So a lot of you are bashing Windows 7, simply because it's Windows. That's intelligent isn't it?
So far I've seen a lot of people say it'll never be as good as osx, but nobody has yet to offer any examples as to why other than the UI. If what you look for in an OS is for it to look pretty, then you should google "window blinds" because it does a great job of manipulating many aspects of the windows ui. Is there a program for OSX that allows you to completely revamp the OSX UI? I'm not being a smart ass, I'm seriously asking. Please inform me.
If Apple offered their OS like Microsoft did, maybe more system builders would use it instead. When I'm building a computer, I have Linux or Windows to go with, and since companies are all working with Windows, which do you think I'll go with?
What a lot of you don't understand is that while you guys are happy as hell with OSX, people are not happy with the specs of a mac vs the price, especially geeky system builders like me. I honestly would give OSX a try on my next system if Apple offered it, but they don't. They choose to only write drivers for a limited amount of hardware, then turn around and say they are the best.
I wish a third company would step up and blow apple and ms out of the water all while offering pre built systems and stand alone os installs for system builders.
Correct in many ways. BUT OSX is a decade behind Windows Vista/7 in regards to handwriting recognition...something which I use on a daily basis to input Japanese. OSX's handwriting recognition is an absolute embarrassment.
By all accounts, I don't see Win7 as actually adding value to PCs.
$300 muli-touch netbooks for all the mums out there. This really can be a huge success.
So multi-touch, HomeGroup and the new Libraries do add value for beginners while performance, stability and security do add value for the pros and native XP virtualization adds value for small businesses. I wouldn't underestimate this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stashman
Vista users will be the most irritated since they will be paying for basically bugs fixes.
No. Service Packs are free and add some Windows 7 technology to Vista (and even XP). But the point is Vista is absolutely not buggy. And Vista isn't slow. 7 is just a lot faster.
I'm looking forward to Win7 - it is what Vista should've been all along. And it runs about as fast as XP, but with better security and DX11 should be a boon for those that have DX10 cards.
I love OSX too, but I don't find either OS that far apart, even Ubuntu 9.04 has impressed me so far. Apple just seems too concerned with selling a pretty package, then actual computers ATM. It may be a wait and see thing with SL for me on my Mini, but I'm definitely getting Win7 when it comes out.
All good points, however they are made by someone (erm, you) who is an informed consumer. Now think about your mother (okay, my mother, someone who knows nothing about computers other than how to turn one on). She (or other uninformed consumers) will see that it's got a fast processor, a large hard drive (500gb is plenty for someone who's never going to store a ton of media online), Blu-Ray drive (oooh, Hi Def - I hear that's the future), TV tuner - that sounds cool, 21.5" LCD (oh that's bigger than my 17") and an all-in-one printer.
Uninformed user is not going to know that the 21.5" display has just about the same resolution as their previous 17" (1650x1080 is really not that much more real estate than 1280x1024), nor that their email is not going to come any faster due to the upgraded CPU. They're also not going to realise that they will never use a BD disc, nor bother hooking up their cable to the TV tuner (nor will they know that the bastards at Comcast are about to encrypt most of the channels anyway, rendering their tuner card utterly useless - not that I'm bitter at all about that).
Quote:
Let me see what I want:
- does it run iPhoto?
- does it run Aperture?
- how well the mail, calendar, contacts and photo library will integrate with my iPhone?
No, but it will run Lightroom (which I hear good things about, despite the fact that I am definitely a dedicated Aperture user), and something like Adobe Photo Album, the free Picassa, or (from what I hear) the photo tool that comes with Vista are good enough for those who have never used iPhoto.
Supposedly the iPhone syncs with Outlook okay. I can't say how well it syncs with the standalone iCal and Address Book tools because I have MobileMe (which works wonderfully now that I've finally got some weird out-of-sync issue resolved). But again, Outlook syncing probably works well enough for those who don't know what their missing. In fact, most people have never used anything but Windows, and for them, the Microsoft experience is just fine. Apple's ad campaign has been doing a bang up job of getting the message out that the alternatives are better. Those who have switched almost always say they wish they'd done so sooner.
Now if I could only get my family to understand that, I'd get a lot less support calls from them!
The XP mode is very useful for shops still running expensive proprietary software. You have to remember that many software vendors who work on expensive integrated software are LAZY. I have heard of issues of certain programs (like for them medical, manufacturing and construction fields) that didn't work with Windows XP until last year! Most home users will not need the XP mode; so users running Windows 7 Home will not really need to rely on the software. If they are having issues they can just run VirtualBox for free and can run XP in a VM window.
The issue with software compatibility for the vast MINORITY of Windows programs lies in blame with the developers. The driver developers are lazy and certain software vendors are lazy. Using a seamless virtual machine is the way to help transition for enterprise applications. Windows 7 is far superior to XP in pretty much every way; better security, UAC, better user interface and apparently faster boot times (according to some benchmarks from tomshardware.com).
The same issues faced OSX at a time only a few years ago. Lazy developers who were making half-assed attempts at Mac software. Think FaxSTF. The early OSX Versions SUCKED compared to the OS9 versions.
The issue with software compatibility for the vast MINORITY of Windows programs lies in blame with the developers. The driver developers are lazy and certain software vendors are lazy. Using a seamless virtual machine is the way to help transition for enterprise applications. Windows 7 is far superior to XP in pretty much every way; better security, UAC, better user interface and apparently faster boot times (according to some benchmarks from tomshardware.com).
While I'm certainly one of the last people in the world to defend Microsoft, I don't think your comment is very fair at all.
First of all, imagine how well OSX would have been received had Apple not provided the safety net of classic mode. All those who rely on the tools they use every day would have had to have gone without them, or more likely, would not have upgraded - at least not until those tools had been ported (and until OSX became stable).
Now multiply that times an unimaginable factor due to all the proprietary and custom-written software businesses use that was developed for the Windows platform (keeping in mind that while the Mac's marketshare has risen dramatically in the home, the vast majority of businesses are using some form of Windows operating system).
Providing this sandbox of sorts allows those businesses to upgrade with a certain level of confidence that they will still have access to their mission critical software, regardless of the compatibility issues that cropped up with Vista.
Microsoft is in a hard position - they're pushing out upgrades to an operating system that, primarily out of the necessity of corporate compatibility, is based on code that is over a decade old. I've strongly felt that what Microsoft needs to do is follow Apple's lead (as they usually do anyway). Start over with a new code base so they can free themselves from the headaches, and from the performance and security troubles rooted in the old code, and provide a compatibility mode that allows old software to run while also providing a smooth upgrade path.
As for developers being lazy - perhaps you have no idea what's involved with migrating a huge code base onto a new platform, or even just ensuring that every API function you call is going to still do exactly what you expect. While the majority of us are not particularly excited about what Microsoft gave us with Office 2008, they had to practically perform a complete rewrite to migrate the old CodeWarrior Carbon code over to Xcode and Cocoa.
Price will stop Apple. Price has led to a 4% Mac world market share.
BTW, Microsoft is the largest Mac software developper outside of Apple. Like every developper, it is provided with regular seeds of Mac OS X. To say that Microsoft is unaware of Mac OS X Snow Leopard's features is a stretch.
IMO, Microsoft knows all that it needs to know about Mac OS X or Snow Leopard, including that price matters.
Price and lack of options is why I switched back to Windows from the Mac. I built a quad-core 2.6GHZ AMD-based machine with a 640GB, a 24" Viewsonic 1080P display, and 8GB of memory for less than $1000. Vista 64 flies on it. Downloaded Rocketdock and now I'm perfectly happy, especially since I don't need to minimize to the dock. I always missed the Start menu and the taskbar in Windows. I love the taskbar for minimization and the Start menu to find things easily. I always had to go digging on the HDD in OSX.
Would've preferred to stick with Apple, but to build an iMac or PowerMac that could match my system would've cost $3000. My last iMac was alright, but it had bad capacitors and Apple refused to deal with it while the PC manufacturers actually were pretty good about that whole situation.
Adobe CS4 flies. I have 64-bit Photoshop and don't have to wait for Adobe to move to Cocoa.
Apple is seeing an erosion of their marketshare because of price and lack of options. I know many people who would LOVE a 15.4" laptop, but they have no option for that with the MacBook and they have no need for the MacBook Pro.
The iMac is nothing more than a glorified laptop. Apple has quad-core Conroe based Intel processors available but refuses to create a prosumer desktop. You either get stuck with the throwaway iMac or you get raked over the coals for a MacPro.
A friend owns a video-editing/graphics business and he balked at buying any more Macs. He likes Final Cut, but has found he likes Premiere Pro almost as well and now he can move all his Final Cut stuff over to Premiere Pro. He can build systems better than the MacPro for over $1000 less and is perfectly happy with Vista 64. I think within the year they will say goodbye to Macs entirely all because the prices are ridiculous and they NEVER drop as chip and memory prices do.
I think the Apple Store wanted to charge something like $100 for a 1GB upgrade. I paid about $80 for 8GB of Kingston memory.
I also have the capacity to easily overclock my memory and processor via the software from Asus for my motherboard.
I was a loyal Mac guy for years. I now say that Apple can shove it for everything except the iPod. I'm tired of paying ridiculous prices for their stuff and the move to Intel only made their price gouging more obvious. They went from a 13% profit margin to nearly 16% this year. That's gouging to me, but plenty of Macheads drink the Kool-Aid and just fork over their hard earned cash.
Bring on Windows 7. I look forward to getting the RC. I used to attack MS, but Apple has helped to make them better. Vista 64 SP1 has been great for me. It is superfast, looks great, and is BETTER than OSX in many regards. The Vista version of Expose is great via the Windows-Tab keys.
Are Macs really worth the $2000 premium they charge if you want to have a really awesome system? A loaded down iMac with 8GB and a 24" screen still would only be dual core. I could do it for less if I hunted down the 4GB modules myself, but why does Apple only have two memory slots available?
I've got a case that looks great and is aluminum. I have at least eight easy install 3.5 HDD bays. Five full size 5.25 bays. Six 120mm fans that all run pretty quietly. An nVidia 9500GT (didn't go top end) with 512MB that I can always upgrade with SLI.
A) Millions of iPhone users with expired contracts soon and the palm pre, maybe
unlike vista, win 7 is becoming adored by IT departments which means upgrades, upgrades, upgrades and all the mom, boys, and girls that work in an office will go from XP to win 7. This will be much bigger than vista as many corprate still use XP. Personally, it's better than vista but could still uses few things. I enjoy the mac more but win 7will be a lot larger than apple fans probably believe.
A) Not a chance. Even if the pre is better than the iphone, the vast majority will stick with the iphone (see ipod). Additionally people are comparing the unreleased pre to the iphone3G. There is a new iphone coming...
