
Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of The Plan  - px
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/apples-lower-prices-are-all-part-of-the-plan.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all
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tatsuke95
Price is the reason why no manufacturer has been able to compete with the
iPad. It's not only a tremendous product as far as tablets go, it's relatively
cheap. Look at the latest high-end tablet offerings; all subjectively "worse",
most more expensive than the Apple product.

The market-share argument against Apple will disappear as they strengthen
their supply chain and become more efficient. They will become great AND cheap
products. As someone who recently purchased his first Mac (decked out 13" MBA)
and loves it, this is good news for everyone.

------
greggman
I call BS. A macbook air might be "cheap" if you decide to limit your
comparisons to "thin" notebooks but Best Buy has 40 models of notebooks for
$200-$299 and another 40 models for $300-$399. The $300-$399 aren't bad
either. 3-4gig, I3, AMD 6910, DVD player, etc. etc. You can get 3 of them for
the price of 1 macbook air. Got 3 kids, how about 3 notebooks instead of 1?

iPad? The competition hasn't really even started yet. It's only a matter of
time before the $200-$300 tablets that don't suck start appearing. Will Apple
lower the price of the iPad to match? I doubt it.

Phones are a different market. Because almost all phones are bought with
contracts there's been very little incentive to make the phones cheaper.
Unlike notebooks which you just buy outright.

I'm not saying in any way Apple's products aren't worth it. I have an iPad, 2
Macbook pros, A Mac Mini and an 8 core Mac Pro. But I'm not under any delusion
that they are cheap compared to the alternatives. I'll still buy them because
I like them but claiming a macbookair is a cheap notebook is like claiming a
BWM is cheap car. It's only cheap if you massively restrict the options you
are comparing them to.

~~~
gnaffle
The article does mention that you can find cheaper alternatives. The point is
that other manufacturers have problems competing with Apple in the premium
market.

Will Apple lower the price on the iPad? They will, if they can without
compromising on quality. They did so with the iPod and the iPhone. They did it
with the MacBook Air. Right now, they don't need to it with the iPad because
it doesn't have any real competition.

If Audi and Mercedes had problems matching BMW on price while making more
crappy cars, you'd say that a BMW was cheap compared to the competition, even
though it's an expensive car.

~~~
usaar333
As an aside, it is often possible to buy laptops from competing manufacturers
vastly lower than MSRP (40+% off), especially on craigslist. Apple laptops
seem to not exhibit this effect.

Used ones are extremely cheap. My 2 year old (and extremely usable) Dell E4300
model can be had for ~$320 on ebay, while weaker macbook airs go for double
that.

~~~
pbreit
Apple product resale values make it a no-brainier to buy Apple.

~~~
usaar333
Well if you must buy a new product at retail pricing, then yes. :)

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pedalpete
The challenge for Apple here is to maintain both the 'premium' cache while
remaining competitively priced.

As this article states, they've done very well in marketing the Air. Everybody
seems to be comparing Apple's $999 11" Air with competitors 13" products. The
13" starts at $1300, so the competitors are often priced $300+ less, with the
exclusion of the Samsung Series 9.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I think Apple has proven it can maintain the premium _cachet_ [1], making
healthy profits as well as offering competitive pricing. It has sold more than
300 million iPods, and yet, they look and feel like luxury products.

Also, it is only through Intel's $300 million stimulus fund [2] that computer
manufacturers other than Apple have finally started making slim notebooks that
can compete with MacBook Air on price. Whether they can actually compete on
quality remains to be seen, the 'ultrabooks' haven't exactly gotten favorable
reviews. Read for instance Engadget's review of the Acer Aspire S3, their
conclusion is "If you absolutely must buy a laptop of this ilk right now,
you'll get better performance and longer battery life from the MacBook Air"
[3].

[1] <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cachet>

[2]
[http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/08/10/intel-
capital-creates-300-million-ultrabook-fund)

[3] [http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-
aspire-s3-ultrabook-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-
aspire-s3-ultrabook-review/)

~~~
pedalpete
Sorry about the spelling on cachet, I was wondering about that.

I'm not sure if you intentionally left out the review of the UX31, or just
were unaware of Engadgets positive review yesterday.
<http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/21/asus-zenbook-ux31-review/>

My biggest disappointment with all of these 'ultrabooks' is that they are
MacBook Air clones. I don't think PC makers are going to go very far competing
with Apple by copying their designs. PC makers need to start innovating
themselves.

Ultrabook is starting to be a synonym for MacBook copy, but there is a great
opportunity to create products like the Lenovo U260 (which I'm typing this on
now) which are as light as the Air, with warmer materials and don't have the
wedge shape.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
I hadn't read Engadget's review of the Asus Zenbook. I have now, and I also
read the review at Anandtech [1]. Both sites really try hard to like the
device, but they agree on several points:

\- incoherent case design (did you see that blue USB port?)

\- uncomfortable keyboard with barely any travel

\- trackpad is laggy and inaccurate

\- display is TN, not IPS, and has high black levels.

Anandtech's conclusion: "if you don't care about OS X and just want a good,
ultra-thin Windows machine the Zenbook is a viable alternative. If ASUS can
fix the trackpad issues then it's worth considering, however the display in
the MBA alone is reason to opt for it over the Zenbook, even for Windows use"

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-
ux21-review/...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-
ux21-review/1)

~~~
robin_reala
To be fair, blue USB port = USB3 port in PC parlance. No excuse for the
trackpad though.

