Comments on: Why a new $800 Apple laptop had better be pretty

If Apple does launch an $800 laptop next week, the design will, as usual, be the crucial factor.

[Galaxy5]

Sure would be cool if they sold a product that could be used as a laptop or a desktop, a la Mac Mini. $600.00 for the 'brick' and you get what's essentially a Mac Mini. $800 gets you the same thing with a bright, sharp, fully detachable 13" display.

Not that I would be in a position to know...I just like leaving cryptic comments. And I drink beer at B.J.s on DeAnza a lot.

[Mr. Dee]

But what about the competitors? They have gotten fairly good at design and aesthetics and they are really good at pricing their products. I can get a notebook from Dell or HP with specs of the most high end MacBook for $600 to $800. As soon Apple delivers this product, don't be surprised to see $300 to $500 notebooks from Dell, HP, Lenovo or Acer. Then we can say, the cycle continues. Apple will have to use its design, user experience and end to end value to really make this an easy sell.

[technewsjunkie]

" I can get a notebook from Dell or HP with specs of the most high end MacBook for $600 to $800."

Please provide a link to this. I would like to see it. Especially the display.

Thank you .

[Penguinisto]

Well, Dell and HP already operate on razor-thin margins... plus they have to pay Microsoft for the privilege of selling those laptops with Windows pre-loaded on them. Not sure how on Earth they're going to be able to shrink their existing prices without having to cut even more corners (read: more gray-market parts, under-specced RAM and mainboard components, overclocked video components, HDD's with undersized buffer, etc). Sure, the numbers on the surface will look pretty, but I suspect that now more than ever, the numbers that consumers don't pay attention to (e.g. CAS latency on RAM) will suck even more than they do now...

/P

[jasonschlachter]

you might see an dual core atom powered laptop for $800 from Apple. Perfectly usable by most students and cloud computing types.

[wratbatblue]

I couldn't resist the chance to speak up as one who disagrees with the statement that Apple always gets the "pretty" part right. I think they do extremely well with their desktops and handhelds, but I, personally, don't think their laptops are pretty at all, with the possible exception of the black Macbook. They're too minimalist for my taste.

[technewsjunkie]

Yeah, I much prefer the WinTel "luggable" laptops I see. They are not "minimalist" at all, they are deep, fat and heavy.

[bgnm]

As usual, the industry pundits have it backwards. Apple makes products that work extremely well and that also happen to look great, not the other way around. My Mac is worth large price premium because of frustration I don't have to suffer. For example, I logged onto a free WiFi service at an airport Tuesday, and checked email and the market within a minute or two. The Windows geeks across from me were not able to get logged on in the 45 minutes before the flight boarded. They were obviously not novices, and they were obviously very frustrated. I'm always amused at the little things the Windows platform designers never seem to get right, e.g. USB ports too close together to be used simultaneously. My MacBook looks (and performs) like a Porshe. By contrast, HP laptops always remind me of the station wagon in the original Vacation movie. Lots of chrome, but not much more.

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Oh, please don't get me wrong, bgnm.

I agree that Apple makes really good products. For me, at least. I have never used anything else. Not sure that I could. But I'm still drawn to them first for the looks. And then for the other 'feely' things, like ease of use.

Chris

[rapier1]

Ummm... DHCP is pretty fundamental technology and in most situations it just works. Unless they were trying to access VPN through a poorly configured router there should have been no problem. So I have to believe that these 'geeks' were trying to do something more than just send out a DHCP request and that you just weren't aware of what they were trying to do.

[Penguinisto]

@ the author: Screw the looks - question is, what will it have under the hood? I can live with a 13-inch screen for $800, but as long as they don't skimp too much on the CPU (a decent Core2 Duo or Centrino Duo will do), a decent OpenGL-capable video card (GeForce-something with 128/256MB on it), and allow the buyer to jam in a few sticks of RAM and perhaps stick in a bigger HDD (SATA will do just fine, thanks)... all is well.

I can always get a bigger monitor to plug the creature into @ home (same w/ the keyboard and etc), and looks are the last thing I care about (I own and use a very banged-up Sony Vaio Centrino rig).

If it has some decent 'oomph under the hood (with potential for the user to pack in more), I'd happily run out and grab one.

/P

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

And there is plenty of room in this world for the UnderTheHooders, penguinisto.

It's just that some folks out there don't look at things quite like you do. I mean, CPUs, RAMs...Lordy, Lordy, you are deep, man.

It's all good.

Chris

Chris

[rapier1]

Chris, thats a really weird reply. Pretty means nothing if the product doesn't meet the basic needs of the users. We're talking about computers here - not fashion accessories. As far as the design goes - apple is good on the edges but the fundamentals of the ID are consistent throughout the problem space. A notebook needs to conform to a basic set of tasks and this dictates the major modalities of the design. The remainder is frill. It speaks to some people - but if the core components aren't there then the frill adds nothing.

