So what if the smart people at lg were thinking along the same lines Apple? What lg did was to take the iPod and enlarge it into a phone. This was good thinking, but did this phone come out in competition against the iphone? No.

The facts about some the parts of the iPhone were evident from the suppliers even before the IPhone was announced, so it was easy to create a mockup. I’ve seen prototypes Apple Phones during that period, which bears no resemblance to the iPhone.

OH REALLY…

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/01/11/iphone-and-lg-ke850-separated-at-birth/

Apple created their own niche and expanded it. I would expect the same if Apple entered the Netbook market. It would have a competely different form factor.

What I would like to see is an iPod Touch in pocket back book size with a higher screen resolution to keep the size small enough.

A 6.6 inch screen in 16/10 format at 240 dots per inch would have 1344 by 840 pixels. This would create a device about six inches by 3.75 inches which would fit in a purse or back pocket. It would be ideally sized for a movie viewer, e-book reader and personal game player. It would build on Apple’s success. It would do everything you would want an Netbook to do, but it would cost only about $299 to $399.

No. Macs are not right for every situation (and I say this as someone who owns both an iMac and Macbook Pro). If all you really need is a glorified netbook to send pictures of the kids to Grandma, and you’re on a restrained budget, that Dell might be exactly right for you. Given a choice between sending the kids to camp and buying a Mac just to run Safari and Mail, you might be better served by getting that Dell.

They can easily come out with a low spec’ed machine, perhaps with their own processor, and a small screen that won’t compete with their laptops. Any way you look at it though, the margins would suffer. They would have to make up for that in volume.

Clearly Apple has sales projections that show a tower would be a poor use of resources.

The razor/blades approach only works when people have to buy compatible blades. Intel Macs use generic RAM, generic hard drives, generic optical drives, etc. Some day soon PCs will adopt EFI instead of BIOS and even generic video cards will work, provided there are drivers.

Apple won’t be able to sell blades so they need to charge a premium price for the razor.

Apple really only succeeds where they control the entire widget like they do with their laptops and iMacs or when dealing with Pro customers who think nothing of paying 3 times too much for a hard drive. Hard evidence: Canadian Apple Store wants $360 for a 1TB drive that costs only $110 at my local PC shop.

The Mac mini is as far as they’re willing to go with a modular Mac and once you add a usable amount of RAM, decent HD, keyboard and mouse you’re up into iMac price range and you’ve got an inferior box with no display.

I do not believe Apple will bring out new, lower models. Not only will it cheapen the brand image it would show a large number of people that they can get away with less Mac and that would forever harm their ability to up-sell people in the future.

If Apple does anything with prices it will involve squeezing their suppliers for better pricing so they can make some small retail price cuts without hurting margins.

Disagree. The reason there seems to be an Apple Tax at all is because Apple doesn’t cripple their specs or build quality. If they did, as you suggest, then the prices would be comparable with a Dell with the same specs, not to one with with better specs.