While iPods sizzle, Macs and laptops are sluggish, says Alex Salkever. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s how to get that computer market share surging.
A Six-Step Plan for Apple
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
good points all. The sunflower design for the imac was cute, but a professional-looking box trumps “cute” every time.
And with Apple’s reputation for “cool” at an all-time high thanks to the ipod, now’s the time for an offensive at the low-end computer market to grab a reputable market share from the dynosaurs.
I just bought a 15″ Superdrive Powerbook G4 from their site
I bet you bought a refurb didn’t ya? Case in point.
What, exactly, constitutes “a professional-looking box”?
What case did you just prove exactly? I bought a refurb because I didn’t want the processor upgrade for the price, and they don’t currently have the old one on the site unopened. (Go ahead, take a look. In fact, the one I bought as a refurb is already gone also).
You may actually want to make a statement that you are PROVING when you generically say ‘case-in-point’. Context means a lot.
Price trumps style in the computer market
Let’s rephrase that and analyze for a different market…
“Price trumps style in the automobile market”
Which is why we see so many Saturn owners happily driving their plastic cars…
Therefore, by the author’s logic, since Saturn has done so well in the low end, Ferrari and Porsche should introduce “economy models” to woo low-end consumers.
Face it, Apple makes expensive, high end computers that double as a piece of art. They aren’t interested in making low end systems any more than Ferrari is interested in making a model to compete with the Corolla and Civic.
The low-end market is SATURATED… no need for another player, especially one who exclusively caters to the lavish and style conscious…
I’ll post what I did on slashdot. The way to give Apple a boost is for them to reintroduce the Newton.
Look at the PDA market today. It is dying, thanks in a large part to cellphones and smartphones. They do everything the user requires in approximately the same form-factor as the PDA. They are the natural evolution of the PDA, and that’s cool. But they’re killing PDA’s, and that’s not cool.
Now take a look at the Tablet PC market. It’s a nice idea, yeah, but Tablet PC’s are inherently flawed. They’re too large, too slow, they run a full version of Windows (which implies a lot of overhead), too heavy and too expensive. That’s why (in a nutshell) they’re not going to take off except with things like Fujitsu’s lines of vertical-market tablets.
The Newton was a perfect fusion. Smaller than a Tablet, but larger than a PDA. The perfect size to write on without being too heavy. If Apple introduced a NEW Newton with a colour screen, WiFi and a nice Lithium Polymer battery, it would probably be exactly what the PDA market today needs. If successful, it would put Apple at the head of the biggest PDA revolution since the release of the original Palm Pilot. Tell me how that could be a -bad- thing.
Apple developed a PDA/”mini-tablet” but decided not to release it as the PDA market is ridiculously oversaturated as is, which can be noted by some discontinuations of major PDA product lines (i.e. Clie)
7. Make ichat for all plaform and .Mac Free
It bring customer loyalty an other user considering it.
8. Support an multi-OS programming tool/environnement (like mono)
This make a nice place to code once, but for all. Attract developper and developpement.
Is a great idea, esp. for Macs on the desktops. Would love to see them port Wine over to Mac and put a lot of development muscle behind it so people could run their Windows programs on Macs without Virtual PC
Wine Is Not an Emulator
(that’s the acronym, btw):
http://www.winehq.org/site/docs/wine-faq/index#INTEGRATE-AN-X86-EMU…
Preach on Comrad! Preach on!
The difference between a Ferrari/Porsche and a Saturn is clear. The difference between two boxes used for surfing/IM/email is pretty much negligible in comparison. I think that getting people to try Macs with a cheaper headless in the hope that they will upgrade later is a valid strategy (see C-Class and 3 series).
