I want one!!
I always thought my brother’s Cube was the coolest computer I’d ever seen, and I’m saying this as the proud owner of a 17“ PowerBook.
But this is cooler — and it comes as the rock-bottom low end of Apple’s product range:
Sure, it’s bare-bones, but I don’t think anyone can complain about that.
Some people still did.
The 23-year old kids who ”analyze“ stocks (what’s there to analyze? The values go up, or they go down, or they stay the same) had urged Apple for years to go down-market. They complained about small market share and an image of exclusivity that put many consumers off. (Never mind that a good chunk of Apple’s business was in the high-yield laptop market, where Apple had a great product line-up, introducing WiFi and bluetooth and 17-inch-screens to consumers.)Shares of Apple fell $4.40 Tuesday, to close at $64.56.
Now the same guys are complaining Apple’s latest move would devalue its brand value and confuse customers. The money quote comes from some geezer in yesterday’s Times (free registration required):
So, professor, you’re saying Dell has higher profit margins with the crap they’re selling? But besides the obvious nonsensical content of the quote, today’s Times brought some juice to the quote:”This is not going to return Apple to a high level of profitability,“ said David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. ”The margins on these new machines will be trivial. And I think they will add no more than one or two points of market share.“
Go figure.Correction: January 13, 2005, Thursday:
A front-page article yesterday about Apple Computer’s introduction of a low-priced Macintosh, which will compete with personal computers using Windows software and Intel chips, omitted a corporate affiliation of David Yoffie, a Harvard professor who commented on the potential market for the new machine. He is a director of the Intel Corporation.
Update, 1/13: Drunken Batman has looked into the whole mini thing a bit deeper and comes up with some not-so-great things about this little machine — basically, you need to shell out a lot of money to add stuff, and shell out money to have it added by a certified technician (including RAM!), which is ludicrous.
My sense is that the stock fell not because of the new Mac, which is indeed cool (though once your figure in the cost of a keyboard and monitor, it’s not that much cheaper than an eMac), but because of the new iPod. This was Apple’s entry into the flash MP3 player market, and folks liked the price. What they didn’t like was the lack of screen, which analyst think will make it uncompetitive on the flash player market.
jwb
Comment by Jimbo — January 13, 2005 @ 5:26 pm
You’re probably right — I just wanted to fire a cheap shot at the kids (and I mean by that people who’ve never run a business) who decide whether something’s a smart move. I agree that the iPod shuffle is a gamble; Apple probably hopes to shift large numbers and get people to own a piece of true Mac style without having to shell out a lot of money. I’d consider buying one to use as a quick file backup that as a bonus also allows me to listen to music, but I’m already sold on the brand name. (I’ve owned five PowerBooks since 1992; one was stolen, the very first one bit the dust couple years ago, and the rest are still happily churning away, including a museum piece from 1997.)
And of course the share price has gone up in the meantime anyway.
Comment by Teekay — January 13, 2005 @ 6:33 pm