7 ms·

Apple prices like a luxury item: no sales etc.. But the thing is - tech is not like fashion. You can't just call it 'Gucci' and hold the plebes at bay with hig

Apple prices like a luxury item: no sales etc.. But the thing is - tech is not like fashion. You can't just call it 'Gucci' and hold the plebes at bay with high prices. It's utility - so when there is less utility, people will drop apple and go elsewhere. If they want to keep luxury brand status they actually have to provide something of value.

dijit 10y ago
This is an odd sentiment to hear on HN. We are usually technical people, surely we can see past "spec" as the only differentiator of two laptops. Apple are priced like a high-end business quality laptop. (except upgrades are a higher mark-up) if you compare laptops based on the quality of their build Apple laptops are quite competitive.[0] That's before you factor in little things that don't seem to make it to business line laptops even like protection against USBKiller[1] and getting BIOS firmware updates 8 years after buying a laptop.[2] It's disingenuous to compare an Apple Macbook with an Acer Aspire on things like specification without taking into account all the little things. If you haven't noticed, spec selling has thoroughly destroyed the bottom end of the laptop market, it's super difficult today to get a decent quality laptop because manufacturers are just throwing out devices with high spec and corner cuts everywhere else. I say this, as a person attempting to buy a Dell Precision 5520. I'm not an apple fanboy, but I appreciate quality. It's not a fashion label. [0] http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png [1] http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/711745/USB-killer-2-0-Macbook-Pro-Apple-Macbook-Air http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/71174... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518
- edblarney 10y ago
  Apple is definitely a fashion brand - and their marketing tactics and positioning are mostly aspirational - the underlying commodity is tech. This is why Apple hired Angela Andrents - who's background is 100% fashion (she re-built Burberry) and 0% technology. Think about that for a moment: the hired their #1 marketing person with ZERO tech background :). Who is the 'other' most powerful person at Apple? It's Johhny Ive - a designer - who is very much in the vein of fashion/design, and understands that ethos. Their store layouts, marketing, pricing strategies - all from luxury fashion. Yes - the build 'quality' products - I agree - and their products are not too far off the spec pricing for similarly 'quality' gear. BUT - I would argue that 'high end spec' is just not relevant for most applications even for development. A decent, middle of the road PC would de-facto provide enough RAM/disk space+speed/CPU to do the job, so long as the form factor is robust enough (and there are a few) - I think they would do just fine. This is a pretty crude but not unreasonable comparison: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-macbook-pro-13-vs-dell-xps-13-apple-macbook-dell-xps-13/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-macbook-pro-13-... The Macbook is 2x the price across 'mostly' equivalent measurements. (I understand there's more to it, but pragmatically, they are pretty close). FYI - Luxury brands specifically price on the high end no matter what, they don't ever go on sale - and unlike most other consumer goods - the perception of value goes down if they ever hit mass market appeal. For luxury goods, there has to be an element of 'status' with the purchase, which is what Apple does very effectively, and obviously. But it's not clothing - so they have to keep up the 'wow' factor, and be 'unquestionably the best', not just in benchmark measurements - but in aspirational terms. Case and point: 'Siri' - what a useless thing. But they packaged it and sold it in a manner that 'wowed' the consumer market. 'It was the future!'. So this needs to continue in order to hold their pricing model. That said, I don't think they're going to crash that far. I'm stuck on Mac, I don't want to go through the pain of switching, and eventually I'll bite the bullet and buy a new Mac, but for the first time in a long while I'm thinking of switching. I'm not doubting that Apple products are pretty good, and that they are not too-too far off given their specs.
  - dijit 10y ago
    It's not a zero-sum game, you can have talented designers and talented engineers working on the same product, as long as they are willing to actually work together. I evidenced an example of a laptop which is equivalent build quality (but is $1,000 more expensive at the same spec without discounts.)
    - CamelCaseName 10y ago
      I'm fairly new to ycombinator so perhaps I missed it, but can you link me again to this more expensive but equivalent laptop?
      - dijit 10y ago
        Hey man, no worries: http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png This is a screenshot of a similarly specced Dell Precision 5510 (which is being replaced with a 5520 hence a 30% discount) Here is the product page to see for yourself. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...
        dkonofalski 10y ago
        ...Just ignore all the other differences between to the two laptops.
  - dkonofalski 10y ago
    You're talking a bunch of nonsense here. Apple hired Angela Ahrendts to be SVP of Apple Retail. That's why her experience with Burberry was important. She has nothing to do with the tech and development side, only retail. On the other side, Jony Ive isn't just a designer any more than Stephen Hawking is just a scientist. Ive is an industrial designer with heavy, diverse engineering background. His entire purpose is to find a way to cram specs into solidly designed products that support the hardware packed into them. While Apple may be considered a luxury brand, they're definitely not a fashion brand. You seem to be confusing Apple Retail for Apple as a whole.
- themihai 10y ago
  You may compare apples to oranges because the CPU and other components may be slightly different(usually they are older and cheaper on the mac). It's a known fact that Apple has the highest(by far) margins on laptops. Apple used to be priced and marketed as a high-end business quality laptop but now I feel it's marked more as a lifestyle product.
  - dijit 10y ago
    the CPU is on display for the precision 5510 in the screenshot. That's the same CPU used in the high end 15" macbook pro. I'm failing to see how what you said holds true when the original price of the Dell is $1,000 higher than the Macbook. (with a smaller m.2 SSD, even.)
  - CamelCaseName 10y ago
    No doubt a substantial amount of that margin comes from the economies of scale where you only have a handful of SKUs with comparable sales to some of the PC manufacturers with many more SKUs combined.

