lorin schultz
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Apple sees Mac sales dip, marketshare increase in Q4 PC industry estimates
You're right that cutting corners would be okay in a reasonably-priced product, but it leaves a bad taste when stuff costs as much as Apple's.Eric_in_CT said:Luxury products over-deliver, which is part of the luxury.
Imagine a Porsche-911, a $90,000 car I think; with cloth seats and 150hp engine. Both would suffice and it's still a well designed luxury car and a great experience, but it's just not right. The buyer's don't NEEEEED 400hp, but it's part of the over-delivered luxury expectation.
Base Macbook Pro is $1299 U.S. Processor is yesteryear (debit), Core i5 (debit), 8GB RAM (debit), 128GB (debit).
Where's the luxury for the $? Every aspect is a downgrade, and price is still ultra-premium.
Even if Apple's data shows most people only use Safari & Mail and don't use big-storage; it's just not "enough", luxury wise, for that price.
Through my spouse I've paid a smidge of attention to luxury handbags.
I can appreciate them because, like Apple products, they're very $, but VERY well made.
What if some of that double-stitching goodness went away? Full-$, but only one row of stitch?
"Don't worry, our data shows it won't fall apart and is just as good for what YOU'RE going to do with it". No thanks.
Luxury MEANs extra. Over-made, over-done, Better than better.
I know Apple sells to the high ends, but it also seems like Apple could meet the public in the middle, and still be a luxury provider:
Perhaps base config should be $799 for 7th Gen i5, 8GB, 128GB.
Membership is the luxury. The O/S is the luxury. Specs are JUST ENOUGH to get into the luxury Apple club.
i7, 16GB and 512GB: $999? That's a high price right there.
And GRADUALLY go up from there? 15", 32GB, 1TB SSD, etc etc.
Right now the buyer is getting it on both ends. Very high $, and less "zing", less "pizazz".
Good weekend all.
A couple years ago I caught myself being really cynical about Apple product announcements. I don't remember what the product was, but my wife told me she'd just seen a new whatever-it-was with Desirable Feature 1 and Desirable Feature 2 for a price that seemed reasonable. Instead of reacting with excitement, I asked "What's the 'gotcha?'"
The "gotcha" is the one characteristic of the product that ruins the buyer experience. The thing that makes you say "Those buggers" instead of "TAKE MY MONEY!" Things like including only one port on a MacBook. Announcing high-current fast charging then including only a low-current power supply. Removing and charging extra for accessories that used to be included. Announcing newer, better ports that you accept will mean replacing all your cables, but then charging 50% more for those cables than the old ones. Making a nice computer but including only enough storage for the OS and not much else, then charging egregious prices to bring it up to useful capacity.
There may be good reasons for all of that, and I don't profess to know better than Apple how to bring products to market. All I know is how it makes me feel. I now approach new products with fear of what the REAL cost is going to be instead of feeling excited about acquiring new features.
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Apple sees Mac sales dip, marketshare increase in Q4 PC industry estimates
What do you mean by "a long time?" Prices have gone up with every iteration since at least 2016.chasm said:[...] Mac prices haven't changed in quite a long time
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New Alpine CarPlay receivers include unit with 9-inch floating touchscreen
Any word on power output with the add-on amp? It would be great if you could get them to supply not only the "Max" power rating but also a "real" power spec with all channels driven, full bandwidth, at a stated distortion level.
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Here are all the big changes to Apple Maps from 2017 through 2019
Yesterday I found myself in an area of Vancouver I don't know very well, so I asked Siri to give me directions to the Home Depot on Hennings Drive in Burnaby. I got directions to a Home Depot somewhere in California. It might be a better store, but it would have been thousands of miles out of my way and I don't have a passport.
I again specified the street name and city. This time I got a location in the correct country and province, but still not the one I asked for. I gave up after a third try yielded a third location that still wasn't the one I asked for.
Is this a problem with Maps, or is Siri to blame?
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OWC launches Mercury Helios FX 650 eGPU, new portable storage, USB-C 'ClingOn' cable stabi...
According to this article, it's about as fast as X4 slot, but not a X16 slot:jellybelly said:Isn’t Thunderbolt 3 at about the same speed as the internal bus (PCI Express?).- "40Gbps (~5,000MB/s) of bandwidth over Thunderbolt 3 might sound high (and it certainly is compared to the 10Gbps bandwidth of USB 3.1), but it pales in comparison to a standard 16X PCIe 3.0 slot, which offers a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 15,760MB/s. Thunderbolt 3 effectively runs at an x4 PCIe 3.0 connection (around 3940MB/s), which is where you start to see performance degradation, particularly with high-end graphics cards. That's not to mention that while Thunderbolt 3 is an extension of the PCIe bus, there is some overhead attached to the protocol that drops bandwidth and latency compared to a native connection."
Based on the above, probably just more lanes. Or maybe PCIe 4 rather than 3? I have no idea. The only aspect on which I'd be willing to bet real money is the maximum cable length for full bandwidth will be 4.5 inches!jellybelly said:I believe I’ve heard Thunderbolt 4 may be incubating in the labs, but that would imply a new internal bus, wouldn’t it? Or would TB4 just carry more lanes of data?
