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Phil Schiller Defends iPad Mini Pricing Decision

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brdeveloper said:
Is it really last year's hardware? The specs are similar to iPad2, but putting the same processing power and battery life in a smaller case, seems a great achievement. Also, it gives a higher pixel density, so it's an improved display technology over iPad2.
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No, it's not a great achievement.
The iPod touch might be but the iPad mini is not.
Think iPod touch with a bigger screen.
 
nfl46 said:
Apple products have been overpriced for years, but yet people still buy them.
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No, it's about creating high quality products and charging appropriately and creating the most satisfied customers in the industry. Thats a far better approach then dumping cheap plastic and inferior products that may or may not get system upgrades, selling them for cost and having the least satisfied customers. It's also about recouping all the R&D that went into products that truly innovate while "some" just steal the technology and label it as their own.
 
Anuba said:
The iPod touch is tiny compared to the iPad mini. How can you be an Apple customer and miss that people are willing to pay a premium for smaller, thinner, lighter? These products aren't made of beef that you pay for according to weight. People wouldn't go "oh, bigger for less money, well that settles it, I will strap an iPad mini to my chest for my morning jog".
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That would be extremely funny. Maybe someone will post it to youtube.
 
What?

What the hell are people complaining about. Up until 7 days ago it was going to start at $349. They dropped the price $20. Time for a reality check. :apple:
 
Anuba said:
No, you're missing the point. I think people are comfortable with premium pricing in general, I rarely hear anyone call BMW or Audi "overpriced". Expensive maybe, but not overpriced. You're not merely paying for the brand. They are well-crafted cars built in Germany by well-paid people -- Western European labor doesn't come cheap.

Apple's products on the other hand are made in the same Chinese sweatshops where their competitors have their stuff made. They're assembled from the same old components found in everything else -- Intel, Broadcom, Samsung, Seagate, the usual. Nothing premium about that, Apple has nothing to show that warrants premium price tags.

Steve Jobs was no Henry Ford, and neither is Tim Cook. Apple uses dirt cheap labor and any cost reductions resulting from obsessive streamlining and corner-cutting are not passed on to the customer, instead it goes into making the fattest profit margins in the industry even fatter, so that the cluster of parasitic human filth known as shareholders will close their greedy pieholes for a second before they start crying for MOAR again. As IKEA has shown, you can become #1 in the world without depending on shareholders. IKEA is privately owned, the parasites can't attach to them and demand that they lay off people in spite of huge profits. Gotta love that.
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German cars are now known for their performance more than craftmanship. Their reliability ratings are way below(except Porsche) and having owned a few of them and the huge amount of money I spent on fixing them, I wouldn't touch one again. But of course its that carefully crafted brand image and a legendary history behind them that gives them the right to price their vehicles higher.

Apple's products might be using the same chips made by broadcom or Intel or Realtek, but there is apparently that *quality*, which I don't know comes from the components themselves or the software or the way the circuits are designed? I say this from personal experience because I used a ASUS PC(Reputed name right? Heck they make the motherboards for 90% of the PC manufacturers). Wanted to use some Audio software and MIDI and noticed that the audio out the box was horrible. Crackling sounds, hissing noise and what not. Not to mention the huge latency with MIDI instruments.

Now comes Mac Mini bought used on ebay (2007 version) and wow the audio quality is just great. No hiss no crackle and no latency. Imagine a dual core machine @ 1.87 Ghz with a max of 2 GB RAM outperforming my 1200 dollar Core i7 @ 2.8 Ghz desktop made by a reputed company. Outperforming not just the audio but also when it came to file transfers and other daily tasks. Okay that might the OS X/Unix working its magic. But I can't necessarily vouch for every component in the Mac but the Audio alone left me impressed.

I agree your last part about shareholders and wall street. Wall Street I presume, at one point of time served as a barometer of how the corporations were doing so others can invest, divest or do whatever with it.

Today it has become a horse race. They demand that they better show quarterly profits or else..... (bunch of analysts spreading crap of "Sell" or "Downgrade")...

Imagine when a few yeas ago Microsoft had to shed 5000 engineers/managers(some of them were truly to cut fat), just to make Wall Street happy. Right there... you are not in control of your company anymore. You have succumbed to the "Show me profit every quarter" mafia !

Reality is...some times you *cannot* show profit all the time because you are working on something that takes time. Example? iPhone!

I always remember one video where steve said about starting a business...

"We truly didn't know how to run a business in the early years. Heck I didn't even know what a Wall Street Journal was !!!.. In the end.. it worked out for the better.."

Wall street has a knack of taking something good or even great and sprinkling gold dust on it.. and then run away with the gold and leaving nothing but dust. We have seen it happen and we will see it more in the future if people in charge of designing/manufacturing and selling great gadgets focus only on quarterly profits and not the product/aesthetics/experience etc

Once Apple starts dancing to the tunes of Wall Street, its game over.
 
