. . . All it would take are some machines modeled on the Sun Rays: A G3, a cheap graphics chip, ethernet (or 802.11g if it ever appears), USB mouse and keyboard, and a couple of display options.
That just leaves one question, and one that will mean this never happens: Who the hell would buy them?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, a G3 and on-board, lower-performance video circuitry will mean it cannot take too many sales from the iMac and eMac. However, I'd like to give another pitch for just USB I/O ports, but include two PCI slots. A business or school could choose either Ethernet or wireless network by selecting the right PCI card. It also allows adding FireWire and/or modem if customers need it. PCI cards give more flexibility, and likely lower the base selling price. It would be interesting to know the cost difference for either two PCI slots, or including all these items: Ethernet, FireWire, modem and the support pieces for adding an AirPort card. The PCI approach also allows for GHz Ethernet, should a business have such a network.
To address the question of who would buy such a Mac, schools are the obvious number one answer. Having it available for business means Apple can also start making inroads into this market. But wait, that's not all, as the TV man says. With a modem card, this would make a low end home computer for things like email and word processing. With two PCI slots, this would be a great hobby computer, or a controller for lab equipment or displays. Basically, all the dumb little jobs people now buy a cheap PC to do could be done with this Mac. If the Mac platform is to become ubiquitous, used everywhere, there must be such a model.
Take the guts out of the iBook, stick it in a white box, sell it without a monitor for $599 and everyone is happy!</strong><hr></blockquote>
If you are truely the buisness man you claim to be you should realize that if you took the "guts" out of an iBook, and put it in a new case there is no way that you could sell it for $599, since the iBook sells for $999. Given that Apple might have a little room to wiggle with higher marging, they might be able to still make a profit at $899, and possibly at $799. Even if they took the 12" screen off and sold it without a monitor, the R&D costs as well as production costs of yet another model (MoBo, case, packaging, inventory backlog, etc) would probably keep it up above that $599 target you set, and they kill their margins, without a garentee of a sales increase, but an extreamly good chance that iMac sales would go down.
Apple would be best served to come up with a "consumer tower" or a reinvented Cube with a target low end of $999-$1199. Keep the eMac and shoot for an intro price of $699-$799. The only problem is that they still have to rely on a number of second party salesmen who will still stear customers to the low end PC's because that is what they have/know.
Yes and no, there's absolutely no reason to pay the miniturization/efficiency premium of a portable design in making an affordable headless mac. I think he might have meant more like an iBook level specification. Once you chuck the screen and the battery, use a 3.5 HDD and full size desktop optical, you're probably getting down to a very cheap system, add the use of regular dimms for a few more dollars of savings too. 599 is not out of the question. But why? The G3 should already be retired, at the very least this altivecless version should be (if IBM ever makes a Sahara 2, we'll see.) The ONLY reason it is still used is to protect PowerBook margins. The weight and/or heat/power consumption arguments are just excuses. The Powerbook, with a much larger screen, manages to weigh about the same and return similar battery life. The current iBooks could most certainly house a G4, they do not because Apple needs a reason to sell you a TiBook.
As for the desktops:
It's much better to take a G4 mobo and cut it down to a minimal case with AGP, DIMMS, and CPU Daughtercard, one optical bay and 1 HDD bay and standard Mac I/O. No monitor, small, not even the fanless engineering feats of the cube to possibly increase costs. Just a nicely styled small basic box with easily upgradeable video, CPU, memory, and drive components. That's it.
The cube was really very very close to the perfect switcher machine, untill Apple went and put a price on it. Basically the thing should cost about what an eMac/iMac costs, minus the retail value of their displays (not Apple retail, though, or then they would have to sell them for nothing.) 799-1499 low end to high end. No duals, but a nice SP config at the high end with a very big HDD and superdrive and the fastest single CPU/FSB available with full L3 cache enabled.
Today, that system would look like a cubish box with a Superdrive, 80-100GB HDD, a 1.25Ghz G4 w/2MB L3 and 2 or 3 DDR DIMMS, 1 AGP slot with a middling good card (64MB GF4MX), no PCI slots, and no monitor. 1499. Something with a single 867, 30GB HDD, 32MB GF2MX, and a read only DVD could sell for 799, easy.
