Yank the crappatastick nolongerSuperdrive and save me the cashola and grief.
The lady and I were talking about the rate of technological evolution last night. I waxed on about how excited I was when the first Gigabyte drives came with their $1200 pricing. We laughed about our high school days when a mobile phone meant carrying a 5lb battery around with the phone.
Today's youth have no idea about how rapidly changing the tech world is. It's entirely feasible that they see even more change within a decade of their adult lives.
With that in mind the profit margins of $500 computers should rise indeed. When you look at the integration that is happening it's becoming simple to build a low cost computer.
Case
Motherboard
CPU/GPU ondie
RAM/HDD
Physical interfaces
Software
Expansion boards go unused often, because everything has been built on the motherboard.
That's only for parts and manufacturing. These machines have to be developed, marketed, shipped, etc. Even if Apple sees a $150 profit, that's just 25%, which is well below the company average of the low-to-mid 30% range.
that resellers are selling the $599 model for $549, which means that they buy the machine from Apple for just north of $500. So that suggests margins could be less than 20%. Alternatively, iSuppli could just be wrong in their assessment. Personally, I believe it costs Apple less to make the $599 Mac mini than iSuppli estimates.
K
My thoughts exactly, I guess when your a volume buyer like Apple, you can cut deals to get certain parts like -near end of life- parts at the seller costs. It works for the seller as they just break even and not have to dump the parts in a dumpster and charge more for the higher end/newer parts.
It works for Apple because they can make a lower end product designed like a loss leader or introductory Mac.
A lot of people who buy a Mini, are using their old PC tower parts, maybe even a KVM switch too.
The Mini, in my opinion, quickly outgrows itś limited performance and people trade up sooner, hopefully to a more profitable higher end Mac or even buy other high margin Apple products.
Right- and you'll stop using the tern "troll" whenever somebody says anything against the grain. Fanboy is not stupid but a reality. How else do you explain how someone cn defend every shortcoming in any given Apple product- all the time, incessantly?
Teckstud, you are a troll, believe me.
- You seem to hate everything Apple, and especially love to attack the iPhone (by the way, how's your new Pre doing?)
- Your English is second grade level: ... they'er still to high... (Sigh)
- With all the bitching, you still add the slogan "Once you go Mac, you never go back" to your postings.
But please don't leave us, we would miss you tremendously!
About nine months ago, I purchased the previous generation Mac Mini for $599 to find out if I wanted to switch to the Mac after almost three decades of using Microsoft operating systems (MS-DOS and Windows).
I did. And I quickly decided that I wanted more computing horsepower, expandability, video performance, dual monitors, etc. So I shelled out $2900 for a used, but like-new, 8 core 2.8ghz Mac Pro (1.3TB hard drive, 8GB RAM, WiFi). I bought an external Firewire 800 1TB drive for Time Machine and an additional internal 1TB SATA drive. I added a second optical drive with Lightscribe. Then I wanted a Mac laptop, so I bought the white MacBook (2ghz, 120GB drive) and immediately upgraded the RAM to 4GB and the hard drive to 320GB/7200RPM).
And of course, there were software purchases, too.
Apple gets it: They understand that they could sell the Mac Minis at a loss and still come out ahead overall. Remember that Apple's goal is to maximize profit, not to maximize profit on on Mac Minis.
I did. And I quickly decided that I wanted more computing horsepower, expandability, video performance, dual monitors, etc. So I shelled out $2900 for a used, but like-new, 8 core 2.8ghz Mac Pro (1.3TB hard drive, 8GB RAM, WiFi). I bought an external Firewire 800 1TB drive for Time Machine and an additional internal 1TB SATA drive. I added a second optical drive with Lightscribe. Then I wanted a Mac laptop, so I bought the white MacBook (2ghz, 120GB drive) and immediately upgraded the RAM to 4GB and the hard drive to 320GB/7200RPM).
Geez that's a nice system. As expensive as the Mac Pro is I figure I'm headed on that path. I figured I'd be running Final Cut Pro by now but you know a car repair here and other needs make that harder. The mini though is a great little system and I swear if they don't keep their value. Often I'll find someone selling an Intel mini on craigslist (I have an RSS feed as an alert) and if there's a Intel mini in the $300s it's gone in a day or two.
