Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of The Plan
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
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.
If you compare items which aim to be small and lightweight, you pay a premium price for the loss of weight. If the product is already relatively light-weight, losing additional grams gets more expensive - unless you are will to sacrifice something like durability.
It was quite a bit surprising how Apple slashed the price of the MacBook Air - given that it contains relatively expensive flash 'drives'.
The iPad also has a relatively attractive price. The Mac mini feels a bit expensive, though.
The funny thing, of course, was that many people were comparing the very expensive SSD model to _normal_ laptops and complaining that it was way too expensive for a laptop.
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.
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.
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.
The Acer 13.3 at $899 has a 320gb sata drive + a 20gb ssd. It's slightly lower specced than the current Macbook Air 13 inch, but seems like a reasonable savings.
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-S3-951-6646-13-3-Inch-Aluminum-Ul...
I'm writing this comment on the current model 13 inch air, and I wouldn't give it up for any of the alternatives. The build quality and the feel of the machine is incredible. It's the best laptop I've ever owned.
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...
[3] http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-...
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.
- 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/...
Question I couldn't find through searching. Assuming weight is constant, what are the pros of ultra-thinness that outweigh the lack of upgradability?
Assuming weight is constant, what are the pros of ultra-thinness that outweigh the lack of upgradability?
I'm not sure I understand the question. A thinner notebook usually makes for a lighter notebook. If a 'regular' notebook does weigh as little as an ultrabook, it's probably made of cheap plastic -- one of the characteristics of a MacBook Air is its rigid unibody aluminum frame. Besides, the difference in upgradability between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro is negligible (storage, RAM and battery are not user serviceable on either of those machines).
So coming back to Intel, you mentioned they are making a fund for PC makers to be competitive. On my end, I've been using a 3.3 lbs (10% heavier than Air though 60% thicker) Latitude E4300 since mid-2009 that cost me far less than an Air would then - I certainly consider it a competitor to the Air. Would you not consider it as such?
As I mentioned earlier, if a notebook is light but bulky, the build quality probably isn't great.
"On my end, I've been using a 3.3 lbs (10% heavier than Air though 60% thicker) Latitude E4300 since mid-2009 that cost me far less than an Air would then"
You want to compare your 2 year old notebook to a 2 year old MacBook Air? Even though the MacBook Air has become even more affordable since and the E4300 doesn't even exist anymore? Alright. The Latitude E4300 with 64GB SSD cost $2600 [1]. The MacBook Air with 128GB SSD cost $1800 [2].
"I certainly consider it a competitor to the Air. Would you not consider it as such?"
Together with the Sony VAIO Z and the Lenovo X301, those were the only notebooks at that time that came anywhere close to the MacBook Air. That doesn't mean it qualifies as a competitor in 2011. The E4300 weighs 3.3 lbs and is 1.1" thick. The MacBook Air weighs 2.96 lbs and is 0.11-0.68" thick. That means the E4300 has more than twice as much mass; it might be ultra-light but it's definitely not ultra-portable according to today's standards.
[1] http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/dell-latitude-e4300....
[2] http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/stats/macb...
As an aside, the quoted prices seem extremely steep for the E4300, mostly because it is possible to get PC laptops on deep discounts and upgrade for far less than a manufacturer charges. I snagged mine in July '09 for $700. Doubled battery power for another $70. Didn't get an SSD until last year, but 128 GB models sold for around $320 then. Total cost ~$1,100.
(I chose the Latitude as a comparison just to show that even older PC's (2009) were competitive with Airs (this one through 2010). Agreed, Dell doesn't make such a light laptop anymore, but others have taken its place.)
Yes, that is what I meant. My bad.
"The latitude (or equivalent models) is thicker, but I see a benefit with removal battery, HD, etc. I'm not seeing as strong a benefit with thinness."
I don't see the benefits of having removable batteries and storage in an ultraportable. Why buy a light notebook when you're also planning to carry extra batteries and hard disks? To me, that defeats the purpose.
