And this is exactly the reason the price increased. Apple figures its customers are willing to pay more for cachet and wealth signaling. They're going to sell less of them because they've already largely saturated the market, so it's time to make Apple products even MORE exclusive.
So, what explains the sudden surge in CHROMEBOOK prices, eh???
Don't believe me? Believe THIS Slashdot poster, who said:
"I'm typing this on a refurbushed ThinkPad X220 in which I just upgraded the SDD to 1TB yesterday (runs Manjaro i3 Linux) and got meself a Chromebook a few months back to try out the cheap ARM-based secure "Lord-Google-watches-over-me" option. Not sure if that test will come out positive, still carefully evaluating. The suddenly increasing (!) price in Chromebooks lately isn't helping though IMHO."
Certainly no "Brand Cachet" or "Wealth Signaling" with THOSE POS machines! So, perhaps it more like worries about Tariffs and general economic instability that is causing an ACROSS THE BOARD price increase in "tech" products (which are nearly universally Made in China)...
BTW, my newest piece of Apple Gear (other than the Apple TV I bought a couple of years ago) is a mid-2012 MacBook Pro. I also have an iPad 2. None of that stuff is particularly about "Cachet" or "Wealth Signaling".
I buy the stuff because it works, is quite reliable, and because the company respects and actually honors my Privacy.
And because I develop Windows software for a living, and am immersed in THAT "ecosystem" all day, every day at work; so I KNOW the difference!
So blow your effete crapola out your ass. But I see that that is actually unecessary; because that's OBVIOUSLY where it came from to begin with!
I've been pondering a new hardware update cycle in the last 2-3 years. Waiting for the cheap viable Apple option to come around. Didn't happen with Apple lately.
HOW cheap?!? What's "Viable"?
The suddenly increasing (!) price in Chromebooks lately isn't helping though IMHO.
Hmmm. Chromebook prices are "suddenly increasing", yet it is APPLE's prices that ALWAYS get the " Price Gouging" treatment. Wonder why???
Only at work am I still using a neat retina 27" iMac with a bunch of FOSS software (homebrew, iTerm, Gimp, Inkscape, etc.) added. Nice. But if a work HW upgrade is due, my next one will inlcude a fanless custom Linux box and a extra-wide 4k display and some luxury KB & Mouse. And still be cheaper than the sub-par Apple option.
And, at the end of all that, it will be a sub-par experience that will consume ??? of your time (which is free, right?) getting it to run and keeping it running.
I just traded in most of my Apple gear - a Mac Pro, Mac Mini, iPad and watch. The downside is they only pay out in Apple giftcards so I'll get my wife a new iPad for Christmas.
The funny thing is I bought most of this gear for my Job at Apple, mostly because Apple is too cheap to give their engineers dev machines (???). We had 3 iPhones for a team of hundreds. I quit before I got to use the machines actually, too much backstabbing and white collar shadiness goes on there for my tastes.
You're a liar.
1. You would have gotten MUCH more for that Apple Gear on eBay. And it would have been CASH. Or are you REALLY that stupid?
2. So, were you on the iOS Dev. Team, the macOS Dev. Team, or WHAT? You seem to have "needed" a lot of disparate Apple Gear to "do your job". CERTAINLY you wouldn't have needed BOTH a Mac Pro AND a Mac mini for ANY Development Job; so why don't you just QUIT LYING?
3. Do you want us to SERIOUSLY believe that you had to "Bring your own Tools" at a Company that MAKES COMPUTERS?!? Bullshit.
Apple products have never been about low prices. They charge premium prices for what they believe is a premium product. Their customers seem to agree. A lot of people put a premium on ease of use and visual esthetics. And they are willing to pay more for that.
I equate it to German cars. Some people believe it is worth it to spend more for a BMW or Merc because they believe it handles better and has superior engineering. Other people see those cars and just think money pit. There is no right answer. If you feel it's worth the extra money then go for it.
