“Blame Duncan Riley,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“Last Wednesday, he posted an ‘exclusive’ on his blog — The Inquisitr — under the headline: ‘Apple to launch $800 laptop.’ Although his scoop was unsourced, the news that Apple was set to announce its cheapest notebook computer ever was picked up by Apple blogs and mainstream publications around the world — including the New York Times. Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi even published a spreadsheet calculating how much an $800 laptop would increase Apple’s available market,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
“So when Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s new line of laptops on Tuesday with starting prices of $1,299 for the MacBook and $1,999 for the MacBook Pro, you could almost hear the sound of Apple’s (AAPL) shares falling,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “What this means is that Apple is not — with one exception — lowering prices in order to grow its market share… The one exception is the original white MacBook — the best-selling MacBook ever, according to Jobs — which sold for $1,099 when it was introduced two years ago and will now sell for $999.”
“‘Apple is very good at pricing,’ says Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for The NPD Group, who believes Apple was right to hold the prices of the new MacBooks steady. ‘They haven’t run out of headroom yet. I expect they will eventually find a way to build out a line that will come in at $799, but they’ll do it in their own way and at their own pace,'” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
Full article here.
I’m out. Bought an HP 17″ with TV Tuner, Nvidia 256MB, Blu-Ray, 4GB, Bluetooth, etc. for under $1000. Apple is CRAZY with their prices. I’ll dual boot Ubuntu & Windows. As a consumer, it’s irrelevant how many pieces the insides are made of.
They have the PC/Laptop line hammered out, they have the music line hammered out, they have wireless communications hammered out. What could be next?
The next big thing will be mo-bettah Apple home entertainment gear.
IMHO
@TheRealist
Good for you. If that’s all you need then great. When my Dell laptop died on me I took the opportunity to get a great MacBook Pro. I dual boot with Vista and Leopard and virtualize XP. In fact XP is definitely snappier. Perhaps due to the 7200 hard disk, 2.4Ghz Core 2 duo and 4Gb of memory. Booting XP in under 15 seconds can only be described as a plus after switching.
@TheRealist
Good for you. Now get out of here and go play in a hp forum.
Well, you want cheap?
Apple will build top of the class machines.
How much can you build with $800?
I can’t say I’m dissapointed. But I don’t find a strong reason to switch from my current 15″ MacBook Pro (even though the new trackpad looks cool!)
Uh, Jobs is an ahole and Ives needs someone to help him pronounce aluminum. What the hell was that anyway? Crap what a lame keynote. And quite frankly a little creepy. The laptops are cool though……I guess
@TheRealist
And with your sub-$1000 machine, what kind of value-added software are you getting? OS X? iLife? Are you getting a built-in iSight camera? Are you getting a multi-touch trackpad? What kind of quality hardware are you getting for under $1000, will it last for 4-6 years? How much crapware will you have to uninstall from it before it’s a useable machine? What version of Windows are you getting with it, Vista Basic? Will you have to shell out extra money for a better version of Windows on top of things?
Granted, if the hardware specs you listed are *exactly* what you’re looking for, and you’re willing to do a lot of extra work to make the machine usable (wipe the HD, partition, install your OS’s) then yeah, Apple isn’t the company for you. But I don’t believe you represent the majority of consumers who simply want to buy a quality laptop that works out of the box without all that hassle.
If you’ll pardon the pun, you’re comparing Apples to oranges here.
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Who here would like a matte screen? ME. Glossy screens suck on laptops. Does Jobs even use this stuff? It’s irritating with screen glare.
I really hope for Mr. Elmer-DeWitt’s sake that he doesn’t purchase a large block of Apple stock subsequent to his “reliably sourced” rumor of an $800 laptop. One would hate to think that an analyst came up with this story in an attempt to suppress the stock’s value.
SEC?
very very boring new products, zzzzzzzzzzzzz
Well, I am happy that one of my predictions came true
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> Now, it remains to be seen, but I would anticipate a 15″ Macbook or Macbook Air…
Or, the Macbook Pro 15″ will come down in price perhaps….
As i said on a different news item on this forum:
so called analysts are getting a bit tiring to listen to. They pontificate on what Apple may or may not with prices and products, and it always seems to be in excess of what will actually happen, so after the announcement the stock tanks because of unmet “phony” expectations, and the parasites make their money on the sell orders, and then buy for their buddies. Shakespeare was wrong, the lawyers should come AFTER the stock brokers and analysts. They are the true parasites.”
MACs are too expensive. I can build a PC any way I want for less than half the price of a MAC. And it plays games. And Windows.
I’m a PC.
Your potential. Our passion.™
“The fact that the MacBook now lacks firewire cuts off millions of potential buyers who own firewire-based video cameras.”
IOW, OLD. Stop being a cheapass and buy a new camera. Sheesh.
“Investors don’t follow product pricing.”
You could just see the movement in the stock to each announcement Steve was making. Some speculators were following exactly what Apple was doing and assessing it’s long term prospects based on that.
“How much can you build with $800?”
A 15″ notebook with a 2GHz+ processor, 320MB disk and 4GB memory if you’re anyone else but Apple. That seems to be the problem. Apple’s 15″ and 17″ notebooks start in price about where everyone else’s high end notebooks end.
We have ten cameras, four of them the latest HiDef Canons only a few weeks old.
Once again, millions of people own the latest HiDef cameras and other fairly new cameras that the Macbook cannot transfer video from.
Bad decision on Apple’s part IMHO.
Yep, Apple stock drops because a potential rumor, started by someone outside of Apple, is false, that makes a hell of alot of sense. Like I said before, did you hear the rumor Steve Jobs is going on the next Russian Space Mission? What… that means he could be killed, tank the stock. Oh it was it different person with the last name Jobs, so what tank the stock. Oh the last name wasn’t even Jobs, too bad, the rumor that was never even close to the truth was false, tank the stock. What a bunch of dumb-shit investors!!!!!
“Once again, millions of people own the latest HiDef cameras and other fairly new cameras that the Macbook cannot transfer video from.”
The writing has been on the wall for Firewire for years. Why would anyone have brought a firewire only camera in the last few years? Most of the new ones have USB2.
“Apple stock for a loop”
does that make it a fruit loop?….
Yes it does. Now make something up about Apple Jacks.