They are still highly valued systems and highly capable.
'Apple Tax' is a silly term right up there with 'fanboy', the use of which signifies low intelligence, lack of insight and plain old laziness. Please, lets refrain from using stupid terminology whenever possible.
Thank you. I could not find the words to say that. !!!!
And apple makes a fair profit on the mini. and by buying components in large volume's it may lower the price for all its products. So even if the mini isn't such a world beater, it has its place in the sun.
in fact instead of buying an apple TV i will buy the mini .
Who cares? Apple makes up for it by their ridiculous gross ups on their MacBook, iPhones , iPods, etc so that this means nothing. Not to mention the $10 Apple tax on the iPod Touch ugrade. Fanboys can defend all they want but the reality is Apple is overpriced for what is inside the devices.
Apple just dropped prices and they'er still to high. That white MacBook for $1000? Indeed!
Actually except for the iPhone, Appleś prices are about equal to similar quality PC products.
The iPhone is really making Apple or AT&T a killing, to the tune of a missing $760 over a two year contract, itś hard to know who gets what part of that.
Perhaps why the lawmakers are looking into these exclusive carrier deals.
I rather much have Apple have a iPhone for nearly each carrier, like RIM does, a set price for the device and then allow carriers to compete for customers based upon price and service.
Right now we don have that and we are getting taken for a ride.
Well, manufacturing costs were included in the estimate. I assumed that included packaging and assembly. The software is basically the same as for all their other models so I'm not really sure how you quantify that for the Mini specifically. You mean like, specialized drivers or something? And we all know how much effort Apple puts into marketing the mini.... \
For each copy of the OSX, the Mac department would have to "pay" (allocate cost) to the software department. Essentially they are "buying" the OS from them, even though they are in the same company. That's how you do accounting with multiple departments. It's a same thing as HP would have to pay MS for the licensing of Vista. I think most people overlook this.
Right- and you'll stop using the tern "troll" whenever somebody says anything against the grain. Fanboy is not stupid but a reality. How else do you explain how someone cn defend every shortcoming in any given Apple product- all the time, incessantly?
What shortcoming?
When we consider the "whole package" of Mac + OS X, shortcomings often mean a lot less than they would otherwise.
Yank the crappatastick nolongerSuperdrive and save me the cashola and grief.
The lady and I were talking about the rate of technological evolution last night. I waxed on about how excited I was when the first Gigabyte drives came with their $1200 pricing. We laughed about our high school days when a mobile phone meant carrying a 5lb battery around with the phone.
Today's youth have no idea about how rapidly changing the tech world is. It's entirely feasible that they see even more change within a decade of their adult lives.
With that in mind the profit margins of $500 computers should rise indeed. When you look at the integration that is happening it's becoming simple to build a low cost computer.
Case
Motherboard
CPU/GPU ondie
RAM/HDD
Physical interfaces
Software
Expansion boards go unused often, because everything has been built on the motherboard.
Intel's Larabee chips will ship next year. CPU, graphics and chipset all integrated in one CPU. instead of making multi-cores, they are going to make each core do it's own thing instead of making specialized chips for CPU and chipsets.
Who cares? Apple makes up for it by their ridiculous gross ups on their MacBook, iPhones , iPods, etc so that this means nothing. Not to mention the $10 Apple tax on the iPod Touch ugrade. Fanboys can defend all they want but the reality is Apple is overpriced for what is inside the devices.
Apple just dropped prices and they'er still to high. That white MacBook for $1000? Indeed!
OH i see now . Hit them hard and hit them low with great rare facts . The fanboy crack is classic teckstud . thank you
A very important thing to remember is that Apple has an extensive array of Apple stores I. Which to display their products. The costs for a retail store that provides both sales AND support is immensive. It's large enough that no other computer manfacturere has anything like it. The cost for such a service must come from somewhere, however the ability to talk to a real human being about a problem with your computer should not be undervalued.
Thank you. I could not find the words to say that. !!!!