dijit 10y ago

This is an odd sentiment to hear on HN. We are usually technical people, surely we can see past "spec" as the only differentiator of two laptops. Apple are priced like a high-end business quality laptop. (except upgrades are a higher mark-up) if you compare laptops based on the quality of their build Apple laptops are quite competitive.[0] That's before you factor in little things that don't seem to make it to business line laptops even like protection against USBKiller[1] and getting BIOS firmware updates 8 years after buying a laptop.[2] It's disingenuous to compare an Apple Macbook with an Acer Aspire on things like specification without taking into account all the little things. If you haven't noticed, spec selling has thoroughly destroyed the bottom end of the laptop market, it's super difficult today to get a decent quality laptop because manufacturers are just throwing out devices with high spec and corner cuts everywhere else. I say this, as a person attempting to buy a Dell Precision 5520. I'm not an apple fanboy, but I appreciate quality. It's not a fashion label. [0] http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png [1] http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/711745/USB-killer-2-0-Macbook-Pro-Apple-Macbook-Air http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/71174... [2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201518

edblarney 10y ago
Apple is definitely a fashion brand - and their marketing tactics and positioning are mostly aspirational - the underlying commodity is tech. This is why Apple hired Angela Andrents - who's background is 100% fashion (she re-built Burberry) and 0% technology. Think about that for a moment: the hired their #1 marketing person with ZERO tech background :). Who is the 'other' most powerful person at Apple? It's Johhny Ive - a designer - who is very much in the vein of fashion/design, and understands that ethos. Their store layouts, marketing, pricing strategies - all from luxury fashion. Yes - the build 'quality' products - I agree - and their products are not too far off the spec pricing for similarly 'quality' gear. BUT - I would argue that 'high end spec' is just not relevant for most applications even for development. A decent, middle of the road PC would de-facto provide enough RAM/disk space+speed/CPU to do the job, so long as the form factor is robust enough (and there are a few) - I think they would do just fine. This is a pretty crude but not unreasonable comparison: http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-macbook-pro-13-vs-dell-xps-13-apple-macbook-dell-xps-13/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-macbook-pro-13-... The Macbook is 2x the price across 'mostly' equivalent measurements. (I understand there's more to it, but pragmatically, they are pretty close). FYI - Luxury brands specifically price on the high end no matter what, they don't ever go on sale - and unlike most other consumer goods - the perception of value goes down if they ever hit mass market appeal. For luxury goods, there has to be an element of 'status' with the purchase, which is what Apple does very effectively, and obviously. But it's not clothing - so they have to keep up the 'wow' factor, and be 'unquestionably the best', not just in benchmark measurements - but in aspirational terms. Case and point: 'Siri' - what a useless thing. But they packaged it and sold it in a manner that 'wowed' the consumer market. 'It was the future!'. So this needs to continue in order to hold their pricing model. That said, I don't think they're going to crash that far. I'm stuck on Mac, I don't want to go through the pain of switching, and eventually I'll bite the bullet and buy a new Mac, but for the first time in a long while I'm thinking of switching. I'm not doubting that Apple products are pretty good, and that they are not too-too far off given their specs.
- dijit 10y ago
  It's not a zero-sum game, you can have talented designers and talented engineers working on the same product, as long as they are willing to actually work together. I evidenced an example of a laptop which is equivalent build quality (but is $1,000 more expensive at the same spec without discounts.)
  - CamelCaseName 10y ago
    I'm fairly new to ycombinator so perhaps I missed it, but can you link me again to this more expensive but equivalent laptop?
    - dijit 10y ago
      Hey man, no worries: http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png http://i.imgur.com/Gjnr0sw.png This is a screenshot of a similarly specced Dell Precision 5510 (which is being replaced with a 5520 hence a 30% discount) Here is the product page to see for yourself. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...
      - dkonofalski 10y ago
        ...Just ignore all the other differences between to the two laptops.
- dkonofalski 10y ago
  You're talking a bunch of nonsense here. Apple hired Angela Ahrendts to be SVP of Apple Retail. That's why her experience with Burberry was important. She has nothing to do with the tech and development side, only retail. On the other side, Jony Ive isn't just a designer any more than Stephen Hawking is just a scientist. Ive is an industrial designer with heavy, diverse engineering background. His entire purpose is to find a way to cram specs into solidly designed products that support the hardware packed into them. While Apple may be considered a luxury brand, they're definitely not a fashion brand. You seem to be confusing Apple Retail for Apple as a whole.
themihai 10y ago
You may compare apples to oranges because the CPU and other components may be slightly different(usually they are older and cheaper on the mac). It's a known fact that Apple has the highest(by far) margins on laptops. Apple used to be priced and marketed as a high-end business quality laptop but now I feel it's marked more as a lifestyle product.
- dijit 10y ago
  the CPU is on display for the precision 5510 in the screenshot. That's the same CPU used in the high end 15" macbook pro. I'm failing to see how what you said holds true when the original price of the Dell is $1,000 higher than the Macbook. (with a smaller m.2 SSD, even.)
- CamelCaseName 10y ago
  No doubt a substantial amount of that margin comes from the economies of scale where you only have a handful of SKUs with comparable sales to some of the PC manufacturers with many more SKUs combined.