“With all the presidential campaign talk about American exceptionalism, it might be easy to forget that we do a pretty unexceptional job at some things — like shopping for computers,” Jon Fortt writes for Fortune.
“No question, we Americans buy a lot of them – the latest estimates say more than 75% of U.S. households have at least one PC, among the highest ownership rates in the world. The problem is, we are hooked on the underpowered, bargain-bin variety, the sort that putter around on the Internet, choke on high-definition video, and struggle to render 3D games,” Fortt writes.
“What should we Americans be buying that we’re not? Something called a graphics processor is high on the list,” Fortt writes. “That’s why when Apple unveiled new MacBook laptops last week, the specs turned a few heads. Unlike the other mainstream PC makers, Apple has chosen to stop using the standard-issue integrated graphics that come packaged with Intel chips, and switch to a new setup from Nvidia, which Apple says can run about five times faster. Apple will continue to source the main laptop processors from Intel, but those Intel processors will now work in tandem with a respectable graphics chip, part of Nvidia’s GeForce 9400M chipset.”
Fortt writes, “Could this endorsement from tech’s hottest company finally put graphics processors on the map? The folks at Nvidia certainly hope so. The day after Apple’s announcement, I caught up with Drew Henry, general manager of Nvidia’s media communications processor business unit, and he was practically gushing. ‘I think this is the beginning of the era of visual computing,’ he said. ‘I believe that Oct. 14, 2008 will be remembered as the moment when an inflection point happened.'”
“Intel, meanwhile, is not sitting still,” Fortt writes. “In the hours after Apple’s laptop announcement, it put out a statement saying it intended to fight hard for Apple’s future business.”
“Will Apple’s move really make U.S. computer buyers smarter about buying PCs? In the short term, probably not… But Apple’s embrace of graphics is clearly just a first step — it’s only a matter of time before it begins offering similar graphics performance in systems priced at $1,000 or less, and then in every computer it makes,” Fortt writes. “And that’s when things will get really interesting.”
More in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take:
We can’t ship junk. There are thresholds we can’t cross because of who we are. The difference is, we don’t offer stripped-down, lousy products. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs, August 7, 2007
Low, low sticker prices are a trick played on the ignorant by PC box assemblers that Apple simply refuses to perform. Instead, educated buyers should compare similar spec’d systems, factor in the bullet points below, and see if the Windows PC offers more value as a Mac:
• Which operating systems the machine can run: Macs are OS-unlimited, Dell et al. are OS-limited: no Mac OS X for you)
• Which software the machine can run: Macs can run all the world’s software, Dell et al. cannot: no iLife, Final Cut, etc. for you)
• How much the machine costs you over time: Anti-virus subscriptions, support, repairs, wasted time, frustration, annual wipe and reinstall Windows, etc.: no fun for you)
Windows PCs offer more headaches, yes; more value, no. Remember, most Mac users have made a conscious technology choice (at one time or another, they’ve usually been stuck with Windows at work and/or school) and are therefore better informed than most Windows PC users (who have never or hardly used a modern Mac). Even if Macs really did cost double, we’d gladly pay it while considering it a steal – because we know better.
