How Apple makes more profit on their systems...

Sun Oct 4 10:05:12 EDT 2009

To be completely fair, there are a considerable number of other hardware
components in a Mac than: Screen size, RAM, Hard Drive space, and CPU.

Let's take the screen, and I have some experience in this dept. as I've
been working on a project for the past couple years that has evaluated
about five different LVDS displays (the same type used in laptops).
Pricing is quite variant in this department when you consider other
properties than screen size, such as: the quantity of light levels to
the RGB bands of your display, the overall maximum brightness, whether
it is backlit from 1, 2, or all 4 sides, what the actual physical
resolution is (my HP by default came with a 1400x864 display, but for
added $$$ I got the 1680x1050 size screen). In addition to this, there
is the clarity (at the brightest setting, how much of the light produced
by the lcd manages to pass through to the user, versus getting diffused
and scattered) and the viewing angle, to cite two examples.

For the Hard Drive, I can get an extremely cheap 4800rpm 320GB drive, or
I can get (for a higher price) a faster 7200rpm
low-random-access-latency drive for my laptop. In addition to this,
there's the question of which ATA controller both laptops use, which one
is more expensive, and which one is faster.

For the RAM, there's always the question of the CAS latency and the
timings that are programmed into the SPD chip. Lower latency modules and
faster timings of course mean that your system uses less bus cycles to
fetch/store data in RAM.

Then there are the keyboard, trackpad, battery, and laptop power
management and cooling system, all of which Apple develops in-house, but
HP likely only does the cooling system part of this list themselves.
Apple has spent considerable years attempting to perfect these
components, and I still feel that the keyboards and trackpads on my
PowerBook are the best that I've played with. Even many of my
office-mates have switched to using an Apple keyboard for their PC's
because they are USB, type very very nicely, and are very sturdy yet
small.

Anyhow, getting back onto my point, I decked-out an HP Compaq 6700
series (which is one of the sturdier business models that actually uses
metal alloys for some of the external case), selected a lot of
components that were higher end choices for that laptop, and managed to
achieve a price that was a slight bit higher than the comparable Apple
model.

It depends upon what you're looking for in a laptop, and Apple is still
a niche vendor, so it is unlikely they're targeting you, but as far as I
can tell, they use more expensive components, and I think that's how
they arrive at a more expensive laptop.

As for the VGA adapter, disassemble it and see if it is any more
complicated than a simple re-wire.

On Sun, 2009-10-04 at 09:38 -0400, Jefferson Kirkland wrote:
> 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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> 
> 
> 
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