Quote :

"We need a separate thread for when Apple makes things that other people innovated and sells them for more money"

[Edited on March 12, 2015 at 11:35 AM. Reason : gonna be a looooooooooooooong thread]

3/12/2015 11:35:38 AM

When more and more laptop manufacturers start releasing core M laptops for a fraction of the price Apple will have to drop the price of the new Macbook. They did it for the air.

3/12/2015 12:15:07 PM

i want someone to make an all-in-one that is as pretty as the iMac

3/12/2015 12:18:41 PM

Could care less about all in one desktops. They're underpowered. If I have a desktop it's going to be a full flown powerful computer.

3/12/2015 12:37:15 PM

my wife won't let me get a desktop unless it's "pretty"

3/12/2015 1:04:41 PM

What Apple seems to be good at it is doing things other manufacturers won't do for cost reasons because Apple can demand prices others could never get away with.

For example, the Retina displays broke the lock on 1920x1080 monitors the persisted for years for no good reason.

3/12/2015 1:24:16 PM

fuck 720 and 1080 computer screens, it's a terrible ratio for anything except watching a video

3/12/2015 3:04:55 PM

unless you like your icons too small to read

3/12/2015 3:14:39 PM

heck, i don't know why they bother making screens that aren't 4:3, since that's (roughly) the aspect ratio of human eyesight

3/12/2015 3:27:30 PM

^Because of the economies of scale for TV's. Widescreen has never really made sense for productivity, but then again most technology isn't used for productive purposes anymore

3/12/2015 4:54:12 PM

Quote :

"When more and more laptop manufacturers start releasing core M laptops for a fraction of the price Apple will have to drop the price of the new Macbook. They did it for the air."

If you actually believe that Apple allows other companies products to dictate their pricing, you really haven't been paying attention to anything they've done in the past decade or two.

3/14/2015 8:20:05 AM

Except they have...their prices on all their laptops have dropped since they were released to be more in line with competitors. I'm not saying 1:1 but I doubt the Macbook will stay at that price for long. The Macbook Air didn't.

3/14/2015 5:14:00 PM

^^The fact that they caved on phone size while still selling the 6+ at a competitive price point is pretty much them giving in to other manufacturers prices.

3/14/2015 7:43:45 PM

The price of the Air dropped because the price of the components (namely SSDs) dropped significantly between 1st and 2nd generations. You can't just say that they dropped the price to compete with other manufacturers without providing at least a hint of evidence to support this line of thinking. correlation !=causation.

^That makes less than no sense. Apple has been using the same pricing structure for the iPhone since the 3G. This year they're offering a premium version for $100 more. What, do you expect them to double the price of the plus just because they're Apple? It's not like their two options for pricing are "fucking retarded" and "whatever the other guys are doing" Pricing it where they think it will sell doesn't mean they give two shits about where the other guys are pricing their phones. Again correlation does not equal causation. If anything, the price of the 6 plus was based on the price of the 6, which, as I said, has been priced the same as every other iPhone for the last 7 years. If anything, the other guys are just pricing their premium devices near Apple's pricepoint in order to appeal to the same type of consumer.

3/15/2015 1:18:33 AM

so a 4 year old Air benchmarks better than the new Macbook?

4/2/2015 12:49:13 PM

It's not really that surprising to hear really. It's not supposed to be a workhorse, it's supposed to be as thin as possible and fanless with decent enough battery life and enough horsepower to be able to check email and facebook while you're at a coffee shop. If you want something powerful enough to do photoshop or video editing on, there are other things available from Apple or other manufacturers that will do that just fine.

4/2/2015 2:16:44 PM

but it costs significantly more than even a new Air

4/2/2015 2:27:16 PM

Then...don't buy it. I'm not really seeing what point you're trying to make here. Obviously it's not for everyone. Hell, I don't even think it's for ANYONE. But you could say the same thing about the first gen Airs as well, and yet here we are several generations down the road and those have evolved into something worth owning. I don't think that the new Macbook represents something that people will want right now, but yet something that will get better in time and eventually will be the thing to have. I just can't, for the life of me, figure out why everyone is getting their panties in such a bunch over something that is so obviously overpriced and underpowered. Do you go around talking shit about every new product that you don't like, or is hating on Apple just a special source of joy?

4/2/2015 2:32:24 PM

Quote :

"The price of the Air dropped because the price of the components (namely SSDs) dropped significantly between 1st and 2nd generations. You can't just say that they dropped the price to compete with other manufacturers without providing at least a hint of evidence to support this line of thinking. correlation !=causation."

The margins on MacBooks have fallen model-to-model since they moved to the Intel architecture. Today with the exception of the "new" MacBook, the rest of the line is basically commodity priced with every other laptop manufacturer.

So while they haven't necessarily dropped the MSRP on their models, their margin have taken a hit as they continue to put more hardware in for the same price points which ARE driven by competitive pressure from other manufacturers. The intent of what neodata686 said is correct.

