I agree that they are probably making better margins on the low end boxes, but it's higly unlikely that they are making good enough margins on those to raise the overall margin to 40%, same goes for the higher end configurations, good margins, yes, but not selling enough to realy raise overall margins to 40%.
As to the idea that you can make it up later in the life of the product, yes in a perfect world that's true, but this aint that world. The problem is that as component prices go down, they down for your competition as well, that means you must either reduce prices or increase the configuration to stay competitive.
Typically what happens is that price of the next CPU in Intel's line drops to the point where there is little gap between that processor and the low-end, so you up the processor in the base configuration. Apple's volumes on components like disk will be tiny compared to DELL so they can't command the same sort of pricing power with suppliers that DELL has. Nor can they demand that the suppliers warehouse the inventory next to DELL's manufacturer plant in their own facilities and bare all the risk of price drops, that's what DELL does!
Apple is to certain degree protected from all this because you can't go and buy a DELL with OSX, if you want OSX then Apple hardware is the only game in town and that's why they will not ship a generic OSX release.
BTW, I know Apple has had some trouble with using very low cost labour in China, but I'd be very surprised if they are getting manufacturing costs at $1/hr. Bare in mind that DELL is widely beleived to have squeezed just about all the costs out of PC manufacturing and will benefit from much higher production volumes than Apple and they can't 40 point margins on hardware these days. 40% was the sort of margin we looked for on RISC workstations and the like in the mid-90s, the days when you can get anything close to that on Intel platforms are long gone.
No, those are prices I would expect them to being for components, my estimates are based on several years work at hi-end PC manufacturer where my job included pricing and forecasting for hi-end systems, so knowledge of component pricing was a requirement. Street price for a single 5150 CPU is in the $730+ for each CPU, FBDIMM memory carries a significant premium over run of the mill DDR etc, Tell me, what's your estimate based on Skippy?
I find the 40% margin figure extremely high and frankly I don't think it's possible. To get 40% on the Dual Core XEON Macs, they would have to be building the base model for ~$1500 including parts, labour, software (Some amount for the R&D involved in building OSX and its applications.)
I haven't seen Intel's CPU pricing to vendors for a while, but I'd surprised if they see much change out $500 for each processor, motherboard another $150 at least, chassis similar amount, PSU isn't going to cheap (I'd guess at least $150 considering the stuff its got to provide power for.) So that's $1450 without even thinking about graphics, memory, disk, and the manufacturing costs. Knowing the hi-end PC manufacturing biz I'd be surprised if they were seeing better than 15% given how good the pricing is on the new boxes.
I beleive it's called wow32 or Windows On Windows. I think part of the MS problem is that the original design work on 64-bit Windows was targeted at Itanic which was of course a very different beast, that was known to suck performance wise, particularly when running 32bit code which had to be done through emulation since it was a completely different instruction set. With that in mind it makes sense to simple design a new 64-bit driver layer for win64 becuase there is no way that you can run 32bit x86 drivers.
Then along comes the 64bit extensions to x86 and you've got a 64bit driver layer that isn't designed to handle 32bit drivers, doh!
I can't help wondering if the new hardware virtualization stuff in the current generation of CPUs might offer some ways around this.
I'm not defending it, and the post I responded to was talking about how Microsoft was trying to destroy *less* expensive products. Perhaps you should read the whole thread before responding!
Agreed, free products are certainly worth exploring, but the implication in the original message (in my opinion) was that Microsoft's solution was more expensive than other commercial solutions like Norton etc which I don't beleive it is.
Applicaitons and drivers are two entirely different things (at least for Win64), 32-bit applications run just fine on Win64 platforms, it's drivers that don't work.
Anybody know if Apple will have the same issue of having to get all drivers rewritten for the fully 64-bit Leopard. I know from being at the initial Win64 kickoff (back in '98 for God's sake:-) that MS made a conscious decision to not offer any backward compatibility with 32 bit driver code.
I would suspect it's about being able to spot the fingerprints of well hidden & stealthy root kits that may not be visible without being inside the kernel.
