Apple Dominates "Premium PC" Market 475
itwbennett writes "Macs made up a whopping 91 percent of the $1,000-and-up computer market in June. Not so long ago, $1,000 got you an entry-level machine. Today the average computer sells for $701, while the average Windows machine sells for only $515. Still, Macs only make up 8.7% of PC sales. But is that really such a bad position to be in? Consider an Apples to Apples, that is, Macs to iPhones comparison: the iPhone takes only a sliver of the phone market but a much larger share of the profits."
Premium price, not premium PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple dominates the premium priced market, not the premium PC market.
Re:Little off topic.. (Score:3, Insightful)
but Mac has no real "economy" option.
They have tried, through various schemes, to compete in this market and have come up bubkis.
I equate it to designer sunglasses. [..] people who want the absolute latest and greatest regardless of how much actual added value they are getting.
This mac is over three years old. You might do better if you at least assumed all of those people with all of that money aren't stupid, but for many slashdotters this seems to be the only possible explanation.
Re:In technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple's appeal is that OSX is a generally better OS than Windows, particularly in the area of usability. That, not "marketing" or "aesthetics" is why people will pay more for the same hardware.
I find it amusing that people don't understand that the software itself has value.
Re:De-spinning. Again. (Score:4, Insightful)
A $1,000 PC is not OEM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:De-spinning. Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right. When comparing the price/value of computer hardware, the cost of software does not matter. Your $700 mid-range (or upper middle or however you want to measure it) hardware is $700 worth of hardware regardless of how much you spend on software.
For the obligatory car analogy, if you buy a cheap second hand car and then put a $50,000 sound system in it, you still have a cheap second hand car. It just has a nice sound system.
Re:In technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, time will tell.
We've been hearing this line for almost a decade now, and time has told to a tune of nearly 6-fold gain in shareholder value since 2000, giving Apple today a larger market cap than Google, HP, and Dell. I keep waiting for this grand charade to end, but Apple keeps raking in $8 billion dollars a quarter.
They've succeeded by every rational metric of business.
Re:Little off topic.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, people no longer need very fast computers. Some years ago, PCs were slower, couldn't work with many applications running and so on. Now even a cheap computer wil be able to run Office, Firefox and some other applications for work, so there is no need for faster PCs for those people.
People who buy expensive computers do so because
1) They have money and buy it to have the latest and greatest. They can buy PCs or Macs.
2) They want to play latest games on highest settings. These will buy PCs and usually more expensive than $1000.
3) They use an application for work that needs a fast PC (3D rendering, video editing, Photoshop etc). They can buy a PC or a Mac, depending on the application.
4) They want a computer made by Apple.
5) They want the computer to last a long time before another upgrade.
Everybody else just buys an inexpensive PC (since there are no inexpensive Macs) and uses it to work/play/watch movies/etc. My father uses a ~6 year old laptop for work. He does today the same things that he did when he bought the laptop (mainly work with MSWord, MSExcel and browsing internet) and, surprise, the laptop is still good for the things that he does, probably will still be good after 5 years, assuming it still works then.
Re:In technology... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is probably more reasonable to talk about the $1.2 billion that they earn each quarter, rather than their revenues:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL [yahoo.com]
For instance, when Google has a good quarter, they make more than that, on 70% of the revenues:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=goog [yahoo.com]
And HP manages to only make a little more than Apple, on 340% of the revenues:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=hpq [yahoo.com]
Car comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
I spend much more time in front of my computer than driving my car. Hence, I am ready to spend a little more to have a luxury computer...
Linux laptop is probably next for me (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been using different GUI front ends for programming and work for over 10 years now - and Apple laptops for the last 5 years of so.
Open office is now a fully acceptable spreadsheet and word processor. Gimp is fully functional for photos. Most other services are web based. VLC, media playing, etc are all working on Linux too. Issues that used to be common are now well supported in the open-source community with networking, video acceleration, disks, USB, drivers, etc.
Apple with it's BSD-based kernel and more open culture than Microsoft, could openly embrace the open source community, however, it seems to be working actively to prevent open access to a large number of their software-hardware combinations, and refuses to embrace and support the console-using, computer-hacking crowd (like me). It is understandable from a short-term financial standpoint, but long term, I think this is a mistake for Apple. I think taking the position at the genius bar of "if you open Terminal, we won't help you" alienates the most dedicated and supportive users in the marketplace. It is that community that could rocket Apple forward with more contributions and functionality - but now they continue to be pushed to support Linux instead.
