3-Way Price War On Black Friday: iPad, Nook, and Kindle

destinyland writes "Black Friday has touched off a three-way price war between Apple, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Kobo readers dropped their price to just $99 to compete with the Nook, only to discover that Barnes and Noble was lowering the price on their touchscreen Nooks to $79, to compete with the new $79 Kindle from Amazon. And meanwhile, Apple has announced aggressive pricing on all Apple products for Black Friday, reportedly including $100 off on MacBook and iMac products, and a $61 discount on the iPad 2."

Comments

Price War?

[BLT2112]

So this still leaves the iPad2 a few hundred dollars more expensive, right?

Re:Price War?

[nomadic]

You're not just buying a tablet, my friend, you're buying a lifestyle. The ipad is a bargain if you think about it like that; buy it and you're the kind of person who knows obscure indie bands, is comfortable hanging out in coffee shops just being chill, where strangers will invite you to gallery openings and private parties attended by other good-looking, creative individuals who also have the good taste to buy apple products. You will probably get a job offer by an independent film company, high-end advertising agency, or chic start-up right after buying it, and then you will be able to afford that high-end condo in San Francisco. Just make sure after you get it to come back to slashdot and respond to every anti-Apple post with anguished hostility.

Re:Price War?

[alvinrod]

Against other products that aren't even in the same category, no less. Sure they can all read books, but that's like comparing sales prices for bicycles against cars because they can get you from point A to point B.

Let's just tag this one "slownewsday" and move along.

Re:Price War?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a new price war between Apple and the others (who are selling products that are much more limited than an iPad).

In previous years, Apple has been known to discount iMacs and MacBook Pros by $101 on Black Friday; and also to discount iPod Touches (I think this discount was roughly 10%). A $61 discount on an iPad 2 would be roughly in line with this.

Re:Price War?

[Fuzzums]

At least there is SOMETHING cheap when it comes to apple products.
That is the jokes about their products.

Wait. My apologies. That was cheap :)

Re:Price War?

[alen]

so are other android tablets

the kindle fire will destroy the tablet businesses of most android tablet makers

Re:Price War?

[Guspaz]

A few hundred dollars more expensive than what? The Galaxy Tab 10.1 16GB seems to be going for about $500 today, which is the same price as the iPad 2. You can't compare a 10" high-end tablet to a 7" budget tablet or e-reader, they're not the same class of device.

People rag on apple for selling expensive products. The perception is largely because, while Apple's products are generally priced roughly the same as similarly spec'd products from their competitors, Apple doesn't typically sell low-end or budget devices. That is to say, their product lineup starts in the mid-range to high-end. So, they're expensive, yes, but not overpriced.

Re:Price War?

[destinyland]

It's even worse. Today Amazon just announced a surprise 32% discount on their Kindle DX tablets!

http://www.beyond-black-friday.com/2011/11/24/amazon-announces-a-black-friday-sale-on-the-kindle-dx/

Re:Price War?

[Rudeboy777]

How about the screen and keyboard? Does your Toshiba have an unibody aluminum design?

I always thought Apple stuff was overpriced too, but there's a lot more to it than the CPU speed and how much memory is in a laptop. This coming from a guy who has never owned an Apple product.

Re:Price War?

[metalmaster]

I would mod you funny if i could, because you've gotta be kidding. The Kindle Fire is little more than an amazon portal that puts up the facade of being an android tablet. If you want a basic android offering that includes a web browser and limited media player by all means get a Kindle Fire. There is no way it can even compete with a tablet that offers an expandable SD slot, camera, mic and presumably android updates down the line.

I work retail and I have had plenty of time to play with our display model. The UI is a bit too simple and it's content-focused. That's great if you plan to consume amazon content, but i'd rather have an android UI and navigation

Re:Price War?

[Hognoxious]

You're not just buying a tablet, my friend, you're buying into a cult. The ipad is a bargain if you think about it like that...

Totally missed the irony for you.

Fixed your "fix".

Re:Price War?

[smellotron]

I always thought Apple stuff was overpriced too, but there's a lot more to it than the CPU speed and how much memory is in a laptop

When I was in college I saw hardware failures on Toshiba laptops that I've not seen elsewhere. Most memorable: one with a hardware clock drifting by minutes per day, and another with dead peripheral ports. Obviously these events are not statistically relevant, but they are problems that easy to hide in advertising/sales literature. No laptop manufacturer touts mean-time-to-failure in their components, but it is easy to cut corners elsewhere in order to beef up cpu/ram/disk.

Re:Price War?

[gstoddart]

Just make sure after you get it to come back to slashdot and respond to every anti-Apple post with anguished hostility.

Or, you know, you could try one and have an informed position instead of just mindlessly slagging the product every time it's mentioned.

My manager just bought his son's, because it wasn't compatible with the stuff he needed to do at school (Windows only class stuff). In a week he went from "meh, who cares" to "wow, I love this thing".

Maybe people like them because they find them extremely useful?

So far, mine hasn't led to the glamorous lifestyle you seem to suggest ... but I'm old, fat, and un-hip, so that wasn't ever going to happen anyway.

But for business trips and being stuck on an airplane, it's an exceedingly useful thing. I can actually read my email from the airport wifi, and watch a movie on a screen much better than the one in the plane. Throw in eBooks, games, and a couple of other things, and I haven't used my laptop on a business trip in the last 7 trips I've made. Despite claims to the contrary, a netbook would not fill the same niche because it's still a clamshell with a keyboard. My iPad is about the size of a book.

Go to the lobby bar of a hotel in a business district, and count the number of people with iPads ... and then look at them and see if you think they're hipsters who have these things for fashion purposes.

I haven't used one, but I suspect what I say is true of any tablet ... it really is a nice form-factor.

Re:Price War?

[AdamJS]

Macbooks and iMacs and, well, most of their personal computers are the exception. But his statement holds true for "ultrabooks" and phone and tablet markets. Apple's main bread and butter.

Re:Price War?

[hedwards]

For a one day sale yes, I'm not sure what Amazon gets out of it, but B&N desperately needs more mindshare going forward. I have one of the first gen Nooks, and it's really good hardware, but most of the time when I'm reading it nobody has ever heard about it. Granted that's in the general public, but still not good.

Any money they lose on them on Black Friday is almost certainly going to be money well spent. The hardware is well polished and of good quality, and I can go into a B&N store and read free books every day if I like. Really, they ought to be advertising it on TV the way that Apple and Amazon do.

Re:Price War?

[Gramie2]

Then again, one of my co-workers has had problems with recent Apple purchases: dead pixels on screens, dust on the inside of his new iMac screen (cleaning it himself would void the warranty, and the replacement had the same problem), and customer service reps that wanted him to go away rather than fix the problems.

Re:Price War?

[hedwards]

Why would you need a unibody aluminum case? For the cost of the case and pointless extras I could just buy a new ThinkPad when mine goes tits up, or get like 8 years worth of extended warranties on the unit.

I've contemplated getting a Mac in the past, I just have never been able to stomach the amount of money that I'd end up paying for shinies that have little to no impact on performance or reliability.

Re:Price War?

[barc0001]

And as a countervailing anecdotal data point I've been running IT departments for 20 years and can tell you that Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo and (recently) Asus laptops have been among the more solid devices for reliability in my experience. HP and Dell are in the mid-tier, Acer is on the lower end, and Sony is a definite NOT buy. In my experience. We've had Apple laptops at most of the companies I've been at and I would say in my experience they have a slightly better reliability rate than the Toshiba devices, but not enough of an edge to warrant their price premium.

Re:Price War?

[Weedhopper]

Okay, I'm calling your story.

When did you your Toshiba i5 and what are its exact specs?

Because Apple only has a few product lines and each price change is widely announced, we ought to be able EXACTLY how much the equivalent MBP cost. I doubt it it was $2500.

Re:Price War?

[xouumalperxe]

There's a lot of stuff inside a computer that doesn't make it to the spec sheet, and that is usually described as "better building quality". Now, we can harp on about the sexy aluminium chassis, which frankly only matters if you're treating your laptop like crap. Or you can get down to stuff that's perhaps a little less obvious, but, at least in my case, much more relevant.