Your comparison of Apple and Ferrari does not work. You are forgetting that computers without software are nothing but useless boxes. While Ferraris are very useful as they come and can fulfill their mission in life without buying anything else but gasoline. What Apple needs to atract developers are good dev tools and a big consumer market share. Apple can make sweet sowtfare but can’t solve all the problems people use computers for. So, please, let’s drop the Ferrari comparison for once and for all…
I think Target is a very good point. They sell a lot by providing everyday things that we all need and want in a very atractive design. If only I could buy a headless G4 for $600 at Target! That would be the day!
Apple, as a company, exists to serve one purpose… to keep Steve Jobs the coolest rich kid on the block.
As someone allready said, wine is not an emulator, so you won’t be able to get it to work on a mac.
However, check out this story:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=7617
http://darwine.opendarwin.org/
Looks good, doesn’t it? ;-D
Apple did step 4 before. You could test-drive a Mac and bring it back for full refund, if not satisfied. The people did exactly that and Apple sat on hundred thousands used Macs, which they had to dump. It almost ruined them. To give delicate electronics to consumers to test is a bad idea, and that’s why you don’t see it in the tech sector very often.
Apple’s then CFO Fred Anderson admitted that Apple would be happy with a larger market share, but they wouldn’t sacrify they goal to build the best computers available. Apple is profitable, they have a loyal following and a stable marke niche. What’s wrong with that?
10. Give all the faithful NeXTstations owners who supported you (Steve Jobs) through the years, a $ 500 discount on a G5 if they turn in a NeXTstation. 🙂
“Apple is profitable, they have a loyal following and a stable marke niche. What’s wrong with that?”
If you call a steadily eroding market share for Mac users, a stable market niche.
I have to agree with Bascule on the Saturn point, If apple started making cheap computers I could afford one, but I can’t say I would really want one any more. Most of the other suggestions lacked any careful consideration of the consiquences.
The one point I agree with is that people have never really been happy about all-in-one intigrated solutions. PC users already own good monitors and the PowerMac is out of the price range of us mortals. The Dell I am typing on was $1,800 without the monitor, but I bought it mostly for gaming.
its eroding market share because the overall market is getting bigger faster than the mac market. The mac market is still growing, however.
However, you could always run Linux on and x86 emulator under Mac OS, then run WINE on that. Recurse as necessary (Linux on an x86 emulator under Mac OS on a PowerPC emulator under Linux on an x86 emulator…)
Give me a 12″ PowerBook that can handle UT2004 and World of Warcraft and I am your’s Apple.
Personally, I think Apple is at least in peace with the market share it holds within the market. Of course, I’m sure they wish more, but I truly believe they are content with what they have. If they weren’t you would see them make a lot more moves to change that, but when a company does that you risk throwing quality in the trash. I’m sure the majority of the cost of the high end Macs are mostly covering Research and Development. On the hardware side, Apple takes great pride in R and D, and money to fund this doesn’t just appear – it has to come from somewhere!
Personally to make sure their designs are top knoch I will take the hit in the pocket book. You pay for what you get people! You buy a Dell, expect it to crap out soon rather then later. But an Apple, the machine will not only look sexy for YEARS, but the thing will keep going and going.
But I’m really getting tired of these ‘Apple needs more market share for Macs’. How many times do they have to report on the same darn stuff. They continue to compare the 15 inch PowerBook to a pathetic 500 14 inch intel celeron laptop! Then complain that they need to drop the price. Give me a freakin break!
The target consumer group that Apple advertises to are people that can drop that much money in a second and not have to worry about. Those are the loyalist with the company, and so far that’s alone is doing a necessary job for the moment. Their stock is performing better then it has ever been, why are people complaining when the company is in a lot better shape then they protray it in the news.
introducing the new iMac — especially given the decision to stop production of the second-generation model. But honestly, did you have any choice? Let’s face it. They haven’t been selling like hot cake
Yeap, if they start selling iMacs with the G5 processor sales “could” go up.
But, wait, if they do that nobody will buy the highly over-priced and over-hyped G5 boxes.
Anyway, I love my G4 Macintosh.
