronics cost more because of VAT, and import fees the government imposes upon such products.
As far as buying my own Mac Pro went, well, I'm retired. If I still was taking work in, I would have popped for the highest config. as I've always done. Another $1,200 or so pays for itself in a couple of weeks in a "real" working environment.
I have no income from the machine these days, and so the extra $1,200 will go to a processor upgrade sometime in 2010 when the new, faster, 6 core chips are out for a bit of time. That way, I'll have the fastest config. the machine will be capable of, unless OWC, or someone else decides to make a processor board upgrade path, which is possible for this machine (I've been talking to them about that).
As for optical, yes, they are still almost a necessity. Most software still comes on optical. Some can be downloaded, but that's not always useful.
Someday, it will be different, but not yet.
All the major stuff is still on optical discs, but most of it is also online. You can DL Adobe Photoshop up to CS4 and MS Office online. But I'd say that the majority of software, in general, has been mainly web based for some time now and that it is most likely way consumers are going to access it. I'd say that even AOL is more likely to be downloaded than installed from disc.
Even software sections of stores are shrinking and Apple's Snow Leopard Betas can even be installed without even burning it to a DL-DVD, which is a cost and time savings as installing the Beta involves only the initial download and then essentially the time it takes to move 6GB from one partition to another. But you know how I feel about optical drives already.
Apple is a financially conservative, and prudent firm. It's been shown, by myself, and others here, that both their gross margins, and their net profits are good but not nearly excessive.
What gets me is that the argument that Apple's margins are high compared to struggling PC vendors seems to come across as if they are being altruistic by having lower margins, while the truth is they are unable to compete with higher margins since they focus on the budget sector.
With my daughter going to school starting this summer, in England, we asked the school whether we should buy a computer there, rather then pay the high shipping costs from here, or to bother carrying a 24" iMac.
She told us that computers and electronics, in general, were more expensive there, and even with shipping, it would be cheaper to buy it here.
I haven't yet decided how to handle that. I asked if it was mostly Macs that were more expensive (because of our discussions here about that), and she said that all computers, and electronics cost more because of VAT, and import fees the government imposes upon such products.
How long will she be gone for and what is her scholastic focus? In other words, would a MBP be more ideal for her situation? Shipping a 24" iMac and then having to pay the import tax seems quite pricey.
I don't know about that.
SSDs aren't practical for most people. Their speed is an illusion. Yes, it cuts off a bit of time when starting up. Yes they cut a couple of seconds off opening programs the first time in a session.
....
As for optical, yes, they are still almost a necessity. Most software still comes on optical. Some can be downloaded, but that's not always useful.
Someday, it will be different, but not yet.
Just today
http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp13.html
That's domination.
Ooooh the fastest 2.5" SATA HDD you can buy gets slaughtered.
You only need one optical drive on a Mac connected to the network. How many people are constantly using their optical drives?
Well, Mel'. Maybe 'most' people disagree with you? Seeing as they make up the majority of the PC market where value for money is abundant and where getting 'stiffed' on pricing for less spec is 'less' apparent.
I think that the reason a lot of folk on this forum disagree with you is that, despite your constant whining about Apple's pricing strategy, it seems to be rather successful.
Your loudest and most misinformed whine has been about the Mac's recent UK pricing. Kind of ironic that Gartner has, just today, published figures that suggest that the UK might have have been Apple's brightest spot.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=966713
"Apple made its debut in the top five replacing Fujitsu Siemens, with market share of nearly 5 per cent."
UK PC SALES GROWTH.
Apple plus 6.6%
HP minus 6.7%
Dell minus 21.7%
Total minus 5.1%
Just today
http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp13.html
image: ]http://www.barefeats.com/images09/mbp13_rr.gif
That's domination.
image: http://www.barefeats.com/images09/mbp13_rw.gif
Ooooh the fastest 2.5" SATA HDD you can buy gets slaughtered.
You only need one optical drive on a Mac connected to the network. How many people are constantly using their optical drives?
the random read/writes have always been great for SSDs, even when they failed to out perform HDDs in the other areas, but the reason this is so high is because it is the fastest SLC NAND with means less dense chips of only 32GB and they are using a RAID 0. Not exactly a typical consumer setup.
I think that the reason a lot of folk on this forum disagree with you is that, despite your constant whining about Apple's pricing strategy, it seems to be rather successful.
