For me it's the choice of "two buck chuck" or splurging for the $8 stuff.
Now there's an analogy I can live with. But, in my mind it is more of a distinction, say, between your $8 bottle of the splurge versus a 1990 Silver Oak Cabernet Savignon Napa Valley at $155 per bottle. If you cannot taste the difference at this level, then by all means stick to your Budweiser.
If you want to take it to the high end, I would consider a top of the line PC to be a lower end Silver Oak vintage, say the 1993 Cabernet at $94, while the top of the line Mac would be a 1986 Chateau Lafite Rothschild at $974 per bottle. At this level, it is more about knowing that you know the difference, rather than throwing specs around. For many, they cannot taste the difference, so they consider the extra money to be thrown away. Those that do not understand the difference, nor care to learn about the difference, will revert back to the lowest denominator, price, and judge everything else on that basis alone.
Damn it. Now all of a sudden I have this urge to go out and buy a nice bottle of wine!
Yea sure you can take it to them and they will tell you to buy ANOTHER Mac or they wont touch it unless you paid for AppleCare.
ckh1272 says-"wrong again"
The original article was written to attack specifically HP, while if Hesseldahl was someone worth noting he would have done his research and realized that Apple just hired IBM's top chip expert. So obviously IBM builds GREAT machines for cheap they just arent pretty looking. Which paying hundreds of dollars for looks is totally up to personal preference and not everyone wants a pretty laptop that will die in 3 years.
I use to support the underdog (Apple) for being different and better, but since they are climbing the ladder they are acting like they are the Big Dog and everyone else sucks. I mean how annoying is a bunch of cocky script kiddies?
ckh1272-"wrong again and again". Thanks for playing the troll game. We have some excellent parting gifts for you like a new life. Get yours while you can!!
Asking for $30 to turn quicktime from a fully functional media player to a media player and a video editing/encoding program isn't the same as asking for $99 to enable 5.1 sound on a blu-ray player.
Not exactly..but that $99 upgrade does more than just enable 5.1 surround as well.
I tell my PC friends the same thing about cheap components and price of software and resolution, but they are happy with their cheap shit.
It's like trying to get someone to go into a wine shop and select a $50 bottle of wine, when they are just as happy with a $10 bottle from the grocery store. It's just not worth the effort.
Actually, it's really like only a bottle of wine that is 20 vs 7 dollars (but you get 50 for your 20 in the long run!) . . . "2buckchuck vs 8 dollarrs" comment = funny . . . heehee
Well, MS has started quite a campaign -- some people really don't drink wine -- so, like we're now going to have a whole generation of young shoppers soon strung out like wino's on the cheap stuff . . . ok, actually, the younger gen probably gets computers better than the older folk out there . . .
Actually, it's really like only a bottle of wine that is 20 vs 7 dollars (but you get 50 for your 20 in the long run!) . . . "2buckchuck vs 8 dollarrs" comment = funny . . . heehee
Well, MS has started quite a campaign -- some people really don't drink wine -- so, like we're now going to have a whole generation of young shoppers soon strung out like wino's on the cheap stuff . . . ok, actually, the younger gen probably gets computers better than the older folk out there . . .
Hmm.
I agree Microsoft's ads are ill-thought, but so is this analogy.
It's actually more like this: Someone goes and gets some tires, and one brand only has good tires that are pricey, and another brand has different levels of quality at different prices, and someone who only drives to work and back buys the cheapest tires because it's all they need. Why would someone spend 1500 on a mac laptop when all they want to do is get on aol and check email?
If I were in Microsoft's shoes, I'd compare laptops at the same exact price point, not a $700 to a $1500 one. I wouldn't be trying to show that PC's hold the lowest price point.
For everyone here who keeps trying to say PC's are just cheap shit, PC's don't just come in that bottom level price, they get really advanced and you can get great stuff for your money. So yeah, when you compare a $700 pc latop to a $1500 mac laptop, the mac would be better. I should hope so. When you compare them at the same exact price, the PC isn't some piece of shit trailing behind.
...They are dumbing down things unfortunately. And I feel that it alienates some of the base. Even the iLife suite could be improved by having some sort of advanced mode that could allow for better filtering, organization...
I know Bruce Tognazzini is sort of a "graybeard" with too much history between him and Apple (and Apple fans), but he wrote a couple of articles about counterproductive simplicity that I think are quite relevant to OS X. I drop them here as food for thought:
I do think that Leopard was a small disaster in several usability areas. For one, all our Dock "muscle memory" was turned against us; the new black elements in the UI are too contrasty; the new standard home user folders are undistinguishable from each other in the Dock; QuickView is fairly inutile without letting us manipulate its results somehow; etc. This is just to name a few: there are LOTS of other problems that reveal how UI design in Apple turned from an usability goal to an aesthetics and Marketing one since Jobs disbanded the HIG. It is telling how UI is always the "one more thing" thing developers-wise in the final stages of a new OS X release betatest period.
