Slashdot Mirror
Apple's Leopard Strategy to Kill Microsoft and Dell?
RX8 writes "A Digital Trends article suggests that Apple's Leopard agenda is to get Windows users to use Apple hardware then convert them to the Apple camp and that Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks. Lastly, they suggest that Steve Jobs held back on showing more Leopard features so people would not get too excited and stop buying in 2006. 'If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year.'"
Of course apple is trying to convert users away.. However, why would they expect people to run Windows on Apple hardware? People switch to a Mac mostly for OSX (Altho the hardware is nice looking).. In addition, Dells market is very different from Apples, Dell is cheap to the masses, Apple is for the few...
Apple has made forrays into the cheaper market (the mini) and Dell takes a poke at the top end (thier quad graphics solutions/purchase of Alienware), but they both have primarily differnt markets.
People shouldn't assume that Apple want's to be the dominant controller, just because other companies think that way, there is much profit to be made by being select too (I would imagine Apples profit per unit sold is much greater then Dells, much like Nintendos standard "make a profit not control the market" stance grants them)
Apple is competitive on price-- the low-end just doesn't go as low. So Dell sells a $300 desktop, and Apple doesn't compete in that market. But you can't compete with Dell in that market, either, because they sell high-quality cheap crap in massive quantities, and they get as good prices as anyone. The only way to get a computer out the door for less than Dell is to sell low-quality cheap crap, and you'll probably still need to take some losses. The profit margins on those $250 Dells are just miniscule, and you can't under-cut that very much. So if you're waiting for a $100 Mac mini, you'll be waiting for a while.
go watch the developer keynote. they ARE competing on price.
Apple is slightly cheaper or equivalent to Dell on same spec machines. the only difference is that Dell also sells cheap shit that Apple wouldn't dignify with their logo.
They're not even in the same market: Apple isn't competing with Dell's primary market to begin with.
Exactly. Every time new Apple hardware comes out, there's always someone griping about how they can get a Dell for much cheaper. That's like comparing a Toyota Corolla and an Acura TL on price alone. When you compare actual specifications, the two cars are not in the same league. A more fair assessment woule be a Lexus ES vs an Acura TL or a Honda Civic vs a Toyota Coroll"
Imagine how silly this sounds:
"Bah, XP Pro is $199? I can get XP Home for $99. XP Pro is way too pricey compared to XP Home."
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If you want quality, you have to pay for it. If you want crap, enjoy your e-machine or low end Dell.
This is an article written by pundits, not Apple. If you disbelieve the premise, attack the pundits, not Apple.
Like a lot of these types of articles, it's all supposition and theorising. Nothing concrete, just ideas. These are the same people who confidently predict the iPhone is coming soon, or for years predicted the imminent demise of Apple (any day now!) so they've got little to no credibility in my eyes.
Now just deliver them for a price I want.
There's a paradox at work here
History has shown that the best product doesn't always capture the greatest marketshare. BetaMax was far better quality then VHS, but look which survived. The original Mac beat Windows 3.1 hands down, but again look who has 95% of the desktop market? I think you really can get what you pay for, the paradox is people too often expect awesome for cheap, then buy cheap and expect awesome. If you want it, buy it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"At the top if you look at Alienware or High End dell systems dell is beating apple because apple just does not offer the best technology possible where they really thrive is the middle and media creators."
Be so kind as to explain this to me. Apple offers a very, very competitively configured and priced machine in the Mac Pro. The only thing that literally isn't the best on the Mac Pro is the hard disk (configurable, self manageable to save some bucks), and the video card (again, configurable, and self manageable if you want to save a few dollars and install yourself).
The software is top notch (and runs Windows if you just don't care for Mac OS X), the platform is incredibly feature rich using the newest processors, RAM, not a sign of old PCI (unlike most boards), Firewire 400 and 800, hell, Apple put so much attention into the design they spaced the video card port out on the motherboard as to not block a PCI-Express port if you need a dual-lane video card.
Another detractor could be said to be 16x PCI-Express SLI/Crossfire, but arguably the cards can't make use of that much bandwidth, and arguably it's not worth the price to who Apple configured the machines for: Professionals. Then again, either Intel will have to put out a 32x capable chipset, or Apple will have to go fishing for a new one (and there will be plenty to choose from).
So the fact is, as a professional workstation, there is nothing that is competitive with the Mac Pro. They've delivered more than anyone for the lowest price possible, and actually made it configurable enough to make it fit anyone's budget, even on the high end. Call me back when Dell stops slapping Intel design recommendation boards with Dell logos in their machines.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The article is written by none other than Rob (I wannabe John Dvorak) Enderle, the same clown who supported SCO's claims in their ongoing lawsuit against IBM. He now appears to be trying to get page hits by trolling the user communities of both Microsoft and Apple with outlandish opinions.
The whole idea that Apple could 'kill' Microsoft or Dell is too far-fetched to even consider. The only way either company could die is by suicide.
Until those converts from Windows run into how OSX handles Windows Media Video files and end up comparing it against what they saw when they used Windows instead.
I believe that is Microsoft's fault. After all they use a close format and even partially dropped support for WMV on a Mac. Personally, Quicktime and VLC work just fine for Divx and various other torrent media.