IT departments going from one Windows OS to another Windows OS hurts Apple how? I hope my department switches, I'm sick of XP and IE6.
Wait, hang on a tic. I'm afraid I'm a little confused...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. MacPhisto
I was a loyal Mac guy for years. I now say that Apple can shove it for everything except the iPod. I'm tired of paying ridiculous prices for their stuff and the move to Intel only made their price gouging more obvious. They went from a 13% profit margin to nearly 16% this year. That's gouging to me, but plenty of Macheads drink the Kool-Aid and just fork over their hard earned cash.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. MacPhisto
Would've preferred to stick with Apple, but to build an iMac or PowerMac that could match my system would've cost $3000.
So on one hand, you're saying that a comparable Mac Pro would have cost you $3000 and on the other, you're claiming a 16% profit margin. So if Apple decided not to take a profit, they should only be charging $2520 for that $3000 Mac Pro. With a marginal 3% profit, they should have charged you about $2600. Yet you're also saying you built that $3000 Mac equivalent for $1000. Man, Apple is really screwing people over by not taking a $1520 loss on every machine they sell. You're right, I think Apple is a bunch of absolute wankers and I'm never dealing with them again.
Either that, or your claims of a comparably built machine are crap.
Quote:
Are Macs really worth the $2000 premium they charge if you want to have a really awesome system? A loaded down iMac with 8GB and a 24" screen still would only be dual core. I could do it for less if I hunted down the 4GB modules myself, but why does Apple only have two memory slots available?
Oh wait a minute, now it's a $2000 premium. Crap - that means Apple should really be taking a $2520 loss on that $3000 Mac Pro, selling them for $480? Let me know when they do that, 'cause I'll be right in line to buy four of them.
Quote:
Price and lack of options is why I switched back to Windows from the Mac. I built a quad-core 2.6GHZ AMD-based machine with a 640GB, a 24" Viewsonic 1080P display, and 8GB of memory for less than $1000. Vista 64 flies on it. Downloaded Rocketdock and now I'm perfectly happy, especially since I don't need to minimize to the dock. I always missed the Start menu and the taskbar in Windows. I love the taskbar for minimization and the Start menu to find things easily. I always had to go digging on the HDD in OSX.
I get that you (and many other PC users) want to have more control over each and every component in your machine. Nothing wrong with that, really. As a gamer I could see that one might want a specific graphics card, or if you're into movie editing (which it sounds like you may be), I could see where a particular accelerator card could be a boon. I used to be like that and have built quite a few PCs over the past twenty years, and once upon a time actually enjoyed pulling my machine apart and tinkering.
Now I prefer to be able to turn on my machine and use it and not worry if the parts I've installed are going to have compatibility issues. I've found every installation of Windows I've used to be incredibly unreliable, and generally attribute that to the low-end parts I've used. I could probably have a fairly stable system, if only I used higher-end components. But then I'd have a system just as expensive as a Mac, and I'd end up with a far less satisfactory user experience.
You can take your Start button and it's horrendously cluttered and clunky method of "organising" your applications. I'm sick and tired of trying to create hierarchies of apps, only to have to guess which application groups are stored under the "All Users" directory and which are in 'my' directory. I'm happy to be able to move applications anywhere I want, including between partitions, and not have some clunky registry barf because it couldn't find what it was looking for. I've never had to go hunting for anything on my machine. I either use Quicksilver as a launcher, or now that Spotlight in Leopard is very usable, simply type "cmd-space kind:app text" to bring up TextEdit. Microsoft has done a decent job of emulating that behaviour by adding a search box to the Start menu. I still find it clunky, and am frustrated at the inevitable delay as I try to move through the menu to get to what I'm looking for (have they not thought to cache its contents, rather than having to dynamically recreate it every friggin' time I bring it up?)
Quote:
Adobe CS4 flies. I have 64-bit Photoshop and don't have to wait for Adobe to move to Cocoa.
There's a point well taken. If you rely on Photoshop for editing large images, I can see where you're coming from.
Quote:
Apple is seeing an erosion of their marketshare because of price and lack of options. I know many people who would LOVE a 15.4" laptop, but they have no option for that with the MacBook and they have no need for the MacBook Pro.
I can only assume you're talking about the erosion of marketshare in the 90's, because in the 00's, Apple's marketshare (particularly in the home segment) has been flourishing. As for the dark period of the 90's, Apple's mismanagement and poor decisions did cost them, but I also put a tremendous amount of blame on Microsoft's absolute anticompetitive licensing agreements and other activities. It's unfathomable to me that the government simply came along and slapped their wrist saying, "um, please don't do that again." And yet Microsoft continued with their exclusive licensing agreements, to which the government responded with yet another request amounting to nother more than, "pretty-please? Can you please stop? Please???"
Quote:
A friend owns a video-editing/graphics business and he balked at buying any more Macs. He likes Final Cut, but has found he likes Premiere Pro almost as well and now he can move all his Final Cut stuff over to Premiere Pro. He can build systems better than the MacPro for over $1000 less and is perfectly happy with Vista 64. I think within the year they will say goodbye to Macs entirely all because the prices are ridiculous and they NEVER drop as chip and memory prices do.
Can't argue that point either (well, the point about Premiere Pro anyway). I've used Premiere on the PC back in the day and found it a very powerful editing tool. I've since switched to Final Cut Express and it feels quite similar to Premiere in most ways.
Quote:
I also have the capacity to easily overclock my memory and processor via the software from Asus for my motherboard.
I really never understood the PC world's obsession with overclocking their hardware, but yes, if you need that extra 3% so you can beat your chest, you do have the ability on a PC, you don't have much on a Mac (I've read about people who have tweaked their GPU settings at the terminal to squeeze some performance, but I've not tried it myself).
As for Windows 7, glad you enjoy it. I do think it sucks less than Microsoft's previous attempts to copy Apple's GUI, in fact it's quite usable (and seems quite stable to me). I still far prefer OSX and find it far more powerful, but then I've been a pretty hardcore Unix guy for the past twenty years and love having the full power of the shell and all its command-line tools at my disposal, along with a fantastic interface.
Quote:
I've got a case that looks great and is aluminum. I have at least eight easy install 3.5 HDD bays. Five full size 5.25 bays. Six 120mm fans that all run pretty quietly. An nVidia 9500GT (didn't go top end) with 512MB that I can always upgrade with SLI.
I definitely wish there was a Mac that took more than one hard drive (other than the Pro). I have an old PC with several TB of storage (3 IDE and 1 SATA drive) that sits as a media server. Right now it's running XP, just because I find BeyondTV to be the best DVR solution around. Comcast is about to start encrypting their channels however, at which point I'll wipe the boot partition, throw Linux on it, and use it as a NAS/media server.
So on one hand, you're saying that a comparable Mac Pro would have cost you $3000 and on the other, you're claiming a 16% profit margin. So if Apple decided not to take a profit, they should only be charging $2520 for that $3000 Mac Pro. With a marginal 3% profit, they should have charged you about $2600. Yet you're also saying you built that $3000 Mac equivalent for $1000. Man, Apple is really screwing people over by not taking a $1520 loss on every machine they sell. You're right, I think Apple is a bunch of absolute wankers and I'm never dealing with them again.
No, their raw profit margin was 16% overall for the entire company. Remember that massive executive bonuses and huge stock options all figure in.
If Apple Execs and the Apple BoD didn't load themselves with such massive bonuses across the board then the profit margin would be much higher. The 16% is company wide.
As a businessman I can tell you that the standard is 5-10%. Apple's is much higher than usual and their bonuses up top are much higher than companies in their sector. The people at the top like the high prices because it finances their huge bonuses and other payouts.
Quote:
Oh wait a minute, now it's a $2000 premium. Crap - that means Apple should really be taking a $2520 loss on that $3000 Mac Pro, selling them for $480? Let me know when they do that, 'cause I'll be right in line to buy four of them.
Wow. Fanboy to the core and unable to look at the hard numbers. The MacPro is at least $500 more than it should be. Paying a premium isn't a horrible idea. The problem is paying a massive premium. My machine is not the equivalent of a MacPro, but it blows any iMac out of the water for far less money.
Quote:
I get that you (and many other PC users) want to have more control over each and every component in your machine. Nothing wrong with that, really. As a gamer I could see that one might want a specific graphics card, or if you're into movie editing (which it sounds like you may be), I could see where a particular accelerator card could be a boon. I used to be like that and have built quite a few PCs over the past twenty years, and once upon a time actually enjoyed pulling my machine apart and tinkering.
Now I prefer to be able to turn on my machine and use it and not worry if the parts I've installed are going to have compatibility issues. I've found every installation of Windows I've used to be incredibly unreliable, and generally attribute that to the low-end parts I've used. I could probably have a fairly stable system, if only I used higher-end components. But then I'd have a system just as expensive as a Mac, and I'd end up with a far less satisfactory user experience.
No, you wouldn't. I've built machines with far better components than the Mac.
My iMac failed because Apple bought the same cheap Chinese capacitors that Dell and others did. They all failed because they bought the cheapest parts they could find. Apple quality components is a myth. I have better memory on my machine by going with Kingston and it has a lifetime warranty.
I have had problems with Windows in the past. That's why I switched in the first place. But paying $1500 for an iMac that is just not comparable to anything I could get on the PC side in that pricerange is ridiculous to me.
Quote:
You can take your Start button and it's horrendously cluttered and clunky method of "organising" your applications. I'm sick and tired of trying to create hierarchies of apps, only to have to guess which application groups are stored under the "All Users" directory and which are in 'my' directory. I'm happy to be able to move applications anywhere I want, including between partitions, and not have some clunky registry barf because it couldn't find what it was looking for. I've never had to go hunting for anything on my machine. I either use Quicksilver as a launcher, or now that Spotlight in Leopard is very usable, simply type "cmd-space kind:app text" to bring up TextEdit. Microsoft has done a decent job of emulating that behaviour by adding a search box to the Start menu. I still find it clunky, and am frustrated at the inevitable delay as I try to move through the menu to get to what I'm looking for (have they not thought to cache its contents, rather than having to dynamically recreate it every friggin' time I bring it up?)
I've never liked the search function. That's for people that keep their drives all cluttered and their computers disorganized. I organize the start menu just as I organized my MacHD. I group things together when I do a system load and maintain the organization throughout.