Their computers are truly beautiful, except the eMac.
But the author is right, they need entry level (HEADLESS!) computers. Make something with a geforce 2 and no monitor and sell it for $600 guys.
Oh, and the iMac is a pretty professional design. It’s space concious and very clean looking. I don’t see how you can get more professional than a pure white box that barely takes up any room. Now it might not be very “masculine” but masculine != professional.
Those old iMacs might be called unprofessional, but still I think the space use is more important here than the coloration.
And the iMac is comparable on price. You put a good 15″ LCD on your $500 Dell and watch the price sail to almost a grand. Now remmeber, that $500 Dell has a 5400RPM hard drive that Dell can’t sell otherwise, it has cut rate memory that no geek will touch, and it’s using a 400-533FSB P4 that Intel doesn’t produce anymore.
Apple as Ferrari, that’s a thought. Somehow, I have trouble linking the $2000 iMac to a high end sports car. The speed just isn’t there. Also, the reliability is generally lacking on the high end sports car.
Another problem: All cars use gas to make them run. Most cars use one of three grades. This applies from the least expensive to the most expensive. The computer analog is software. Using this analogy, Apple uses an alternate fuel (call it jobsoline) with poor availability. It is possible though, to buy an adapter, so the Apple car would run on regular gasoline, but it would accelerate more slowly, and burn a lot more of it than a standard gas powered car would.
This is where the market share arguments come in. A reduction in market share will tend to push the jobsoline supply down, making the car less attractive as a purchase. That, in turn, drives down market share in a vicious cycle. On top of that, the article in question indicates declining sales for Macs, a sign the cycle is well entrenched.
Finally, to those who speak scathingly of Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas, I would purchase them before I would purchase a Ferrari. They are easier on the environment, more reliable, and can haul four people in relative comfort. Ferraris are simply status symbols. Toyotas and Hondas are well engineered.
Your comparison of Apple and Ferrari does not work. You are forgetting that computers without software are nothing but useless boxes.
I think the same, it does work as a comparisson, but because of a different reason: Apple could improve sales if they made a relatively affordable computer “for the masses” to try it out. I also think Apple users, in general, are more “computer passionated” people than “empty minded” elitist people
( I agree many Apple users think using their Macintosh makes them more VIP ).
Would not hurt Apple if they had a larger user base.
Comparing the automobile industry, and consumers perception of it, to the computer industry, and consumer’s perception of it, is unfair.
Consumers are intimately familiar with cars, and which ones are of low quality, and which ones cost too much, etc. Consumers grew up with cars. They are aware of the potential pitfalls of owning and operating a car, and are therefore well equipped to gage the value of a car.
This is not true for consumers who buy computers. Most computer buyers are not aware of the quality issues between a Windows computer and a Mac computer. They simply don’t know why one is better than the other, or what the potential pitfalls of owning and operating different computers are. They are therefore unprepared to gage the value of one computer vs. another.
‘d be more than happy to pay for one that costs $20,000 than pay $40,000+ for one with cruise control, leather seats and all that crap that’s going to serve little more purpose than the $20,000 car execpt to make me look like a shallow prick while I ride around town showing it off to everybody.
With all due respect, that is an ignorant point of view. If you like cars, you will love to have all those little details. Same happens with computers. Saying that a car with “leather seats, cruise control, etc. will make you look like a shallow prick showing it off to everybody” lacks common sense.
It doesn’t have anything to do. We call that’s style. You want an Audi TT because it is cool, because it’s “the way you like it”. Would you buy an Audi TT if it were “Invisible” (i.e.: nobody could see it?) Well, I’d do, because I like the car. Now, there ARE people who’d buy it just to show it… but that is not the truth for most of us, mere mortals. And even if i brought it to “show if off”, a lot of people would be jealous -provided they can’t affor what I could-. That’s life.
