16G ram and a retina screen would make the decision a lot tougher - is usb-c overdue for both the air and the mini...?
That would make the rMB obsolete.
...to me the air is almost 50% heavier, could handle a larger 1440x900 retina screen, is physically larger, and no dongles are required... Is the air more 'pro' in ways than the 13" pro? ie. much better connectivity esp. legacy environments, upgradable storage, etc ? For the ultimate in portability would the macbook still appeal to that market more than the air ?
Anyone using a 12" MacBook probably doesn't care about dongles and just uses the laptop as is...same goes for students using them in education. If USB connectivity was an issue, they wouldn't be using Crapbooks.
I'm curious why Apple doesn't just take the parts for the iMac 21" and install them in a MacMini shell with a breakout adaptor to provide the rear panel connections. It would make it much easier to support & update. They might have to modify the motherboard design slightly to accommodate both case designs, and possible tweak the case designs, too. But that would seem to be a comparatively easy way to offer a low end, up-to-date spec PC with or without display. In fact, they could do it with 2 chassis designs and offer the same thing for the 27" iMac components for a midrange desktop offering. My $0.02, as ever.
Apple wants, all companies actually, to sufficiently differentiate products such that buyers will stretch and buy the next, more expensive product in the lineup. The Mac mini starts at $500. The iMac21 starts at $1000. The 21.5” display in of itself won’t convince customers to go for a $500 upsell, or maybe even $200 from the higher end Mac mini SKU.
So, a Mac mini at $500 or $600 will have to have lower performance to make the upsell more attractive, or they have to increase the Mac mini base price to $700 to $800. This is absent what the components actually cost. Apple needs a good deal from Intel, like $80 for a 15W 3.5 GHz turbo dual-core Skylake processors to hit a $500 price point with sufficient margin. Intel’s MSRP for their low Watt processors are $250 to $400. I don’t think Intel would swing such a deal. A 50 W Core i3 sure, but Apple isn’t going to use high Watt, low performance processors on principle alone.
Upselling shouldnt be part of the equation when it comes to education. Actually I think it’s disgusting period but understand that companies will never stop doing it, especially Apple.
Yes, companies should never offer varying products with varying performance levels at varying prices! How dare they offer this...this...choice! No, we must all be EQUAL and use the SAME computing devices!
My word. It is a very good thing you are not responsible for making money for somebody.
I'm curious why Apple doesn't just take the parts for the iMac 21" and install them in a MacMini shell with a breakout adaptor to provide the rear panel connections. It would make it much easier to support & update. They might have to modify the motherboard design slightly to accommodate both case designs, and possible tweak the case designs, too. But that would seem to be a comparatively easy way to offer a low end, up-to-date spec PC with or without display. In fact, they could do it with 2 chassis designs and offer the same thing for the 27" iMac components for a midrange desktop offering. My $0.02, as ever.
Apple wants, all companies actually, to sufficiently differentiate products such that buyers will stretch and buy the next, more expensive product in the lineup. The Mac mini starts at $500. The iMac21 starts at $1000. The 21.5” display in of itself won’t convince customers to go for a $500 upsell, or maybe even $200 from the higher end Mac mini SKU.
So, a Mac mini at $500 or $600 will have to have lower performance to make the upsell more attractive, or they have to increase the Mac mini base price to $700 to $800. This is absent what the components actually cost. Apple needs a good deal from Intel, like $80 for a 15W 3.5 GHz turbo dual-core Skylake processors to hit a $500 price point with sufficient margin. Intel’s MSRP for their low Watt processors are $250 to $400. I don’t think Intel would swing such a deal. A 50 W Core i3 sure, but Apple isn’t going to use high Watt, low performance processors on principle alone.
Upselling shouldnt be part of the equation when it comes to education. Actually I think it’s disgusting period but understand that companies will never stop doing it, especially Apple.
Yes, companies should never offer varying products with varying performance levels at varying prices! How dare they offer this...this...choice! No, we must all be EQUAL and use the SAME computing devices!
My word. It is a very good thing you are not responsible for making money for somebody.
What you just said is not what upselling is. In the case of Apple they intentionally don’t provide the ‘sweet spot’ (like 128GB option) in the hopes they get people to spend more. And once they get the upsell the thought is these people will never downgrade. Neil Cybart, a former investment guy who writes about Apple estimated in 2014 that Apple not increasing the base level storage to 32GB was worth about $3B. Of course once they got enough people in the middle tier and were confident these people wouldn’t downgrade they raised it to 32GB. Yes they increased the storage at the upper levels too but they have a ton of margin to play with there.
