6 ms·

Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of The Plan

35 points by px 15y ago

pedalpete 15y ago
The challenge for Apple here is to maintain both the 'premium' cache while remaining competitively priced. As this article states, they've done very well in marketing the Air. Everybody seems to be comparing Apple's $999 11" Air with competitors 13" products. The 13" starts at $1300, so the competitors are often priced $300+ less, with the exclusion of the Samsung Series 9.
- sudonim 15y ago
  At first I thought you were wrong but then I looked up prices on Amazon. The Acer 13.3 at $899 has a 320gb sata drive + a 20gb ssd. It's slightly lower specced than the current Macbook Air 13 inch, but seems like a reasonable savings. http://www.amazon.com/Acer-S3-951-6646-13-3-Inch-Aluminum-Ultrabook/dp/B005MR58MG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1319427521&sr=8-4 http://www.amazon.com/Acer-S3-951-6646-13-3-Inch-Aluminum-Ul... I'm writing this comment on the current model 13 inch air, and I wouldn't give it up for any of the alternatives. The build quality and the feel of the machine is incredible. It's the best laptop I've ever owned.
- Samuel_Michon 15y ago
  I think Apple has proven it can maintain the premium cachet [1], making healthy profits as well as offering competitive pricing. It has sold more than 300 million iPods, and yet, they look and feel like luxury products. Also, it is only through Intel's $300 million stimulus fund [2] that computer manufacturers other than Apple have finally started making slim notebooks that can compete with MacBook Air on price. Whether they can actually compete on quality remains to be seen, the 'ultrabooks' haven't exactly gotten favorable reviews. Read for instance Engadget's review of the Acer Aspire S3, their conclusion is "If you absolutely must buy a laptop of this ilk right now, you'll get better performance and longer battery life from the MacBook Air" [3]. [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cachet http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cachet [2] http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/08/10/intel-capital-creates-300-million-ultrabook-fund http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011... [3] http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-review/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-...
  - pedalpete 15y ago
    Sorry about the spelling on cachet, I was wondering about that. I'm not sure if you intentionally left out the review of the UX31, or just were unaware of Engadgets positive review yesterday. http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/21/asus-zenbook-ux31-review/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/21/asus-zenbook-ux31-review/ My biggest disappointment with all of these 'ultrabooks' is that they are MacBook Air clones. I don't think PC makers are going to go very far competing with Apple by copying their designs. PC makers need to start innovating themselves. Ultrabook is starting to be a synonym for MacBook copy, but there is a great opportunity to create products like the Lenovo U260 (which I'm typing this on now) which are as light as the Air, with warmer materials and don't have the wedge shape.
    - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
      I hadn't read Engadget's review of the Asus Zenbook. I have now, and I also read the review at Anandtech [1]. Both sites really try hard to like the device, but they agree on several points: - incoherent case design (did you see that blue USB port?) - uncomfortable keyboard with barely any travel - trackpad is laggy and inaccurate - display is TN, not IPS, and has high black levels. Anandtech's conclusion: "if you don't care about OS X and just want a good, ultra-thin Windows machine the Zenbook is a viable alternative. If ASUS can fix the trackpad issues then it's worth considering, however the display in the MBA alone is reason to opt for it over the Zenbook, even for Windows use" [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-ux21-review/1 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-ux21-review/...
      - robin_reala 15y ago
        To be fair, blue USB port = USB3 port in PC parlance. No excuse for the trackpad though.
    - usaar333 15y ago
      For a pretty innovative, awesome laptop (arguably the best ultraportable out there), see Sony Vaio Z (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4474/sony-updates-vaio-z-thinner-lighter-light-peak-and-external-gpu http://www.anandtech.com/show/4474/sony-updates-vaio-z-thinn...). Only super lightweight ultra-portable desktop replacement I know of.
- usaar333 15y ago