Where some people get in trouble is when they buy the expensive iPhone but can't really afford it. If they are honest with themselves they will realize that their budget doesn't allow for a $1000 phone. But the iPhone, like the German car, is an asperational product. It conveys status and success, at least in some eyes. So Apple lures them in by allowing them to spread the payments over 2 years. Then it doesn't seem like that much money. Just like the 3-4 year car lease.
My wife has an iPhone and she loves it. I'm an Android guy. We manage to coexist. I can see the appeal of the iPhone but I prefer the control that Android give me. To each their own.
People that purchase Apple products fundamentally understand the difference between PRICE and VALUE.
Unfortunately, those people are fairly rare in the U.S., where most people just focus on FEATURE-COUNT (nevermind that those "features" simply don't work at all, or don't work well) as being greater "Bang for the Buck".
Apple is going in the wrong direction. They should be reducing the price
There is a term for that: It's called "A Race to the Bottom."
And the planet is riddled with the carcasses of dead companies and even whole industries that tried that method (or believed they were FORCED into it!), and failed.
NO ONE has EVER successfully pulled-out of that economic tailspin. It CANNOT be done.
Apple is going in the wrong direction. They should be reducing the price and pushing market share, while pivoting the company towards offering more services.
You mean like every other company? It seems that you are suggesting that Apple do less to distinguish themselves in all markets and be another Dell. How does that work for other companies? Did Kmart win against Walmart by being another Walmart?
The Haters just can't handle the fact that, by and large, Apple SETS trends, rather than FOLLOWS them.
Why Slashdot is filled to the brim with Luddite "technorati" that can't get past that beige-box, cookie-cutter, Wintel-Inspired mindset, rather than at least ACKNOWLEDGING the fact that Apple tries VERY hard to march to the beat of their own drummer. Sometimes it's a hit and a miss; but at least they TRY.
Summary not just written and powered by smarmy Hatorade, its a honey pot for the same. You know Zombie Steve isn't holding a gun to your heads, right? You are perfectly free to buy an Android phone - even if it comes with a notch and costs just as much as an iPhone XR.
The central premise of this article is wrong. The high price of the latest product releases has impacted sales, causing a significant drop in stock price. The new features are reviewing well, but the perception of Apple users is that an innovation like face unlock will become standard at lower prices in the future, so why jump in at this early-adopter price point?
Hey!
In case you haven't noticed, EVERYONE's U.S. Stock is DOWN! It's called a RECESSION: Look into it.
What many people miss are Apple's intangible costs like their commitment to renewable energy, sustainable materials and recycling and insistence on fair working conditions (however successful that may be). these things will drive up the costs of Apple's products but you can't find them on bill of materials for their phones and products.
If you want the highest performance, most eco-friendly tech product, then Apple is the best manufacturer.
The Mac would have died in the late 1980s without Microsoft Word and Excel.
And there wouldn't be a GUI Microsoft Word or an Excel AT ALL if it weren't for the Mac.
Study your history before being revealed as ignorant.
MS Word existed ONLY as a text-based (DOS) Application for something like TWO YEARS after the first version of MS Word for Mac (which of course WAS GUI-based) shipped.
Excel existed ONLY for Macs for at least the first 2 or 3 Versions before being ported to Windows (as a GUI Application). In fact, Excel actually caused a bit of Mac-Envy among early Wintel-Users.
And oh, by the way, Even WITHOUT MS Word or Excel, the Mac was doing JUST fine in the 1980s (MacWord, WordPerfect (IIRC), and Lotus 123 (and later, Lotus Jazz), were also very popular at the time with Mac Users. Only the poor management of John Sculley, who never met a Project he didn't like, caused Apple to temporarily internally lose its focus.
So, I get how the Office and Windows Dev. Teams can collaborate; those are both SOFTWARE products.
But then what is the SURFACE team doing in this clusterfuck of endless meetings and even greater corporate infighting?