The MAC is an expensive piece of equipment, period. You either like it or not. But you don’t “show” your Dual G5 to a lot of people (laptops could be different) because it is possibly stuck in your desktop…
Now if you enjoy your crap DELL laptop (for 1000$), that’s another story.
If you don’t like MacOSX, that’s another story.
You just can’t compare, it’s a matter of TASTE. Some people is willing to pay “some more” for a Mac (whether it’s better or not). Some are not. Period.
Stop this nonsense.
p.s.: The guy who said that Hondas and Toyotas are more enginered than feraris, possibly never in his/her entire life saw a ferrari. Toyotas and Hondas, are reliable cars, but the amount of I+D that’s on a ferrari is incredibly. Toyota and Honda (to name a few) tend to copy what ferrari, lamborghini, porsche, Volvo and some others do.
A Dell Latitude User.
Alfa Romeo Owner.
(if you know about both cars and computers, you know that both, alfa romeo and Dell are not the BEST, in fact, it’s FAR from it).
Cheers,
Martin.
Actually you would be very suprised on how much R&D Honda and Toyota do just look at Lexus.
I think you’d find a Honda NSX until a few year as ago was easily as good as any Ferrari and has as much R&D put into it too. Remember that these were the companies that bought JIT, TQM(Total Quality Management) not just on paper but from initial design to manufacture and many other techniques and methodologies such as Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) to the manufacturing world.
Harjtt
(Former Manufacturing Engineer)
Ok, maybe the car analogy was a bad one, because I guess there really can be higher value for paying a higher price for automobiles. The only thing I’m saying is that when we (non-Mac users) point out the higher price of Macs, it’s because from our point of view, we can do pretty much everything that Mac users do and we can do it for considerably less money. So I personally get a little confused when Mac users start comparing Macs-to-PCs like high priced luxury automobiles to cheap clunkers, because from my point of view, I see no practical advantages of Macs, except for the fact that they look ‘prettier.’ Ok, maybe people want something that ‘just works’ which is understandable, so I guess if nothing else, you could consider PCs to be Macs without training wheels
Since I do know how to use a PC, guess I can save myself the $500+ I would’ve spent on a Mac for the hand-holding.
Bascule makes a good point regarding Porsche vs. Saturn. I’ve often looked at MANY of the low rent card put out by GM and Ford (in particular) and wondered why it is that they have to build UGLY cars. Are designers really that hard to come by and safety features really that expensive to add?
I would love to see both Porsche and Apple make a product that is affordable for your average joe. But barring that, I would love to see GM/Ford/Microsoft/HP/Dell/etc make attractive and security products of their own!
You cannot possible tell me that Mr. Gates cannot afford a good graphic designer and information architect to make Windows look as slick as the Mac. Or that he cannot afford a whole army of engineers to make Windows easy to use and secure – it’s insane.
Finally – I *really* feel point #5. The “test drive a mac” thing. It’s not the step cost of the Mac holding me back, it’s the steep cost of buying a Mac that I don’t LIKE that’s holding me back. GM lets you take $20,000+ cars home for 24 hours, you’d think Apple could do the same. It’s all in the budget. Set aside 200,000 various models for testing purposes only, refurbish them, and sell them as used every so many months. Plus I’m sure that there is insurance for that sort of thing.
🙂
Just my .02
Are about as intelligent as your rectum. Luckily for us, most people’s rectums stay quiet.
As long as Apple makes money, the shareholders will be happy. Apple has no real desire to capture a larger share of the box market. Which is good, because they never will. Nobody can compete with a $200 box, and nobody really wants to. Apple sure doesn’t.
Instead, Apple provides high-value integration. Have you ever tried to set up video chat with a PC running XP? Compare that to iChat. The PC is a nightmare, requiring hours of work, configuration, and futzing around. With a Mac, you fire up iChat and it pokes its way through your NAT box with no intervention.
Having just done both of these remotely, I can tell you that the PC user was totally frustrated, and the Mac user was, well, gloating is too strong a word, maybe smug?
