Are Apple laptops worth the price tag? Readers chime in with their thoughts:
In reality, I recognize hyperbole when I see it. Apple stuff is not all
that overpriced in the overall scheme of things. Rejoice and relax -- you
still have the lower parts of the market all to yourselves.
-Bill
You stated by saying that buying a Mac instead of a PC is like buying
a Cadillac instead of a Hyundai. I think a better comparison is buying a Mac
is like buying a Toyota instead of a Ford. We all know Ford could build a
better car if it wanted to, but it doesn't want to. So if reliability and
performance are issues, you buy a Toyota, not a Ford. Same for Mac vs. PC.
-Alan
Apple will never be able to afford to sell entry-level PCs. It simply
cannot generate the volumes necessary to absorb the narrow margins that Dell
and HP must maintain on entry-level products.
That's not really the question, though. OEMs like Dell and HP routinely
offer steep discounts on mid-range to high-end systems in order to attract
high-volume enterprise customers -- and they still make a profit. If Apple
DID care about IT (or perhaps if it simply understood the enterprise market),
it would understand that enterprise customers are not consumers and they will
not pay premium prices for PCs. But when they do buy, they buy in large enough
volumes to make it worth their while.
-Marc
Have you ever met anyone using a Mac that wasn't passionate about their
Apple product? They don't mind paying extra for the look and feel of the Apple
products and love the interface, so why would Apple ever cut its profit margin
in hopes of attracting newbies? It already has a dedicated fan base that's
bringing up children and influencing others with their preferences.
Not for me though -- I'm hooked on Windows and prefer it even with all
the security issues and OS flaws. It's what I use at work and prefer to use
at play. Even if Apple cut its prices down to the $500 level, I'd be no more
drawn to its product line as I'm sure many others would agree. Bet many others
are worked up over this posting!
-Jee
Apple obviously doesn't care about a presence in the enterprise. Most
line-of-business applications won't run on a Mac. There's little in the way
of management, no good story for remote access. Even ignoring the price difference,
there's too much functionality lost with Mac. They're fine for home users
or business users who only need an Office app, but other than that, I don't
see much of a role for them in business. For the foreseeable future, I'm a
PC.
-Dave
I support PCs and am sick of the instability. If Macs are stable, the
$500 premium is worth it. But are they? Based on what evidence?
As the lowly network admin, I'm not really that worried about money per
se; the boss has to pay for it. I'm more worried about my own frustration
regarding malware, users mucking where they shouldn't and general OS instability.
If I could make a defensible claim of higher uptime, higher user productivity
and lower support, I'd be interested in making the case. For now, we are moving
to a dumb terminal configuration using Wyse terminals and Citrix.
-Milton
Interesting to note that Apple once dominated computers in elementary
and high schools, but is now in second place to Dell in sales. Was Bill Gates
smart to settle his antitrust suit by giving away PCs to poorer schools? Not
only is he giving away PCs, Microsoft is providing millions of dollars in
training and technical support for teachers to learn how to effectively use
PCs. Smart move by Microsoft, but will Apple respond with affordable computers
for these low-income students?
-Dan
Since I've always thought (with few exceptions) that Apple customers represent
the best of the snobby, elitist, socially unconscious "arty" crowd,
why would Steve want to stoop so low for the rest of us? Thank goodness laptops
have gone down in price. Hey, maybe someday I can replace my old clunker.
-Anonymous
Apple taking its prices down to PC levels would destroy its business model,
since it wouldn't be the cool, limited club that it is. Its fanboys would
move on to something else if every Joe Six-Pack also owned an Apple; it wouldn't
be special anymore. The coolness is a critical part of Apple's business success...at
least for others. I'm too old to worry about coolness anymore.
-Bob
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/20/20080 comments
Who would've guessed that a free hypervisor aimed directly against one costing
over five grand (for a high-end edition of ESX) would quickly gain market share?
If you said IDC,
you'd
be correct
. This veteran research house says that Hyper-V, "when combined
with Virtual Server 2005, helped Microsoft to capture 23 percent of new license
shipments in 2Q 2008." That's great news for Microsoft execs.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/20/20080 comments
Hackers know that Patch Tuesday is a big day, a day when IT prods feverishly
download patches and plug holes. It's also a perfect way to trick users into
clicking on what they think is legitimate security information from Microsoft,
but is
instead
a Trojan horse
.