Are they trying to imitate Apple, and get their Software and Hardware offerings more "integrated"? Unfortunately, that model doesn't work for Windows, because it must work on widely-disparate Hardware. So, there is only SO much hardware/software "integration" that is practical.
They can't even COPY Apple's business-model correctly. But then, they have about 40 years of trying and failing in that regard already.
Normally there is fine print that explains that the image isn't real. Watch any smartphone commercial and you'll see it at the bottom of the screen. Apparently Samsung didn't do that this time.
Curiously enough, iPhone ads always say the images are real at the bottom of the screen...
And you can't blame them, there's no way to fairly represent a screen image via other media (in that case print, in this case as part of an ad, squished, stretched, and color adjusted, intended for viewing in a web browser), so why bother?
Back when Sylvania made consumer TV sets, they had a TV commercial that, even as a kid, I thought was extremely clever. The V.O. announcer said something like this:
"Have you ever noticed that commercials for TV sets always show you how good the picture is, by displaying that picture on your CURRENT TV? We at Sylvania think that is silly. So we invite you to visit your local Sylvania dealer and see for yourself just bright and clear the picture on the new Sylvania ColorBrite TVs are."
In fact now that I think about it, you may have been one of the ones that told me it was just a faulty device. Now I'm here to tell you that you were wrong.
Indeed. I never had any of my Apple stuff overheating because of dust, so maybe it's just a maintenance thing. Some facts about the failing of Apple producs vs other manufacturers' stuff because of dust are needed.
Exactly. But NO ONE has as deep of pockets as Apple; so they are a lawsuit-magnet like no other...
I have a 2016 macbook pro. My house is fairly clean and 1.5 years in the keyboard was crap. Keys were sticking and repeating and making a sound like walking on a soda coated theater room floor. If you think it's not a problem, Google on it, many people are complaining about it and I believe there is a lawsuit for it as well. Fortunately I had Applecare and they replaced the entire bottom half of my laptop. I blow it off now every time I use it but I don't believe I should have to baby a device this way as a condition of use. Because I have pets I am afraid the laptop will become unusable again shortly after my Applecare ends.
Don't get me started on the USB-C ports. They became so loose after that 1.5 years my power cable would fall out simply from moving the laptop around. Everyone told me 'oh you just got a faulty device' but now after the replacement it is happening again.
You ALWAYS have the most HORRIFIC stories of Apple-failures on ANYONE .
Oh, and "Clean house"? Hardly! In earlier posts, you said you were REMODELING your house. Do you have ANY idea HOW MUCH DUST that produces?!?
And you have been told before: CLEAN THE LINT OUT OF YOUR USB-C CONNECTORS!!! You can Google THAT, too; but EVEN AFTER BEING TOLD BEFORE, you APPARENTLY haven't paid attention!
And, BTW, that isn't Apple's fault: ANYONE that has device with USB-C connectors can potentially have the same problem, and DOES.
Maybe they can fix the GPU overheating and physically separating from its circuit boards? Customers shouldn't have to choose between replacing the entire computer and baking their graphics card at 200 degrees C for 8 min.
Slashdot Mirror
And this is exactly the reason the price increased. Apple figures its customers are willing to pay more for cachet and wealth signaling. They're going to sell less of them because they've already largely saturated the market, so it's time to make Apple products even MORE exclusive.
So, what explains the sudden surge in CHROMEBOOK prices, eh???
Don't believe me? Believe THIS Slashdot poster, who said:
"I'm typing this on a refurbushed ThinkPad X220 in which I just upgraded the SDD to 1TB yesterday (runs Manjaro i3 Linux) and got meself a Chromebook a few months back to try out the cheap ARM-based secure "Lord-Google-watches-over-me" option. Not sure if that test will come out positive, still carefully evaluating. The suddenly increasing (!) price in Chromebooks lately isn't helping though IMHO."
https://apple.slashdot.org/com...
