4 ms·

Ah, hahahaha. I dare people to keep saying Apple can't compete on price. It's an old saw that hasn't been true for years. I also think it's the primary reason f

Ah, hahahaha. I dare people to keep saying Apple can't compete on price. It's an old saw that hasn't been true for years. I also think it's the primary reason for the dearth of competitors to iPod Touch and the iPad: two massive markets that Apple seems to invented (or at least been first to get right) and managed to keep all to themselves.

joezydeco 16y ago
But what does this really tell us about the price of iPads? Is Apple selling iPads at prices under the bill of materials, or do they have such a lock on things like NAND flash that nobody else can build a similar product for the same price? All the talk about screen size and HDMI and ports is noise in the final price. You need to look at what Motorola is paying for things like flash, processor fab, and Gorilla Glass to understand why the price is so high.
- danudey 16y ago
  Apple saves a lot of money by pre-buying things like flash in massive quantity. It will drop millions all at once to ensure that it gets better prices than anyone else can get from it's suppliers, which helps keep costs low.
  - joezydeco 16y ago
    It's not just contracts on pricing that Apple is dominating, it's the actual production capacity of the chip makers. "Digitimes reported Wednesday that Apple recently placed an order of 50 million 8Gb flash chips that it plans to use for that iPhone thing you might have heard about, and therefore the rest of Samsung's customers will have to wait for their chips." http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983117-37.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983117-37.html So if you're scrounging for NAND on the open market, you're gonna get screwed on price. It's not just Moto that's feeling the pressure.
zyb09 16y ago
The complains are about Apples iMacs and Notebooks, which are still pretty pricey for the hardware thats in there. All the iOS devices are very competitive priced.
- sambeau 16y ago
  "which are still pretty pricey for the hardware thats in there" Only when you compare unlike with like. As soon as you look at similar spec, design and build quality it is a different story. Like the Dell Adamo "Macbook Air killer": http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20031079-64.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20031079-64.html
- bradleyland 16y ago
  I hate to take this bait, but I'm hoping maybe I'll get a recommendation here. This is not rhetorical. I'm not happy with the space I'm using up by having an Ubuntu in a VM on my SSD, so this question is very real, not just some Apple fanboy rant. I would like to buy a second laptop to run Ubuntu, but I want something with incredible build quality. I'm an Apple user, so clearly I don't mind paying a premium (ta-dum tss). The closest I've found is Lenovo, but their product still comes in a fully plastic enclosure containing a hundred screws and as many tacked on plastic panels as a Pontiac Aztek. I've read about their "roll cage", and I think that's a pretty cool idea, but it still doesn't hold up to Apple's unibody designs. I owned a T41 back around 2005 (best guestimate), so I'm not speaking entirely from ignorance of the product. I really don't feel it matches my MacBook Pro. Now, you might say that I'm being unreasonable, but I have the money, and I'm willing to spend it. If anyone has a lead on a well-built laptop with the design simplicity of an Apple MacBook, I'm interested to hear about it. I'm looking for: Something in the 13" range. I don't need anything super-powerful (C2D and 2 GB of RAM should be fine). I do care about build quality. The primary use-case is sysadmin duty. I want something small and light to take on the road that still has a bash shell. I want to go Ubuntu, rather than a 13" MBP because I've been very impressed with the work coming out of the Ubuntu community lately, and I don't like to limit my world to Apple alone. All of our VPSs run Debian, which is similar enough to Ubuntu that I can bring over a lot of my dot-files and customizations.
  - 16y ago
jan_g 16y ago
You've checked the specs, haven't you? Ipad with such hardware specs would cost a lot more, in my opinion. It's a question whether ipad2 will be able to match the specs of xoom. For me, hdmi port is a great feature.
- ugh 16y ago
  There needs to be a great $500 Android tablet with appropriate specs (great battery life, snappiness, appropriate resolution, small, great build quality). I don’t think that $800 tablets with extravagant specs will help Android corner the tablet market. Specs luckily don’t matter much anymore.
  - jan_g 16y ago
    I don't think that Motorola is after the whole market with Xoom. There are plenty of lower priced android tablets. So there's lots of choice for upper and lower end buyers. Also, ipad is priced from $500 to 900$, depending on specs, which means that they do matter.
    - ugh 16y ago
      There are no competitive cheap Android tablets. Specs obviously still matter when it comes to the price but they don’t matter to consumers. They want a snappy device, that’s all.
      - jan_g 16y ago
        Well, perhaps we'll see a stripped-down version of xoom later on. Half the memory, no 3g, single-core processor. Could reduce the price for a few hundred bucks. EDIT: I've found one bit of news that suggests there'll be a wifi only Xoom: http://androidcommunity.com/motorola-xoom-wifi-clears-fcc-20110210/ http://androidcommunity.com/motorola-xoom-wifi-clears-fcc-20...
        ugh 16y ago
        Why are we not seeing it now? Motorola wants to compete with Apple but they release something that’s not really competitive. If you have any doubts about Motorola’s intent to compete with Apple head on, here is their Super Bowl commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vmRWeNZSM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vmRWeNZSM This video from Motorola makes their intent even clearer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vRgesYJHKo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vRgesYJHKo They don’t want to target the higher end of the market, they want to obsolete the iPad. They shouldn’t be surprised when they get then criticized harshly for not delivering.