  Agreed that it is silly to compare the Air to competitor's laptops, arguing it is cheaper. A Toshiba Portege R835-P81 is $400 cheaper and similarly spec'd (more RAM, lower res). It's missing an SSD, but that can be had for $150, leaving it still way cheaper than a 13" air.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    Yeah, just heavier, thicker, worse industrial design (no magsafe, no magnetic display clip, no bluetooth (WTF?), no Thunderbolt, no sturdy unibody aluminum frame, no multitouch touchpad. Oh, and comes with these: "WildTangent® Game Console, TOSHIBA Face Recognition, Microsoft® Silverlight™ , TOSHIBA Bulletin Board™, TOSHIBA Disc Creator, TOSHIBA Service Station, Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30-day trial), TOSHIBA Recovery Disk Creator, TOSHIBA Web Camera Application, TOSHIBA HDD/SSD Alert, TOSHIBA BookPlace™, Intel® Wireless Display Technology (WiDi 2.1), TOSHIBA Media Controller, TOSHIBA PC Health Monitor, Microsoft® Windows Live Essentials including Photo Gallery, Messenger, Mail, Writer and Movie Maker., Microsoft® Windows Media Player 12, TOSHIBA ReelTime™, TOSHIBA eco Utility™, Google® Chrome, TOSHIBA Hard Drive Impact Sensor (3D sensor), Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Reduced functionality Word® and Excel® with advertising)*, TOSHIBA App Place" Which is a disadvantage in itself.
    - pedalpete 15y ago
      I have no idea what the 'magnetic display clip' is, and searching google didn't result in anything from Apple. I also don't think just providing a list of installed programs is not much of an argument. Note that many of those 'applications' exist in OSX, but Apple is just smart enough not to list them as installed apps. That list includes a basic install of Excel and Word (very useful for many people), Google Chrome, Media Player, Movie Maker, etc. etc. Do you fault Apple for including QuickTime, iTunes, Safari, iMovie in their products?
      - shrikant 15y ago
        The argument being made with the apps is the sheer volume of crapware on the Toshiba, versus none on the Air.
tatsuke95 15y ago
Price is the reason why no manufacturer has been able to compete with the iPad. It's not only a tremendous product as far as tablets go, it's relatively cheap. Look at the latest high-end tablet offerings; all subjectively "worse", most more expensive than the Apple product. The market-share argument against Apple will disappear as they strengthen their supply chain and become more efficient. They will become great AND cheap products. As someone who recently purchased his first Mac (decked out 13" MBA) and loves it, this is good news for everyone.
jayfuerstenberg 15y ago
What were the well-regarded elements to creating a successful product again? Be the first. Be the best. Be the cheapest. The iPad has all of these elements in the tablet space at the moment.
greggman 15y ago
I call BS. A macbook air might be "cheap" if you decide to limit your comparisons to "thin" notebooks but Best Buy has 40 models of notebooks for $200-$299 and another 40 models for $300-$399. The $300-$399 aren't bad either. 3-4gig, I3, AMD 6910, DVD player, etc. etc. You can get 3 of them for the price of 1 macbook air. Got 3 kids, how about 3 notebooks instead of 1? iPad? The competition hasn't really even started yet. It's only a matter of time before the $200-$300 tablets that don't suck start appearing. Will Apple lower the price of the iPad to match? I doubt it. Phones are a different market. Because almost all phones are bought with contracts there's been very little incentive to make the phones cheaper. Unlike notebooks which you just buy outright. I'm not saying in any way Apple's products aren't worth it. I have an iPad, 2 Macbook pros, A Mac Mini and an 8 core Mac Pro. But I'm not under any delusion that they are cheap compared to the alternatives. I'll still buy them because I like them but claiming a macbookair is a cheap notebook is like claiming a BWM is cheap car. It's only cheap if you massively restrict the options you are comparing them to.
- lispm 15y ago
  'cheap' could be the wrong word. But the first MacBook Air was relatively expensive. In a relatively short time Apple was driving the price for it down to $1000 while adding a lot value to it. If you compare items which aim to be small and lightweight, you pay a premium price for the loss of weight. If the product is already relatively light-weight, losing additional grams gets more expensive - unless you are will to sacrifice something like durability. It was quite a bit surprising how Apple slashed the price of the MacBook Air - given that it contains relatively expensive flash 'drives'. The iPad also has a relatively attractive price. The Mac mini feels a bit expensive, though.
  - gnaffle 15y ago
    Even the original MacBook Air was cheap compared to the competition when it was released, from what I recall, about a $1000 cheaper than a similar Fujitsu-Siemens laptop (both non-SSD models). The funny thing, of course, was that many people were comparing the very expensive SSD model to _normal_ laptops and complaining that it was way too expensive for a laptop.
macavity23 15y ago
I'm surprised nobody (including the article author) has mentioned Tim Cook, particularly as this new shift to lower pricing that he talks about coincides with TC taking the helm. This is what Mr. Cook does - squeezes every last bit of optimization and efficiency out of every step in the supply line, reducing costs, hence giving them leeway to reduce their prices while keeping their enviable margins.