Quote:
I can only assume you're talking about the erosion of marketshare in the 90's, because in the 00's, Apple's marketshare (particularly in the home segment) has been flourishing. As for the dark period of the 90's, Apple's mismanagement and poor decisions did cost them, but I also put a tremendous amount of blame on Microsoft's absolute anticompetitive licensing agreements and other activities. It's unfathomable to me that the government simply came along and slapped their wrist saying, "um, please don't do that again." And yet Microsoft continued with their exclusive licensing agreements, to which the government responded with yet another request amounting to nother more than, "pretty-please? Can you please stop? Please???"
Have you been paying attention to the decline of the last two quarters? It's not a mass erosion yet, but a longterm erosion is beginning. Why do you think we now here reports of Apple finally lowering prices?
The final start for me was the last MacBook update. My mother purchased a dual core 2.4GHZ MacBook for $1400 (education faculty discount). The update saw the $1400 MacBook get downgraded to a dual core 2.0 GHZ. Apple used the "nVidia onboard video" as an excuse but it was a poor one since they had earlier claimed the nVidia chipset was cheaper than the Intel one. They've since corrected that blunder.
Quote:
I really never understood the PC world's obsession with overclocking their hardware, but yes, if you need that extra 3% so you can beat your chest, you do have the ability on a PC, you don't have much on a Mac (I've read about people who have tweaked their GPU settings at the terminal to squeeze some performance, but I've not tried it myself).
I actually don't overclock, but I have the ability to do so easily. Many things are overclocked by standard. DDR2 1066 is really nothing more than overclocked DDR2 800 for instance.
The biggest problem I have with Apple is their arrogance surrounding their product anymore. They were better a few years ago, but the recent uptick in Mac sales seemed to bring back the arrogance. Two quarters of backward sales may kick them in the pants.
But I don't see them offering a real prosumer desktop option, not while Jobs is still around. The iMac is his baby and he doesn't want anything that would threaten it.
I understand the MacPro being pricey. It is a high end machine, but there's a vast expanse in between it and the iMac. The iMac is great for iPhoto. It sucks for Photoshop if you want to do anything serious. It is a glorified laptop with a low power laptop CPU. Still pretty fast for everyday use, but a desktop quad-core can do so much more.
And Apple screwed the pooch by dumping Carbon-64. They hurt themselves too. Final Cut is tied to Carbon as well. Seems like Apple didn't plan out their path to 64-bit very well. They have optimization just like Windows does through the OS, but on many programs a single project cannot have full access to memory.
I also have friends and family that considered Apple but found nothing for them because of how little choice their is in selecting a computer. Go with the iMac or the MacPro or the horribly incapable MacMini. Little variation in the MacBook line whereas the old iBooks gave you the ability to select a smaller or larger screen. Why no 15.4" option? Why do consumers have to pay $2000 to get a laptop with a 15" screen?
Why does Apple drive up their prices so they can facilitate driving up the payouts to the people on the top? If they really wanted to open up their market share then lowering prices and cutting pay at the top would be key. They don't have to compete on the bottom end.
They do it for Final Cut Studio. It's cheaper than the Production Premium version of CS4, though CS4 has more stuff. Even so, Apple knows that people in production aren't suckers. They will leave Apple very quickly for Adobe, so Apple doesn't charge a premium for Final Cut. Why not if they have the same superior quality like they do with their computers?
It's because they have a bunch of users who would pay anything for whatever Apple sold. They could sculpt beautiful dog turds and market them as the iTurd and the Apple sycophants would go crazy.
I've liked Apple for a long time. I like OSX and will say it is more powerful than Windows, more elegant, etc. But I'm not paying a massive premium for it, especially when Apple refuses to build anything NEAR what I want. I'm tired of Apple's attitude of "we know what you need better than you do."
So I switched back, somewhat reluctantly. And I was pleasantly surprised by Vista. I've found it more easily configurable than OSX. I've found that things work far better than they did when I left with Windows 2000.
If Apple gets their act together I might go back, but I'm leery to be stabbed in the back by them again.
No, their raw profit margin was 16% overall for the entire company. Remember that massive executive bonuses and huge stock options all figure in.
Gotcha - I assumed you were talking about their computer hardware. No doubt they make a pretty penny on much of their software, and certainly it's a well known fact that the iPod line has a huge markup. Makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn't really lower the price of the Zune. I think that, as one of the few real competitors to the iPod (yes, there is the Sansa and the Archos and the Zen line, all of which do more than either the iPod or the Zune, but they don't have the integrated ecosystem), it seems to me that Microsoft's markup must be similar, and they could easily undercut the iPod and increase their marketshare.
Quote:
Wow. Fanboy to the core and unable to look at the hard numbers. The MacPro is at least $500 more than it should be. Paying a premium isn't a horrible idea. The problem is paying a massive premium. My machine is not the equivalent of a MacPro, but it blows any iMac out of the water for far less money.
Again my numbers were (very roughly) based on the assumption that there was a 16% profit margin on the Mac Pro and that you were suggesting it was also $1000-2000 over the cost. I've done price comparisons myself and see numbers on both sides. Sometimes things come out where the Mac is comparably priced, even less than what is roughly a comparable PC system, and sometimes I've seen numbers (the Mac Pro being a good example) where it seems there is a definite premium.
I'm not going to deny being a fanboy (although I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, I have a strong preference [based on real-world experience will various platforms] and definitely stick to it--and my bias shows ). However, I also argue that there is more here than simply cost and performance, there is also user experience as well as included extras. I find the Mac experience to be genuinely enjoyable as well as productive, while I find using Windows to be quite unpleasurable, very utilitarian, and frequently unproductive (especially when I consider the amount of lost data my co-workers experience with their Dell laptops and their almost monthly blue screens as well as the downtime involved with bi-weekly reboots due to security patches, and the performance hit taken by the anti-virus software we have to use).
Quote:
My iMac failed because Apple bought the same cheap Chinese capacitors that Dell and others did. They all failed because they bought the cheapest parts they could find. Apple quality components is a myth. I have better memory on my machine by going with Kingston and it has a lifetime warranty.
It wasn't the motherboard and controller components I was referring to necessarily. However, if I think back to the hardware I've built, I've often used low-end Taiwan-made motherboards with their questionable driver support, off-branded burners and graphics cards (which may use the same chipset, but are unquestionably not built to the same standards as the name brand cards). The freezes I frequently experience, I attribute to the crummy drivers that come with the hardware.
Quote:
I've never liked the search function. That's for people that keep their drives all cluttered and their computers disorganized. I organize the start menu just as I organized my MacHD. I group things together when I do a system load and maintain the organization throughout.
However, that seems to go against the paradigm switch in thinking that even Microsoft is pushing for. It's been said that we now have too much information to keep organised with simple hierarchies, so we might as well stuff all our documents into a single document folder, our images in a single folder, and use metadata to keep our information organized, much as software such as iTunes and iPhoto (or in my case, Aperture) does. I used to be anal about keeping my music and photo folders organised. Now I left the software take care of it. I've found it to be more efficient, and I don't have to think about it anymore.
Quote:
Have you been paying attention to the decline of the last two quarters? It's not a mass erosion yet, but a longterm erosion is beginning. Why do you think we now here reports of Apple finally lowering prices?
Hmm, I do recall a small (but significant) decline in the previous quarter, but don't recall one prior to that. Statistics can be fudged to look however we want them to, so I say this with a grain of salt, but one could attribute much of that decline to the economy. Sales of technology items are down pretty much across the board. Apple's appear to be down less than the majority of the sector.
Quote:
The final start for me was the last MacBook update. My mother purchased a dual core 2.4GHZ MacBook for $1400 (education faculty discount). The update saw the $1400 MacBook get downgraded to a dual core 2.0 GHZ. Apple used the "nVidia onboard video" as an excuse but it was a poor one since they had earlier claimed the nVidia chipset was cheaper than the Intel one. They've since corrected that blunder.
I honestly haven't looked much at the new hardware, other than the MacBook Pro, as my 1st generation 1.83 CD is very aged, and doesn't perform as well as I'd like when working in Aperture. I'll almost certainly be stretching this machine out another year though. And while I certainly did pay a premium for this laptop, it's already lived a longer life than my previous two Windows laptops, one of which was an even more expensive Vaio.
Quote:
I actually don't overclock, but I have the ability to do so easily. Many things are overclocked by standard. DDR2 1066 is really nothing more than overclocked DDR2 800 for instance.
Honestly, I've not done it in the past because a) I didn't see a need to, and b) I was kind of afraid to. As I've said, my Windows experience has not been the most stable, and I didn't see the need to introduce any further potential for instability by overclocking. That and until my most recent CPU upgrade, I never had a cooling fan effective enough for me to feel comfortable using on an overclocked chip that would be generating ever more heat
Quote:
But I don't see them offering a real prosumer desktop option, not while Jobs is still around. The iMac is his baby and he doesn't want anything that would threaten it.
I love the idea of an iMac. They're beautiful, functional, and minimalist. I agree that something more powerful would be very welcome. I don't much care for upgradability. I generally find that by the time I feel the need for a more powerful video card, it's also time for a full CPU and motherboard upgrade. Seems like room could be made for a second hard drive though
Quote:
And Apple screwed the pooch by dumping Carbon-64. They hurt themselves too. Final Cut is tied to Carbon as well. Seems like Apple didn't plan out their path to 64-bit very well. They have optimization just like Windows does through the OS, but on many programs a single project cannot have full access to memory.
Have they? I think much of Microsoft's troubles are rooted in their insistence on backward compatibility with 15 year old software. While I haven't tried it yet, I have an old card game I used to play on Windows 3.1 that would probably still work under Windows 7. I know it worked fine under XP. That's nice, but as I said before, create a new architecture and provide a compatibility sandbox for legacy software. That's the only way to get software companies to really migrate to the new technology.
Quote:
I also have friends and family that considered Apple but found nothing for them because of how little choice their is in selecting a computer. Go with the iMac or the MacPro or the horribly incapable MacMini. Little variation in the MacBook line whereas the old iBooks gave you the ability to select a smaller or larger screen. Why no 15.4" option? Why do consumers have to pay $2000 to get a laptop with a 15" screen?
I disagree that the Mini is a horribly incapable machine. I wouldn't use it for my Aperture work (although I hear the new one performs comparably there to my aging MBP), but I bought last year's version for the office and it's my primary work machine. It works great running Entourage, NeoOffice, X11, Pages, and a multitude of other tools I use day in and out. I'd argue that it's really the perfect machine for the vast majority of homes who really don't need anything more powerful than that.
Anyway, I do have to thank you for writing a cordial response. It was more than I deserved (or expected) after my hostile response to your post
Vista is fully resolution independent and Windows 7 has even improved on this area. I doubt that Snow Leopard will be so good at this even while I know that the technology is in OS X since Tiger.