Getting back to the main issue:
-Hardware-wise, the quality of a given Apple product line has too much of a chance factor: you either get a tank or a festered thing. The "beware of Rev.1s" is here for a reason. We've seen too much seesawing there in these last decades, and one would say it became prominent the moment case aesthetics became the main selling point and dictated the innards instead of the other way round: iMacs having to use laptop parts, laptop parts having to fit in extravagantly "cool" enclosures (Titanium, Unibody, whatever becomes "The new black" in materials in a few years. Isn't it funny how well WIFI works in plastic boxes vs. metal ones?); melting MagSafes; bad nVidia components; etc. Interestingly, the Mac Pros have resulted to be most "tankish" (if one forgets the noxious fumes: mine is one of these), being the most, let's say, usual PC Tower-like with less strange design ideas there (sort of).
-And there is an evident Apple Tax for memory, hard disks, cables and other accesories. The usual recommendation from an experienced Mac user to a novice one is to get the bare minimum, if the chosen system allows for that. Sadly, one cannot buy a Nehalem Mac Pro without having to fill it with Apple's RAM one way or the other. For a Pro user one would guess Apple would understand him/her wanting to configure the thing with zero extras to ensure full expandability choices (well, actually, one guesses Apple understands that all too well, and that's why one has to buy them with that overpriced useless RAM configs, instead of buying RAM to any top quality reasonable pricing memory builder).
Now. Should we discuss miniDisplayPort AKA 2008's ADC (which doesn't do audio through DP, so no possibility of full DP-to-HDMI conversion)? New SAS RAID card I/O system that excludes all current third party SATA/SAS RAID cards, all of them far more powerful that Apple's abysmal one? No hint of Blu-Ray support in the future (you can author them but you can't test them: brilliant!). The idiotic multiple-of-two slot numbers for a multiple-of-three-optimized memory subsystem in Nehalem Mac Pros? Worse performance SATA controller? The list goes on.
-One big flaw in Microsoft's ad is how they don't address the fact that many users neither will buy their PCs from top brands at (comparatively) top prices nor they will build them themselves but will buy at the nearest grand store, PC franchise shop or Pop&Mom PC store at very reasonable prices, near-commodity ones. These PCs work, they endure, and if anything goes wrong the replacement component is usually in a computer shop one block or two from home at dirt-cheap prices and a day or less repair time. Compared to THAT, both Apple's weeks time (in countries like Spain, at least, where most Apple repair services are farmed to a single company operating at four locations, and usually you have to go through a misdiagnostic stage first. And outrageous repair prices unless you AppleCare) and other companies supervariable time (the biggest the company, the best Amelie-style gnome photos your computer sents you).
-Netbooks. Of course, Microsoft hates them, Intel does too, Apple probably is trying to figure how to pimp them up to their standard margins level, but oh how "secret weapons of the Nazis" an ad it would have been. They are being so maligned: they are cheap, they are quite less powerful, etc. Well, folks: they are CUTE (a crucial factor nobody seems to dare mention), they are as low priced as to be an impulse buy, they do the job, they have form factors (down to pocketable) to fit anyone's needs, and the well-hackintoshed ones demonstrate just how big the Apple Tax is, having in account that in most cases you are paying the Windows license for their price: make them white or metallic-finish, slap an Apple logo and an OS X license, downgrade the I/O (as customary from Apple, see the MBA, grrr!) and tell me just why Apple can't do a MacBook Mini.
So, in a Dr. House-type conclusion: everybody lies. And I miss the Seinfeld ads: they were this quirky road movie that would have made great as a webisodes TV series.
(I am a Mac owner and Mac-based DTP/DTV/3D worker, and I have been an Apple user since the Apple IIe era)
Look, M$'s basic point is valid. If you want an entry level computer, PCs are cheaper. If you build your own, for 800-1000$ you can get something that's almost as fast as a mac Pro. It would certainly be faster than any imac. If you buy a laptop, you can get a cheaper PC craptop probably for 1/2 of what you'd get the more-or-less equivalent mac for. (minus the awesome extras macs have).
When money gets tight, these up front cost differences make a huge difference. People just won't spend that extra 500$, when that is half their next month's rent.
The better response that apple should do, is to lower their goddamn prices and make a move toward much larger volume.
But that's not going to happen.
Or they could even sell OSX for 300$ in a version that works on very specific hardware. Then folks could BYOB or buy 3rd party. Shit, I'd pay 300$ if i could build a 700$ box and easily install OSX on it.