------
iaskwhy
I'm definitely in the minority here but sometimes it's good to have some
counterpoints about the new MacBook Air. I recently bought one with 13"
thinking it would be my best computer ever. Well, hardware/power-wise it is
incredibly fast! But I found out some things that make it almost unbearable.

There are only three ways to interact with a laptop and I believe it fails
deeply in two of them.

The trackpad is very much ok, probably the best one I ever tried. But the
keyboard... While the design looks amazing, keys are really thin and feel
cheap. As soon as I turned the laptop on and needed to enter my Apple ID, the
first time I pressed the Alt key it just came out! This hasn't happened yet to
any other key on this laptop but I used to have an iMac with a similar
keyboard and three keys stopped working. You can feel the fragility of the
keys by putting one finger on the top of the key and another on the bottom,
and then press them alternatively: the key bounces like a boat. While I can't
say it's the worst keyboard I ever had (because I owned an iMac), I never had
such problem with any other laptop or external keyboard. I could also talk
about the really small size of the arrow keys. I miss them all the time. And
the return key is also much smaller than every other keyboard I have tried
before.

The other way to interact with the laptop (more like it interacting with me)
is the screen. I was crazy about having a really good definition screen and it
is. But operating systems are not made for resolutions like that so it all
ends up with really really small text everywhere and zooming all the time
because you will mostly never get into a text properly sized for a screen like
this. If you use Windows you can set the DPI to whatever you want but webpages
text will still be incredibly small.

So I have a hard time typing and reading on it. I can't recommend it to
anyone.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
Regarding your complaint of rocking keyboards.

I went and checked my ol' T60 and by god, do T60's keys rock like a drunk
sailor.

But it's universally regarded as one of the best laptop keyboards available.

~~~
iaskwhy
I'm replying to you again but with a different view. Is the T60 keyboard the
same as the X200? Because it's what I am using now and it's an amazing
keyboard. This is important because if you say these keys move a lot then we
are definitely not talking about the same feeling, probably because I can't
explain myself much better. My only problem with the X200 keyboard it the
documents keys near the arrow keys, even after almost one year working on a
X200 everyday I still hit them. It used to be so good when the arrow keys were
a little bit apart from the main layout of the keyboard. I do love my Sony
Vaio for that.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that its not good keyboard.

I love Thinkpad keyboards I even profess my love publicly
(<http://www.janezstupar.com/the-best-keyboard-for-programmers>).

There are two major beefs with Thinkpad keyboards. First the positioning of
_fn_ key and lack of option to remap it is inexcusable. Second the page keys
you mentioned.

~~~
iaskwhy
Yes! The fn key is so annoying there. I didn't mention it because it seems
like that's the standard now, so wrong...

------
jayfuerstenberg
What were the well-regarded elements to creating a successful product again?

Be the first. Be the best. Be the cheapest.

The iPad has all of these elements in the tablet space at the moment.

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macavity23
I'm surprised nobody (including the article author) has mentioned Tim Cook,
particularly as this new shift to lower pricing that he talks about coincides
with TC taking the helm. This is what Mr. Cook does - squeezes every last bit
of optimization and efficiency out of every step in the supply line, reducing
costs, hence giving them leeway to reduce their prices while keeping their
enviable margins.

~~~
pja
Not only that, but IIRC Apple uses their size to bankroll plant manufacture in
the far east in exchange for exclusive access to the first product run for a
period followed by guaranteed sweetheart pricing deals thereafter (or at least
so an article I read somewhere like TechCrunch claimed: I don't have a link
handy unfortunately). Unsurprisingly, this gives Apple a huge commercial
advantage: they are able to maintain profit margins whilst undercutting their
competitors thanks to the clever use of their strong cash position. Apple's
competitors seem to be completely incapable of taking the longer term view of
product development that leads to these kind of dividends down the road.

(Whether doing these deals was down to Tim Cook, Jobs or some other Apple exec
I've no idea, but I'm guessing Cook.)

------
AndrewDucker
Doing a little digging, it seems that it's $199 on Verizon with a contract.
But you need a data package on top. It's $60 for 450 minutes.

Go for the Droid Bionic and it's $300 with a 2 year contract. So that _looks_
more expensive, but it's not, because it's $40/month for 450 minutes.

So over the two years that's an extra $480 dollars you spend on the Apple, to
save $100 up-front.

I don't see how that's cheaper.

~~~
usaar333
I'm surprised you don't need a data package for a Droid Bionic.

On Sprint, an iPhone 4S and highest end Android phone offered (Galaxy S 2) are
the same price ($200) - contract details seem the same. My best guess is that
highest end Android phones cost about the same as an iPhone 4S.