When I joined the company I'm currently working for, I was given a budget for a laptop. Given that budget, I suggested they instead buy me a set of display/mouse/keyboard, and I'd use my own Macbook Pro. Some time later, after the advantages of the big display and lower-set keyboard starting becoming obvious to the rest of the company, people got upgraded to similar setups. Now, I work at a place where there are loads of power fluctuations. What we immediately saw was all the other laptops here that connect via VGA to their respective displays got serious issues with the image flickering. I don't mean a tiny flicker, I mean great big stripes visible a metre away. Disconnecting the laptops from their chargers fixes the issue, as does connecting them via DVI/HDMI where possible. The voltage regulators in those laptops' power supplies suck balls, and the noisy power is propagating all the way to the display. Me? I'm still working on the MBP, and it works just fine with VGA.

Granted, "I work in a place with bad power" isn't exactly the biggest issue in most people's minds when they're shopping for a laptop. I also agree that it's a steep price difference for "better build quality" (I still think that the buying into the OS makes it worthwhile, though I accept that others don't). But it's quite clear to me that comparing purely on the performance specs is missing some details of the whole picture.

Re:Price War?

[gstoddart]

Oh the irony!!!

Well, since there's neither anguish nor hostility, not so much with the irony.

But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them ... it's generally an uninformed opinion based on what people think they know as opposed to anything factual.

But, hey, all Linux fanboys are smelly virgins who live in their mom's basement, and all Windows fanboys must be corporate shills who don't know better ... right?

Or we could act like adults.

Re:Price War?

[danbob999]

Squaretrade made statistics with over 30,000 laptops

http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/?ccode=bs_war_buyerblog

Asus came first, followed by Toshiba, in terms of reliability. Sony came better than Apple. HP was the worst. Even worse than Acer and Gateway.

Apple did slightly better than the average, but given that what they call "premium laptops" (those over $1000), which include almost all Apple laptops, also did better than the average, Apple didn't score any better than the competition.

Re:Price War?

[bemymonkey]

Longer than a run-of-the-mill Toshiba/Acer/ASUS/Dell? Yes, of course.

Longer than a Dell Precision or a Thinkpad T/X/W or HP Elitebook? Maybe not, but then again, those often actually cost more than Apple hardware...

Re:Price War?

[steveha]

You can't compare a 10" high-end tablet to a 7" budget tablet or e-reader, they're not the same class of device.

Oh, I think I can. Here, I'll do it. I'll compare the iPad 2 to the Nook Tablet.

Each is better in some ways than the other. iPad 2 has cameras and a larger screen; Nook Tablet is a convenient size for carrying, is lighter (400 grams vs. 601 grams!), and has longer battery life. Both have great screens. Both have a web browser. iPad 2 has more apps, but Nook Tablet has the apps I really care about; in particular, it has Netflix pre-loaded. Both have a 1 GHz dual-core ARM processor. The Nook Tablet has 1GB of RAM, twice as much as iPad 2, and has a claimed 11.5 hour battery life vs. iPad 2's claimed 10 hour battery life.

And Nook Tablet is literally half the price of iPad 2.

So I bought a Nook Tablet and I haven't bought an iPad.

P.S. I also have a Nook Color and I plan to root it and install CyanogenMod. It turns out that the Nook Color actually has Bluetooth hardware that was not enabled by the Nook software stack, so a rooted Nook Color makes a rather nifty little tablet.

If a bunch of Nook Color owners run out and buy a Nook Tablet, now might be a good time to pick up a used Nook Color for cheap. If you can get a new one for $200 you ought to be able to get a used one for around $100 or so. A used iPad 2 will be much more expensive than that.

I am hoping that the Nook Tablet also has hidden Bluetooth hardware, but I have not yet seen this confirmed or disproved.

steveha

Re:Price War?

[gstoddart]

"Or we could act like adults."

Well... looking at your slashID, I know you're not new here, so I guess you've just not been paying attention? lol.

Well, I can always hope, misguided as that may be.

Re:Price War?

[bemymonkey]

Interesting... the Thinkpads I've been looking at lately are all pretty much just as expensive as a MBP. Are they so much cheaper than Apple stuff in the States?

Oh well, don't think my X200 will be dying any time soon... maybe I'll just wait until I get a chance to visit the States again :)

Re:Price War?

[fyngyrz]

Not only will it likely last longer, check EBay for resale values on Macbooks. You might be pretty surprised. My windows laptop, same vintage as my Macbook Pro, isn't worth much. My Macbook Pro, however, will earn me a significant amount towards the next version if I were to sell it today. If, that is, I were feeling like I needed to sell it, which I don't, because it's really pretty darned sweet. Illuminated keyboard, fast dual core, lots of ram, fabulous native display and drives a 2nd display without a problem, big drive, all manner of I/O, wifi, bluetooth. And yes, that very tough aluminum case. I often use it to run my software-defined radio in my vehicle, which is a *very* demanding application. Doing the same thing on the supposedly comparable windows laptop - dual core, same ram and clock speed - I get lag and audio gaps; on the Macbook pro, not only does the app run smoothly, I can surf the web via wifi at the same time without glitchery. Part of the advantage is OSX; it does very well at multitasking... but the hardware is frankly awesome, if that's all that matters to you (I've bought my last Windows product, myself, and quit doing Windows development... the bottom line is the Mac is better in almost every way, the one exception being Apple, which is a company I think of as just as "evil" as Microsoft... just a bunch of dickheads. But they do make the best gear.)

Re:Price War?

[hedwards]

Mine was, I ended up with an x120e because I need something that's going to be readily portable and durable. It has similar specs to the cheapest to the Mac Air that I could have bought, but even after upgrading to 4gb of RAM and adding bluetooth, it was still $400 or so less than the Mac. Also, I bought mine during a sale which helped, but not that much, I think it was only 10% off or sometime similar.

That being said, I do kind of wish it had a back lit keyboard, although it's more cost effective to just buy a light.

Re:Price War?

[bemymonkey]

Not a cracked case, but creaky palmrests, keyboard keys becoming unresponsive, the touchpad buttons becoming loose... hell, I only had two regular laptops before switching to Thinkpdas, and both of them exhibited all those symptoms. I see it every day at university, where people are schlepping around creaky half-broken laptops with glossy screens, overpowered graphics and mediocre battery life instead of geting something that gets the job done.

Not only durability is a factor here - ergonomics play a huge role as well. A decent trackpoint like those on Thinkpads, or the touchpads on MacBooks, are worth at least a few hundred dollars on a device you use for hours every day.

And however much you want to fight it: Apple tools do get the job done, and last longer while doing it.

Re:Price War?

[BasilBrush]

Yes, it's more expensive, does more, does it better, and has 90% of the market.

Re:Price War?

[bemymonkey]

These are all consumer and prosumer products - why would you expect to get anything other than anecdotal evidence?

As for Lenovo's reliability: I said Thinkpad, not Lenovo. You wouldn't lump in Alienware with Dell, would you? Yes, Lenovo has been making some unfortunate additions to the Thinkpad line (Edge, X1xxe, SL series...), but the workhorse T series, workstation W series and X220 are still pretty much unequalled.

Re:Price War?

[barc0001]

Not sure what to say about that Sony ranking. Sony (across several companies I've been at) has become a byword for "pay too much and watch it break in less than a year".

Re:Price War?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the iPad does dramatically more than the others which are glorified readers. It spanks all the Android tablets easily. That's why it sells in the millions.

Re:Price War?

[fyngyrz]

Apple's stock warranty is one year. Three years as a low-cost option (plus other support.) Me, I wouldn't know what the failure rates are, as my Macbook pro, Mac pro, our two iPads, four iPods, iPhone and and four minis of various ages are still all operating flawlessly.

In contrast to this, all of our Dells have had problems, some of them DOA within days of receiving them (though warranty has covered all of that); one custom-built machine has been back to the builder three times, once for a dead parallel port and twice for power supply problems. That could be anything, though, as the builder had many choices to make and may have made some of them badly. Most of the XP machines have had to be registry cleaned and de-malwared over and over. I do have a little Samsung running Windows 7 that's still problem-free. Though I suspect that's more a reflection of the fact that almost nothing has been installed on it as yet. In any case, part of the problem is there is a very wide range of PC hardware out there, while Apple hardware choice is considerably more circumscribed -- and frankly, I am *very* confident that it's more reliable than PC hardware. But I have to add to this that windows itself is a maintainance sink, and that's simply not true of OSX. Argue all you want, but the bottom line for us has to be written by my daily experience here -- not yours.