And apple makes a fair profit on the mini. and by buying components in large volume's it may lower the price for all its products. So even if the mini isn't such a world beater, it has its place in the sun.
in fact instead of buying an apple TV i will buy the mini .
Just saying
Defintiely buy the MacMini over theAppleTV anyday. The only thing missing is HDMI and an adapter can be had for very little. I wish I had.
Right- and you'll stop using the tern "troll" whenever somebody says anything against the grain. Fanboy is not stupid but a reality. How else do you explain how someone cn defend every shortcoming in any given Apple product- all the time, incessantly?
I have never used the term 'troll' ever. But I don't object to it as much. At least when it is used as a verb. Apple Tax is just a dumb term designed to appeal on a base level against Apple's high prices. Or perceived high prices. I know you think Apple overcharges and you are perfectly entitled to that opinion. But in terms of the usage of the made up term in question, that is neither here nor there. As for Fanboy... do I really have to say anything? It is a kindergarten level gibe. I mean, explain it to me (intelligently, if you can. I know what an Apple fan (or fanatic in extreme cases) is. Apple fan = a fan of all things Apple (gender neutral). Fanboy - a boy that is a fan of something? A fan of boys?
A very important thing to remember is that Apple has an extensive array of Apple stores I. Which to display their products. The costs for a retail store that provides both sales AND support is immensive. It's large enough that no other computer manfacturere has anything like it. The cost for such a service must come from somewhere, however the ability to talk to a real human being about a problem with your computer should not be undervalued.
Actually except for the iPhone, Appleś prices are about equal to similar quality PC products.
You guys said the same thing before Apple made the price cuts... So they were similarly priced before the cuts, and now they are still similar somehow? I think Apple realized they maxed out of customers who were willing to overpay so they had to lower it. (The answer is they are more expensive, still)
Here comes the "But I don't want cheap hardware" argument. Apple PC's use the same hardware, intel processors, nvidia graphics.. Now if they could only fix those display problems...
Comments
Yank the crappatastick nolongerSuperdrive and save me the cashola and grief.
The lady and I were talking about the rate of technological evolution last night. I waxed on about how excited I was when the first Gigabyte drives came with their $1200 pricing. We laughed about our high school days when a mobile phone meant carrying a 5lb battery around with the phone.
Today's youth have no idea about how rapidly changing the tech world is. It's entirely feasible that they see even more change within a decade of their adult lives.
With that in mind the profit margins of $500 computers should rise indeed. When you look at the integration that is happening it's becoming simple to build a low cost computer.
Case
Motherboard
CPU/GPU ondie
RAM/HDD
Physical interfaces
Software
Expansion boards go unused often, because everything has been built on the motherboard.
That's only for parts and manufacturing. These machines have to be developed, marketed, shipped, etc. Even if Apple sees a $150 profit, that's just 25%, which is well below the company average of the low-to-mid 30% range.
You can see in our mac price guide:
http://www.appleinsider.com/mac_price_guide/
that resellers are selling the $599 model for $549, which means that they buy the machine from Apple for just north of $500. So that suggests margins could be less than 20%. Alternatively, iSuppli could just be wrong in their assessment. Personally, I believe it costs Apple less to make the $599 Mac mini than iSuppli estimates.
K
My thoughts exactly, I guess when your a volume buyer like Apple, you can cut deals to get certain parts like -near end of life- parts at the seller costs. It works for the seller as they just break even and not have to dump the parts in a dumpster and charge more for the higher end/newer parts.
It works for Apple because they can make a lower end product designed like a loss leader or introductory Mac.
A lot of people who buy a Mini, are using their old PC tower parts, maybe even a KVM switch too.
The Mini, in my opinion, quickly outgrows itś limited performance and people trade up sooner, hopefully to a more profitable higher end Mac or even buy other high margin Apple products.
Right- and you'll stop using the tern "troll" whenever somebody says anything against the grain. Fanboy is not stupid but a reality. How else do you explain how someone cn defend every shortcoming in any given Apple product- all the time, incessantly?
Teckstud, you are a troll, believe me.
- You seem to hate everything Apple, and especially love to attack the iPhone (by the way, how's your new Pre doing?)
- Your English is second grade level: ... they'er still to high... (Sigh)
- With all the bitching, you still add the slogan "Once you go Mac, you never go back" to your postings.