Is this difference worth $600 (HP laptop, Mac iBook)? It depends how much your time is worth. If I was a consultant, I’d much rather have my clients have PCs, because I’d make more money. So buy PCs everyone!
I don’t know about the cheap headless iMac idea. I’m not sure thats the cure all for Apple, although a cheaper model couldn’t hurt. I am sure that Apple’s advertising sucks big time. It sucks so bad it doesn’t exist! I have never seen a commercial extolling the virtues of OS X. A commercial listing the million Windows viruses and ZERO for the Macintosh would resonate with a computing pubic sick of constantly patching and having their machines repaired when they get infected.
Maybe one day the genuises at Apple will get it. People dont buy what they dont know about.
If you want to buy a computer, you do research. If you don’t do research and run to the first computer you see on TV, I doubt you would even want to have a nice new apple with OS X.
Maybe you spend too much time watching HBO Mr. Soprano and not enough seeing that TV advertising isn’t the only avenue to represent your product to the public.
Apple stores, bestbuy/compusa/et al displays, huge dedicated conferences (WWDC), catchy TV ads for OTHER products to draw users in. If you see Mac OS X, you are typically impressed off the bat. The interim method to get you to see it doesn’t have to be a TV commercial.
No TV. No print ads. No billboards. No nothing! Tell me – where does Apple advertise? WWDC is not advertising. A computer sitting on the shelf at CompUSA is not advertising. Where does Apple advertise computers and OS X? The only advertising they do is for the iPod.
I think a headless iMac is great for switches.
Let’s say I have a 2 year old PC that still performs well and all but I am looking to upgrade. All I do is really check e-mail, surf the web and do spreadsheets or similar desktop publishing activities. I don’t want to buy an iMac even though they look so cute, but it’s such a waste. I already have a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and speakers…and I like them. Why buy an all in one solution when all I want to change out is the box that actually does the work? If there was a headless mac, it would be attractive to people in that position. I think that potential customers see it as a waste to buy a full on machine when all they need is the box that does the processing.
The underlying assumption of the article is that sales is the same thing as installed base. Apple is flanking the opposition. It is entrenching itself in high profit markets. Macs are often used where time is money. When you are paying $100 an hour to a photo retouching artist, you do not want to loose four working days a year reloading the OS, as is common with MS.
Mac’s have very high quality displays with the supporting technology, ColorSync, that allows Macs to preview material for press runs. Redoing a press run can easly cost 5 figures. The “expensive” Mac is much less costly than the “cheep” Dell in this situation. The diplay quality contributes to the ubiquity of iBooks/PowerBooks in photography.
Apple is also doing an end run into the enterprise market. The XServe is getting very good reviews and is very competitively priced. Using the more efficient PPC is an important componant of this success. It is clear that Apple is lisening carefully to that market. They changed to error correcting memory in the G5 version.
Apple is attacking the video processing market with substantial success. The G5 with FCP seems to be a big winner. Apple also has large mind share in the music arena. I suspect that that dominance contributes substantially to the success of the iPod. Apple (SJ) gets music, Gates does not.
One common thread on all these markets is that they can be profitable.
I do not expect Apple to make huge attacks on the mass market no matter how much the press assumes that market is essential. How much of that market share consists of low level corporate workstations? Those boxes are bought on the very short sighted economics of purchase price, not total cost of ownership. Most of those boxes will be unusable in 3 years. Look at the price of used Macs versus PCs on eBay to verify this.
Give me the option to buy a case by itself, and each component seperately… If I can build a dirt cheap mac first say 20gb hdd ati rage 128 etc, then UPGRADE over time it becomes a crapload more affordable than buying a ridiculously powerful in one day, also it WON’T break compatability with their hardware control, you could use mac only hardware that apple controls, eg go from ati rage pro, to geforce 4, to geforce fx.. over time…
however, IMHO, the FIRST thing Apple should be doing is flogging this horse til it bleeds: _the number of viruses and trojans affecting Mac OS X since its release is effectively zero_.