Re:Price War?

[mcvos]

Explaining is not the same thing as spicing up.

Re:Price War?

[mcvos]

If you want to see evidence of Apple overpricing, you need to look at the upgrades for Macbooks. Macbooks themselves, though pricey, are really, really nice machines. And if they cost more than comparable, slick, goodlooking hardware elsewhere (not sure if that's actually the case; there are other expensive laptops out there), then at least you get a really nice OS with it, and it all just works. But if you want 4GB extra RAM, you pay $200 extra. Replace the harddisk with an SSD? Pay $200 extra. 8GB of similar RAM would cost $50 elsewhere, and for $200 you can buy a better SSD and keep the old one.

I still think Macbooks are worth their price (if you can afford it at all, of course), but the upgrades make no sense. You can get them better and cheaper elsewhere. And reputedly the official manual even explains how to replace the harddisk.

Re:Price War?

[Spaseboy]

I have an iPad (1st gen bought in June 2010) and a nook color I bought new in November 2011. I prefer my nook. It is lighter and the screen size makes it easier to hold. I will replace my year old 17" MacBook pro with an Asus Eee pad transformer prime when it comes to retail.

For once I don't think Apple is keeping up with the future. Yes, tablets are where it is going but you can't replace democracy with communism and say it is a better choice because comrade Apple knows how to take care of you because you can't be trusted to take care of yourself.

Re:Price War?

[jbeaupre]

Funny thing though ... the original statement was that iPads cost hundreds more. In defense of iPads, you listed a bunch of activities that make iPads worth getting. Things that Nooks and Kindle Fires do quite well by all accounts and for hundreds less.

I think you just demonstrated why Apple may have reason to worry.

BTW, I've done 2/3 the stuff you listed with a $114 Kindle (email, books, games, plus web surfing and some encryption key calculations). I'm looking to upgrade to the $99 version soon.

Re:Price War?

[Spaseboy]

Um, third party statistic Companies do satisfaction and reliability ratings and surveys all the time. Your Google ain't broke. Apple is not always the most reliable in terms of hardware but it is typically top 3 in reports (Asus is often right with them). I have yet to see a report personally that does not have Apple as number 1 in satisfaction.

Most PC laptops are of garbage build quality. The case is the only thing that differentiates PC laptops from each other and can even be the single most expensive component on a laptop and it is the prime target for reducing cost because it is the one thing OEMs have direct control over.

Re:Price War?

[exomondo]

whoa settle down there cowboy, getting a little emotionally involved in this aren't ya. I don't think anyone is too scared to reply to some random guy on the internet.

Re:Price War?

[nomadic]

Woo, did I angry up the blood here?

Re:Price War?

[tadas]

Or we could act like adults.

You must be new here...

Re:Price War?

[shellbeach]

But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them ... it's generally an uninformed opinion based on what people think they know as opposed to anything factual.

See, I think this might be the cause of some misunderstanding. I personally dislike Apple not because of the quality of the hardware (which is excellent) or the software (which is likewise excellent), but rather because of their walled-garden strategies (e.g. iOS) and corporate philosophies (e.g. attempting to block the sale of rival products).

Like closed vs. open source, it's a position based on philosophy and ideology, not a spec-sheet comparison. Nobody's saying that Apple makes crap products -- they don't -- but some of us would still rather avoid them.

Re:Price War?

[danbob999]

Oh yeah I forgot this is slashdot. If your mother has a laptop and you ever helped her, then it means that you must live in her basement and play WoW.

Re:Price War?

[lsatenstein]

Gee, I am looking to replace our electric kettle. I get more pleasure from it than I would from an IPAD because the kettle is used to pour boiling water into our French style coffee maker. We actually use ground coffee for our breafast beverage -- no instant stuff

Re:Price War?

[RockDoctor]

You're not just buying a tablet, my friend, you're buying a lifestyle.

And if I want to buy a tablet, but not a lifestyle?

Thanks, but no thanks.

(Incidentally, I am unconvinced by buying a tablet. Full Stop. Benefits over a netbook? Minimal.)

Re:Price War?

[Jeremy Erwin]

I'll do you one better. I use whole beans-- and then, I, get this, I GRIND THEM.

The best of both worlds.

Re:Price War?

[Guspaz]

Compare a 13" macbook air to a Toshiba r830, which I believe is the current in that line, and the specs are pretty similar at the ~$1300 pricepoint... That's what I paid for my r700 (I'm not a mac user), and not long after, the mac air refreshed and had better specs for the same price.

It's not necessarily fair to compare Apple's price/performance to every other vendor at any time, because Apple can't refresh their product lineup daily. Some PC company is always coming out with something new, and any product that's just been refreshed is going to be ahead of the curve...

A proper comparison between a mac and another notebook would have to match up every spec as closely as possible, and then compare the price. If the mac air 13" has a 128GB SSD, you've gotta spec out the r830 with a 128GB SSD. Match the memory. Match the resolution, if possible. That sort of thing.

Re:Price War?

[Guspaz]

The 16GB Transformer has an enormously slower GPU, can't decode h.264 properly (blame nVidia's really horrible Tegra 2 GPU, something they thankfully fixed in Tegra 3, mostly), and is much thicker and heavier. Not to mention shorter battery life. It's not all bad, since the screen is a bit higher res, but it's not a comparable tablet. Heck, evne the Galaxy Tab I mentioned isn't exact (GPU is still slower), but it's closer in terms of physical size at least.

The Transformer Prime still has a much slower GPU, but the much faster CPU would make up for that. Thickness is about the same, and it's a bit lighter. But you're missing one critical thing: the Transformer Prime doesn't even have an official release date yet, while the iPad 2 has been on the market for 8 months. A closer comparison would be the Transformer Prime and iPad 3, when it comes out; the gap between them will likely be pretty small.

By the time the Prime comes out, it will probably be ~9 months away from the iPad 2. If we assume the iPad 3 comes out one year after the iPad 2, the gap between the two tablets then would be only 3 months, a much fairer comparison.

Re:Price War?

[Guspaz]

No, you can't. Because you obviously weren't willing to consider any $500 Android tablets either.

You can get a nice thin and light laptop for $1000, or you can get a similarly spec'd thick and chunky laptop for half that. That doesn't mean that the thin and light is overpriced, it means that you're not even looking at that market segment.

Re:Price War?

[Guspaz]

I'd probably have to own more than one modern Apple product for that. My windows desktop, windows laptop, solaris server, and linux VPS probably didn't please Steve too much.

Re:Price War?

[Guspaz]

The list price of the Acer Iconia seems to be $50 less than a comparable iPad 2, true. But it got mediocre reviews, it's thicker, heavier, slower, etc. I was trying to compare an iPad 2 to the most similar Android tablet. But we're not talking about a huge difference in price here. Yeah, you can save a bit by getting a budget-brand tablet, but you don't always want to.

Re:Price War?

[mikecase]

You're kidding right? All the upper tier Android tablets offer similar processor and memory specs, but with better screens (1280x800 vs 1024x768). Also, most have at least micro SD and USB slots, some have full size. Most can be had for at least $100 less than a competing iPad. And that's before the quad core Transformer Prime drops next month, which should pretty much mop the floor with the iPad 2 (similar price/size/weight, substantially better processor/batter life). Keep drinking the kool-aid.

Re:Price War?

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, I'm not so sure I'd describe an X120e as durable...no structure frame, no spill tray, chiclet keyboard... they're decent little netbook-upgrades, but not exactly throw-em-down-the-stairs Thinkpads.

I was thinking more along the lines of the X220 with the IPS screen, or a T420...

Re:Price War?

[Sporkinum]

I'll do you one better. I feed them to my pet civet, and then carefully get the beans after they have been pooped out. I then slowly roast them over a fire fueled by imported Tibetan yak dung. Only then do I grind them.

Re:Price War?

[mgf64]

Well, if you want to save on memory upgrades on a mac you can buy off the shelf ram and install it yourself. It is easy and won't break the warranty.

Re:Price War?

[Hognoxious]

How about the screen and keyboard? Does your Toshiba have an unibody aluminum design?

Well if it doesn't that makes it fall outside the GP's definition of "similary spec'd[1]" products.