Apple will change their pricing structure and anti-expansion orthodoxy or they will continue to slowly lose market-share.
In such a basic G3 desktop there would be no need for the expensive laptop components, take out the expensive LCD, slim CD-ROM, Radeon Mobility and 2.5" hard drive and replace them with standard inexpensive desktop components and you have taken $400 off the price in one swoop
And I have a very hard time believing Apple is selling the $999 iBook without their regular margin
I just had to talk my dad out of getting a $599 Dell. His Mac is getting old. He said to me that he doesn?t do a lot of graphics and doesn?t see the need to spend $1000. He has never bought anything but Apple and preaches Apple merits up and down even though he really doesn?t have much Winblows experience.
To be blunt there is no comparison. That $599 will get you a damn good box running a good os that runs faster and is more plug and play then what Apple is offering in the hardware and os dept. XP is as user friendly if not more then OS X and is very responsive in comparison.
This doesn?t make me happy at all as a stockholder or a devote user and someone looking to spend a couple of grand on a new Box that can give me as much power as I can get and have to last me three years. (I have never worked on a computer on ether side of the fence that has come close to having too much power). Did I mention I hate Microsoft.
I think the cost factor boils down to the lack of processor choices by Apple. Apple doesn?t have the whole line covered with the likes of 2Ghz Celerons/ 1Ghz Durons to 3GhzPIV/Xeons and 2.8+ Thunderbirds and everything in-between.
They can?t really offer that much depth in their line up if they don?t have the parts to work with. Pisses me off to no end.
It?s going to be hard until the first 970 revs come out. I seriously pray they are out no later then 2Q 2003 or 3Q, which of course is way over optimistic.
FSCk Motorola with thinking they will be saving the day.
If having to talk my dad out of going to the dark side is any indication of the overall market then???
I just had to talk my dad out of getting a $599 Dell. His Mac is getting old. He said to me that he doesn?t do a lot of graphics and doesn?t see the need to spend $1000. . .
</strong><hr></blockquote>
My experience too. The only three people I know who owned older Macs all switched to Windows in the last 18 months. The last one got the $599 Dell a week or so ago.
<strong>All you cheap computer market share people have to remember some things. Apple (I believe) is not only looking to gain market share, but get a certain kind of Switcher. Apple consumers are smarter, better educated, and more wealthy. Selling an olf iMac to grandma for little to know profit, means she does not have a lot of money and will probably die before she would need to upgrade. What is the point.</strong><hr></blockquote>
apple needs to remember that the wealthy do not make up the majority in this world. the middleclass do. and the average middleclass blow joe will look at the price tag along with his 9 PC buddies behind him telling him what to get. if apple really wants 10% marketshare they NEED a sub $500 computer. even if they take a loss on profit it would be worth it. just to get the marketshare growth.
"Should Apple introduce a new Mac system for $399?"
No. This price is too low. Apple does not have the market share to properly counteract the monetary losses that will come from competing against Dell, Compaq, HP, and eMachines.
What should Apple's Pricing be?
eMac.......$799.99
iMac 15"...$999.99
iMac 17"...$1299.99
Where the %!@# did those numbers come from?
The eMac price is equivilent to the iMac price a couple of years ago. The G3 iMac is obselete, and is no longer advertised except on the Apple website. Moreover, most PCs advertised in the weekly Best Buy and Circuit City ads end up at around $600 - $800 when the cost of a monitor is added.
The iMacs contain many of the same internals as the eMac. The exception being the LCD screen. It is not unreasonable to assume that since (off the shelf, retail) 15" LCD monitors are selling for roughly $200 more than an (off the shelf, retail) 17" CRT, that Apple's profits would be consistent between the eMac and 15" iMac with this pricing scheme.
For the 17" iMac, see the above paragraph, but relate the 17" LCD to the 15" LCD.
About "Thin Clients"
Let's suppose that Apple created the $399.99 cMac. Go ahead and put whatever "low cost" hardware you want into it and hook a 1000 or so of them up to an XServe. Will a hospital buy the system? Will a university? Will Honeywell? How about a city planning agency?
Heck no. And here's why.
No matter HOW cheap you make the hardware, the simple fact is that Apple does not have enough of a development presence to convince business and industry that it can support their software needs.
