From: "vic.nelw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Any country that allows its citizens to be ripped off by a licensing system that allows him to blackmail the world by a windows system largely stolen from apple needs its head read.
Um ... I believe that ALL countries are "allowing" this. So if you're saying the whole world has gone mad because they continue to use Windows in the face of unfair pricing and monopolistic abuses ... well, I can't argue with that ... :)
The big telephone companies and oil tycoons were brought to heel but not Bill Gates and his supporters.
I *can* argue with the notion that the big energy companies and telephone conglomerates have been brought to heel ... do the names "Worldcom" and "Enron" ring any bells? Ever heard the Texaco tapes? Looked at the price of gas lately?
As for Gates and Microsoft ... well let's just say that if a certain "change" in the Justice Department hadn't happened, things would be *dramatically* different in Redmond, as the EU Commission has shown.
The assertion that the big corporate players would reduce the price of software is ludricus- any big enterprise spend huge amounts of time and effort on establishing prices on what the market will bear. Vic.
I think what such people are saying when they talk about this (the idea that companies can "afford" to dramatically lower prices) is part based on nothing more than wishful thinking ("I *wish* Photoshop were $199 instead of $599") and part based on the flawed theory of volume offsetting cost ("if Photoshop were $50, they'd sell a ton more than they do!"). It is usually ignorant of other very important factors in software distribution, of which I'll only mention one: limiting the audience on purpose.
Think about this (not you specifically Vic, I mean all who are reading this): Why is Photoshop (a great program) priced at $599 or so, while iLife (a whole barnyard of mostly-great programs) priced at $50?
The reason: Photoshop is designed and aimed at professionals - people who will gladly climb the steep learning curve, people who will be using the product to make money, people who have the technical expertise to figure out quirks or oddities without a lot of "hand-holding."
Adobe DOES NOT WANT everyone and his brother using Photoshop, because if that happened then they would have massively higher bills for tech support from uneducated or undereducated users tying them up answering simple questions, and would be forced to compromise the program quite severely in the name of "user-friendliness." People who use the program to make money see the "high" cost of $599 as a trivial expense, because they have the ability to make that investment back many times over. That is the audience Adobe wants for that product, so making it available for less would be a silly idea -- besides, they already have a consumer-level version (Photoshop Elements) with certain key "professional" areas omitted and a "dumbed-down" interface which is sufficient for its target market, and reasonably priced to cover their expenses in supporting it ($99).
Apple, on the other hand, takes a different approach with iLife. They want EVERYBODY to use it -- all five programs of it -- and they offer very little to no support beyond periodic minor (free) upgrades. Their pricing -- which most assuredly reflects a big loss on the R&D behind the products -- reflects their desire to attract the masses into using the suite, believing (correctly) that many will eventually outgrow the limited abilities of the suite and want to move on to doing more/better things ... things that require more/better (and more profitable) products. But for those that never move up, the iLife suite represents great products at a sound price that almost anyone can use, and those who can't are further motivated to upgrade their systems ... which Apple will of course benefit from (and now you know why there won't be a PC version of iLife).
So, Apple accepts the idea that in order to make the product as attractive as possible to as many people as possible, it must be priced at levels which, when you consider the cost of the packaging, development and distribution, amount to practically giving it away. Adobe, OTOH, is (with products like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere/After Effects) aiming for an entirely different market segment with different needs and price justifications.
Ironically, this also explains (in reverse terms) why Adobe enjoys success when they DO come out with a popularly-priced product like Elements, yet Apple chooses to ignore the very low-end computer market (and the "volume" of sales that would go along with it). Adobe crafts their high-end stuff, then cheaply produces a subset thereof for the mass-market, priced mainly to cover the added support costs. The cost of "developing" a product like Elements is practically nothing -- it comes entirely from R&D already done for Photoshop, so the wholesale cost of the product represents mostly support/packaging/distribution costs and profit.
Apple, meanwhile, WOULD incur enormous expense trying to "dumb down" their engineering, OS and overall elegance down into a package that could sell for, say, $399. Yes, such a machine would sell very well indeed -- assuming Apple's manufacturing capacity could grow to keep up with demand -- but support costs would be *through the roof* as confused Windows users tied up support lines, and returned units would probably be quite high from people who bought one and then felt bewildered by the lack of "familiar" practices and software ("what th-- no solitaire? I'm takin' this thing back to Wal-Mart!"). Customer satisfaction would probably be quite low too -- even if customers liked what they saw of OS X and the iApps, the superior nature of OS X and its helpful, intuitive, non-hostile philosophy would quickly lead buyers to "outgrow" the machine, meaning that they would be seeking a replacement inside a year for their now "underpowered" computer.
Apple has studied the low-end market many, many times, I promise -- I have been involved in such studies. What they found every time is that customers *think* they "just want a machine to check email and play solitaire" but when you in fact give them a machine that ALLOWS them to do more, they WILL do more -- and the machine had better be ready for that. A $399 Mac would never keep up with even the first six months of "user growth." A $399 PC, on the other hand, is hostile, unpredictable, chintzy and erratic -- intimidating users into staying with the basics and preventing any "user growth." Thus, low-end PCs will always be more "popular" than low-end Macs, even if Apple made such a machine.
Furthermore, low-end machines tend to be bought by, if you'll forgive the term, "high-maintenance" customers -- people who don't really know what they're doing and want a LOT of very expensive "hand-holding." This is exactly why *every* company that *ever* focused solely on low-end PCs has gone out of business -- tech support is WAY more expensive than people realise, and even those that charge heavily for it aren't even breaking even on it. You'll notice, for example, that the "big boys" of the PC world -- Dell, the entity calling itself Gateway (which is really E-Machines) and HP -- have diversified into *vastly* more profitable home electronics and business-server lines to a far greater extent than Apple has. Why? Because these companies have discovered that the low-end computer market *is not profitable.* Since Apple, being a relatively small player, can't afford to make mistakes like that -- finding out the hard way as "Gateway" has done -- I'm awfully glad they ignored advice from "armchair quarterbacks" in the Mac community to make a low-cost "starter" Mac, produce an Apple-branded PDA (oh dear, THAT would have been a bad idea wouldn't it?!), etc.
PS. If any of this sounds like I'm talking down to you, please be assured that it's not intended -- I just saw your post as an opportunity to educate those who may have wondered about the price discrepancies among software products (and hardware, for that matter) -- and I will quickly admit to using broad examples here. It just seems to me that a lot of people don't really understand why computer software and hardware is priced as it is.
_Chas_
FL-MUG: central Florida's Macintosh User Group. Meetings: second Thursday of the month, 6-9pm, at the Orlando Science Center. http://www.flmug.org
-- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! |
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
---------------------------------------------------------------
The Think Different Store
http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