Raise your hand if you know what the difference between a virus and a trojan is.
Put it back down if you still use Windows anyway and are willing to sacrifice hours of your valuable time dealing with the problem (or worse paying someone else to do so) _without counting the cost_ to your productivity.
I’m reasonably sure you can value your time at an hourly rate, right?
I wonder what the cost-differential would be if you worked out how much time you spend installing software and updates to protect yourself from all the viruses, trojans, and popups, and whether that would have worked out to more than the difference between the cost of your computer vs an equivalent Macintosh at purchase time.
Things that make you go hmmmmmm….
Notwithstanding Macs can run nearly all the old OS 9 software base, all the new OSX native apps, all the open-source unix apps (and that is one HELL of a lot of software, friends), and all the windows apps via emulation temporarily while you transition to native software, _thereby retaining all your existing software investment during the refactoring period_.
(Please, don’t ‘pish-posh’ me about speed of emulation; you won’t be doing it for long, obviously not wanting to for equally obvious reasons, but you ARE aware that you can use this method to easily transition yourself, right?)
What was the benefit of using said apps on a notoriously buggy virus-prone system again? oh yeah, a few dollars at purchase time…. which you easily and cheerfully and carelessly pay back two or three fold over the course of ownership in order to prevent someone else from electronically owning your system instead of you.
I really can’t figure you out. *headscratching*
There’s two kinds of hardware out there for personal computers: the ‘IBM-compatible’ (aka the PC), and the Macintosh. For the PC there’s three operating systems: Windows, Linux, and Unix. For the Mac, there’s OS X (which IS already unix based and does what the linux crowd has been trying to do for years: make it look good, and usable, even for grandma.)
Ohh, I hear you say, but if we buy a Mac, we have vendor lock in! that’s bad! Isn’t it?
uhh…
_EITHER WAY_ YOU HAVE VENDOR LOCK IN. Haven’t you figured THAT out yet???
@martin
“With all due respect, that is an ignorant point of view. If you like cars, you will love to have all those little details. Same happens with computers. Saying that a car with “leather seats, cruise control, etc. will make you look like a shallow prick showing it off to everybody” lacks common sense. ”
You don’t like cars, or rather arn’t a car person, cause your point of veiw is way off. Car people, that is people who love and know cars buy what they know is a good value and is a good car all around. They don’t give a sh*t about dumb little features they don’t use. The analysis that paying way to much for a car just for the name or silly features makes one look like a shallow prick is correct. I know many people who could go any buy a $80,000 car without a problem, but instead just buy solid used cars for 7 grand . This would be my parents. Some people are smart with there money and know there is more in life then spending tons of money on stuff you don’t need to just impress the neighbors.
The ferrari thing here is dumb to. Apple doesn’t make anything in that class, maybe if you are compairing to a low end ferrari, but really the only maker that would be up there would be Cray or SGI. Apple would be a toyota or Ford. That is they make a solid car that you can feel safe with, and has pretty good styling. Where some other brand crap PCs would be kia’s and such.
In the end of the day, it’s a damn computer. It sits in your place, doesn’t do much that you depend on. Cars are important cause they do things like get you to work and hold your family. If a computer dies, it’s not that big of a deal. There isn’t much that changes for a consumer from low end crap to high end in the desktop area. A computer is a computer and a person will see a dual 2.5ghz G5 Powermac not much differant then any regular PC out there.
Sure to some of us there is some differances, but the question of if it is worthwhile is debatable. I want a mac, but it has little to do with the hardware. More of some things with the OS, and applications around it, and some of the ways the company works (this would be integration, which MS unfortently can’t do without getting sue’d) .
People who want to think apple macs some perfect super consumer computer need to get a clue, it’s a computer, and thats about it.