Related articles:
Ars Technica reviews Apple’s new 15-inch MacBook Pro: You’ll fall in love – October 20, 2008
Houston Chronicle reviews Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook: sturdy, glossy, and alluring – October 20, 2008
iLounge reviews new 13-inch MacBook: Apple got it so, so right – October 17, 2008
Unibody: Apple new 15-inch MacBook Pro and 13-inch MacBook completely disassembled – October 16, 2008
Top 10 things you might not know about Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook – October 16, 2008
5 of Amazon’s top 10 best-selling computers are new Apple MacBooks; None offer Windows Vista – October 16, 2008
PC Magazine reviews Apple’s new 15-inch Macbook Pro: ‘Among the best notebooks on the market’ – October 15, 2008
Desperate Microsoft goes negative based on unfounded rumors to undercut Apple’s new MacBook launch – October 15, 2008
PC Magazine reviews Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook: Glamorous, glorious and magnificent design – October 15, 2008
TIME Mag on new MacBooks: Windows PC makers wallow in confusion; Apple offers moments of Zen – October 15, 2008
Apple unveils new MacBook, MacBook Pro, updated MacBook Air models; Updated white MacBook now $999 – October 14, 2008
Pfeiffer Consulting: Mac vs Windows: Total Cost of Ownership, Productivity and Return on Investment – March 30, 2006
Windows to Mac switchers: recommendations and Total Cost of Ownership analysis – September 29, 2005
ACSI: Customer satisfaction rockets for Apple’s Mac; rest of Windows PC industry drops again – August 19, 2008
ChangeWave: Mac OS X Leopard satisfaction far outpaces Vista; Apple Mac strong despite PC slowdown – March 26, 2008
ChangeWave: Apple’s iPhone races to huge lead in customer satisfaction – October 18, 2007
Apple Mac desktops, notebooks top PC Magazine’s Annual Reader Satisfaction survey – again – September 18, 2007
Survey: Apple iPhone nabs unprecedented 92% satisfaction rating (plus likes and dislikes) – August 16, 2007
Apple again tops the field in LAPTOP Magazine’s ‘Tech Support Showdown 2007’ – June 19, 2007
Apple again leads Consumer Reports’ survey for notebook, desktop computer tech support, value, more – October 16, 2006
Apple Mac desktops, notebooks top PC Magazine’s Annual Reader Satisfaction survey – again – August 22, 2006
Apple far outscores all other PC makers in Consumer Reports Computer Tech Support Survey – May 05, 2006
Apple Mac desktops, portables top PC Magazine’s 2005 Reader Satisfaction survey – August 24, 2005
Apple Computer products top PC Magazine’s annual ‘Best of the Year’ survey – December 16, 2004
Apple Macs top PC Magazine’s ’17th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey’ – August 10, 2004
Apple leads PC Magazine’s 16th annual Service and Reliability Survey – July 10, 2003
As with many important technologies, Apple is not the first to implement them, but they make it mainstream. For example, USB, bluetooth, WiFi, even the original 3.5″ floppy drive.
With Snow Leopard, GPU is one of the core enhancement that Apple will bring.
Even typical graphical user interfaces will change and actual static screen will be like terminal green screen in few years from now.
The complete GUI experience is about to change and Apple will reinvent it.
Competiton, start your photocopiers!
I wouldn’t pay $50 for a Windows PC.
an additional major bullet point is the mac’s high resale-value. try to sell a pc after 3 years. good luck with that. have a look at ebay for the second-hand mac market. 25-35% value after 3 years is quiet common.
A Windows PC is like a pile of cat poo;
Asking me to pay a low price for it does not make it any more desirable.
” . . . and he was practically gushing.”
I hope someone had a mop handy. People could get hurt.
Uhh, this is a silly article. General issue visual computing has been around since 1984, when the original Mac was released (and 1983 if you use Lisa as the starting point, but that wasn’t a very popular system).
I’d say the inflection point happened about a quarter century ago!
I’m sorry but an entry level laptop doesn’t need a “uni-body” enclosure and a 5x faster CPU, and it most certainly should not be priced at $1299.
There is a huge gap between the “low end junk” that MDN rants about and the way overspeced MacBook that Apple is currently shipping. There is no reason that Apple can’t build a respectable entry level laptop for $899 and still make a nice profit.
The real truth is that an educated consumer, which there are few of, will pick Mac every time when everything is considered. But, too many consumers are price driven and pick the least expensive box and then wonder why it underperforms and needs to be replaced every two years or so. Steve Jobs is right in designing and manufacturing high quality, full featured products which work well and last a long time. Who has the better business model now Michael Dell ?
