Help me understand please.
In 2007 I purchased a White 2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook. I paid £650.
In 2009, Apple released the White 2.26Ghz Unibody Macbook. Apple are asking £799 for it. It DOESN’T come with Firewire of any kind, a battery indicator or an SD slot. Admittedly it comes with a better screen, a beefier graphics card and multitouch trackpad, nice to have but nothing mind blowing or anything that could extend the life of the machine.
I could rant about how great Firewire and how stupid Apple is for leaving it out, all I need to say is that I have 2 Firewire hard drives daisy chained attached to this machine, one of them a Time Machine Backup, 820GB’s in total running off the 1 cable. I can’t take any of this with me if I moved to the new MacBook.
There is an argument that for only £100 more you can get the Aluminium 13″ MacBook Pro, which comes with everything I’m griping about that the plastic unibody doesn’t. This is the up sell technique in action. But I would argue that if there is only £100 in the difference, why even bother making the plastic version? Why not just sell MacBook Pro’s and the MacBook Air, why even bother wasting people’s time when its so obvious in what they want to move the customer to?
Sure there will be some people who will buy it, but its such a boring machine I don’t think it does Apple any favours. There are Netbooks with more connectivity which are more than half the price and there are other Windows machines priced at £799 that are capable of doing so much more as well. Not only isn’t it competitive with windows machines but there is also the Mac Mini.
The Mac Mini is a £499 machine with a supposed ‘Pro’ feature such as Firewire 800 (1), why even bother adding Firewire to a £499 machine but not to a £799 laptop? The Mac Mini does have 5 USB ports as it is. Why does a lower priced machine have it, where is the up sell technique in Apple’s desktop lineup? Are 2 USB ports even enough for the Macbook, they are if you purchase enough wireless gear I guess.
Let’s not forget the total fail that is the SD card slot, its pretty much standard on any laptop in the consumer market, bar the actual laptop that Apple sells to consumers.
For people with the older MacBooks, the difference isn’t going to be £100 either, it will be the difference between what we paid for our current MacBooks, so the difference is actually £250. Is it worth it now?
- Being a Pro feature means that its use is reserved only for the Pro Machines. An artificial distinction Apple has made with its machine to justify product differentiation. I would argue there are better ways but hey ho.