Can we get some sort of posting filter that will forever eliminate postings that mention car analogies. Thus these threads don’t happen. I’m a Car guy, and a decent bit of a computer guy. These threads make my head explode.
Brad, I think you are confusing people who love performance and engineering with people that like other aspects of the car not being “true” car people.
I concider myself as a person who is into cars – just not the engineering and performance side of things. If you have a car magazine on your desk and I see I will not pass it up BUT what I will be looking at will not necessarily be the same thing as what you will look at.
I look at consoles – I love them a balance between gadgety, simplicity and elegance; how the car looks from the back – big thing for some reason; it should have decent to good (preferably) power and performance but I will not go anal over some more detailed or obscure technical reason (not that I cannot understand but that’s my limit – just like you have people that are anal about wasting cpu cycles, I like a computer to perform well but will not go that far).
While I agree with you that there are people that do things for show there are just as many that love cars or some aspect about them that they are willing to shell out more for them.
That they bring and cause them happiness is a mystery that I respect because that’s part of what makes us human – the mystery as to how someone will bunjee jump, play golf, shop all day, hike around the world, study all day, be a couch potato, be a groupee, go hunting for whales, paly bridge, crochet – all these things one cannot explain why they bring happiness but they do.
Just because your (or your parents’) hobbies may not involve shelling out a lot of money does not necessarily make the other person more shallow. Rather, in capitalism, some things may cost alot of money at one time but not in another time.
<extremely-simplified-example>
a person who loves collecting cellphones would have seemed like a person with alot of money to spare/waste 10 years ago when they were upward of a thousand dollars but would not seems so bad today (yeah it would still be a strange hobby but I am tired and too lazy to come up with a more realistic example… 🙂
</extremely-simplified-example>
Also, some things that qualify as hobby material are inherently not cheap. I have a friend who loves cars and he has been getting a car custom built for over a year ending this year – almost 2 years, total cost just over 20,000. It’s highly optimized for performance but will still look good.
This guy, because this is what brings him happiness, is sacrificing a possibly way better lifestyle he could have if he just financed/leased a car or bought a cheaper car BUT – and this is a BIG BUT – this IS the BETTER lifestyle for him.
And this guy lights up the place wherever he goes. I have only known him just under a year bt I have never seem him not happy. Au contraire – he is high on life and if you get him to talk about his car the positive vibe he gives off would cure 10 depressed people.
To me, that’s worth way more than 7,000 dollars and 80k is still a drop in the bucket when you try and and quantify the number of smiles he brings to people’s faces on a daily bases (and he does) – and to think this is partly because of a car.
I am not trying to knock you but I think you were too heavily one-sided in your analysis/comment. I mean, I bet there are many people with “cheap” hobbies like going on picnics or braais/BBQs that derive less “happiness” from these supposedly wholesome activities than my friend and his car.
Anywayz, love a good debate, can’t wait for your response and others’…
… just in case you are wondering what type of car I like – as an example that is here goes:
http://www.bentleymotors.com/bentleymotors/selectlanguage.jsp?lang=…
…and…
http://www.europeancarweb.com/firstlook/0402ec_bentley/
Good compromise of everthing – performance, elegance, luxury, etc., etc.
Now I just need to pay all my bills then I will start a piggy bank with the hope of purchasing one of these in the next 50 years
ok, i used to be a mac user at home, got a cheap windows box for my time at school, stuck with x86 for a cheap linux box for my latest computer, and use windows at work. i work as a java dev, have been using computers since the age of five or so, and far too many of my hobbys and interests alwas have revolved around computers.
all that to say i have quite a bit of experience for a range of different kinds of computers.
first, the hardware. ive got two towers under my desk now. theres nothing all that impressive looking about them, they are computers. which is fine, they do their jobs. but i really miss having something that looks nice, at least at home. apples attention to asthetics outside the box is still second to none, ive seen cool cases in stores since, but nothing thats just beautiful.