[Penguinisto]

@ Chris: Dude - form has its place, but not at the expense of function.

The only gripe I've had against the low-end Apple notebooks are that they tend to have mediocre parts when compared to their more powerful siblings, and that the scale of mediocrity is on a curve. The Mac Mini doesn't suffer that problem. The Minis come with decent hardware that provides a decent bang-for-buck value (though it's a bit of a trial to bump the specs after you bring it home).

Now with a laptop, I don't expect to hop it up like I did my old G4 Mac Cube (where I basically gutted and customized pretty much everything but the logic board). OTOH, I do want something I can reasonably expect to bring up to speed in a small form factor.

I guess what I'm saying is, looks aren't my top priority when it comes to shelling out for a computer. I'll leave that to the folks who, say, happily drop $50 or so extra just to have their Dell arrive in some "custom" color. ;)

/P

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

Of course not at the expense of function...but design isn't just the sheer cosmetic look. It's what your eyes recognize as an invitation to use, understand and explore without intimidation or confusion.

Macs always seem to function well enough to me...

Chris

[Kalama]

" bgnm " says something very straight forward .... years ago when I was involved in getting my internet connection set up for my business, the tech guy was here, WinPC in hand, trying to "hook up" to the connection .... before he could reboot, my old "Blue Clam Shell" was on line and I was surfing the net ... Hum? I still use that old unit when ever I need to program a router for off site use. << 15 employees - VPN to office >>

[navanee2u]

This is going to be a new kind of "notebook" from Apple... Almost like a real school "notebook".

Check out these predictions:
http://navanee.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/14-predictions-for-apple-oct-14-product-launch/

[ssicomputers]

Personally, I think the real question will be:

When (if) Apple does come out with this $800 Macbook, are they going to be ready for the new customers in the sub-$1000 market they've never had to deal with before?

"Why doesn't Deer Hunter run on my new Mac?"
"What do you mean I can't use this 5-year old printer?"
"What the hell is Finder?"

Apple's forte' is Mac users, and those folks who are willing to take the time to know their Mac that they are able to afford and spend the time getting to know.

I'm just curious to see if this will open up to another MobileMe situation.

[Penguinisto]

@ssicomputers:

* Deer Hunter (*chuckle*) can run on a new Mac - just get Parallels, and you're set.
* five-year-old printers are not a problem with OSX (my Mac has an ancient HP DeskJet 940c latched onto it - no drivers needed).
* Finder = "Windows Explorer", but better. No more "right-click on My Computer", but instead you get "double click on the square smiling face thingy"

I know what you;re getting at, but seriously? It's pretty easy to get the hang of a Mac.

Trust me - I've had a wild array of relatives and friends stay at my place, sit down in front of a Macintosh they've never seen before, and in less than 10-15 minutes they were reading web pages, sending email, playing games, etc etc. Most of them summed it up in saying "wow - this is pretty easy to use!" I think my mother took the longest to get the hang of the thing, at 15 minutes total (mostly because she kept asking me about the thing out of curiosity more than for any help).

/P

[ssicomputers]

I hear ya. I just wonder organizationally if Apple's ready for this. It's going to be interesting to watch, regardless.

[ChrisMatyszczyk]

penguinisto,

I really do think you are so very right. Macs are genuinely intuitive for most normal, ordinary humans. they simple feel less 'scientific.'

Especially for Mums.

Chris

[Penguinisto]

Indeed. The biggest shock I've noticed from folks was best summed up by my missus: Not knowing where to start. OTOH, that's easy to fix... I pointed out the icons for the web browser, email client, etc on the dock, and left the icon leading to Applications on the dock as well... the rest I simply left her at, and in no time she was totally cozy with it. :)

[Stormspace]

I work in a large organization with a mixed windows.mac, linux environment and I find that macs do great as a peer on a network. It's real easy to connect them and get them going. When you try to do anything with the network, other than surf or print, is when the problems arise. Macs simply don't do networking very well, or intuitively for that matter. But in a consumer market you typically wouldn't see those problems.

[twyrick]

Stormspace, I agree completely. OS X has made a lot of improvements in the area of networking capabilities and compatibility - but much of what we finally got in Leopard should have been there several versions ago. And in some cases, it seems like Apple even broke compatibility that was there in Tiger. (EG. I was trying to connect to an NFS share on my Linux-based MythTV box from OS X and I kept getting "Access denied" type errors trying to work with the files on the NFS share in Leopard, despite the fact that share was set up completely open for full access to all users (anonymous included). In OS X 10.4 Tiger, it worked just fine.) After a few software "point release" updates to Leopard, it started working for me again, but it's this kind of thing that upsets you, when Macs are known for promising that things "just work" with them!