I'm curious why Apple doesn't just take the parts for the iMac 21" and install them in a MacMini shell with a breakout adaptor to provide the rear panel connections. It would make it much easier to support & update. They might have to modify the motherboard design slightly to accommodate both case designs, and possible tweak the case designs, too. But that would seem to be a comparatively easy way to offer a low end, up-to-date spec PC with or without display. In fact, they could do it with 2 chassis designs and offer the same thing for the 27" iMac components for a midrange desktop offering. My $0.02, as ever.
Students don’t want an iMac, they want a laptop or iPad.
You’re thinking of a classroom environment...
Even in a classroom environment, we don't use desktops. Everyone is going 1 to 1 and/or BYOD. Computer labs are becoming a thing of the past as they're simply not needed when everyone already has a computer they carry around with them throughout the day.
Two problems there: 1) Not everybody has a laptop. 2) Lack of homogeneity of hardware and software (including OS's) make classroom learning almost impossible.
Schools simply don't have the ability to support any and every hardware device that might show up.
If Apple wants to focus more and capture EDUCATION market than offer at least ONE GO-TO 13" and 15" Macbook Air,Macbook and Macbook Pro with reasonable Spec at reasonable Price. For example, without touch strip 13" Macbook Pro with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD should not cost more than $1299. Still not cheap comparing to similar spec Windows laptop but still affordable,usable MAC laptops for the mass market like high-schools, Universities, casual and small businesses. Get rid of 128GB and give USB Type-C Ports on both side.
How is $1,299 "affordable" -- when they can get the same functionality from a Chromebook for $1,000 less?
For an average school of 500 students, that's a savings of half a million dollars -- or equipping 4 schools for the price of one.
If Apple keeps the MBA name and adds a retina screen to it they’d basically be admitting the rMB is a failure and there would be zero reason for it to exist. This device would also cannibalize sales of the rMBP sans TouchBar. My guess is either Apple is working on a cheaper rMB that maybe doesn’t have as good of a display as the current rMB models do.
Keeping the Air around is nuts and just makes their laptop lineup very confusing. They need to go back to Steve’s grid of consumer/pro, desktop/laptop and stop confusing the lineup by keeping old products around or (creating new ones) just to fit certain price points. Keep it simple stupid. And if they have to give up some margin to take on Google in the classroom then do it. The last thing Apple should want is students being all in on the Google ecosystem.
What if they made it education only? No educational institutions are going to purchase 12" MacBooks for their students, even if the price was lower.
Apple has made education only Macs before. I know it pisses people off sometimes because its something they want and can't have but if Apple can make an education specific Mac for a decent price it could end up well for Apple. I don't foresee Apple ever making a true Google CrapBook competitor at the same price point.
I’d be all for an education only Mac or iPad with the sole purpose to be taking share from Google in the classroom.
That won’t happen anytime soon. Google has better productivity software. If you compare Apple Pages, Numbers, Keynote the only one that is excellent is Keynote, however it doesn’t matter because Google has built an ecosystem for collaborative productivity and is much more elegantly integrated in their cloud services. It’s great for businesses and schools, especially when paired with their Chrome books. We don’t need to layout ‘beautiful letters’. That’s old fashioned. Nice for mommy who wants to send a birthday card and use a template to stick a photo of their kids in a pink flowery frame, but the general public is passed that stage. People want to be productive. Apple’s productivity software is stuck in the past, the 90s and 20s era. If Apple wants to capture the educational market, they have to focus on software and cloud services, not just new and cheaper hardware.
I'm curious why Apple doesn't just take the parts for the iMac 21" and install them in a MacMini shell with a breakout adaptor to provide the rear panel connections. It would make it much easier to support & update. They might have to modify the motherboard design slightly to accommodate both case designs, and possible tweak the case designs, too. But that would seem to be a comparatively easy way to offer a low end, up-to-date spec PC with or without display. In fact, they could do it with 2 chassis designs and offer the same thing for the 27" iMac components for a midrange desktop offering. My $0.02, as ever.
Students don’t want an iMac, they want a laptop or iPad.
You’re thinking of a classroom environment...
