Apple missed the boat with "cheap" laptop

The rumors of the $800 MacBook were just that; rumors. Apple released their lineup, with the bottom end at $999, just barely putting it in the sub-$1,000 game. Affordable for those of us on a budget? Not really. Having lived in California, I know that there is a cost involved in being cool. Condo near the beach, organic grocery stores, hundred-dollar Birkenstocks, and expensive laptops with a picture of a fruit on the case all put the cool lifestyle out of reach. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but now I'm firmly planted here in the industrial Midwest, where the money you paid for that beach condo would buy my house five times over. And the price of your entry-level Apple would buy three of my Windows PCs.

Unbelievable? Yes, I did get a very functional, although admittedly low-end, Toshiba (with Vista) on sale at Best Buy for $350 last year (after the mail-in rebate), and it works just fine, thank you very much. Like most middle-class people in the country today, I shop for bargains. I buy my shoes at Payless, go to the dollar store to buy cleaning supplies, and wait to buy groceries until the store has their "ten for ten dollars" sale. Expensive laptops just don't fit into that picture.

And so it is with most people. An informative ZDNet blog lays out the actual numbers of the market. According to independent research that breaks down price in hundred dollar increments, number of units shipped peaks at the $800 to $899 level then goes down from there, and given the state of the economy, I wouldn't expect that peak level to go higher any time soon. When Apple stops selling "cool" and starts selling affordability, I may jump onto that bandwagon, but that's not happening today.

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