4/2/2015 7:28:49 PM

Quote :

"Today with the exception of the "new" MacBook, the rest of the line is basically commodity priced with every other laptop manufacturer."

Except for we were actually talking specifically about the price of the new Macbook and how Apple doesn't price it to compete with anyone else.

So yeah, aside from the only thing we were talking about, he's totally correct.

Hell, even still, you and I both are saying that as the price of the components go down, so does the overall price of the products. That's just basic economics. I still maintain (and not a single person has replied to me so far with even the slightest bit of evidence to suggest otherwise) that Apple doesn't give a shit about where similar "competing" products are priced. Their MO is to build sleek products, price them with a hefty profit margin, and let people that want to buy them buy them. You think they couldn't produce a barebones "netbook" type product and sell it for $300 if they wanted to compete on the low end of pricing? Apple doesn't compete on price. They never have.

Quote :

"their margin have taken a hit as they continue to put more hardware in for the same price points which ARE driven by competitive pressure from other manufacturers"

Do you have numbers to back this up? I've been googling for the last few minutes trying to find profit margins for their products, but they're practically impossible to find. My gut tells me that you're talking out of your ass again, however. Year-to-year, most improvements to the Macbook are minimal at best. Add some keyboard backlighting here, a processor bump there. Make sure the ports go from displayport to thunderbolt. And the big updates like adding a retina screen and the beefy GPU that come with it definitely come with a price bump to go with it. The 2012 MBP retina cost $400 more than the product it replaced. So I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that Apple is adding all this new expensive hardware, not raising their prices, and allowing that to cut into their profit margins. Because I'm just not seeing it.

4/2/2015 10:51:40 PM

You two should compare notes with each other on how Bill Gates' and Steve Jobs' respective dicks taste.

4/3/2015 1:32:41 AM

ehe

4/3/2015 8:04:49 AM

^^ You're right in that finding margin information publicly isn't exactly easy.

Using SEC filings, BOM data, Court filings with the Samsung case disclosing iPad/iPhone margins, I pulled together what should be pretty good ballpark numbers for Macbook net unit margins from 2010-2014.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?page=view&resid=6D5207F27A6F6684!539369&authkey=!AP-YlIDq87UhGkY

Basically, the TLDR is:

2010/2011 - ~11% net margin, 2012 ~20%, 2013 ~2%, 2014 ~9%.

So while the trend is definitely rough (due to the wild swings in 2012/2013) is does show an aggregate, small downward push on margins. Which is also explicitly called out as a more general trends and forward looking expectation in Apple's own forecast for this year.

That said, definitely no where close to the margin shift I expected, it's almost negligible and you're right that I was going on gut and some shaky market numbers. So fair enough, I'll admit I'm wrong

4/3/2015 8:05:07 AM

Quote :

"You two should compare notes with each other on how Bill Gates' and Steve Jobs' respective dicks taste."

I know there are a bunch of words up there, and reading is hard for someone of your obvious limited intellect, but if you go ask an adult to help you out with some of the bigger words, you'd see that nowhere in here is anyone figuratively or literally sucking anyone's dick. Personally, I think that Steve Jobs was an egotistical asshole who gets far too much credit for his role in Apple's success. I'm not defending, praising, or really even saying anything particularly good about him, or Apple as a whole. We were discussing profit margins of products. How stupid do you have to be to translate that into sucking off Steve Jobs?

^Cool. Those numbers are different from even the limited ones I was able to find using google. They really are hard to find, and I doubt we'll ever really know for sure. I too, was just going on my gut, and I don't feel like there are these huge hardware improvements that would really bulk up the cost much at all.

4/3/2015 1:46:49 PM

Don't waste money on Apple watch. It's not worth buying.
You need to have an iphone first and it's totally against Android.

4/3/2015 2:30:55 PM

Quote :

"The price of the Air dropped because the price of the components (namely SSDs) dropped significantly between 1st and 2nd generations."

Didn't the first gen Air have a cheap 80GB 4200 RPM hdd and not an ssd?

4/3/2015 3:26:22 PM

Yep, first gen MBA had a mechanical drive.

4/5/2015 12:35:53 AM

Has Apple innovated at all in the last 4 years? Everything they've done in that time period has been done elsewhere (often better), or was just an incremental improvement, certainly nothing disruptive like the iPhone was when it first released. At this point, I can comfortable say that Microsoft is more innovative than Apple, and that was not the case 10 years ago.

Quote :

"Apple is gonna revolutionize the way you scroll. "

Yeah, like this monstrosity: https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

Arguably the worst example of scroll jacking I've seen.

[Edited on April 5, 2015 at 8:46 PM. Reason : ]

4/5/2015 8:42:15 PM

If HoloLens pans out and and Cortana's general release is good, Microsoft potentially could be more innovative than Apple.

But as far as shipping products, Apple definitely currently bests Microsoft, and if you look at the sum of their incremental improvements, Apple is still the innovation king at this point.

4/6/2015 2:52:28 PM

apple seems to build things / widgets / etc. while Microsoft is more into the research / data and services realm.