I don't think so. I tried this out, using W7 Beta in Boot Camp. My eyes, as bad as they may be, noticed graphics became a little fuzzy. For example, the AppleInsider logo at the very top left of this page. Anything other than 100% (default) and it gets a little less clear. Sure it works, but not good enough for me to switch. I can do a CMD+ in Safari and it looks exactly the same as changing the DPI in Windows 7. I have reason to believe this is not an easy undertaking. If anyone is going to get it right, it will be Apple.
Gotcha - I assumed you were talking about their computer hardware. No doubt they make a pretty penny on much of their software, and certainly it's a well known fact that the iPod line has a huge markup. Makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn't really lower the price of the Zune. I think that, as one of the few real competitors to the iPod (yes, there is the Sansa and the Archos and the Zen line, all of which do more than either the iPod or the Zune, but they don't have the integrated ecosystem), it seems to me that Microsoft's markup must be similar, and they could easily undercut the iPod and increase their marketshare.
My guess is they probably don't think cutting the price will make a huge impact. They were too late to the game and, quite frankly, the product isn't as good.
I understand being happy with margins, especially the big ones that Apple has on their computers. But I think in Apple's case you could make an argument for trimming up top end bonuses (and they'd still be very nice) and cutting margin only slightly.
Historically Apple has had a cost of around 60%. That's quite low for cost. It also increases greatly when people do add-ons via custom builds. For instance, it costs $75 to upgrade from a 320GB SATA HDD on the iMac to a 640GB one. Apple likely pays less than this amount for the drive itself AND will put the 320GB drive back in for manufacturing. A Seagate 7200RPM Barracuda at 320GB costs $55 on NewEgg. The 640 GB Seagate with 32MB of cache that I bought is $70. So realistically it is a $15 upgrade. If Apple charged $20 they would maintain a similar profit margin to the base model, but the hammer the buyer with a $75 upgrade fee. And those drives are loaded off of a mirror, so it doesn't take much work to load the system on them. They actually have them preloaded. Even at $25 it would be a reasonable price for an upgrade, but $75 is a HUGE markup.
It costs $100 to go from 2GB of DDR1066 to 4GB of it. A 4GB kit from Kingston at NewEgg costs $61.99. Apple pays less for memory. Yes, they'd have to pull out the 2x1GB sticks, but those would go right back into manufacturing. 2x1GB costs $35.49. So a $30 upgrade fee or even $35 would be reasonable and they'd be making extra cash. Instead they charge $100. Yes, you can do it yourself just like the HDD, but then you get the privilege of tossing the 2GB worth of RAM instead of Apple reusing it in manufacturing. It would seem "greener" to me to charge a reasonable price for a memory upgrade and insure end users don't just toss their extra RAM.
Quote:
I'm not going to deny being a fanboy (although I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, I have a strong preference [based on real-world experience will various platforms] and definitely stick to it--and my bias shows ). However, I also argue that there is more here than simply cost and performance, there is also user experience as well as included extras. I find the Mac experience to be genuinely enjoyable as well as productive, while I find using Windows to be quite unpleasurable, very utilitarian, and frequently unproductive (especially when I consider the amount of lost data my co-workers experience with their Dell laptops and their almost monthly blue screens as well as the downtime involved with bi-weekly reboots due to security patches, and the performance hit taken by the anti-virus software we have to use).
I like OSX better myself. I'm not a fan of buy a ready made PC, but I've found Vista to be fairly enjoyable. I like that I was able to build a machine without a bunch of preloaded garbage, something Apple is very good about on machines they build.
I should say that I've had very few security patches with Vista thus far, but I got it SP1. No crashes, no problems, and it is the most secure Windows OS I've ever used.
I also have no problem paying a premium for a Mac, but the question is how much of a premium.
A base iMac is $1199. Let's assume the usual 60% cost, so Apple pays around $719 for the hardware. Other factors have to be rolled in, such as development, marketing, etc. However the partnership with Intel has cut down Apple's costs for engineering, especially on the logic board. Let's assume we need an additional 20% off that $719 for additional costs, though those costs go down the more iMacs that are sold because the are distributed across the line. That brings us to $863. Let's assume a 15% profit margin on the iMac based on the end price. The price would be at $1015 for a base iMac. Let's go up to $1049 just to make it all nice and even.
And remember that as HDD price, CPU price, GPU price, and RAM prices go down the margins get better.
I would guess, and I've heard it from friends that work closely with Apple, that Apple tends to run about 30% profit on their hardware before bonuses are paid out.
The margins are likely to same or better on laptops.
Apple would still make a boatload of money starting the iMac out at $1099 AND they would also get more people in the door.
Imagine if they had a desktop that started at $799 or $899. That's hardly a bottom feeder at that price - and if they offered dual core and quad core options as upgrades while offering REASONABLE upgrade prices.
I don't think Apple need give up premium pricing because I think A LOT of people don't mind paying $100-200 extra on the lower end of things for a Mac. I know I wouldn't have a problem with it. The problem is that on the bottom end of things it is likely closer to $400-500 and it gets worse as you move up.
My example comparing to my machine is based on Apple's builds. The reason THAT looks so bad for Apple is because they offer nothing like my machine. Mac Pro is overkill and the iMac is underkill, but they overcharge to get to 8GB (Apple charges $1100 to upgrade to 8GB). I know 4GB sticks are hard to find and expensive, but they're not THAT expensive. $400-500 would be reasonable for an upgrade to 8GB on the iMac, though a design with 4 memory slots would make 8GB far more attainable. OSX is 64 bit but if you don't have a MacPro then good luck affordably getting beyond 4GB.
Quote:
It wasn't the motherboard and controller components I was referring to necessarily. However, if I think back to the hardware I've built, I've often used low-end Taiwan-made motherboards with their questionable driver support, off-branded burners and graphics cards (which may use the same chipset, but are unquestionably not built to the same standards as the name brand cards). The freezes I frequently experience, I attribute to the crummy drivers that come with the hardware.
I'm very careful when I build. I check the MoBo. I check all the hardware. I pay more for better parts. I didn't buy the bottom rung Asus MoBo. I got a Seagate HDD, the same make my iMac had. A got a Gigabyte nVidia GPU.
Quote:
However, that seems to go against the paradigm switch in thinking that even Microsoft is pushing for. It's been said that we now have too much information to keep organised with simple hierarchies, so we might as well stuff all our documents into a single document folder, our images in a single folder, and use metadata to keep our information organized, much as software such as iTunes and iPhoto (or in my case, Aperture) does. I used to be anal about keeping my music and photo folders organised. Now I left the software take care of it. I've found it to be more efficient, and I don't have to think about it anymore.
I understand why people would like this, but I hate the performance hit a system takes by indexing the drive. I always turn the indexing off because I hate the performance hit. I just prefer to stay organized from the beginning.
Quote:
Hmm, I do recall a small (but significant) decline in the previous quarter, but don't recall one prior to that. Statistics can be fudged to look however we want them to, so I say this with a grain of salt, but one could attribute much of that decline to the economy. Sales of technology items are down pretty much across the board. Apple's appear to be down less than the majority of the sector.
I believe it was a 1.1% decline first quarter versus a .6% growth for the overall PC industry largely driven by netbook sales.
The word is that Apple has experienced a 3% decline thus far in the new quarter, with iMacs being the hardest hit.
Quote:
I honestly haven't looked much at the new hardware, other than the MacBook Pro, as my 1st generation 1.83 CD is very aged, and doesn't perform as well as I'd like when working in Aperture. I'll almost certainly be stretching this machine out another year though. And while I certainly did pay a premium for this laptop, it's already lived a longer life than my previous two Windows laptops, one of which was an even more expensive Vaio.
Honestly, I don't disagree at all on the laptops, though I dislike the lack of selection. I don't want to have to go to the MacBook Pro to get a 15" screen and I do think the prices on the MacBook are a bit high right now. The previous iteration was fairly priced, but they got really out of whack on this one and assumed that minor upgrades were worth more than they truly are.
I'm not a laptop guy. I have had them and I would be likely to get a Mac, but I find the MacBook to be about $200 more than it should be - and even with that mark down it would still cost more than equivalent PC notebooks. That's fine because it is much better.
Quote:
I love the idea of an iMac. They're beautiful, functional, and minimalist. I agree that something more powerful would be very welcome. I don't much care for upgradability. I generally find that by the time I feel the need for a more powerful video card, it's also time for a full CPU and motherboard upgrade. Seems like room could be made for a second hard drive though
That's why I love the desktop. I can spend $50 for a new nVidia card and link it up with my current one via SLI and double or better my GPU power. I can also buy a socket compatible processor. My MoBo supports AM3, so quad-core 3GHZ and beyond will be available for me with more L1, L2, and L3 cash at a cost of $150 or maybe less, depending on when I upgrade.
Quote:
Have they? I think much of Microsoft's troubles are rooted in their insistence on backward compatibility with 15 year old software. While I haven't tried it yet, I have an old card game I used to play on Windows 3.1 that would probably still work under Windows 7. I know it worked fine under XP. That's nice, but as I said before, create a new architecture and provide a compatibility sandbox for legacy software. That's the only way to get software companies to really migrate to the new technology.
I know I can't run my old Windows stuff in Vista. That's one reason why MS got dumped on for it - they threw out a lot of compatibility. And the 64 bit version can't run 16 bit Windows stuff. Some of the full blown Win32 stuff can be run.
That's why you can download Virtual PC for free for Vista. They did that to address the compatibility issues. Also a lot of old hardware won't work.
Quote:
I disagree that the Mini is a horribly incapable machine. I wouldn't use it for my Aperture work (although I hear the new one performs comparably there to my aging MBP), but I bought last year's version for the office and it's my primary work machine. It works great running Entourage, NeoOffice, X11, Pages, and a multitude of other tools I use day in and out. I'd argue that it's really the perfect machine for the vast majority of homes who really don't need anything more powerful than that.
Anyway, I do have to thank you for writing a cordial response. It was more than I deserved (or expected) after my hostile response to your post
The big problem I have with the mini again is the price and lack of any flexibility. The average user cannot upgrade the memory, so they're stuck paying Apple's crazy prices ($150 for an upgrade to 4GB on the base). That $599 model has no keyboard, mouse, a 120GB HDD, and only 1GB. For $399 or $449 it might be okay, but the 250GB HDD costs very little extra and an extra GB probably costs Apple $10, if that.
And Apple screwed the pooch by dumping Carbon-64. They hurt themselves too. Final Cut is tied to Carbon as well. Seems like Apple didn't plan out their path to 64-bit very well. They have optimization just like Windows does through the OS, but on many programs a single project cannot have full access to memory.
