Posted on 10/30/2010 3:20:35 AM PDT by Swordmaker
On this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, we talk with Laptop magazine’s Avram Piltch about Apple’s spanking new MacBook Air. Along with reports that the product may already be flying off the shelves, particularly the 11.6-inch version, the early reviews are nothing short of spectacular.
Piltch, who is certainly no ardent fan of Apple, has high praise for this revision of this sexy thin and light notebook, and it’s not just the performance factor. You see, compared to other notebooks that use solid state storage, the Air is actually priced competitively. It may even be cheaper than some of the generic PC alternatives, simply because Apple is able to get the best price on flash memory.
With a base price of $999, the entry-level MacBook Air may not be the cheapest notebook on the planet, but the designs that come closest cost even more.
Now take a look at the promised iPad killers that are slowly coming to market. Some companies are tying them in to two-year data plans with wireless carriers to make them seem less expensive, but soon as you add up the price of admission — particularly in the months where Wi-Fi access is sufficient for you — you’ll find that the iPad is a much better deal.
Worse, without a 3G plan, such products as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, with a 7-inch display, may be priced at the same level or higher than the cheapest 9.7-inch iPad. Go figure!
Add to that the fact that Apple’s latest SEC filing warns of somewhat lower profit margins — still high compared to most of the consumer electronics industry — and that typically conservative outlook has spooked Wall Street and stalled the meteoric rise in the company’s stock price.
But remember that Apple never releases a product that fails to deliver great profits to the company, even if it’s a few percentage points less than some might hope. What that means is that Apple is going to be far more aggressive about pricing, not to mention the need to cover R&D for new product releases. In the end, as much as Apple is regarded as the BMW of the tech business, you can’t call their prices high compared to identically-equipped competitors.
So, yes, you can buy a big screen Windows notebook for $700. But now load it up with essentially the same options that Apple provides as standard issue, including a superior LCD display with higher resolution, and suddenly the Mac doesn’t seem so expensive.
When you move to the high end of the equation, the Mac Pro has almost always been priced similar to, or lower than, competing workstations from Dell and other top-tier PC box assemblers.
Yes, there are loads of PC boxes out there that are much cheaper than a Mac, and businesses may not particularly prefer to buy computers equipped with Wi-Fi, digital lifestyle apps, not to mention a Web cam. None of those features may be suited to an office environment, yet all of Apple’s notebooks, along with the iMac, have them. It makes them more expensive to build, and the price of admission is higher, but Apple sharply limits customization. You can’t, for example, buy ten thousand copies without these and other features, and that is often a reason why businesses won’t choose Apple.
I wonder how things might change with Apple’s new enterprise push, and their deal with Unisys to mine the corporate and government markets. Certainly Apple is taking business customers seriously, but it doesn’t appear they’re going to sacrifice product design or customization to get there.
When it comes to the iPhone, pretty much any competing smartphone using the Android OS, RIM, or Windows Phone 7 OS, will have a similar subsidized price. There may be times when a carrier will cut prices to move product, such as those two-for-one deals at Verizon Wireless. But since Verizon didn’t grow its postpaid subscription roster as much as they hoped in the last quarter, the days may be numbered for such product giveaways.
You can rest assured that there won’t be any two-for-one deals if and when the iPhone joins Verizon’s product list. Apple wouldn’t accept such a marketing scheme for a moment, and Verizon clearly would have to cede major levels of control to get an iPhone to sell. That the iPad is already available almost certainly cements the likelihood such a deal is already in place.
In any case, the next time someone tells you that Apple’s gear is way overpriced, remind them of the iPad, iPhone and iPod. At $49 for an iPod shuffle, you can’t call it costly, nor can you say anything of the sort about the $499 iPad. Indeed, that trendsetting product is priced far more cheaply than pretty much any alleged analyst expected when it was introduced earlier this year.
The version 2.0 iPad will likely be priced the same, since there appears to be no incentive for Apple to drop the price. At the same time, it’ll have more features; consider the presence of a camera almost a lock.
But Apple did reduce the price of the MacBook Air, and that decision has made it tremendously — surprisingly — competitive, even against cheap PC gear.
Mechanically stuck.
I’ve had the same thing happen to worn out slot loading DVD drives in the past but this one has had minimal use.
Luckily the Mac is pretty much limitted to facebooking and web surfing so it’s not a huge problem, it came up because I bought a new printer this weekend and had to load a driver.
There are always the outlying mechanical lemon drives that get by the inspections. How close are you to an Apple Store? And did you get the extended warranty with your notebook? If not, you can attempt to replace the drive yourself. It would be less expensive. Here is are Instructions for how to remove the drive:
Replacing MacBook Superdrive YouTube.
Replacing MacBook Pro Superdrive YouTube.
Replacement Superdrive source.
However, it may be as simple as a loose screw and the drive being lifted a bit from the position it should be in to align with the slot in the case. I'd check that first, before ordering the replacement drive.
Oh, the reason I mentioned the Apple Store... You might want to try them. They will often fix these things free, even on out of warranty computers. You can never know... they might also charge you. It's sort of like Russian Roulette.
A friend took his two year old, out of warranty Notebook Mac in with a problem... they took it into the back and after an hour came back and said "We can't fix it here... and it would take several weeks of turn around to send it where it can be fixed. So the manager said to give you a new one." Handed him his old computer and a brand new MacBook Pro... already configured with his files transferred, and said, "Have a nice day!"
I’m about an hour away from the Apple Store and the warranty has expired. I’ll take a look at your links when I get home. I’ve changed drives on various laptops in the past, I will probably change it out myself.
In fact, I had an HP about 6-7 years ago that in a matter of two years, I was on the third CD drive and second hard drive, all of them changed out by yours truely. It was after opening it up for about the 4th time that I ran across the receipt for the computer. I had purchased an extended waranty and had forgotten. Doh!!!
There are no non-Apple laptops that have the same features as the new Macbook Air, that are under $1000. Period.
The only way to "find" one today is to disregard reality. For example, to call a rotating hard drive the same as a solid-state drive, ignoring speed, power, and weight, and mentioning only capacity and price.
I don't have time to recap all the silly things that were said in this and similar threads about the Macbook Air, but let's put it this way:
Show me a non-Apple product that has the same characteristics as the new Macbook Air, and costs less. I don't think one exists at present. Obviously, one will come into being, probably within a year -- Apple leads the way, and it's not impossible for others to copy.
But as usual, all they can do is copy. And while they can do a copy cheaper (cost), it's also cheaper (quality).
My wife told me it’s time to fix the Mac notebook, she had another stuck disc last night. I looked at your youtube videos, they already had the laptops disassembled. I think they left out a few interesting steps in the process.
Good point.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.