Your loudest and most misinformed whine has been about the Mac's recent UK pricing. Kind of ironic that Gartner has, just today, published figures that suggest that the UK might have have been Apple's brightest spot.
Drowned only the 'zining' of irrational premium price huggers such as yer good self.
Nothing misinformed about Mac UK prices. Check them out for yourself and take away the price increase of this years base model from the last years entry model.
It's 'successful' in a very limited market. And the fact they went backward in the US market sez they hit the ceiling. If they're happy there...then they're pricing alot of people...more than the few that disagree with me on this forum
Shrugs.*
If they were so unbothered about marketshare...they'd never have plunged the sub-k market back in the day. But they did.
As for recent UK sales figures. We'll see when the £250-£400 price hike beds in. It's not like Apple had 'marketshare' here anyhow? Eh. Guess they refreshed the models...and they 'bumped' sales a little. We'll see how the next quarter does. I'm sure their sales figures will double. Nobody likes buying expensive stuff they can't afford more than UK consumers...well. Apart from US consumers...
'Alot' of UK buyers find Macs expensive. Only 'Pinot' seems surprised by this.
Even Melgross was given food for thought regarding UK prices.
6%. Whoop. That showed me.
Lemon Bon Bon.
A certainly agree that Mac's are expensive. I don't think they're overpriced though. This is an area in which we've not only beaten the dead horse, but flayed it completely.
I don't think that Apple is greedy. I think that they do make better products, and they must pay for their service somehow.
Apple, as we've said many times, simply doesn't compete in the junk market.
Apple is a financially conservative, and prudent firm. It's been shown, by myself, and others here, that both their gross margins, and their net profits are good but not nearly excessive.
We don't know what they have in mind for the money they have, but no one here can make the claim that they know better what to do with it, though they may try.
With my daughter going to school starting this summer, in England, we asked the school whether we should buy a computer there, rather then pay the high shipping costs from here, or to bother carrying a 24" iMac.
She told us that computers and electronics, in general, were more expensive there, and even with shipping, it would be cheaper to buy it here.
I haven't yet decided how to handle that. I asked if it was mostly Macs that were more expensive (because of our discussions here about that), and she said that all computers, and electronics cost more because of VAT, and import fees the government imposes upon such products.
As far as buying my own Mac Pro went, well, I'm retired. If I still was taking work in, I would have popped for the highest config. as I've always done. Another $1,200 or so pays for itself in a couple of weeks in a "real" working environment.
I have no income from the machine these days, and so the extra $1,200 will go to a processor upgrade sometime in 2010 when the new, faster, 6 core chips are out for a bit of time. That way, I'll have the fastest config. the machine will be capable of, unless OWC, or someone else decides to make a processor board upgrade path, which is possible for this machine (I've been talking to them about that).
Yeah. Oft flayed. But arguments to be repeated...as people who want to be in Apple's target market get stung by £250-£400 price hikes. If they were expensive before the 'hike' then I'd have to disagree with you and say that now they are overpriced. For a variety of reasons.
'Make better products'. Sure. The cases look nice. They have a great OS. And the whole widget thing sprinkled with Mac Eco System...yes. We know what's good. But how much to pay for that. I don't thing anyone is seriously suggesting that Apple makes a £329 laptop. But a £900+ one as the entry price? A tower starting at £1895.
Those kind of sticker prices put people off in the UK. Just like Apple's iPhone pricing in the UK did. They didn't 'get it'. And were forced to think again with cheaper models. Proving that Apple's 'greed' elastic only stretches so far.
But their specs are just about competitive when the models 1st appear. Then date badly after several months...because we know how Apple like to congratulate themselves for prolonged periods between updates.
Oh. I've got my iMac now. But it's proof of my argument. Macs are expensive. I had to buy last years top model on sale. I'm glad I did. This years high end iMac is a rip-off.
Hey. If you said they were expensive. I'd take that as some sort of concession of seismic proportions. *Writes down the date.
Lemon Bon Bon.
What gets me is that the argument that Apple's margins are high compared to struggling PC vendors seems to come across as if they are being altruistic by having lower margins, while the truth is they are unable to compete with higher margins since they focus on the budget sector.
