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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.'"
Price.
People buy Dells because they are cheap, and they work.
They're not particularly good computers, but they do the job.
They're not even in the same market: Apple isn't competing with Dell's primary market to begin with.
...Apple will also be directly targeting Dell by offering a better experience when it comes to media and related tasks.
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. Don't forget about one of the largest multimedia formats, and how poorly it runs under OSX. I haven't seen Jaguar, yet, so I don't know how good it's WMV handling capabilities are, but I do know watching a 640x480 WMV on OSX is like upsampling a 160x120 video into 1080 high-def - UGLY.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Apparently, you missed it. Apple's new Mac Pro is cheaper than a comparatively configured Dell workstation machine.
But, on the overall, I agree; Apple's not fighting for the bottom dollar, Apple's positioned themselves as just a tad bit more expensive than the baselines from the Big Three, but with an enormous amount of extra features that make it that "bang for the buck". That factor alone could be considered a part of the "pricing war"; for all you get with an Apple computer, it'd take you not only longer to find a way to configure a competitive machine, but it's unlikely you could do it for cheaper without a ton of rebates, mail in coupons, etc.
So really, it is the price. Apple won't beat Dell at the bottom, but in the middle and top, Apple's already got them beat.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Two problems:
(1) I don't want to buy a 32-bit processor. Yes, I know that 32-bit is good enough for a long time now. But 64-bit is just what I want. It'll make me feel better.
(2) First-release Mac products are often rife with problems. The first-release aren't out yet. So I'm going to end up waiting at least 6 months for Apple to get most of the bugs worked out of the hardware.
Once that's all taken care of, I'll be getting a light Mac notebook.
Back in the days of the original iMacs, iBooks and the Blue-and-White/Graphite minitowers, everyone bagged on Apple for building "Fisher-Price" computers out of that thick ABS you used to only see on toys. Guess what? Those machines wore like iron. My iBook and my Blue-And-White were both purchased in 1999. Guess what? They are still 100% functional and run modern Mac OS X. I also was able to acquire a third-generation iMac from around the same era. Aside from a couple of pen marks, it was pristine.
And the thing about Apple is that the inside of these machines are just as good as the outside. The Apple Minitower design that was only phased out in favor of the aluminum "cheese grater" minitower was amazing. You unlatch one of the sides and pull it down, and you are inside the machine. No stupid sheet metal slidy doors or inverse-u shaped cowlings that are a bitch to tear down and even more of a bitch to replace right. And the parts used are good, sane parts. Not "hacked by Chinese" crap. You don't hear about explodey caps or random shorts with regard to these old machines. Yeah, you hear about explodey batteries on laptops, but let's face it, everyone except IBM has had problems with LiIon batteries, and I'm waiting for the reports of burning Thinkpads that I know will eventually come.
Apple builds to last with good solid parts and also by patronizing good facilities. Foxconn, ASUS, they don't deal with the Elitegroups of the world. If a top-tier Asian facility is unavailable, Apple has its own factories run to their standards.
Hell, people still use Mac SE30s after all these years. Why? They are BUILT.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Yeah, but does a out-of-the-box PC have the same quality of applications (iLife, iTunes, iCal, Mail.app, etc) with the same level of seamless integration? Sure PCs come with Music Match, some basic calendar app, Outlook Express, and other bundled software, but it is nowhere near the quality of the Mac's bundled software; in fact, some of that bundled software may be spyware. Does an out-of-the-box Windows PC have the same security as OS X's out-of-the-box security? Once again, if I bought a Windows PC, I have to worry about installing anti-malware tools (which is basically a high memory tax), installing Firefox, and keeping up to date with every little Windows update. And don't get me started on Windows default admin mode, lack of full multiuser support, lack of user permissions (that work the same way as Unix permissions), and other stuff.
Apple doesn't compete on the low-end scale, so that is the reason why PCs are much more common; you can buy a nice Athlon 64 box for $600 or more (depending on the specs), or a decent Celeron M laptop for the same price. They are quite capable machines, and they run Windows/*nix very well. Apple would make a big sweep if they competed on the low end (imagine a $300 Mac Mini to counter those Dell $299 specials, or a $699 MacBook with a Core Solo processor). Not everybody needs a dual core laptop, for example. However, when configured at the same price, the Mac is usually a better deal, unless you must need Windows for your job, or you are a serious gamer (I admit, I'd rather game on Windows than OS X; my favorite game, Sim City 4, costs $60 on the Mac but $20 for the exact same version for Windows. Eh?).
PCs may be more popular, but there is a reason why Mac users buy Macs. It comes with a well thought out package of software that complements each other quite nicely with no hiccups.
