Friday, July 18, 2008

The cost of buying a Mac

Don't get me wrong, I am a dyed in the wool Mac user, and have been since around 1986 when I first got my hands on one of those little compact SE20s. Today I use a G5 iMac and a Macbook, and OS X is clearly the best operating system on the planet for humans. But you increasingly have to look at the price of Apple kit. I paid just shy of £1000 inc. VAT for my Macbook a couple of years a go (the mid-range option with max RAM).

Today you can get a well specced Windows laptop for around £300 (of course you have to suffer Vista or XP unless you go Linux), while the current equivalent of my Macbook currently retails for £829 inc VAT. That is a big differential. Apple has never sought to play in the budget space, but all the same, computing in these cost conscious credit crunchy times is becoming a commodity item, and surely Apple has to respond with a lower cost mobile offering. Remember the hugely well-liked 12" pro laptop of a few years ago? With the phenomenal rise of the Asus EeePC thingy, perhaps its time for Apple to launch a small - say 11" screen super-mini. With a price point of say £399 it would compete effectively with the top end eePC and provide a competitive OS X platform in the mainstream laptop market. Just a thought...

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