>Microsoft want you to pay them a monthly fee to get the Microsoft anti-malware stuff.
Nope, Microsoft want to charge you $49.95 for three PCs for a year, other than the free AV products, I don't of any "cheaper alternatives" care to elaborate?
The article is certainly ambiguous, but I think they mean these companies worked out what the original flaw was by looking at what the patch fixed. So if you are patched you are OK.
I don't make my judgments based solely on advertising, but I do find the Apple advertising patronizing and frequently economical with the truth and as such it certainly doesn't encourage to buy a Mac, much as my geek side likes some of the features of OSX. I don't think I'm alone in that opinion.
I do think Apple's advertising strategy reflects a corporate culture that is arrogant and dismissive of the vast majority of computer users, I'd rather see them tout the benefits of OSX in a way that doesn't flat out lie about some of its benefits. Cracks about how devices for the Mac just work vs Windows users having to search the web for drivers are at best irritating. A more accurate statement would be that the limited set of 3rd-party hardwares for the Mac generally work, just like the vast majority of the much larger pool of devices for Windows.
It's quite possible that the original patent was filed by Xerox and Microsoft subsequently bought it, MS has a long history of purchasing IP like that, look at the deal they did with SGI a few years ago.
Hey, everybody stole from XEROX, it was the only way to get really cool stuff out of PARC and EuroPARC, because XEROX was always to boneheaded to do anything useful with it:-)
> Expose and viewing all virtual desktops in miniature versions the way Spaces does might even be new, at
> least I haven't seen it before.
That's stollen from old Xerox LISP environment's "ROOMS" so nothing new in Apple stealing XEROX (who of course invented the photocopier, how ironic!)
Speaking as someone who does marketing for a living, my aim is to make my product appeal to people who don't already use it. Apple's strategy seems to be to patronize and insult the intelligence of anybody who doesn't drink the Cupertino cool-aid. Ask yourself how irritated you are by the smug patronizing Apple adds of late, thye've pretty much cured me of any desire to by a Mac.
> Makes you wonder where they'll be trying to hide explosives next.
Every time I take my shoes off going through security I'm reminded how grateful I am that it was the "shoe bomber" not the "underpants bomber"
In what way does Vista shove DRM down your throat, having been using for a while now, DRM doesn't seem to be any more of an issue than it is with any other OS. Vista doesn't stop me ripping media to DRMless formats, doesn't stop me playing back DRMless media. All Vista is doing is supporting DRM schemes required to handle things like HDCP and HD-DVD, that's no different to the decision to support the DRM that was required to playback DVDs, the only difference so far is that no one has cracked the DRM on HD-DVD.
In the end, what do you want MS to do, they have three options:
Support DRM - lets end users play the stuff without causing problems, it's up to the end user to decide if they can live with restricted rights on the media
Actively bypass DRM - get sued by every media company on the planet
Do nothing - even if end users can live with the DRM restrictions they can't actually play DRMd formats
Seems like the "support" position is the most logical and defensible to me.
Corporates have never rushed into new operating system releases, they'd be crazy to, so nothing new there. As to consumers, they'll get Vista on any new PC next year without even thinking about, the only issue is how many XP customer upgrade on existing hardware and that's hard to predict, though it's never been a problem for MS in the past.
As to Vista "as the beginning of the end of MS reign," please can I get some of what you're smoking. I've tried new releases of platforms like Ubuntu side by side with my beta test work on Vista and while I like Ubuntu, it's a thousand years away from being a desktop for anybody but a self-confessed geek!
Nobody runs as Administrator in Vista, not in the sense of a "God" account that existed in XP. Even if you are Administrator you still get prompted about whether you really want to do something stupd, just like that root accounts work on platforms like Ubuntu.
I don't doubt that an upgrade version for existing Intel mac customers will be offered, but it's not rocket science to make that very hard to install as anything but an upgrade to an existing OSX install. SO it's still not an option for running OSX on top of Windows.
