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Puncturing the "PCs Are Cheaper Than Macs" Myth
jcatcw writes "The recently converted Scot Finnie went notebook shopping. At the high end of the notebook spectrum, in order to get comparable power and features, a Dell machine comes in $650 over the Apple, and it was clunkier and weighed more. Sony couldn't beat the Apple either. Midrange and low-end machines, though, turn out to be pretty comparable, with more choices in the PC arena but some good values if you happen to want what Apple has decided you need. So, if you're talking name-brand hardware, it's just no longer the case that PCs are cheaper than Macs."
All this shows is that Vaios and Inspirons are way, way overpriced.
Why don't you compare the Mac to something from AOpen, Acer, or even eMachines?
Hell, even Gateway or HP.
They're all just as "similary equipped".
You cant specifically compare overpriced shiny crap to overpriced shiny crap and say you "punctured the myth".
And you can't compare Best Buy's jacked up retail prices to the Apple store. Hop online and see what it would truly cost you, the geek. I don't know where I can get discount Macs online.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think they (or anyone) could be forgiven for not understanding what you mean. If I can buy 1 pound of sugar for $1 at Safeway, or 100 pounds of sugar for $2 at Costco, and a friend asked me whether Safeway or Costco had cheaper sugar, it'd be negligent+misleading of me to simply answer "Safeway".
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I'm sure that Apple could go after the low end market but It's my belief that Apple intentionally avoids doing that for a number of reasons.
1. Margins at the lowest end of the market are thin if not razor thin. Certainly profit per unit isn't great, so each of these sold would mean a minimal profit, perhaps not even enough over the long term to justify any R&D, marketing and support.
2. Such a model would surely detract from sales of Apple's mid-range notebooks, as there would be a significant proportion of buyers who opted for the cheapest possible portable MacOS solution that they could lay there hands on. So, a low end model would, to some extent, cost Apple revenue, as it cannibalised sales from other, more profitable Apple notebooks.
3. Cheaper products sometimes (but not always) require corners to be cut. Apple's image (to the public) is one of quality as well as simplicity, and a low end model would perhaps change that image in a way that wouldn't suit it. Certainly Apple would not want people's first experience of the brand to be a negative one, and a low end notebook computer (from any manufacturer) is certainly the sort of product that is likely to disappoint rather than meet or exceed the average user's expectations.
The bottom line is that Apple just doesn't need to go chasing that segment of the market when doing so has so many cons and so few pros.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Almost every time one of my non-tech savvy friends is looking for a laptop, I ask if they've looked at Macs. I then, without fail, hear "Macs are more expensive than PC's", and after a few questions, it always turns out that what they have actually found is, "I was looking for cheap laptops, and Apple doesn't make anything in the $500-$1000 range". But, that's not the end of the story. Most of my non-tech savvy friends interpret Apple's low-end laptops ($1100) as being equivalent to a low-end PC laptop ($600). Thus, they think that Macs really do cost $500 more than equivalent PC laptops. These are not the kind of people who carefully compare specs, hard drive size and RPMs, processor speed (mostly they still think Macs are slower too), graphics sets, the value of bundled software, service and repair reputation, etc. They just look at price on a few manufacturers that they've always dealt with.
So no, many people do not understand that Apple has no low-end. They actually think that all PC makers have the same low end, and that the only difference is price.