4/6/2015 4:03:32 PM

Having seen and used the Cortana prototype first hand, it's going to obliterate Siri. No lie, shit's awesome.

[Edited on April 6, 2015 at 4:22 PM. Reason : .]

4/6/2015 4:22:21 PM

Yeah Siri hasn't seen any major public facing improvements since it's release. And it's still technically in beta.

Apple tends to do a lot of work in secret, so it wouldn't surprise me at all that they dump a huge Siri release around the time Cortana comes to iOS. HomeKit is already set to accompany some siri improvements.

If you tell your iPhone now "siri set temperature..." it will say "no devices deleted".

4/6/2015 5:07:58 PM

Siri's been out of beta since iOS 7.

4/6/2015 5:44:34 PM

http://qz.com/378959/the-apple-watch-reviews-are-in-and-theyre-uncharacteristically-meh-across-the-board

4/8/2015 7:51:06 PM

^^

still the most worthless thing in iOS this side of game center.

4/8/2015 9:27:50 PM

siri works pretty well for me

4/8/2015 9:42:37 PM

I use Siri solely for alarms, timers, and appointments. I know people who use it more. I can see it being more relevant when HomeKit comes out.

4/8/2015 9:54:00 PM

yeah i was pretty hype for the apple watch, but reviews have been pretty meh so far. i think it could be like an ipad situation though. people dont know the full potential of it yet.

this smartwatch will be better than android ones because of much more third party support. i imagine in a month or so native watch apps will come out to optimize the watch.

4/8/2015 10:10:47 PM

Quote :

"this smartwatch will be better than android ones because of much more third party support."

That's not saying much. The smart watch game as a whole needs to make some big strides to get mainstream. Or it could fizzle out into strictly a niche market. It's way too easy right now to use a nice 5"-6" phone to do much more than a watch can.

4/8/2015 11:18:23 PM

the first moto360 reviews were better than the apple watch reviews

4/9/2015 8:55:18 AM

We're the expectations the same?

4/9/2015 8:59:13 AM

moto360 is a beautiful watch. I still wouldn't buy it, but I've always been a fan of round watches over square ones anyway.

4/9/2015 2:37:42 PM

Every time I see the Moto 360 I just have to laugh at the fact that they couldn't be bothered to make the screen display at the bottom. I can't imagine the utter shit-show that would have happened if Apple had released a watch that had that little bit at the bottom that didn't light up. It would have been the running joke for all Apple haters for the next decade or more. But motorola can go full speed ahead ghetto as hell, and nobody seems to mind.

4/12/2015 12:07:20 AM

Quote :

"But motorola can go full speed ahead ghetto as hell"

this literally made me lol

4/13/2015 1:47:04 PM

^^ Dude you really need to take angry management or take your meds. You are always pissy like a bitch.

4/13/2015 1:52:32 PM

https://www.google.com/search?q=Moto+360&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=cg4sVaLgGYuzggTVvoDgAQ&ved=0CAoQ_AUoBA&biw=1355&bih=772#rls=en&tbm=isch&q=moto+360+vs+apple+watch&revid=1164070014

Definitely a pock on the Moto 360, but it's a reasonable tradeoff from an engineering perspective...

4/13/2015 2:46:23 PM

I've never noticed that. Still a beautiful piece of tech.

4/13/2015 3:37:42 PM

the new moto 360 is going to not have that and will have a higher resolution

4/13/2015 3:42:14 PM

I've already spent money on a fitbit, and I certainly can't wear both, so I'm stuck right now. But I would almost consider buying the 360. Especially since I do android for a phone.

4/13/2015 3:49:01 PM

Quote :

" Dude you really need to take angry management or take your meds. You are always pissy like a bitch."

I wasn't even remotely angry, pissy, disgruntled, or any other word you want to come up with when I wrote that. I don't even see what you're complaining about.

I'm sorry (not really) that you don't like me, but honestly, I couldn't possibly care less about it. Your opinion of me means less than nothing. Maybe you should be the one to take some meds, because I'm just fine and you obviously have an issue that you need to work on. I'm not about to alter one thing about myself to help you out though.

Now maybe we could get back to discussing the topic at hand?

Quote :

"I've never noticed that. Still a beautiful piece of tech."

Admittedly, it's not that big of a deal, but I definitely notice it, and it would have stopped me from buying a 360 (if I had a phone that would work with it anyway). I just think that if Apple would have put it out, they would have been put under a lot more scrutiny and the average Joe on the street would know all about the Apple Watch that didn't fill up the entire display or whatever-gate the media would have ran with. Kinda like how when the iPhone 4 came out and there was antennagate and then it was proven that almost every Android phone (and previous iPhones to an extent) had a similar issue when you held it a certain way but nobody noticed, and certainly nobody made a huge deal about it, because it wasn't a big deal to begin with. But Apple does seem to be put under a microscope more often than rival companies, for better or worse.

4/13/2015 9:01:30 PM