Microsoft Office is a VERY MINOR piece of business software here in America. Most businesses and industries have thousands of "in-house" or "PC-only" custom software programs that they use on a daily basis.
Hospitals have specific RECORDS software. Libraries have specific INVENTORY software. Engineering firms have specific BOARD LAYOUT software. Et-cetera...
Um, so?
The point is that even IF industry made the shift to the cMac, there would be very FEW developers who could supply them with the necessary software to do their daily jobs.
You must fundamentally understand that the Macintosh is a very "developmentally-starved" platform. There are only a handful of custom development firms for OSX application software, and there are only TWO ways to learn how to program on the Macintosh:
1) Buy a book and "teach yourself"
2) Attend a "training session" at a faraway Ranch that costs over $1500 and requires you to spend a full week there and bring your own hardware.
The Alternative?
The reason why business and industry are so apt to choose the PC over the Macintosh is that there are Millions of developers and Thousands of private development firms that do nothing but make custom software solutions.
If Apple really wants to break into business and industry, they need to make sure that a Cocoa Programming Solution is taught at every major Community College and University in this country. They need to ENCOURAGE people to take the courses (re: discount on Hardware), and to become certified.
Market Share
To me, the whole point of the, "Should Macs be cheaper, " discussion is the impact on Market Share.
Would a less-expensive Macintosh be able to sell more easily to more consumers who would, in turn, purchase more Macintosh products in the future and "sell" the MacOS platform to others?
<strong>Microsoft Office is a VERY MINOR piece of business software here in America. Most businesses and industries have thousands of "in-house" or "PC-only" custom software programs that they use on a daily basis.
Hospitals have specific RECORDS software...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can certainly attest to this. We have over 200 applications that were written by almost as many vendors for DOS/Windows only. Trying to get a (non-profit) hospital to switch to an all Mac platform would be insanely difficult. All of those applications would have to be re-written or abandoned for something similar or Open (java-based, web-based, etc). I could only imagine the cost of this. :eek:
It would be good incentive and a smart decision to replace all of those applications with Open ones, however, and thus we come to a point that most people overlook. Convincing the people who are in charge of approving the task. More and more, IT people like myself are frustrated by the lack of solid understanding of direction of technology. They are overwhelmed and, more often than not, sold by a Microsoft Rep that switching all services to Windows xx (you pick a version) is the way to go. While I understand the market share and developer backing, it boggles my mind.
Case in point, our hospital is in the middle of such an undertaking. We are replacing a dozen or so Netware email/file/print/application servers with Windows versions of the same services. Our implementation is set to cost roughly $25 million dollars, corporate-wide, while our corporate spending on Novell services was $600,000 per year. Of course, we are WAY over budget, because the Microsoft Reps hide so many, many costs. Hardware they were more or less up front about, but training, extra staffing, and various XP bugs have led us to probably a $30 million dollar tag. That is going to take us 50 Years! to recoupe. Does that make sense?
The move toward Open systems is the only way out of the Microsoft (or insert the vendor you are smothered by) stranglehold! Why do you think their fight with Sun was the real key to Court battles over the past 3 years? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
I think Stagflation Steve hit on a very good idea and price, using the iBook board with less expensive drives in a box without monitor. It would be a quick and easy way for Apple to try out the concept, with not too much engineering expense. If it works, they can start to knock out yet more costs, and refine the product.
My only concern is that the video may be too good, and it would take sales from the eMac and iMac. After all, just add a cheap LCD display and the customer almost has low price iMac capability. If Apple can keep it degraded just enough it would still be great in schools and to encourage enterprise to start using Macs. Also, those three former Mac users who now have a cheap Windows box would not have switched, I would bet. They all liked the Mac, but could not justify the cost for their limited needs. I am going to look at the $599 Dell the last one bought and see what I think. Once they switch, it is unlikely they will switch back sooner than 5 to 10 years. They kept their Macs a long time.
So, what do you think can promote the Mac platform, increase popularity and marketshare?
I'll answer first:
What makes the Mac popular amongst most consumers is its ease of use, the iApps, its simple connectivity concept - no legacy ports - and its beautiful design and love for the details - my the poweradapter currently shipped is the best one I know.