Certainly no "Brand Cachet" or "Wealth Signaling" with THOSE POS machines! So, perhaps it more like worries about Tariffs and general economic instability that is causing an ACROSS THE BOARD price increase in "tech" products (which are nearly universally Made in China)...
BTW, my newest piece of Apple Gear (other than the Apple TV I bought a couple of years ago) is a mid-2012 MacBook Pro. I also have an iPad 2. None of that stuff is particularly about "Cachet" or "Wealth Signaling".
I buy the stuff because it works, is quite reliable, and because the company respects and actually honors my Privacy.
And because I develop Windows software for a living, and am immersed in THAT "ecosystem" all day, every day at work; so I KNOW the difference!
So blow your effete crapola out your ass. But I see that that is actually unecessary; because that's OBVIOUSLY where it came from to begin with!
I've been pondering a new hardware update cycle in the last 2-3 years. Waiting for the cheap viable Apple option to come around. Didn't happen with Apple lately.
HOW cheap?!? What's "Viable"?
The suddenly increasing (!) price in Chromebooks lately isn't helping though IMHO.
Hmmm. Chromebook prices are "suddenly increasing", yet it is APPLE's prices that ALWAYS get the "
Price Gouging" treatment. Wonder why???
Only at work am I still using a neat retina 27" iMac with a bunch of FOSS software (homebrew, iTerm, Gimp, Inkscape, etc.) added. Nice. But if a work HW upgrade is due, my next one will inlcude a fanless custom Linux box and a extra-wide 4k display and some luxury KB & Mouse. And still be cheaper than the sub-par Apple option.
And, at the end of all that, it will be a sub-par experience that will consume ??? of your time (which is free, right?) getting it to run and keeping it running.
Good luck with that.
I just traded in most of my Apple gear - a Mac Pro, Mac Mini, iPad and watch. The downside is they only pay out in Apple giftcards so I'll get my wife a new iPad for Christmas.
The funny thing is I bought most of this gear for my Job at Apple, mostly because Apple is too cheap to give their engineers dev machines (???). We had 3 iPhones for a team of hundreds. I quit before I got to use the machines actually, too much backstabbing and white collar shadiness goes on there for my tastes.
You're a liar.
1. You would have gotten MUCH more for that Apple Gear on eBay. And it would have been CASH. Or are you REALLY that stupid?
2. So, were you on the iOS Dev. Team, the macOS Dev. Team, or WHAT? You seem to have "needed" a lot of disparate Apple Gear to "do your job". CERTAINLY you wouldn't have needed BOTH a Mac Pro AND a Mac mini for ANY Development Job; so why don't you just QUIT LYING?
3. Do you want us to SERIOUSLY believe that you had to "Bring your own Tools" at a Company that MAKES COMPUTERS?!? Bullshit.
Apple products have never been about low prices. They charge premium prices for what they believe is a premium product. Their customers seem to agree. A lot of people put a premium on ease of use and visual esthetics. And they are willing to pay more for that.
I equate it to German cars. Some people believe it is worth it to spend more for a BMW or Merc because they believe it handles better and has superior engineering. Other people see those cars and just think money pit. There is no right answer. If you feel it's worth the extra money then go for it.
Where some people get in trouble is when they buy the expensive iPhone but can't really afford it. If they are honest with themselves they will realize that their budget doesn't allow for a $1000 phone. But the iPhone, like the German car, is an asperational product. It conveys status and success, at least in some eyes. So Apple lures them in by allowing them to spread the payments over 2 years. Then it doesn't seem like that much money. Just like the 3-4 year car lease.
My wife has an iPhone and she loves it. I'm an Android guy. We manage to coexist. I can see the appeal of the iPhone but I prefer the control that Android give me. To each their own.
People that purchase Apple products fundamentally understand the difference between PRICE and VALUE.
