Apple financial success secret - some iMac components are overpriced up to 13 times!!

[leman]

LG Panel# LM270WQ
Look above step 6
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple-Thunderbolt-Display-Teardown/6525/1

Yamakasi LG Panel#
http://www.overclock.net/t/1225919/yamakasi-catleap-monitor-club/910#post_16740523

Yes, nice links. Now please look at the stickers carefully. That Yamakasi one clearly states "For evaluation use only. No guarantee for service after evaluation". No wonder these monitors are so cheap! They are using some sort of pre-production prototype panels, never meant to be used in an actual consumer product. Probably bought for pennies and being sold by enterprising Koreans to "stupid Americans". Good business!

 

[Medic278]

Thats why you do RAM upgrades yourself, Apple products are pricey to begin with. But as another person said Apple uses premium components so I have no problem paying the Apple tax. I am not surprised they charge such a premium its how they got billions of cash reserves lol

 

[battlekid]

Yes, nice links. Now please look at the stickers carefully. That Yamakasi one clearly states "For evaluation use only. No guarantee for service after evaluation". No wonder these monitors are so cheap! They are using some sort of pre-production prototype panels, never meant to be used in an actual consumer product. Probably bought for pennies and being sold by enterprising Koreans to "stupid Americans". Good business!

The actual reason that they are so cheap is because they use factory rejects, that have up to 5 stuck pixels and/or minor defects (backlight bleed or the like). They also come with a cheap case/stand, and only one input.

However, the price savings is worth it imo — if you can stand having a monitor with a few stuck pixels on the side and some minor backlight bleed, then you can save $550 or more, and some sellers offer a no-defect version for $60 more, while SquareTrade has a $60 three year warranty for sale. So for $470, you can get a monitor worth $900+ with a three-year warranty and no defects...

 

[TMRaven]

I read the title of the topic and expected some link to an article online that went into deep statistics about market values for all of the minute little parts of the iMac among other gadgets apple sells, and I get some random guy's rant on memory prices. I'm sure selling 600 dollar memory upgrades that nobody buys greatly contributes to Apple's success as a company.

 

[gagaliya]

Apple 27" Thunderbolt monitor: $999
Aftermarket 27" IPS 2560x2440 monitor: $350

*The aftermarket monitor uses the same LG panel.

but with an aftermarket monitor you have to connect a power cord, while the apple monitor it's just 1 line directly to the imac (i think).

so that extra power cord is definitely worth the $650 extra

 

[G4DP]

Apple is not a memory seller. They price it hight to prevent them against market fluctuation. There was a time where prices were moving all the time.

Apple computers are expensive, but they select only premium components (never entry lever cpus for example), an exclusive case and OS plus you pay this 'hype' image (marketing cost). There is no secret. You pay what you get.

You are kidding?

The price has nothing to do with "Market Fluctuation". I've read some carp on these forum, but this is in a whole new league.

Apple charge what they do because they know some customers will pay for it to be fitted on the machine as it arrives. Especially business customers who don't want the hassle of having to do after market additions.

As for premium components? What ever you are taking I want some, it must be seriously strong!

How about using Laptop parts in a desktop - the iMac?
18 month old GPU's in all 'desktop' computers?
How about basement SSD's in machines?

Yes, they do have shiny cases and a different OS, but that is it. Everything else is a bog standard computer component.

 

[snberk103]

It has come to my attention ....

So are you still amazed they are world's most financially successful company?

Guess what? Lots of things have high markups, like bottled water and soft drinks. Especially the soft drinks in restaurants that don't come out of a can/bottle. You can pay a couple of dollars for something that has about 3 cents worth of ingredients. It's called free-market economy where a company charges what people will spend. Often high markup items subsidize low markup items.

I would suggest that unless you are posting similar outbursts on the McDonalds/A&W/BK/etc websites then perhaps you should your time doing so?

 

[leman]

How about using Laptop parts in a desktop - the iMac?
18 month old GPU's in all 'desktop' Computer

Who cares if they use Laptop parts if these perform as well as the desktop ones( I gues you mean RAM)? And to the GPUs - please do tell us which mobile or desktop GPU is compact and cool enough to be fitted in the iMac while being faster than the current ones. If you build a car especially for fuel economy, you can't just slap a 200hps engine on it...

 

[G4DP]

Who cares if they use Laptop parts if these perform as well as the desktop ones( I gues you mean RAM)? And to the GPUs - please do tell us which mobile or desktop GPU is compact and cool enough to be fitted in the iMac while being faster than the current ones. If you build a car especially for fuel economy, you can't just slap a 200hps engine on it...

The post I was responding to claims Apple use premium components in their machines, I was pointing out they do not.

Maybe next time read the whole context of the post and that to which it responds.

 

[Angelo95210]

You are kidding?

