Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades

RustNeverSleeps writes "Apple has just lowered prices on certain build-to-order options on the Mac mini. The combination Bluetooth and AirPort Express option has gone down to $99 from $129, 1 GB RAM upgrades have been reduced to $325 from $475 and the price of an upgrade from a 40 GB hard drive to an 80 GB hard drive has been reduced to $50 from $90. Also, the original 4x SuperDrive has been upgraded to an 8x drive for the same price. Interesting that they dropped prices so soon after release. Perhaps Apple actually listened to people complaining about overpriced upgrades."

Comments

Re:Look....

[garcia]

All this did was correct stuff that was already WAY overpriced to begin with. I'm thrilled, and this pretty much seals up that I'll buy a mini, but I don't think it makes a huge difference to most people, maybe just to those on the fence. If they weren't going to buy one before, they probably won't now just because of these incremental price "normalizations."

I have always said "the day a Mac becomes affordable I will own one." The mini brought that to be and mine is on its way (should be here the 27th).

I am getting the 1.42Ghz with 80GB HD. It'll have the bare minimum 256MB of RAM and the regular combo drive but if push comes to shove I'll get an external Firewire DVD writer and might even open the case myself and add some RAM. Who knows. It'll all depend on how well it performs for me.

I always wait too long and am left in the dust by the early adopters. Now with this price drop I got burnt by being one :( I can never win :)

Classic TV Shopping technique..

[OlivierB]

1. Start by announcing something cheaper than competition or usual
2. Stress out benefits of given product so potential buyers actually think it's good value.
3. Let early buyers get in.
4. For those still undecided, actually improve the deal (i.e more features, ie. superdrive) and/or cut the price
5. Those actually undecided that thought it was already good value now think this is fantastic value.
6. Sell like crazy

I think this technique is call "push-over" or something like that. The key to it is to convince people that even at a premium your product is fantastical value (Apple sure knows a lot ib this field). The more you convince people at step 2, the easier the push-over.
IMHO, APPLE had it all laid out. They knew they could make the fat margins with early adopters and then have the extra publicity announcing this. It keeps the momentum...

Re:Or Apple hears Anandtech's cry

[Anonymous Coward]

A reseller I was talking to said that he preferred that they only sold with 256MB of RAM, as he can sell people third party ram and installation and make a profit on that, whereas his profits from the Mac Mini are almost non-existant.

How do you know the margin is thin?

[SuperKendall]

An eMac is $800 with a 17" CRT built in.

A Mac mini has no monitor, or keyboard or mouse and only costs $500 for roughly the same hardware. The pacakging is also a lot smaller and simpler.

Apple could still be making decent margins off this I think. And as others have noted if there are many accessory sales margins are even better.

Re:Now how about accessory purchases?

[ChibiOne]

IMHO Apple would win some more "do it yourself" people if they offered upgrades and parts. That's because the Mini is not intended for the "do it yourself" kind of people. We know YOU and the rest of the Slashdotters can build a beowlf cluster from scrap parts of a Commodore64 for less than $99.

Re:Buying generic RAM for mini is dangerous

[HeghmoH]

On the Apple forums, several people have described random kernel panics and general operating unpleasantness after going with cheap RAM.

If that happens, then your RAM is defective. Assuming you bought memory with a lifetime warranty (can you even find memory that doesn't have one?), then get it replaced.

The only place I would get Mac RAM from would be Crucial.com, and they're more or less the price of the Apple RAM, though the 1GB is a hundred less. Crucial is a division of Micron and thoroughly tests their RAM.

I'll never buy from Crucial, and here's why. I was shopping for a memory upgrade for my PowerBook when I came across this product on their site:

http://www.crucial.com/store/MPartspecs.Asp?mtbpoi d=5DC2B0BFA5CA7304

It's a 1GB memory module for my model of PowerBook. It's $480. I thought this price was a little high, but Crucial is generally kind of expensive. Then I found this page:

http://www.crucial.com/store/PartSpecs.asp?imodule =CT12864X335&cat=RAM

It's an identical 1GB module, but for $340.

What's going on here? I e-mailed them and asked what the difference was. Here are some quotes from their reply:

Thank you for your e-mail. At Crucial we offer different "flavors" of the same memory, some that work in specific systems and some that work in general systems.

If you placed the general use module into a PowerBook the system would become unstable and even lock up at sporadic times.

Part number CT12864X335 is not compatible.

I'm not sure what's going on here. It's obvious that this e-mail is at extreme odds with the truth. One explanation is that they've caught on to the idea that Mac owners have more money, and they decided to cash in. Another explanation is that their customer support is incompetent. Either way, I see no reason to buy from them and every reason to avoid them.