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Apple's Notebook Marketshare Growth and High Margins
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Think $1400 is a lot for a computer? Remember not too long ago laptops were easily $4000! People complain an awful lot about computer prices. Honestly if you want a good computer you are going to have to spend a little bit. In about 6 months I'm going to purchase a $3,800 Mac Pro (with monitor), but you know what? It is worth it for the quality, reliability, expandability, and usability I will get out of it. Also, Apple has proven itself to me time and time again. My Apple IIGS still works for crying out loud!
rofl podpacker...
a bit onesided is ur opinion...
only crappy ware for windows?
i like the software i have on my mbp still i miss A LOT of the "crapware"
and macs are never up to date... the best and most sofware is programmed for windows first. What do u do if u want exactly that software but it is still not avaible for mac? Set a dollar value for your time... what a bs argument
are no people here who are reasonable?
i mean we all are here because we own a mac or we like macs... but the fanboyism is just bs
a bit onesided is ur opinion...
only crappy ware for windows?
i like the software i have on my mbp still i miss A LOT of the "crapware"
and macs are never up to date... the best and most sofware is programmed for windows first. What do u do if u want exactly that software but it is still not avaible for mac? Set a dollar value for your time... what a bs argument
are no people here who are reasonable?
i mean we all are here because we own a mac or we like macs... but the fanboyism is just bs
If this is going to go to price wars 
Check out Dell's 13.3" line of notebooks. Easily comparable to macbooks and sometimes even more expensive.
The only thing Apple loses on is RAM.
Check out Dell's 13.3" line of notebooks. Easily comparable to macbooks and sometimes even more expensive.
The only thing Apple loses on is RAM.
Price matters more now than ever because we are entering a period where price is all that will matter. I don't care if an equally specced box is the same, Apple doesn't sell the $600 laptop so people will go to whoever does. It's not a slap against Apple or anyone else, it's just how things work when you are a provider of luxury items. It's even more true when there are plenty of budget providers out there. Apple isn't going out of business or anything, but most likely their sales will slow.
I think Apple is in a better situation than any of those ~$500 laptops producers. Their customers aren't those who won't buy computers anymore because of a slowdown (unless it's really, really bad). Maybe they won't buy high-end MBP anymore, but they'll switch to low-end MBP. And Apple has high enough margins to protect itself. They can afford to lower their prices, if they have to. Companies who are competing in "lowest price" category can't do that - their margins are already as low as they can be and their components as cheap as they can be, and their employees as few as possible. They've already cut the price to gain market, but the market that has been gained this way will be dead if the recession gets worse - they'll stop buying new computers. Also it works in Apple's favor that they're offering relatively few models - too much differentiation drives the costs up. I think "one size fits all" will refer not only to iPod Classic in the future, and standardizing of the components points in this direction as well.
My Point Was Sorely Missed
Fan much, g00k?
Stripping out just "the best and most [sic] sofware is programmed for windows first." comment I can say this:
iTunes for Mac first
iPhoto for Mac first
iMovie for Mac first
iDVD for Mac first
FinalCut Pro for Mac first
Aperture for Mac first
Halo for Mac first (Who still remembers that bit of underhandedness?)
Hey, it's fine if time has no value to you, but I use my computers to generate income first and as entertainment second.
And everyone here knows what "crapware" means. How many people use AOL or Microsoft Works or Joe's Accounting Program? It's a good thing Joe has money and got a few hookers for the execs at Dell, now his useless program gets slipstreamed onto the Dell installation disc and peecee users have to learn to live with it on their machines. That's crapware, sorry I didn't explain it. (I don't want to flame) Next time I won't make any assumptions.
Like I ended my original post, if you need it bad enough you can always run Windows.
I don't hate peecees, I just think that the price point is the new megahertz myth, just check out System Shoot Outs online.
Fan much, g00k?
Stripping out just "the best and most [sic] sofware is programmed for windows first." comment I can say this:
iTunes for Mac first
iPhoto for Mac first
iMovie for Mac first
iDVD for Mac first
FinalCut Pro for Mac first
Aperture for Mac first
Halo for Mac first (Who still remembers that bit of underhandedness?)
Hey, it's fine if time has no value to you, but I use my computers to generate income first and as entertainment second.
And everyone here knows what "crapware" means. How many people use AOL or Microsoft Works or Joe's Accounting Program? It's a good thing Joe has money and got a few hookers for the execs at Dell, now his useless program gets slipstreamed onto the Dell installation disc and peecee users have to learn to live with it on their machines. That's crapware, sorry I didn't explain it. (I don't want to flame) Next time I won't make any assumptions.
Like I ended my original post, if you need it bad enough you can always run Windows.