- pja 15y ago
  Not only that, but IIRC Apple uses their size to bankroll plant manufacture in the far east in exchange for exclusive access to the first product run for a period followed by guaranteed sweetheart pricing deals thereafter (or at least so an article I read somewhere like TechCrunch claimed: I don't have a link handy unfortunately). Unsurprisingly, this gives Apple a huge commercial advantage: they are able to maintain profit margins whilst undercutting their competitors thanks to the clever use of their strong cash position. Apple's competitors seem to be completely incapable of taking the longer term view of product development that leads to these kind of dividends down the road. (Whether doing these deals was down to Tim Cook, Jobs or some other Apple exec I've no idea, but I'm guessing Cook.)
iaskwhy 15y ago
I'm definitely in the minority here but sometimes it's good to have some counterpoints about the new MacBook Air. I recently bought one with 13" thinking it would be my best computer ever. Well, hardware/power-wise it is incredibly fast! But I found out some things that make it almost unbearable. There are only three ways to interact with a laptop and I believe it fails deeply in two of them. The trackpad is very much ok, probably the best one I ever tried. But the keyboard... While the design looks amazing, keys are really thin and feel cheap. As soon as I turned the laptop on and needed to enter my Apple ID, the first time I pressed the Alt key it just came out! This hasn't happened yet to any other key on this laptop but I used to have an iMac with a similar keyboard and three keys stopped working. You can feel the fragility of the keys by putting one finger on the top of the key and another on the bottom, and then press them alternatively: the key bounces like a boat. While I can't say it's the worst keyboard I ever had (because I owned an iMac), I never had such problem with any other laptop or external keyboard. I could also talk about the really small size of the arrow keys. I miss them all the time. And the return key is also much smaller than every other keyboard I have tried before. The other way to interact with the laptop (more like it interacting with me) is the screen. I was crazy about having a really good definition screen and it is. But operating systems are not made for resolutions like that so it all ends up with really really small text everywhere and zooming all the time because you will mostly never get into a text properly sized for a screen like this. If you use Windows you can set the DPI to whatever you want but webpages text will still be incredibly small. So I have a hard time typing and reading on it. I can't recommend it to anyone.
- DuncanIdaho 15y ago
  Regarding your complaint of rocking keyboards. I went and checked my ol' T60 and by god, do T60's keys rock like a drunk sailor. But it's universally regarded as one of the best laptop keyboards available.
  - iaskwhy 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's easy to find a bad keyboard, I was just never that unlucky until now I guess. The problem is not only that they bounce but that if I press either the top or the bottom I feel that it might break the key. I believe the MacBook Air is universally regarded as one of the best screens available for a laptop but on a recent poll here more than 50% of the comments said they zoomed in all the time so I tend not to care much about what is universally said and more about how I feel about it. It's good to know how people feel about something but I can't make it my word until I try it myself. Edit: Also because I might be looking for something else than the majority of people, I don't know, just thinking out loud now because I like that topic a lot!
AndrewDucker 15y ago
Doing a little digging, it seems that it's $199 on Verizon with a contract. But you need a data package on top. It's $60 for 450 minutes. Go for the Droid Bionic and it's $300 with a 2 year contract. So that _looks_ more expensive, but it's not, because it's $40/month for 450 minutes. So over the two years that's an extra $480 dollars you spend on the Apple, to save $100 up-front. I don't see how that's cheaper.
- sebbi 15y ago
  People are stupid ... that's all I can say. We have multiple providers selling the iPhone in Germany. One sells it for 240 € with a 40 € / month contract, another one for 19 € with a 48 € / month contract. It amounts to roughly the same end price (which is ALWAYS higher than buying the iPhone straight from Apple), but people say it's 200 € cheaper on the second provider ... stupid stupid stupid ;-)
- usaar333 15y ago
  I'm surprised you don't need a data package for a Droid Bionic. On Sprint, an iPhone 4S and highest end Android phone offered (Galaxy S 2) are the same price ($200) - contract details seem the same. My best guess is that highest end Android phones cost about the same as an iPhone 4S.