The shortcomings I encounter are lack of certain software products - an eDonkey-client for example - and the lack of support and interest on the hardware industries' side. It is hard to integrate OS X into existing infrastructure: Cisco for example provides its IPSec Client for OS X with out GUI and without an easy to use installer.
And sometimes it is Apple's fault because they cut features. Ever tried to use PPPoE on your Airport card (!) to access a wireless network? In Windows you just bind protocol to the network interface and there you go.
Or Mail's IMAP support.
And this annoyes schools and small businesses, too. They usually don't benefit from iApps in any way. Although this might change with iCal, iSync, Mac OS X Server and whether Apple is going to forge them together and make a decent easy-to-use-and-administer secure groupware - the killer app for businesses.
Businesses and educational institutions demand affordable solutions tailored to thier individual needs. This is what Apple needs to address.
Apple should seek cooperation with third parties the way they cooperate with Sony-Ericsson.
Concerning developer support, I think that Apple does fairly well with their ADC programm.
It loads down all of your mail off the server in a POP-style instead of just the headers.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Seriously? That sucks. I only had a very brief look at Mail.app up to now, but this would definitely be a complete show-stopper for me, as I do have some IMAP folders with several thousand mails in them.
With regard to IMAP functionality on OS X... I grabbed this off the O'Reilly Network. And this applied back in May. I'll assume that the support only got better.
To help keep things efficient, Mail.app keeps local caches of your IMAP accounts' content, even though the "real" messages reside on the server. By default, an account's cache lives in Library/Mail/IMAP within your Home folder, unless you specified a different folder when you created the account (see the section called "Account Directory"). Every account gets its own folder there, named IMAP/account name. Note the similarity between the structure of this folder on my Mac, and that of my actual, server-side IMAP mailboxes seen in Figure 4.
Through the Message caching: pull-down menu, you can specify how much of your incoming email Mail.app should cache, and when it should cache it:
-Cache all messages and attachments locally
This will direct Mail.app to download the entirety of every new message upon connection. This will allow you to read these messages and their attachments when offline, much as you can do through a POP account.
NOTE: This is the default selection for a new Mail.app IMAP account. **
-Cache messages bodies locally
When selected, Mail.app will cache all new messages' text bodies, as well as a list of any attachments for each, but not the attachments themselves (unless they're relatively small). If you specifically request to see a message's attachment (by clicking on the attachment's icon in the message view window), Mail.app will fetch a fresh copy from the server for you.
This is a good choice if you like the convenience that having all your textual email stored locally (which allows nice features like indexing and searching), but would like to avoid downloading large attachments you might not always want.
-Cache messages when read
This directs Mail.app to hold off on any message caching when fetching new mail. It will display new mail in the message list as usual, but doesn't actually fetch a message's content until you select one for reading. Once it loads a message, Mail.app places its body into the cache. Subsequent visits to this message will read from the cached copy (unless the server's version of the message changes).Like the previous menu choice, this does not cache large attachments.\t
-Don't cache any messages
Finally, this selection tells Mail.app to forget about caching entirely. Every time you access a message, Mail.app will fetch its contents from the server anew, regardless of whether you've read it before.\t]]]
<strong>So, what do you think can promote the Mac platform, increase popularity and marketshare?
I'll answer first:
What makes the Mac popular amongst most consumers is its ease of use, the iApps, its simple connectivity concept - no legacy ports - and its beautiful design and love for the details - my the poweradapter currently shipped is the best one I know.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
USB is turning into a legacy port - look at the PCs that have come out this year: USB2....
USB is turning into a legacy port - look at the PCs that have come out this year: USB2....
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Maybe USB 1 is getting a little old but USB 2 is backwards compatible and uses the same connectors... it is not really as much a legacy port as those big old Centronics - parallel -, PS/2 - mouse and keyboard - or RS 323 - serial - connectors. And there are no pins inside them to bend or break.
Many posts about somehow downgrading one or another Mac to make a low cost version that will not take sales away from the existing product line.
Will someone explain how this works in the wintel world? If you can buy a $399 or $599 or $x99 pc then why does anyone buy a pc for $1,500 or $2,500 or $3,500 or more?
