Apple, quit telling me what I want.

Apple gives you allot

Apple does this for one reason.
I wold say this is because they are tryig to save you money, if they had all this customizable stuff then the prices would go up allot. With there system of having the imacs so solid and uniform, they imply the assembly line methode and thus save us the consumer money. If you know all tha you want to the exact everything and speed, then get a tower. That is what i think at least. That would be nice but the top of the line everything would also be nice.

Profit

Machines are configured so that Apple can maximize their profits on sales. Usually, more people are going to buy the high end of any particular product. They throw in a combo or super drive in to make that difference between the high end and mid or low end more appealing.

bunton is pretty close

The biggest issue is the cost of the inventory Apple would have to carry to handle all of the options.

It would be sort of like back in the 60's and 70's when you would buy a car and you could choose from literally dozens of options. Then the Japanese started really pushing cars in North America and they would have just a few option kits that included several individual options. The result was you got a Japanese car with a cassette player (sorry no CDs yet) for the same price as North American car with just a radio.

How did they know what options to kit? They did a ton of market research to figure out the mix. Was it perfect? Nope. Did it work better? I guess we just need to look at how all the car companies do their options now.

Well, they're not Burger King.

I'd like a well done eMac, hold the tomatoes and a large... oh wait....damn....

Originally posted by chitman
I'd like a well done eMac, hold the tomatoes and a large... oh wait....damn....

Click to expand...

You looking at the eMac or the vMac???

I was thinking more along the lines of a bigMac....but then thats just me.

You say "don't want" or "don't need" but when you start to fill up that hard drive with all the porn you download, you will change your tune. An 80GB hard drive is almost nothing these days, especially for a desktop system.

One of the reasons that Apple isn't offering the different hard drive sizes and optical drives is to produce the systems faster. It's faster, and easier to get the factory to pump out iMac's with XXGB hard drives, one optical drive and such then to have them BTO a ton of them.

BTW, In all the years I have owned computers, and talked with people that have them, I have yet to hear anyone brag about getting a smaller hard drive installed in their computer BEFORE purchasing it. Of all the people I know, and have spoken with, all that have changed the drive sizes have increased them when they get the sytem (or before it arrives). They do this right away, so that they don't have to do it later. Especially with systems where it is a pain to change drives (like the PowerBooks and iMac's).

Something else, the hard drives in the iMac's are NOT customer installable items. There are only two items that fall into that category, the Airport card, and SODIMM.

The iBook has the Airport card, memory, and keyboard as the only customer installable parts. Installing anything else youself WILL void your warranty (unless you are an Apple certified tech that is, and certified for those types of systems).

Things to think about before crying out what you do, or don't want from Apple inside the sytems.

I get your point, sometimes I feel the same way. Like when there are just one or two things that would make me want one, but there's no option to add or subtract the items I want. If I say something about it, suddenly I'm b*tching about nothing (hello people, it's my $$$, I can b*tch all I want).

If you are in the market for a new iMac or iBook, you should go ahead and buy it as configured and add stuff later. That's what I'm going do. Buy a new Tower when they come out (if the specs are good) and get an external CD-R/W. That way I can use the internal DVD-R and a faster R/W (unlesss Apple gives the option for two internals). Same thing with the combo drive in the iBook. It can read CDs, DVDs, CD-R/Ws, etc. It would only save you about $100, so it's kinda worth it.

Plus, you can never have too much HD space.

There was a site that sold eMacs with Superdrives. Apple made them stop. I can kinda see why. You can get it with a combo drive now.

And feel free to b*tch all you want. That's my favorite part of coming to these forums. You get all those who say "that's just the way it is", and those who say "Apple can do no wrong". The best part is when they say, "go buy a PC if you don't like it". And then people do, and they grow complacent with their crappy Dells, and we wonder why more people don't switch.

Some things you just suck up and accept. But just say "no" to complacency and obsolesence among we the Mac faithful.

Ok, getting a little esoteric here.

Just buy it. You'll be happy.

Or buy a Tower and a Display. CTO.

Re: Apple, quit telling me what I want.

Originally posted by sjs
I want a 17" iMac 800 mhz WITHOUT superdrive, and I don't need an 80 gig HD.

I want a 700 mhz iBook without the Combo drive.

Maybe I want an eMac with superdrive (not really).

Anyway, my question is: why can't I have what I want? Why do I have to buy what you want me to have? I'd gladly wait a few more days for delivery.

This isn't whining...its a question about whether Apple's business model could be improved. More of a build to order...

