Steve Jobs £800 Extra for MacBooks, Windows Laptops Cheaper
Category: Apple, News | October 15th, 2008
Now we all know that the new Apple MacBooks were hot stuff yesterday and we are learning more each day and what we found via ITProPortal is very interesting indeed and leaves us asking the question “Steve Jobs, why so expensive?
Apple is charging customers £800+ for new Macbooks when compared to Windows laptops according to the source. Apple’s Steve Jobs has bumped up the price of its entry-level Apple Macbook from £699 to £719, wonder why? ITProPortal researched into this a little and found that buyers will pay about £800 more to get the MacOSX and all the trimmings.
Now for the 13-inch 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Apple Macbook with 250GB SATA Drive, 2GB DDR3 memory, a Slot-in DVD writer, integrated NVIDIA 9400M graphics chipset and a few other tit-bits you will pay £1149, now with the same set-up the Dell Vostro 1310 with 3GB memory but a lesser Geforce 8400M GS graphics module, you will pay around £680. The list goes on, so please visit ITProPortal for the full run down, please do post your comments though; we would love to know what you think.
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Apple Charges Customers Up to 69%+ Extra For New Macbooks When Compared To others
Far as I know none of the ones you mentioned have the same battery life, features, can run OS X good. Nor are they made from Alu.
It doesn’t change the fact that compared to previous generation MacBooks, those seem overpriced. New chipset, new display (same resolution though), new case and $200 more? And that is compared to the price from a year ago? I refuse to consider new chipset’s cost as really significant - they didn’t raise Air’s price, and they would have otherwise.
In fact, I think there’re two reasons why it’s a bad moment to buy a MacBook or MacBook Pro. First, Apple’s market share rose, so Jobs is milking it right now. Second, I suppose most of the cost was about new case and iMac like screen bezel, product transition, that is. Apple needs to get it back, so right now we’re paying for the sheer novelty of it.
Of course, if anyone needs a laptop right now, I can see how those would still be better than a PC. But I think it’s going to be a bad year for buying a MacBook or a MacBook Pro, in terms of value.
I don’t know what computer you configured, but I configured the XPS M1330 (which is 1.3″ thick at its thickest point compared to 0.95″ for the MacBook) to be comparable to the Apple offerings (eg vista ultimate, LED screen, 2.4GHz CPU, a comparable battery and bluetooth), and the dell comes out to around £839, resulting in about £310 difference.
The non-tangible differences come with battery life (a user claims the battery lasts only 2.5 hours with the upgraded 6-cell battery vs 5 hours claimed performance with the MacBook’s battery), slower RAM (667MHz vs 1066MHz), ethernet (100mbps vs 1gbps), compatibility (Dell can run windows, mac can run OS X and windows), the keyboard (non backlit in the dell vs the backlit of the macbook), wireless speed (b/g in the dell vs b/g/n in macbook) and the design material (plastic vs aluminium).
Can you install at full OSX in those notebook?.
IMHO :The success of Apple is the couple of hardware and software. And for bonus you can install Windows and OSX in the same machine (virtualization and/or bootcamp). . I tried the opposite, running OSX in a pc machine and wasn’t unable to do it, hackingtosh is unstable and virtualization is too slow.
Its the same as the console wars, ps3 can cost x3 times the price of a wii, yet if you want to play “little big planet”, then the only choose is to buy a ps3.
In the US the new 15inch 2.53Ghz Macpro is $2500. Usually in Korea(here) the price is that plus about $300. No problem. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the Apple Korea store and found the price was 3,890,000won! And the 17incher is 4,390,000won! Two days ago the old 15inch was about 2,600,000won, and the 17inch was about 2,900,000won. As far as I know, the 17incher hasn’t been updated. We usually trade at about 1,000won to the dollar. I know the won is down about 20% right now, but that doesn’t explain this.
The prices people in the US are reasonable, but people buying overseas (UK and Korea) are getting gouged something awful. Can someone please explain this to me?
I would really appreciate it.
P.S. My first thought was to buy Asus too.
Comment by Riz — October 15, 2008 @ 9:41 pm