The High Cost of Mac
Dear Apple,
I love your computers I’m sitting here right now hammering out this post on OS X Tiger with Safari, checking my email in Mail.app and generally lapping up the entire Mac experience. I love you guys.
I also recommend you to my friends, at least the ones I like. My friends and family all get wonderful tales of how great my Mac is, so much so that I’ve been banned from giving any toasts at get-togethers and endured an intervention from my parents two weeks ago.
But my recommendations to them are not just because I love Macs, but because I’m a selfish bastard. Among most of my friends and family, I’m the computer guy. They have a question about computers, they come to me. They get viruses, spyware, a hard drive crash or leprosy of the motherboard, I’m the guy they call.
And they call a lot.
From my father who can’t understand the intricacies of broadband to my coworkers that don’t grasp that an out of date virus definition is bad, I get a lot of calls.
I figure that my Mac has given me the least trouble of any system, it comes with great support, if I can shovel these otherwise intelligent people over to Mac, I’ll get less calls and that gives me more time for Desktop Tower Defense.
However, despite my speeches, praise and those snappy Mac ads, I haven’t been able to convince one damn person to switch. Why? Well, they’re just too damn expensive.
Need proof of the problem? Let me see if I can shed some light on the situation.
Dude… They Got a Dell
However, if you slide on over to Dell’s site (after switching to Firefox due to Dell sucking in Safari), you can build a desktop system with the exact same specs, including speakers and Firewire, for just $819.
That’s about $400 cheaper.
That might not be a lot of money to Steve Jobs and Co., but those of us here in the real world who are living paycheck to paycheck, that is a big fucking deal and it doesn’t get any better on the laptop side.
A 13-inch Macbook with similar specs and an 80 gig hard drive will eat up about $1,100. Meanwhile, a comparable laptop on Dell’s site will set you back a mere. $714, once again about a $400 difference in price and the Dell laptop had a bigger monitor, 15.4 inches instead of 13.
The problem isn’t “Is Mac Better?” it’s “How do I convince my grandfather to spend $400 more on a computer that does the same damn thing?”
It’s easy, I can’t, and that’s why Mac hasn’t blown Microsoft out of the market, they’re just too costly.
Value Added
When I bought my Mac, I knew that I could get a more powerful system for less money if I just walked forty feet to the PC section of the store. I did it anyway, going deeper into debt and farther down the rabbit hole.
The reason I did that is because I knew that Macs were more stable, could do more with less powerful hardware and were great for the type of work I do. However, that’s not exactly the kind of explanation one gives to their parents.
When your average consumer goes computer shopping, they look at the specs, knowing roughly that more=better, and try to get the best deal they can based upon what they understand. Justifying a whopping 50% price jump for the same hardware is very difficult.
Right now, budget consumers are priced clean out of the Mac market, even Mac Minis are way more expensive than other monitorless budget PCs, consumers seeking a mid-range computer can find drastically cheaper computers on the PC side of the aisle and high-end consumers can get more horsepower by avoiding Macs.
To sell these damn computers, you need to do one of two things, lower the price or add some kind of real value to them. You could package iWork with every Mac the way you do iLife, but there are already free office suites out there.
You could offer free .Mac service, but most of us seem to agree it would suck even then. No, you need to do something significant to justify a price hike of $400. Outside of access to paid porn sites on the Web, I can’t fathom many things that will actually garter enough attention from the average Web user to make them think buying a Mac is a good idea.
No, you’re going to have to lower your price. I’m sad to say. Because most of us will not win the lottery, we can’t afford to blow $400 on a whim and we can’t, seriously, justify the expense. The reasons to buy a Mac aren’t tangible to most computers buyers and they aren’t going to spend money they don’t think will give them real benefit.
As I’m looking at my credit card bills, I am struck with a twinge of buyer’s remorse. I needed a machine, but did I really have to spend $1000 when $500 would have gotten me by? I love my Mac, but I hate paying it off.
That’s why, no matter how much I push Macs on those I know, I have to nod and understand when they go with PC (no matter how much of square he is).
Bottom Line
Your business is good, you’re selling a lot of Macs, I’m happy for you. But there’s more to this than just increasing business. It’s about standing up to Microsoft (you remember them, right?) and freeing us from their tyranny and getting revenge for the screw job they did you all of those years ago.
You’re selling a lot of computers now, but how many more could you be selling if your prices were actually competitive? You have the better product, you can charge a premium for it, but 50% is not a premium, especially with computers, its an anal violation.
The way things are now, my granfather will never own a Mac, neither will my mom, my dad or friends (my brother, however, might). Sadly though, users like my parents out number people like me and my brother, in my immediate circle, by about 10 to 1.
You can’t win a war without winning over the people, see Iraq if you need proof, and you’ll never win the people without a fair pricing scheme.
It’s time to come out of the clouds and join the rest of us. iPhones and iPods are cool, but the desktop war is still a one-sided ass kicking.
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