secondly, the os. i was a mac user from os 7-9, so this may not be applicable anymore, but between os7.5 and windows xp, from a usability standpoint os7 beats windows with an ugly stick. when it comes to our lovely *nix environments, its even more of a trouncing. and we are talking os 7 here! not only is it the easiest os ive ever installed, but it required zero maintenance, and in the decade or so i had my mac classic 2 i only re-installed the os once. once! ive reinstalled windows at work more then that, and i have a way of flitting from distro to distro every few months in linux. inside the box, apple has given me by far my favorite user experience.
all this to say, firarri may not be a good analogy, as firrari is the king in the power department, which isnt apples area of dominance as the car guy pointed out. im far from knowing my cars, but ive driven a benz and i think that would be an adiquite analogy. you buy power in a benz, but you also buy beauty and asthetics. let me say, as much as i would never buy one cause of the exorberant costs, it was by far the best experience i have had from a car. it was more then just the power, it was everything about it, right up to the name “mercades”. so how bout changing from firarri to mercades, the analogy is better and the argument still stands.
last but not least, to the numerous snide comments about software, yes, a computer without software does nothing. not only does apple ship with a suite of apps that are more then adiquite for “average” usage (im talking mail/chat/browse), but how many apps do you actually need? here at home i use vim and kate for text editors, IDEa for my ide, OO.o for the (limited) ms office docs i have to work with, evolution for email, firefox for browsing, etc, etc. notice how i only mentioned one app for each category? (text editors count as two, one command line one gui) theres at least hundreds of apps for each of those categories i mentioned, do i really care? i went from mac to windows and managed to replace all the apps i used. i went from windows to linux and managed to replace all the apps i used. applications arnt a problem, if a platform has 1,000,000 or 100,000 makes absolutely no difference to me as long as i have what i need to get the job done.
One point I don’t know if any of you are aware of is this…
Not everyone can sell a Mac.
In my country, you have to be an “Authorized Apple Reseller” to get a Mac to sell it to the public… and it’s not easy to be one, iirc, you have to have multimegamega sales turnover per year and meet other strict criteria. What this means is this.. All those little locally owned corner computer stores that actually, combined sell millions and millions and millions of PC’s per year, can’t sell Mac’s.
If Apple make it so restrictive to sell Apple hardware, then imho, it’s their own fault if they go under.
ANYONE can sell a PC, thus, PC will strive.
I think you’d find a Honda NSX until a few year as ago was easily as good as any Ferrari and has as much R&D put into it too. Remember that these were the companies that bought JIT, TQM(Total Quality Management) not just on paper but from initial design to manufacture and many other techniques and methodologies such as Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) to the manufacturing world.
You must be joking right a NSX is not even close to a Ferrari in terms of anything other than a copied design. I am not saying a NSX isn’t a good car but it is nothing close to a ferrari.
The chaepest ferraris compared with a NSX
http://www.supercars.net/Comp?sourceList=30&CompList=30-914-913
Honda flagship vs a ferrari flagship
http://www.supercars.net/Comp?sourceList=984&CompList=984-30
One could compare a ferrari to an Apple on the basis that Ferrari is the closest thing you can drive on the street to a forumla 1 car. The Apple machines are the closest things to a computing appliance in terms of user experience with its seemless hardware software integration. Apple an Ferrari are at the pinnacle of thier fields one personal computers (beautiful designs and extrodinary user experience) the other seer drving pleasure with no frills.
OS X is the reason I own 2 Macs (a dual G5, and an iBook G4), and that reason enough is enough for me to hand my cash over to Apple. Great OS, good hardware, keep it coming, and I’ll keep buying.
its eroding market share because the overall market is getting bigger faster than the mac market. The mac market is still growing, however.
This is repeated, oh-so-many-times, and it is just plain wrong. Numbers?
Even if it was true, if the overall market is getting bigger in a faster rate than YOU are, then you are doing something wrong.