Originally posted by cb911
the article says:
"If the rumor was, instead of a hot G5, that Apple had developed a new manufacturing process that enabled it to compete price-wise with Windows, that would be the news Apple needs."
but i'm wondering if the manufacturing process of that internals is all that makes Apple's so expensive? is it really that big a part of the price? obviously an Aluminium case, as well as the design that goes into them is also a part of what makes the price so high.
i don't think that Apple could radically reduce their prices anytime soon, but they're definitely on the right track. they've just lowered the 12 & 15" PowerBook price, and the 970 is supposed to be cheaper than the G4 to manufacture... so there might even be another small price drop on the way.
another reason why they might not be reducing prices constantly is because they probably wait until they can take a couple of hundred dollars off. it is better if they can only do this every year or so rather than smaller price drops throught the year, as a couple of hundred $ drop will usually make people sit up and pay attention.
I think what the article meant by "manufacturing process" was volume. Volume is what drives down the prices of making products. It's why Dell computers are so cheap. It's called the economies of scale if you want to get technical. Because of market share, Apple can't afford to produce the volume that would be require to drop their prices as drastically as PCs have been able to.
It's possible that driving down the prices to compete with the larger producers would improve Apple's market share, but the question is, would they survive in that interim? If they gamble on that possibility, and their volume of sales doesn't increase significantly, then the entire company could go out of business.
Our wishes aside, what keeps Apple expensive is economics. They can't afford to lower their prices and remain in the financial position that their board, or Jobs, or their investors feel they need to be in.
I'm all for lower-priced hardware, but if Apple is like most companies, they would lower their prices if they could lower their costs. It's just logical to assume at this time that they can't lower their costs or their margins, thus can't lower their prices.
I prefer not to believe that they are a purely money-hungry greedy corporation (most companies aren't) not willing to sacrifice an inch on margins. Every company is in business to maximize profits, but that doesn't mean maximize product price. What you give up in margin, you make up for in volume. That's just the economics of profit maximization (or loss minimization if you're looking at a company losing money).
Anyway, just my two cents.
Alia