Seems I recently saw a newspaper article saying that college kids were buying pcs in the $1,500 range because they wanted multimedia and gaming features and such. Can't you do that on a cheap pc?
Comments
<strong>
. . . All it would take are some machines modeled on the Sun Rays: A G3, a cheap graphics chip, ethernet (or 802.11g if it ever appears), USB mouse and keyboard, and a couple of display options.
That just leaves one question, and one that will mean this never happens: Who the hell would buy them?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, a G3 and on-board, lower-performance video circuitry will mean it cannot take too many sales from the iMac and eMac. However, I'd like to give another pitch for just USB I/O ports, but include two PCI slots. A business or school could choose either Ethernet or wireless network by selecting the right PCI card. It also allows adding FireWire and/or modem if customers need it. PCI cards give more flexibility, and likely lower the base selling price. It would be interesting to know the cost difference for either two PCI slots, or including all these items: Ethernet, FireWire, modem and the support pieces for adding an AirPort card. The PCI approach also allows for GHz Ethernet, should a business have such a network.
To address the question of who would buy such a Mac, schools are the obvious number one answer. Having it available for business means Apple can also start making inroads into this market. But wait, that's not all, as the TV man says. With a modem card, this would make a low end home computer for things like email and word processing. With two PCI slots, this would be a great hobby computer, or a controller for lab equipment or displays. Basically, all the dumb little jobs people now buy a cheap PC to do could be done with this Mac. If the Mac platform is to become ubiquitous, used everywhere, there must be such a model.
<strong>
Take the guts out of the iBook, stick it in a white box, sell it without a monitor for $599 and everyone is happy!</strong><hr></blockquote>
If you are truely the buisness man you claim to be you should realize that if you took the "guts" out of an iBook, and put it in a new case there is no way that you could sell it for $599, since the iBook sells for $999. Given that Apple might have a little room to wiggle with higher marging, they might be able to still make a profit at $899, and possibly at $799. Even if they took the 12" screen off and sold it without a monitor, the R&D costs as well as production costs of yet another model (MoBo, case, packaging, inventory backlog, etc) would probably keep it up above that $599 target you set, and they kill their margins, without a garentee of a sales increase, but an extreamly good chance that iMac sales would go down.
Apple would be best served to come up with a "consumer tower" or a reinvented Cube with a target low end of $999-$1199. Keep the eMac and shoot for an intro price of $699-$799. The only problem is that they still have to rely on a number of second party salesmen who will still stear customers to the low end PC's because that is what they have/know.
As for the desktops:
It's much better to take a G4 mobo and cut it down to a minimal case with AGP, DIMMS, and CPU Daughtercard, one optical bay and 1 HDD bay and standard Mac I/O. No monitor, small, not even the fanless engineering feats of the cube to possibly increase costs. Just a nicely styled small basic box with easily upgradeable video, CPU, memory, and drive components. That's it.
The cube was really very very close to the perfect switcher machine, untill Apple went and put a price on it. Basically the thing should cost about what an eMac/iMac costs, minus the retail value of their displays (not Apple retail, though, or then they would have to sell them for nothing.) 799-1499 low end to high end. No duals, but a nice SP config at the high end with a very big HDD and superdrive and the fastest single CPU/FSB available with full L3 cache enabled.
Today, that system would look like a cubish box with a Superdrive, 80-100GB HDD, a 1.25Ghz G4 w/2MB L3 and 2 or 3 DDR DIMMS, 1 AGP slot with a middling good card (64MB GF4MX), no PCI slots, and no monitor. 1499. Something with a single 867, 30GB HDD, 32MB GF2MX, and a read only DVD could sell for 799, easy.
Apple will change their pricing structure and anti-expansion orthodoxy or they will continue to slowly lose market-share.
And I have a very hard time believing Apple is selling the $999 iBook without their regular margin
To be blunt there is no comparison. That $599 will get you a damn good box running a good os that runs faster and is more plug and play then what Apple is offering in the hardware and os dept. XP is as user friendly if not more then OS X and is very responsive in comparison.
This doesn?t make me happy at all as a stockholder or a devote user and someone looking to spend a couple of grand on a new Box that can give me as much power as I can get and have to last me three years. (I have never worked on a computer on ether side of the fence that has come close to having too much power). Did I mention I hate Microsoft.
