Apple's Pricing Model

Throughout the years, the biggest complaint for anyone in the hardware market towards Apple was that it was too expensive. The fallback argument is that when you buy a Mac your getting more for your dollar and a much more reliable machine. Still, many PC's are half the cost of any desktop or portable machine from Apple. So when the company decided to switch to Intel chips, part of their decision was for more power, but part of their decision was for cost.

With the release of the new 17" Macbook Pro, I was surprised to see that the prices are still pretty unreachable for the common consumer. Yes, Apple has catered to the low-end consumer market with the inception of the Mini, but I can't recommend a machine like that to anyone.

It's really time for Apple to change it's pricing model to make their hardware more affordable to really compete with companies like Dell. Maybe they can subsidize their hardware sales with their sales of iPod's and iTunes music downloads and pass the savings on to the consumer.

In all honesty, now that the release of Bootcamp makes running Windows XP on a Mac simple, people are going to start expecting a price drop in the hardware anyway. Wishful thinking? Not really. Changing Apple's pricing model now will go a long way to making their sales margins wider than ever.