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wow, you know, now that you mention it, i agree. I am tired of companies always telling me what i want. Stop it. It happens everywhere, from the automotive industry to the carpet cleaning solutions they sell. It's always THEM calling the shots, THEY think their market reseach is superior. Well, I have news for them, we (me and ten other people I know) are not going to take it anymore. From now on, I am only going to buy and use goods and services, respectively, that offer me exactly what I want. No longer am I going to be satisfied with 87 or 89 percent octane at the pump. No sir, I will only patronize gas stations where i can find 88 octane (not to mention a good 53 OZ Big Gulp). So I hope you hear that, Corporate America! We want full customization. Down with Henry Ford and his mundane assembly line approach to manufacturing, up with Santa Claus and his dedicated team of ever-customizing elves!

My mum always used to say.....

"I want, doesn't get"

So there....

Re: Re: Apple, quit telling me what I want.

Originally posted by buffsldr
Down with Henry Ford and his mundane assembly line approach to manufacturing, up with Santa Claus and his dedicated team of ever-customizing elves!

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you are being sarcastic but looking over all the people around here who have been bitching ever since mwny i think you will find that most of the people who post around here will not be able to comprehend your sarcasm and will cheer you on.

First, buffsldr, you made me smile!

Second, the iMac and iBook are consumer machines. They are designed to give Joe what he probably wants, at a reasonable price point, with a reasonable margin to the orchard. These are also integrated machines (read: not towers), so each custom built machine is a deviation from standard production, which means higher costs. This is considerably less time consuming with the towers (as anyone whose upgraded both knows). Options are slim with these machines because of complexity, and time. Apple RAM isn't über expensive because they want a 300% margin. They want a 150% margin, and some compensation for the fact that someone has to stop the presses to make your machine different.

Imagine the annoyance (and cost) of doing that with the upgrade unfriendly iBook & iMac to meet your odd optical drive requests?

well if you want to buy a steaming pile of customized sh*t be my guest.

its frustrating i understand, but if it means lower prices (iMac 17") im willing.

Re: "made to order"

Originally posted by sjs
Dell makes their computers to order, and yes, you can get them any way you want them

AND they have they lowest inventory costs in the industry.

So this is a matter of choice on Apple's part. They can do it differently if they want to.

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When Apple does the volume that Dell does then maybe they can do it differently and have low inventory costs.

Dell is all about pricing and not much else. Pricing updated by the hour.
Dell is nothing more than a commodity seller.

Re: Re: "made to order"

Originally posted by synergy

Dell is all about pricing and not much else. Pricing updated by the hour.
Dell is nothing more than a commodity seller.

Click to expand...

there was a post somewhere, can't find it now, that basically described Dell's R&D policy - it was quite simple - they let other people do the research, they just sell the current tech cheaper.

Apple does hardware and software development - and we should be thankful that they do - ever hear of something call FireWire? Just one example.

Got me thinking...

I really don't need dual gigahertz g4s. I wan one ghz g4 and a 68040 25 mhz processor.

That should be precisely enough speed.

The problem is that having 1millon different configurations raises the costs per unit of the system, and thus would make them even more expensive than they are now, and would raise problems with reliability. One of the reasons that Macs are so reliable is that they have only a few configurations and they are repeated so often. Pc's. That is what kills Gateways and Dells. The people there will tell you that it would be better if they only had a few. I know. I used to work at Gateway, and I know how much money they saved by going with about 25 configurations rather than the 13 million that they had.

Re: Re: Re: "made to order"

Originally posted by dukestreet
there was a post somewhere, can't find it now, that basically described Dell's R&D policy - it was quite simple - they let other people do the research, they just sell the current tech cheaper.

Apple does hardware and software development - and we should be thankful that they do - ever hear of something call FireWire? Just one example.

Click to expand...

How many computers used the 12Mb USB before Apple?? Before that, if the computer (pc) had USB at all, it was most likely the slower version.

I agree on their money grabbing tactics on component configurations, they need to add more BTO options with regard to downgrading components to smaller sizes on higher end models so you can go for faster CPU and cut back on the hard drive size, downgrade the optical drive to a CDRW and other options they could offer iBook and iMac buyers more options too so they can get a higher end CPU without needlessly spending extra on other components at the same time.

Here's a comparison for you both identical configuration (apart from the HD) :

800Mhz G4, 40Gb, no modem, Radeon 7500, Superdrive, 256Mb : £1,491.08
933Mhz G4, 60Gb, no modem, Radeon 7500, Superdrive, 256Mb : £1,890.58

Going off the extra cost of a 60Gb HD on the 800Mhz model, this is the BTO options on the mid range G4 configuration you should be able to buy :

933Mhz G4, 40Gb, no modem, Radeon 7500, Superdrive, 256Mb : £1,831.83

It's still over £340 more than the entry level with the same config and that's far too much to justify a 133Mhz clock speed advantage and a L3 cache even if most benchmarks I've seen show the 933 Mhz model to be about 35% faster than the 800Mhz G4. £200 or so is just not enough of a price cut on the higher end models.

the truth

Please shut up!
Rather than complain about the past, talk about the future.

Apple aint going to start making customizable imacs so ask for a new breed or some**** ok!