How Apple makes more profit on their systems...

Jefferson Kirkland numberwhun at gmail.com
Sun Oct 4 09:38:55 EDT 2009


While I find the Apple OS to be pretty sweet, mostly due to the fact that it
is Unix based now, I just don't see any justification for the cost of their
systems.  Someone I follow on twitter tried to convince me of how cheap
their systems are and I ended up halting the conversation with a small
comparison.  Take the low end Mac Book.  It has a 13" screen, 2 gig ram, 160
gig hard drive and a 2.13 Ghz processor, starts at $999.  Meanwhile, my HP
Pavillion dv7 laptop (only about 3 months old at this point) has a 2.10 Ghz
processor, 4 gig ram, 320 gig hard drive and a 17" screen cost  $649.  $350
cheaper and I get so much more.  On my last laptop, a Dell Inspiron 9200, I
was able to (about a year ago) install and run Apple OSx 10.4.  While I
really liked it and enjoyed the chance to play with it, I did not have the
time to dedicate to work on getting the wireless working. (yes, a driver was
available and I have it downloaded).

My opinion is, unless you are either a Mac aficionado or have some reason
for running OSx over Windows or Linux, I just cannot justify the cost of
their machines.  But, that is my opinion.

Regards,

Jeff




On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 9:12 AM, Alex Hewitt <hewitt_tech at comcast.net> wrote:

> Yesterday some friends asked me to accompany them to the Apple store in
> Salem to help them purchase a Mac. I had talked to them previously about
> some of the advantages of the platform including decent reliability and
> in their case the much lower amount of malware targeting the system.
>
> But before going I decided to check out the Apple web site. They were
> planning on buying a Mac Mini which is probably Apple's best bargain for
> their budget. Recently a customer had purchased the current (early 2009)
> model and I already knew that if they were going to use their VGA CRT
> type monitor they were going to need an adapter. The Mac Mini used to
> have a full size DVI connector on the back capable of both Analog and
> Digital connections. The new model has removed the DVI connector and
> replaced it with two much smaller connectors. An included adapter
> produces a DVI-D connection (single link, Digital only) and the other
> connector requires a "miniDisplayPort to VGA" adapter. That has a
> standard VGA connector (what they needed). The miniDisplayPort adapter
> costs $29.95 (and probably costs $2.95 to manufacture in China). I
> actually don't know the right combination of cables that would allow you
> to connect most current digital flat panels. The Apple site doesn't
> provide that information and they don't seem to offer the correct cable.
> They definitely don't tell their customers that they won't be able to
> connect their current monitor unless they are just plain lucky.
>
> I asked the sales guy (who was quite pleasant) why the Apple web site
> doesn't provide enough information for a customer to properly connect
> their new Mini to their existing monitor and he essentially said that
> Apple wants these customers to buy one of their nice shiny "Cinema"
> displays. Of course the Cinema display comes with precisely the correct
> cable to hook up to the digital only DVI-D adapter and only costs $899
> (which is $100 more than the higher end Mac Mini).
>
> My conclusion - Apple isn't in the business for their health. If an
> unsuspecting customer walks through their door and all they needed was a
> decent low end system to web surf, read their email, play their music
> and view their photographs, they will walk out of the store about $2,000
> to $2,500 lighter in the wallet. The Mac Mini is actually a pretty
> decent value for a small form factor system. They have upgraded their
> graphics from the sorry Intel video they previously used to a decent
> nVidia 9400 based chip set. That's all to the good but taking big chunks
> of cash from unsuspecting customers seems to be on the verge of bait and
> switch.
>
> -Alex
>
> P.S. There are a lot of ways to spin this but for me it has a bad smell.
>
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