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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.
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
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?
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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.
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.