35 points by px 15y ago

The challenge for Apple here is to maintain both the 'premium' cache while remaining competitively priced. As this article states, they've done very well in marketing the Air. Everybody seems to be comparing Apple's $999 11" Air with competitors 13" products. The 13" starts at $1300, so the competitors are often priced $300+ less, with the exclusion of the Samsung Series 9.

sudonim 15y ago
At first I thought you were wrong but then I looked up prices on Amazon. The Acer 13.3 at $899 has a 320gb sata drive + a 20gb ssd. It's slightly lower specced than the current Macbook Air 13 inch, but seems like a reasonable savings. http://www.amazon.com/Acer-S3-951-6646-13-3-Inch-Aluminum-Ultrabook/dp/B005MR58MG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1319427521&sr=8-4 http://www.amazon.com/Acer-S3-951-6646-13-3-Inch-Aluminum-Ul... I'm writing this comment on the current model 13 inch air, and I wouldn't give it up for any of the alternatives. The build quality and the feel of the machine is incredible. It's the best laptop I've ever owned.
Samuel_Michon 15y ago
I think Apple has proven it can maintain the premium cachet [1], making healthy profits as well as offering competitive pricing. It has sold more than 300 million iPods, and yet, they look and feel like luxury products. Also, it is only through Intel's $300 million stimulus fund [2] that computer manufacturers other than Apple have finally started making slim notebooks that can compete with MacBook Air on price. Whether they can actually compete on quality remains to be seen, the 'ultrabooks' haven't exactly gotten favorable reviews. Read for instance Engadget's review of the Acer Aspire S3, their conclusion is "If you absolutely must buy a laptop of this ilk right now, you'll get better performance and longer battery life from the MacBook Air" [3]. [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cachet http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cachet [2] http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/08/10/intel-capital-creates-300-million-ultrabook-fund http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011... [3] http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-review/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/14/acer-aspire-s3-ultrabook-...
- pedalpete 15y ago
  Sorry about the spelling on cachet, I was wondering about that. I'm not sure if you intentionally left out the review of the UX31, or just were unaware of Engadgets positive review yesterday. http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/21/asus-zenbook-ux31-review/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/21/asus-zenbook-ux31-review/ My biggest disappointment with all of these 'ultrabooks' is that they are MacBook Air clones. I don't think PC makers are going to go very far competing with Apple by copying their designs. PC makers need to start innovating themselves. Ultrabook is starting to be a synonym for MacBook copy, but there is a great opportunity to create products like the Lenovo U260 (which I'm typing this on now) which are as light as the Air, with warmer materials and don't have the wedge shape.
  - Samuel_Michon 15y ago
    I hadn't read Engadget's review of the Asus Zenbook. I have now, and I also read the review at Anandtech [1]. Both sites really try hard to like the device, but they agree on several points: - incoherent case design (did you see that blue USB port?) - uncomfortable keyboard with barely any travel - trackpad is laggy and inaccurate - display is TN, not IPS, and has high black levels. Anandtech's conclusion: "if you don't care about OS X and just want a good, ultra-thin Windows machine the Zenbook is a viable alternative. If ASUS can fix the trackpad issues then it's worth considering, however the display in the MBA alone is reason to opt for it over the Zenbook, even for Windows use" [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-ux21-review/1 http://www.anandtech.com/show/4985/asus-zenbook-ux21-review/...
    - robin_reala 15y ago
      To be fair, blue USB port = USB3 port in PC parlance. No excuse for the trackpad though.
  - usaar333 15y ago
    For a pretty innovative, awesome laptop (arguably the best ultraportable out there), see Sony Vaio Z (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4474/sony-updates-vaio-z-thinner-lighter-light-peak-and-external-gpu http://www.anandtech.com/show/4474/sony-updates-vaio-z-thinn...). Only super lightweight ultra-portable desktop replacement I know of.
usaar333 15y ago
Agreed that it is silly to compare the Air to competitor's laptops, arguing it is cheaper. A Toshiba Portege R835-P81 is $400 cheaper and similarly spec'd (more RAM, lower res). It's missing an SSD, but that can be had for $150, leaving it still way cheaper than a 13" air.
- dextorious 15y ago
  Yeah, just heavier, thicker, worse industrial design (no magsafe, no magnetic display clip, no bluetooth (WTF?), no Thunderbolt, no sturdy unibody aluminum frame, no multitouch touchpad. Oh, and comes with these: "WildTangent® Game Console, TOSHIBA Face Recognition, Microsoft® Silverlight™ , TOSHIBA Bulletin Board™, TOSHIBA Disc Creator, TOSHIBA Service Station, Norton Internet Security™ 2011 (30-day trial), TOSHIBA Recovery Disk Creator, TOSHIBA Web Camera Application, TOSHIBA HDD/SSD Alert, TOSHIBA BookPlace™, Intel® Wireless Display Technology (WiDi 2.1), TOSHIBA Media Controller, TOSHIBA PC Health Monitor, Microsoft® Windows Live Essentials including Photo Gallery, Messenger, Mail, Writer and Movie Maker., Microsoft® Windows Media Player 12, TOSHIBA ReelTime™, TOSHIBA eco Utility™, Google® Chrome, TOSHIBA Hard Drive Impact Sensor (3D sensor), Microsoft® Office Starter 2010 (Reduced functionality Word® and Excel® with advertising)*, TOSHIBA App Place" Which is a disadvantage in itself.
  - pedalpete 15y ago
    I have no idea what the 'magnetic display clip' is, and searching google didn't result in anything from Apple. I also don't think just providing a list of installed programs is not much of an argument. Note that many of those 'applications' exist in OSX, but Apple is just smart enough not to list them as installed apps. That list includes a basic install of Excel and Word (very useful for many people), Google Chrome, Media Player, Movie Maker, etc. etc. Do you fault Apple for including QuickTime, iTunes, Safari, iMovie in their products?
    - shrikant 15y ago
      The argument being made with the apps is the sheer volume of crapware on the Toshiba, versus none on the Air.