Is this clever? Not really. Dangerous? You bet! You might want to warn your
end users about this one.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/20/20080 comments
IBM is bucking the recession, and is
expecting
its revenues and earnings to rise
more sharply than the price of a New York
Giants ticket. Revenue should be right around $25 billion -- which, if you multiply
by four, gives a $100 billion run rate, enough to bail out one mid-size investment
firm. Profits are also expected to be solidly in "kick-butt" territory.
What's IBM doing right? Insight welcome at
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/13/20080 comments
One stock maven believes that the Wall Street collapse may
reignite
Microsoft's interest in Yahoo
. The theory is that Yahoo is now far cheaper
and the value of Microsoft cash is relatively undiminished.
This could well be true, though I still think buying Yahoo is a terrible me-too
idea. And Microsoft has recently
spent $80 billion buying back its own stock (a better investment than AIG,
I dare say). Does Redmond still have the cash to snag Yahoo? And if not, can
it borrow that amount in today's market? You tell me at [email protected].
More
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/13/20080 comments
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have a mini-mutual-admiration society. They support
the same causes (The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and neither are as
flashy as their wealth would indicate (compare either to Donald Trump and you'll
see what I mean).
But for at least a decade, Bill has outpaced Warren for good, old-fashioned
greenbacks. This year, Buffet finally turned the tables, and is now
the richest man in the world.
More
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/13/20080 comments
Tomorrow will be a particularly busy
Patch Tuesday
, and once again remote code execution attacks are taking center
stage, with no less than four fixes. Active Directory will get plugged, as will
Windows Server 2000, Internet Explorer and Office.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/13/20080 comments
It's been a bit of secret how much Microsoft has been pushing SQL Server 2005
and 2008 as a business intelligence (BI) platform. But Microsoft doesn't want
it to be such a secret anymore, and has a range of
new
features to increase the IQ of BI
in the next rev of SQL Server. Topping
the list? New reporting and analysis services aimed not just at BI gurus, but
rank-and-file managers and information workers.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/09/20080 comments
This isn't the first time this newsletter has warned about the need for better
virtualization security. The whole issue is that virtualization is a relatively
new form of computing (and yes, I do know IBM mainframes were virtualized in
1968), and many security tools haven't kept up. Add to that the fact that a
single virtualized server can act as dozens of machines. Compromise that server
and you can compromise the whole shooting match.
A new survey by security vendor nCircle Inc. shows
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/09/20080 comments
Last week, I
wrote
about scareware
, those pesky pop-ups that claim your PC is infected. Click
the pop-up and you're either buying security or performance software you don't
need and doesn't even work, or your machine is now infected and ready to cash
it in.
I've been getting plenty of horror stories -- you can check out a few of them
in
yesterday's
Mailbag section
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/09/20080 comments
It might not be a reversal of XP's death sentence, but if reports are to be
believed, XP did at least get a
six-month
reprieve
and won't be yanked from OEM hands until July 2009.
Some say this is a bunch of hooey, but whether or not Microsoft has formally
made the decision, I have to believe the company will offer XP as long as humanly
possible. After all, people want it, Microsoft gets paid for it and the monopoly
remains intact. Where's the downside? There isn't one.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/09/20080 comments
Here's one more scareware story to cap off the week. At least in this one, the
user learns his lesson:
I have a boss, the company vice president yet, who has a bad habit of
going places on the Internet that he shouldn't and clicking on things better
left unclicked. In the past, I have been able to clean some of the scareware
off his system, but the last couple of times I couldn't. The scareware folks
had gotten smarter. The first thing they did was disable anything I could
use to get rid of their work, such as Task Manager, the Run box, any malware
or anti-virus products it could find, and even access to the c: drive (they
hid it).
I basically told him that I couldn't get rid of the crap and that it
would take me two days to reformat and reload his machine...two days during
which he would have no access to his e-mail or anything else. Since the second
two-day outage, he has been behaving himself much better.
-Phil
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Posted by Doug Barney on 10/09/20080 comments