Perhaps you should investigate things like that before you speak. Apple was putting Carbon on a path for oscelescence for a decade. When moving to 64 bit they realized that developers would spend just as much time moving their UI to 64 bit carbon as they would to cocoa. Apple was wasting everybody's time with porting across the carbon UI pieces. They settled on the carbon backend but no UI.
Adobe is looking for excuses for taking so long. The fact is they have a codebase and they don't want to change it. Either way, Carbon64 or Cocoa it was adobe's job to port everything across and they've had a decade. Don't blame Apple for Adobe's product decisions, Apple gave them ample warning.
Actually, it's not even Windows 6.5. If you look at the build number, it's 6.1, so it's a lot closer to Vista than Microsoft is willing to admit. Although, after playing around with the leaked version of Build 7100, Windows 7 is looking like the Vista that Microsoft should have released two and a half years ago.
Well, it is not like Snow Leopard is OS XI, isn't it..?
Windows Media Center will not be able to play Blu-Ray movies. That will require third-party software. Windows 7 will be able to natively write to BD-R discs, though.
However, BR manufacturers do ship BR players with their BR drives. True, I'd like to play everything with one player, but hey. Better that than nothing.
Comments
So far I've seen a lot of people say it'll never be as good as osx, but nobody has yet to offer any examples as to why other than the UI. If what you look for in an OS is for it to look pretty, then you should google "window blinds" because it does a great job of manipulating many aspects of the windows ui. Is there a program for OSX that allows you to completely revamp the OSX UI? I'm not being a smart ass, I'm seriously asking. Please inform me.
If Apple offered their OS like Microsoft did, maybe more system builders would use it instead. When I'm building a computer, I have Linux or Windows to go with, and since companies are all working with Windows, which do you think I'll go with?
What a lot of you don't understand is that while you guys are happy as hell with OSX, people are not happy with the specs of a mac vs the price, especially geeky system builders like me. I honestly would give OSX a try on my next system if Apple offered it, but they don't. They choose to only write drivers for a limited amount of hardware, then turn around and say they are the best.
I wish a third company would step up and blow apple and ms out of the water all while offering pre built systems and stand alone os installs for system builders.
Correct in many ways. BUT OSX is a decade behind Windows Vista/7 in regards to handwriting recognition...something which I use on a daily basis to input Japanese. OSX's handwriting recognition is an absolute embarrassment.
So true. Have you seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUp-Jz0f-jI ?
By all accounts, I don't see Win7 as actually adding value to PCs.
$300 muli-touch netbooks for all the mums out there. This really can be a huge success.
So multi-touch, HomeGroup and the new Libraries do add value for beginners while performance, stability and security do add value for the pros and native XP virtualization adds value for small businesses. I wouldn't underestimate this.
Vista users will be the most irritated since they will be paying for basically bugs fixes.
No. Service Packs are free and add some Windows 7 technology to Vista (and even XP). But the point is Vista is absolutely not buggy. And Vista isn't slow. 7 is just a lot faster.
I love OSX too, but I don't find either OS that far apart, even Ubuntu 9.04 has impressed me so far. Apple just seems too concerned with selling a pretty package, then actual computers ATM. It may be a wait and see thing with SL for me on my Mini, but I'm definitely getting Win7 when it comes out.
How I would look at this configuration:
All good points, however they are made by someone (erm, you) who is an informed consumer. Now think about your mother (okay, my mother, someone who knows nothing about computers other than how to turn one on). She (or other uninformed consumers) will see that it's got a fast processor, a large hard drive (500gb is plenty for someone who's never going to store a ton of media online), Blu-Ray drive (oooh, Hi Def - I hear that's the future), TV tuner - that sounds cool, 21.5" LCD (oh that's bigger than my 17") and an all-in-one printer.
Uninformed user is not going to know that the 21.5" display has just about the same resolution as their previous 17" (1650x1080 is really not that much more real estate than 1280x1024), nor that their email is not going to come any faster due to the upgraded CPU. They're also not going to realise that they will never use a BD disc, nor bother hooking up their cable to the TV tuner (nor will they know that the bastards at Comcast are about to encrypt most of the channels anyway, rendering their tuner card utterly useless - not that I'm bitter at all about that).
Let me see what I want:
- does it run iPhoto?
- does it run Aperture?
- how well the mail, calendar, contacts and photo library will integrate with my iPhone?
No, but it will run Lightroom (which I hear good things about, despite the fact that I am definitely a dedicated Aperture user), and something like Adobe Photo Album, the free Picassa, or (from what I hear) the photo tool that comes with Vista are good enough for those who have never used iPhoto.
Supposedly the iPhone syncs with Outlook okay. I can't say how well it syncs with the standalone iCal and Address Book tools because I have MobileMe (which works wonderfully now that I've finally got some weird out-of-sync issue resolved). But again, Outlook syncing probably works well enough for those who don't know what their missing. In fact, most people have never used anything but Windows, and for them, the Microsoft experience is just fine. Apple's ad campaign has been doing a bang up job of getting the message out that the alternatives are better. Those who have switched almost always say they wish they'd done so sooner.
Now if I could only get my family to understand that, I'd get a lot less support calls from them!
The issue with software compatibility for the vast MINORITY of Windows programs lies in blame with the developers. The driver developers are lazy and certain software vendors are lazy. Using a seamless virtual machine is the way to help transition for enterprise applications. Windows 7 is far superior to XP in pretty much every way; better security, UAC, better user interface and apparently faster boot times (according to some benchmarks from tomshardware.com).
The same issues faced OSX at a time only a few years ago. Lazy developers who were making half-assed attempts at Mac software. Think FaxSTF. The early OSX Versions SUCKED compared to the OS9 versions.
The issue with software compatibility for the vast MINORITY of Windows programs lies in blame with the developers. The driver developers are lazy and certain software vendors are lazy. Using a seamless virtual machine is the way to help transition for enterprise applications. Windows 7 is far superior to XP in pretty much every way; better security, UAC, better user interface and apparently faster boot times (according to some benchmarks from tomshardware.com).
While I'm certainly one of the last people in the world to defend Microsoft, I don't think your comment is very fair at all.
First of all, imagine how well OSX would have been received had Apple not provided the safety net of classic mode. All those who rely on the tools they use every day would have had to have gone without them, or more likely, would not have upgraded - at least not until those tools had been ported (and until OSX became stable).
Now multiply that times an unimaginable factor due to all the proprietary and custom-written software businesses use that was developed for the Windows platform (keeping in mind that while the Mac's marketshare has risen dramatically in the home, the vast majority of businesses are using some form of Windows operating system).
Providing this sandbox of sorts allows those businesses to upgrade with a certain level of confidence that they will still have access to their mission critical software, regardless of the compatibility issues that cropped up with Vista.
Microsoft is in a hard position - they're pushing out upgrades to an operating system that, primarily out of the necessity of corporate compatibility, is based on code that is over a decade old. I've strongly felt that what Microsoft needs to do is follow Apple's lead (as they usually do anyway). Start over with a new code base so they can free themselves from the headaches, and from the performance and security troubles rooted in the old code, and provide a compatibility mode that allows old software to run while also providing a smooth upgrade path.
As for developers being lazy - perhaps you have no idea what's involved with migrating a huge code base onto a new platform, or even just ensuring that every API function you call is going to still do exactly what you expect. While the majority of us are not particularly excited about what Microsoft gave us with Office 2008, they had to practically perform a complete rewrite to migrate the old CodeWarrior Carbon code over to Xcode and Cocoa.
Price will stop Apple. Price has led to a 4% Mac world market share.
BTW, Microsoft is the largest Mac software developper outside of Apple. Like every developper, it is provided with regular seeds of Mac OS X. To say that Microsoft is unaware of Mac OS X Snow Leopard's features is a stretch.
IMO, Microsoft knows all that it needs to know about Mac OS X or Snow Leopard, including that price matters.
Price and lack of options is why I switched back to Windows from the Mac. I built a quad-core 2.6GHZ AMD-based machine with a 640GB, a 24" Viewsonic 1080P display, and 8GB of memory for less than $1000. Vista 64 flies on it. Downloaded Rocketdock and now I'm perfectly happy, especially since I don't need to minimize to the dock. I always missed the Start menu and the taskbar in Windows. I love the taskbar for minimization and the Start menu to find things easily. I always had to go digging on the HDD in OSX.
Would've preferred to stick with Apple, but to build an iMac or PowerMac that could match my system would've cost $3000. My last iMac was alright, but it had bad capacitors and Apple refused to deal with it while the PC manufacturers actually were pretty good about that whole situation.
Adobe CS4 flies. I have 64-bit Photoshop and don't have to wait for Adobe to move to Cocoa.
Apple is seeing an erosion of their marketshare because of price and lack of options. I know many people who would LOVE a 15.4" laptop, but they have no option for that with the MacBook and they have no need for the MacBook Pro.
The iMac is nothing more than a glorified laptop. Apple has quad-core Conroe based Intel processors available but refuses to create a prosumer desktop. You either get stuck with the throwaway iMac or you get raked over the coals for a MacPro.
A friend owns a video-editing/graphics business and he balked at buying any more Macs. He likes Final Cut, but has found he likes Premiere Pro almost as well and now he can move all his Final Cut stuff over to Premiere Pro. He can build systems better than the MacPro for over $1000 less and is perfectly happy with Vista 64. I think within the year they will say goodbye to Macs entirely all because the prices are ridiculous and they NEVER drop as chip and memory prices do.
I think the Apple Store wanted to charge something like $100 for a 1GB upgrade. I paid about $80 for 8GB of Kingston memory.
I also have the capacity to easily overclock my memory and processor via the software from Asus for my motherboard.
I was a loyal Mac guy for years. I now say that Apple can shove it for everything except the iPod. I'm tired of paying ridiculous prices for their stuff and the move to Intel only made their price gouging more obvious. They went from a 13% profit margin to nearly 16% this year. That's gouging to me, but plenty of Macheads drink the Kool-Aid and just fork over their hard earned cash.
Bring on Windows 7. I look forward to getting the RC. I used to attack MS, but Apple has helped to make them better. Vista 64 SP1 has been great for me. It is superfast, looks great, and is BETTER than OSX in many regards. The Vista version of Expose is great via the Windows-Tab keys.
Are Macs really worth the $2000 premium they charge if you want to have a really awesome system? A loaded down iMac with 8GB and a 24" screen still would only be dual core. I could do it for less if I hunted down the 4GB modules myself, but why does Apple only have two memory slots available?
I've got a case that looks great and is aluminum. I have at least eight easy install 3.5 HDD bays. Five full size 5.25 bays. Six 120mm fans that all run pretty quietly. An nVidia 9500GT (didn't go top end) with 512MB that I can always upgrade with SLI.
Agreed.