I think the cost factor boils down to the lack of processor choices by Apple. Apple doesn?t have the whole line covered with the likes of 2Ghz Celerons/ 1Ghz Durons to 3GhzPIV/Xeons and 2.8+ Thunderbirds and everything in-between.
They can?t really offer that much depth in their line up if they don?t have the parts to work with. Pisses me off to no end.
It?s going to be hard until the first 970 revs come out. I seriously pray they are out no later then 2Q 2003 or 3Q, which of course is way over optimistic.
FSCk Motorola with thinking they will be saving the day.
If having to talk my dad out of going to the dark side is any indication of the overall market then???
{ <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> Vent over <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> }
[ 11-12-2002: Message edited by: tink ]</p>
<strong>
I just had to talk my dad out of getting a $599 Dell. His Mac is getting old. He said to me that he doesn?t do a lot of graphics and doesn?t see the need to spend $1000. . .
</strong><hr></blockquote>
My experience too. The only three people I know who owned older Macs all switched to Windows in the last 18 months. The last one got the $599 Dell a week or so ago.
<strong>All you cheap computer market share people have to remember some things. Apple (I believe) is not only looking to gain market share, but get a certain kind of Switcher. Apple consumers are smarter, better educated, and more wealthy. Selling an olf iMac to grandma for little to know profit, means she does not have a lot of money and will probably die before she would need to upgrade. What is the point.</strong><hr></blockquote>
apple needs to remember that the wealthy do not make up the majority in this world. the middleclass do. and the average middleclass blow joe will look at the price tag along with his 9 PC buddies behind him telling him what to get. if apple really wants 10% marketshare they NEED a sub $500 computer. even if they take a loss on profit it would be worth it. just to get the marketshare growth.
"Should Apple introduce a new Mac system for $399?"
No. This price is too low. Apple does not have the market share to properly counteract the monetary losses that will come from competing against Dell, Compaq, HP, and eMachines.
What should Apple's Pricing be?
eMac.......$799.99
iMac 15"...$999.99
iMac 17"...$1299.99
Where the %!@# did those numbers come from?
The eMac price is equivilent to the iMac price a couple of years ago. The G3 iMac is obselete, and is no longer advertised except on the Apple website. Moreover, most PCs advertised in the weekly Best Buy and Circuit City ads end up at around $600 - $800 when the cost of a monitor is added.
The iMacs contain many of the same internals as the eMac. The exception being the LCD screen. It is not unreasonable to assume that since (off the shelf, retail) 15" LCD monitors are selling for roughly $200 more than an (off the shelf, retail) 17" CRT, that Apple's profits would be consistent between the eMac and 15" iMac with this pricing scheme.
For the 17" iMac, see the above paragraph, but relate the 17" LCD to the 15" LCD.
About "Thin Clients"
Let's suppose that Apple created the $399.99 cMac. Go ahead and put whatever "low cost" hardware you want into it and hook a 1000 or so of them up to an XServe. Will a hospital buy the system? Will a university? Will Honeywell? How about a city planning agency?
Heck no. And here's why.
No matter HOW cheap you make the hardware, the simple fact is that Apple does not have enough of a development presence to convince business and industry that it can support their software needs.
Microsoft Office is a VERY MINOR piece of business software here in America. Most businesses and industries have thousands of "in-house" or "PC-only" custom software programs that they use on a daily basis.
Hospitals have specific RECORDS software. Libraries have specific INVENTORY software. Engineering firms have specific BOARD LAYOUT software. Et-cetera...
Um, so?
The point is that even IF industry made the shift to the cMac, there would be very FEW developers who could supply them with the necessary software to do their daily jobs.
You must fundamentally understand that the Macintosh is a very "developmentally-starved" platform. There are only a handful of custom development firms for OSX application software, and there are only TWO ways to learn how to program on the Macintosh:
1) Buy a book and "teach yourself"
2) Attend a "training session" at a faraway Ranch that costs over $1500 and requires you to spend a full week there and bring your own hardware.
The Alternative?
The reason why business and industry are so apt to choose the PC over the Macintosh is that there are Millions of developers and Thousands of private development firms that do nothing but make custom software solutions.
