sinclap does have a bit of a point, though he may not have made it very well in his unbridled enthusiasm for the Dell product line. (Which totally amazes me every time I hear it, or anyone go on about these ill formed plastic air box holdovers from the IBM PC days of the late 80's, which happen to have pretty decent computers inside were they not saddled by a bloated, spaghetti coded and patchwork layered operating system.)
The point is that the mini, iMac and Mac Pro address the desktop market like a broad rake with only three main tines and some rather large gaps between the offerings that shift the edge of competitive advantage back towards Dell.
The biggest shortcoming would have to be to either side of the Mac Mini. Pinpointed as the cheapness anchor, it doesn't quite go far enough to catch all the demand, so a lot of potential Mac buyers slip past that side of this rake tine. On the other side, between the Mini and the iMac is another uncomfortable gap. Apple has fashioned the iMac as a splayed action multi tined portion of the rake, in one form factor, spread over multiple price points. Trouble is, the Mini and the iMac are only two form factors to choose from. The Mini rakes by itself, and the multi price pointed iMac rakes by itself, but there's nothing in between to catch the customers who like to get fiddly with their cheap computers.
Between the iMac and the Mac Pro it's looking pretty good, but to do a really fine job of raking in the potential Mac buyers, there should be some more overlap of performance. The iMac is just fine as it is. It's not meant to be fiddly. But there should perhaps be another form factor between the iMac and Mac Pro which offers the option of more fiddlyness than the iMac, yet less expensive than the Mac Pro.
At least, I think that's his point. |