[1] How hard would it have been to press the "c" key again, followed by the "e"?

Re:Price War?

[steveha]

No, you can't. Because you obviously weren't willing to consider any $500 Android tablets either.

You aren't making any sense. I certainly am willing to consider a $500 Android tablet; if I were buying one, it would be the Samsung Galaxy Tab. But I have no current need for a 10" screen rather than a 7" screen, no current need for a camera, and no current need for the extra horsepower.

You see, in my mind, the Nook Tablet qualifies as a tablet. To you, it's some kind of toy, not in the same class as an iPad 2; you basically said exactly that, so I don't think I'm putting words in your mouth. But I don't agree. For the things I want to do with a tablet, a Nook Tablet or a rooted Nook Color will work.

You aren't going to tell me now that I'm wrong, and the tablet won't do the things I want, are you?

You can get a nice thin and light laptop for $1000, or you can get a similarly spec'd thick and chunky laptop for half that. That doesn't mean that the thin and light is overpriced, it means that you're not even looking at that market segment.

But the Nook Tablet is about as thin as the iPad 2, and it's 2/3 the weight, so it's definitely thin and light.

If you mean that the iPad 2 is like the BMW of tablets, and the Nook Tablet is more like a Volkswagen or something, then sure, I'll go along with that. A BMW is not an "overpriced" car; you are getting more car for more money. But some of us don't want to spend the extra money, and are happy with a lesser car.

But a Volkswagen car still qualifies as a car. You wouldn't say "you can't compare a Volkswagen to a BMW"... or would you?

steveha

Re:Price War?

[Xest]

"But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them ..."

But I do have an iPad 2 and it really is all hype. There's this mythical fantasy built up around them that they're easy to use, that they're flawless, that they're high quality, that they have loads of awesome apps, and it's simply all a load of bollocks.

Starting with build and design quality, the back of it scratches so easily, both mine and everyone's I've seen has numerous scratches on it, it's hardly a tough sturdy material that continues to look nice if you dare ever actually try and use it. The official iPad covers that flip over to protect the screen look fancy but again, after a bit of use, those manky lines that appear on the screen between the grooves resulting in a need for constant cleaning make it look naff, and tacky. There's a long history of poor build quality on Apple products too, from cracking iPhone 3GS', to far too easily scratched iPod nanos, to fire hazard magsafe power adapters, to discolouring MacBook plastics. What about the fundamentally flawed 4G antenna design?

Ease of use is another myth, there's nothing about iOS that's any easier to use than other equally priced devices, I'd argue the fact that it's so utterly app-centric is in fact a downside - Android's gadgets are far more intuitive to end users in letting them access what they want, and far more efficient to boot. The app store app on the iPad is terribly unintuitive, why when I search for something and then click the button to reset search filters does it not actually reset search filters and in fact retains the primary search text? that's not what I want- when I reset search filters it's because I want to search again. Why when I'm scrolling through a massive long list of a few thousand apps split into many pages is it than when I go into one, and go back, it returns me to the first page so I've no idea how far along the list I was and have to scroll through many more apps? What about the extremely unhelpful fact the device tries to tie itself to a person so that if multiple people in a household want to use it they find they have to jump through a massive amount of hoops because switching user accounts for certain things like social media just isn't very easy? That's on the device itself, I wont even get started on how iTunes is probably one of the most awful, buggy, unintuitive mainstream apps around in the world right now. What about the apps that only take up a small portion of the iPad in the middle of the screen "because they were designed for iPhone" - why the fuck do I have this massive tablet if I'm going to have half the apps using only a phone sized section of the screen - great, I can expand it to use the screen and just have an extremely pixelated version instead. We've been building scalable user interfaces on PCs for decades to handle a far wider range of screen resolutions - on a device whose fans espouse how awesome it is in terms of quality and ease of use was it really so hard for Apple to plan for and issue advice for producing scalable, futureproof interfaces to start with? Or we they too busy slagging off Android for fragmentation to do this, because they didn't want to look hypocritical when the same issue - also known as hardware progress - inevitably came to bite them?

The choice of apps isn't as good as often hyped either, there's the obvious - that because of Apple's strict policies you're stuck with a god awful piss poor keyboard that can't even touch the likes of Swype on my phone (my phone is Android), through to the slightly less talked about - that all those great looking apps you see demo'd are pretty fucking hollow when you come to use them. That app on the adverts showing a planet or whatever? no it's not the exciting looking app that looks like it'll let you explore the solar system in great depth using just your fingers, it's a few largely static pages of rather basic factual information. The spr

Re:Price War?

[Spykk]

But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them

If the latest Prius came pre-installed with an irremovable mousetrap at crotch level in the drivers seat I probably wouldn't bother giving it a test drive. You could go on all day about how smooth the ride is or how the mousetrap helps hold you in so you don't fall out, but none of that matters because I don't want a car that caches my balls in a mousetrap every time I drive it.

Re:Price War?

[tehcyder]

I'll do you one better. I feed them to my pet civet, and then carefully get the beans after they have been pooped out. I then slowly roast them over a fire fueled by imported Tibetan yak dung. Only then do I grind them.

Electric or hand grinder?

Re:Price War?

[Guspaz]

I don't think the Nook Tablet is a toy, I just think it's a different class of device. You can compare it in that they're both tablets, but it's not fair to say the iPad is overpriced because it costs more than the Nook; you're basically saying that all 10" tablets are overpriced because they cost more than the Nook. That's the point I'm trying to make. To qualify something as overpriced, you have to compare it to similar devices. If you want to compare it to a Nook, you can only say that it's expensive, not that it's overpriced...

Although I guess the counterargument there might be, if a tablet was 10% bigger but 100% more expensive, it would be overpriced, even though they're different sizes, but hopefully you understand what I mean. Overpriced versus expensive. I won't say that Apple products aren't expensive. They ARE expensive. But they seem to generally be favourably priced compared to similar products from other companies, at least shortly after they come out. I used the mac air in another reply; ultrabooks have changed the dynamic a bit, but compare a mac air to a comparable notebook from Sony or Toshiba and the price is about the same for similar specs. They're all expensive, but the mac air isn't overpriced for that class of device. It's more fair to say thin and lights are expensive in general, since you pay a premium to get notebooks that involve a lot more custom design and exotic materials and parts and such.

Re:Price War?

[tero]

Kindle Fire is not sold outside U.S
Kinda hard to see how it would destroy anything until Amazon decides to go global with it (which they probably never will).

Until then the Fire is just a niche product in the American market - not much global relevance.

Re:Price War?

[Rutulian]

The only Macbook that costs $2500 is the 17-inch Pro. Toshiba only sells a handful of 17-inch laptops, and based on what you say of the price, I'm guessing you have a Qosmio X775. I just randomly picked one, so let's go through it, shall we?

Case and form factor (or "build quality" as others are referring to)
Weight: 7.5 lbs for the Toshiba vs. 6.6 lbs. for the Apple
Thickness: not in the Toshiba specs, but from the pictures looks like about 2 inches vs. 1 inch for the Apple
Battery life: 5 hours on the Toshiba (testing conditions not disclosed) vs. 7 hours for the Apple (50% display brightness browsing the web with the wireless card)
Case material: plastic for the Toshiba vs. aluminum for the Apple
Display material: plastic/polymer for the Toshiba vs. glass for the Apple

Display and Graphics
Video adapter: NVidia GTX 1.5 Gb GDDR5 for the Toshiba vs. TWO graphics chipsets (AMD Radeon 1 Gb DDR5 + Intel HD3000, which it automatically switches between depending on workload, presumably to help the battery life) for the Apple
Native resolution: 1600x900 for the Toshiba vs. 1920x1200 for the Apple
Dual display: no mention of this on the Toshiba, but maximum external display resolution for the Apple is 2560x1600, which it can support while also driving the native resolution of the built-in display
Display: nothing about this for the Toshiba, but Apple is well-known for their high-quality displays
--from notebookcheck.net there are a few more specs (similar, but not the exact models)
    avg. brightness: 192 for the Toshiba vs. 290 for the Apple
    contrast: 250:1 for the Toshiba vs. 578:1 for the Apple
    illumination: 77% for the Toshiba vs. 70% for the Apple
    blacks: 0.9 cd/m^2 for the Toshiba vs. 0.6 cd/m^2 for the Apple