If Apple really wants to break into business and industry, they need to make sure that a Cocoa Programming Solution is taught at every major Community College and University in this country. They need to ENCOURAGE people to take the courses (re: discount on Hardware), and to become certified.
Market Share
To me, the whole point of the, "Should Macs be cheaper, " discussion is the impact on Market Share.
Would a less-expensive Macintosh be able to sell more easily to more consumers who would, in turn, purchase more Macintosh products in the future and "sell" the MacOS platform to others?
Only Apple's accountants know for sure...
My $0.02,
-theMagius
<strong>Microsoft Office is a VERY MINOR piece of business software here in America. Most businesses and industries have thousands of "in-house" or "PC-only" custom software programs that they use on a daily basis.
Hospitals have specific RECORDS software...</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can certainly attest to this. We have over 200 applications that were written by almost as many vendors for DOS/Windows only. Trying to get a (non-profit) hospital to switch to an all Mac platform would be insanely difficult. All of those applications would have to be re-written or abandoned for something similar or Open (java-based, web-based, etc). I could only imagine the cost of this. :eek:
It would be good incentive and a smart decision to replace all of those applications with Open ones, however, and thus we come to a point that most people overlook. Convincing the people who are in charge of approving the task. More and more, IT people like myself are frustrated by the lack of solid understanding of direction of technology. They are overwhelmed and, more often than not, sold by a Microsoft Rep that switching all services to Windows xx (you pick a version) is the way to go. While I understand the market share and developer backing, it boggles my mind.
Case in point, our hospital is in the middle of such an undertaking. We are replacing a dozen or so Netware email/file/print/application servers with Windows versions of the same services. Our implementation is set to cost roughly $25 million dollars, corporate-wide, while our corporate spending on Novell services was $600,000 per year. Of course, we are WAY over budget, because the Microsoft Reps hide so many, many costs. Hardware they were more or less up front about, but training, extra staffing, and various XP bugs have led us to probably a $30 million dollar tag. That is going to take us 50 Years! to recoupe. Does that make sense?
The move toward Open systems is the only way out of the Microsoft (or insert the vendor you are smothered by) stranglehold! Why do you think their fight with Sun was the real key to Court battles over the past 3 years? <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
<strong>Will this improve over time, probably. But for the time being Mac OS X is an incredible burden on IT support.
...
Take the guts out of the iBook, stick it in a white box, sell it without a monitor for $599 and everyone is happy!</strong><hr></blockquote>
100% agree with both these points.
My only concern is that the video may be too good, and it would take sales from the eMac and iMac. After all, just add a cheap LCD display and the customer almost has low price iMac capability. If Apple can keep it degraded just enough it would still be great in schools and to encourage enterprise to start using Macs. Also, those three former Mac users who now have a cheap Windows box would not have switched, I would bet. They all liked the Mac, but could not justify the cost for their limited needs. I am going to look at the $599 Dell the last one bought and see what I think. Once they switch, it is unlikely they will switch back sooner than 5 to 10 years. They kept their Macs a long time.
I'll answer first:
What makes the Mac popular amongst most consumers is its ease of use, the iApps, its simple connectivity concept - no legacy ports - and its beautiful design and love for the details - my the poweradapter currently shipped is the best one I know.
The shortcomings I encounter are lack of certain software products - an eDonkey-client for example - and the lack of support and interest on the hardware industries' side. It is hard to integrate OS X into existing infrastructure: Cisco for example provides its IPSec Client for OS X with out GUI and without an easy to use installer.
And sometimes it is Apple's fault because they cut features. Ever tried to use PPPoE on your Airport card (!) to access a wireless network? In Windows you just bind protocol to the network interface and there you go.
Or Mail's IMAP support.
And this annoyes schools and small businesses, too. They usually don't benefit from iApps in any way. Although this might change with iCal, iSync, Mac OS X Server and whether Apple is going to forge them together and make a decent easy-to-use-and-administer secure groupware - the killer app for businesses.
Businesses and educational institutions demand affordable solutions tailored to thier individual needs. This is what Apple needs to address.
Apple should seek cooperation with third parties the way they cooperate with Sony-Ericsson.
