Will Intel price cuts = Mac price cuts?

[Play Ultimate]

Apple has traditionally (let's argue about the meaning of that word also ) kept fairly constant price points. What they have done is change the feature set. So a drop in Intel price may result in a revision in ram or hard disk size.

 

[Timepass]

Sure it will. They're still the only manufacturers of Macintosh computers, and they've got no competition. This is also a big motivating factor for not allowing OS X outside of the Apple camp via licensing--it would cause other OEMs to become direct competitors and force Apple's update cycles. </off topic>. More to the point, Apple's pricing is likely to remain fixed and stable (it's been a cornerstone of their sales practices for almost 10 years now), changing only at product revisions as it currently does. Those revisions also don't seem like they're going to come along faster. The only effect we'll probably see is a CPU speed bump every now and again without any other revisions--the sort of thing that happened with the MacBook Pro between announcement and shipping.

software wise they still have that. But they lost the hardware protecton they had for years.

It used to be when comparing a Apple computer to a PC it was like comparing apples and orages because the hardware was differnt. Now it like comparing Apples to apples hardware wise no real differences bettween the 2. So to the average Joe apple going to look bad because they see Dell and ohter doign price cuts and upgrades and apple well doing nogthing. No upgrades and no price cuts as new hardware comes out.
People who build computers will nail apple on it because they dont see the logiic in not dropping the price or at least upgrading. All it means is apple bring in the same ammount of cash with less cost. They are not passing there saving on to the consumers in some way shape or form (that being either an upgrade or price cut)

 

[Mord]

the pricing of the 17" macbook pro indicates the price cuts. apple must be biteing the discount as to not piss off everyone who would buy a 17" MPB.

 

[matticus008]

It used to be when comparing a Apple computer to a PC it was like comparing apples and orages because the hardware was differnt. Now it like comparing Apples to apples hardware wise no real differences bettween the 2.

Comparisons between PCs and Macs on hardware performance have always been possible. What they haven't been is direct and obvious by clock speed--but now even within the x86 market, that comparison is useless. Only the CPU has changed; bumping up to faster incarnations of the same chip doesn't warrant any big changes at Apple. Macs and PCs haven't been as different as "apples and oranges" in a very long time.

Contrary to your argument, it doesn't mean that either the pricing model or the product cycle has to change. It was never solely the fact that the CPUs were different that dictated product changes--back when the G3/G4 were actively competitive with the Pentium III the update cycle was similar, and Apple's pricing has little to do with CPU pricing--the MBP processors are tremendously more expensive than the G4s it replaced, but the computers themselves aren't.

 

[weldon]

I think this sort of thing is going to have a huge impact on the way Apple does business. These kinds of frequent updates from Intel are going to force Apple to make changes to configs or pricing much more often than they have over the last couple years. Inventory management is a bigger concern because you don't want to have excess supply of CPU's that were bought at higher prices and you don't want to be stuck with lower-tier CPU's that people don't want to buy anymore now that the new faster chips are out at the same price.

Apple could either take advantage of the opportunity to improve their supply chain and increase inventory turns, or they could get hammered by the shift in their business and lose money on excess inventory or shortages if they try to push efficiency too far. I'm hoping for the latter outcome, of course. If I were investing in Apple, I would really watch their inventory levels for the rest of the year to see how they do in managing the transition. I think that will reveal a lot more about their future profitability than any initial surge from Intel-based Macs.