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I agree that they are probably making better margins on the low end boxes, but it's higly unlikely that they are making good enough margins on those to raise the overall margin to 40%, same goes for the higher end configurations, good margins, yes, but not selling enough to realy raise overall margins to 40%. As to the idea that you can make it up later in the life of the product, yes in a perfect world that's true, but this aint that world. The problem is that as component prices go down, they down for your competition as well, that means you must either reduce prices or increase the configuration to stay competitive. Typically what happens is that price of the next CPU in Intel's line drops to the point where there is little gap between that processor and the low-end, so you up the processor in the base configuration. Apple's volumes on components like disk will be tiny compared to DELL so they can't command the same sort of pricing power with suppliers that DELL has. Nor can they demand that the suppliers warehouse the inventory next to DELL's manufacturer plant in their own facilities and bare all the risk of price drops, that's what DELL does! Apple is to certain degree protected from all this because you can't go and buy a DELL with OSX, if you want OSX then Apple hardware is the only game in town and that's why they will not ship a generic OSX release. BTW, I know Apple has had some trouble with using very low cost labour in China, but I'd be very surprised if they are getting manufacturing costs at $1/hr. Bare in mind that DELL is widely beleived to have squeezed just about all the costs out of PC manufacturing and will benefit from much higher production volumes than Apple and they can't 40 point margins on hardware these days. 40% was the sort of margin we looked for on RISC workstations and the like in the mid-90s, the days when you can get anything close to that on Intel platforms are long gone.
No, those are prices I would expect them to being for components, my estimates are based on several years work at hi-end PC manufacturer where my job included pricing and forecasting for hi-end systems, so knowledge of component pricing was a requirement. Street price for a single 5150 CPU is in the $730+ for each CPU, FBDIMM memory carries a significant premium over run of the mill DDR etc, Tell me, what's your estimate based on Skippy?
I find the 40% margin figure extremely high and frankly I don't think it's possible. To get 40% on the Dual Core XEON Macs, they would have to be building the base model for ~$1500 including parts, labour, software (Some amount for the R&D involved in building OSX and its applications.) I haven't seen Intel's CPU pricing to vendors for a while, but I'd surprised if they see much change out $500 for each processor, motherboard another $150 at least, chassis similar amount, PSU isn't going to cheap (I'd guess at least $150 considering the stuff its got to provide power for.) So that's $1450 without even thinking about graphics, memory, disk, and the manufacturing costs. Knowing the hi-end PC manufacturing biz I'd be surprised if they were seeing better than 15% given how good the pricing is on the new boxes.
I beleive it's called wow32 or Windows On Windows. I think part of the MS problem is that the original design work on 64-bit Windows was targeted at Itanic which was of course a very different beast, that was known to suck performance wise, particularly when running 32bit code which had to be done through emulation since it was a completely different instruction set. With that in mind it makes sense to simple design a new 64-bit driver layer for win64 becuase there is no way that you can run 32bit x86 drivers. Then along comes the 64bit extensions to x86 and you've got a 64bit driver layer that isn't designed to handle 32bit drivers, doh! I can't help wondering if the new hardware virtualization stuff in the current generation of CPUs might offer some ways around this.
And judging buy what Apple said about Leopard, it will be fully 64-bit.
I'm not defending it, and the post I responded to was talking about how Microsoft was trying to destroy *less* expensive products. Perhaps you should read the whole thread before responding!
Agreed, free products are certainly worth exploring, but the implication in the original message (in my opinion) was that Microsoft's solution was more expensive than other commercial solutions like Norton etc which I don't beleive it is.
32-bit drivers and a 32-bit kernel is a very different problem to allowing 32-bit drivers in a 64-bit kernel.
There is a layer used to interface 32-bit code to 64-bit APIs in Win64 I beleive.
Applicaitons and drivers are two entirely different things (at least for Win64), 32-bit applications run just fine on Win64 platforms, it's drivers that don't work.
Anybody know if Apple will have the same issue of having to get all drivers rewritten for the fully 64-bit Leopard. I know from being at the initial Win64 kickoff (back in '98 for God's sake :-) that MS made a conscious decision to not offer any backward compatibility with 32 bit driver code.
