Apple is stingy. No price drop on these old ass Macs. No updates in sight.
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Apple is Stingy (No Price Drop)
- Thread starter krause734
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I just can't believe anyone buying old Macs at the same price as they were released 1-3 years ago. Apple is mostly focused on iOS. Especially with the holiday season right now, Mac sales will disappoint. I am not buying an overpriced Macbook Pro with Magical Touchbar. iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, Macbook/Air all need updates.
I guess I'm still getting used to being disappointed by Tim Cook.
I guess I'm still getting used to being disappointed by Tim Cook.
Simple solution, don't buy the MBP.
As a comparison, the new Surface Studio start at 3,000 dollars where as the entry level iMac is 1,000. The SurfaceBook is just as expensive as the MBP, so apple is not the only one charging a lot of money.
If you don't think you're getting value for the price being charged then don't buy the computer.
Plenty of people do, which is why Apple doesn't discount. And you can alway go refurb (which is what I do) and save a pretty decent amount.
Steve wasn't known for dropping prices on currently-shipping product, either.
Exactly. Show me a for-profit company that would not love to be able to sell "old" product at full price for an extended period of time.
Sales would go up if they dropped the price. Particularly the Mac Pro (1086 days since updated) and Mac Mini (784 days). You wouldn't have disgruntled customers switching to PC. All they care about is the iPhone now.
Apple's priority is high margins, not high volume with low margins.
That's the Timinator's maximum profit calculus.
Selling old, low cost, obsolete junk at premium prices is extremely profitable.
The Timinator doesn't care. Desktops are low margin trucks.
The sooner Apple gets out of that biz the happier the Timinator will be.
That and EmojiBook Pros, "super computer" iPads and watch bands.
Stay tuned.
Apples pricing should be no surprise to anyone they keep them the same until new upgrades are released they always have done. If you don't like it then either wait, buy a refurb or get a deal at a third party vendor.
My company just bought all of us designers the 5k iMac because we needed them, and moved from PC to MAC platform. Don't fool yourself, no one needs the 10% spec bump that will come with the 2016/2017 models. It is a radical difference working on these for design, the owner liked them so much he bought the rest of the company Mac minis. And they too are perfect for what we do.
This. So many of life's issues could easily be avoided if people simply followed common sense.
Before the return of Steve Jobs, Apple and others used a different marketing strategy. Prices were probably somewhat inflated but there were very substantial discounts available for education. Apple products were sold through Apple certified resellers and they had some discretion on their sale prices. This had the drawback of creating a gray market of sellers pushing units out the back door and students buying Apple products and then selling them to a gray market buyer for a profit and the gray market buyer then reselling them at a discount. There were even ads for gray market Apple products in the back of Mac magazines.
All that changed when Steve Jobs returned and killed the clones. Apple products then began to be sold at the online Apple Store and Apple stores came into existence. Now the Apple reseller had very little wiggle room on price. Only refurbished and older generation Apple products were discounted and still these discounts were no more than 10 or 15 percent.
All that changed when Steve Jobs returned and killed the clones. Apple products then began to be sold at the online Apple Store and Apple stores came into existence. Now the Apple reseller had very little wiggle room on price. Only refurbished and older generation Apple products were discounted and still these discounts were no more than 10 or 15 percent.
Congrats. You'll be upgrading sooner than you expect. Current base model Mac Minis already get the spinning wheel of death.
I really don't believe that, since my 2009 Mac Mini is doing just fine.
So is mine. Personally would be quite happy if the new mini was based on the same hardware as the macbooks. My use Elgato DVR and iTunes streaming. Really doesn't need a lot of power for that.
Some people just don't understand that not everybody needs a Quad and 32Gb of Ram in there mini.
For some people the 2014 model is more then enough.
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Apple is a LOW Volume, HIGH Margin company. Why spend the extra money if they don't need too. You also have to refresh models more often, have a larger variety of models available to shift larger volumes. Costs go up to the company. Profit Margin goes down. Apple and the shareholders aren't interested in share of market, they are interested in overall profit.
HP/Dell/Lenovo would love to be able to get the margin that Apple do.
Samsung shifts way more phones then Apple yet doesn't make anything like the profit margin that Apple does.
I haven't replaced my mini 2009 as still does the job I need of it, so why buy a 2010/2011/2012/2014 model other then just that I have the latest and greatest. A lower price wouldn't necessarily increase sales. IU haven;t bought those mini's because don't need too, nothing to do with spec or price or value for money.
The problem for Apple is that it became cool to use Apple gear which swelled the volume, however those are fickle customers that will come and go, depending upon what is seen as cool.
And margins would go down, resulting in the Mac product line making less money overall. And that's certainly not going to encourage Apple to spend money on updating the product line.
As noted up-thread, the "Rise of the Clones" was meant to improve Apple's marketshare and profits. It did the former, but gutted the latter and that negative economic impact was one of the reasons Steve was able to take back the company.
Sure you would. People would still complain about the specs, they just couldn't complain (as much) about the price. And for those who really care about the specs (because their work requires it or they're just 'spec obsessed') would move to PC.
Because that is where all the money is. Even at "Max Mac", annual sales were maybe a month's worth of iPhone sales.
The Mac now is a platform to support iOS development (because you can't develop for iOS on Windows or Linux). So the focus, what there is, is on the iMac and MacBook family because those are the machines most-used to develop iOS apps. You don't need a Mac Pro to write iOS apps (it's massive overkill) and why would you use a Mac Mini since it's better on an iMac? So those two models are ignored because they no longer fit into the narrative.
That macOS Sierra has support for AMD's next generation of workstation GPUs implies we will see a new Mac Pro along with the new iMac by March. But I seriously question Apple's interest in the Mac Pro for the reasons outlined above. As for the Mac Mini, it served it's purpose to get people interested in macOS. That role is now firmly handled by the MacBook Air (which is apparently the best-selling Mac even though it's the weakest) and will eventually be handled by the MacBook once it gets cheap enough.
Just wait for the next generation of whichever Mac you want to be released. The old one will drop in price and new one will (maybe) be similarly priced as the old one currently is.
This is how resale value is maintained with Apple products. If they dropped prices "just because" then resale value drops exponentially.
Apple products are some of the few electronics I buy that don't end up in a dumpster. A lot of the time the price nearly offsets buying the new version of whatever it is.
I guess their pricing structure is a double edge sword.
This is how resale value is maintained with Apple products. If they dropped prices "just because" then resale value drops exponentially.
Apple products are some of the few electronics I buy that don't end up in a dumpster. A lot of the time the price nearly offsets buying the new version of whatever it is.
I guess their pricing structure is a double edge sword.
Probably the least surprising thing I've read here yet
Dell tried that years ago, and it nearly bankrupted them. The race to the bottom has only one end game scenario - destruction of profits.
Apple themselves don't drop the price but plenty of retailers do around the Holidays and back to school time. I got the base 5k iMac for $1600 from Best Buy during Black Friday.
Base model Mac minis... lol
Are you seriously comparing a dual-core Mac mini to the 27" 5k iMac? The Mac mini was outdated from day 1 back in 2014.
You sound bitter
Do you have an SSD installed? If so, i'm sure its fine. But without an ssd ANY mac on the market today would be brutal IMO.
If you claim otherwise, you havent used a mac with an ssd, because once you get used to it, the lags caused by a spinning drive are absolutely unbearable