September 12, 2008 8:49 AM PDT
Reading the Apple tea leaves: Cheaper MacBooks coming?
In the wake of Tuesday's Let's Rock Apple event, our own Tom Krazit posited a round of possible MacBook updates in October. More circumstantial evidence today, in the form of revised estimates by AmTech Research analyst Shaw Wu.
Silicon Alley Insider reports that Wu is cutting his Apple revenue estimates for the remainder of 2008 and for fiscal 2009, citing a belief that even affluent consumers are feeling the financial crunch, and that Apple may respond with lower prices.
"We continue to believe that MacBook Pro and MacBook are due for refreshes with more radical redesigns, likely at a special event later this fall. In addition, we are picking up that MacBook Air could see a minor refresh and potential price cut to increase its value proposition as build plans have slowed from earlier robust levels as customers have opted for MacBook or MacBook Pro instead."
New York native Dan Ackerman, a former radio DJ turned journalist, has written about technology and music for publications including Spin, Blender, The Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today. He hosts the weekly Digital City podcast and the New York edition of Editors' Office Hours. Dan's new album, Tales Out of Night School, is available now. E-mail Dan. 
Besides, maybe they're watching Dell and ASUS for a change to see how their mini notebooks fare before taking a stab at that.
Hint to Apple: Make them AFFORDABLE.
..Well, a hundred or two hundred dollars less would have been better, but like I said, being the first to offer that, it was well worth it to deviate from the crowd, especially considering that the same price could be spent on competitors, only to come up short in performance and features (the LED screen was only out from Apple too!).
But if you were to have bought the minor update they did earlier this year, or even now, I don't think it's worth it since most of the market has caught up and can offer very similar, if not slightly better specs at almost 60% or half the price. The only thing you miss out on is the LED-lit keyboard, ambient brightness controls (for the most part), and Leopard.
That's kind of why I'm holding out for an update to justify the price. But if they manage to update the lineups and also give significant hardware upgrades, they'll have me sold almost immediately.
The same applies to the standard Macbooks... though I felt skimping out on the super drive in the basic configuration and RAM (well, 2GB is sufficient enough for Leopard, but they should have up'ed it a bit when they did the minor update) and discrete graphics almost kills the deal.
For a 13-inch laptop, it's actually OK aside from those minor gripes, but for goodness sakes, if you're going to include iMovie or expect people to unleash their photos and creative sides, you might as well give them a decent discrete card to go with it!
Mac User Too has a point on their customer audience too.
it is correct that vista is bloated, but it is possible to get rid of a lot of unnecessary features.
its true though that the Apple audience isn't generally financially insecure.
i also can't believe that with apple's amazing success, growth, and profits that people still focus so much on price with apple products.
everybody has been saying for months that "in this economy" people are going to pull back on spending on apple products. but the facts show that with record sales in macs and iphones and continued growth in ipods that apple is doing just fine.
by the way, i am wondering how shaw wu failed to notice that the iphone 3g is selling by the millions and the new ipods are also sure to sell by the 10's of millions and apps are selling by the 100's of millions and songs are selling by the billions. sounds like a revenue bump to me.
Whipple looks like a walking skeleton , and that`s not good for Apple. Maybe "Jeepers Creepers boy" could take over ?
Where DO these SNObs come from anyways.
I hope you realize how ridiculous the statement about status symbol is. A company does not care about being a status symbol, they care about the bottomline.
But on the other hand I understand that this snobbish "I'm better than everybody else because I own a Mac" attitude is a feature that unfortunately tends to distinguish Apple fanboys. It's OK, I'll keep my laptop that is light years ahead of Macs in hardware and cost me less than even starter model Macbooks.
- by Galenn20K September 14, 2008 2:07 PM PDT
- Ok First sage324 you are just completely ridiculous thinking that and if you do, GOod Luck in Life with That!!
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (39 Comments)And second, Placebo1985 you are RIGHT on the Money!!!! Way more intelligent and sound than that OTHER person's comment.