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Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

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Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#121

Post by tbob22 »

cletus wrote: post #88
chime wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - significantly better battery life than any Windows lapt I've ever seen (due in part to software admittedly); My 11 month old Acer Timeline gets me 8+ hours of battery life with constant Wifi use. I easily work full days without recharges.

Your Acer Timeline also uses a CULV (Ultra Low Voltage) CPU. Apples and oranges. Find me a Core 2 Duo (non-ULV) or i3/i5/i7 laptop with equivalent battery life. The Timelines are a good budget laptop and much better than the Atom-based netbooks (imho). Personally I prefer the Asus UL30A (etc) range but that's really nitpicking.

I have the Sony Vaio Z (2.4ghz Core 2 Duo) and I can get about 6 hours with moderate usage with Wi-Fi (no flash), and about 8 hours using Ethernet.

Also, I got it on sale for $500 almost two years ago. :-]

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#123

Post by jonah »

tibbon wrote: post #43
cheald wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, you're paying a few hundred extra for the aluminum body and glowy Apple logo - it's not just about "premium" versus "consumer" tiers of hardware. A Latitude 5400 (again, same hardware loadout) prices on Dell's website right now at $849.00. A ThinkPad Edge 13", again, similar loadout, prices at $694.00. Apple makes fantastic hardware, no doubt, but it's very difficult to consider them to be competitivel…

I think the body is actually a pretty big deal. Who else is making unibodies like that?

Apple really does have the materials/build quality thing down. I don't know anyone who makes a physically better laptop or phone...

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#124

Post by nikster »

mturmon wrote: post #83
kemiller wrote: post #12

Another factor here is that mobile devices are all a tier or two down from personal computers in terms of the raw number of dollars. Seems like a 15% premium is something people will consider paying if it only amounts to $30, but might not if it's $300. This was especially true in the early days of the PC revolution. The Mac 128K sold for $2495 at the time, which is more than $5000 in today's dollars[1]. I can't find…

The PC, once purchased, sits under your desk. But the laptop and the phone, you touch and carry with you in public. It's a personal accessory. People will pay more to have nicely made personal accessories -- for many reasons -- looks, durability, pleasant to use, feels well made, status signaling.

Yes, that's exactly the difference between the PC market, and the mobile phone / gadget market. The number one thing about a phone is looks. Then comes status. Then comes usability.

Though I might say the iPhone has turned the focus on usability much more than it was in the past - just because you can do so much with it so easily, so people now expect that from all phones.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#125

Post by nikster »

mattmaroon wrote: post #56

First of all, I priced this at work out of curiosity when buying some Mac Pros and some Macbook Pros. You can get a PC with the same hardware specs as a Mac Pro for about half the cost. You can also get a PC with the same specs for about the same cost if you get one of the gamer brands, but just a Dell or HP Quad core machine is far cheaper than a Mac Pro, assuming all things that can be compared on an apples to appl…

Not doing this again now, but in my experience over the past few years the "Apple tax" on notebooks based on specs alone was about $100 - $200.

Apple doesn't sell cheap laptops but when you compare a $800 machine to a $1200 Mac, I dare say that many of the components in the $800 PC will be inferior, CPU, screen, etc. Not even mentioning the chassis where nobody can touch the unibody design of the Macs.

Apple makes premium stuff that comes with premium components - high end PCs which also come with premium components usually cost just as much, or just a tad less.

For the Mac Pro, it's probably a similar situation - you can probably make a cheap junk PC with the same CPU and as much HD space for much less, but if you use high quality components you'll be right up there fairly quickly.

As for tablets - Gruber's argumentation is way more conclusive, sorry.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#126

Post by nikster »

cheald wrote: post #87
cletus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, just proves Gruber's argument that many people buy PCs based on bullet point specs having never seen the enclosure. With MacBook Pros you get: - a backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor; - a high quality display; - significantly better battery life than any Windows lapt I've ever seen (due in part to software admittedly); - the best trackpad I've seen on any laptop ever (seriously.…

I've seen a lot of MBPs. I've used them. They're really nice. I don't dispute that at all. My Fedora/Win7 laptop has a backlit keyboard, stunning display, and a great industrial design with an aluminum body. The trackpad is dodgy and the battery life isn't as good as an MBP's, but it also has two batteries that are user-swappable. It doesn't run OS X. It also has HDMI out and a Blu-Ray drive, two "premium" features y…

There's usually a lot of selective perception involved in things like this.

When you say "X may not be as nice" - that may be irrelevant to you, or hugely relevant to the next person. The point is, it's not the same.

Last time I had a forum argument with a guy who said he could build me a Mac Pro equivalent Dell for half the price. I went to Dell's website - no way. Best I could do was something like $50 less on a $3000 machine. So I dared him to prove it, and he came up with a machine that was worse in every way (oh we don't need a Xenon CPU, let's just go with a C2D... and things like that) and cost half as much. Total joke.

Your laptop that costs half as much - show us a link to the full specs page. This is the internet - prove it.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#128

Post by andreyf »

cletus wrote: post #79

I've had this argument far too many times. Specifically regarding the iPad vie put several theories forward regarding the 7" vs 10" tablets: 1. Apple has tied up the world supply of 10" capacitative touch screens. That's not far-fetched; 2. Price: as per Gruber's argument; 3. Fear: no one wants to directly compete with the iPad so they're seeking some form of differentiation. Nikon did this with DSLRs and Canon. It w…

There's a lot of true in that and the response to the iPad can be construed as a collective aversion to risk by all the people involved.

Except Apple ;)

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#129

Post by jamesk2 »

The Android vs. iOS marketshare race is one in which iOS is hobbled because of iOS's exclusivity. When the iPhone 4 hits Verizon next year, $199 Android phones will take a massive hit in demand and they will quickly be dropped in price to spur demand.

Apple has dropped it's prices to compete before. It'll be really interesting if Apple drops the price of the iPhone below the top of the line Android phones.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#130

Post by nikster »

tibbon wrote: post #43
cheald wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, you're paying a few hundred extra for the aluminum body and glowy Apple logo - it's not just about "premium" versus "consumer" tiers of hardware. A Latitude 5400 (again, same hardware loadout) prices on Dell's website right now at $849.00. A ThinkPad Edge 13", again, similar loadout, prices at $694.00. Apple makes fantastic hardware, no doubt, but it's very difficult to consider them to be competitivel…

I think the body is actually a pretty big deal. Who else is making unibodies like that?

Let me tell you a story about my 17" unibody MacBook Pro. It's nearly 2 years old now. I used this thing constantly, I use it about 12 hours a day, every day, and carry it around in my backpack every single day. Most weekends, too, even.

Thanks to the glass screen, the screen as as good as it was on day one - and it's the best I've ever had in terms of brightness and clarity. When the screen gets dirty, I scrub it furiously with a napkin. Glass - it doesn't scratch! The alu body is as tight as on day 1. You'd have to look very closely to see any scratches at all - it basically looks brand new.

The battery lasted until 2 days ago, providing around 6 hours real life usage (on a 17" laptop!). Now it's down to 60% capacity at 500 charge cycles - and guess what, Apple is replacing it free under AppleCare warranty.

Nothing shakes. Nothing rattles. The unibody is just as solid as it was new. As is the keyboard and the track pad.

It's blazingly fast too thanks to an SSD I put in the optical drive spot (though that was a little harder than it should have been).

At the end of the day, this is just fantastic quality and it ends up being not only better but also cheaper than any crap quality laptop simply because I can use it for 2 years. Maybe even longer, who knows?

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