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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.
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
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.
So, uhm, Apple is, uhm, trying to compete, uhm, with, uhm,their competitors.
Thanks a lot for this insightful article Mr. Enderle....
Don't forget that the author is Rob Enderle, who tends to defend Microsoft and SCO with all his heart and bitches regularly on Apple and Linux... Do a quick Google on him...
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
"I haven't seen Jaguar, yet"
Jaguar?? I presume you meant to say "Leopard"
"I do know watching a 640x480 WMV on OSX is like upsampling a 160x120 video into 1080 high-def- UGLY"
Not at all. A 640x480 wmv file on windows has the same resolution as on OS X. They play fine with the flip4mac plug-in for quicktime. VLC can handle a lot of them too.
I chose to end my comments, not with a rim shot, but a long decaying F#7sus4
They already do, Apple's machines are competitive with Dell's offering of the same price (depends of the rebates you grab though, but Apple's price are lower than equivalent Dell machines without rebates), and you get OSX + slick cases (versus ugly dell cases).
They just don't compete on the very low end stuff (dell goes much lower in price/configurations quality)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
FTFA:
"However, Steve Jobs is the master of being your best buddy while planning to stab you in the back. His biographies are filled with stories that do more than suggest that if he wants what you have, you'd better grab it and run for the hills."
Please. History is littered with the corpses of companies with which Microsoft formed a "strategic partnership"-- The MS people stick around and play nice for a while, then one day the other company gets notified that Microsoft wants to go in another direction so the partnership is over. Then a couple months later Microsoft unveils a competing product and kills the company with which they partnered.
The best historical example I can think of is Go Corp in the late 80s/early 90s-- Microsoft partnered with them, stole their stuff and created Pen Windows to crush them. You can get accounts of it from both sides if you read these two books. However, Microsoft is doing the exact same thing right now: They are desperate to take marketshare from iPod/iTunes. To that end, their partnerships to make portable players and sell music under the "PlaysForSure" moniker have been miserable failures-- so now, they are screwing their partners and rolling their own solution in-house, Zune, which is stated incompatible with all the PlaysForSure stuff.
~Philly
That's the job of Puma.
Then Ocelot will take out HP.
Marmoset, once released, will end IBM.
Finally, Mr. Whiskers Boddington (the name of Jobs' childhood cat) will make Google irrelevant.
Then we'll get those full-screen iPods everyone's been wanting. wheeee
Could you please flag articles by this unmitigated idiot so I don't wast the click. Reading his drivel is not worth anybodys time.
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
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.
WMV's look identical on the Mac as they do on Windows. Its the exact same file. They can be played through QuickTime using Flip4Mac, VLC, or mplayer without problems.
WMV and Real are just as good on the Mac as they are in Windows.
For proof that this post is rubbish, look at the fact that the poster refers to "Jaguar" That was the code name for 10.2. That was many years ago.
Debunked.
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.
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.
H.264 is an Open Standard, as a part of MPEG-4. Apple's implementation is not Open Source, but there are Open Source implementations of H.264, the most notable of which is X.264.
When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
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.
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.
This is just something that's never going to change with Apple. They have a standard of quality that makes their brand quite valuable, and that's due to not stooping too low and slapping the Apple logo on a piece of crap. If you get their cheapest Mac, you can still rest assured it will be an awesome machine in its own right. You get the cheapest Dell, and you're just in for a poor experience.
Besides, remember the $100 laptop project? Steve Jobs offered OS X for free to run on those things. The project rejected the offer because they wanted it to be open source, then went with Red Hat (who just so happened to have donated to the project). So because of them, the world missed out on having a $100 Mac. Ugh.
"Sufferin' succotash."
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?
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.
I thought this was a neat trick, since I wasn't aware that Intel were shipping 2.8GHz Core Duos. The Dell site is a horrible mess, so I wasn't able to find the machine you were looking at. I did find the Dimension 9200. This was $1,574 with a 1.86GHz Core Duo. I also found the Dimension 5150c, starting at $779 with a 2.8GHz Pentium D as an option for $50 more.
The Pentium D is based on the old NetBurst microarchitecture which (in case you missed the last five years) is slower than pretty much anything else clock-for-clock. It's also very high power and hence heat, so needs more cooling, meaning it's likely to be louder.
If you are going to compare like with like, then please do so. Please post links, and please at least try to have slightly more clue than '2.8 is a bigger number than 1.8 so it must be better.'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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!
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?
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!