I don't hate peecees, I just think that the price point is the new megahertz myth, just check out System Shoot Outs online.
That doesn't have anything to do with it. It's not about price points, it's about revenue. This is a story about business, not about retail products.
All this story says is that Apple captures more dollars than average per machine, because those machines have a higher price. There is no commentary to be made (on either side) about price/performance, features, or specifications.
It doesn't need to take anything into account. It has nothing to do with the products.
Let's look at a simple market.
Company A has an average price of $500, and they've sold 80 units, for $40,000. Company B products have an average price of $1000, and they've sold 40 units, for $40,000. Company C products have an average price of $200, and they've sold 100 units, for $20,000.
Company C might have 45% market share by number (200 units), but they've only captured 20% of the dollars. Company B, meanwhile, only has 18% of the volume, but 40% of the dollars. Company A has 36% of the volume and 40% of the money. They are an "average" performer.
Company C uses the "Walmart" model of low margins and high volumes. Company B uses the "boutique" model of focusing on fewer sales at higher margins. Company A uses a straddling method to avoid risk.
In either case, these numbers are totally separate from actual profit, and at best a poor proxy, since the relative production costs are not considered.
Mostly games nowadays but Cider is taking care of that but with some overhead.
Otherwise OS X does have a nice community of unique software and cross platform open source initiatives.
Exactly. I don't think anyone looks at the Mac Devos side of the fence when they make such statements, or the apps developed by Apple themselves.
Pair those with the games for Windows and it's pretty even, with companies like Adobe coding for both platforms at the same time.
What a load of crap!!!!
If "Megahertz myth" was only a myth than Apple wouldn't bother to switch to Intel. But they did because they are trying to be a profitable company. In fact that move was the MAIN thing that allowed them to gain such market/profit share. But I can easily imagine you preaching self-destruction of Apple if they insult their "funs" and switch to Intel processors.
I had 3 pc notebooks for the past 8 years (dell, toshiba and ibm), spent <4000$ and all three still working well. They worked right out of the box and only for the newest one I did a clean windows re-install right away, using the INCLUDED windows cd (beside a cd that re-installs all trial software). Yes I had found time to do this, but if you can have time to write this nonsenses here, maybe your time is not that expensive too. But I don't have unhealthy obsession with specific computer hardware, I may buy MacAir, providing I can install Windows on it and have software I use for work. My wife bought me an iPhone, I kept it (wife too).
Dealing with malware is most of the time simple, I install only reliable software and not "free", "shareware" etc. crap! iTunes for windows and Apple updater for Windows are, in fact, the worst malware I have seen in years.
About Vista incompatibility, I really don't know; I am using XP. But I also know you have no idea either, you are just repeating dogmatic mantra.
Surfing porn, playing games and downloading media - that is a great description of an average American computer user so I guess "peecee" has a great future!
My dual 450mhz G4 still works like a champ, and it's going on 7 years old.
I can't think of a 7 year old PC that can still do 90% of what it needs to do (games and 3d are about the only things this won't run, and that's because I don't want to spend the $ to find a better GPU to put in it!).
Blame IBM. The Power architecture is, IMO, still better than x86 (and x64 by extension, I was so sad the day Intel buried IA64). The problem was that there was never going to be a G5 PowerBook, and Apple got sick of waiting. Be glad, or we'd still be stuck around 1.6/1.7ghz G4's.
Absolutely. I just sold a 4 year old, BROKEN iBook g4 for $225. Not too shabby.
very timely point
I think that is something that Apple is going to have to struggle with. They *ALL* ( mac and windows laptops ) use commodity hardware, but apple puts a premium on design, their OS and bundled software. Will folks be willing to pay the premium in "tough" times?
You have to give it to apple, however, they have never ( at least not to my knowledge ) succumbed to using that crummy 'dual core' processor, but rather have stayed on the core duo, core 2 duo path from the beginning. And that processor is worth every 'extra' penny over the dual-cores they are cramming in a lot of the low-end windows laptops.
Currently, apple store has a white refurb macbook for $899. If it had 2gb ram, it would make it a better deal.
I think that is something that Apple is going to have to struggle with. They *ALL* ( mac and windows laptops ) use commodity hardware, but apple puts a premium on design, their OS and bundled software. Will folks be willing to pay the premium in "tough" times?
You have to give it to apple, however, they have never ( at least not to my knowledge ) succumbed to using that crummy 'dual core' processor, but rather have stayed on the core duo, core 2 duo path from the beginning. And that processor is worth every 'extra' penny over the dual-cores they are cramming in a lot of the low-end windows laptops.
Currently, apple store has a white refurb macbook for $899. If it had 2gb ram, it would make it a better deal.
