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Apple @ MacWorld Tokyo
rschroeder writes "Apple updated several products at MacWorld Tokyo tonight (or tomorrow morning). A $499 10-gig iPod, with, get this, custom laser engraving on the back, ($49 extra) and vCard support. They also announced a $49 USB bluetooth module, shipping in April, with beta drivers availble today. Among other tricks, Jobs synced a Clie with a mac via bluetooth. Also a new 23" (1920x1200 )Cinema Display. Jobs also said they're raising the price of the iMac due to LCD and RAM cost increases. All this courtesy MacMinute.com's live coverage." Maccentral has several stories about Jobs' keynote at the convention.
raising the price of the iMac sounds like a fair deal to me... any other computer manufacturer would raise the price of their stuff if supply was low... just simple economics. i think this is a good move to apple, although it might make some people mad (minus those with pre-orders)
All the advances are good and fine, but the increase in the iMac category may really hurt. I realize that the increase in necessary becuase of the increased costs, but the iMac is what makes Macinctosh a viable comeptitor. The G4 and soon to be G5 towers are excellent, but only cover a very small demographic and their high cost makes them prohibitive. The lower cost iMac can go head to head with most PCs and in some cases, offer a better value. While I agree that the high end computers are more fun and interesting (from a marketing/sales perspective). The lower cost machines are what is going to make money. Something that I believe Apple is still desprately in need of. It may be a smarter move to swallow the increased costs for the time being and attempt to move more volume.
More importantly, who is buying these things?!?
Wouldn't a more rational plan be to drop the iPod to $299 and sell this new version for $399? (which is what it's going for now)
$500 seems like an AWFUL lot of money for a product with a 90 day warranty.
You're going to look awfully silly with that big ol' 40GB Maxtor hard drive on your hip as you go jogging. And I'll bet you'll feel silly, too, when you realize that the Maxtor can't play music on its own.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Well considering neither your standard MP3 player or USB 2.0 hard drive have a master bus controller or software, they can't talk to one another. You could carry both the MP3 player and hard drive around until you were blue in the face but you couldn't transfer any of the songs without a host system.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This is big. If Apple is on the blue tooth train, then it means that the standard will be back from the dead when M$ put it by not supporting it in XP, and will become successfull (see USB for some background.) Apple is obviously working on new desktop and laptop systems with bluetooth integrated. It's not rumors but very certain that BT is what Apple need for their digital hub strategy. I wonder how they are going to cop with interference between BT and 802.11b. And it will be really funny to see how other vendors are playing catch up with Apple when they realize that bluetooth is a really neat solution to connect devices. In M$ interest not to connect easily with Palm, this is the only reason why the beast of Redmond killed the technology by not releasing drivers last summer. However, all the devices like PDAs (ex: iPaq, Loox, etc...) are released in Japan with BlueTooth in standard. Again, US is lagging big time behind Japan when it comes to wireless (3G, and now BlueTooth.)
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Why are you putting all the blame on Apple? The LCD prices went up and supply of them is limited. Apple doesn't control the LCD market - it makes the computers.
"Although no one believes that the iMac price increase is due to manufacturing costs..."
I do. The LCD production has not kept up with the demand (because people love the iMac, you see), so the manufacturer raised the cost of the LCDs. Ergo, price of iMac went up.
It's not exactly a secret.
The price will go down eventually, when supply meets demand. It happened with LCD displays for cell phones a few years back.
Actually, exactly the same thing has happened in the Mac world over the last few months. For instance, the high end PowerMac G4/dual 800 was $3,499, while its dual 1ghz replacement is $2,999. The PowerBook G4/667 was $ 3,500 when it was first released; now it's $2,999.
The new iMac is only a little more expensive than previous iMac price points, but you're getting tons more for your money.
D
Things have changed. Micron (Boise, Idaho) is taking over the industry. They bought Toshiba's DRAM business, they bought TI's business, they bought KMT's business, and are negotiating to buy Hynex, which is in trouble. They and Samsung are in a race for the #1 spot now; if the the Hynex deal goes through, Micron will be far bigger than Samsung in DRAM.