joezydeco 16y ago

But what does this really tell us about the price of iPads? Is Apple selling iPads at prices under the bill of materials, or do they have such a lock on things like NAND flash that nobody else can build a similar product for the same price? All the talk about screen size and HDMI and ports is noise in the final price. You need to look at what Motorola is paying for things like flash, processor fab, and Gorilla Glass to understand why the price is so high.

danudey 16y ago
Apple saves a lot of money by pre-buying things like flash in massive quantity. It will drop millions all at once to ensure that it gets better prices than anyone else can get from it's suppliers, which helps keep costs low.
- joezydeco 16y ago
  It's not just contracts on pricing that Apple is dominating, it's the actual production capacity of the chip makers. "Digitimes reported Wednesday that Apple recently placed an order of 50 million 8Gb flash chips that it plans to use for that iPhone thing you might have heard about, and therefore the rest of Samsung's customers will have to wait for their chips." http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983117-37.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983117-37.html So if you're scrounging for NAND on the open market, you're gonna get screwed on price. It's not just Moto that's feeling the pressure.

zyb09 16y ago

The complains are about Apples iMacs and Notebooks, which are still pretty pricey for the hardware thats in there. All the iOS devices are very competitive priced.

sambeau 16y ago
"which are still pretty pricey for the hardware thats in there" Only when you compare unlike with like. As soon as you look at similar spec, design and build quality it is a different story. Like the Dell Adamo "Macbook Air killer": http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20031079-64.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20031079-64.html
bradleyland 16y ago
I hate to take this bait, but I'm hoping maybe I'll get a recommendation here. This is not rhetorical. I'm not happy with the space I'm using up by having an Ubuntu in a VM on my SSD, so this question is very real, not just some Apple fanboy rant. I would like to buy a second laptop to run Ubuntu, but I want something with incredible build quality. I'm an Apple user, so clearly I don't mind paying a premium (ta-dum tss). The closest I've found is Lenovo, but their product still comes in a fully plastic enclosure containing a hundred screws and as many tacked on plastic panels as a Pontiac Aztek. I've read about their "roll cage", and I think that's a pretty cool idea, but it still doesn't hold up to Apple's unibody designs. I owned a T41 back around 2005 (best guestimate), so I'm not speaking entirely from ignorance of the product. I really don't feel it matches my MacBook Pro. Now, you might say that I'm being unreasonable, but I have the money, and I'm willing to spend it. If anyone has a lead on a well-built laptop with the design simplicity of an Apple MacBook, I'm interested to hear about it. I'm looking for: Something in the 13" range. I don't need anything super-powerful (C2D and 2 GB of RAM should be fine). I do care about build quality. The primary use-case is sysadmin duty. I want something small and light to take on the road that still has a bash shell. I want to go Ubuntu, rather than a 13" MBP because I've been very impressed with the work coming out of the Ubuntu community lately, and I don't like to limit my world to Apple alone. All of our VPSs run Debian, which is similar enough to Ubuntu that I can bring over a lot of my dot-files and customizations.
- 16y ago

jan_g 16y ago

You've checked the specs, haven't you? Ipad with such hardware specs would cost a lot more, in my opinion. It's a question whether ipad2 will be able to match the specs of xoom. For me, hdmi port is a great feature.

ugh 16y ago
There needs to be a great $500 Android tablet with appropriate specs (great battery life, snappiness, appropriate resolution, small, great build quality). I don’t think that $800 tablets with extravagant specs will help Android corner the tablet market. Specs luckily don’t matter much anymore.
- jan_g 16y ago
  I don't think that Motorola is after the whole market with Xoom. There are plenty of lower priced android tablets. So there's lots of choice for upper and lower end buyers. Also, ipad is priced from $500 to 900$, depending on specs, which means that they do matter.
  - ugh 16y ago
    There are no competitive cheap Android tablets. Specs obviously still matter when it comes to the price but they don’t matter to consumers. They want a snappy device, that’s all.
    - jan_g 16y ago
      Well, perhaps we'll see a stripped-down version of xoom later on. Half the memory, no 3g, single-core processor. Could reduce the price for a few hundred bucks. EDIT: I've found one bit of news that suggests there'll be a wifi only Xoom: http://androidcommunity.com/motorola-xoom-wifi-clears-fcc-20110210/ http://androidcommunity.com/motorola-xoom-wifi-clears-fcc-20...
      - ugh 16y ago
        Why are we not seeing it now? Motorola wants to compete with Apple but they release something that’s not really competitive. If you have any doubts about Motorola’s intent to compete with Apple head on, here is their Super Bowl commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vmRWeNZSM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vmRWeNZSM This video from Motorola makes their intent even clearer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vRgesYJHKo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vRgesYJHKo They don’t want to target the higher end of the market, they want to obsolete the iPad. They shouldn’t be surprised when they get then criticized harshly for not delivering.