MacBook Air gets a lot thinner--in price
On Monday, the Apple MacBook Air reached a new price low as a wave of sub-$1,000 ultrathin laptops get set to break onto the market.
MacBook Air prices as updated Monday on Apple's Web site
(Credit: Apple)The ultrathin, trend-setting 13-inch notebook made a steep descent from its rarefied, luxury-laptop pricing altitudes. The top-of-the-line Air with a 128GB solid-state drive fell $700 in price to $1,799 from $2,499 and gained a slightly faster 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The new prices are now posted on Apple's Web site.
The lower-end version with a 120GB hard disk drive fell to $1,499--the lowest price to date for a new (not refurbished) MacBook Air.
The price cut is happening just as PC makers, including Lenovo, Acer, Asus, and MSI, are debuting new ultrathin laptops at price points decidedly lower than the executive-jewelry genre of ultraportables that dominated the market for years.
Lenovo's 3.5-pound 13.3-inch IdeaPad U350, for example, will start at $649. At the other end of the pricing spectrum, the top-of-the-line, ultrasleek Dell Adamo is still listed at $2,699. The clock may be ticking on these lofty price levels, though.
On Monday, Apple also upgraded its comparably sized 13-inch MacBook to MacBook Pro status. The new 13-inch MacBook Pro has the same unibody design but now includes a seven-hour battery, a FireWire 800 port, an SD card slot, a backlit keyboard, and an improved LED-backlit display with a greater color range.
With Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory, and a 160GB hard disk drive, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is priced at $1,199. A model with a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of memory, and a 250GB hard disk drive is priced at $1,499.
Brooke Crothers has been an editor at large at CNET News, an analyst at IDC Japan, and an editor at The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, among other endeavors, including co-manager of an after-school math-and-reading center. He writes for the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
But I guess Apple finally realized that it had to do something. I do not really hate Apple products, but they do remind me of Bose when it comes to their marketing hype. I used to be a Bose fan until one day I was able to what crappy drivers were in one of their speakers. After that I realized it was more about making a crappy speaker sound good. Apple is a lot like that. I mean I have taken a lot of Mac's apart and the parts are just what you expect to see in any computer. In fact some of the LCD screens I was a bit amazed that they were cheaper quality then I expected. So even though I think Apple makes a good operating system and they design nice looking hardware. I would not pay anymore for them then I would any other brand. Just because their standard warranty is no better and their parts are just parts.
It really doesn't matter how much a product costs to make, as long as you can sell it for more than that then you should sell it for as much as you can make from it.
Then, you aren't going to be buying a "good operating system" or "nice looking hardware," brother. Doh!
DNFTT
You often get what you pay for and I for one am very glad I paid extra for a Mac computer that has reduced my headaches while increasing my production, abilities, and general happiness.
they did it because most people don't really use firewire !
USB has the market cornered !
plus even now you need a adapter for FW 400 devices
I look for FireWire interfaces in peripherals and devices. I especially did this when my PowerBook G4 was my main machine. It also had FireWire 800. Apple made a huge mistake in not pushing FireWire harder in the beginning.
If they don't have S3200 in their next Pro desktop upgrade I will be very disappointed.
Looks like dell will need to shut one more of it's factories soon !
Haha, about time they got a reality check
- by J.G. June 12, 2009 6:15 AM PDT
- A recession happened to Apple and everyone else. The lower prices are not a response to the release of thin netbooks, which do not compete with Apple laptops. Apple seeks to increase market share during this recession by sweetening its deals.
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- by Renegade Knight June 15, 2009 11:57 AM PDT
- They are all computers. Thus they are all competitors. You don't have to like it or even believe it, but it's true.
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(28 Comments)However to help you understand. I'll point out the proof in your post. "Apple seeks to increase market share". That increase share would come from the competition.