Apple has responded to the new Microsoft ads promoting low-cost generic PCs as a cheaper alternative to the Mac, stating "A PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want."
The comment, from Apple spokesman Bill Evans, appeared in a BusinessWeek article by Arik Hesseldahl, which examined the differences between the $699 HP notebook Microsoft recommended to its TV audience over Apple's 17" MacBook Pro, a system in a considerably higher quality and price range.
The real point here is that Apple gives you fewer choices, which probably is a good thing as far as most people are concerned: it makes their buying decision easier. It's certainly true that you can find a $700 Windows laptop with a 17" screen but your only Apple choice with this feature is an expensive MacBook Pro. It seems slightly crazy, though, to respond to this fact by arguing that a low-end buyer should spend four times as much for a Mac because it's a much better value. Instead, I would suggest that hardly anyone needs a 17" screen and an ordinary MacBook will make the low-end buyer happier than the bargain PC, and save them money overall when you include software and maintenance.
The two keys to netbooks: 1) cheap. cheap. cheap. 2) small small small.
The fact that you can get a pretty good one for 300$ is awesome. It puts it into the price range where people just buy one to see if they'd like it.
Apple needs to get on that bandwagon.
actually i was playing with one today at bestbuy. $279, 900mhz intel, 2gb of ram, 160gb hd. It was running xp. I tethered my touch pro to it wirelessly and was getting 1.71mbps dl speed. I was SO CLOSE to getting one.
Funny story about the mac side at best buy. I sat there playing on one for about 15 minutes, and I swear to Christ within that time at least 6 people asked if I had any questions (very oddly like they were all giddy to show me their knowledge on macs) while in the pc side only one guy asked if i needed help, and when i did have a question, he couldn't answer jack shit for me lol. Don't know what that means but i thought it was funny
I personally think that the Microsoft ads suck and I won't discuss why any further. But one thing that does resonate with me when I see them is that Apple has huge holes in it's lineup and the lineup leaves much to be desired. What it boils down to is:
- MacBooks: There should be a 15 and 17 inch model. Similar CPU speeds to the 13" model, and go ahead and use integrated graphics like the 9400M.
- Desktops: they're not dead yet. There needs to be a model between the Mac mini and the Pro, priced accordingly. Period.
/tired rant
- MacBooks: There should be a 10 inch model. Similar CPU speeds to the 13" model.
I guess one thing we must always consider is that Apple is a business. They like to make money and in fact they do. A lot of money. It is obvious that they don't need to make cheaper Macs. This ridiculous idea exists (mostly on the Internet) that Apple must gain dominant market share or something horrible will happen. They don't need it. More market share would be good, but not at the expense brand destruction resulting from decreasing product quality - whether perceived or real.
I don't really want to see cheaply made, low quality Macs in the marketplace. I like my six year old 867mHz Powerbook that works perfectly. When I'm ready for a new computer I want it to be the same Mac quality - not PC quality.
I guess one thing we must always consider is that Apple is a business. They like to make money and in fact they do. A lot of money. It is obvious that they don't need to make cheaper Macs. This ridiculous idea exists (mostly on the Internet) that Apple must gain dominant market share or something horrible will happen. They don't need it. More market share would be good, but not at the expense brand destruction resulting from decreasing product quality - whether perceived or real.
I don't really want to see cheaply made, low quality Macs in the marketplace. I like my six year old 867mHz Powerbook that works perfectly. When I'm ready for a new computer I want it to be the same Mac quality - not PC quality.
The only problem is if your market share falls to such dire levels that you have trouble attracting developers. Even then the only real concern is making sure a few big titles stay put (Office, Photoshop and the like), since an installed user base in the tens of millions is going to mean there is plenty of money to be made for people who want to write high quality, innovative software, regardless of market share-- as the Mac ecosystem demonstrates.
Plus, as others have noted, the emergence of the iPhone/Touch OS, and whatever devices likely to come, means that the Mac development world is growing in ways that the "Mac" market share doesn't capture.
So: absolutely. Apple can continue to cruise along, flirting with 10% share, and continue to make tons of money and building the devices they are interested in making.
I am an avid Mac user. Have been for years, went the way of the pc for a moment and now back to Mac.
That having been said, I have to say this report is an interesting manufactured propaganda to counter an equally not well manufactured propaganda.
Yes, there may be proof the MS/HP ads are faked, but take into account people are stupid and not everyone reads apple insider or even follow the links from google news, so MS/HP are only providing the additional justification for the uninformed whom cannot pay the premium Macs are retailed at.
To be honest, if my wife didn't have a computer purchase plan are her place of employment, we wouldn't have our 24 inch 2.8 Ghz iMac extreme, that came out just before the 3.0 Ghz update.