Memory, cpu, hard disk
RAM: 6 Gb DDR3 for the Toshiba vs. 4 Gb DDR3 for the Apple
Processor: Intel Core i5 2.4 GHz for the Toshiba vs. Intel quad-core i7 2.4Ghz for the Apple
Hard disk: 640 Gb 7200 rpm for the Toshiba vs. 750 Gb 5400 rpm (optional 750 Gb 7200 rpm for $50) for the Apple

Everything else
LAN: gigabit for both
WLAN: b/g/n for the Toshiba vs. a/b/g/n for the Apple
Bluetooth: 3.0 for the Toshiba vs. 2.1 for the Apple
Smart card reader: none for the Toshiba vs. SDXC for the Apple
Ports: USB 2/3 for the Toshiba vs. USB 2 + Firewire for the Apple
External display port: HDMI for the Toshiba vs. Thunderbolt for the Apple, which supports VGA/DVI/dual-link DVI/HDMI

This is just a careful spec-to-spec comparison of the two. No need to pull in anecdotes or "feelings about quality". The Apple clearly has more higher-spec'd hardware for that extra $1400. You can certainly argue that the Toshiba is "good enough". That's fine, a personal decision. But the Apple is more expensive because it has more, and the quality of some of the components is higher, plain and simple.

Re:Price War?

[steveha]

it's not fair to say the iPad is overpriced because it costs more than the Nook; you're basically saying that all 10" tablets are overpriced because they cost more than the Nook.

I don't think I ever said the iPad is "overpriced". I said that both the Nook Tablet and the iPad are classified in my mind as "tablet devices" and I like how the Nook is half the price. I also said I don't need the iPad 2, and didn't buy one.

As I understand it, Apple spent large sums of money to lock in excellent prices on the major parts needed to make iPads. As a result, anyone else trying to enter the market finds that major parts are hard to come by, expensive, or both. In the near term, this gives Apple an edge in the tablet market. In the long term, I expect that we will see competing tablets that cost less than the iPad, but have similar specs.

I think we agree more than we disagree. We both agree that Apple is sort of the BMW for this sort of product, where you pay more and get more. But I absolutely think that 7" tablet devices qualify as tablet devices, and I think you can usefully compare them against 10" tablet devices.

steveha

Re:Price War?

[Coren22]

Burr or blade grinder?

(In case anyone doesn't know, only burr, only EVER burr...)

Playbook as well

[Anonymous Coward]

The Blackberry Playbook has it's price slashed, and it is a signal of the end.

Android/Apple price slash - PRICE WAR!

Re:Playbook as well

[paimin]

What's a Blackberry? :-D

Re:Playbook as well

[somersault]

Trust me, you don't want to find out. D-:

Re:Playbook as well

[Pope]

What's a Blackberry? :-D

A Blueberry that's been told twice.

Re:Playbook as well

[frank249]

The Playbook sold out up here in Canada within hours of going on sale last week and it looks like the same thing is happening in the US. According to this CNet article'the $199 BlackBerry tablet is now listed as 'unavailable' at most Best Buy stores in the U.S. For example, a Best Buy in suburban Los Angeles said it had sold out of the $199 PlayBook "a couple of days ago," according to a sales representative.'

Kindle Touch is still at $99

[sunr2007]

Kindle Touch is at $99 . I want that simply because of amazon ecosystem though Nook touch is better in terms of hardware. im just waiting for any offers on it to buy. any leads which can help?

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[modmans2ndcoming]

How does the nook touch beat the kindle touch in hardware? Seriously because I want to get an e-reader but want the best value.

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[sunr2007]

check these reveiew. http://www.marco.org/2011/06/03/nook-simple-touch-review http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/11/2458956/kindle-2011-review ... im not saying difference is heavy but nook is slightly better off than kindle touch.

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[willoughby]

Amazon missed the boat on one feature. With my Nook Touch I can hold it in one hand and press the hardware buttons on either side to turn the pages. With no hardware page-turn buttons on the Kindle touch you must tap or swipe the screen to turn a page, so it takes two hands to read a book. But, maybe I'm the only person who sometimes holds their e-reader with one hand.

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[steveha]

I got the Nook Simple Touch because I really wanted a physical button for turning pages. I have been quite happy with the device.

My Nook is currently on loan to my father, whose hands shake a bit. He has real trouble with any touchscreen device; touchscreens are designed to do things when you touch them, and with his hands shaking he keeps doing things he didn't mean to do. With the Nook Simple Touch he can hold his hands on the bezel and use the hardware buttons to flip pages. (He's still having some trouble with it, but I think once he gets used to it he won't have any more trouble. But any device without hardware buttons is ruled out for him.)

Also, I really like the way Barnes and Noble designed their Nooks to take standard protective covers. You can choose from a variety of covers, with various features and colors and price points. I got a simple cover that can be secured with a permanently-attached elastic band, so that if I throw it in a backpack, the cover will stay closed.

I paid $140 for my Nook and I am satisfied that it was money well spent. I might just go pick up one of the $80 ones tomorrow.

steveha

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[Abstrackt]

But, maybe I'm the only person who sometimes holds their e-reader with one hand.

ASCII porn certainly isn't what it used to be.

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[chromas]

Unicode porn is the future!

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[fyngyrz]

Perverts. Binary pron is the only respectable pron. "You're the one!" "the power of two!" "Shift a bit left, would you? Ah, that's twice as good..."

Thanks, I'll be here all day. Try the veal.

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[don.g]

The old palmpilots were great for that. Hold in one hand, use your thumb on the scroll buttons.

Yes, I used to walk to university (50 minutes) reading off one. And on the way back, at night, with the backlight on.

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[nurb432]

If you root the nook touch, you can add the amazon app and get the bet of both worlds.

Re:Kindle Touch is still at $99

[shellbeach]

Amazon missed the boat on one feature. With my Nook Touch I can hold it in one hand and press the hardware buttons on either side to turn the pages. With no hardware page-turn buttons on the Kindle touch you must tap or swipe the screen to turn a page, so it takes two hands to read a book. But, maybe I'm the only person who sometimes holds their e-reader with one hand.

Yeah, I was surprised that Amazon removed the buttons on the side. You could still turn pages by tapping, though, which makes it possible to read with one hand -- you just need to curl your thumb around a little more. Not as nice as a button, though, and you'll get the screen dirty ...

In any case, the kindles with buttons and a keyboard are still available, and are the same price as the Kindle touch I believe ... Do you really need a touchscreen to read a book?

61 off the highest end iPad 2

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hardly a price war.

Give it a rest

[artor3]

That's not a price war. The Kindle dropped their prices a while ago, not as part of some Black Friday promotion. And the iPad is in a completely different class of devices. I guess you might say that they're offering the sale to dissuade people from getting the Kindle Fire this Christmas, but the more likely scenario is that all of these are just standard Black Friday deals. This is less of a story and more like one of those snail mail sales flyers they spam out every week.

But hey, it will give all the fanboys a reason to argue over which device is best, which I suppose was the whole point.

Re:Give it a rest

[Spad]

Everything is a war these days, every new product an [other product]-killer; people don't disagree with someone, they "slam" them or "destroy" them.

Let's face it, if it's not totally over the top and blown out of all proportion, very few sections of the media will care enough to publish it.

Re:Give it a rest

[kqs]

Close. If it's not totally over the top and blown out of all proportion, very few people will buy the magazine/watch the show/click the link. Blame where blame is due. The media does what makes them money; we the people make the choices.

Pathetic.

[Ethanol-fueled]

People who participate in Black Friday are pathetic. Only in America are people willing to be herded like cattle, trampling and fighting each other over a fucking TV. Camping out in front of stores days in advance just to buy low-priced crap made in China is like begging to suck the cock of a person who steals your money and beats the shit out of you.

Pay the extra pennies and have some fucking dignity. If you're that hard-up to suck Chinese or Korean cock, then go move there and suck to your heart's content. The living expenses are real cheap over there, too.

Re:Pathetic.

[Anonymous Coward]

now, we call that being smart

Re:Pathetic.

[element-o.p.]

Being smart would be buying on Black Friday and saving a shit ton of money.

It's only smart if the time you spend camping outside of the store and fighting the mob inside the store is worth less to you than the difference in price. My time is valuable; wasting it on Black Friday shopping is a poor choice, IMHO.