I would suspect it's about being able to spot the fingerprints of well hidden & stealthy root kits that may not be visible without being inside the kernel.
>Microsoft want you to pay them a monthly fee to get the Microsoft anti-malware stuff. Nope, Microsoft want to charge you $49.95 for three PCs for a year, other than the free AV products, I don't of any "cheaper alternatives" care to elaborate?
The article is certainly ambiguous, but I think they mean these companies worked out what the original flaw was by looking at what the patch fixed. So if you are patched you are OK.
Yes dear.
I don't make my judgments based solely on advertising, but I do find the Apple advertising patronizing and frequently economical with the truth and as such it certainly doesn't encourage to buy a Mac, much as my geek side likes some of the features of OSX. I don't think I'm alone in that opinion. I do think Apple's advertising strategy reflects a corporate culture that is arrogant and dismissive of the vast majority of computer users, I'd rather see them tout the benefits of OSX in a way that doesn't flat out lie about some of its benefits. Cracks about how devices for the Mac just work vs Windows users having to search the web for drivers are at best irritating. A more accurate statement would be that the limited set of 3rd-party hardwares for the Mac generally work, just like the vast majority of the much larger pool of devices for Windows.
It's quite possible that the original patent was filed by Xerox and Microsoft subsequently bought it, MS has a long history of purchasing IP like that, look at the deal they did with SGI a few years ago.
Hey, everybody stole from XEROX, it was the only way to get really cool stuff out of PARC and EuroPARC, because XEROX was always to boneheaded to do anything useful with it :-)
> Expose and viewing all virtual desktops in miniature versions the way Spaces does might even be new, at > least I haven't seen it before. That's stollen from old Xerox LISP environment's "ROOMS" so nothing new in Apple stealing XEROX (who of course invented the photocopier, how ironic!)
Speaking as someone who does marketing for a living, my aim is to make my product appeal to people who don't already use it. Apple's strategy seems to be to patronize and insult the intelligence of anybody who doesn't drink the Cupertino cool-aid. Ask yourself how irritated you are by the smug patronizing Apple adds of late, thye've pretty much cured me of any desire to by a Mac.
> Makes you wonder where they'll be trying to hide explosives next. Every time I take my shoes off going through security I'm reminded how grateful I am that it was the "shoe bomber" not the "underpants bomber"
In what way does Vista shove DRM down your throat, having been using for a while now, DRM doesn't seem to be any more of an issue than it is with any other OS. Vista doesn't stop me ripping media to DRMless formats, doesn't stop me playing back DRMless media. All Vista is doing is supporting DRM schemes required to handle things like HDCP and HD-DVD, that's no different to the decision to support the DRM that was required to playback DVDs, the only difference so far is that no one has cracked the DRM on HD-DVD. In the end, what do you want MS to do, they have three options: Support DRM - lets end users play the stuff without causing problems, it's up to the end user to decide if they can live with restricted rights on the media Actively bypass DRM - get sued by every media company on the planet Do nothing - even if end users can live with the DRM restrictions they can't actually play DRMd formats Seems like the "support" position is the most logical and defensible to me.
Corporates have never rushed into new operating system releases, they'd be crazy to, so nothing new there. As to consumers, they'll get Vista on any new PC next year without even thinking about, the only issue is how many XP customer upgrade on existing hardware and that's hard to predict, though it's never been a problem for MS in the past. As to Vista "as the beginning of the end of MS reign," please can I get some of what you're smoking. I've tried new releases of platforms like Ubuntu side by side with my beta test work on Vista and while I like Ubuntu, it's a thousand years away from being a desktop for anybody but a self-confessed geek!
Nobody runs as Administrator in Vista, not in the sense of a "God" account that existed in XP. Even if you are Administrator you still get prompted about whether you really want to do something stupd, just like that root accounts work on platforms like Ubuntu.
I don't doubt that an upgrade version for existing Intel mac customers will be offered, but it's not rocket science to make that very hard to install as anything but an upgrade to an existing OSX install. SO it's still not an option for running OSX on top of Windows.