But please don't leave us, we would miss you tremendously!
I did. And I quickly decided that I wanted more computing horsepower, expandability, video performance, dual monitors, etc. So I shelled out $2900 for a used, but like-new, 8 core 2.8ghz Mac Pro (1.3TB hard drive, 8GB RAM, WiFi). I bought an external Firewire 800 1TB drive for Time Machine and an additional internal 1TB SATA drive. I added a second optical drive with Lightscribe. Then I wanted a Mac laptop, so I bought the white MacBook (2ghz, 120GB drive) and immediately upgraded the RAM to 4GB and the hard drive to 320GB/7200RPM).
And of course, there were software purchases, too.
Apple gets it: They understand that they could sell the Mac Minis at a loss and still come out ahead overall. Remember that Apple's goal is to maximize profit, not to maximize profit on on Mac Minis.
I did. And I quickly decided that I wanted more computing horsepower, expandability, video performance, dual monitors, etc. So I shelled out $2900 for a used, but like-new, 8 core 2.8ghz Mac Pro (1.3TB hard drive, 8GB RAM, WiFi). I bought an external Firewire 800 1TB drive for Time Machine and an additional internal 1TB SATA drive. I added a second optical drive with Lightscribe. Then I wanted a Mac laptop, so I bought the white MacBook (2ghz, 120GB drive) and immediately upgraded the RAM to 4GB and the hard drive to 320GB/7200RPM).
Geez that's a nice system. As expensive as the Mac Pro is I figure I'm headed on that path. I figured I'd be running Final Cut Pro by now but you know a car repair here and other needs make that harder. The mini though is a great little system and I swear if they don't keep their value. Often I'll find someone selling an Intel mini on craigslist (I have an RSS feed as an alert) and if there's a Intel mini in the $300s it's gone in a day or two.
They are still highly valued systems and highly capable.
'Apple Tax' is a silly term right up there with 'fanboy', the use of which signifies low intelligence, lack of insight and plain old laziness. Please, lets refrain from using stupid terminology whenever possible.
Thank you. I could not find the words to say that. !!!!
And apple makes a fair profit on the mini. and by buying components in large volume's it may lower the price for all its products. So even if the mini isn't such a world beater, it has its place in the sun.
in fact instead of buying an apple TV i will buy the mini .
Just saying
Who cares? Apple makes up for it by their ridiculous gross ups on their MacBook, iPhones , iPods, etc so that this means nothing. Not to mention the $10 Apple tax on the iPod Touch ugrade. Fanboys can defend all they want but the reality is Apple is overpriced for what is inside the devices.
Apple just dropped prices and they'er still to high. That white MacBook for $1000? Indeed!
Actually except for the iPhone, Appleś prices are about equal to similar quality PC products.
The iPhone is really making Apple or AT&T a killing, to the tune of a missing $760 over a two year contract, itś hard to know who gets what part of that.
Perhaps why the lawmakers are looking into these exclusive carrier deals.
I rather much have Apple have a iPhone for nearly each carrier, like RIM does, a set price for the device and then allow carriers to compete for customers based upon price and service.
Right now we don have that and we are getting taken for a ride.
Well, manufacturing costs were included in the estimate. I assumed that included packaging and assembly. The software is basically the same as for all their other models so I'm not really sure how you quantify that for the Mini specifically. You mean like, specialized drivers or something? And we all know how much effort Apple puts into marketing the mini....
For each copy of the OSX, the Mac department would have to "pay" (allocate cost) to the software department. Essentially they are "buying" the OS from them, even though they are in the same company. That's how you do accounting with multiple departments. It's a same thing as HP would have to pay MS for the licensing of Vista. I think most people overlook this.
Right- and you'll stop using the tern "troll" whenever somebody says anything against the grain. Fanboy is not stupid but a reality. How else do you explain how someone cn defend every shortcoming in any given Apple product- all the time, incessantly?
What shortcoming?
When we consider the "whole package" of Mac + OS X, shortcomings often mean a lot less than they would otherwise.
I still want to see a $499 Mac mini.
