“Apple made a few jabs at Microsoft during Tuesday’s notebook event, but if I were a Windows executive today, I’d probably be breathing a sigh of relief,” Ina Fried reports for CNET.
“Although Apple did revamp its entire Mac product line on Tuesday, it didn’t hit the $800 price point that the rumor mills had projected,” Fried reports. “The new laptops seem nice enough, and they might be enough to keep Apple on a roll, but Apple didn’t take the Mac into any new segments of the market.”
Fried reports, “Clearly fearing that Apple was on the brink of such a price move, Microsoft launched a pre-emptive attack on Monday, with Vice President Brad Brooks going into great detail about an ‘Apple tax’ ahead of what even he thought would be the introduction of significantly cheaper Macs.”
“But in the end, Apple’s attack was limited to those words and the company’s usual arsenal of elegant but pricey machines,” Fried reports. “Apple has made some significant advances, to be sure, but it looks as if this year’s Mac-vs.-PC battle will remain at the high end of the market rather than dropping down to the mainstream.”
Fried reports, “Apple’s market share is significant and growing. Although its share of the global market is only a few percentage points, its share of the dollars spent on PCs, particularly in the United States, is far more significant.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Quick, someone ask Mikey Dell how amassing “market share” is working out for him. In the last quarter, Dell had to generate 2.2 times the revenue just to make 58% of Apple’s profit. Not good.
Why kill yourself trying to educate clueless Wal-Mart shoppers in order to make a few pennies per unit when you can make advanced, elegant machines that informed customers highly value?
These new laptops are a minimal update at best. Pure style of real features… Very Sad. I won’t be replacing my 2007 MBP on this refresh – thats for sure!
I was hoping for a $800 laptop, that would have been exciting. Come on Apple, let’s take this fight to Micro$oft and finish them!
> These new laptops are a minimal update at best. Pure style of real features… Very Sad.
You must be joking. The old MacBook had Intel graphics. The new ones have NVIDIA GeForce 9400M. And LED backlighting. Even if you don’t care about the “cut from a block of aluminum” construction, calling it a “minimal update at best” is moronic, “at best.”
That’s partly because this refresh will set the groundwork for Snow Leopard. Your Core 2 Duo probably won’t benefit from the OpenCL features that these computers will get for free. The mega hertz race has stalled for now and greater power for home computing will be seen through multicores. The new OpenCL enabled Snow Leopard potentially whilst itself better optimized for speed will get another boost from the GPU and newer Macs really will get snappier from the upgrade.
minimal.
the construction makes it immensely more durable, the graphics should be a huge improvement, the touchpad looks incredible, plus several feature bumps…..
i swear, there is no reason to keep coming here. the comments are regularly made by people with exactly zero vision.
Skeeter, you fool, it’s not style. Do you know the difference between refresh and redesigned?
A MBP won’t flex like your Dell will. A MBP is now built like a brick shit-house.
A Dell is built without the brick or the house. I think you can smell what’s left.
I have a question that has been on my mind since this morning’s presentation of new products: Has Apple overhyped itself during the last analyst call by saying that they will be producing products this quarter that the competition cannot match?
Is “The Brick” way of production really that drastically different and important to consumers? I am assuming that by switching to the new material and production, Apple will be saving money, but after seeing today’s prices with the products, it is actually increasing the prices on the customers (as is the case in the entry-level next-gen MacBook.) So, in the end, it is not really revolutionary for the customer (other than perhaps in the case of overall weight reduction, but is that really more important than price?).
Am I missing something here, or has Apple taken a wrong turn today, when it could’ve passed on those savings to the customer to a certain level (and don’t even dare mentioning the $999 old-gen price redux — I don’t buy it.). 🙁
The laptop under $1000 is a new segment for Apple.
Sure, you can find a bunch of advertised laptops for less than Apple, but they aren’t ones that people actually want to buy. They are just to lure people in, so they can be sold more expensive, but actually usable models.
@CYxodus
“I was hoping for a $800 laptop…”
And I was hoping for a $100 Apple MBP! That would really do-in Microsoft!
But really, you or me being a cheap sh!t is perhaps not a compelling incentive for Apple to go down the road of crap components, shoddy materials, bargain-basement manufacturing contracts, and eliminating R&D;.
See you at Wal-Mart.