Unfortunately, those people are fairly rare in the U.S., where most people just focus on FEATURE-COUNT (nevermind that those "features" simply don't work at all, or don't work well) as being greater "Bang for the Buck".
Apple is going in the wrong direction. They should be reducing the price
There is a term for that: It's called "A Race to the Bottom."
And the planet is riddled with the carcasses of dead companies and even whole industries that tried that method (or believed they were FORCED into it!), and failed.
NO ONE has EVER successfully pulled-out of that economic tailspin. It CANNOT be done.
Apple is going in the wrong direction. They should be reducing the price and pushing market share, while pivoting the company towards offering more services.
You mean like every other company? It seems that you are suggesting that Apple do less to distinguish themselves in all markets and be another Dell. How does that work for other companies? Did Kmart win against Walmart by being another Walmart?
The Haters just can't handle the fact that, by and large, Apple SETS trends, rather than FOLLOWS them.
Why Slashdot is filled to the brim with Luddite "technorati" that can't get past that beige-box, cookie-cutter, Wintel-Inspired mindset, rather than at least ACKNOWLEDGING the fact that Apple tries VERY hard to march to the beat of their own drummer. Sometimes it's a hit and a miss; but at least they TRY.
Costs More...
Does Less...
It's that simple!
Citation.
It's that simple!
Summary not just written and powered by smarmy Hatorade, its a honey pot for the same. You know Zombie Steve isn't holding a gun to your heads, right? You are perfectly free to buy an Android phone - even if it comes with a notch and costs just as much as an iPhone XR.
Exactly!
We are a capitalist society, they are not "getting away" with anything.
They can charge what they want, and if people continue to buy then they are not charging too much.
How DARE you ruin a perfectly good Fake News story with FACTS?
Their designs are decent, but I've never seen them as a value proposition.
And so, neither should anyone else.
Is that about right?
The central premise of this article is wrong. The high price of the latest product releases has impacted sales, causing a significant drop in stock price. The new features are reviewing well, but the perception of Apple users is that an innovation like face unlock will become standard at lower prices in the future, so why jump in at this early-adopter price point?
Hey!
In case you haven't noticed, EVERYONE's U.S. Stock is DOWN! It's called a RECESSION: Look into it.
Being a member of the Apple cult is getting more expensive.
While being a member of the Apple Hater's Cult is as worthless as ever...
What many people miss are Apple's intangible costs like their commitment to renewable energy, sustainable materials and recycling and insistence on fair working conditions (however successful that may be). these things will drive up the costs of Apple's products but you can't find them on bill of materials for their phones and products.
If you want the highest performance, most eco-friendly tech product, then Apple is the best manufacturer.
Well said!
You can look at history and see the REAL truth: Adjusting for inflation, Macs are now LESS EXPENSIVE than at any time in their 30 year history.
Get the FACTS:
https://appleinsider.com/artic...
The Mac would have died in the late 1980s without Microsoft Word and Excel.
And there wouldn't be a GUI Microsoft Word or an Excel AT ALL if it weren't for the Mac.
Study your history before being revealed as ignorant.
MS Word existed ONLY as a text-based (DOS) Application for something like TWO YEARS after the first version of MS Word for Mac (which of course WAS GUI-based) shipped.
Excel existed ONLY for Macs for at least the first 2 or 3 Versions before being ported to Windows (as a GUI Application). In fact, Excel actually caused a bit of Mac-Envy among early Wintel-Users.
And oh, by the way, Even WITHOUT MS Word or Excel, the Mac was doing JUST fine in the 1980s (MacWord, WordPerfect (IIRC), and Lotus 123 (and later, Lotus Jazz), were also very popular at the time with Mac Users. Only the poor management of John Sculley, who never met a Project he didn't like, caused Apple to temporarily internally lose its focus.
So, I get how the Office and Windows Dev. Teams can collaborate; those are both SOFTWARE products.
