SmugBlog: Where's the Mac?

blogs.smugmug.com

6 points·far33d··5 comments

The MacBookPro can feed a 30" display, and costs $2K. Businesses should be leaning towards mobility too, making the laptop a good solution.

Yet most corporations only give laptops to employees whose jobs involve travel - everyone else gets a sub-$1k Dell desktop, with a hand-me-down display. This is the segment he's suggesting Apple address.

Laptops for everyone would be awesome, but hard to justify if they'll never leave the office.

By including the display on the iMac, Apple ensures that they sell a display with each unit shipped, they maintain their volume discounts in the supply chain, etc. This is just conjecture on my part, but it wouldn't be surprising.

I don't want to get into a debate about apple, but ...

People that can use a sub $1K dell can use a mac mini. People that need multiple large displays can get a MacPro. People that need mobility get a MacBookPro.

I don't see the problem.

Also, the IT support costs alone justify getting Macs. My current company has around 5 people in IT servicing the windows desktops and servers. There are 0 people servicing the linux servers and desktops, because we do development under linux and peers solve most problems quickly. The mac folks just don't have problems beyond things like "this doesn't work with our MS exchange server"

I absolutely agree about the support costs - that alone makes the Macs worth it.

Having never used the Mac mini I don't feel qualified to compare it to a Dell. I suspect that the performance is similar, yet I also suspect that a $900 display-less iMac would blow the Dell out of the water, with the drastically lower support costs.

Yes, but only a single display. It's interesting because this hole in the market has pushed businesses to do exactly what you say - laptops as the main dev machines.

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