Yank the crappatastick nolongerSuperdrive and save me the cashola and grief.
The lady and I were talking about the rate of technological evolution last night. I waxed on about how excited I was when the first Gigabyte drives came with their $1200 pricing. We laughed about our high school days when a mobile phone meant carrying a 5lb battery around with the phone.
Today's youth have no idea about how rapidly changing the tech world is. It's entirely feasible that they see even more change within a decade of their adult lives.
With that in mind the profit margins of $500 computers should rise indeed. When you look at the integration that is happening it's becoming simple to build a low cost computer.
Case
Motherboard
CPU/GPU ondie
RAM/HDD
Physical interfaces
Software
Expansion boards go unused often, because everything has been built on the motherboard.
Intel's Larabee chips will ship next year. CPU, graphics and chipset all integrated in one CPU. instead of making multi-cores, they are going to make each core do it's own thing instead of making specialized chips for CPU and chipsets.
Who cares? Not to mention the $10 Apple tax on the iPod Touch ugrade.
Out of interest, are you tempted to buy the upgrade?
Who cares? Apple makes up for it by their ridiculous gross ups on their MacBook, iPhones , iPods, etc so that this means nothing. Not to mention the $10 Apple tax on the iPod Touch ugrade. Fanboys can defend all they want but the reality is Apple is overpriced for what is inside the devices.
Apple just dropped prices and they'er still to high. That white MacBook for $1000? Indeed!
OH i see now . Hit them hard and hit them low with great rare facts . The fanboy crack is classic teckstud . thank you
i will try later
Thank you. I could not find the words to say that. !!!!
And apple makes a fair profit on the mini. and by buying components in large volume's it may lower the price for all its products. So even if the mini isn't such a world beater, it has its place in the sun.
in fact instead of buying an apple TV i will buy the mini .
Just saying
Defintiely buy the MacMini over theAppleTV anyday. The only thing missing is HDMI and an adapter can be had for very little. I wish I had.
Right- and you'll stop using the tern "troll" whenever somebody says anything against the grain. Fanboy is not stupid but a reality. How else do you explain how someone cn defend every shortcoming in any given Apple product- all the time, incessantly?
I have never used the term 'troll' ever. But I don't object to it as much. At least when it is used as a verb. Apple Tax is just a dumb term designed to appeal on a base level against Apple's high prices. Or perceived high prices. I know you think Apple overcharges and you are perfectly entitled to that opinion. But in terms of the usage of the made up term in question, that is neither here nor there. As for Fanboy... do I really have to say anything? It is a kindergarten level gibe. I mean, explain it to me (intelligently, if you can. I know what an Apple fan (or fanatic in extreme cases) is. Apple fan = a fan of all things Apple (gender neutral). Fanboy - a boy that is a fan of something? A fan of boys?
A very important thing to remember is that Apple has an extensive array of Apple stores I. Which to display their products. The costs for a retail store that provides both sales AND support is immensive. It's large enough that no other computer manfacturere has anything like it. The cost for such a service must come from somewhere, however the ability to talk to a real human being about a problem with your computer should not be undervalued.
Genius.
Actually except for the iPhone, Appleś prices are about equal to similar quality PC products.
You guys said the same thing before Apple made the price cuts... So they were similarly priced before the cuts, and now they are still similar somehow? I think Apple realized they maxed out of customers who were willing to overpay so they had to lower it. (The answer is they are more expensive, still)
Here comes the "But I don't want cheap hardware" argument. Apple PC's use the same hardware, intel processors, nvidia graphics.. Now if they could only fix those display problems...
Out of interest, are you tempted to buy the upgrade?
I did last week- why? I live in New York- I'm used to paying high taxes on everything.
The Mac Mini increased by £100+ here in the UK, which stopped me buying one...
It's $822 in the UK and $628.95 in the US (both prices including tax) - paying 30% more to buy in the UK hardly seems justified.
Why include tax? Just because it lets you blame Apple for the fact that you live in a crappy high-tax country?
Apple PC's use the same hardware, intel processors, nvidia graphics.. Now if they could only fix those display problems...
Because a PC is composed of only a CPU and GPU and because all Intel and Nvidia components are exactly the same in price and performance.