tatsuke95 15y ago

Price is the reason why no manufacturer has been able to compete with the iPad. It's not only a tremendous product as far as tablets go, it's relatively cheap. Look at the latest high-end tablet offerings; all subjectively "worse", most more expensive than the Apple product. The market-share argument against Apple will disappear as they strengthen their supply chain and become more efficient. They will become great AND cheap products. As someone who recently purchased his first Mac (decked out 13" MBA) and loves it, this is good news for everyone.

jayfuerstenberg 15y ago

What were the well-regarded elements to creating a successful product again? Be the first. Be the best. Be the cheapest. The iPad has all of these elements in the tablet space at the moment.

greggman 15y ago

I call BS. A macbook air might be "cheap" if you decide to limit your comparisons to "thin" notebooks but Best Buy has 40 models of notebooks for $200-$299 and another 40 models for $300-$399. The $300-$399 aren't bad either. 3-4gig, I3, AMD 6910, DVD player, etc. etc. You can get 3 of them for the price of 1 macbook air. Got 3 kids, how about 3 notebooks instead of 1? iPad? The competition hasn't really even started yet. It's only a matter of time before the $200-$300 tablets that don't suck start appearing. Will Apple lower the price of the iPad to match? I doubt it. Phones are a different market. Because almost all phones are bought with contracts there's been very little incentive to make the phones cheaper. Unlike notebooks which you just buy outright. I'm not saying in any way Apple's products aren't worth it. I have an iPad, 2 Macbook pros, A Mac Mini and an 8 core Mac Pro. But I'm not under any delusion that they are cheap compared to the alternatives. I'll still buy them because I like them but claiming a macbookair is a cheap notebook is like claiming a BWM is cheap car. It's only cheap if you massively restrict the options you are comparing them to.

lispm 15y ago
'cheap' could be the wrong word. But the first MacBook Air was relatively expensive. In a relatively short time Apple was driving the price for it down to $1000 while adding a lot value to it. If you compare items which aim to be small and lightweight, you pay a premium price for the loss of weight. If the product is already relatively light-weight, losing additional grams gets more expensive - unless you are will to sacrifice something like durability. It was quite a bit surprising how Apple slashed the price of the MacBook Air - given that it contains relatively expensive flash 'drives'. The iPad also has a relatively attractive price. The Mac mini feels a bit expensive, though.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  Even the original MacBook Air was cheap compared to the competition when it was released, from what I recall, about a $1000 cheaper than a similar Fujitsu-Siemens laptop (both non-SSD models). The funny thing, of course, was that many people were comparing the very expensive SSD model to _normal_ laptops and complaining that it was way too expensive for a laptop.

