Digitimes is reporting that Apple is apparently working on a new MacBook Pro and iMac to launch in the first half of 2G’s+11. The piece claims a new MacBook chassis design, but perhaps most intriguing is an alleged lower price point for the iMac.
I love Macs, and swear by their overall superiority in certain areas, but let’s be honest: as it is, they’re too expensive. Any hardware you can get in a Mac, you can generally equivocate in a PC for half the price. Even as a total Mac ‘fanboy’, I can admit that part of what you’re paying for is that wee little apple laser-cut into the chassis. Considering that, a lower price point might be just what the doctor ordered to help Steve put Mac sales over the top.
eMac 2011?
This kind of misinformation is what makes bloggers look bad. “Half the price” is extremely generous. Seven/eighths the price would be more like it, and that doesn’t even hold up across the whole spectrum, allot of people skimp on actually matching the CPU class, or ECC RAM in the case of the Mac Pro. Of course that is all before comparing useable software that comes with. And lets be honest what consumer wants a computer with no software on it, or illegitimate software. Miniaturization isn’t cheep either.
Overall when all is said and done the real world difference between hardwares prices is minimal between Apple, and PC. Not to mention the subsidies from advertising ATI, AMD, Intel, McAffe (trial), Norton (trial), MS Office (trial), HP Games (trials), and so on. All those things go into offsetting their hardware cost. Where as Apple is just Apple, no logos, no trial software to get ad dollars from to diminish the cost of the hardware. And I’m sure Apple is made to pay dearly for that right. But i’m glad to get a nice clean computer without a bunch of stupid logos, or trial junk I can only use for 90 days or whatever the trial period. When it comes down to actually comparing hobbyist components to Apple hardware, people often don’t actually match up components very accurately. Sure you can build A computer with A CPU from intel, and A kind of RAM, and A type of GPU, but is it really the same thing? Too often that answer is no, it’s not. And lets not forget all those cheep little OEM copies of Windows MS sells in bulk to manufactures. That OEM software is cheep because MS doesn’t provide support for it, you have to go through your manufacture to get support, and we have all heard about HP, Dell, or similar customer “support.”
“You get what you pay for” is an adage that holds up between the Apple vs PC cost debate, hands down, repeatedly.
@Alex
+1
@Alex
Actually 7/8 of the price is off. Seriously go look at prices, same hardware to a T for any of the imacs or powermacs and their pc counter-part is generally around 50% cheaper. Yes bloatware sucks but get a program like ccleaner and it is all gone. Apple does make nice products, but they are still too expensive for your average consumer who doesn’t need all of the power. The part that kills me is all of the people I see with macbook pros who only use it for email and web browsing with the occasional word document. A bit overkill I say.