The thing applenhas to worry about is:
A) Millions of iPhone users with expired contracts soon and the palm pre, maybe
A) Not a chance. Even if the pre is better than the iphone, the vast majority will stick with the iphone (see ipod). Additionally people are comparing the unreleased pre to the iphone3G. There is a new iphone coming...
I was a loyal Mac guy for years. I now say that Apple can shove it for everything except the iPod. I'm tired of paying ridiculous prices for their stuff and the move to Intel only made their price gouging more obvious. They went from a 13% profit margin to nearly 16% this year. That's gouging to me, but plenty of Macheads drink the Kool-Aid and just fork over their hard earned cash.
Would've preferred to stick with Apple, but to build an iMac or PowerMac that could match my system would've cost $3000.
So on one hand, you're saying that a comparable Mac Pro would have cost you $3000 and on the other, you're claiming a 16% profit margin. So if Apple decided not to take a profit, they should only be charging $2520 for that $3000 Mac Pro. With a marginal 3% profit, they should have charged you about $2600. Yet you're also saying you built that $3000 Mac equivalent for $1000. Man, Apple is really screwing people over by not taking a $1520 loss on every machine they sell. You're right, I think Apple is a bunch of absolute wankers and I'm never dealing with them again.
Either that, or your claims of a comparably built machine are crap.
Are Macs really worth the $2000 premium they charge if you want to have a really awesome system? A loaded down iMac with 8GB and a 24" screen still would only be dual core. I could do it for less if I hunted down the 4GB modules myself, but why does Apple only have two memory slots available?
Oh wait a minute, now it's a $2000 premium. Crap - that means Apple should really be taking a $2520 loss on that $3000 Mac Pro, selling them for $480? Let me know when they do that, 'cause I'll be right in line to buy four of them.
Price and lack of options is why I switched back to Windows from the Mac. I built a quad-core 2.6GHZ AMD-based machine with a 640GB, a 24" Viewsonic 1080P display, and 8GB of memory for less than $1000. Vista 64 flies on it. Downloaded Rocketdock and now I'm perfectly happy, especially since I don't need to minimize to the dock. I always missed the Start menu and the taskbar in Windows. I love the taskbar for minimization and the Start menu to find things easily. I always had to go digging on the HDD in OSX.
I get that you (and many other PC users) want to have more control over each and every component in your machine. Nothing wrong with that, really. As a gamer I could see that one might want a specific graphics card, or if you're into movie editing (which it sounds like you may be), I could see where a particular accelerator card could be a boon. I used to be like that and have built quite a few PCs over the past twenty years, and once upon a time actually enjoyed pulling my machine apart and tinkering.
Now I prefer to be able to turn on my machine and use it and not worry if the parts I've installed are going to have compatibility issues. I've found every installation of Windows I've used to be incredibly unreliable, and generally attribute that to the low-end parts I've used. I could probably have a fairly stable system, if only I used higher-end components. But then I'd have a system just as expensive as a Mac, and I'd end up with a far less satisfactory user experience.
You can take your Start button and it's horrendously cluttered and clunky method of "organising" your applications. I'm sick and tired of trying to create hierarchies of apps, only to have to guess which application groups are stored under the "All Users" directory and which are in 'my' directory. I'm happy to be able to move applications anywhere I want, including between partitions, and not have some clunky registry barf because it couldn't find what it was looking for. I've never had to go hunting for anything on my machine. I either use Quicksilver as a launcher, or now that Spotlight in Leopard is very usable, simply type "cmd-space kind:app text" to bring up TextEdit. Microsoft has done a decent job of emulating that behaviour by adding a search box to the Start menu. I still find it clunky, and am frustrated at the inevitable delay as I try to move through the menu to get to what I'm looking for (have they not thought to cache its contents, rather than having to dynamically recreate it every friggin' time I bring it up?)
Adobe CS4 flies. I have 64-bit Photoshop and don't have to wait for Adobe to move to Cocoa.
There's a point well taken. If you rely on Photoshop for editing large images, I can see where you're coming from.
Apple is seeing an erosion of their marketshare because of price and lack of options. I know many people who would LOVE a 15.4" laptop, but they have no option for that with the MacBook and they have no need for the MacBook Pro.
I can only assume you're talking about the erosion of marketshare in the 90's, because in the 00's, Apple's marketshare (particularly in the home segment) has been flourishing. As for the dark period of the 90's, Apple's mismanagement and poor decisions did cost them, but I also put a tremendous amount of blame on Microsoft's absolute anticompetitive licensing agreements and other activities. It's unfathomable to me that the government simply came along and slapped their wrist saying, "um, please don't do that again." And yet Microsoft continued with their exclusive licensing agreements, to which the government responded with yet another request amounting to nother more than, "pretty-please? Can you please stop? Please???"
A friend owns a video-editing/graphics business and he balked at buying any more Macs. He likes Final Cut, but has found he likes Premiere Pro almost as well and now he can move all his Final Cut stuff over to Premiere Pro. He can build systems better than the MacPro for over $1000 less and is perfectly happy with Vista 64. I think within the year they will say goodbye to Macs entirely all because the prices are ridiculous and they NEVER drop as chip and memory prices do.
Can't argue that point either (well, the point about Premiere Pro anyway). I've used Premiere on the PC back in the day and found it a very powerful editing tool. I've since switched to Final Cut Express and it feels quite similar to Premiere in most ways.
I also have the capacity to easily overclock my memory and processor via the software from Asus for my motherboard.
I really never understood the PC world's obsession with overclocking their hardware, but yes, if you need that extra 3% so you can beat your chest, you do have the ability on a PC, you don't have much on a Mac (I've read about people who have tweaked their GPU settings at the terminal to squeeze some performance, but I've not tried it myself).
As for Windows 7, glad you enjoy it. I do think it sucks less than Microsoft's previous attempts to copy Apple's GUI, in fact it's quite usable (and seems quite stable to me). I still far prefer OSX and find it far more powerful, but then I've been a pretty hardcore Unix guy for the past twenty years and love having the full power of the shell and all its command-line tools at my disposal, along with a fantastic interface.
I've got a case that looks great and is aluminum. I have at least eight easy install 3.5 HDD bays. Five full size 5.25 bays. Six 120mm fans that all run pretty quietly. An nVidia 9500GT (didn't go top end) with 512MB that I can always upgrade with SLI.
I definitely wish there was a Mac that took more than one hard drive (other than the Pro). I have an old PC with several TB of storage (3 IDE and 1 SATA drive) that sits as a media server. Right now it's running XP, just because I find BeyondTV to be the best DVR solution around. Comcast is about to start encrypting their channels however, at which point I'll wipe the boot partition, throw Linux on it, and use it as a NAS/media server.
So on one hand, you're saying that a comparable Mac Pro would have cost you $3000 and on the other, you're claiming a 16% profit margin. So if Apple decided not to take a profit, they should only be charging $2520 for that $3000 Mac Pro. With a marginal 3% profit, they should have charged you about $2600. Yet you're also saying you built that $3000 Mac equivalent for $1000. Man, Apple is really screwing people over by not taking a $1520 loss on every machine they sell. You're right, I think Apple is a bunch of absolute wankers and I'm never dealing with them again.
No, their raw profit margin was 16% overall for the entire company. Remember that massive executive bonuses and huge stock options all figure in.
If Apple Execs and the Apple BoD didn't load themselves with such massive bonuses across the board then the profit margin would be much higher. The 16% is company wide.
As a businessman I can tell you that the standard is 5-10%. Apple's is much higher than usual and their bonuses up top are much higher than companies in their sector. The people at the top like the high prices because it finances their huge bonuses and other payouts.
Oh wait a minute, now it's a $2000 premium. Crap - that means Apple should really be taking a $2520 loss on that $3000 Mac Pro, selling them for $480? Let me know when they do that, 'cause I'll be right in line to buy four of them.
Wow. Fanboy to the core and unable to look at the hard numbers. The MacPro is at least $500 more than it should be. Paying a premium isn't a horrible idea. The problem is paying a massive premium. My machine is not the equivalent of a MacPro, but it blows any iMac out of the water for far less money.
I get that you (and many other PC users) want to have more control over each and every component in your machine. Nothing wrong with that, really. As a gamer I could see that one might want a specific graphics card, or if you're into movie editing (which it sounds like you may be), I could see where a particular accelerator card could be a boon. I used to be like that and have built quite a few PCs over the past twenty years, and once upon a time actually enjoyed pulling my machine apart and tinkering.
Now I prefer to be able to turn on my machine and use it and not worry if the parts I've installed are going to have compatibility issues. I've found every installation of Windows I've used to be incredibly unreliable, and generally attribute that to the low-end parts I've used. I could probably have a fairly stable system, if only I used higher-end components. But then I'd have a system just as expensive as a Mac, and I'd end up with a far less satisfactory user experience.
No, you wouldn't. I've built machines with far better components than the Mac.
My iMac failed because Apple bought the same cheap Chinese capacitors that Dell and others did. They all failed because they bought the cheapest parts they could find. Apple quality components is a myth. I have better memory on my machine by going with Kingston and it has a lifetime warranty.
I have had problems with Windows in the past. That's why I switched in the first place. But paying $1500 for an iMac that is just not comparable to anything I could get on the PC side in that pricerange is ridiculous to me.
You can take your Start button and it's horrendously cluttered and clunky method of "organising" your applications. I'm sick and tired of trying to create hierarchies of apps, only to have to guess which application groups are stored under the "All Users" directory and which are in 'my' directory. I'm happy to be able to move applications anywhere I want, including between partitions, and not have some clunky registry barf because it couldn't find what it was looking for. I've never had to go hunting for anything on my machine. I either use Quicksilver as a launcher, or now that Spotlight in Leopard is very usable, simply type "cmd-space kind:app text" to bring up TextEdit. Microsoft has done a decent job of emulating that behaviour by adding a search box to the Start menu. I still find it clunky, and am frustrated at the inevitable delay as I try to move through the menu to get to what I'm looking for (have they not thought to cache its contents, rather than having to dynamically recreate it every friggin' time I bring it up?)
I've never liked the search function. That's for people that keep their drives all cluttered and their computers disorganized. I organize the start menu just as I organized my MacHD. I group things together when I do a system load and maintain the organization throughout.
I can only assume you're talking about the erosion of marketshare in the 90's, because in the 00's, Apple's marketshare (particularly in the home segment) has been flourishing. As for the dark period of the 90's, Apple's mismanagement and poor decisions did cost them, but I also put a tremendous amount of blame on Microsoft's absolute anticompetitive licensing agreements and other activities. It's unfathomable to me that the government simply came along and slapped their wrist saying, "um, please don't do that again." And yet Microsoft continued with their exclusive licensing agreements, to which the government responded with yet another request amounting to nother more than, "pretty-please? Can you please stop? Please???"