$79 Kindle with "Special Offers"

[Vecanti]

I notice there are two types of Kindles. Those that say Kindle and those that say, Kindle "with Special Offers". The $79 is with special offers. My understanding is that it will display ads for the entire life of the device for the cost saving over the normal price, is this true? It's a $109 without special offers.

The Nook is $79 with no ads.

I have no interest in either, but I wonder how many people are going to be WTF!? this christmas with their Kindle's as they didn't notice the "Special Offers" thing.

Re:$79 Kindle with "Special Offers"

[Anonymous Coward]

The ads are fullscreen as a screen saver only... The rest of the time it is a little banner on the screen, except when reading, then the ads are not seen at all. You can also disable the ads anytime you want and Amazon will debit the amount to match the price of an unsubsidized model.

Re:$79 Kindle with "Special Offers"

[Anonymous Coward]

You also have to pay an extra $10 for the power cable... which comes with every other model.

Re:$79 Kindle with "Special Offers"

[darrylo]

The Nook is $79 with no ads.

It also appears to be in-store only (Black Friday special?). Foo.

Re:$79 Kindle with "Special Offers"

[hedwards]

I might be missing something, but isn't the Kindle power adapter just a standard micro USB cable with power adapter? From the looks of it it's almost identical to the one that came with my Nook, apart from different branding.

At this stage as things move more and more to a standard cable, it makes less and less sense to pay for an extra power cable when you probably have a half dozen ones sitting around already.

Re:$79 Kindle with "Special Offers"

[Zebedeu]

Not exactly. The power cable is a standard micro-USB cable which comes with the device.
The 10$ part is the USB AC adapter, which frankly seems a bit expensive, but it's not necessary as long you have access to a USB port or a modern cell phone charger.

The iPad Wins

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to tell you guys an important secret: nobody except nerds wants a non-iPad tablet. Everybody wants the iPad, and if you buy somebody a different tablet, they will be secretly angry about you. You can nerd-rage about this all you want, but it is true. As has been said before: there is not a tablet market, there is an iPad market.

Re:The iPad Wins

[Nerdfest]

Right. That's why there's all those HP tablets still lying around. A good percentage of people seem to feel the a tablet is not worth the price Apple is charging. Another fairly large group of people seem to disagree with many of Apple's restrictions. Both of these groups have somewhat limited options, but that is changing. In 5 years the tablet market will match the smartphone market, assuming Apple doesn't cripple all potential competition with lawsuits.

Re:The iPad Wins

[Curunir_wolf]

I'm going to tell you guys an important secret: nobody except nerds wants a non-iPad tablet. Everybody wants the iPad, and if you buy somebody a different tablet, they will be secretly angry about you. You can nerd-rage about this all you want, but it is true. As has been said before: there is not a tablet market, there is an iPad market.

Meh. I doubt that's true. A friend of mine (very non-geek) has an iPad, and her son recently came home with a Nook Tablet. She likes it better than the iPad.

Unfortunately, it looks like Amazon is going to sell a lot of Kindle Fires to non-geeks just because they have better marketing, and a lot of people won't look at or even know about the Nook tablets, which are much better products.

Re:The iPad Wins

[Anonymous Coward]

The HP tablets were essentially given away. I don't think that really compares.

As for the Apple restrictions? I don't think anybody really cares about that outside of tech circles. Most people don't mix politics with their consumer electronics like we all do.

Re:The iPad Wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Another fairly large group of people seem to disagree with many of Apple's restrictions.

I've got news for you: the group of people who disagree with Apple's restrictions is very very small.

Re:The iPad Wins

[fyngyrz]

I care about the Apple restrictions -- they bother me quite a bit, in fact. As do some of their upgrade policies and the iPad's intentionally limited hardware connectivity (no memory slot, no really effective USB connection.) But those things don't bother me nearly as much as the difference in usability and apps between the Androids (I have Kindle E-ink and Fire devices, a recent Droid, and an enTourage Pocket Edge) and my iPad. The iPad is simply a *way* better device. I use my iPad all the time. All day, every day. The rest generally just take up shelf space.

Re:The iPad Wins

[nurb432]

Not everyone wants an iPad. I detest reading on LCD for any length of time, and the form factor comes in to play too.

You also cant toss the e-ink readers into the tablet market, they are different devices for different markets. ( which is what the story was talking about.. e-ink.... )

Re:The iPad Wins

[Belial6]

Funny, just tonight I was eating dinner with someone who was trying to be polite to her family for buying her an iPad after she had specifically told them she was looking for a 7" android tablet. This person definitely is not a "nerd".

It is not an iPad market. Apple timed their entry well, and Google was slow to respond, but the tablet market is still tiny and ready to grow. Thinking Apple has it all locked up is just wishful thinking.

Re:corporate birthdays now?

[rubycodez]

it's gone to the next level, day after halloween the stores started pimping Christmas crap in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Brings to mind the Tom Lehrer medley of Christmas song beginnings:
,br/> "God rest ye merry merchants may ye make the yuletime PAY!"
"Angels we have heard on high, tell us to go out and BUY!"
"Hark the Herald Tribune sings, advertising wonderous things...."

Funny - yes - but true

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys; the above, although funny, is exactly the business and marketing explanation for Apple products. Another example of this marketing a "lifestyle" is Harley Davidson Motorcycles. I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.

Saint Steven Jobs was the greatest salesmen and marketer that has ever existed. And I'd dare say, St. Jobs will be the best that will ever be.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[Em Adespoton]

Guys; the above, although funny, is exactly the business and marketing explanation for Apple products. Another example of this marketing a "lifestyle" is Harley Davidson Motorcycles. I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.

Saint Steven Jobs was the greatest salesmen and marketer that has ever existed. And I'd dare say, St. Jobs will be the best that will ever be.

Apple doesn't need logo'd apparrel. They'd prefer you to just buy one of their products and wear it as a talisman :) That way they don't have to make as many sizes and styles.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[the_humeister]

PT Barnum has him beat.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[mysidia]

I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.

The iPod is logo'd apparel that you wear in your pocket.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[Bogtha]

the above, although funny, is exactly the business and marketing explanation for Apple products

It's really not. This is the excuse trotted out when somebody wants to flame Apple or Apple fanboys, but it really doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny. Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices. They are renown for focusing on what you can do with the devices.

Do you really believe that Apple is managing to brainwash people? That there isn't a more plausible explanation, such as the fact that they see an ad showing people using the devices in ways that appeal to them and want to buy them? That people try the competition and are less than thrilled, so they opt for the premium product that does what they want instead? If you really believe that marketing brainwashing is a more plausible explanation than that, I'm afraid you're the one who's brainwashed.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[superslacker87]

Funny, here I am wearing an Apple store Augusta shirt.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[apparently]

How in the fuck were the Apple II or the original Mac "leaps forward" of the competition? You're busting our balls, right? As much as I loved Oregon Trail, the Turtle program, and Odell motherfucking Lake, Apple produced overpriced pieces of shit (and seriously, I only pay a nickel-per-log for regular pieces of shit, and that's when I'm desperate), until they created the iPod.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[NormalVisual]

How in the fuck were the Apple II or the original Mac "leaps forward" of the competition?

Apple II: For one, it came fully assembled with a keyboard, power supply, high-res color graphics, NTSC video output, and a case. Not much else in mid-1977 could make that claim.

Mac: At the time, it was the only usable GUI-based machine available at a reasonable price, and being 68000-based, it had quite a bit more CPU horsepower at its disposal than most other machines, had an 8-bit DAC as standard equipment, onboard SCSI, etc. The Lisa had been out for a short while with a similar feature set, but Apple had priced it outside the reach of most people. IBM's XT couldn't touch it performance-wise, and while IBM had introduced their AT around the same time, it was quite some time before any software could actually take advantage of the 80286 processor to do anything particularly interesting.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[nomadic]

Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices. They are renown for focusing on what you can do with the devices.

Exactly, like dancing in silhouette.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[Bogtha]

Imagine that - an advert for a music player that focuses on a person enjoying music. Yeah, it was stylised, but when you look at the bare essence of the advert, it's about what the product can do for you, not brainwashing people into thinking they are buying a lifestyle.