From my original post:
"So really, it is the price. Apple won't beat Dell at the bottom, but in the middle and top, Apple's already got them beat."
And of course, there's the fallacious point of "Apple's computers starting at $1000". Apparently you haven't heard of the Mac Mini, coming in at $599, just $199 more than Dell's "Bottom Line" and offering a ton more features.
Price is only the deciding factor right now because Dell set that one up a couple years back. Now Dell's cut so many corners on their machines their profits are beginning to fall, they're on the other side of the price slashing curve where quality isn't beating out quantity anymore. Apple's only cut margins slightly, and completely rebuilt their platform to make their machines entirely more marketable. All they have to do is show you the differences and let you play with the machines a bit.
With 50% of new purchasers being new to the Mac, we can assert their plan is working.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I love the way people keep trotting out the 'same price an an equivilantly specced dell machine' line.
How about you try the other way round? Go have a look at Dell's cheapest laptop, then go & find an 'equivilant' Apple notebook.
Dell's market range is huge, Apple only competes with them in a few areas - pretending otherwise is.... deluded.
Dell competes on price, Apple competes on quality (that's one of the reasons why you hear about Apple defects so much).
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I am probably a typical switcher and I am not looking back. I admit, I only bought a mac since it is an Intel machine and i _could_ install Windows (my primary platform) on it if i wanted to. And I am sure I am not the nly one going this route. So i gave OS X a chance and it's probably one of the most polished OSs out there. The BSD core even satisfies the geek in me while the GUI is just tight. I have tried switching comepletly to a linux desktop but i have just not found myself to be productive in it. Too many little quirks to work out to get everything working, which just costs: time. So for now and the near future, count me in in the Apple camp. Hope i don't sound too fanboyish ;)
I want a desktop with drive bays and expansion slots, and I don't want to spend $2,500 plus monitor and warranty. Please show me an Intel Mac that meets these specifications. I can show you hundreds of Windows machines that do.
For more information, click here.
No, I didn't forget it, it doesn't apply here. It applies when the product in question is expensive and meant to last a relatively long time. If Apple were talking up their next generation computer that was going to kick ass over everything they are currently shipping, a dropoff in sales would be the Osbourne effect at work.
Instead they were talking up their new OS, which will work perfectly with everything they are currently shipping and sells for a very reasonable cost.
Apple experienced the Osbourne effect already: In years past, when people would hold off Mac purchases if Apple trade shows were near, in case Apple would announce something new. They also went through it in the last 13 months since they announced the Intel switch, as many people waited in anticipation of the PowerPC-based machine they originally wanted being replaced in the product lineup with an Intel-based Mac. And each product introduction was followed by a flood of sales. The difference between Apple and Osbourne is that Apple had alternate income sources to sustain it through the sales dropoffs.
Now that the Intel transition is complete, the Osbourne effect is the last thing Apple needs to worry about-- they will probably be updating their machines much more frequently than in the past, to keep pace with what the other Intel-base computer makers offer-- not just announcing new stuff at their trade shows and developer conferences.
~Philly
The problem is that the "cheap crap" does what most users want, thus they buy that instead of the Apple machine that costs 2-3 times as much.
Apple isn't competing in price. In order to compete in price you have to be cheaper than the competitors lower end products. To use a car analogy, Kia competes with Honda on price. Mercedes doesn't compete with Honda on price, even though you could certainly say their lower end models featurewise are equilivent to some of Toyota's high end models at a similar cost.
I wish I had mod points. I have two iBooks, a G3 and a G4. The G3 had video problems and had to be sent back 2X. Then, just after the 3 year warranty ran out, it up and died. Just got a beep, and nothing else on boot. Tried everything, and nothing worked. I had to rip out the hard drive to salvage all my work. No problem there, but accessing the HDD is a 2 hour operation (or close to it) and basically fsck's up the computer. Now, the G4 has had repeated mouse problems. It's been on repair 2X and the thrid time I just said fsck it, I'll use a USB mouse. The screen also has brightness problems, sometimes getting darker. But hey, I'll deal with it because OS X is sweet. But, why haven't I bought a new MB? Very simple. I don't trust Apple hardware enough. And recent reports of all kinds of problems I think justify my hesitation. I am seriously thinking of scrounging up a good ThinkPad on ebay and installing Ubuntu.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
...since their ads focus on everything you can do with a Mac with just its included applications: Buy it, take it home, spend five minutes hooking it up, and then make a movie. Or burn a CD. Or create a song. Or make a web site. Or write a paper. Part of the message of the ads are: If that's what you can do with just what ships on the machine, imagine what else must be out there!