It is disappointing to me that we live in a world where large companies like Apple still grow primarily based on marketing, selling and distributing physical things over digital products, or from monetizing the support and services (and maintaining a community) around increased productivity.
The difference in price between all these products is small compared to the value of ones times spent dealing with issue that arise. Regardless of how one values their own time - after any major screw ups taking many, many hours to fix - you have already surpassed any difference in price between the systems. Reliability, functionality, and real security (and how much time you have to spend later to get those) are the real value of owning a laptop for several years, not just the initial price.
But all in all, lack of Apple support for hacking means I'll be looking seriously at a Linux-based laptop (at 1/2 the price and more open standards) for my next laptop.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:4, Insightful)
easy removal of power connector in case of tripping
accelerometers to shut the hard drive off if the laptop falls
backlit keyboards that have a sensor to automatically come on
automatic screen dimming at low light levels
single piece aluminum frame construction for less stress on the motherboard (the most common point of failure of a laptop, in my experience)
custom battery arrangement to maximize useful lifetime but leave a smaller dimensional footprint.
I'm sure there are others that I'm missing but the very idea that mac laptops aren't "premium" is ridiculous. You can argue that the set of features that you get are not worth the price, but one can make the same argument about "premium" cars as well and has nothing to do with if the object itself has a feature set above and beyond the average.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:5, Insightful)
...12 high end Mac Pros for, say $5,000...
Last I checked, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Mac Pro was closer to $23,000.
Re:Little off topic.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have tried, through various schemes, to compete in this market and have come up bubkis.
I believe the reason for this is it's hard to compete in the low AND high end markets at the same time, at least under the same brand.
Dell tries to do this, but the world knows dell for cheap PCs.
Cisco/Linksys is my favorite example. They keep those two brand names very separate for a good reason. What IT dept would shop Linksys for their company firewall, and who would imagine they could afford/use a Cisco at home?
Apple is known for quality, longevity, and higher price. There's nothing to gain from them trying to get any sizable portion of the low-end market. The only reason they sell the mac mini is to get PC converts, not because they want a foot in the low end market.
Re:In technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you get that idea from? My whole company switched to Macs and productivity is up as we spend so much less time on desktop maintenance.
What desktop maintenance were you spending so much time on? Because if you were spending THAT much time on desktop maintenance you were doing it wrong.
In the last few years most of my friends have switched to Macs and they all say they're easier to use.
Yeah, a new PC out of the box from apple is setup better than same from an OEM. That's not Apple vs Microsoft. That's Apple vs HP and Sony. HP and Sony etc really need to pick up the ball to deliver a much better out of box experience.
They need to dump the shovelware, trialware, and utter crap, and invest in good quality productivity options.
I know one high level executive who's arguing with his IT department to let him use his Mac and iPhone on the corporate network because he prefers their usability and productivity.
And I know one high level executive who switched back to PC after he got tired of having to remote access or virtualize 4/5ths of the stuff he wanted to do because there was no mac equivalent, and it drove him nuts. He'd have his mail running on his Mac, then launch VMware to run the accounting software, pull up a report, and then have to jump through hoops to paste it into his email... because outlook supports OLE and when he pastes the spreadsheet bit in, he can edit it... but not on his mac, where it comes through as an image... so now he gets to copy it from the vm accounting to excel on the mac, tweak it some more, and paste it again to mail...
And now he gets to run Mac OS software update, AND windows update. Productivity dropped into the toilet. Not to mention the burden on IT as they have to handle everything they do with him as separate case.
He curses at it all day, but its what he wanted.
Why are we argue the definition of "Premium" (Score:2, Insightful)
when surely the bigger question here is who was dumb enough to believe that fucking stupid and clearly made up statistic in the first place? I will eat my PCs if anyone can prove that Apple get anywhere even close to 91% of all PC sales over $1000. Remember folks, approximately 87.93% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Nick
Re:Little off topic.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Mac Mini isn't an economy option, especially refurbs as low as $419 on the Apple Store? Granted, you could build a cheap PC for less, but I'd hardly call $419 expensive, or even $599 expensive, putting aside arguments of what you get for the money.
