roni
I believe you are mistakenly assuming that the entire Mac user base follows Apple one-fraction as closely as we here on this board do. I recently heard from a Mac-using distant relative who had no idea[/] that you could get a G4-based Mac for under $800. She was still chugging along on a severely outdated iMac, based on the false premise that getting a new Mac would cost roughly as much as she paid for hers. Whether she now buys a new Mac based on this "new" information, I have no idea. But surely it will change her line of thinking.
Sure, that's anecdotal, but it is consistent with many Mac users I've run ino. They just don't realize that an upgrade is in their price range. And it doesn't help when doomsday-prophecizers who know better, go around stating matter-of-factly that "Macs cost $1500". The uninformed among the Mac users actually believe that kind of crap, because Apple isn't diligent enough in telling them otherwise.
Based on all I've seen, I would venture to guess that more than half of all Rev. A-D iMac users don't even know that you can get a new desktop Mac for $800. Just a guess, but it's what I'm guessing. Plenty of them who know about OS X, know that they want a new Mac running OS X when they can afford it, and yet they have no idea that they already can afford it.
As far as PC users, I don't think that any advertised price point, even if it were $300, would bring in hordes of PC users into the Apple Stores. Unlike switching from a Gateway to a Dell, which is simply transactional, switching to a Mac is in fact a major decision in someone's life. Even those PC users who know so little about the Mac that they don't know what they're missing, are still able to recognize that moving to the Mac would be very "different", I would think.
Of course you and I and everyone on this board (and all 500,000 readers of MacSurfer) are familiar with Apple's newer (very low IMO) pricing structure, but what about the tens of millions of other Mac users out there? How are they supposed to know that they can get a new G4-based Mac for $799? Apple would be wise to go places that Mac users go, and advertise their prices there. You get to figure out where that would be. And no, I'm not talking about the Mac print media, which only a small minority of Mac users subscribe to.
From what I see, the Apple Stores are as much about forcibly educating existing Mac users about where the platform is these days, as anything else. Beyond that, how exactly are Mac users supposed to know, other than doing their own homework? In fact, it's part of the reason I started my site. As a Mac user, it's way too easy to become complacent and forget just how good it is comparison to how the other 90% has it.
billpalmer.net: Macintosh users, you've never had it so good.