When I buy a computer I factor in the shelf life of the product. This is the time the computer will be up-to-date enough to be useful before it becomes obsolete. I have found the shelf life of Apple products to be 2 to 3 times longer than any Windows only machine. When I am done with my PC it is usually because it dies on its on. The Apple machines are given other tasks to complete in their old age. For Example: I now have a 2001 Apple iBook running a digital camera for time elapse photography. I have another 8 year old Apple laptop that wasn’t cutting edge enough for work to be my home alarm system. Trust me, you 8 year old computer might be slow at the office but as a home alarm system it is AMAZING! …my point is that if you factor in shelf life, the Apple is by far the best deal on the market. I could also pick the low hanging fruit by saying that if you calculate the time YOU spend fooling around with a Windows machine, the Apple is WAY cheaper than the typical Windows machine.
I read a statistic that 30% of all millionaires shop at Wal-Mart….well, no kidding, they are the only ones with enough time on their hands to keep returning things.
The problem is, here’s the thought process your average crap-PC-buying consumers go through:
All I do are basic things like web browsing, email, etc.
Therefore, all I need is a basic unit.
That machine there for $500, being the cheapest, must be a basic unit.
It already has way more of everything than what I have now, so it must be more than sufficient for my needs. Why should I pay more? Sure I’ll get a faster processor or more storage or whatever, but all I’m doing is basic things!
Sure, a Mac would be nice, but I don’t need that much computer, and don’t want to pay that much more, I’m used to Windows anyways. Plus, [insert Mac canard here], [here], and [here].
[Purchases $500 PC laptop of questionable quality using 2-year-old parts]
[Calls back in 1-6 months extremely angry that they already have some problem or other with the “brand new” computer they purchased, demanding we fix it for free even if it’s something to do with the software and/or something they caused.]
[Gets so angry they refuse to purchase another PC from this company, and instead buy their next piece-of-crap PC somewhere else, where they are treated much worse and end up swearing them off… the cycle begins again…]
If I try to convince them they need a $1000+ laptop whether it be Mac or PC, they’re just going to leave and go buy a cheap P.O.S. somewhere else.
On the upside, more and more are looking at Macs, where the the “basic unit” is actually a really good machine. I encourage them strongly to buy the accompanying mac video-training guide, as this eases the transition from Windows greatly. One of my hopes is that people will learn to do more with their computer than just web browsing and email. There is so much more you can do, and I can’t help but wonder if there is anyone out there who doesn’t have at least one thing they secretly wished they knew how to do with their computer. Macs come with the hardware and software you need to do more, whether it be photography, video editing, making your own webpage, or whatever.
I do sort of wish Apple would just bite the bullet and start pre-loading iWork on every machine, because that would be a real selling point and destroy Office. The problem with that, and the real reason I think Apple HASN’T done so, is because many people still need (or think they need) Office for Mac, and pre-loading iWork (aside from possible anti-trust problems) would likely result in Microsoft killing Office for Mac within a year or two due to lack of sales.
@ mike – what you forget is that Apple CHOOSES to make their entry level $999. It’s their entry level, not some market dictated price point. Just like Mercedes has an entry level at say $30,000. Sure, they can make and market cheaper cars (they do in Europe), but they CHOOSE to market certain price points in the US market. Like Apple, they CHOOSE to ignore the sub $999 market. Because while they could make a cheap computer, they have standards.
I think the real problem is brainwashing. It’s taken a while for Apple to gain this momentum in the market, and the resistance has been a decade’s worth of brainwashing by the Windows PC crowd. They tried to make their boxes into disposable commodities, cheaper and cheaper, and for a while it worked. Now, slowly but surely, Apple is on the rise again. Some will argue not slowly LOL. And folks are realizing that they can spend $500 every year or two for a PC, or $1299 every 5 years for a Mac, and with all the other costs (service, repairs, software, anti virus, etc) that $1299 number is even less than it appears.
