MacNoob

My nine-year-old daughter has been bugging me for a laptop for months.  She coyly asked her mother and I if Santa Claus could afford a Macbook.  She really loves my Macbook Pro and wants the freedom of a portable machine.  Her room is adorned with more computer hardware than most people twice (or three times) her age, but every time I get up from the sofa for more than a minute or two I find her tapping away on my laptop which usually sits on the coffee table.  My cookie folder is filled with Nick and Disney crap all the time.  If someone didn’t know me better, a casual inspection of my Mac’s browsing history would indicate I’m some sort of “Chester the Molester”. She needs her own laptop!

The wife and I discussed getting her a laptop and I said that I really wanted her to have a Mac.  When I mentioned the price of $1000 however, she looked at me like I was nuts.  I guess I am nuts, but I still want our daughter to be a “chip off the old block”, as it were, and fostering her techno-lust fits nicely into that agenda.  OK, on to plan B…

So, with my buying criteria promptly adjusted, I focused on the sub $750 category.  I want my daughter to have something cool and portable.  Lots of laptops in my price range fit the latter criteria but most are butt-ugly, chunky or both.  When it comes to cool factor, the possibility list gets pared significantly.  If there is one thing Asus has accomplished, it has wowed the geek world with this new form factor.  So much so that we’re beginning to see copy cat offerings from the likes of Dell and Acer.  There’s even a light bulb company (Sylvania) manufacturing a netbook!

The $479 (street price) Eee PC 1000H model comes pretty loaded and the newest version packs a 160GB hard drive.  Plenty of punch for my 9-year-old’s surfing and chatting.  The one big drawback to all of these sub-notebooks is the lack of a CD/DVD drive.  My daughter is a movie freak and I know I’ll be burning up my Macbook ripping DVDs until she has a decent catalog of her movies stored.  There’s always the external drive option, but my daughter has a hard enough time keeping up with her power cord, much less a bunch of peripherals.

Dell Studio

If I choose the normal laptop route, it looks like I’ll need to shop the refurb shelves to keep the price in the $500 range.  Dell’s XPS 1330 can be had for around that price and comes with a bigger display, CD/DVD burner and same 160GB hard disk, but the real difference is the processor.  I know battery life will suffer, but the 1330′s 1.66 GHz Core 2 Duo will run circles around the 1.6 GHz Atom plant of the Eee.  I think you could probably run Spore on the Dell quite nicely and that sort of “future proofs” the machine.  Well, as much as you can with any computer.  It’s sort of like buying shoes for a kid who’s feet grow three sizes every year.  I know the Eee is just her size. It will do almost everything she wants to do and the battery will last almost all [school] day. But what about next year?

I’m hoping all the manufacturers will start their holiday specials early.  Sometimes, if you stick to your guns you can buy a real bargain.  Dell has perfected the “bait and switch” technique though, so I’ll have to be careful.  They’ll advertise a $500 box that looks pretty complete and then trade you up to another [higher priced] model or nickel-and-dime you to death with add-ons.  Before you can spit, your $500 machine is closer to $900.  That’s one check mark in the Eee’s favor.  Every place I’v seen the Eee for sale sells just that, the Eee, period.  Dealing with Dell and other on-line retailers is an exercise in saying NO if you want a real bargain.  Even the Dell Outlet web site won’t let you buy a PC without first navigating through several pages of option questions.

All said and done, I don’t know what the hell to do.  Any constructive suggestions would be welcome.  I guess the main reason I’m struggling with this is because I really want to get her a Macbook.  I guess hoping Apple will have a big holiday special is just a pipe dream.  A $1000 Macbook has the same hardware as a $600 Acer with one exception, the Apple logo.  Apple charges what they do because they can.  The company’s market share is growing at a rate other PC makers only dream about and at the expense of everybody else in the game.  I can’t think of a single reason for them to change their pricing except that, if they would my daughter would grow up using a Mac instead of a Windows machine.  I wonder if my quandary is unique?

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As much as I love my Macbook Pro and use it at the office for almost everything, there’s no way I could consider converting our site to Apple.  As an IT manager, I have come to love the security and reliability OS X represents, but when I think about the logistics of converting our 120 workstation site to Macs, I hit more than one brick wall.

Let’s suppose for a moment that my servers are fine and I wouldn’t need to change a thing for them to work with Macs.  Lets also suppose everyone on-site would love a new Apple computer and would use it without question.  There are still a number of problems Apple has no solution for.

First, Apple doesn’t make a computer suitable for a managed business environment.  For a company with an IT staff, you must provide a workstation that meet these criteria:

• A small to desktop form factor
• A “tool less” chassis with user-replaceable parts
• $1000 maximum cost (w/o display)

Apple has nothing that fits this model.  A Mac Mini is the only machine less than $1000 and it doesn’t even come close to meeting the other two criteria.  An iMac can be had for around a grand and its’ form-factor is OK, but if its’ hard drive fails there’s no way to fix it.  Additionally, an all-in-one form factor marries the display to the CPU, removing even more flexibility from the IT department.  A Mac Pro has user-serviceable parts, but it is huge and there’s no IT manager in the world (who wants to keep their job) willing to pay $2800 for business machines.  Besides, it’s way too much computer for anyone but a graphic artist or a film editor.

Another gaping hole in Apple’s business offering is service.  Enterprises are not going to designate an employee to make appointments with a Genius Bar at their local mall’s Apple store whenever there’s a service issue with a machine.  Dell and HP offer a next business day, on-site service plan at a nominal fee for enterprise customers.  If Apple wants to make even a small dent in the enterprise market shares of these two companies, they must put a much better service model in place.

What Apple needs to do to be a real enterprise player is build something like Psystar is building.  By that I don’t suggest they make a cheap, flimsy computer but rather build a mid-sized, mid-priced machine that meets the above criteria and add a service plan businesses are willing to consider.  This new computer could also be sold to every day consumers as well.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it would be a hit.  Maybe the reason so many people are willing to roll the dice with an unknown like Psystar is because Psystar is filling a huge vacuum created by a hole in Apple’s product line.

When you look at the “Business” section of Apple’s web site, it’s apparent they’re not serious about providing anything close to an enterprise solution.  Apple devotes its’ web space to small businesses like lawyers, doctors and real estate offices.  That’s all well and good, but contrasting Apple with Dell or HP reveals a huge difference in focus. On their sites you see server farms, floors of endless cubicles and service centers with world-class response and distribution networks.  Yes, it may well be smoke and mirrors, but it does, at least, illustrate their intent and focus.

For now, Dell and HP rule the enterprise roost.  Mr. Jobs is certainly aware of what the other guys are doing.  Maybe that type of low-margin, high volume business is something Apple is just not willing to invest in.  I guess the real reason Apple doesn’t put up bigger numbers in the enterprise market is because they just don’t want to.  Yet.

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For me, BMW is to cars what Apple is to computers.  This GINA concept may never make it to production, but the thought of changing the design of your car with the touch of a button is too sexy for words.  So, here’s a video:

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