- Mac Clone back in action. Mac clone to be $804.99. Now called the Open computer. Licensing issues still abound.
- Google to sift through porn to identify individuals shown in child porn.
- Earthquake coming say experts. Duh!
- XP SP3 coming out in two weeks.
- Tesla Motors suing and being sued.
- Microsoft to shrink XP? Har.
- Linux sales growing on Dell.
- Google’s cookies being stolen.
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
‘Dinner Party’ was a fantastic episode…thanks for the audio clips to hold me over until Thursday’s new episode.
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Buy your Mac Clone while you can!
http://www.psystar.com/shop/openmac.html
These guys are selling a full Mac clone for ~$560 with Leopard 10.5 installed! You know Jobs isn’t going to let this go on for long.
This certainly gives us an idea of how much profit Apple is extracting from each and every sale.
Now here is my little rant. Why doesn’t Jobs release a version of the Apple OS that installs in a Windows system? Certainly he can do this, specially on systems labeled as “Vista Capable”. After all, wouldn’t this be a much better way to get Windows users to switch to Apple is they can install just the OS and not invest thousands in hardware just to see if Apple works for them?
Why doesn’t Jobs do this? It’s obvious. Jobs is gouging Apple users coming and going. Since most computers today are made in Asia (China in particular), we can make the reasonable assumption that the hardware costs isn’t all that much greater for an Apple than other similar Intel based systems.
Therefore, the “Apple Premium” is pure profit to Apple. Yes, you get a pretty box with a nice OS, and you get to show it off for street cred…
Please excuse my bad grammar, it’s late and I’m off my meds…
Not to mention, “Ah_Yea” that installing on a windows box is better said than done.
Apple builds a specific, non-mutable set of hardware. To make Leopard install on a “Windows box” with God knows what inside, would double or triple Apple’s task force just to write drivers and quality testing. Not to mention after sales support. It would break Apple.
That’s also the very reason Apple needs to fight these clones, because if they let them pass, even if the clones do their own support, ultimately Apple is responsible for the software and it’s liable if anything bad comes out of it.
#2 – Guess we missed our chance. According to the web site link you posted:
“Thank you for visiting Psystar. We’re sorry but the store is temporarily down due to the fact that we are currently unable to process any credit card transactions.Please send an e-mail to support@psystar.com with the subject line “UPDATE” so that we can update you when the store comes back online.”
What’s wrong with being naked online? Can ya just stick to people who hurt children?
And Ha Ha, people are starting to realize that all the things you said about open source ain’t true. And Linux is growing.
The Guardian has taken a look into whether Psystar is even a legitimate company, or a fly-by-night scam. Something everyone else hasn’t bothered to do in their rush to announce cheap Macs.
http://tinyurl.com/5etxuz
The Psystar site has also raised the ire of the hacker whose work they claim to be selling. I guess you can sell for less when your R&D budget consists of downloading and reselling free stuff off the web.
[Please use TinyUrl.com for overly long URLs. – ed.]
#4, yes Apple is a hardware company, but not so much a computer hardware company anymore. Apple makes much more money on products peripheral to the computer. Ipod, Iphone, Itunes, Apple TV, etc.
Microsoft makes much more than Apple on software alone. Apple could, if it had the vision, beat Microsoft on both the software and hardware fronts.
Use the peripheral items to push the OS to the windows desktop. Sell OS 10 at a very reasonable cost. Even better, bundle OS 10 with new Ipod/Iphone/Apple TV sales. Make up the profit in future upgrades. This will move more users from Windows to Apple than any other method.
It’s not rocket science.
# 4, your statement makes no sense at all. If Microsoft could make it’s billions per year selling Vista at $250 a pop, then Apple can make billions a year doing something similar. And remember, Microsoft limited it’s new OS to a particular set of devices. This is called “Vista Capable”. My original comment specifically stated that Apple should do the same and have their OS install on systems marked as “Vista Capable” as well, thereby avoiding the driver issues.
#9 Well… if only things were so simple.
First, “Vista Capable” is more or less anything you can buy now. That alone is a market of hundreds of millions of machines. And M$ is not selling it’s OS at $250, but much less, averagely, since the bulk of it is OEM. M$ sells it close o Apple’s point. Apple in turn sells it’s OS at a loss (surely), but recoups in Hardware.
So, for Apple to go the M$ way, first it would have to enlarge tenfold it’s user base, start supporting dozens of Graphics cards, usb gimmicks, and the lot of what it’s out there, and would also have to support Nvidia, AMD/ATI, VIA, chipsets, instead of only intel chipsets. That would mean lots of new programmers (coming mainly from M$, cos’ the rest of the world is doing web stuff. only M$ has the tech fellows to do drivers, so Apple would have to shell out better pay than M$)
And in the end, would also have to sell it’s OS at a higher price point.
Ah_yea… Just don’t see it coming. And neither did Jobs, nine years ago, when he killed the clones…
Basically, what you are saying is that Apple’s programmers are not as good or as capable as Microsofts. That they cannot write USB drivers (which Mac already has), Video drivers (the card makers would write these, same as they already do for Microsoft), etc.
I fundamentally disagree. Apple has plenty of good programmers. I am willing to bet that most of the stuff needed to port the Apple has already been done, the same as Apple having ported it’s OS to Intel way before the initial announcement.
Your two statements “hundreds of millions of machines” and “M$ sells it close to Apple’s point” actually make my point. Hundreds of millions of machines is a very, very big market. Isn’t that market worth going after? Sells close to Apple’s point simply means that Apple, a leaner – meaner – more efficient company, can make more profit per sale than Microsoft. And if Microsoft can spend 44 billion on a worthless yahoo acquisition, then Apple can take what it earns to improve the product. It can afford to spend on expanding it’s OS because they will recover the costs!
And possibly get more than it’s paltry market share.
Nobody will see this, but …
Man, it’s simple. I’m not doubting Apple’s engineers prowess, it’s the numbers. They develop for a very reduced hardware base. Do you even know what it takes to code, debug, quality test and patch for the hardware base M$ has to cover? Or do you think those tens of thousand employees M$ has are there just to make the Christmas party more merry?
They have a sweet spot right now: Sell less but for a higher margin. That way they don’t need to grow that much. And doesn’t even have to be a big margin. Remember if you sell stuff with a 30% margin, cutting the margin in half you’ll have to sell twice to earn the same. And the price cut is not 50% but 14% less…
Re: Earthquake.
As someone who lives in Los Angeles I don’t think that the greater chance of the next big one being in the south “is a good thing”.