Low volume and low weight are the key characteristics of ultraportables. I want a light notebook I can put in my backpack with plenty of space to spare, not a notebook I need to carry in a separate suitcase because it's so bulky. The reality is, I could put two MacBook Airs in my backpack and they still wouldn't take up as much space as your E4300 does.
But from what I gather, you never really wanted an ultraportable, you want a mobile workstation.
"it is possible to get PC laptops on deep discounts and upgrade for far less than a manufacturer charges. I snagged mine in July '09 for $700. Doubled battery power for another $70"
That explains why the model isn't around anymore, doesn't it? Also why IBM sold its PC business and why HP is trying to do the same.
Thanks for pointing out the backpack space advantage. To be honest, I've so rarely ever had a problem with backpack space (probably less often than needing extra battery power), it hadn't crossed my mind. (looking at the numbers, it makes sense I rarely run into such an issue: a 13" Air is 12.8"x8.94"x0.68"= 77.8 in^3 and a dell latitude is 12.2"8.6"x1.1"=115.4 in^3, a difference of 38 in^3. School backpacks typically have capacities 40 times that difference.)
The price effect sucks for manufacturers, but is great for consumers. :) Truth be told, older Core 2 Duo machines will work fine for most people; my laptop might be old but I find there little reason to upgrade until there are reasonably priced, equally light laptops that can A) play modern games or B) operate at way lower power levels.
I hope you didn't get the impression I was dissing your computer, I bet it works great for you. It just wouldn't qualify as an 'ultraportable' or 'ultrabook' by today's standards, and that's what we were talking about.
I do feel I need to point out the following:
"a 13" Air is 12.8"x8.94"x0.68"= 77.8 in^3 and a dell latitude is 12.2"8.6"x1.1"=115.4 in^3, a difference of 38 in^3."
MacBook Air is wedge shaped, it tapers evenly from 0.68 inch to 0.11 inch. So its volume is actually 35.6 cubic inches (11.8"x7.56"x0.4"). Your notebook takes up more than 3 times as much space.
No clue how big a typical school backpack is, but my Emerica backpack is 17.5"x12"x6"= 1260 cubic inches. It would fit your notebook, but not much else.
My bad. I didn't realize the tapering. By the dimensions, I'm guessing you have an 11", but I see how the 13" is actually only 46 in^3, making my laptop 2.5x larger by volume. That said your backpack should be able to hold 10 of my laptops, well, with perfect packing. :)
Oh, and comes with these: "WildTangent® Game Console, TOSHIBA Face Recognition, Microsoft® Silverlight™ , TOSHIBA Bulletin Board™, TOSHIBA Disc Creator, TOSHIBA Service Station, Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30-day trial), TOSHIBA Recovery Disk Creator, TOSHIBA Web Camera Application, TOSHIBA HDD/SSD Alert, TOSHIBA BookPlace™, Intel® Wireless Display Technology (WiDi 2.1), TOSHIBA Media Controller, TOSHIBA PC Health Monitor, Microsoft® Windows Live Essentials including Photo Gallery, Messenger, Mail, Writer and Movie Maker., Microsoft® Windows Media Player 12, TOSHIBA ReelTime™, TOSHIBA eco Utility™, Google® Chrome, TOSHIBA Hard Drive Impact Sensor (3D sensor), Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Reduced functionality Word® and Excel® with advertising)*, TOSHIBA App Place"
Which is a disadvantage in itself.
I also don't think just providing a list of installed programs is not much of an argument. Note that many of those 'applications' exist in OSX, but Apple is just smart enough not to list them as installed apps. That list includes a basic install of Excel and Word (very useful for many people), Google Chrome, Media Player, Movie Maker, etc. etc.
Do you fault Apple for including QuickTime, iTunes, Safari, iMovie in their products?
it is about the TOSHIBA crapware. those are non-Microsoft components, and it shows. same on pretty much any other big manufacturers stuff - LENOVO, HP,...
as if win7 didn't provide all these features natively - as OS X seemingly does.
(I have no idea what Toshiba's uses).
My new 2011 13" MBA is a real pleasure to use.