The difference is that the $599 PC comes with everything you need to use it (keyboard, screen, etc), while the Mac Mini still needs a couple of hundred spend on it before it can be more than a paperweight.
The PC will also have roughly twice the specs.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:2, Insightful)
*slashhole
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, see, that doesn't work when you're asking for something that's right on Apple's Website [apple.com] and fits into the readily-proven common knowledge category as the far side of the moon always facing away from the surface of the earth.
All you're really doing is saying "I don't have a shred of proof for my argument so I'm not even going to tell you what it is, or even which part of yours I disagree with, I'm just going to say 'i demand proof' generically and pretend that it makes me intelligent and trendy".
Re:In technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget: For a while, PPC *was* better than Intel. And for new users (i.e. anyone who hadn't grown up with using mice), 1 button was less confusing than two. But you know what? Things changed. Intel got off their ass and made great chips (while Moto/IBM sat on their ass with PPC) and the number of people who knew how to use a mouse became a majority of their market.
Re:My Time is worth something (Score:5, Insightful)
And windows users don't have to do any of those things either. Every piece of anti-virus software under the sun updates itself, completely without any human intervention, at some god awful time of night so as to avoid doing it while you may be using your computer. Similarly, right out of the box windows runs a scheduled weekly disk degrag at something like 3 am every wednesday or some other silly time. These things happen and I do nothing to cause them, I didn't even set them up originally -- they were just pre-configured that way and if I don't like them I can change them.
Nor do I have to reinstall windows yearly -- Vista on this machine has been installed for 18 months and everything is as snappy as the day I brought it home.
Try to understand, when you buy a mac you're not choosing between OS 10.5 and Windows 95. There's really major selling point of Mac over Windows at this point other than simple preference.
If you PREFER MacOS, by all means by a Mac -- but don't kid yourself into thinking you're getting something the rest of us aren't getting. We're all getting the OS of our choice and more or less the same feature set. Your preference costs more, but if you prefer it, and are willing to pay the money, then go for it.
Re:Linux laptop is probably next for me (Score:2, Insightful)
"Apple with it's BSD-based kernel and more open culture than Microsoft..."
This is the image it has among some, but the reality is that it is far more closed and restrictive and controlling in its culture than Microsoft ever was. Its really mysterious where it gets this impression of openness from. The only analogy I can think of is that among the liberal establishment, Soviet Russia and Communism generally was somehow seen as more humane and decent than Fascism, while indulging in repeated genoicides several times as large. The then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, for example, made some remark in his last year in office about the deaths caused by capitalism, as if the Ukraine and Chinese famines had never happened. One does not know whether the blindness is due to willful ignorance, or lack of thought. But its wrong.
Apple is not the company you and others think it is, or would like it to be, painful as it is to accept that.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Premium != Performance (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen this comparison a number already here.
Here comes a car analogy.
For me, a premium car has nice interior materials and a good balance of comfort, performance, build quality and a few intangibles.
If I just want pure perfomance, I could get a Mustang or a Civic and slam it out for much less than say, an M3 or an IS.ï
My gaming computer is the equivalent of that Mustang or Civic. I use it run games with everything turned up to 11 but for everyday computing, I vastly prefer my Mac.
Re:Little off topic.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's common in the car market, too: Japanese car firms have done very well with their pairings of Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus, Nissan/Infiniti.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:2, Insightful)
What surprises me is that the comment was modded "insightful" and then EVERY replier proceeded to miss the point. The point isn't about quality. It's about objectivity. I don't dislike Apple ( well, I think they do some objectionable things like the whole iEcosystem thing they have going of non-compatibility ) but the advantages you have mentioned are subjective. The points you make don't objectively label Apple PCs as premium PCs, they just show that you think they should.
If we were to compare acoustic guitars, I could say that mine is superior to yours because it has:
- a pickup to amplify the sound
- a cutaway body to easily reach bodyside frets
- fret markers at frets 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, where the best harmonics can be created
- a custom-built bridge for firmly held but easily removed strings
It's hard to argue that the guitar would be better to not have any of these features, but they don't make it a well-made guitar by any definition.
I don't necessarily disagree with you on the assertion that are premium PCs, but I do disagree that it's undeniable.