So MS/HP have done something that is underhanded.
So what?
It's to be expected. If you make a substandard product but want it bought you put more into advertising it than making a better product.
BOSE anyone?
All of that not withstanding, Apple makes mistakes too, so lets not all be fanboys.
Example: Why do none of the Macs come equipped with an HDMI port? Because Apple wants us to use their proprietary Mini Display port? What is that? A DVI port with a different connector?
it doesn't transmit sound, and neither does the DVI. What? Use the headphone jack? What about surround sound?
What's the point of digital surround without the ability to listen on it with anything other than headphones? What's the point of all those HD downloads in iTunes if you can't fully experience them? Most Flat panel televisions come with a PC serial port. That can't be utilized with a Mac. With ANY Mac, except maybe the Pro.
That's sort of like castrating your customers, isn't it?
Most PCs are now equipped with HDMI out of the box as a standard peripheral now, so why not the Macs?
Now, before anyone says it, I know the answer: Buy an apple TV.
But that's about as shady and underhanded as MS/HP, isn't it?
My point is mud will be slung by both parties, about as freely as they were in the last election, and in the end it will mean nothing as its all just a show. People will still by Macs because they can afford them and wonder why people agonize over windows and PCs.
People will still buy PCs because they're cheap and sneer at us "ELITISTS" who can afford to buy Macs.
Ultra geeks will still buy and build their boxes and run many flavors of LINUX on them.
And ALL of these people will still buy or salivate over iPods or iPhones, and connect them to their Macs, PCs, or work Macs or PCs.
And Ultimately NONE of this will get Matroska files to run on my PS3, because Sony knows THAT WILL CUT INTO BLU-RAY SALES.
I am an avid Mac user. Have been for years, went the way of the pc for a moment and now back to Mac.
That having been said, I have to say this report is an interesting manufactured propaganda to counter an equally not well manufactured propaganda.
Yes, there may be proof the MS/HP ads are faked, but take into account people are stupid and not everyone reads apple insider or even follow the links from google news, so MS/HP are only providing the additional justification for the uninformed whom cannot pay the premium Macs are retailed at.
To be honest, if my wife didn't have a computer purchase plan are her place of employment, we wouldn't have our 24 inch 2.8 Ghz iMac extreme, that came out just before the 3.0 Ghz update.
So MS/HP have done something that is underhanded.
So what?
It's to be expected. If you make a substandard product but want it bought you put more into advertising it than making a better product.
BOSE anyone?
All of that not withstanding, Apple makes mistakes too, so lets not all be fanboys.
Example: Why do none of the Macs come equipped with an HDMI port? Because Apple wants us to use their proprietary Mini Display port? What is that? A DVI port with a different connector?
it doesn't transmit sound, and neither does the DVI. What? Use the headphone jack? What about surround sound?
What's the point of digital surround without the ability to listen on it with anything other than headphones? What's the point of all those HD downloads in iTunes if you can't fully experience them? Most Flat panel televisions come with a PC serial port. That can't be utilized with a Mac. With ANY Mac, except maybe the Pro.
That's sort of like castrating your customers, isn't it?
Most PCs are now equipped with HDMI out of the box as a standard peripheral now, so why not the Macs?
Now, before anyone says it, I know the answer: Buy an apple TV.
But that's about as shady and underhanded as MS/HP, isn't it?
My point is mud will be slung by both parties, about as freely as they were in the last election, and in the end it will mean nothing as its all just a show. People will still by Macs because they can afford them and wonder why people agonize over windows and PCs.
People will still buy PCs because they're cheap and sneer at us "ELITISTS" who can afford to buy Macs.
Ultra geeks will still buy and build their boxes and run many flavors of LINUX on them.
And ALL of these people will still buy or salivate over iPods or iPhones, and connect them to their Macs, PCs, or work Macs or PCs.
And Ultimately NONE of this will get Matroska files to run on my PS3, because Sony knows THAT WILL CUT INTO BLU-RAY SALES.
Sorta gettin' the picture now?
Every Mac does optical out on the headphone port with the right connector, so you needn't worry about getting surround out to your system.
I guess by "serial connector" you mean VGA? Any Mac can connect to a VGA port with a cheap adapter. Although I'm not sure why I'd ever want to use it, since it's just there to accommodate all those legacy PCs with no other options, and anyone who has a machine with a more up to date video out (including every Mac) would use the HDMI or DVI for the improved image quality.
HDMI would be slightly tidier, but it's not as if Macs are hopelessly crippled in this respect.
Comments
For me it's the choice of "two buck chuck" or splurging for the $8 stuff.
