9 ms·

So, you really wanna claim that Apple has an equally confusing product lineup compared to other manufactures? That’s a quite daring claim (and also some impress

by ugh 15y ago

So, you really wanna claim that Apple has an equally confusing product lineup compared to other manufactures? That’s a quite daring claim (and also some impressive misleading quoting you are doing there). Apple doesn’t ask you to decide based on non-sensical marketing blabber like that. They use it, sure, but it isn’t central in the decision process of the buyer. Go to their store and check out how they do it: http://store.apple.com/us http://store.apple.com/us If you want a laptop you are asked to make only one decision: Do you want a MacBook Pro or Air? Finding out what those two laptops are all about is easy, if only because it’s only two and not four or more. They are also clearly different from each other, in a way that’s obvious even to someone who doesn’t know anything or doesn’t want to know anything about technological details. Just looking at them is more or less enough to figure out what they are all about. When you have made that decision, you more or less only have to decide on the screen size you would like: 11" or 13" if you want an Air, 13", 15" or 17" if you want a Pro. I would love it if other manufacturers did the same. Shopping for PCs is just so damn frustrating. It’s no fun at all.

jseliger 15y ago
So, you really wanna claim that Apple has an equally confusing product lineup compared to other manufactures? That’s a quite daring claim (and also some impressive misleading quoting you are doing there). Apple doesn’t ask you to decide based on non-sensical marketing blabber like that. They use it, sure, but it isn’t central in the decision process of the buyer. One other point: all three Macs I've owned were ready to use out of the box. No stickers, no crapware, no nothing. Contrast this with a recent Anandtech review of a recent Sony Vaio that, hardware-wise, is quite nice, but: Because of that initial bloat I have a hard time recommending the VAIO S to any end user that can't fix it (including but not limited to just plain physically upgrading the hard drive) or doesn't know someone who can. This is an otherwise fantastic notebook with a lot of potential just looking for the right user, but if you're not comfortable getting elbow deep in cleaning it out (or preferably doing a clean Windows 7 installation), it's not going to be the notebook for you. For those of you who are willing and able to put in the time, though, you'll likely be very well served by the Sony VAIO S. (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4748/sony-vaio-sb-all-day-consumer-computing/7 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4748/sony-vaio-sb-all-day-cons...) I read something like that and think, "Where's the MacBook Air link again..."
- dlss 15y ago
  What an odd way to decide which machine you'll use every day for the next year or more. A clean install is really easy -- maybe one hour if you sit and watch it, fifteen minutes if you use your old laptop while it's going... why would you let a cost of <one hour drive your buying decision? Setup time is part of the cost of a system. I'm sure that the apple machine isn't actually ready for you to use it out of the box -- if you're like most HN readers you'll have tons of tweaks you need to install before the computer actually works the way you want it to. I'm writing this on a x220 with a 240GB Vertex3 under the hood, which is 4-10x faster than my coworker's13" 240GB macbook air for bioinformatics workloads. It cost about $100 more, and yes it required a clean install as part of setup. The profit I've made on that $100 + 1 hour is insane... probably 100x return so far this year on decreased compile & run times (calculated as delta in experiments per day times my annual salary)
  - hamedh 15y ago
    i cared about doing clean installs/configuring when i was a teenager and had nothing else to do. now i just want my computer stay out of my way and make me money. os x, time machine, etc all let me do that
  - endtwist 15y ago
    You do know you're not the typical laptop buyer, right? The majority of people buy a laptop, take it home, and want it to just work. Do you buy a new refrigerator expecting to have to clean out the compressor the minute you take it home? I certainly hope not.
    - dlss 15y ago
      If I could make a 100x profit on my time doing it, you bet. To put more forcefully: if I needed to maintain one of those room sized refrigerators, and could save $10,000 for a couple hours of messing with a compressor the decision is a no brainer. I agree that mortals can't/won't do this -- doesn't mean the HN crowd is being intelligent when they say what the guy I replied to was saying :p EDIT: Downvoters, please explain -- For people with high computing requirements who insist on the x220 / Macbook air form factor, this is an accurate picture of the ROI. Look at the performance differences between the macbook air ssd (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) and the vertex 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review...). If your job commonly has you IO bound you will see at least 100 hours of your life saved over the 2,000 hours of a year of 40 hour work weeks (a 5% savings -- not all your time will be spent IO bound). And that's not including the difference between a 2.7 Ghz and a 1.7 Ghz processor...
uladzislau 15y ago
It's exactly the point other market players don't get: give people less choice i.e. less confusion. Save their time and they will pay premium for that. And in the end, serious and smart people care about piece of mind not specs or even price.
statictype 15y ago
Until recently, Apple had a 13" Macbook Air, a 13" MacBook and a 13" MacBook Pro. As a first-time Mac buyer last year I was certainly confused about the difference between the plastic MacBook and the MacBook Pro. I find it hard to believe that simplicity of choice is a reason people buy Apple laptops. If you're looking at the various MacBook models, you've pretty much already made a conscious decision to consider buying from Apple for reasons that had nothing to do with how many models were on display. It was probably the reputation for good design, easy software, lack of shovelware, no viruses etc...
- technoslut 15y ago
  In retrospect this was a transitional phase for Apple since the Macbook is no longer offered. Even at three different models it is still far less complicated than the rest of the industry.
- philwelch 15y ago
  But you can just look at the pictures to tell them apart. Oh, that one's tiny and made of aluminum, that one's bigger and made of plastic, and that one's bigger and made of aluminum. I didn't have to click through meaningless pages of non-differentiating differentiations to see those options, they were right there on the page.
  - statictype 15y ago
    I could certainly tell them apart by looking at them. Question was why they had these 2 different models in the first place
    - thenduks 15y ago
      Transition period.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      For Apple it was due to a transition period. As far as the customer is concerned, the customer notices that there's a plastic MacBook, and it's cheaper than the aluminum one.