Re:Windows is the wisest choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Targeting some of the richest and yet least security-aware computer users could be a very profitable niche indeed.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:4, Insightful)
I have pumped WAY more than $1000 into my home-built, and I strongly suspect it doesn't show up in anybody's statistics.
Re:And worth every penny (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually saying, "I don't believe you; show me some facts to back-up your claim," is the best place to start. All of modern-day science is based on that premise.
As for Apple's luxury market:
I'm glad they are doing so well, but remember a lot of luxury carmakers went bankrupt during the 1930s depression, and they are going bankrupt now too. When times are hard people turn their back on luxury and go for lower-priced options. Apple may find itself dominating a high-priced over-$1000 market that has few customers left to serve.
Re:Premium - as in more useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're comparing business class machines (MacBook pro) to consumer shit (Dell). Buy business notebooks (elitebook/thinkpad lines for example) and I think they are as solidly built as a Mac. You can also get a better resolution then 1440x900, but I don't think you would consider that a problem.
Apple is not worth the cost (Score:1, Insightful)
It's just not.
PC hardware is cheaper. PC software is cheaper. PC software 'just works' despite people claiming it does not.
Windows is very stables these days, despite claims to the contrary. There is far more software available for it than any other hardware, and it will run on any hardware of my choosing(within range of course). When I use a PC, I know that I will have access to all the applications, have the freedoms to choose between operating systems and hardware, and that if I want to, I can make it look just as pretty as a Mac. Let's not mention Apple's atrocious security record....
The excuse that Apples just work is just crap. Stability is not the issue it once was, and those people have watched one too many "I'm a Mac" ads.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably the most cogent analogy I can think of is cars. For the most part, an Acura is a Honda. Indeed a good majority of Acura parts are actually Honda parts. But an Acura costs more and people are willing to pay for them than a Honda. To some people who only fixate on pricing that seems ridiculous as they equate the two as the same therein lies the problem. An Acura is similar but not identical to a Honda. If you ignore the details, an Acura TL is the same as a Honda Accord but that's using a flawed comparison.
That's the same difference between an Apple laptop and any other laptop. No two laptops models are ever really the same even by the same manufacturer. Apple has put more into the fit and polish than other manufacturers. Apple has targeted the middle of the market to the high-end premium. They do not want a part of the low-end market as they know they cannot compete with the Dell, HP, etc.
For some people, Apples are simply "prettier" and they are willing to pay for that. For some people, Apples are less hassle and they are willing to pay for that. For others, Apples don't have the processing power, HD, whatever, that they want and they are not willing to pay for that. The real point is it is really up to the needs and wants of the customer. Discounting Macs are more expensive for no reason is another way of saying that value only means money and you can't understand that value might mean other things for other people. For other people value can mean time, ease of use, aesthetics, etc.
Take for example why do some computer security professionals use Macs [toolbox.com]? It's not because they think Macs are cute. With a Mac they can run Windows, Unix, BSD, Linux, etc which is very beneficial to their job. On the other end, why do professional photographers use Macs? It's because they don't care to get involved with the intricate details of maintaining a computer. Most of them are not technical. They want to worry more about the color saturation of a photo rather than drivers for their camera.
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:5, Insightful)
custom battery arrangement to maximize useful lifetime but leave a smaller dimensional footprint. - Laptop manufacturers always make the enclosure, it's just the cells that are outsourced. There's nothing inherently more customized about Apple's battery arrangement than Dell's, although Dell is more likely to use a conservative design.
Apple's cells aren't outsourced, and there is something "inherently more customized about Apple's battery arrangement than Dell's." You should really read up [anandtech.com] on them since it's one of their major differentiators from competitors at the moment. They generated quite a bit of surprise [anandtech.com] earlier in the year when the actual results seen by the media and individuals met and exceeded Apple's stated numbers for the expected charge time [apple.com]. More or less, your assertion regarding Apple and Dell's batteries is entirely incorrect.
Thinkpad isn't going to vent its heat directly into your groin, while an aluminum Macbook will.