Concerning developer support, I think that Apple does fairly well with their ADC programm.
<strong>Or Mail's IMAP support.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Curious, what kind of problems does Mail have with regards to IMAP?
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>
Curious, what kind of problems does Mail have with regards to IMAP?
Bye,
RazzFazz</strong><hr></blockquote>
It loads down all of your mail off the server in a POP-style instead of just the headers.
By-the-way, where are you from and are you in anyway associated to <a href="http://www.ratz-fatz.net"; target="_blank">http://www.ratz-fatz.net</A>; ?
<strong>
It loads down all of your mail off the server in a POP-style instead of just the headers.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Seriously? That sucks. I only had a very brief look at Mail.app up to now, but this would definitely be a complete show-stopper for me, as I do have some IMAP folders with several thousand mails in them.
[quote]<strong>By-the-way, where are you from and are you in anyway associated to <a href="http://www.ratz-fatz.net"; target="_blank">http://www.ratz-fatz.net</a>; ?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Nope, not at all.
Bye,
RazzFazz
The following text taken from here:
<a href="http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/05/21/imap.html"; target="_blank">http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/05/21/imap.html</a>;
[[[Message Caching
To help keep things efficient, Mail.app keeps local caches of your IMAP accounts' content, even though the "real" messages reside on the server. By default, an account's cache lives in Library/Mail/IMAP within your Home folder, unless you specified a different folder when you created the account (see the section called "Account Directory"). Every account gets its own folder there, named IMAP/account name. Note the similarity between the structure of this folder on my Mac, and that of my actual, server-side IMAP mailboxes seen in Figure 4.
Through the Message caching: pull-down menu, you can specify how much of your incoming email Mail.app should cache, and when it should cache it:
-Cache all messages and attachments locally
This will direct Mail.app to download the entirety of every new message upon connection. This will allow you to read these messages and their attachments when offline, much as you can do through a POP account.
NOTE: This is the default selection for a new Mail.app IMAP account. **
-Cache messages bodies locally
When selected, Mail.app will cache all new messages' text bodies, as well as a list of any attachments for each, but not the attachments themselves (unless they're relatively small). If you specifically request to see a message's attachment (by clicking on the attachment's icon in the message view window), Mail.app will fetch a fresh copy from the server for you.
This is a good choice if you like the convenience that having all your textual email stored locally (which allows nice features like indexing and searching), but would like to avoid downloading large attachments you might not always want.
-Cache messages when read
This directs Mail.app to hold off on any message caching when fetching new mail. It will display new mail in the message list as usual, but doesn't actually fetch a message's content until you select one for reading. Once it loads a message, Mail.app places its body into the cache. Subsequent visits to this message will read from the cached copy (unless the server's version of the message changes).Like the previous menu choice, this does not cache large attachments.\t
-Don't cache any messages
Finally, this selection tells Mail.app to forget about caching entirely. Every time you access a message, Mail.app will fetch its contents from the server anew, regardless of whether you've read it before.\t]]]
Have a nice day.
--
Ed M.
<strong>So, what do you think can promote the Mac platform, increase popularity and marketshare?
I'll answer first:
What makes the Mac popular amongst most consumers is its ease of use, the iApps, its simple connectivity concept - no legacy ports - and its beautiful design and love for the details - my the poweradapter currently shipped is the best one I know.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
USB is turning into a legacy port - look at the PCs that have come out this year: USB2....
engpjp
<strong>
USB is turning into a legacy port - look at the PCs that have come out this year: USB2....
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Maybe USB 1 is getting a little old but USB 2 is backwards compatible and uses the same connectors... it is not really as much a legacy port as those big old Centronics - parallel -, PS/2 - mouse and keyboard - or RS 323 - serial - connectors. And there are no pins inside them to bend or break.
Mr. Ed, you saved may day ;-)
[ 11-14-2002: Message edited by: RolandG ]</p>
Will someone explain how this works in the wintel world? If you can buy a $399 or $599 or $x99 pc then why does anyone buy a pc for $1,500 or $2,500 or $3,500 or more?
Seems I recently saw a newspaper article saying that college kids were buying pcs in the $1,500 range because they wanted multimedia and gaming features and such. Can't you do that on a cheap pc?