I will only comment on 'malware, spyware and viruses'. I have used pc's for ages and have NEVER had any of these issues. I play games, surf the web, etc. I a decent, free anti virus app, a modern browser, and I use window's defender.
I guess I may not be in the norm, but using windows xp pro for many years now has been just fine. I can tweak/customize the GUI, it's very responsive on the current hardware and stable.
I agree completely. I've been running Windows for years alongside the Mac OS (the Intel switch was a godsend) and XP works just fine if you follow some basic rules: use Firefox (or anything but IE), buy antivirus software, and don't frequent questionable websites (if you do, there are other measures that you can take that I won't get into here). That's it. Sure, XP isn't as sophisticated as Mac OS X, but it certainly gets the job done.
Vista is another story...god what a failure of an OS that is...
My only complaint about Apple hardware is the lack of variety. I either get the average-specced Macbook, the decently-specced Macbook Pro, or the light Macbook Air. There are no other options. I was almost swayed to buy a PC laptop a few months ago when doing research on new laptops. I would have bought one if it wasn't for Apple Refurbished...15" 2.2GHz MBP for $1450, can't beat it. There are some nice PC laptops that offer more features and, sometimes, more value than a Mac. Look at the new Thinkpads, for example.
Value is important to consumers in a struggling economy. Macs are, and probably always will be, more of a premium product. People don't like buying premium products when they have to be concerned about affording enough gas to get to work etc. If Joe Smith can buy a $500 POS laptop that can run MS Office, an email program, and a web browser, why would he want to pay twice as much (or more) for one to do mostly the same things? We, as Mac users, understand the fact that Apple's laptops are not horribly overpriced compared to similarly-specced PC laptops, but Apple doesn't cater to the low-end market.
Ballmer needn't fear the Mac.....just yet.
found this article online.......at blogs.zdnet.com
Ballmer needn’t fear the Mac…just yet
Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 10:00 am
Tags: Apple Macintosh, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp., Desktops, Microsoft Windows, Hardware, Operating Systems, Software, Dennis Howlett
Boutique analyst firm Freeform Dynamics took a run at standardizing on Macs but the switch was not worthwhile. They’re now back in the Windows fold. Their report starts by posing a series of questions about business benefit. They found that when pressed, business users were hard put to come up with anything other than woolly answers. So what usually happens when an average business user switches to Mac?
With the world and his dog essentially standardised on Microsoft Office for business, how does the average Mac user in a mainstream commercial setting handle that? Well, they typically run a copy MS Office in a Windows virtual machine using Parallels or VMware Fusion. Most say they flip to this to do a lot of their more ‘boring’ work such as messaging and collaboration via the Exchange server, and participation in the document production/review/approval cycle with colleagues, clients, suppliers and so on, then do everything else in OS X. Of course the big question then becomes what does “everything else” actually translate to – accessing corporate applications and the Web through a browser probably – i.e. things that the desktop OS has little bearing on.
What happened in Freeform’s case?
The answer is actually pretty simple – we found that as a business, we were far more reliant on Microsoft Office under Windows than we had anticipated, and while most of the other productivity and business apps we use had native Mac equivalents, this was not true for all of them. The end result was that we couldn‟t get away from Windows, so ended up with a hybrid Windows/OS X environment which got in the way of productivity.
In other words none of:
* Improved uptime compared with Windows Vista
* Fewer critical security patches
* Ease of networking
* Faster operating (at least natively)
…could overcome the lock that Microsoft has placed in their business? That seems short sighted.
I’ve operated solely in the internet ‘cloud’ for some three years now with nothing other than the occasional glitch. The only time I use desktop applications is when Google or Zoho can’t ‘read’ something, most often from a PowerPoint deck. I’m not alone.
OK so I’m a one man band and accountable to no-one but myself. Yet both Google and Zoho are picking up plenty of business. All the indications suggest that the inevitable price pressures arising out of the impending IT spend squeeze would favor a re-consideration of those Microsoft licenses. That’s what GE thinks.
Of course you don’t need Mac to make that sort of switch but as anyone will tell you, both IE6 and IE7 present challenges when working with internet applications. Users could switch to Firefox as the day to day browser but most will simply use whatever they’re given.
The question then comes down to TCO. The Mac acquisition cost is an order of magnitude more expensive than Windows machines but as my Irregular colleague Zoli Erdos said last month:
I started to chronicle the hassle of just running a Vista PC and dealing with random, unexplainable failures, but more or less gave up. Compare this to the anecdotal evidence of my Mac-user friends, who, despite occasional hiccups all agree: it just works.
And that’s the point. As someone who is constantly creating content of one kind or another (including accounts data) productivity matters. A lot. I’ve never had a Mac equivalent of BSOD, rarely need to power down and reboot (though I do so more these days as an energy saver) and have never had any real problems other than crappy battery life.