Have you been paying attention to the decline of the last two quarters? It's not a mass erosion yet, but a longterm erosion is beginning. Why do you think we now here reports of Apple finally lowering prices?
The final start for me was the last MacBook update. My mother purchased a dual core 2.4GHZ MacBook for $1400 (education faculty discount). The update saw the $1400 MacBook get downgraded to a dual core 2.0 GHZ. Apple used the "nVidia onboard video" as an excuse but it was a poor one since they had earlier claimed the nVidia chipset was cheaper than the Intel one. They've since corrected that blunder.
I really never understood the PC world's obsession with overclocking their hardware, but yes, if you need that extra 3% so you can beat your chest, you do have the ability on a PC, you don't have much on a Mac (I've read about people who have tweaked their GPU settings at the terminal to squeeze some performance, but I've not tried it myself).
I actually don't overclock, but I have the ability to do so easily. Many things are overclocked by standard. DDR2 1066 is really nothing more than overclocked DDR2 800 for instance.
The biggest problem I have with Apple is their arrogance surrounding their product anymore. They were better a few years ago, but the recent uptick in Mac sales seemed to bring back the arrogance. Two quarters of backward sales may kick them in the pants.
But I don't see them offering a real prosumer desktop option, not while Jobs is still around. The iMac is his baby and he doesn't want anything that would threaten it.
I understand the MacPro being pricey. It is a high end machine, but there's a vast expanse in between it and the iMac. The iMac is great for iPhoto. It sucks for Photoshop if you want to do anything serious. It is a glorified laptop with a low power laptop CPU. Still pretty fast for everyday use, but a desktop quad-core can do so much more.
And Apple screwed the pooch by dumping Carbon-64. They hurt themselves too. Final Cut is tied to Carbon as well. Seems like Apple didn't plan out their path to 64-bit very well. They have optimization just like Windows does through the OS, but on many programs a single project cannot have full access to memory.
I also have friends and family that considered Apple but found nothing for them because of how little choice their is in selecting a computer. Go with the iMac or the MacPro or the horribly incapable MacMini. Little variation in the MacBook line whereas the old iBooks gave you the ability to select a smaller or larger screen. Why no 15.4" option? Why do consumers have to pay $2000 to get a laptop with a 15" screen?
Why does Apple drive up their prices so they can facilitate driving up the payouts to the people on the top? If they really wanted to open up their market share then lowering prices and cutting pay at the top would be key. They don't have to compete on the bottom end.
They do it for Final Cut Studio. It's cheaper than the Production Premium version of CS4, though CS4 has more stuff. Even so, Apple knows that people in production aren't suckers. They will leave Apple very quickly for Adobe, so Apple doesn't charge a premium for Final Cut. Why not if they have the same superior quality like they do with their computers?
It's because they have a bunch of users who would pay anything for whatever Apple sold. They could sculpt beautiful dog turds and market them as the iTurd and the Apple sycophants would go crazy.
I've liked Apple for a long time. I like OSX and will say it is more powerful than Windows, more elegant, etc. But I'm not paying a massive premium for it, especially when Apple refuses to build anything NEAR what I want. I'm tired of Apple's attitude of "we know what you need better than you do."
So I switched back, somewhat reluctantly. And I was pleasantly surprised by Vista. I've found it more easily configurable than OSX. I've found that things work far better than they did when I left with Windows 2000.
If Apple gets their act together I might go back, but I'm leery to be stabbed in the back by them again.
So a lot of you are bashing Windows 7, simply because it's Windows. That's intelligent isn't it?
Like the way Windows users bash OSX because it runs on Macs? That's rich coming from you.
No, their raw profit margin was 16% overall for the entire company. Remember that massive executive bonuses and huge stock options all figure in.
Gotcha - I assumed you were talking about their computer hardware. No doubt they make a pretty penny on much of their software, and certainly it's a well known fact that the iPod line has a huge markup. Makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn't really lower the price of the Zune. I think that, as one of the few real competitors to the iPod (yes, there is the Sansa and the Archos and the Zen line, all of which do more than either the iPod or the Zune, but they don't have the integrated ecosystem), it seems to me that Microsoft's markup must be similar, and they could easily undercut the iPod and increase their marketshare.
Wow. Fanboy to the core and unable to look at the hard numbers. The MacPro is at least $500 more than it should be. Paying a premium isn't a horrible idea. The problem is paying a massive premium. My machine is not the equivalent of a MacPro, but it blows any iMac out of the water for far less money.
Again my numbers were (very roughly) based on the assumption that there was a 16% profit margin on the Mac Pro and that you were suggesting it was also $1000-2000 over the cost. I've done price comparisons myself and see numbers on both sides. Sometimes things come out where the Mac is comparably priced, even less than what is roughly a comparable PC system, and sometimes I've seen numbers (the Mac Pro being a good example) where it seems there is a definite premium.
I'm not going to deny being a fanboy (although I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, I have a strong preference [based on real-world experience will various platforms] and definitely stick to it--and my bias shows
My iMac failed because Apple bought the same cheap Chinese capacitors that Dell and others did. They all failed because they bought the cheapest parts they could find. Apple quality components is a myth. I have better memory on my machine by going with Kingston and it has a lifetime warranty.
It wasn't the motherboard and controller components I was referring to necessarily. However, if I think back to the hardware I've built, I've often used low-end Taiwan-made motherboards with their questionable driver support, off-branded burners and graphics cards (which may use the same chipset, but are unquestionably not built to the same standards as the name brand cards). The freezes I frequently experience, I attribute to the crummy drivers that come with the hardware.
I've never liked the search function. That's for people that keep their drives all cluttered and their computers disorganized. I organize the start menu just as I organized my MacHD. I group things together when I do a system load and maintain the organization throughout.
However, that seems to go against the paradigm switch in thinking that even Microsoft is pushing for. It's been said that we now have too much information to keep organised with simple hierarchies, so we might as well stuff all our documents into a single document folder, our images in a single folder, and use metadata to keep our information organized, much as software such as iTunes and iPhoto (or in my case, Aperture) does. I used to be anal about keeping my music and photo folders organised. Now I left the software take care of it. I've found it to be more efficient, and I don't have to think about it anymore.
Have you been paying attention to the decline of the last two quarters? It's not a mass erosion yet, but a longterm erosion is beginning. Why do you think we now here reports of Apple finally lowering prices?
Hmm, I do recall a small (but significant) decline in the previous quarter, but don't recall one prior to that. Statistics can be fudged to look however we want them to, so I say this with a grain of salt, but one could attribute much of that decline to the economy. Sales of technology items are down pretty much across the board. Apple's appear to be down less than the majority of the sector.
The final start for me was the last MacBook update. My mother purchased a dual core 2.4GHZ MacBook for $1400 (education faculty discount). The update saw the $1400 MacBook get downgraded to a dual core 2.0 GHZ. Apple used the "nVidia onboard video" as an excuse but it was a poor one since they had earlier claimed the nVidia chipset was cheaper than the Intel one. They've since corrected that blunder.
I honestly haven't looked much at the new hardware, other than the MacBook Pro, as my 1st generation 1.83 CD is very aged, and doesn't perform as well as I'd like when working in Aperture. I'll almost certainly be stretching this machine out another year though. And while I certainly did pay a premium for this laptop, it's already lived a longer life than my previous two Windows laptops, one of which was an even more expensive Vaio.
I actually don't overclock, but I have the ability to do so easily. Many things are overclocked by standard. DDR2 1066 is really nothing more than overclocked DDR2 800 for instance.
Honestly, I've not done it in the past because a) I didn't see a need to, and b) I was kind of afraid to. As I've said, my Windows experience has not been the most stable, and I didn't see the need to introduce any further potential for instability by overclocking. That and until my most recent CPU upgrade, I never had a cooling fan effective enough for me to feel comfortable using on an overclocked chip that would be generating ever more heat
But I don't see them offering a real prosumer desktop option, not while Jobs is still around. The iMac is his baby and he doesn't want anything that would threaten it.
I love the idea of an iMac. They're beautiful, functional, and minimalist. I agree that something more powerful would be very welcome. I don't much care for upgradability. I generally find that by the time I feel the need for a more powerful video card, it's also time for a full CPU and motherboard upgrade. Seems like room could be made for a second hard drive though
And Apple screwed the pooch by dumping Carbon-64. They hurt themselves too. Final Cut is tied to Carbon as well. Seems like Apple didn't plan out their path to 64-bit very well. They have optimization just like Windows does through the OS, but on many programs a single project cannot have full access to memory.
Have they? I think much of Microsoft's troubles are rooted in their insistence on backward compatibility with 15 year old software. While I haven't tried it yet, I have an old card game I used to play on Windows 3.1 that would probably still work under Windows 7. I know it worked fine under XP. That's nice, but as I said before, create a new architecture and provide a compatibility sandbox for legacy software. That's the only way to get software companies to really migrate to the new technology.
I also have friends and family that considered Apple but found nothing for them because of how little choice their is in selecting a computer. Go with the iMac or the MacPro or the horribly incapable MacMini. Little variation in the MacBook line whereas the old iBooks gave you the ability to select a smaller or larger screen. Why no 15.4" option? Why do consumers have to pay $2000 to get a laptop with a 15" screen?
I disagree that the Mini is a horribly incapable machine. I wouldn't use it for my Aperture work (although I hear the new one performs comparably there to my aging MBP), but I bought last year's version for the office and it's my primary work machine. It works great running Entourage, NeoOffice, X11, Pages, and a multitude of other tools I use day in and out. I'd argue that it's really the perfect machine for the vast majority of homes who really don't need anything more powerful than that.
Anyway, I do have to thank you for writing a cordial response. It was more than I deserved (or expected) after my hostile response to your post
LOL! Please take a look here: http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...a-dpi-scaling/
Vista is fully resolution independent and Windows 7 has even improved on this area. I doubt that Snow Leopard will be so good at this even while I know that the technology is in OS X since Tiger.
I don't think so. I tried this out, using W7 Beta in Boot Camp. My eyes, as bad as they may be, noticed graphics became a little fuzzy. For example, the AppleInsider logo at the very top left of this page. Anything other than 100% (default) and it gets a little less clear. Sure it works, but not good enough for me to switch. I can do a CMD+ in Safari and it looks exactly the same as changing the DPI in Windows 7. I have reason to believe this is not an easy undertaking. If anyone is going to get it right, it will be Apple.
