Product Differentiation
Either Apple is really stupid (which I doubt), or these repeated assertions that Apple is keeping their consumer lines castrated so they don't "cannibalize" higher-end sales are wrong.
I really hope the latter.
If the 12" G4 PowerBook isn't appealing to buyers, then (1) it shouldn't have been introduced, (2) production should be slowed down on it, or (3) if lower-quantity production is not cost-effective, it should be dropped. I mean, this is first-year economics, hardly something that should be tripping up a $4B company!
If salespeople are having a hard time reaching quotas on the 12" PB but are surpassing quotas on the iBook line, then your quotas need to be adjusted! As the same company is handling both production and retail, there should be very little friction there!
Now, product line differentiation is good, but not when you are selling yourself short to achieve it. The "Power" line should showcase the higher-end power-user features, and the "i" line the consumer-oriented features. FW800 is a pro-level feature. Expandability (PC card slot) is a pro-level feature. Altivec, perhaps, might be considered a pro-level feature (given the heat cost, that's probably right in the notebook lineup). A specific speed of processor? Not pro-level at all, unless the faster processor is appreciably more expensive.
On the other hand, there is a natural supply-side reason for Apple's practices, and it has nothing to do with blind and rabid product differentiation: quantity of available stock determines how "low" on the line a particular item can go, and product development resources determine how quickly any particular technology can filter through product lines. Take the first item: if you only have 1000 1.43GHz G4s coming out each month, you shouldn't be putting them into a 5000 unit-per-month product line (you could, of course, but would have to increase the cost of that product until it was a 1000 unit-per-month line, which wreaks havoc on the economics of the other parts going into that product ...) Then for development time: for each product line, there are unique features that mean that Apple has to dedicate development resources to fitting any new CPU and/or chipset into each product line. Apple doesn't have the resources (not many companies do in fact) to turn all of its product lines over in a month or two. Because of the first principle above and the fact that new parts are generally in shorter supply than more established parts, it makes sense that the first team given these redevelopment resources is the highest-end/lowest-quantity team, and that resource allocation then trickles down through the ranks until all product lines are able to use the line.
The third principle that keeps the product lines differentiated is that of multiple sources. Apple is a lot safer getting CPUs from two companies than from one. If IBM is only (so far) supplying G3's and motorola has no interest in providing anything better or worse than a G4, then Apple is in a much better position if it is buying both G3's and G4's than if it were to move all to G4's. This is, of course, also why I suspect we won't see Apple completely dump the G3/G4 lines when the 970 debuts.
The point I am trying to make is that there are "natural" reasons for product-line differentiation, and unless you are quite incompetent in managing your product lines, this differentiation should both arise quite naturally and be incredibly hard to avoid. There is NO need to artificially "hold back" one line because it might look too much like another line. If your lines are looking too much alike, the root cause is that you have too many lines! IIRC, this was approximately jab's assessment when he cme back to Apple as well: too many lines to keep a coherent message about each.
So, this is either a myth coming from the sales lines or it is a sign of pathetically poor product management.