As for your argument that you have Windows-only stuff, part of the reason Apple is playing up virtualization is because it lets you move to a Mac and take your Windows-only stuff with you, if you must. Parallels Desktop kicks ass, runs at nearly native speed, and the VM runs all the Windows productivity apps my clients have thrown at it like a champ. I have more people asking about it every day.
~Philly
On raw specs, this is true, but my experience has been that Apple *systems* have generally been of higher quality over the years (compared with Dell). I've had several systems from each (mostly at work) over the years, and the random-crapout factor has been substantially lower on the Apple systems.
So yeah, you get better specs for the money with Dell, and if you plan on only keeping the system for short-term use, that's dandy. But in my experience the Apple price premium isn't *entirely* due to the brand-name factor; there does seems to be an overall better system quality.
Is anyone else tired of hearing the hardware comparisions, with umm no you are wrong attached to them? Some one please PROVE your comment. Apple computers are more expensive by Dell every time that I compare them. No matter what machine you are talking about. I just priced up a an Inspiron 6400 vs Apple MacBook Pro base model. Same basic stats except that Inspiron only would a min of 1GB RAM and 120GB HD and I upgraded the video and display so it would be closer:
Apple MacBook Pro $1999.00
Inspiron 6400 $1212.00
I don't see this Apple is cheaper with same equipment comment. Looks like I save $700 dollars with Dell. And if I don't care about the 128MB ATI video card and Ultrasharp monitor it drops to $1073. I could even throw in Windows XP Pro to really even the OS and I still save $550/$750.
Am I missing something?
Pricing as similar a machine as I can (replacing the ATI card with a quadra FX 3450, match RAM, lose monitor, add DVD-RW, add ethernet) I get $6282 before tax.
So, are Dell gouging an extra $2033 (or 47%) profit from their customers ? Or is it what the market will sustain for them ? Or is it that this time Apple managed to get a better deal on parts ? Who knows... It's pretty certain that if it were the other way around it would be Apple's "high prices".
Now my pricing includes a small discount, but since it seems Apple have to compete on price against Dell's discounts normally, I'm sure no-one will object to me using Apple's discounted prices against Dell, yes ? Even with the discount removed, it's still almost $1400 difference in Apple's favour.
My point is that you have to compare like with like. Sure there's no low-cost tower. Deal. If they don't sell it, you can't buy it - though in fact I'd be surprised if the gap wasn't filled soon enough... I'd expect Apple to launch the high-end towers first so there's a good population of high-end machines out there, and to exploit the pent-up demand. As soon as that demand starts to wane, I (if I were Apple
Simon (who can't wait for his new machine to arrive
Physicists get Hadrons!
On the high end of notebooks, Apple competes with Dell so-so. I just spec'ed an E1705 to be comparable to the standard 17" MBP in the way a Mac fanatic would (i.e. put in XP Pro, the GeForce Go 7900 GS, the 1920x1200 display -- all this because the lesser offerings don't quite compare to the MBP; never mind that the latter two are better -- and in the case of the GPU, significantly so). The price w/o the instant rebate is $2631, and the standard MBP is $2799. Ok, I didn't quite do it like a Mac fanatic. The more unreasonable ones would price it against an XPS, which is just ridiculous.
The "mid range" notebooks (which really have a CPU too expensive to be considered mid range) are similar, though the E1505 can't quite compare to the $1999 15" MBP. I don't think the Turbo Cache and Hyper Memory cards will work as well as the x1600. The RAM is also peculiarly 533 MHz... So, I think the 15" MBP would at the very least be comparable to the $1837 E1505 w/o rebates.
On the "low end" (again, CPU choice is the issue), the 13" MB looks like a steal compared to the E1405. I had to bump up the RAM and HD size on the MB this time (surprising, because Dell usually offers lower options), but the MB was $1249 compared to the E1405's $1543 w/o rebates. (Even with the instant rebate, the E1405 was $1234).
So it looks to me like Apple competes much more favorably in mid range thin and light notebooks than on the high or low ends (well, it doesn't have a low end product; if there were options to use a Core Solo or even a lower clock Core Duo, it might compete).
Perhaps Apple just needs to grow more before it can offer more competitive rates and more options. I feel like at every level the CPU is one step high and the GPU is one step low, but maybe that's because I'm a gamer, so I tend to value GPU performance over CPU. I bought the E1705 with standard display, GeForce Go 7800, 1.66 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM @ 667 MHz (alas! 2 DIMMs), and XP MCE w/ CD, and it cost me $1550. Those specs aren't fit for the enthusiast, but I think Dell still has the competitive edge for the gamer.
The desktop line is another beast, and no matter how hard someone tries, you won't be able to compare the two lines. Until I can find good benchmarks comparing Woodcrest to Conroe somehow, you won't be able to make them similar. However, one thing's for sure: there's a big gaping hole in Apple's current desktop lineup for middle range. I hope they decide to fill that gap sometime soon.