We will have to see how many C2D notebooks priced below 1299 will have multitouch glass trackpads, nvida GeForce 9400M graphics, LED–backlit displays, 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM, 1066MHz frontside bus, DisplayPort, and the all aluminum body rigidity of a MacBook, before we can tell if this is a good deal or not.
‘Quick, someone ask Mikey Dell how amassing “market share” is working out for him. In the last quarter, Dell had to generate 2.2 times the revenue just to make 58% of Apple’s profit. Not good.”
———————
Were not talking about Dell pricepoints or margins here..
There is no reason that Apple can’t make a nicely equipped yet profitable computer for $899.
It doesn’t have to be low end junk either..
I don’t care if the whiners think they’re too expensive and/or don’t like them or not. I’ve already put in my order for the new $1,299 MacBook model and I can’t wait until it arrives!
“Why kill yourself trying to educate clueless Wal-Mart shoppers in order to make a few pennies per unit when you can make advanced, elegant machines that informed customers highly value?”
No FireWire. They are not advanced elegant machines, they won’t even hook up to ubiquitous technology developed by Apple itself. USB 2.0 does not remotely replace what FireWire can do.
I can’t consider these machines to be successful designs with out FW. They remind me of Apple’s puck mouse. Nice to look at but bad to use.
“There is no reason that Apple can’t make a nicely equipped yet profitable computer for $899. “
I agree. I really think Apple missed the mark with these new machines.
“I don’t care if the whiners think they’re too expensive and/or don’t like them or not.”
They are too expensive. People will buy them but their price point will keep them from picking up significant new marketshare.
The issue is not whether Apple’s existing customers will buy these machines but rather if Apple can pick up new additional customers, and I don’t think these will help pull in people who would not have already purchased a Mac. Apple loses a certain number of customers who would have bought them due to lack of FireWIre and another percentage based on the high cost of entry.
They may be pushing the technology ahead with the new track pads, I’d have to see them to decide, but it comes at a cost to marketshare now.
“No FireWire,” twilightmoon whined.
Then get a MacBook Pro and shut the fuck up.
Apple has been gaining market share quickly BEFORE these cheaper and better laptops came out. Apple will continue to gain market share despite the groaning and gnashing of teeth by geeks.
Firewire is generally not used by newer consumers, especially compared to USB2. The expresscard slot offers firewire or better for those with pro machines. There was a time before firewire, there will be a time after.
The glass trackpad has absolutely nothing to do with market share.
Sheesh. Stop complaining. These things are going to be very popular. Just suck up and deal with the success. It’s such a tough pill to swallow, after all.
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Looks to me like they nearly eliminated the MacBook line and added a couple of 13″ MacBook Pros. The latter was a good idea, the former not.
Very disappointing. I am an Apple fan but when I try to convince some of my friends to switch, the price differential is always a big issue. I kind of understand that comparing an $800 Dell to an MacBook is not fair, but what do you say to someone who can get a 15″ Dell with 4 GB ram, 300 GB hard drive for below $1000?
Apple would kill the competition if they came out with an $800 notebook.
@twilightmoon
Who’s paying you to write your schtick?
Yes. Without an $800 notebook offering from Apple, Microsoft has exclusive access to the “Trailer-trash” market.
I do think you need firewire on the macbook. I’ll not be buying one without it. No firewire makes several of my existing external drives useless.
The other new features- I love them. but not enough to give up $600 worth of hardware.
No Firewire, does it still come with iMovie and iDVD? Now I have to purchase a firewire add-on to transfer my movies, or spend the extra for the pro? Are the low end books just for gamers. You give us better graphics and speed, but we have to search around to use them with our video cameras.
Does seem short sighted.
Find another $1299 laptop that can drive a 30″ monitor.
@Greg L
Yes. Without an $800 notebook offering from Apple, Microsoft has exclusive access to the “Trailer-trash” market.
very nicely said.
I’ll be checking my bank balance to see if I’ll be buying the remaining plastic MacBook or a few more shares of stock. I know there isn’t enough for both and I know my iBook is nearing a problematic age. And, of course, the iBook is my only computer still running Tiger! In not too much time, my wife will be upgrading to Snow Leopard and I’ll be left with Leopard and Tiger – and I just do NOT want to wrap my head around supporting three OSs.
Do I want the faster FireWire version for $300 less? Or the slower nVidia version with the tougher case for the extra money? Tough decision, there. Very tough.