Thicker: I'll give you this - that said I've always wondered why this feature matters. Sure it looks nice, but from a usability standpoint - well, in my entire life of using laptops, I have found laptops too heavy, but never too thick. Honest question: why is it worth the premium - and loss of user customization - to be so thin?
Design: Magsafe: Agreed. Bluetooth: Agreed, but dongles are extremely cheap Thunderbolt: An issue, but so few devices use it currently that there is a good chance it won't be that much of a problem over the life of the laptop.
Unibody: Debatable if that is even a good thing. I searched in vain for studies that show a unibody laptop is sturdier or more durable; do you know of any? I am guessing that any fall strong enough to start making a difference would already be enough to crack the screen. The huge downside is the difficulty of opening the thing up (no replaceable battery?!!)
Multi-touch: The toshiba site claims "multi touch control". I have no idea what that means, though I doubt it is to the level of what os/x offers.
Crapware: This really isn't that much - most of those are useful programs. That said, I'll admit I completely ignore such lists, as I just reformat and install Linux anyway. :)
That said, one can fault the air as well when comparing it:
-Shorter battery life
-No replaceable battery (making shorter battery life even worse)
-Significantly slower processor (1.7 versus 2.4 ghz)
-Less RAM (4GB versus 6)
-Impossible to swap hard-drives
-No dvd drive
-Based on amazon's current pricing, costs $500 more. ($800 vs. $1300). (http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Portege-R835-P81-13-3-Inch-Lap... versus http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-MC965LL-13-3-Inch-VERSIO...)
While they aren't the same laptop, they are closely spec'd with different trade-offs. In reviews, Toshiba's is often compared to the Air. (http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/toshiba-portege-r835-p56x/45... http://www.pcmag.com/article/print/263220). The R835 is certainly an example of a company producing a competing product to Apple without much quality loss but at a vastly lower (40% cheaper w/out SSD; 27% w/ SSD) price.
Well, we're talking about Air style laptops here. Extreme portability is kind of the requirement, and thin helps.
I also see the loss of "user customization" as a good thing, I want the laptop to be "fire and forget", like those distraction free writing environment.
> Unibody: Debatable if that is even a good thing. I searched in vain for studies that show a unibody laptop is sturdier or more durable; do you know of any?
No, but I've owned many plastic laptops --including Toshiba's and Apple's-- and a few metal ones, and it feels obviously sturdier at hand. Remove points of failure, such as joints, is a good thing. I had many laptops "break", or slightly open, at the joints between sides, something that cannot happen in a MBP.
> Shorter battery life
I'm not sure about this. Apple tends to report expected battery life damn accurately, while other companies are off by 20-30% or even more (based on tons of reviews I've read). Could this be the case here?
> -Less RAM (4GB versus 6)
The specs on the cnet page say 4 GB, ??
> -No dvd drive
I think this falls in the "no floppy disk" category though.
On battery life, PC Mag[1] claims 9:30 against the 2010 Macbook Air's 5:35 - I believe that dominates even the 2011 Air.
[1]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383651,00.asp#fbid=fiU...
But it does have a USB3 port, and HDMI port and an eSATA port. I have an Air, and it's awesome, but I fail to see how thunderbolt counts as a plus. If I could somehow trade it in thunderbolt port for a USB3,HDMI and eSATA port I would do so in an instant. Sure in the future once thunderbolt become widespread perhaps it might be useful, but for me, today, it's completely useless and it definitively was in the minus column when deciding which laptop to buy.
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.
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.
I believe the MacBook Air is universally regarded as one of the best screens available for a laptop but on a recent poll here more than 50% of the comments said they zoomed in all the time so I tend not to care much about what is universally said and more about how I feel about it. It's good to know how people feel about something but I can't make it my word until I try it myself.
Edit: Also because I might be looking for something else than the majority of people, I don't know, just thinking out loud now because I like that topic a lot!
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.
Be the first. Be the best. Be the cheapest.
The iPad has all of these elements in the tablet space at the moment.
(Whether doing these deals was down to Tim Cook, Jobs or some other Apple exec I've no idea, but I'm guessing Cook.)
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.
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.