More to the point I believe, the Windows OEMs compete within what is essentially a commodity market. Since the products they sell all work the same way (as dictated by Microsoft), they are forced to compete mainly on the basis of price.
the random read/writes have always been great for SSDs, even when they failed to out perform HDDs in the other areas, but the reason this is so high is because it is the fastest SLC NAND with means less dense chips of only 32GB and they are using a RAID 0. Not exactly a typical consumer setup.
Note that the system was indeed compared to the fastest 2.5" HDD available (Seagate Momentus 7200.4 in a RAID 0 configuration) and the HDD got obliterated.
SLC is certainly the extreme choice for performance and it's costly but even the Vertex stuff and Intel MLC based SSD outperform hard drives in Random Read/Write and with features like TRIM and better controllers coming it's clear that this year will be a watershed year for SSD.
Consumers should start thinking about performance as it relates to storage and and density in two different manners. Expecting everything in one drive is not going to happen.
Drowned only the 'zining' of irrational premium price huggers such as yer good self.
I am not hugging anything. You, in the other hand, keep clinging on to the notion that Apple operates in some kind of vacuum, shielded from the vagaries of national economies and fluctuating currency markets.
Nothing misinformed about Mac UK prices.
Sure About that?
Check them out for yourself and take away the price increase of this years base model from the last years entry model.
iMac base model: Less Vat (15%)
2008 £ 680.00
2009 £ 825.22 Price difference = £145.22 MORE.
Is that what you are talking about?
Want to try the same exercise in dollars? You do know Apple is a US company?
iMac base model: Less Vat (15%) Converted to $ using exchange rate on day of release.
2008 Rate 1.990 = $ 1353.20
2009 Rate 1.403 = $ 1157.78 Price difference = $195.42 LESS
So yes, you are right Lemon. The UK Pound got dumped in the shitter! Apple put there UK prices up on NEW models and yet they are taking home LESS dollars.
It seems like they must have done it... just to annoy you.
Want to try the same exercise in dollars? You do know Apple is a US company?
iMac base model: Less Vat (15%) Converted to $ using exchange rate on day of release.
2008 Rate 1.990 = $ 1353.20
2009 Rate 1.403 = $ 1157.78 Price difference = $195.42 LESS
So yes, you are right Lemon. The UK Pound got dumped in the shitter! Apple put there UK prices up on NEW models and yet they are taking home LESS dollars.
It seems like they must have done it... just to annoy you.
Informative post.
All the major stuff is still on optical discs, but most of it is also online. You can DL Adobe Photoshop up to CS4 and MS Office online. But I'd say that the majority of software, in general, has been mainly web based for some time now and that it is most likely way consumers are going to access it. I'd say that even AOL is more likely to be downloaded than installed from disc.
Even software sections of stores are shrinking and Apple's Snow Leopard Betas can even be installed without even burning it to a DL-DVD, which is a cost and time savings as installing the Beta involves only the initial download and then essentially the time it takes to move 6GB from one partition to another. But you know how I feel about optical drives already.
I can't agree with that. don't even begin to think about downloading CS4, or office, or any other big program or suite.
Several years from now, when most people have really fast connections it will be different, but that's years from now.
Store stocks are shrinking because people are buying online, from Newegg, Amazon, etc, not because they're downloading the software. Almost no one I know does that except for smaller programs.
Developers don't count.
What gets me is that the argument that Apple's margins are high compared to struggling PC vendors seems to come across as if they are being altruistic by having lower margins, while the truth is they are unable to compete with higher margins since they focus on the budget sector.
How long will she be gone for and what is her scholastic focus? In other words, would a MBP be more ideal for her situation? Shipping a 24" iMac and then having to pay the import tax seems quite pricey.
She's going for a four year degree. A BFA in photography.
A MBP isn't the best computer for that, but a 24" iMac is really good for that. We won't need the computer until she starts the actual school year in early September. The summer is for a long orientation course for foreign students.
Informative post.
An informative post that will probably be ignored by the majority of people that it was intended for.
An informative post that will probably be ignored by the majority of people that it was intended for.
Par for the course on internet forums.
Just today
http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp13.html
That's domination.
Ooooh the fastest 2.5" SATA HDD you can buy gets slaughtered.
You only need one optical drive on a Mac connected to the network. How many people are constantly using their optical drives?
You do know how much those enterprise drives cost don't you? From Newegg, each 32 GB drive costs $393.
