End User: Bites from the Apple: The Riches

A couple weeks back, my Uncle called me from the Mall of America in Minnesota with a desperate sound to his voice. He was visiting our family in the Twin Cities and his WinTel laptop was repeatedly giving him the Blue Screen of Death and not connecting to the Internet. This was a fairly recent laptop purchase for him, and he was getting fed up with the intermittent hardware problems--both small and BSD--that he'd been experiencing for several months as well as the constant requirement to update security and OS patches. He was ready to go into the Apple Store and check things out, but wanted some baseline info from me. I licked my lips, thinking I might be scoring another family member switch.

Alas, after talking through the range of hardware, my Uncle decided that Apple's laptops were just too rich for his budget. And it's hard to really debate that--Apple hardware isn't inexpensive (the preferred word in the retail universe to "cheap"). I tried to argue that Apple hardware, by and large, offers a stable environment that would eliminate some of the downtime he'd been experiencing with his WinTel hardware, and that the laptops come loaded with very useful software (from multimedia apps like iPhoto to the Time Machine backup utility) that wouldn't be as seamlessly integrated as comparable software in Windows. And... you get to run both the Mac OS and Windows on the same machine. None of that worked.

I wish that I'd had this article from Tom's Hardware (hat tip to TUAW), which compares the prices of Macs and similarly specced Windows machines and finds that there's really not that much difference. However, Tom's Hardware also notes that an NPD Group study shows that Windows laptops cost significantly less than Apple's Mac lineup--a $700 average for the former versus $1500 for Apple. But it's important to note that this comparison is a bit apples-to-oranges (yes, pun intended), as Apple Mac hardware is typically specced out with more expensive, higher-end components. Thus the upfront cost is going to be greater than for a budget laptop such as this Compaq Presario, but it's still a rather high hurdle for many to make despite the fact that the Apple laptop will probably be productive for a longer time (as well as having a better resale value). Apple has had a string of successful years creating products marketed to an audience that appreciates and will pay a premium for well-designed PCs--both inside and out--but with the whole globe starting to face an economic downturn, I'd love to see Apple offer more of a range of hardware options and pricing to bring its prices down widen its user base even further.

On the subject of exorbitant pricing, the gadgetosphere was up in arms over the inclusion of the I Am Rich iPhone app in the iTunes App Store, which cost $999.99 (the highest amount a developer can charge). When turned on, it displayed a glowing red ruby on your iPhone screen. That's it. The LA Times Technology blog notes that eight (!) people actually plunked down their credit cards for I Am Rich before it got yanked by Apple.
If you are in the market for a new Mac laptop or desktop machine, Amazon has a number of rebates running until August 25 on the full lineup, including MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro.
However, beware that there will most likely be new hardware coming down the pike in the near future. AppleInsider reports that investment bank Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster expects Apple to hold a special event sometime in September to unroll new MacBooks and iPods. And the UK's Electricpig blog has uncovered some curvilicious leaked shots at what is purported to be the new MacBook Pro aluminum case seen at right.
That wasn't the only removal from the App Store this week. Seems that George Lucas and his lawyers weren't pleased with the Phonesaber app, which turns your iPhone into a swishing lightsaber. However, Gizmodo notes that the company that handles Star Wars paraphernalia for mobile devices wants to work with the software developer to release an officially branded version. Luckily, I still have it slicing away on my iPhone (it's my toddler's favorite app).
And happily, I don't think that Apple is going to be able to dial into my iPhone and yank it off. There were rumblings this week about just that possibility with the discovery of a line of code in iPhone OS 2.x by an iPhone security expert that suggested that Apple could "blacklist" unauthorized apps. However, John Gruber at Daring Fireball throws water on this, noting that the coding most likely prevents certain applications from accessing the iPhone's Core Location services (i.e., your physical location as determined by GPS or Wi-Fi).
Steve Jobs got in on the MobileMe bashing game this week, with an email of his leaked to the gadgetosphere that has him saying that "MobileMe was simply not up to Apple's standards" and that it "was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence" (via Ars Technica).
And finally a blast from the past (unearthed by TUAW)--a video review of the very first 5 GB iPod done by the now defunct TechTV. I've still got my original model stored somewhere in my archives (aka, my old-and-cold gadget drawer)... might try and see if it's still workable (though, if I remember correctly, the battery was losing its kick).