Even in a classroom environment, we don't use desktops. Everyone is going 1 to 1 and/or BYOD. Computer labs are becoming a thing of the past as they're simply not needed when everyone already has a computer they carry around with them throughout the day.
Two problems there: 1) Not everybody has a laptop. 2) Lack of homogeneity of hardware and software (including OS's) make classroom learning almost impossible.
Schools simply don't have the ability to support any and every hardware device that might show up.
Thats why you don't support it. You make it clear that if you BYOD, the school is not responsible for technical support beyond putting it on the network and we use a separate BYOD network for these devices so we control who connects to the network. Also, they need to have some sort of antivirus on them as well. This is what we did and it works outs fine. Never an issue.
Many schools are doing 1 to 1 initiatives versus BYOD so again, computer labs and rolling carts are not needed as much anymore. Trust me, these will be a thing of the past sooner rather than later.
If Apple wants to focus more and capture EDUCATION market than offer at least ONE GO-TO 13" and 15" Macbook Air,Macbook and Macbook Pro with reasonable Spec at reasonable Price. For example, without touch strip 13" Macbook Pro with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD should not cost more than $1299. Still not cheap comparing to similar spec Windows laptop but still affordable,usable MAC laptops for the mass market like high-schools, Universities, casual and small businesses. Get rid of 128GB and give USB Type-C Ports on both side.
How is $1,299 "affordable" -- when they can get the same functionality from a Chromebook for $1,000 less?
For an average school of 500 students, that's a savings of half a million dollars -- or equipping 4 schools for the price of one.
Crapbooks don't do anything except run Chrome which is fine if all you do is need a browser, but anything else its a cheap POS. IMO, they're not worth it in the end and you spend more than just buying a good computer that will do anything.
If Apple wants to focus more and capture EDUCATION market than offer at least ONE GO-TO 13" and 15" Macbook Air,Macbook and Macbook Pro with reasonable Spec at reasonable Price. For example, without touch strip 13" Macbook Pro with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD should not cost more than $1299. Still not cheap comparing to similar spec Windows laptop but still affordable,usable MAC laptops for the mass market like high-schools, Universities, casual and small businesses. Get rid of 128GB and give USB Type-C Ports on both side.
How is $1,299 "affordable" -- when they can get the same functionality from a Chromebook for $1,000 less?
For an average school of 500 students, that's a savings of half a million dollars -- or equipping 4 schools for the price of one.
Crapbooks don't do anything except run Chrome which is fine if all you do is need a browser, but anything else its a cheap POS. IMO, they're not worth it in the end and you spend more than just buying a good computer that will do anything.
That's true... But, Apparently the schools disagree with your assessment -- because their needs and priorities are different from yours: The Chromebooks meet their needs at much less cost -- so they have most of the market at this point.
Comments
Anyone using a 12" MacBook probably doesn't care about dongles and just uses the laptop as is...same goes for students using them in education. If USB connectivity was an issue, they wouldn't be using Crapbooks.
My word. It is a very good thing you are not responsible for making money for somebody.
https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2014/12/18/apple-will-save-3-billion-in-2015-by-selling-16gb-iphone-66-plus
Anyway the purpose of upselling for Apple is not about choice but about extracting more $$ from their customers.
1) Not everybody has a laptop.
2) Lack of homogeneity of hardware and software (including OS's) make classroom learning almost impossible.
Schools simply don't have the ability to support any and every hardware device that might show up.
For an average school of 500 students, that's a savings of half a million dollars -- or equipping 4 schools for the price of one.
We don’t need to layout ‘beautiful letters’. That’s old fashioned. Nice for mommy who wants to send a birthday card and use a template to stick a photo of their kids in a pink flowery frame, but the general public is passed that stage. People want to be productive. Apple’s productivity software is stuck in the past, the 90s and 20s era.
If Apple wants to capture the educational market, they have to focus on software and cloud services, not just new and cheaper hardware.
Many schools are doing 1 to 1 initiatives versus BYOD so again, computer labs and rolling carts are not needed as much anymore. Trust me, these will be a thing of the past sooner rather than later.
Crapbooks don't do anything except run Chrome which is fine if all you do is need a browser, but anything else its a cheap POS. IMO, they're not worth it in the end and you spend more than just buying a good computer that will do anything.
Apparently the schools disagree with your assessment -- because their needs and priorities are different from yours: The Chromebooks meet their needs at much less cost -- so they have most of the market at this point.