You also didn't mention that this was with TWO of these drives.
As BF also says:
The bad news is that the X25-Es are expensive and limited to 64G capacity each. There are larger capacity SSDs currently shipping such as the Intel X25-M, but the write speed is an unimpressive 80MB/s per drive. And non-Intel SSDs have major stuttering issues in random write mode.
We also won't know if the claims from other drive manufacturers will be upheld. They've made claims before that all sites testing the drives have found to be false, so we'll see.
In addition, as I said before, with smaller files you won't notice a difference. Even 5400 HDDs are fast enough so that the extra speed here won't be noticed, not matter how much faster they may be.
For most people this is a waste of money at this time.
Drowned only the 'zining' of irrational premium price huggers such as yer good self.
Nothing misinformed about Mac UK prices. Check them out for yourself and take away the price increase of this years base model from the last years entry model.
It's 'successful' in a very limited market. And the fact they went backward in the US market sez they hit the ceiling. If they're happy there...then they're pricing alot of people...more than the few that disagree with me on this forum
Shrugs.*
If they were so unbothered about marketshare...they'd never have plunged the sub-k market back in the day. But they did.
As for recent UK sales figures. We'll see when the £250-£400 price hike beds in. It's not like Apple had 'marketshare' here anyhow? Eh. Guess they refreshed the models...and they 'bumped' sales a little. We'll see how the next quarter does. I'm sure their sales figures will double. Nobody likes buying expensive stuff they can't afford more than UK consumers...well. Apart from US consumers...
'Alot' of UK buyers find Macs expensive. Only 'Pinot' seems surprised by this.
Even Melgross was given food for thought regarding UK prices.
6%. Whoop. That showed me.
Lemon Bon Bon.
They only went backwards in he US market because of really cheap netbooks, which are almost, but not quite full computers, though they are counted such because they run a computer OS, even though so far, it's an old one.
This has lowered the marketshare of PC companies that haven't fully jumped on the netbook bandwagon also, it's not just Apple.
And Apple does have the least loss from last years sales of all these companies, esp. when netbooks are taken out of the equation..
Yeah. Oft flayed. But arguments to be repeated...as people who want to be in Apple's target market get stung by £250-£400 price hikes. If they were expensive before the 'hike' then I'd have to disagree with you and say that now they are overpriced. For a variety of reasons.
'Make better products'. Sure. The cases look nice. They have a great OS. And the whole widget thing sprinkled with Mac Eco System...yes. We know what's good. But how much to pay for that. I don't thing anyone is seriously suggesting that Apple makes a £329 laptop. But a £900+ one as the entry price? A tower starting at £1895.
Those kind of sticker prices put people off in the UK. Just like Apple's iPhone pricing in the UK did. They didn't 'get it'. And were forced to think again with cheaper models. Proving that Apple's 'greed' elastic only stretches so far.
But their specs are just about competitive when the models 1st appear. Then date badly after several months...because we know how Apple like to congratulate themselves for prolonged periods between updates.
Oh. I've got my iMac now. But it's proof of my argument. Macs are expensive. I had to buy last years top model on sale. I'm glad I did. This years high end iMac is a rip-off.
Hey. If you said they were expensive. I'd take that as some sort of concession of seismic proportions. *Writes down the date.
Lemon Bon Bon.
I'm really not an extreme person, and my views as expressed here are not extreme. Let's get that out of the way please.
Yes, I said that they are expensive. But it's not just the expensive cases, though that certainly is part of it. Service, which they have plenty of (how much do the genius bars cost apple over a years time?) costs a lot more too.
I don't know exactly why everything cost so much more in England, though VAT of 16% and up certainly doesn't help. Neither do the high import fees. Both of these tax amounts depend on where the product is engineered, manufactured, how many middlemen there are in the distribution channel etc, so it's tough for a consumer to know what to expect. We have far less taxes on everything here, and have few import taxes and fees.
Apple is conservative in their hardware as well. They are much more concerned that everything work and be reliable then get the very latest for an extra 5% every three months or so.
An example is my new Mac Pro. Intel specs 1333 memory for Xenons at 2.5 GHz and above, yet, Apple only uses 1066. Why? Likely they found some stability problems with the faster memory. So they not only don't supply 1333, but they force it to 1066 should you use it.
How much of a performance drop will that have? Likely 5% or so. Big deal.