Likewise, aside from the silhouette ads, they've had ads focusing on taking iPods running, clipping iPod nanos to your clothing, listening to music on a beach, commuting with them, playing games on them - all focusing on people actually using the products. Unsurprisingly, people respond to being shown the value of the devices and buy them in droves. No "buying a lifestyle" bollocks necessary to explain the obvious.

Why don't we take a look at something more recent? These are the latest TV ads for the iPad. Every single one of them is focused like a laser on what you can use them for. Practically every single shot is somebody using an app. This is a defining quality of Apple's marketing strategy, and it has been for a long time.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[johny42]

Imagine that - an advert for a music player that focuses on a person enjoying music. Yeah, it was stylised, but when you look at the bare essence of the advert, it's about what the product can do for you, not brainwashing people into thinking they are buying a lifestyle.

There's more to an ad than its bare essence. Probably their most famous campaign presents Mac as "the cool guy" as opposed to PC. Most of the ads focus on features, but the message is still there. Even in the ads that focus on people using Apple products in various way, it's always cool people using them.

Now, I agree that Apple has a lot of high quality products, but there are other companies that sell high quality, well-designed products, and Apple is clearly trying to get an edge over them by "selling a lifestyle". There's nothing wrong with this, most companies that sell high quality products are trying to do that (with various levels of success) -- fashion ads are another good example (wearing Victoria's Secret lingerie doesn't make you a supermodel, but they'd like you to believe so anyway).

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[wzzzzrd]

Do you really believe that Apple is managing to brainwash people? [...] Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices. They are renown for focusing on what you can do with the devices.

Maybe you should think about what the sole purpose of advertisement is and how advertisement achieves it. So, yes, Apple is indeed managing to brainwash people, just look at your posts.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[slasho81]

The majority of Apple marketing, both in time and money, is product placement - showing Apple products in the hands of characters in TV series and movies. It's all about the perception that everyone uses it (or at least everyone that matters).

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[Xest]

"Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices."

Yes, I have an iPad2 and you're right.

Unfortunately however being able to randomly slide screens around, and use half-arsed versions of applications that only do 1/100th of what their counterparts on my PC or laptop do is the reason it's just sat uncharged because being arsed to plugged it in to charge it nowadays requires more effort than any resultant benefit the device can provide to my life to be worthwhile. I suppose if I didn't have a PC attached to my TV then it might be useful as a £400 web browser in the living room at least.

"They are renown for focusing on what you can do with the devices."

No, that's quite the opposite of what they're known for, Apple devices have long been known to let you do less, with the argument that what they do let you do, they let you do more comfortably. Certainly what you do with Apple devices has never been stand out, they've always been quite limited and restrictive whether it was the limited selection of file formats on the early iPods, or the strict lockdown and limitation of applications on the iPhone and iPad.

"If you really believe that marketing brainwashing is a more plausible explanation than that, I'm afraid you're the one who's brainwashed."

Whilst your attempt at the use of the word brainwashing to make it look like some mystical unexplained power is cute, you've got to be quite naive to believe that companies don't rely on common human psychological traits to push a products sales or price higher than it would otherwise be worth. If you hadn't noticed, there are entire industries built around just that, fashion, and modern art are two you can start with. If however rather than cold hard examples like this you prefer the theoretical, then feel free to go and read about consumerism.

Contrary to the hype, Apple products aren't more secure, aren't any less buggy, don't have more features, aren't any easier to use, aren't of any higher quality, and don't always even look any more stylish than all of their competitors. Above all else what separates Apple from the rest is that they've built a brand that allows them to shift units regardless of any downsides to their products in much the same way that some people will gladly squeeze into an uncomfortable pair of Armani jeans and insist on showing them off, simply because they say Armani on them.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[Rutulian]

Even in the ads that focus on people using Apple products in various way, it's always cool people using them.

Mmmm...I don't think it is any more exaggerated than other technology ads. Microsoft seems to like adds with people dancing around carrying colorful signs. I guess because using Windows/Office is supposed to make you feel cheerful and happy. Other ads similarly appeal to a desired image (think about the the stay at home moms who are just thrilled to be mopping the floor with Mr. Clean's Super Mop Formula for some reason). So while it is true that Apple wants to portray happiness or style or hipness in association with their products, I don't think it is any different from anybody else, and attributing "brainwashing" to Apple's success is just overstatement.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[nomadic]

It isn't brainwashing necessarily when you sell a lot of a product. The brainwashing can be seen by people who, despite not being employed by Apple or stockholders will come on to internet forums to emotionally defend it.

Like, I am a fan of Toshiba electronics. They're not top of the line, but they are very inexpensive for reasonably good quality. If someone posted on slashdot making fun of Toshiba, calling them overpriced, or that they suck, how do you think I would respond? Answer: I wouldn't. I don't care. Yet Apple users will feel that emotional reaction and need to defend something that they're not part of. Feeling the need to incessantly defend a corporation does smack of brainwashing.

Re:Funny - yes - but true

[Rutulian]

Maybe. Or maybe we just prefer an honest discussion. From my point-of-view, I don't own a Mac, but I really like their hardware. I think their products are well-built and have a very high quality that fully justifies their higher price. So I will recommend macbooks to people looking to buy a laptop. Now, somebody comes along and says macbooks are just overpriced and anything else is just as good, that "I'm brainwashed" for thinking they are higher quality, or that I only prefer macbooks because I want to be cool and hip, I take offense to that and will defend my not-brainwashed opinion. You don't see people claiming it is brainwashed to like Thinkpads, although there quite a few people who will stand by those. There are just a lot of people out there who are not content to simply dislike Apple and not buy their products, they have to also denigrate those who do. So the defensive reactions of those who buy, recommend, and are happy with Apple products is not entirely unsurprising to me.

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[Guspaz]

Depends for what store. A lot of Canadian stores have Black Friday deals, even though Thanksgiving was over a month ago here. Some US stores which operate or ship to Canada have the sales, like NewEgg (although their sale this year for Canada sucks).

Steam's prices are the same in every country, and they've got some amazing deals. Yesterday had Mass Effect 2 (or 1) for $5, Portal 2 for $10, that sort of thing. That sale is over, but there's a new set for today, and there's some less aggressive sales that are valid all week.

Playbook?

[Lucky75]

And...you know....Playbooks. Not sure why RIM always gets left out of the equation when their device is just as good as anything non-apple.

Re:Playbook?

[93 Escort Wagon]

And...you know....Playbooks. Not sure why RIM always gets left out of the equation when their device is just as good as anything non-apple.

Has RIM rewritten its OS so the Playbook is no longer partially crippled unless you also carry a Blackberry with you? Because, if not, it's only "as good as" those other devices if you're a Blackberry owner - and there are fewer and fewer of those every day.

Re:Playbook?

[Straif]

I was holding out for the next gen Asus Transformer but I just picked up a 32Gb Playbook for $299 and I've never owned a blackberry product in my life. The only crippling I can see is the native email client requires a blackberry but that's suppose to change in OS 2.0. Even with that there are links to Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail even Aol directly on the main screen and at least with Gmail, the mobile page looks as good as any app.

The only real drawback is because they launch through the browser you don't get notifications in the status bar when new mail arrives. I don't know about you but having newly arrived mail show up as an icon in my status bar isn't really worth the extra 2-300 dollars it would cost to get something comparable with a native app.

Now there is definitely a shortage of apps on Blackberry AppWorld but that should change with their new Android to Blackberry conversion tools and the ones that are there, especially the EA games, look amazing. For that matter it's possible to run an Android emulator on the playbook although not all apps are compatible. Some people have even used the DOS emulator for playbook to load a full version of Win95 onto it (to each his own I guess).

Basically, if the Playbook is crippled in any significant way, I've yet to find it.

Re:Playbook?

[Straif]

As far as I can tell the Playbook only really uses a Blackberry phone for it's native email app and since all mail is accessible through the browser anyway, that's hardly a deal breaker. There's even suppose to be a new email app with no Blackberry phone requirement in OS 2.0.

All the sex...

[arcite]

...will quickly make up for the several hundred dollar difference. Nook owners ain't gettin no nookie!

Apple's pricing: "announced" or "reportedly"?

[DavidinAla]

Did anybody notice the bizarro contradiction in the description of this story? If Apple had "announced aggressive pricing," the referenced article wouldn't be talking about what Apple was "reportedly" going to do. It can be announced OR it can be just rumored. You can't reasonably use both words.