But then what is the SURFACE team doing in this clusterfuck of endless meetings and even greater corporate infighting?
Are they trying to imitate Apple, and get their Software and Hardware offerings more "integrated"? Unfortunately, that model doesn't work for Windows, because it must work on widely-disparate Hardware. So, there is only SO much hardware/software "integration" that is practical.
They can't even COPY Apple's business-model correctly. But then, they have about 40 years of trying and failing in that regard already.
Office for Mac has historically been developed as a separate codebase by an almost Pirate-Like Division at MS called the "Mac Business Unit" (Mac BU).
So, what does all this "redesigned methodology" mean to the independence of Office for Mac and the Mac BU?
BTW, MacBU is actually one of the more profitable Divisions in Microsoft.
Between this and what a security swisscheese any smartphone is (even iPhones)
You DO realize, of course, that iPhones don't run Android, right?
Otherwise, please provide Citations showing how iPhones are "security swisscheese[sic]".
Normally there is fine print that explains that the image isn't real. Watch any smartphone commercial and you'll see it at the bottom of the screen. Apparently Samsung didn't do that this time.
Curiously enough, iPhone ads always say the images are real at the bottom of the screen...
And you can't blame them, there's no way to fairly represent a screen image via other media (in that case print, in this case as part of an ad, squished, stretched, and color adjusted, intended for viewing in a web browser), so why bother?
Back when Sylvania made consumer TV sets, they had a TV commercial that, even as a kid, I thought was extremely clever. The V.O. announcer said something like this:
"Have you ever noticed that commercials for TV sets always show you how good the picture is, by displaying that picture on your CURRENT TV?
We at Sylvania think that is silly. So we invite you to visit your local Sylvania dealer and see for yourself just bright and clear the picture on the new Sylvania ColorBrite TVs are."
In fact now that I think about it, you may have been one of the ones that told me it was just a faulty device. Now I'm here to tell you that you were wrong.
If I did, it was before I did any research.
What's YOUR excuse?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...
Mods: Parent is OFF-TOPIC.
Indeed. I never had any of my Apple stuff overheating because of dust, so maybe it's just a maintenance thing. Some facts about the failing of Apple producs vs other manufacturers' stuff because of dust are needed.
Exactly. But NO ONE has as deep of pockets as Apple; so they are a lawsuit-magnet like no other...
I have a 2016 macbook pro. My house is fairly clean and 1.5 years in the keyboard was crap. Keys were sticking and repeating and making a sound like walking on a soda coated theater room floor. If you think it's not a problem, Google on it, many people are complaining about it and I believe there is a lawsuit for it as well. Fortunately I had Applecare and they replaced the entire bottom half of my laptop. I blow it off now every time I use it but I don't believe I should have to baby a device this way as a condition of use. Because I have pets I am afraid the laptop will become unusable again shortly after my Applecare ends.
Don't get me started on the USB-C ports. They became so loose after that 1.5 years my power cable would fall out simply from moving the laptop around. Everyone told me 'oh you just got a faulty device' but now after the replacement it is happening again.
You ALWAYS have the most HORRIFIC stories of Apple-failures on ANYONE .
Oh, and "Clean house"? Hardly! In earlier posts, you said you were REMODELING your house. Do you have ANY idea HOW MUCH DUST that produces?!?
And you have been told before: CLEAN THE LINT OUT OF YOUR USB-C CONNECTORS!!! You can Google THAT, too; but EVEN AFTER BEING TOLD BEFORE, you APPARENTLY haven't paid attention!
And, BTW, that isn't Apple's fault: ANYONE that has device with USB-C connectors can potentially have the same problem, and DOES.
So, I hope you choke on that Hatorade, idiot.
Maybe they can fix the GPU overheating and physically separating from its circuit boards? Customers shouldn't have to choose between replacing the entire computer and baking their graphics card at 200 degrees C for 8 min.
Ugh.
And people wonder why Apple ditched nVidia...