Now there's an analogy I can live with. But, in my mind it is more of a distinction, say, between your $8 bottle of the splurge versus a 1990 Silver Oak Cabernet Savignon Napa Valley at $155 per bottle. If you cannot taste the difference at this level, then by all means stick to your Budweiser.
If you want to take it to the high end, I would consider a top of the line PC to be a lower end Silver Oak vintage, say the 1993 Cabernet at $94, while the top of the line Mac would be a 1986 Chateau Lafite Rothschild at $974 per bottle. At this level, it is more about knowing that you know the difference, rather than throwing specs around. For many, they cannot taste the difference, so they consider the extra money to be thrown away. Those that do not understand the difference, nor care to learn about the difference, will revert back to the lowest denominator, price, and judge everything else on that basis alone.
Damn it. Now all of a sudden I have this urge to go out and buy a nice bottle of wine!
Maybe it's because you were in a rush that you did not have time to google it (or, like wilco, you just did not know), but here are some links, fyi:
http://duckproducts.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_tape_(disambiguation)
I could go on, but this should do.....
Well I be danged. All this time I thought Duck tape was what the University of Oregon football players used when getting ready to play.
the Nazis
Godwins's Law
fucknuts with an axe to grind
Apple enthusiast
stupid strawman
it makes baby jesus throw himself out the nearest window.
Now I know just how big a Mac enthusiast you really are. Only a truly creative person could come up with such a barrage of imagery in one post.
Statements I take issue with:
Except Psystar :P
ckh1272 says-"Wrong"
Yea sure you can take it to them and they will tell you to buy ANOTHER Mac or they wont touch it unless you paid for AppleCare.
ckh1272 says-"wrong again"
The original article was written to attack specifically HP, while if Hesseldahl was someone worth noting he would have done his research and realized that Apple just hired IBM's top chip expert. So obviously IBM builds GREAT machines for cheap they just arent pretty looking. Which paying hundreds of dollars for looks is totally up to personal preference and not everyone wants a pretty laptop that will die in 3 years.
I use to support the underdog (Apple) for being different and better, but since they are climbing the ladder they are acting like they are the Big Dog and everyone else sucks. I mean how annoying is a bunch of cocky script kiddies?
ckh1272-"wrong again and again". Thanks for playing the troll game. We have some excellent parting gifts for you like a new life. Get yours while you can!!
Asking for $30 to turn quicktime from a fully functional media player to a media player and a video editing/encoding program isn't the same as asking for $99 to enable 5.1 sound on a blu-ray player.
Not exactly..but that $99 upgrade does more than just enable 5.1 surround as well.
I tell my PC friends the same thing about cheap components and price of software and resolution, but they are happy with their cheap shit.
It's like trying to get someone to go into a wine shop and select a $50 bottle of wine, when they are just as happy with a $10 bottle from the grocery store. It's just not worth the effort.
Actually, it's really like only a bottle of wine that is 20 vs 7 dollars (but you get 50 for your 20 in the long run!) . . . "2buckchuck vs 8 dollarrs" comment = funny . . . heehee
Well, MS has started quite a campaign -- some people really don't drink wine -- so, like we're now going to have a whole generation of young shoppers soon strung out like wino's on the cheap stuff . . . ok, actually, the younger gen probably gets computers better than the older folk out there . . .
Hmm.
Actually, it's really like only a bottle of wine that is 20 vs 7 dollars (but you get 50 for your 20 in the long run!) . . . "2buckchuck vs 8 dollarrs" comment = funny . . . heehee
Well, MS has started quite a campaign -- some people really don't drink wine -- so, like we're now going to have a whole generation of young shoppers soon strung out like wino's on the cheap stuff . . . ok, actually, the younger gen probably gets computers better than the older folk out there . . .
Hmm.
I agree Microsoft's ads are ill-thought, but so is this analogy.
It's actually more like this: Someone goes and gets some tires, and one brand only has good tires that are pricey, and another brand has different levels of quality at different prices, and someone who only drives to work and back buys the cheapest tires because it's all they need. Why would someone spend 1500 on a mac laptop when all they want to do is get on aol and check email?
If I were in Microsoft's shoes, I'd compare laptops at the same exact price point, not a $700 to a $1500 one. I wouldn't be trying to show that PC's hold the lowest price point.
For everyone here who keeps trying to say PC's are just cheap shit, PC's don't just come in that bottom level price, they get really advanced and you can get great stuff for your money. So yeah, when you compare a $700 pc latop to a $1500 mac laptop, the mac would be better. I should hope so. When you compare them at the same exact price, the PC isn't some piece of shit trailing behind.
...They are dumbing down things unfortunately. And I feel that it alienates some of the base. Even the iLife suite could be improved by having some sort of advanced mode that could allow for better filtering, organization...