by ugh 15y ago

jseliger 15y ago

So, you really wanna claim that Apple has an equally confusing product lineup compared to other manufactures? That’s a quite daring claim (and also some impressive misleading quoting you are doing there). Apple doesn’t ask you to decide based on non-sensical marketing blabber like that. They use it, sure, but it isn’t central in the decision process of the buyer. One other point: all three Macs I've owned were ready to use out of the box. No stickers, no crapware, no nothing. Contrast this with a recent Anandtech review of a recent Sony Vaio that, hardware-wise, is quite nice, but: Because of that initial bloat I have a hard time recommending the VAIO S to any end user that can't fix it (including but not limited to just plain physically upgrading the hard drive) or doesn't know someone who can. This is an otherwise fantastic notebook with a lot of potential just looking for the right user, but if you're not comfortable getting elbow deep in cleaning it out (or preferably doing a clean Windows 7 installation), it's not going to be the notebook for you. For those of you who are willing and able to put in the time, though, you'll likely be very well served by the Sony VAIO S. (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4748/sony-vaio-sb-all-day-consumer-computing/7 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4748/sony-vaio-sb-all-day-cons...) I read something like that and think, "Where's the MacBook Air link again..."

dlss 15y ago
What an odd way to decide which machine you'll use every day for the next year or more. A clean install is really easy -- maybe one hour if you sit and watch it, fifteen minutes if you use your old laptop while it's going... why would you let a cost of <one hour drive your buying decision? Setup time is part of the cost of a system. I'm sure that the apple machine isn't actually ready for you to use it out of the box -- if you're like most HN readers you'll have tons of tweaks you need to install before the computer actually works the way you want it to. I'm writing this on a x220 with a 240GB Vertex3 under the hood, which is 4-10x faster than my coworker's13" 240GB macbook air for bioinformatics workloads. It cost about $100 more, and yes it required a clean install as part of setup. The profit I've made on that $100 + 1 hour is insane... probably 100x return so far this year on decreased compile & run times (calculated as delta in experiments per day times my annual salary)
- hamedh 15y ago
  i cared about doing clean installs/configuring when i was a teenager and had nothing else to do. now i just want my computer stay out of my way and make me money. os x, time machine, etc all let me do that
- endtwist 15y ago
  You do know you're not the typical laptop buyer, right? The majority of people buy a laptop, take it home, and want it to just work. Do you buy a new refrigerator expecting to have to clean out the compressor the minute you take it home? I certainly hope not.
  - dlss 15y ago
    If I could make a 100x profit on my time doing it, you bet. To put more forcefully: if I needed to maintain one of those room sized refrigerators, and could save $10,000 for a couple hours of messing with a compressor the decision is a no brainer. I agree that mortals can't/won't do this -- doesn't mean the HN crowd is being intelligent when they say what the guy I replied to was saying :p EDIT: Downvoters, please explain -- For people with high computing requirements who insist on the x220 / Macbook air form factor, this is an accurate picture of the ROI. Look at the performance differences between the macbook air ssd (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) and the vertex 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review...). If your job commonly has you IO bound you will see at least 100 hours of your life saved over the 2,000 hours of a year of 40 hour work weeks (a 5% savings -- not all your time will be spent IO bound). And that's not including the difference between a 2.7 Ghz and a 1.7 Ghz processor...

uladzislau 15y ago

It's exactly the point other market players don't get: give people less choice i.e. less confusion. Save their time and they will pay premium for that. And in the end, serious and smart people care about piece of mind not specs or even price.

statictype 15y ago

Until recently, Apple had a 13" Macbook Air, a 13" MacBook and a 13" MacBook Pro. As a first-time Mac buyer last year I was certainly confused about the difference between the plastic MacBook and the MacBook Pro. I find it hard to believe that simplicity of choice is a reason people buy Apple laptops. If you're looking at the various MacBook models, you've pretty much already made a conscious decision to consider buying from Apple for reasons that had nothing to do with how many models were on display. It was probably the reputation for good design, easy software, lack of shovelware, no viruses etc...

technoslut 15y ago
In retrospect this was a transitional phase for Apple since the Macbook is no longer offered. Even at three different models it is still far less complicated than the rest of the industry.
philwelch 15y ago
But you can just look at the pictures to tell them apart. Oh, that one's tiny and made of aluminum, that one's bigger and made of plastic, and that one's bigger and made of aluminum. I didn't have to click through meaningless pages of non-differentiating differentiations to see those options, they were right there on the page.
- statictype 15y ago
  I could certainly tell them apart by looking at them. Question was why they had these 2 different models in the first place
  - thenduks 15y ago
    Transition period.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    For Apple it was due to a transition period. As far as the customer is concerned, the customer notices that there's a plastic MacBook, and it's cheaper than the aluminum one.