Gotcha - I assumed you were talking about their computer hardware. No doubt they make a pretty penny on much of their software, and certainly it's a well known fact that the iPod line has a huge markup. Makes me wonder why Microsoft doesn't really lower the price of the Zune. I think that, as one of the few real competitors to the iPod (yes, there is the Sansa and the Archos and the Zen line, all of which do more than either the iPod or the Zune, but they don't have the integrated ecosystem), it seems to me that Microsoft's markup must be similar, and they could easily undercut the iPod and increase their marketshare.
My guess is they probably don't think cutting the price will make a huge impact. They were too late to the game and, quite frankly, the product isn't as good.
I understand being happy with margins, especially the big ones that Apple has on their computers. But I think in Apple's case you could make an argument for trimming up top end bonuses (and they'd still be very nice) and cutting margin only slightly.
Historically Apple has had a cost of around 60%. That's quite low for cost. It also increases greatly when people do add-ons via custom builds. For instance, it costs $75 to upgrade from a 320GB SATA HDD on the iMac to a 640GB one. Apple likely pays less than this amount for the drive itself AND will put the 320GB drive back in for manufacturing. A Seagate 7200RPM Barracuda at 320GB costs $55 on NewEgg. The 640 GB Seagate with 32MB of cache that I bought is $70. So realistically it is a $15 upgrade. If Apple charged $20 they would maintain a similar profit margin to the base model, but the hammer the buyer with a $75 upgrade fee. And those drives are loaded off of a mirror, so it doesn't take much work to load the system on them. They actually have them preloaded. Even at $25 it would be a reasonable price for an upgrade, but $75 is a HUGE markup.
It costs $100 to go from 2GB of DDR1066 to 4GB of it. A 4GB kit from Kingston at NewEgg costs $61.99. Apple pays less for memory. Yes, they'd have to pull out the 2x1GB sticks, but those would go right back into manufacturing. 2x1GB costs $35.49. So a $30 upgrade fee or even $35 would be reasonable and they'd be making extra cash. Instead they charge $100. Yes, you can do it yourself just like the HDD, but then you get the privilege of tossing the 2GB worth of RAM instead of Apple reusing it in manufacturing. It would seem "greener" to me to charge a reasonable price for a memory upgrade and insure end users don't just toss their extra RAM.
I'm not going to deny being a fanboy (although I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, I have a strong preference [based on real-world experience will various platforms] and definitely stick to it--and my bias shows
I like OSX better myself. I'm not a fan of buy a ready made PC, but I've found Vista to be fairly enjoyable. I like that I was able to build a machine without a bunch of preloaded garbage, something Apple is very good about on machines they build.
I should say that I've had very few security patches with Vista thus far, but I got it SP1. No crashes, no problems, and it is the most secure Windows OS I've ever used.
I also have no problem paying a premium for a Mac, but the question is how much of a premium.
A base iMac is $1199. Let's assume the usual 60% cost, so Apple pays around $719 for the hardware. Other factors have to be rolled in, such as development, marketing, etc. However the partnership with Intel has cut down Apple's costs for engineering, especially on the logic board. Let's assume we need an additional 20% off that $719 for additional costs, though those costs go down the more iMacs that are sold because the are distributed across the line. That brings us to $863. Let's assume a 15% profit margin on the iMac based on the end price. The price would be at $1015 for a base iMac. Let's go up to $1049 just to make it all nice and even.
And remember that as HDD price, CPU price, GPU price, and RAM prices go down the margins get better.
I would guess, and I've heard it from friends that work closely with Apple, that Apple tends to run about 30% profit on their hardware before bonuses are paid out.
The margins are likely to same or better on laptops.
Apple would still make a boatload of money starting the iMac out at $1099 AND they would also get more people in the door.
Imagine if they had a desktop that started at $799 or $899. That's hardly a bottom feeder at that price - and if they offered dual core and quad core options as upgrades while offering REASONABLE upgrade prices.
I don't think Apple need give up premium pricing because I think A LOT of people don't mind paying $100-200 extra on the lower end of things for a Mac. I know I wouldn't have a problem with it. The problem is that on the bottom end of things it is likely closer to $400-500 and it gets worse as you move up.
My example comparing to my machine is based on Apple's builds. The reason THAT looks so bad for Apple is because they offer nothing like my machine. Mac Pro is overkill and the iMac is underkill, but they overcharge to get to 8GB (Apple charges $1100 to upgrade to 8GB). I know 4GB sticks are hard to find and expensive, but they're not THAT expensive. $400-500 would be reasonable for an upgrade to 8GB on the iMac, though a design with 4 memory slots would make 8GB far more attainable. OSX is 64 bit but if you don't have a MacPro then good luck affordably getting beyond 4GB.
It wasn't the motherboard and controller components I was referring to necessarily. However, if I think back to the hardware I've built, I've often used low-end Taiwan-made motherboards with their questionable driver support, off-branded burners and graphics cards (which may use the same chipset, but are unquestionably not built to the same standards as the name brand cards). The freezes I frequently experience, I attribute to the crummy drivers that come with the hardware.
I'm very careful when I build. I check the MoBo. I check all the hardware. I pay more for better parts. I didn't buy the bottom rung Asus MoBo. I got a Seagate HDD, the same make my iMac had. A got a Gigabyte nVidia GPU.
However, that seems to go against the paradigm switch in thinking that even Microsoft is pushing for. It's been said that we now have too much information to keep organised with simple hierarchies, so we might as well stuff all our documents into a single document folder, our images in a single folder, and use metadata to keep our information organized, much as software such as iTunes and iPhoto (or in my case, Aperture) does. I used to be anal about keeping my music and photo folders organised. Now I left the software take care of it. I've found it to be more efficient, and I don't have to think about it anymore.
I understand why people would like this, but I hate the performance hit a system takes by indexing the drive. I always turn the indexing off because I hate the performance hit. I just prefer to stay organized from the beginning.
Hmm, I do recall a small (but significant) decline in the previous quarter, but don't recall one prior to that. Statistics can be fudged to look however we want them to, so I say this with a grain of salt, but one could attribute much of that decline to the economy. Sales of technology items are down pretty much across the board. Apple's appear to be down less than the majority of the sector.
I believe it was a 1.1% decline first quarter versus a .6% growth for the overall PC industry largely driven by netbook sales.
The word is that Apple has experienced a 3% decline thus far in the new quarter, with iMacs being the hardest hit.
I honestly haven't looked much at the new hardware, other than the MacBook Pro, as my 1st generation 1.83 CD is very aged, and doesn't perform as well as I'd like when working in Aperture. I'll almost certainly be stretching this machine out another year though. And while I certainly did pay a premium for this laptop, it's already lived a longer life than my previous two Windows laptops, one of which was an even more expensive Vaio.
Honestly, I don't disagree at all on the laptops, though I dislike the lack of selection. I don't want to have to go to the MacBook Pro to get a 15" screen and I do think the prices on the MacBook are a bit high right now. The previous iteration was fairly priced, but they got really out of whack on this one and assumed that minor upgrades were worth more than they truly are.
I'm not a laptop guy. I have had them and I would be likely to get a Mac, but I find the MacBook to be about $200 more than it should be - and even with that mark down it would still cost more than equivalent PC notebooks. That's fine because it is much better.
I love the idea of an iMac. They're beautiful, functional, and minimalist. I agree that something more powerful would be very welcome. I don't much care for upgradability. I generally find that by the time I feel the need for a more powerful video card, it's also time for a full CPU and motherboard upgrade. Seems like room could be made for a second hard drive though
That's why I love the desktop. I can spend $50 for a new nVidia card and link it up with my current one via SLI and double or better my GPU power. I can also buy a socket compatible processor. My MoBo supports AM3, so quad-core 3GHZ and beyond will be available for me with more L1, L2, and L3 cash at a cost of $150 or maybe less, depending on when I upgrade.
Have they? I think much of Microsoft's troubles are rooted in their insistence on backward compatibility with 15 year old software. While I haven't tried it yet, I have an old card game I used to play on Windows 3.1 that would probably still work under Windows 7. I know it worked fine under XP. That's nice, but as I said before, create a new architecture and provide a compatibility sandbox for legacy software. That's the only way to get software companies to really migrate to the new technology.
I know I can't run my old Windows stuff in Vista. That's one reason why MS got dumped on for it - they threw out a lot of compatibility. And the 64 bit version can't run 16 bit Windows stuff. Some of the full blown Win32 stuff can be run.
That's why you can download Virtual PC for free for Vista. They did that to address the compatibility issues. Also a lot of old hardware won't work.
I disagree that the Mini is a horribly incapable machine. I wouldn't use it for my Aperture work (although I hear the new one performs comparably there to my aging MBP), but I bought last year's version for the office and it's my primary work machine. It works great running Entourage, NeoOffice, X11, Pages, and a multitude of other tools I use day in and out. I'd argue that it's really the perfect machine for the vast majority of homes who really don't need anything more powerful than that.
Anyway, I do have to thank you for writing a cordial response. It was more than I deserved (or expected) after my hostile response to your post
The big problem I have with the mini again is the price and lack of any flexibility. The average user cannot upgrade the memory, so they're stuck paying Apple's crazy prices ($150 for an upgrade to 4GB on the base). That $599 model has no keyboard, mouse, a 120GB HDD, and only 1GB. For $399 or $449 it might be okay, but the 250GB HDD costs very little extra and an extra GB probably costs Apple $10, if that.
And Apple screwed the pooch by dumping Carbon-64. They hurt themselves too. Final Cut is tied to Carbon as well. Seems like Apple didn't plan out their path to 64-bit very well. They have optimization just like Windows does through the OS, but on many programs a single project cannot have full access to memory.
Perhaps you should investigate things like that before you speak. Apple was putting Carbon on a path for oscelescence for a decade. When moving to 64 bit they realized that developers would spend just as much time moving their UI to 64 bit carbon as they would to cocoa. Apple was wasting everybody's time with porting across the carbon UI pieces. They settled on the carbon backend but no UI.
Adobe is looking for excuses for taking so long. The fact is they have a codebase and they don't want to change it. Either way, Carbon64 or Cocoa it was adobe's job to port everything across and they've had a decade. Don't blame Apple for Adobe's product decisions, Apple gave them ample warning.
Actually, it's not even Windows 6.5. If you look at the build number, it's 6.1, so it's a lot closer to Vista than Microsoft is willing to admit. Although, after playing around with the leaked version of Build 7100, Windows 7 is looking like the Vista that Microsoft should have released two and a half years ago.
Well, it is not like Snow Leopard is OS XI, isn't it..?
Windows Media Center will not be able to play Blu-Ray movies. That will require third-party software. Windows 7 will be able to natively write to BD-R discs, though.
However, BR manufacturers do ship BR players with their BR drives. True, I'd like to play everything with one player, but hey. Better that than nothing.