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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.
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)
$500 seems like an AWFUL lot of money for a product with a 90 day warranty.
You're going to look awfully silly with that big ol' 40GB Maxtor hard drive on your hip as you go jogging. And I'll bet you'll feel silly, too, when you realize that the Maxtor can't play music on its own.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Any other manufacturor might not have done such a foolish thing as integrating the display. Seriously, I am not trolling here - just look at the attempted consolidation in the ram market right now. I think every area of the it industry had hardware surplus based on skyrocking demand for 5 straight years, and then stopped. Apple probably viewed the cheap lcd prices as a natural parallel to the hard drive and cpu performance inc. vs price metrics, whereas the lcd prices were probably very depressed by massive overproduction.
Having to raise prices is truly ridiculous. It just hurts apple even more in the last 9 months of this year as the x86 folks keep pushing the mhz gap higher, and thus the apple/x86 price comparison keep getting worse for apple.
Well considering neither your standard MP3 player or USB 2.0 hard drive have a master bus controller or software, they can't talk to one another. You could carry both the MP3 player and hard drive around until you were blue in the face but you couldn't transfer any of the songs without a host system.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This is big. If Apple is on the blue tooth train, then it means that the standard will be back from the dead when M$ 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.
yeah, being one of 2 PC makers in the Black this year,having 60 million in the bank and having no debt can realy Hurt, it hurts realy realy realy bad.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
"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.
The lower cost machines are what is going to make money. Something that I believe Apple is still desprately in need of.
Exactly what aapl are you looking at. Apple may not hold the record for market share but when it comes to making a profit Apple holds her own. One of the great things about Apple is they have so much in the bank that they can afford to take a risk here and there. The reason the price went up: their research suggests people will pay more. This is not a desperate act. And I doubt anybody in the market will interpret this as a desperate act either.
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.
the difference is, I own a Mitsubishi 22" DP2040u. The SGI sucks 27 watts, the DP2040u sucks 155 watts. Used 16 hours a day, 31 days a month, results in a 12 dollar electric bill. Including the $75 recycle fee, I can run my monitor for 10 years before my total cost of ownership exceeds the SGI. $1500 invested instead of spent on a flat panel makes the CRT pay for itself relative to the flat panel in the same timeframe. I still have an 8 year old 21" HM-4520-D. I know the life expectancy of a CRT. The apple cinema display has a life expectancy of 15000 hours. That is less than TWO YEARS. 6 years peak with conservative use.
So, with 1/3 the life expectancy, Buying THREE for every one CRT, Where are your cost of ownership numbers now?
You do not own a cinema display. You have absolutly no idea what it costs to own one.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Consoles have better specifications. Apples are toys.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Numbers do not tell the whole story.
I am a Java developer who has been looking for years for the perfect development environment from which to work on. Since I got my G4 I have without a doubt never been happier. I don't have to fuck with endless config files like I did on Linux, and yet I can use all the *nix tools I got used to. Windows made me want to choke: it was functional, but I prefer not to deal with Microsoft products if I can help it. Compared to OS X it is *Windows* that is the toy.
My G4 has helped me to do my job better. I can assure you it is *not* a toy, at least no more or less so than any other general purpose PC.
If I could mount a railgun to a toaster, you can bet I would. You can't have too many railguns.