BMW drivers typically don't tell everyone to buy BMWs no matter their driving needs, either. It's not the machines, it's the users.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
As much as I loathe Apple's manufacturing and QA practices, if you bought an Intel Mac, you could easily run Windows XP without resorting to VMWare or VirtualPC to do it. So, your complaints seem largely baseless in light of the new generation Apple computers being able to run Windows natively.
If your engineering applications require hardware specifications an Apple can't offer, okay. Use Windows, please; nobody is twisting your arm. I use both Windows and Linux myself, but I can meet my Windows needs by running Windows inside of VMWare Player or QEmu, and I use Linux for my day-to-day computing. If Linux couldn't meet my day to day computing needs, I wouldn't use it; it's that simple.
Actually it was a master marketing move and worked beautifully.
Coke was releasing a a new product. What better ways to get it out than apply all manufacturing capability to the new product to get it on the shelf?
In the meantime they knew all the other Cokers would bitch and moan and complain their Coke was gone.
After two weeks of media frenzy it came back.
But it was a changed formula. Corn syrup instead of sugar. Corn syrup is cheaper.
After the two weeks no one noticed the change in the formula. They had forgotten the original taste and CC got it close enough.
Throw me a bone here. Since when does a major company toss a flagship product for no reason?
Think about this in computer terms. MS pulls Windows whatever and only provides Diet Windows. The revolt happens and MS goes back to the previous Windows. Do you think that version is unchanged?
I think not.
Oh, BTW they did tout how it was unchanged in their history of Coke except for the corn syrup. They left out that cocaine was removed in 1929
Then we have this which disputes what I have said but...
Study history with a bit of skeptcism. It helps.
qz
Wait a minute...
Mac Pro
dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
16 Gigs RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 4500
23" cinema display
Mac OSX
$11,648
Dell Precision Workstation 690
dual 3.0Ghz Xeon woodcrests
16 Gigs RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 4500
24" widescreen flat panel
Windows XP x64 edition
$9,908
Guess it depends on how you configure them, doesn't it?
There has been talk of the elusive "killer app" for years on the internet but I believe that these new frameworks (Core Animation), existing frameworks (Core Image/Video, Data and Audio) will usher in a true "killer app" that developers will struggle in vain to reproduce on windows and other linux. Some may manage to create a pale copy of it but it will not be so tightly integrated into the OS and you will not be able to easily share data with other apps. I would also venture that it would take 10X as much time, money and manpower to develop.
We can all "oooh and ahhh" all we we want about the flashy features in OS X or Vista how easy it is to implement innovative applications in a particular OS will determine which one has the attention of the public and media IMO.
I think the keynote only scratched the surface of the power the collaboration features in Leopard will have on the development landscape.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Competition, of course. Maybe Microsoft will release new (and better) OSes on time when faced with a serious competitor.
Hey, it worked for Intel/AMD.
I'm thinking about building a new G5 system. will windows run on that?
We have Vista Beta in our office. The OS is a memory and processor hog. Now I know "but it's beta" and all that MS appologist crap, but the same box it is on screams with Linux and is quite capable with XP. All the computer pros in our office who have messed with this Vista Beta are already looking at their existing systems and deciding what all they will have to upgrade to make it Vista compatible.
Bottom line is, a > $500 desktop from Dell isn't going to run Vista for crap where as today you can buy and old Apple iMac on eBay for the same money and you can run Tiger.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Whenever I see threads like this on Slashdot, I can't help but think how sorely mislead the average Slashdot user is. The forum is overwhelmingly pro-Apple and pro-Linux, and they let their emotions cloud their vision.
Often, you see trollish headlines that state "will Apple kill Microsoft?", "Will Apple kill Dell?", "is this the iPod killer?", etc. People here seem to be a little on the artsy/emotional side rather than on the purely logical side. They can't seem to grasp the gravity of a situation; instead they get lost in the details and forget the scale of things. For a forum that loves Star Trek, they sure don't think like Spock.
First of all, people underestimate the massive advantage of being the much larger company. Dell has a huge marketshare advantage over Apple. They have $55 billion a year in revenue vs. $14 billion a year. If worst came to worst, Dell could simply buy Apple. Microsoft could also easily buy Apple, but the US Gov wouldn't allow that. Still, if it were a fight to the death, they could afford to take losses to sap away Apple's marketshare.
I think people should stop to think for a moment before they post these unrealistic headlines, because if it came down to it, the larger company would simply gobble up the smaller company. It's business 101.
I'm not trying to troll here, I'm trying to inject a dose of reality into another one of these irrational threads.