Many people have been speculating that Apple will release a
US$499 Mac very soon. They see the primary market for this Mac as
those who own iPods and currently use Windows PCs. Many of these
people would most likely consider Macs if they were less
expensive.
This seems to make sense, since the prevailing opinion I've
heard is that Macs are too expensive, so buyers generally don't
consider them when looking at new computers.
In fact, last week I was talking with someone who is considering
a new laptop. He was thinking that a Dell
might be a good option,
because they seem to be very reasonably priced. I told him how
configuring it with the features he wanted would bring it up to the
price range of lower-end Apple and IBM laptops.
When I mentioned that Apple had a laptop for $999 with most of the
features that he'd want already built in, he seemed fairly
interested.
Perhaps placing a low-end desktop in the $500 range just to
dispel the price myth is a good idea. On the other side, people
will notice if the $500 Mac is missing features one might expect in
a typical desktop computer and then - since Apple tends to get a
lot of criticism - complain about what an awful machine Apple's
selling and what a rip-off it is to consumers.
I'm thinking of another market for this
machine, however. Right now, many people are still using older
blue & white G3s (300-450
MHz) and 1st generation G4
machines running at 350-500 MHz. While some of these people may
have upgraded the processor, others were reluctant to do so because
other aspects of the system were equally outdated.
For example, the video card in the blue & white G3 is PCI,
and current video cards are generally AGP 4x or 8x. Also, system
bus speeds in older machines (100 MHz in the models mentions)
prevent the faster upgrade processors from reaching their full
potential. (See our Guide to G4 ZIF
Upgrades and Guide to Power
Mac G4 Upgrades for processor upgrade options. Some upgrades
cost more than these older Power Macs are worth.)
A fairly basic $500 Mac with a G4 running at 1.2 GHz or so would
still have enough processor power to do almost anything that people
currently using blue & white G3s and older G4s are doing with
those machines. The only exception might be limited space inside
the new case for hard drives - and probably no PCI slots.
Assuming that the user can do without the PCI slots (many ports
that formerly required PCI cards can now be bought as USB
peripherals - audio interfaces, for example - or are now standard
on the Mac). FireWire hard drive enclosures are fairly cheap, so
their existing drives could be effectively moved to the new "cheap"
Mac. And their old monitor could be used with the new system.
A low-end "headless" Mac could serve as an alternative upgrade
path for Mac users who don't want to buy a new high-end system yet
want something faster than they already have.
As for the idea that a new low cost Mac could take away PC sales
and cause more people to buy Macs, this may only be partly true. It
could take away PC sales from companies like Dell and Gateway -
those consumers simply just looking at commercially available PCs.
But people who have systems built for them (even cheap ones) will
soon find that they can build a "better" PC system (at least
spec-wise) for less money than the "headless" Mac.
Then again with all the spyware and viruses just waiting to
infest brand-new PCs, people may opt for the slightly more
expensive headless Mac just to avoid those headaches.