I’ve not seen any recent comparative studies about Mac v PC TCO but my experience mirrors that of my Mac using colleagues. Macs work. Period. Whether it is possible to generalize our experience to fully networked operations is another matter. All I know is that my Express based wifi home network works just fine.
Given the SMB sector is Microsoft’s bread and butter by volume and recent news that Apple’s laptop products are doing rather well, perhaps Ballmer should have something to worry about. But only from those who are prepared to view a move to Mac as an opportunity to completely re-evaluate how they are using IT to run their business. For some that will be a breath of fresh air, for others their Wintel addiction will be too powerful.
oh, just now thought I could've just posted the link am out of coffee...kinda blurry headed.....
here it is
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=488&tag=nl.e539
found this article online.......at blogs.zdnet.com
Ballmer needn’t fear the Mac…just yet
Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 10:00 am
Tags: Apple Macintosh, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp., Desktops, Microsoft Windows, Hardware, Operating Systems, Software, Dennis Howlett
Boutique analyst firm Freeform Dynamics took a run at standardizing on Macs but the switch was not worthwhile. They’re now back in the Windows fold. Their report starts by posing a series of questions about business benefit. They found that when pressed, business users were hard put to come up with anything other than woolly answers. So what usually happens when an average business user switches to Mac?
With the world and his dog essentially standardised on Microsoft Office for business, how does the average Mac user in a mainstream commercial setting handle that? Well, they typically run a copy MS Office in a Windows virtual machine using Parallels or VMware Fusion. Most say they flip to this to do a lot of their more ‘boring’ work such as messaging and collaboration via the Exchange server, and participation in the document production/review/approval cycle with colleagues, clients, suppliers and so on, then do everything else in OS X. Of course the big question then becomes what does “everything else” actually translate to – accessing corporate applications and the Web through a browser probably – i.e. things that the desktop OS has little bearing on.
What happened in Freeform’s case?
The answer is actually pretty simple – we found that as a business, we were far more reliant on Microsoft Office under Windows than we had anticipated, and while most of the other productivity and business apps we use had native Mac equivalents, this was not true for all of them. The end result was that we couldn‟t get away from Windows, so ended up with a hybrid Windows/OS X environment which got in the way of productivity.
In other words none of:
* Improved uptime compared with Windows Vista
* Fewer critical security patches
* Ease of networking
* Faster operating (at least natively)
…could overcome the lock that Microsoft has placed in their business? That seems short sighted.
I’ve operated solely in the internet ‘cloud’ for some three years now with nothing other than the occasional glitch. The only time I use desktop applications is when Google or Zoho can’t ‘read’ something, most often from a PowerPoint deck. I’m not alone.
OK so I’m a one man band and accountable to no-one but myself. Yet both Google and Zoho are picking up plenty of business. All the indications suggest that the inevitable price pressures arising out of the impending IT spend squeeze would favor a re-consideration of those Microsoft licenses. That’s what GE thinks.
Of course you don’t need Mac to make that sort of switch but as anyone will tell you, both IE6 and IE7 present challenges when working with internet applications. Users could switch to Firefox as the day to day browser but most will simply use whatever they’re given.
The question then comes down to TCO. The Mac acquisition cost is an order of magnitude more expensive than Windows machines but as my Irregular colleague Zoli Erdos said last month:
I started to chronicle the hassle of just running a Vista PC and dealing with random, unexplainable failures, but more or less gave up. Compare this to the anecdotal evidence of my Mac-user friends, who, despite occasional hiccups all agree: it just works.
And that’s the point. As someone who is constantly creating content of one kind or another (including accounts data) productivity matters. A lot. I’ve never had a Mac equivalent of BSOD, rarely need to power down and reboot (though I do so more these days as an energy saver) and have never had any real problems other than crappy battery life.
I’ve not seen any recent comparative studies about Mac v PC TCO but my experience mirrors that of my Mac using colleagues. Macs work. Period. Whether it is possible to generalize our experience to fully networked operations is another matter. All I know is that my Express based wifi home network works just fine.
Given the SMB sector is Microsoft’s bread and butter by volume and recent news that Apple’s laptop products are doing rather well, perhaps Ballmer should have something to worry about. But only from those who are prepared to view a move to Mac as an opportunity to completely re-evaluate how they are using IT to run their business. For some that will be a breath of fresh air, for others their Wintel addiction will be too powerful.
oh, just now thought I could've just posted the link
am out of coffee...kinda blurry headed.....here it is
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=488&tag=nl.e539
Actually we do which is why they consistently fail TCO comparisons when compared to Windows machines.
The rest of your post is so comical it doesn't really merit an answer.