moronic flamebait comparison
Macster389 said:
Mac Rand
You seem to try and make excuses for the pricing on Apple products which is fine. If you wan't to pay the price you can. If you want proof of high pricing policy just look at the Apple store websight. Apple is selling brand new G4 1.25 gig Power Macs for almost 2000 dollars! These unit have old boards, slower memory, slower processors etc. And the technology in them is well over two years old. PC's had these components in them over 3 1/2 years ago. By Apple's own claims they are over 3 times slower than the G5 machines. How much have these components come down in cost? I would bet over 75%. I'm sure you will try to justify this as well!
by my calculations, 3 1/2 years ago would be roughly the end of 2000. The G4 and Athlon (and I believe the PIII) were introduced in late 1999. I'm having trouble finding release dates for old Athlons but the hardware sites were reviewing the 700-800MHz Athlon Thunderbirds back in July of 2000.
So, a dual 1.25 GHz with a Radeon 9000, 80GB HD, and Combo drive is equivalent to whatever a sub-700MHz (maybe 600MHz in late 2000?) Athlon was shipping with?
Just to be fair.. the only people who buy the G4 towers anymore are educational institutions who have a lot of infrastructure built around OS 9.. and aren't ready to move to OS X. EDU institutional pricing for the G4 tower runs between $1200 (single) up to $1,761 for a dual with superdrive (BTW.. DVD-R didn't exist 3 1/2 years ago)
Now, notice that I'm not arguing that the G4 isn't overpriced. It is, however, a VERY low margin machine that is currently only being marketed to people who can't, for one reason or another, migrate to OS X right now. With the help of groups like
http://www.macosxlabs.org the number of potential G4 tower customers is very small indeed.
Your conjecture that the components in the G4 should be 75% off now is also silly. Some components have come down quite a bit (but not 3/4s). 80 GB drives are very cheap.. optical drives are very cheap..
Other components haven't come down, and they are probably MORE expensive for Apple since the volumes have decreased quite a bit. I'd expect that Apple probably pays more for the short runs of the motherboards and system chips now than in the past. Apple probably pays about the same for the G4s since Motorola charges whatever they want.. Even the Radeon 9000 is a discontinued chip so who knows were Apple is getting those from.
Now, before I log out.. you may be thinking.. but older PC parts are so cheap! This guy must be talking out his butt. The exceedingly important fact to remember is that PC components become obsolete and large unsold stock of parts eventually get liquidated. This is why I can buy a KT266, or an Intel 845 motherboard for $30 new (well, old but previously un-sold). Apple doesn't have 20 companies making their motherboards hoping that Apple will take the old parts off their hands. Apple orders runs of G4 boards as they are needed. It's going to cost Apple a lot more per component to get a run of 5000 G4 motherboards in 2004 that it would have cost to get a run of 50,000 or 100,000 G4 boards in 2003 (remember, per unit cost).
Please, if you are going to spout un-informed FUD and Junk on the Mac forums, how about your actually make slightly reasonable arguments.