Delusional?

iPad been top for so long, Apple loosing sight?

Last year(October) even $399 would be fine, but Amazon and Google have changed the game.

Oh, mini will sell millions, but I can hear Amazon and Google breath a sigh of relief.
 
I also think the price is too high. The only way we can show to Apple and send the message to them is not to buy one. I am not getting one for sure and very happy with my iPad 2 still a very capable device. Their heads is getting bigger because they think they can sell more. The Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 are good devices and more ideal gift for this coming holiday because of the price.
 
Anuba said:
The iPod touch is tiny compared to the iPad mini. How can you be an Apple customer and miss that people are willing to pay a premium for smaller, thinner, lighter? These products aren't made of beef that you pay for according to weight. People wouldn't go "oh, bigger for less money, well that settles it, I will strap an iPad mini to my chest for my morning jog".
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You're right. I'm willing and am going to pay a premium for a device that is the right size for me. iPad is too large for me to haul around and an iPod touch is too small for me to use as my primary computer/web browsing device.
 
8ate8 said:
I know I'm about 16 pages late to the party, and someone may have brought it up already, but you have to compare it apples to apples (no pun intended). The "4 inch tablet" base model is 32gb for $299. The 7.9 inch tablet, 32gb version, is $429. It's not a $30 price difference between them when you compare equal capacity models.

If Apple offered a 16gb ipod touch, it'd probably be priced at $199. $130 less than the 16gb iPad mini.
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You have a point about the capacity, I just feel that many want the "entry" level device (if they stream/cloud their content, they may not need 32GB)

So, you cannot get an iPad Mini for less then $329 and you cannot get a 4" iPod touch for less than $299. There are a few other differences beyond the extra 16GB you get with the iPod touch but it looks like Apple did not want to price a 7.9 inch tablet at the same price or lower price than the 4" "pocket tablet"
 
zioxide said:
And what, 15 apps for it? :rolleyes:
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This comment leads me to believe that you do not have manyexperiences with android devices. Now maybe you do but then you wouldn't say what you have as there are a ton of amazing apps on Android and the idea that their aren't is a misconception.
 
michaelearth said:
This comment leads me to believe that you do not have manyexperiences with android devices. Now maybe you do but then you wouldn't say what you have as there are a ton of amazing apps on Android and the idea that their aren't is a misconception.
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For fanboys like him, the world outside the Apple's ecosystem is a mysterious one where plastic is cheap junk because Apple stopped using plastic and Apple can be the only winner in any situation.
 
krravi said:
Apple's products might be using the same chips made by broadcom or Intel or Realtek, but there is apparently that *quality*, which I don't know comes from the components themselves or the software or the way the circuits are designed? I say this from personal experience because I used a ASUS PC(Reputed name right? Heck they make the motherboards for 90% of the PC manufacturers).
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I'll admit that Apple's build quality is good if not great. My 2009 MBP looks brand new, much unlike all PC laptops I owned before it, and it's a joy to open these things and upgrade stuff... the inside is ridiculously neat compared to PC laptops I've had the dubious pleasure of opening.

Wanted to use some Audio software and MIDI and noticed that the audio out the box was horrible. Crackling sounds, hissing noise and what not. Not to mention the huge latency with MIDI instruments.
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Yeah but that's Windows for ya. Apple has low latency audio out of the box via Core Audio. On Windows you need an ASIO driver to bypass all the garbage that causes the latency. But the Mac sound chip itself isn't exactly premium stuff. Hissing, bleeps, noises and huge DC offset that causes a popping sound when you're on battery power and the audio chip is put into rest mode.
 
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didn't Nielsen earlier this year say 4 out of the top 5 downloaded apps between both Android and iOS were Google apps? (granted I think one was Google Play)

so much for that huge app selection that's missing from Android
 
michaelearth said:
This comment leads me to believe that you do not have manyexperiences with android devices. Now maybe you do but then you wouldn't say what you have as there are a ton of amazing apps on Android and the idea that their aren't is a misconception.
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I've used android a decent amount. But in my personal experience, most of the people who I know who have owned an android phone either have switched to the iPhone or have said that they want to when their contract expires.

aerok said:
For fanboys like him, the world outside the Apple's ecosystem is a mysterious one where plastic is cheap junk because Apple stopped using plastic and Apple can be the only winner in any situation.
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Fanboy? doubtful. The fanboys are the ones on here who are posting paragraphs of stuff whining about and defending things they can't control, not the guy posting a one-line comment mocking them. :D
 
cocky jeremy said:
.. and still a Crapdroid device. Even at free.. no thanks.
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Comments like this (and the "other tablets are cheap plastic crap") make me embarrassed to be a part of this site. There are other tech companies out there, many of whom also make good products. The constant defensiveness every time a competitor is brought up is both childish and cult like.
 
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