I know Bruce Tognazzini is sort of a "graybeard" with too much history between him and Apple (and Apple fans), but he wrote a couple of articles about counterproductive simplicity that I think are quite relevant to OS X. I drop them here as food for thought:
http://www.asktog.com/columns/075App...landPart1.html
http://www.asktog.com/columns/076App...landPart2.html
I do think that Leopard was a small disaster in several usability areas. For one, all our Dock "muscle memory" was turned against us; the new black elements in the UI are too contrasty; the new standard home user folders are undistinguishable from each other in the Dock; QuickView is fairly inutile without letting us manipulate its results somehow; etc. This is just to name a few: there are LOTS of other problems that reveal how UI design in Apple turned from an usability goal to an aesthetics and Marketing one since Jobs disbanded the HIG. It is telling how UI is always the "one more thing" thing developers-wise in the final stages of a new OS X release betatest period.
Getting back to the main issue:
-Hardware-wise, the quality of a given Apple product line has too much of a chance factor: you either get a tank or a festered thing. The "beware of Rev.1s" is here for a reason. We've seen too much seesawing there in these last decades, and one would say it became prominent the moment case aesthetics became the main selling point and dictated the innards instead of the other way round: iMacs having to use laptop parts, laptop parts having to fit in extravagantly "cool" enclosures (Titanium, Unibody, whatever becomes "The new black" in materials in a few years. Isn't it funny how well WIFI works in plastic boxes vs. metal ones?); melting MagSafes; bad nVidia components; etc. Interestingly, the Mac Pros have resulted to be most "tankish" (if one forgets the noxious fumes: mine is one of these), being the most, let's say, usual PC Tower-like with less strange design ideas there (sort of).
-And there is an evident Apple Tax for memory, hard disks, cables and other accesories. The usual recommendation from an experienced Mac user to a novice one is to get the bare minimum, if the chosen system allows for that. Sadly, one cannot buy a Nehalem Mac Pro without having to fill it with Apple's RAM one way or the other. For a Pro user one would guess Apple would understand him/her wanting to configure the thing with zero extras to ensure full expandability choices (well, actually, one guesses Apple understands that all too well, and that's why one has to buy them with that overpriced useless RAM configs, instead of buying RAM to any top quality reasonable pricing memory builder).
Now. Should we discuss miniDisplayPort AKA 2008's ADC (which doesn't do audio through DP, so no possibility of full DP-to-HDMI conversion)? New SAS RAID card I/O system that excludes all current third party SATA/SAS RAID cards, all of them far more powerful that Apple's abysmal one? No hint of Blu-Ray support in the future (you can author them but you can't test them: brilliant!). The idiotic multiple-of-two slot numbers for a multiple-of-three-optimized memory subsystem in Nehalem Mac Pros? Worse performance SATA controller? The list goes on.
-One big flaw in Microsoft's ad is how they don't address the fact that many users neither will buy their PCs from top brands at (comparatively) top prices nor they will build them themselves but will buy at the nearest grand store, PC franchise shop or Pop&Mom PC store at very reasonable prices, near-commodity ones. These PCs work, they endure, and if anything goes wrong the replacement component is usually in a computer shop one block or two from home at dirt-cheap prices and a day or less repair time. Compared to THAT, both Apple's weeks time (in countries like Spain, at least, where most Apple repair services are farmed to a single company operating at four locations, and usually you have to go through a misdiagnostic stage first. And outrageous repair prices unless you AppleCare) and other companies supervariable time (the biggest the company, the best Amelie-style gnome photos your computer sents you).
-Netbooks. Of course, Microsoft hates them, Intel does too, Apple probably is trying to figure how to pimp them up to their standard margins level, but oh how "secret weapons of the Nazis" an ad it would have been. They are being so maligned: they are cheap, they are quite less powerful, etc. Well, folks: they are CUTE (a crucial factor nobody seems to dare mention), they are as low priced as to be an impulse buy, they do the job, they have form factors (down to pocketable) to fit anyone's needs, and the well-hackintoshed ones demonstrate just how big the Apple Tax is, having in account that in most cases you are paying the Windows license for their price: make them white or metallic-finish, slap an Apple logo and an OS X license, downgrade the I/O (as customary from Apple, see the MBA, grrr!) and tell me just why Apple can't do a MacBook Mini.
So, in a Dr. House-type conclusion: everybody lies. And I miss the Seinfeld ads: they were this quirky road movie that would have made great as a webisodes TV series.
(I am a Mac owner and Mac-based DTP/DTV/3D worker, and I have been an Apple user since the Apple IIe era)
When money gets tight, these up front cost differences make a huge difference. People just won't spend that extra 500$, when that is half their next month's rent.
The better response that apple should do, is to lower their goddamn prices and make a move toward much larger volume.
