Comments on: Chart of the day, Apple price edition

By: mattmc

mattmc — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:53:15 +0000

What about the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro?

Do they throw off your graph too much?

By: otter4

otter4 — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:33:56 +0000

Fantastic chart. The time element is off slightly….it looks as if the Mac was introduced in the late 70s. I think it was 83 or 84, and then in the late ’80s (wilderness years?) the Mac plus came out, and then, wonder of wonders, the SE with a hard drive.

By: jonhendry3

jonhendry3 — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:30:32 +0000

In 1989 the Apple SE/30, with 1MB of RAM and a 40MB had drive, and a slower 16MHz 68030, for a list price of $6500. (With an educational discount, mine was $3495).

The monochrome NeXTStation came out in 1990, and cost $4,995, with a 25MHz 68040, 17″ monitor, 8MB of RAM and a 105MB hard drive.

By: FifthDecade

FifthDecade — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:51:45 +0000

Why no modern Mac computers in that chart? It makes it look like Apple stopped making computing when the iPod came out. Since then prices have continued to fall (as with all technology) and innovation continued with such models as the Mac mini, the MacBook Air and so on.

By: FelixSalmon

FelixSalmon — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:32:55 +0000

“Dr. Dongarra estimates that the iPad 2 will have a Linpack benchmark of between 1.5 and 1.65 gigaflops (billions of floating-point, or mathematical, operations per second). That would have insured that the iPad 2 could have stayed on the list of the world’s fastest supercomputers through 1994.”

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09 /the-ipad-in-your-hand-as-fast-as-a-sup ercomputer-of-yore/?smid=tw-nytimesbits& seid=auto

By: Matthew_Saroff

Matthew_Saroff — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 03:40:35 +0000

The idea that an iPad is as powerful as a Cray Computer is a common misconception.

Basically, it’s comparing MIPS to MIPS, but a Cray, or for that matter any vector processing supercomputer, uses MIPS only for house keeping, basically loading the program, not running the program.

You need to compare FLOPS.

By: figg94

figg94 — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:26:42 +0000

“But Jobs can take credit for always being a step or two ahead of the technology curve, for seeing where the technology puck was going, and skating to that point before anybody else.”

Apple not so much anticipated the technology curve as set the curve. Apple is a marketing powerhouse. If any other company would have said, “hey, look at this great tablet!” or “look at this great PMP,” Fuggetaboutit. Apple can make it work not because their technology is superior but because their product has built-in legitimacy and status from their devoted, dare I say, irrational followers. Then again, that’s what marketing is all about, isn’t it?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 23:27:47 +0000

I remember getting a 100-series PowerBook for about $1150 (education) in 1994. And there were plenty of cheaper Quadras, Performas, PowerMacs, licensed Mac clones (which were great values), etc. The iMac was reasonably priced, to be sure, but it’s not like it was the first Apple product in a consumer price range. It was just a better product.

By: Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 23:02:03 +0000

Here’s my retrospective. For the record, I still own a 1984 128KB Mac, and it still boots. http://wp.me/pJhAL-9x

By: KenG_CA

KenG_CA — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:26:32 +0000

The IBM PC, when introduced in 1981, cost more than $2,000. PCs were not for everybody back then, whether Apple or IBM. You had to really want a computer, and know what to do with it (there was no web).

Apple has always been trying to sell computers to consumers. To imply that he was fired because consumers couldn’t afford them is ridiculous, for the company had already grown pretty rapidly selling to consumers. He was fired because the soda salesman he hired was arrogant enough to believe he could be CTO and CEO.

By: GRRR

GRRR — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:22:51 +0000

Someone forgot Newton in the chart.