In 2001, there was a huge DRAM glut, which pushed prices down. Micron, instead of cutting back, used its advantage as the lowest-cost producer to squeeze out the weaker players. Here's an overview of the industry.
It looks like that when the dust settles, Micron will have about 40% market share, Samsung (S. Korea) about 22%, Elpdata (Japan) somewhere under 20%, and minor players the rest. The era of brutal competition in DRAM may be ending. The number of players is much smaller now. We may see more "stability" in DRAM pricing.
$2,000 got you the machine you could afford -the one that you could use Office and Quicken on, play most middle-of the road games, and if you were willing to wait a long time, dabble in graphic design and multimedia.
Now the machine you really want still costs $4,000, but the machine you can afford is down to $1,500, and it does far more than even the best home computers did just two or three years ago.
The fact that there are $500 commodity PC boxes available is nice, but does that mean that the $1,500 iMac no longer has value to the person who purchases it?
It seems to me that rather than comparing the prices of PC and Mac CPUs and peripherals, we ought to be comparing overall value to the consumer - i.e., is this machine doing everything I want it to do, for a price that I find worthwhile?
If you love your Mac, but you don't love PCs, there must be more perceived value in the Mac for you. If that's the case, isn't it intrinsically worth more to you than a less expensive PC?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Before you Apple fans begin to flame me: I once had an apple. It was my favorite computer of all time. I miss it. I just can't afford a Mac.
And how much do you value your time?
I'm amazed at how many people will "save" themselves a few hundred bucks when buying a PC, only to waste months of their own time and effort on keeping it working.
But then again, those $400 MSN "rebates" were a bit hit too. Suckers.
-pmb
Newer ipods and bigger cinema displays are great, but MacOS X is vastly more important. Guess the transition period needs to be lengthened now.
$24 t-shirts, $50 jeans, does Abercrombie & Fitch only cater to the super rich?
Yes. Take your broke ass to American Eagle (Dell).
You either get it or you don't. You either "get" paying more for the end-to-end experience, or you buy some cheap knockoff down the way. You may have something similar, but you don't have the original, nor will it ever be the original, nor will all the complaining that the original costs more, or your knockoff performs the same function make your cheap knockoff the original.
Get over it.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
A 22" CRT, while capable of a much sharper image, uses 3 to 5 times the energy, most of which is thrown into your home or office climate. Together, these will raise your operating expense...throw in that 'bigger desk', and up it goes again. And what about the upcoming regulations that will require the consumer to pay for disposal of these monsters? More cost....
Your desire to quote a lower price, while ignoring the increased soft costs associated with CRT ownership make you the fool, sir. But this is exactly the type of logic that marketing guys love in a consumer. Too bad you can't take a break and realize you're being manipulated. Ignorance is bliss...right?
If I could mount a railgun to a toaster, you can bet I would. You can't have too many railguns.
Did anybody here think that while the iPod hard drive was retailing for $400, Apple was selling 125,000 iPods for $399? Now that the 5GB hard drive has dropped in price, Apple has an opportunity to actually make money on iPods. That may have been the plan from the beginning. Sure, they could have charged $499 for iPods last year and now charge $349, but isn't it better to just charge $399 for the whole first year? That's how Apple does it, and it makes buying tech a lot easier.
... $299. They made more of their profit off the later buyers, but Apple's customers all know that $299 gets you a base station, and we have bought them in droves. iPod is $399 for 5GB and is still the best player on the market. When someone else has a pocket-sized 5GB FireWire MP3 player that's easy enough for kids and Grandma, then complain about the iPod being expensive.
Similarly, Apple introduced their AirPort base station in 1999 for $299, when everyone else's 802.11 base stations were over $1000. They sold that same base station for two years at $299, until there were plenty of $299 base stations with similar or better features, and then they released AirPort base station Mark 2 with improved features for
Also, I am actually using the included headphones in a personal stereo for the first time ever, because they're so good. iPod is good value.