"And meanwhile, Apple has announced aggressive pricing on all Apple products for Black Friday, reportedly including $100 off on MacBook and iMac products, and a $61 discount on the iPad 2."

Re:Apple's pricing: "announced" or "reportedly"?

[AdamJS]

Not exactly.
It may be that Apple said "We will be aggressively pricing products for black friday".

Re:Apple's pricing: "announced" or "reportedly"?

[DavidinAla]

That's not the case. Apple hasn't announced anything. Read the stories. The description of this item is just plain wrong.

Re:Apple's pricing: "announced" or "reportedly"?

[nightfell]

Um, no. That's exactly the case.

Apple announced earlier this week that they will be having a black friday sale, but they did not list the actual sales.

Re:Apple's pricing: "announced" or "reportedly"?

[DavidinAla]

You're wrong. Apple said it's having "a sale." It didn't announce "aggressive" pricing. Period.

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[Pope]

Portal 2 for $10? Dang, I knew I forgot to check something yesterday, that was it. Time to see if they'll do the same around Christmas, I have a week off and a need to get my game on :)

Re:corporate birthdays now?

[gstoddart]

it's gone to the next level, day after halloween the stores started pimping Christmas crap

I saw Christmas stuff in the stores a full two weeks before Halloween. We actually received the Sears "Spring Preview" catalog earlier this week.

It has definitely gotten absurd.

Re:love my kindle - apple IS big brother

[Yvan256]

I've never put down my Kindle since I got it

Is e-ink really waterproof? It must be hard taking a shower while holding your Kindle.

Re:Two vs One

[Yvan256]

It's spelled "ketchup", not "catchup".

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[Yvan256]

I just started Steam to check it out and according to what I'm reading, it's Portal 2 at half-price (14.99$USD) and that special price is still valid for another 21 hours and 30 minutes.

Re:Two vs One

[MachDelta]

I played ketchup once. Ruined my clothes and stained the walls red. I don't advise it.

$2500 could be accurate

[Chirs]

17" MBP at Best Buy. Regular price $2500, now on sale for $2300.

Currently uses i7, but in mid 2010 it would have been an i5.

The MBP is also just about the only laptop left with a 1920x1200 pixel screen. Just about everyone else has gone to 1920x1080.

Re:$2500 could be accurate

[Weedhopper]

Screen size is your only metric? There are $500 17"+ Toshibas out there but they're not spec comparable.

Let's actually compare the real specs between what the Toshiba unit he actually bought and a comparable Apple at the date of purchase.

People give examples of 100%+ prices differences all the time, but once you actually start comparing specs, they usually end up in the same ballpark. Let's talk about the display panel, the GPU, ports, etc.

Re:$2500 could be accurate

[mcvos]

Absolutely. The problem with Macbooks is that the bigger the screen gets, the higher the specs of every other component. Why can't I have a 17" with a cheaper CPU and a smaller harddisk? If you want to spend more, you've got to spend more on everything, it seems. Though the (overpriced) upgrades give you some customization options.

Still, that doesn't mean that there are cheaper alternatives for Macbooks. Well, maybe old Macbooks. But OS is a big part of the choice too. If you prefer Windows or Linux, you won't want a Macbook. If you prefer OS X, you've got to have a Macbook. (If you just want a unix, then OS X is still a valid choice.)

Re:$2500 could be accurate

[Weedhopper]

Hey, that 17" MBP is overkill for me for a lot of reasons, too. I grab a top spec 15" every 2-3 years.

I'm pointing out that it's not even close to being a correct comparison to take a 17" MBP, which only comes in the fully optioned flavor, with a $1000 17" Toshiba, which anyone with more than a couple brain cells to rub together knows is not going to be spec-comparable. They're not even going to be in the same league.

A Suzuki XL7 4WD seats seven. It's not a Landcruiser. Not even close.

Re:Two vs One

[fyngyrz]

lol -- what are you smoking?

$2500 is possible

[Chirs]

The current 17" MBP has a regular price of $2500. Mid-2010 it would have had an i5 processor.

While expensive, it's one of very few laptops offering a 1920x1200 display. Even most of the other "high end" ones are offering only 1920x1080. That's 10% less vertical capacity.

stupid slashdot...it gave me an error

[Chirs]

so I reentered the text only to find that the first message had gone through...

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[MimeticLie]

There are two kinds of sales going right now. A lot of stuff is discounted across the board until the 28th, and then specific items are on sale each day. Portal 2 was on sale until 1:00 PM EST today for $10 as a daily deal. Now that that's over, it'll be on sale for $15 till the end of the sale on Monday.

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[Yvan256]

How are we supposed to know about these sales? I didn't receive any email about it.

The Pedantic store called

[AdamJS]

and they're running out of you!

Anywho, $60 to $100 is brazenly aggressive from what's normally expected from Apple.

Re:The Pedantic store called

[Smurf]

Anywho, $60 to $100 is brazenly aggressive from what's normally expected from Apple.

Not really. $60 off the iPad 2 is quite aggressive when compared to the only previous Black Friday sale after the original iPad was announced: last year, the discount for iPads was $41.

But it's deffinitely not the first time that Apple offers discounts of $100 for Macs: it happened at least last year (see previous link) and on 2009, 2006, and 2004.

Re:The Pedantic store called

[AdamJS]

I was making a bit of a joke based off of my own experiences. They advertised "massive savings" for both my workplace AND University in the form of student discounts and CPPs that could be combined.

Yet together they amounted to nothing more than $150 off of a $1499 item.
Quite MASSIVe.

$61 off iPad

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

More like a minor skirmish then a war.

3 is the new 4

[chrismcb]

The summary makes no sense. The title mentions a three way price war and mentions three companies. It then STARTS the summary claiming a FOURTH company is reducing the price of its ereader to compete with one of the other "three." It continues to talk about another company that isn't even offering e-readers. So the real story is, companies are offering black Friday sales?

$40 kindle

[bcrowell]

I bought the $80 kindle last week. At checkout, amazon offered me another $40 off if I'd apply for an amazon credit card. I did that, so I got a $40 device for reading public-domain books while traveling. I will never buy a DRM'd book from amazon.

No color? No video? Huh?

[nurb432]

Well, since color e-ink is just now becoming available, so what do you expect? Oh, and it wouldn't be 99 bucks either.

Also e-ink has never been meant or marketed for 'vireo', as you put it. its for reading books.

Either you are stupid and don't understand the technology, or you are confusing a book reader with a tablet.

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[ZzzzSleep]

Steam's prices are the same in every country

They certainly aren't the same in Australia. See http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/3047097 for details...

Re:corporate birthdays now?

[garyebickford]

If the Christmas season keeps precessing, eventually it will wrap around - "Buy next year's Christmas stuff this year!!!" :P

Maybe you will even be able to return the stuff you bought last year to give this year, in exchange for next year's stuff, without ever opening the box.

In fact, maybe that will be the Guv's next stimulus package - require everyone to buy their Christmas stuff one year in advance.

Three-way price war? Really?

[EmagGeek]

A 3-way price war between iPad, Fire, and Nook, is like watching two lions and a chihuahua fighting over a zebra.

Fire is $200.
Nook is about the same.

iPad is 2.5x either one... why bother even mentioning iPad? Oh that's right.. .this is slashdot and we have to pay homage to Steve Jobs' semen.

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[Guspaz]

You just have to check, unfortunately. But you know Valve is going to have sales for any major holiday, so it would be prudent to check around black friday, boxing day, Halloween, etc. Me, I was remiss and didn't check, and was notified by stories in my RSS feed from the likes of Kotaku.

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[coxymla]

Steam's prices are definitely not the same in every country. Australian and UK prices are always much higher than US ones, forcing people into using proxies and disposable credit cards, or buying Russian activation keys through dodgy third party sites.

Re:Do you have to live in USA?

[Guspaz]

Steam lists all prices in Canada in USD, and doesn't charge us any tax (since they have no presence in Canada). I assumed that the situation was the same everywhere (USD prices used, hence the same prices everywhere). Does Steam force you to buy from the Australia store? We lose a bit in the currency exchange, but that only amounts to a 1.5-2.5% difference.

Re:Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na leader!

[Phoghat]

Oh wait, leader died.

Sorry, too soon