MacBooks sweep Consumer Reports laptop ratings | Laptop | MacUser | Macworld:
“The venerable publication gave the company top rankings in three of its notebook categories: 13-inch machines, 14-inch to 16-inch laptops, and 17-inch models.
The MacBooks bested their competitors, despite the lower cost of many of the Windows machines rated.”
(Via Macworld.)
And that’s what the laptop hunters ads always seem to miss: you go cheap, you get cheap.
Daring Fireball: Regarding the Verizon and ‘iPhone Lite’ Rumors:
“The reason why Apple did this with the iPod, and why I’m convinced they’ll do it again with the iPhone, is that when it comes to managing the balance between per-unit profit and overall market share, Apple is determined to err on the side of market share. (Not as much with the Mac, however — the difference being that PCs are now a firmly established market.) Most gadget companies, when they have a smash hit on their hands, try to milk it. A typical company that found itself selling millions of $400 hard-drive-based digital music players would try its best to continue selling the same $400 hard-drive-based digital music players for as long as it could. Apple, despite an overwhelming 70 percent market share, aggressively added features and drove down its own prices, year after year after year.”
(Via Daring Fireball.)
Good analysis on how Apple “thinks” in “Erring on the Side of Market Share.” I found the monopolistic discussion towards the end, the most trenchant. Companies tend to be “sales-guy” driven who want to grow market share at the expense of quality/consumer value/innovation or go for profits by milking the cash cow once they have a monopolistic position. Apple since the turn of the millennium has avoided away this successfully. That’s why I spit fire on Microsoft. They are like Apple in the late 90’s (pre-Jobs) when I was considering leaving the platform/going with Mac clones. I wish Windows 7 née Vista SP2 continues to flop. Microsoft has shown that it can learn its lesson given enough pain. Security in Vista is demonstrably more robust. I’m hopeful they will experience enough pain to finally concentrate on usability in Windows 7. That’s good for everybody, even Mac OS X users.
Apple Moves Closer to Snow Leopard Release:
“If Apple can pull off this effort, the company will be able to further capitalize on its hot iPhone mobile platform to make inroads against Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile in enterprise environments.”
(Via eWeek.)
Apple might actually have an executable enterprise strategy here instead of trying to boil the ocean by offering me-too software to established enterprise competitors.
Mobile Access Server an important sign of where Apple might be going with the iPhone platform. Apple is incrementally trying to attack large enterprise akin to the so-called halo effect of the iPhone on Mac sales in the consumer market. Is this Apple setting the stage for Apple to back the iPhone platform in the enterprise? It sounds interesting since they would be replicating Microsoft’s success against mainframe/Unix. Microsoft used Office to weaponize Windows against Unix environments. I think the hardware analog here is Office/iPhone Windows/Xserve.
Mac vs. PC: What You Don’t Get for $699 – BusinessWeek:
“PC makers in the Windows camp have done everything possible to make their products progressively worse by cutting corners to save pennies per unit and boost sales volume. There’s good reason Apple is seeing healthy profits while grabbing market share. It refuses to budge on quality and so charges a higher price. Rather than running ads that seem clever at first but really aren’t, the Windows guys ought to take the hint and just build better computers.”
(Via BusinessWeek.)
How a $699 really costs $1500 but all you really get is $699 worth of computer.
The Macalope » Blog Archive » No, no, no:
“Just to be clear, this is not a rational argument they’re trying to make, so don’t treat it like one. Don’t waste your time refuting horse shit. When someone calls you a name, you don’t say ‘Am not!’ You say ‘Yeah? That’s not what your mother said while I was…’ Etc.
Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.”
(Via The Macalope.)
Microsoft’s ‘Apple tax’ needs a refund | Mac | MacUser | Macworld:
“Kay would have you believe that everything can be reduced to quantitative measurements, and that’s emblematic of the way Microsoft operates. But there are plenty of important qualitative differences as well. The report bandies about the term ‘cool’ like a four-letter word, but it mistakes the trappings of ‘cool’ for its substance. True coolness is never really about appearance and only those who just don’t get it claim that it is. Apple’s computers are fantastically designed and aesthetically attractive, but that’s not what makes them cool—what makes them cool is what they allow their users to do. And for many, that’s worth a few extra bucks.”
(Via Macworld.)
Microsoft’s latest ad attacks Mac aesthetics, computing power — RoughlyDrafted Magazine:
“The strangest point of this ad is that Giampaolo didn’t get the portability, battery life, and power he was looking for, he just ended up with a cheap-appearing machine that obscured its real technical limitations under a flashy layer of misleading, specification-oriented marketing, the very thing he thought he was avoiding with HP: buying a brand rather than a computer. And that’s exactly what Microsoft wants people to do: buy its brand rather than a computer that does what they want it to do.”
(Via Roughly Drafted.)
Great summary on why Microsoft can’t even sell itself. It has to sell others. I wonder how Dell or Lenovo feel about this ad.
“At the risk of stating the obvious, using advanced technology to predict when a volcano might erupt, at the most basic level, allows local officials to, um, save people’s lives by evacuating them. It’s hard to think of a better use of government money.
Why is Jindal’s line looking even worse now? Because, as you’ve likely heard, Alaska’s Mount Redoubt, 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, erupted last night. And a USGS geologist confirmed to TPMmuckraker that a portion of the stimulus spending for volcano monitoring that Jindal lampooned has been slated to go to USGS monitoring Redoubt.”
(Via Talking Points Memo.)
This from a man who speaks of the government role in properly handling natural disasters. It looks like the GOP is stuck on stupid, to coin a phrase. First Palin. Now Jindal. When will the GOP this figure out?
UPDATE: I realize there is a double irony here that this eruption occurred in Alaska, Palin’s state. I wonder if she rejected the volcano monitoring money too.
iPhone 3.0 to offer MobileMe users “Find My iPhone†feature — RoughlyDrafted Magazine:
“When activated, the phone opens an alert that says, ‘this enables the ’Find my iPhone‘ service on your MobileMe account at me.com.’ It would appear that the service obtains the iPhone’s location and makes it available to the MobileMe user on request if the unit is lost or stolen.”
(Via RoughlyDrafted Magazine.)
Awesome sauce.
Netbooks killing off sickly Windows PC sales — RoughlyDrafted Magazine:
“That has hit Microsoft particularly hard, resulting in an 11% drop in profits over its year ago quarter and plans to cut 5,000 jobs over the next year and a half. On the other hand, Apple posted its best quarterly results ever, with 9% growth in its Mac sales over the previous year.”
(Via RoughlyDrafted Magazine.)
This what happens when you have to focus on making great products in order to survive.