The price has nothing to do with "Market Fluctuation". I've read some carp on these forum, but this is in a whole new league.

Then you should review your computer history knowledge. Since the 90s memory price has been changing all the time making it very hard for large manufacturers like HP, Compaq, Dell, Apple etc to forecast and determine the final price of their machines. This is obviously not the only reason, but this is one of the reason they started to overprice memory. Now it's kind of a tradition. I am sure you are aware about this unless you are fourteen.

As for premium components? What ever you are taking I want some, it must be seriously strong!

Look a bit outside of the Apple world. Apple always release computers with innovative technology. No Intel Celeron or AMD processors. First manufacturers to include SSD only laptop. They do not make cheap on components. The fact that the Mac Pro is obsolete now is an other story.

So at this end good (I didn't say best) components + exclusive design + state of the art marketing = expensive computer. This is the basis of their business and I hope you get the difference with Dell.

 

[LachlanH]

Why in the hell was half this thread about a dodgy ebay monitor with a stupid sounding name somehow being better value than a thunderbolt display based solely off what panel it used? There is far more to a monitor than it's panel.

And ebay warranties? Sure.....

 

[harcosparky]

Oh joy!

Another one of THESE threads!

 

[leman]

The post I was responding to claims Apple use premium components in their machines, I was pointing out they do not.

Maybe next time read the whole context of the post and that to which it responds.

And I was responding only to the part of your post I disagree with (I mostly agree with the rest of your statement, even if its not 100% accurate). If you don't wont people commenting on some statements you make, please don't make these statements on a public discussion boards.

 

[bawbac]

The actual reason that they are so cheap is because they use factory rejects, that have up to 5 stuck pixels and/or minor defects (backlight bleed or the like). They also come with a cheap case/stand, and only one input.

However, the price savings is worth it imo — if you can stand having a monitor with a few stuck pixels on the side and some minor backlight bleed, then you can save $550 or more, and some sellers offer a no-defect version for $60 more, while SquareTrade has a $60 three year warranty for sale. So for $470, you can get a monitor worth $900+ with a three-year warranty and no defects...

Yes, nice links. Now please look at the stickers carefully. That Yamakasi one clearly states "For evaluation use only. No guarantee for service after evaluation". No wonder these monitors are so cheap! They are using some sort of pre-production prototype panels, never meant to be used in an actual consumer product. Probably bought for pennies and being sold by enterprising Koreans to "stupid Americans". Good business!

Do you have facts to back up your factory reject claim?
If you read through the overclock forum thread, over 90% have defect free monitors.
Stupid Americans. Who's the ones paying $999 for monitors?

Also, are you insinuating that iMac monitors are defect free?
If so, you really need to do some searching and find the plethora of reported issues of yellowing, dead pixels, light leaks and other issues.

 

[leman]

Also, are you insinuating that iMac monitors are defect free?
If so, you really need to do some searching and find the plethora of reported issues of yellowing, dead pixels, light leaks and other issues.

no, I am simply stating the fact that iMacs don't use panels with weird 'evaluation' stickers on them. You can say what you will but this does not change the fact that you monitors does not use the regular lg panels but instead, some sort of irregular batch. Which is ok, if you can make a bargain and the quality is right. I also once bought a nice bicycle very cheap at a police auction and I was very happy about it. Still, you can't take some sort of b-rate irregular wares as an argument that every company should sell the regular panel for less, because I very much doubt that LG sells them at a price which makes a 400$ point profitable.

 

[blackhand1001]

Apple is not a memory seller. They price it hight to prevent them against market fluctuation. There was a time where prices were moving all the time.

Apple computers are expensive, but they select only premium components (never entry lever cpus for example), an exclusive case and OS plus you pay this 'hype' image (marketing cost). There is no secret. You pay what you get.

No offense but Apple has a long history of selecting some pretty non premium components. One of the worst of this is the mac mini gpu option. Its a binned part with 75% of the ram failed and disabled. Normally it has 1gb of vram but apple's only has 25% (256mb). I have never seen a part that badly binned before in another product. I have personally used one of these and not only does this starve it of vram, the bandwidth of the memory is reduced significantly. Needless to say the card performed quite poorly compared to the non binned version even in windows. The base level 15 inch macbook pros also have binned gpus.

 

[Angelo95210]

No offense but Apple has a long history of selecting some pretty non premium components. One of the worst of this is the mac mini gpu option. Its a binned part with 75% of the ram failed and disabled. Normally it has 1gb of vram but apple's only has 25% (256mb). I have never seen a part that badly binned before in another product. I have personally used one of these and not only does this starve it of vram, the bandwidth of the memory is reduced significantly. Needless to say the card performed quite poorly compared to the non binned version even in windows. The base level 15 inch macbook pros also have binned gpus.

I agree Apple and GPUs have never been friends.