| Wednesday, January 26, 2005 |
11:50 - Everything you ever wanted in a Mac—and less
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/01/25/lower.mac.mini.bto.pricing/
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Aziz spotted this development:
Apple has quietly lowered the price of some of its build-to-order components on the Mac mini as well as offering a faster version of its optical SuperDrive. The Apple Store is now offering the combination SuperDrive reads DVDs at 8x, writes to DVD-R at 4x, writes DVD+/-R at 4x, writes DVD+RW at 2-4x, reads CDs at 24x, writes to CD-R at 16x, and writes to CD-RW at 8x. Bluetooth/AirPort Extreme upgrade for $100 ($30 drop), while offering the Bluetooth upgrade separately for $50. Apple is also offering 1GB RAM upgrades for $325 ($150 drop) and offering a faster 8x SuperDrive (with both DVD+/-RW functionality) for the same $100 upgrade price as its previous 4x SuperDrive. A hard drive upgrade to 80GB (from 40GB) is now $50 ($40 drop). The estimated ship time on BTO and standard configuration Mac minis is 3-4 weeks. Update: The BTO SuperDrive combines a 4x/2x/8x DVD+/-RW mechanism with a 16x/8x/24x CD-RW mechanism.
This looks like damage control to me. Suddenly Apple realized they were under intense scrutiny from PC penny-pinchers, and must have decided that the Mac mini BTO upgrade process is no place to try to recoup loss-leader deficits. Apple's RAM costs have always been exorbitant, but they know at least in this case that every crossover buyer will be wanting to max out the RAM—and it's either face a flood of geeks bearing street-price generic 1GB DIMMs for Apple Store Geniuses to install on their valuable time, or risk alienating the very people they're trying to convince that the Mac can be cost-effective after all by insisting they pay through the nose to have it tricked out at the factory. Not a great PR move—certainly no better than suing sites leaking rumors.
At least this way Apple can sell some of its own RAM; at the earlier price, they must have realized that precisely zero tech-savvy buyers would opt for the factory upgrade, and would instead seek out just about any alternative—including the ones involving giving their cash to other RAM vendors and voiding their warranties with a flick of a screwdriver.
I know a lot of people who are probably glad to have waited.
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Brian Tiemann