This is probably one of the stupidest articles the MacDefenseNetwork has ever linked. Performance GPUs have been widely used by every manufacturer (including Apple) for the last ten years. There’s nothing particularly special, novel or innovative about the use of 9400M processors in Apple laptops. Computers have had gaming/engineering level GPUs in both mobile and desktop markets for a long time, even some build-to-order entry-level boxes. How is this news?
This guy must be stuck in 1996 or something.
The article has a point somewhere, although it fails to argue it directly.
Most P.o.C sub- $600 Win machines come with integrated graphics and shared RAM. Entry-level Macs used to as well. The point here is, other than previous-gen plastic MB (which will most likely soon be discontinued), no Macs of today use integrated graphics with shared RAM, while ALL P.o.S. entry-level Win computers still do.
This allows Apple to explore the power of graphic processors by offloading some OS functions directly to the GPU, now that they know every Mac will have one. This may contribute the most appealing changes to the Snow Leopard.
I’m a PC convert, and huge Mac fan, but this article is fairly worthless. Sure there are a lot of crappy PCs and laptops out there, but I really don’t think those are the ones Apple should be being compared to. The high-end PC notebooks offer more direct comparisons and in many cases looking only from a hardware perspective, offer lower prices.
You mention the three bulleted points which basically boil down to:
Ability to run OS X: The problem here is that most PC users have never been given OS X to use for any period of time, so they haven’t had the opportunity to fall in love with it like a lot of us have. To an average PC or Linux user, this first bullet point means nothing and because they have no experience with OS X, doesn’t offer them any value.
Ability to run OS X specific apps: Same problem as before. Until they’ve seen the integration, the functionality and the ease-of use firsthand, they have no idea.
Machine cost over time: If you’re in the unfortunate position of having to run XP or (God forbid) Vista on your Mac, to achieve the ‘OS Unlimited’ thing, all of these same costs are there. You still need virus software and all the other Windows crap that’s associated with running a Windows box.
For most of the higher-end PC notebooks, the Mac wins every time if you appreciate the integration and design from a hardware perspective, and if you appreciate the power AND ease of use of OS X.
So this article is telling us early MacBook adopters that we were fools because we fell for Apple’s claim that the integrated graphics chip from Intel was good enough.
Gee thanks.
Highly recommended (for us suckers) huh MDN?
Things will never change. The only ones that whine about the “high” price of Macs and slam them as “toy” machines are the jealous ones who can’t afford them or don’t know how to save their money for one.
Do PC laptops ever use dedicated GPU’s like in the MacBook Pro?
If so, I’ve never seen one in any of my friend’s laptops.
Yes they do.
From the article,
The most affordable (ed. Apple) laptop to carry the chip so far costs $1,299, and folks like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) sell laptops with graphics processors for less money.
I think Apple will continue to offer Intel’s integrated graphics chipsets (the most recent version) in the lowest end Macs, the white plastic Macbook and Mac mini (or whatever replaces it).
Those system are still attractive designs. Steve Jobs said himself that the white plastic MacBook was a great product and it would be offered for a long time. There is no reason why it would not be refreshed with faster processors and new integrated Intel graphics as those options become available and affordable. The price will eventual reach $899.
Not everyone needs to play graphically intensive games or use Final Cut Pro.
@@Cubert,
The sentence you quote is talking about NVIDIA’s new integrated chip set – not separate GPU’s.
After re-reading the article, I agree with you. The article IS talking about an integrated chip set.
Here’s a link to an ASUS system (ASUS does make nice components) with a dedicated GPU.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220162
Specifically the specs are:
Graphics
GPU/VPU NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
Video Memory Dedicated 256MB
Graphic Type Dedicated Card
In general, they’re hard to find but a few exist. If I am not mistaken a few of the Alienware and FalconNorthwest machines also have dedicated GPU’s. But you do pay for what you get.