macavity23 15y ago

I'm surprised nobody (including the article author) has mentioned Tim Cook, particularly as this new shift to lower pricing that he talks about coincides with TC taking the helm. This is what Mr. Cook does - squeezes every last bit of optimization and efficiency out of every step in the supply line, reducing costs, hence giving them leeway to reduce their prices while keeping their enviable margins.

pja 15y ago
Not only that, but IIRC Apple uses their size to bankroll plant manufacture in the far east in exchange for exclusive access to the first product run for a period followed by guaranteed sweetheart pricing deals thereafter (or at least so an article I read somewhere like TechCrunch claimed: I don't have a link handy unfortunately). Unsurprisingly, this gives Apple a huge commercial advantage: they are able to maintain profit margins whilst undercutting their competitors thanks to the clever use of their strong cash position. Apple's competitors seem to be completely incapable of taking the longer term view of product development that leads to these kind of dividends down the road. (Whether doing these deals was down to Tim Cook, Jobs or some other Apple exec I've no idea, but I'm guessing Cook.)

iaskwhy 15y ago

I'm definitely in the minority here but sometimes it's good to have some counterpoints about the new MacBook Air. I recently bought one with 13" thinking it would be my best computer ever. Well, hardware/power-wise it is incredibly fast! But I found out some things that make it almost unbearable. There are only three ways to interact with a laptop and I believe it fails deeply in two of them. The trackpad is very much ok, probably the best one I ever tried. But the keyboard... While the design looks amazing, keys are really thin and feel cheap. As soon as I turned the laptop on and needed to enter my Apple ID, the first time I pressed the Alt key it just came out! This hasn't happened yet to any other key on this laptop but I used to have an iMac with a similar keyboard and three keys stopped working. You can feel the fragility of the keys by putting one finger on the top of the key and another on the bottom, and then press them alternatively: the key bounces like a boat. While I can't say it's the worst keyboard I ever had (because I owned an iMac), I never had such problem with any other laptop or external keyboard. I could also talk about the really small size of the arrow keys. I miss them all the time. And the return key is also much smaller than every other keyboard I have tried before. The other way to interact with the laptop (more like it interacting with me) is the screen. I was crazy about having a really good definition screen and it is. But operating systems are not made for resolutions like that so it all ends up with really really small text everywhere and zooming all the time because you will mostly never get into a text properly sized for a screen like this. If you use Windows you can set the DPI to whatever you want but webpages text will still be incredibly small. So I have a hard time typing and reading on it. I can't recommend it to anyone.

DuncanIdaho 15y ago
Regarding your complaint of rocking keyboards. I went and checked my ol' T60 and by god, do T60's keys rock like a drunk sailor. But it's universally regarded as one of the best laptop keyboards available.
- iaskwhy 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's easy to find a bad keyboard, I was just never that unlucky until now I guess. The problem is not only that they bounce but that if I press either the top or the bottom I feel that it might break the key. I believe the MacBook Air is universally regarded as one of the best screens available for a laptop but on a recent poll here more than 50% of the comments said they zoomed in all the time so I tend not to care much about what is universally said and more about how I feel about it. It's good to know how people feel about something but I can't make it my word until I try it myself. Edit: Also because I might be looking for something else than the majority of people, I don't know, just thinking out loud now because I like that topic a lot!

AndrewDucker 15y ago

Doing a little digging, it seems that it's $199 on Verizon with a contract. But you need a data package on top. It's $60 for 450 minutes. Go for the Droid Bionic and it's $300 with a 2 year contract. So that _looks_ more expensive, but it's not, because it's $40/month for 450 minutes. So over the two years that's an extra $480 dollars you spend on the Apple, to save $100 up-front. I don't see how that's cheaper.

sebbi 15y ago
People are stupid ... that's all I can say. We have multiple providers selling the iPhone in Germany. One sells it for 240 € with a 40 € / month contract, another one for 19 € with a 48 € / month contract. It amounts to roughly the same end price (which is ALWAYS higher than buying the iPhone straight from Apple), but people say it's 200 € cheaper on the second provider ... stupid stupid stupid ;-)
usaar333 15y ago
I'm surprised you don't need a data package for a Droid Bionic. On Sprint, an iPhone 4S and highest end Android phone offered (Galaxy S 2) are the same price ($200) - contract details seem the same. My best guess is that highest end Android phones cost about the same as an iPhone 4S.