Besides, WMV and Mov wars on the web are loosing to Flash (Youtube and Google videos) so that is a moot point. If you want to watch video on webpages it will be all flash soon and everything else will run under VLC.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
FTFA:
Another of the primary reasons Apple isn't being forthcoming about Leopard is the fear that if people get too excited about a product coming early in 2007 they will stop buying in 2006"
Uh, yeah, that might apply when you're talking about an expensive product. Mac OS X costs $129, and Leopard will run on any Mac sold in 2006 (and probably several years previous). Anyone who is paying attention to what's coming out of WWDC knows that and can likely afford $129 to upgrade. Everyone else who's interested in a Mac now will happily buy a Tiger system and probably not even notice when Leopard ships.
Furthermore, Microsoft has been talking up Vista for five years. You didn't see Dell or HP go out of business for lack of sales because people are waiting for Vista, did you?
~Philly
Silly to you, but it happens EVERY day, among the group of people who don't really use their computers for everything a computer can do.
Most people just want to download their AIM smileys and play the Sims. Why spend an extra hundred bucks for that? And why spend over $1000 for a machine that's cute, when it's just going to sit on the shitboard-n-glue Wal*Mart computadesk, get clogged with cat hair and peanut butter, when there are perfectly good smiley-downloading-Sims-playing computers with labels like Dell, Acer, or Daewoo for much less?
[
well yes I suppose if mercedes wanted my business all they'd have to do is drop a zero off the end of the price tag I suppose.
Does that mean it's sensible for them to do?
Apple, like any business, sets their price point for maximum proffit. If they drop the price 10%, they will get maybe an 8% increase in sales, which will not quite make up for the drop in price, and their net proffit drops. If they raise the price 10%, they will get maybe a 12% drop in sales, which again cuts into proffit sufficiently to drop their bottom line below where it is now. I'm sure Apple spends a lot on market research to make sure they have selected the optimal price points for their products. Your decision as to whether or not to buy based on the current price affects the optimal price point, so a Macintosh's price is not actually set by Apple, it's set by me and you, the consumers.
You just want good hardware on the cheap. There's nothing really wrong with that until you start saying it would be to anyone's benefit besides your own.
In an ideal world, if you paid more for a product it would be better, higher quality. If you paid less for it, it would be a poorer quality. It doesn't always work this way, but that is still the general idea. Keep that in mind when you want to "have your cake and eat it too". Reminds me of the production manager's motto: "fast, good, cheap, pick two."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Either way though, I do not think you'll be buying a Mac anytime soon then, since every one of your demands is something that just isn't going to be happening any time soon (i.e. OS X for generic Intel hardware, 3-5 year warranty standard on all devices and hardware and 1 major free OS upgrade). When you set up an impossible standard (that is, a standard that no PC companies could live up to), you have set yourself up for something where you could never be satisfied.
Apple positions itself as a high-end vendor, as do many other companies. Why does that concept confuse so many people only when it applies to computers?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What "current price differentials"? You mean the Mac Pro being priced $1000 less than a comparably configured Dell?
You wrote a totally false statement and repeated that statement several times with made up facts.
You facts aren't made up, just misleading. The $1200 Mac is a Core Duo with Mac OS X, the $1200 Intel is a Pentium D with Windows MCE.
So you get a faster clock, but less performance -- and the Mac can be upgraded to new chips whereas the PC is using an end-of-life architecture and a retarded version of Windows.
You are correct and that is exactly what I plan on doing. I plan on getting a PS3 and a new Macintosh. For me it came down to a few things but in short here it is.
I have an Alienware laptop P4 3GH, around a year and a half old. It is still a nice machine and it runs most games ok. I then went out and purchase some new WWII game to play at a local lan party... Well 50% of the people there spent over an hour installing the freaking game and all the patches. Then the ATI people had to dork with their video drivers... another 30 min.... then after all that the game freaking killed my machine... I was able to uninstall it but for me this was a waist of 4 hours. Now the machine does one purpose and that is play EQII. My Windows/PC friends suggested getting a new machines and or reloading my OS from scratch. At this point I looked at a new video card for a PC and found that they still range around $300-$600. So to "play games" on a PC is going to set me back more than the cost of a PS3.
This is when the wheels started turning... I could get a PS3 (my PS2 has never caused me 4 hours of frustration just to game) and I could get a Macintosh for my work. So for me, a small gamer, I can say that I am very happy to be dumping the whole PC "gaming" experience and I will actually be saving money. I figure that the Macintosh will last me for around 4 years and the PS3 will be a viable gaming console for 5. "If" I was to do a new Alienware/Dell, I would need to buy one every two years to keep up OR I could get use to waisting time reloading my OS and downloading new crappy drivers every so often.
Please understand I am not knocking you PC gamers out there. I was someone who dropped $350-$500 for a new video card every year or so and upgraded my system every year or so, but I am tired of doing that now and I see a viable escape and lastly, please please please don't tell me "All my games load" If that is the case then good for you, it wasn't the case and NEVER has been with any LAN party I have been to.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
You can run Windows on the Macs now. So, get a high end workstation, save money, get a nicer case with room for expansion/customization, still run your crap Windows stuff and just put some tape over the Apple logo. Why do you hate Apple so badly?
It's funny, because the Mac fanbois at least hate Windows because it sucks and they can give reasons. Apple haters just seem to hate Apple and the logic is missing.
... it would do all the spell-checking for you without you having to load up Word. It's a system-wide facility for any NSText-derived object...
Sometimes the small things are what make the difference.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!