But that's not going to happen.
Or they could even sell OSX for 300$ in a version that works on very specific hardware. Then folks could BYOB or buy 3rd party. Shit, I'd pay 300$ if i could build a 700$ box and easily install OSX on it.
The two keys to netbooks: 1) cheap. cheap. cheap. 2) small small small.
The fact that you can get a pretty good one for 300$ is awesome. It puts it into the price range where people just buy one to see if they'd like it.
Apple needs to get on that bandwagon.
Did anybody read that? I had to quit and go play Halo for a while about 1 paragraph into it.
That's hilarious!
Apple has responded to the new Microsoft ads promoting low-cost generic PCs as a cheaper alternative to the Mac, stating "A PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want."
The comment, from Apple spokesman Bill Evans, appeared in a BusinessWeek article by Arik Hesseldahl, which examined the differences between the $699 HP notebook Microsoft recommended to its TV audience over Apple's 17" MacBook Pro, a system in a considerably higher quality and price range.
The real point here is that Apple gives you fewer choices, which probably is a good thing as far as most people are concerned: it makes their buying decision easier. It's certainly true that you can find a $700 Windows laptop with a 17" screen but your only Apple choice with this feature is an expensive MacBook Pro. It seems slightly crazy, though, to respond to this fact by arguing that a low-end buyer should spend four times as much for a Mac because it's a much better value. Instead, I would suggest that hardly anyone needs a 17" screen and an ordinary MacBook will make the low-end buyer happier than the bargain PC, and save them money overall when you include software and maintenance.
@chronster -
The two keys to netbooks: 1) cheap. cheap. cheap. 2) small small small.
The fact that you can get a pretty good one for 300$ is awesome. It puts it into the price range where people just buy one to see if they'd like it.
Apple needs to get on that bandwagon.
actually i was playing with one today at bestbuy. $279, 900mhz intel, 2gb of ram, 160gb hd. It was running xp. I tethered my touch pro to it wirelessly and was getting 1.71mbps dl speed. I was SO CLOSE to getting one.
Funny story about the mac side at best buy. I sat there playing on one for about 15 minutes, and I swear to Christ within that time at least 6 people asked if I had any questions (very oddly like they were all giddy to show me their knowledge on macs) while in the pc side only one guy asked if i needed help, and when i did have a question, he couldn't answer jack shit for me lol. Don't know what that means but i thought it was funny
I personally think that the Microsoft ads suck and I won't discuss why any further. But one thing that does resonate with me when I see them is that Apple has huge holes in it's lineup and the lineup leaves much to be desired. What it boils down to is:
- MacBooks: There should be a 15 and 17 inch model. Similar CPU speeds to the 13" model, and go ahead and use integrated graphics like the 9400M.
- Desktops: they're not dead yet. There needs to be a model between the Mac mini and the Pro, priced accordingly. Period.
/tired rant
- MacBooks: There should be a 10 inch model. Similar CPU speeds to the 13" model.
I don't really want to see cheaply made, low quality Macs in the marketplace. I like my six year old 867mHz Powerbook that works perfectly. When I'm ready for a new computer I want it to be the same Mac quality - not PC quality.
I guess one thing we must always consider is that Apple is a business. They like to make money and in fact they do. A lot of money. It is obvious that they don't need to make cheaper Macs. This ridiculous idea exists (mostly on the Internet) that Apple must gain dominant market share or something horrible will happen. They don't need it. More market share would be good, but not at the expense brand destruction resulting from decreasing product quality - whether perceived or real.
I don't really want to see cheaply made, low quality Macs in the marketplace. I like my six year old 867mHz Powerbook that works perfectly. When I'm ready for a new computer I want it to be the same Mac quality - not PC quality.
The only problem is if your market share falls to such dire levels that you have trouble attracting developers. Even then the only real concern is making sure a few big titles stay put (Office, Photoshop and the like), since an installed user base in the tens of millions is going to mean there is plenty of money to be made for people who want to write high quality, innovative software, regardless of market share-- as the Mac ecosystem demonstrates.
Plus, as others have noted, the emergence of the iPhone/Touch OS, and whatever devices likely to come, means that the Mac development world is growing in ways that the "Mac" market share doesn't capture.
So: absolutely. Apple can continue to cruise along, flirting with 10% share, and continue to make tons of money and building the devices they are interested in making.
That having been said, I have to say this report is an interesting manufactured propaganda to counter an equally not well manufactured propaganda.
Yes, there may be proof the MS/HP ads are faked, but take into account people are stupid and not everyone reads apple insider or even follow the links from google news, so MS/HP are only providing the additional justification for the uninformed whom cannot pay the premium Macs are retailed at.