I think you're overstating or fabricating an issue that doesn't exist. For instance, on my (ancient) Aluminum PowerBook G4 (remember that the G4 chip was notorious for its heat issues), I have vents along the backside of the computer and along both sides (all of which are hidden from view in normal use). In regular practice I can easily max out the CPU for extended periods of time (heck, running Azureus and watching a movie will do that these days), yet it never gets hot enough to warrant concern, due to the proper venting. So while the thermal properties of other metals may be more favorable, it's not an issue if the heat is properly vented, which it is (otherwise, we could make the argument that every computer should use liquids for cooling since they have better thermal properties than air, which would entirely miss the fact that liquid cooling is simply unnecessary in many cases). And last I checked, the current laptop lines from Apple do not have vents in the region that would be directed at the groin.
backlit keyboards that have a sensor to automatically come on - My Thinkpad has an overhead light so I can read papers as well as the keyboard.
Totally missing the point. An overhead light is a ridiculous feature that bothers others around you and is total overkill for the problem. What makes Apple's backlit keyboards a "premium" feature are ideas like the use fiber optics to relay a light both through the character glyphs on each laser-etched key, as well as around the keys. Plus, most people are comfortable purchasing a $5 USB attachment if they really wanted an overhead light. Backlit keyboards are not something you can tack on for $5. It's that sort of difference that was being pointed out as a premium feature of Apple laptops.
Also, as has already been pointed out, the ThinkPad is by no means a commodity laptop. It's most certainly a premium line as well (aimed at a different audience than Macs, but premium nonetheless), and it demands a premium price, so pointing out that your ThinkPad carries similar features is a self-defeating argument if you were trying to suggest that some of Apple's laptop features were common in regular ol' commodity laptops.
Re:Coming soon... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, I am not a kernel developer but I am pretty sure that the transition to a full 64-bit, "Grand Central Dispatch" and OpenCL would involve some pretty serious work on the kernel. Does MS really make such huge under the hood changes in a service pack? If so that seems like a pretty bad idea. I can see that maybe in XP SP2 (and maybe 3) just because they were getting hammered so hard on security they had no choice not to make some pretty serious security upgrades. But for the most part they seem just like an accumulation of lots and lots of lots and lots of bug fixes. Just because it doesn't have that many checklistably obvious user facing features doesn't mean that they haven't made serious architectural changes that would distinguish it from what MS calls a service pack.
There are often large updates to the OS that apple also pushes out for free that contain tons of bug fixes. They also don't charge for those. The two companies obviously have different models for how they do updates, but I can't believe that this idea that every major OS X update is just a service pack keeps coming up again and again. I'm sure I am missing something but at this point it just seems willfully obtuse.
So which major versions would you consider service packs and which would you not? So far it seems people have said that about every single major version that has been released except for 10.0. By the logic of these people all of the work that Apple has done since 2001 is akin to what MS just gives away for free. All that they have done is just fix a ton of bugs and add very minor features. It is unbelievable to me that people continue to assert this.
It seems to me that the entire viewpoint of people who espouse and advocate these ideas seems to be fundamentally flawed. The way I see it every single major release has been worth way more than $129 to me and I would in fact pay far more for it if it came down to it. When you combine that with the number of people who actually paid money to "downgrade" their Vista licenses to XP it just becomes all the more laughable that people are trying to criticize Apple's update/pay structure not with any real argument about it's specific flaws but by saying "oh yeah, well Microsoft would give that away for free."
Seriously?
People don't even want the latest MS OS they have already been forced to pay for and yet you feel the need to make ridiculous semantic arguments about what constitutes a service pack in order to try to somehow say that what Apple spent two years making MS would just give away.
Am I alone here are do others also believe that this "it's just like an service pack" line of reasoning is just completely absurd?
Re:Premium price, not premium PC (Score:3, Insightful)
You claimed "it's not like there aren't PCs like that too." And when challenged the best you can come up with is a PC from the 1980s/1990s from a company that doesn't even make PCs any more. So that shows categorically that there AREN'T any PCs like that. Only Macs have that sort of build quality these days.
Bullshit. The usually upgradable parts are standard connectors. Standard memory modules, standard hard disks, standard graphics cards. All available from the usual third party sources.
And of course external connectors are standard too. USB, Firewire, Displayport. About the the only proprietary external connector is the power connector on MacBooks. But all lqptop manufacturer do that. The apple one is at least with good reason: Magsafe.
What's left that you're saying is it's such a shame that Apple have the best form factors on the market, and they should emulate the crap that the PC manufacturers make.
No thanks.