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Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

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Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#151

Post by Yaggo »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #149
Yaggo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody have an idea what would cost an equivalent software for Windows? (Offering similar usability, high quality templates/samples/tutorials etc. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if no such a thing exists for Windows.)

I don't think you have to do that, it's far too subjective and there are free equivalents for a lot of stuff (Picassa for iPhoto for instance). The easiest thing would be to knock the retail price of iLife off ($49) as that's where Apple seem to value it.

I don't think retail price really reflects iLife's value, if you need such a software. Because iLife only runs on Macs (sold by Apple), the price of iLife can be subsidized. Still, I agree with you that the value of any software (for an individual) is highly subjective.

Also, the big value of iLife comes from the fact that it comes pre-installed on Macs and integrates well with the rest of the system. That's exactly what Apple sells: a hassle-free experience out of the box. No 3rd party alternatives can offer that.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#152

Post by protomyth »

flomo wrote: post #137
protomyth wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost isn't everything, even in 1984. The PC wasn't the price leader of the era, check the market share and price of a C64.

In 1984, my buddy received a $2500 Mac 128K for his birthday. I got a $800 Apple //c. To this day, I believe I recieved the better gift, at the time. The original Mac, while "groundbreaking", was not only overpriced, but pretty useless.

It really should have shipped with 512K (Forth was fun then). I wrote all my college papers on an Mac printing to a LaserWriter. For the time, that combo was incredible.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#153

Post by steve19 »

nikster wrote: post #130
tibbon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fu…

I just put in an SSD and moved the hard drive into the optical bay. Probably the best upgrade I ever did to a laptop :)

I suggest moving your SSD into the original hard drive spot and moving the hard drive into the optical bay. Apparently the optical bay is slower.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#155

Post by eftpotrm »

Apple cheap - hmm, not sure I buy that.

Why does an iPhone cost more than an iPod Touch, a standard 2G phone and a 3G USB dongle? That's all the hardware is.

Why does an iPad with a 10 inch screen cost twice as much as a netbook with a 10 inch screen and a keyboard?

Apple may have found some good niches to milk for cash with some attractively designed products, but cheap they most definitely ain't.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#156

Post by adolph »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #144
netcan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these might be true, but still be on-the-margin effects. In the PC world (and I think the old audio player world), any new Apple product was met a competitor with the similar specs (often better) at close to half the price (taking into account sales and such). Like the post concludes, if it was possible to make an android tablet (even a 7" one) that was a direct alternative to the ipad at $350 someone would be

Archos 10 inch tablet: $300. http://www.archos.com/products/ta/archos_101it/specs.html?co... I'm not saying it's the best tablet ever, though on a spec checklist it might actually win (camera, HDMI out, USB host, multimedia formats etc.). I'm more interested in the fact that the vast majority of Gruber-style pronouncements about how special Apple is require you to not have any knowledge of what's actually happening o…

Is the Archos 10 actually available anywhere? B&H says "Approx. Arrival December." It's not even available on the Archos store:

https://store.archos.com/archos-internet-tablet-p-5005.html

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#157

Post by eftpotrm »

kemiller wrote: post #73
protomyth wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM salesmen were pretty effective (it was the second run after the IBM 5100), but I get the feeling Compaq isn't quite given the credit they deserve. The Compaq Portable was a pretty compelling machine for business. I would argue that the C64 was still a price / performance leader given its low price. edit: /BM/IBM/

Well, you know. The C64 had a bigger problem: Commodore.

Indeed. I confess I remain baffled how the Mac managed to beat the Amiga to the not-PC slot in the market. More expensive, slower, less capable hardware, vastly more primitive operating system and not an enormous delay between the two.

If Commodore had done their job properly we'd be saying Steve Who?

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#158

Post by metageek »

eftpotrm wrote: post #155

Apple cheap - hmm, not sure I buy that. Why does an iPhone cost more than an iPod Touch, a standard 2G phone and a 3G USB dongle? That's all the hardware is. Why does an iPad with a 10 inch screen cost twice as much as a netbook with a 10 inch screen and a keyboard? Apple may have found some good niches to milk for cash with some attractively designed products, but cheap they most definitely ain't.

>Why does an iPhone cost more than an iPod Touch, a standard 2G phone and a 3G USB dongle? That's all the hardware is.

Currently, that's not true. The iPhone 4 has a much better camera than the current iPod Touch. Not sure if there are any other differences.

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#159

Post by yardie »

frou_dh wrote: post #63
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…

Mac Pros have Xeon CPUs and ECC RAM. Were you comparing with similar "workstation" grade PCs? (Whether the average Mac Pro user gets any real benefit from these parts is another question)

Consider that now is the time when manufacturers are putting memory test utilities into firmware and that intersects with systems coming with 4-8-12GB of memory that take can take multiple hours to fully test. I would say its worth it.

If the Mac detects a bad DIMM it locks it out and informs you which one. You don't have to have do the RAM shuffle to find out which one is the bad DIMM. Your computer also doesn't crash because of it (it shouldn't but I've seen instances where even ECC couldn't recover).

Re: Daring Fireball: Apple's Pricing Advantage

#160

Post by protomyth »

eftpotrm wrote: post #157
kemiller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you know. The C64 had a bigger problem: Commodore.

Indeed. I confess I remain baffled how the Mac managed to beat the Amiga to the not-PC slot in the market. More expensive, slower, less capable hardware, vastly more primitive operating system and not an enormous delay between the two. If Commodore had done their job properly we'd be saying Steve Who?

The worst part was when Tramiel bought Atari and we got Commodore II. Although, by the time the Amiga 1000 was launched, Jobs was already on his way out. It might have helped NeXT if the Amiga would have taken some of the PC market share.
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