Microsoft Says Your Mac Is Not Worth $500 More
Despite a reputation for being more expensive than Windows PCs, in the past few years Apple’s Mac has steadily gained market share with record sales.
With a tough economy, Apple is under some pressure to develop lower priced products instead of premium quality products which, on average, cost more than competing products. None other than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the “tide has really turned” against Apple.
Has it? Or is Ballmer’s hubris about to be deflated by market realities? Again? Is your Mac really.... (excerpted).
17 Reader Comments
Troy Jackson said:
I am a pc’er and this year decided that in August of 2009 my wife and I will buy mac pro laptops for school and ourselves. I am through with windows, windows xp, and windows vista. I am tired of windows updating at the wrong time, even though you turn the software off, windows takes over your computer and just makes it unfriendly. I hear of microsoft coming out with new operating system but, it is a little to late now. My wife and I have researched the macs and talked to people who have them and they are very happy with them. The manufacturers that make dell, hp, gateway, will lose my business because of the dilemma of windows operating system. Windows figured that upgrading their software would make people happier but, I have come across more and more people who are tired of the windows operating system and are willing to dump it. Like me I do not want to spend the extra money but, the hours lost to a window base system has caused me more down time and in the long run cost me my time. I figured I overpaid for a windows base system because of the recovery I had to do on the windows base system.
MacGirl said:
There are so many reasons why the price of a Mac is actually on par with a PC!!!!
First off, you have the stability and security of the OS. Secondly, I have had customers tell me they have the pricing for a PC, and want to know why a similar Mac is more. I always compare the specs for them. They usually have less memory, and it will be the previous generation in memory no doubt, they don’t have an awesome suite of preloaded software to let them play and be creative will all of their digital media, with notebooks the wireless technology included in PC’s is almost always a generation behind Apple, and it never fails that the battery life is actually less. Do I have to mention all of the trial software they have to get rid of? And what about the fact that most PC software isn’t integrated, not made to really work together? And what about the long term? Most PC users are ready to overhaul or upgrade their systems every 18 -24 months. Mac users know it’s very common to have a Mac for 6, 8, or even up to 10 years.
I have many many times shown my customers that if they were to get a PC that is actually up to par with a Mac with the same specs, the pricing is much more comparable. They don’t realize that the PC they are getting is a stripped down model that won’t suit what they need in a computer.
I love bringing people around when they really want to make the comparison…
Seele said:
We can carry on giving examples on how Balmer is wrong til the cows come home, but we still have to consider the possibility that he is not THAT stupid:
In the current economic climate, people tend to be more frugal with their expenditure. What Balmer is saying, is ” be penny-wise; all computers are the same so why bother paying more for a Mac?”
He could very well be aware that the TCO of Macs is much much lower than that of a Windows PC. There would be no benefit at all if he mentions being penny-wise can be dollar-stupid.
Bill said:
One other thing. My Cyberpower 1500AVR UPS lists on the box that it will run an iMac for 170 minutes and a PC with an LCD for 100 minutes. That’s a 70% difference. The iMac will save money by using less electricity and will save the planet better! 
Bill said:
First of all, where is Ballmer getting his figures? He selected the Zune market share in a subset of MP3 players instead of the entire market [a while ago] to show how ‘good’ or big the market share was, but only included an exact hardware comparison. So he always compares apples to oranges. The retail all-in-one units are comparable to the iMac and don’t even come close to a $500 difference. Comparing a Mac Pro Tower to a Dell or HP with Dual Xeon chips will show you that the Mac Pro Tower is much less expensive. However, laptops made by Apple are more expensive than similar hardware. I guess if you average the three, you can get close to $500, but the funny thing is that the Apple laptop sales are going through the roof! Neverland is in Redmond. Microsoft distortion field at it’s finest.
explorer_8_sux said:
I’m with you. IE 8 is such a huge disappointment and contrasts sharply with Safari 4, which has become a pleasant surprise. I’m even over the new “Tabs” in Safari and find them to be an improvement. IE 8 is very buggy, and web sites that looked fine in IE 7 break and fall apart in 8. The emperor has no clothes. Microsoft is a company in disarray and confusion.
The only thing they can do right these days is count their profits. Those days will end.
May Steve Ballmer reign over Microsoft for many years to come.
MrSin said:
The Microsoft (PC) verses Apple debate will continue regardless. In my opinion however, the notable “difference” between the two can be observed by comparing Internet Explorer 8 (final) with Safari 4 public beta - on the same PC. This test must be performed on a PC as IE8 is not available for the Mac.
I performed this evaluation on my XP Pro PC (kept it after switching to the Mac in 2005). I’ll not reveal my results so as not to unduly influence your findings. I will say that I couldn’t be more thankful for Apple, Mac and OS X than I am and have been since switching.
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Bill said:
Many of my friends are doing the same Troy. We all save time by not ridding malware and spyware or updating all the apps to rid and protect against them. We get better quality and dependability. Your time is more precious than the price difference.
BTW, the Pro Towers [Xeon workstations] are actually much less expensive than the Windows counterparts such as systems from Dell or HP, and Apple support is much better too. If your in the market, the iPhone is a great product, especially starting at 99 bucks now.
Peace bro