To be honest, if my wife didn't have a computer purchase plan are her place of employment, we wouldn't have our 24 inch 2.8 Ghz iMac extreme, that came out just before the 3.0 Ghz update.
So MS/HP have done something that is underhanded.
So what?
It's to be expected. If you make a substandard product but want it bought you put more into advertising it than making a better product.
BOSE anyone?
All of that not withstanding, Apple makes mistakes too, so lets not all be fanboys.
Example: Why do none of the Macs come equipped with an HDMI port? Because Apple wants us to use their proprietary Mini Display port? What is that? A DVI port with a different connector?
it doesn't transmit sound, and neither does the DVI. What? Use the headphone jack? What about surround sound?
What's the point of digital surround without the ability to listen on it with anything other than headphones? What's the point of all those HD downloads in iTunes if you can't fully experience them? Most Flat panel televisions come with a PC serial port. That can't be utilized with a Mac. With ANY Mac, except maybe the Pro.
That's sort of like castrating your customers, isn't it?
Most PCs are now equipped with HDMI out of the box as a standard peripheral now, so why not the Macs?
Now, before anyone says it, I know the answer: Buy an apple TV.
But that's about as shady and underhanded as MS/HP, isn't it?
My point is mud will be slung by both parties, about as freely as they were in the last election, and in the end it will mean nothing as its all just a show. People will still by Macs because they can afford them and wonder why people agonize over windows and PCs.
People will still buy PCs because they're cheap and sneer at us "ELITISTS" who can afford to buy Macs.
Ultra geeks will still buy and build their boxes and run many flavors of LINUX on them.
And ALL of these people will still buy or salivate over iPods or iPhones, and connect them to their Macs, PCs, or work Macs or PCs.
And Ultimately NONE of this will get Matroska files to run on my PS3, because Sony knows THAT WILL CUT INTO BLU-RAY SALES.
Sorta gettin' the picture now?
I am an avid Mac user. Have been for years, went the way of the pc for a moment and now back to Mac.
That having been said, I have to say this report is an interesting manufactured propaganda to counter an equally not well manufactured propaganda.
Yes, there may be proof the MS/HP ads are faked, but take into account people are stupid and not everyone reads apple insider or even follow the links from google news, so MS/HP are only providing the additional justification for the uninformed whom cannot pay the premium Macs are retailed at.
To be honest, if my wife didn't have a computer purchase plan are her place of employment, we wouldn't have our 24 inch 2.8 Ghz iMac extreme, that came out just before the 3.0 Ghz update.
So MS/HP have done something that is underhanded.
So what?
It's to be expected. If you make a substandard product but want it bought you put more into advertising it than making a better product.
BOSE anyone?
All of that not withstanding, Apple makes mistakes too, so lets not all be fanboys.
Example: Why do none of the Macs come equipped with an HDMI port? Because Apple wants us to use their proprietary Mini Display port? What is that? A DVI port with a different connector?
it doesn't transmit sound, and neither does the DVI. What? Use the headphone jack? What about surround sound?
What's the point of digital surround without the ability to listen on it with anything other than headphones? What's the point of all those HD downloads in iTunes if you can't fully experience them? Most Flat panel televisions come with a PC serial port. That can't be utilized with a Mac. With ANY Mac, except maybe the Pro.
That's sort of like castrating your customers, isn't it?
Most PCs are now equipped with HDMI out of the box as a standard peripheral now, so why not the Macs?
Now, before anyone says it, I know the answer: Buy an apple TV.
But that's about as shady and underhanded as MS/HP, isn't it?
My point is mud will be slung by both parties, about as freely as they were in the last election, and in the end it will mean nothing as its all just a show. People will still by Macs because they can afford them and wonder why people agonize over windows and PCs.
People will still buy PCs because they're cheap and sneer at us "ELITISTS" who can afford to buy Macs.
Ultra geeks will still buy and build their boxes and run many flavors of LINUX on them.
And ALL of these people will still buy or salivate over iPods or iPhones, and connect them to their Macs, PCs, or work Macs or PCs.
And Ultimately NONE of this will get Matroska files to run on my PS3, because Sony knows THAT WILL CUT INTO BLU-RAY SALES.
Sorta gettin' the picture now?
Every Mac does optical out on the headphone port with the right connector, so you needn't worry about getting surround out to your system.
I guess by "serial connector" you mean VGA? Any Mac can connect to a VGA port with a cheap adapter. Although I'm not sure why I'd ever want to use it, since it's just there to accommodate all those legacy PCs with no other options, and anyone who has a machine with a more up to date video out (including every Mac) would use the HDMI or DVI for the improved image quality.
HDMI would be slightly tidier, but it's not as if Macs are hopelessly crippled in this respect.