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Apple: Same value, lower price?

At today’s unveil­ing of the new mac­book and mac­book pro line, Steve Jobs men­tioned that the new mac­book was offer­ing the same func­tion­al­ity as the old mac­book pro for $700 less than before. To check the verac­ity of that state­ment, I pulled out 2 sets of data: first, thanks to Google cache, I was able to pull up the price list for the Apple Mac­Book Pro in the store prior to today’s announce­ment. It looked like this:

Then, I picked up the same info from the Apple store offer­ings for the Mac­Book today:

So look­ing at this, the com­par­i­son in terms of a price drop, since we’re talk­ing about fea­tures, would prob­a­bly have to be around the 2.4 GHz ver­sion since it’s the only ver­sion that appears on both pages (the Mac­Book didn’t have any 2.0 GHz or 2.1 GHz version.)

How­ever, here is the first prob­lem with the state­ment. The 2.4Ghz Mac­Book ver­sion offered today is $1599 and the 2.4 Ghz Mac­Book Pro ver­sion offered yes­ter­day was $1999. That’s only a $400 price drop.

Using the same advanced “check the Google cache” method­ol­ogy, I pulled up the tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tion list for the Mac­Book Pro as it appeared on Apple’s site yes­ter­day. It looked like this:

I then pulled up the sim­i­lar data from today’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the Mac­Book. The idea here is to get a fair assess­ment, based on Apple’s words yes­ter­day and today, about whether one really gets the same value for less.

So let’s take a quick run down through the fea­tures of each devices, since Steve Jobs asked us to keep think­ing of today’s Mac­Book offer­ing as equiv­a­lent to yesterday’s Mac­Book Pro, based on the data pro­vided by Apple itself:

Mac­Book Pro — Oct. 13, 2008 Mac­Book — Octo­ber 14, 2008
Size and Weight
Height: 1 inch (2.59 cm)
Width: 14.1 inches (35.7 cm)
Depth: 9.6 inches (24.3 cm)
Weight: 5.4 pounds (2.45 kg)
Height: 0.95 inch (2.41 cm)
Width: 12.78 inches (32.5 cm)
Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
Weight: 4.5 pounds (2.04 kg)
Con­nec­tions and Expansion One FireWire 400 port at up to 400 Mbps
One FireWire 800 port at up to 800 Mbps
Two 480-Mbps USB 2.0 ports
ExpressCard/34 slot
Kens­ing­ton cable lock slot		 MagSafe power port
Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
Mini Dis­play­Port
Kens­ing­ton lock slot
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Built-in Air­Port Extreme Wi-Fi wire­less net­work­ing (based on IEEE 802.11n draft spec­i­fi­ca­tion); IEEE 802.11a/b/g com­pat­i­ble
Built-in Blue­tooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Giga­bit Eth­er­net (RJ-45 connector)		 Built-in Air­Port Extreme Wi-Fi wire­less net­work­ing (based on IEEE 802.11n draft spec­i­fi­ca­tion); IEEE 802.11a/b/g com­pat­i­ble
Built-in Blue­tooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Giga­bit Eth­er­net (RJ-45 connector)
Audio Built-in stereo speak­ers
Built-in omni­di­rec­tional micro­phone
Com­bined opti­cal dig­i­tal audio input/audio line in (mini­jack)
Com­bined opti­cal dig­i­tal audio output/audio line out (minijack)		 Built-in stereo speak­ers
Built-in omni­di­rec­tional micro­phone
Com­bined opti­cal dig­i­tal input/analog line in (mini­jack)
Com­bined opti­cal dig­i­tal output/analog line out (mini­jack)
Sup­ports Apple Stereo Head­set with microphone
Input Back­lit key­board with ambi­ent light sen­sor for auto­matic adjust­ment of key­board illu­mi­na­tion and screen bright­ness

Solid-state track­pad with Multi-Touch ges­ture sup­port for pre­cise cur­sor con­trol; sup­ports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities

 Built-in full-size illu­mi­nated key­board with 78 (U.S.) or 79 (ISO) keys, includ­ing 12 func­tion keys and 4 arrow keys (inverted “T” arrangement)Multi-Touch track­pad for pre­cise cur­sor con­trol; sup­ports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, three-finger swipe, four-finger swipe, tap, double-tap, and drag capabilities
Dis­play 15.4-inch (diag­o­nal) antiglare widescreen TFT LED back­lit dis­play with sup­port for mil­lions of col­ors; optional glossy widescreen dis­playSup­ported res­o­lu­tions: 1440 by 900 (native), 1280 by 800, 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 pix­els at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pix­els at 4:3 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pix­els at 4:3 aspect ratio stretched; 720 by 480 pix­els at 3:2 aspect ratio; 720 by 480 pix­els at 3:2 aspect ratio stretched 13.3-inch (diag­o­nal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen dis­play with sup­port for mil­lions of col­orsSup­ported res­o­lu­tions: 1280 by 800 (native), 1152 by 720, 1024 by 640, and 800 by 500 pix­els at 16:10 aspect ratio; 1024 by 768, 800 by 600, and 640 by 480 pix­els at 4:3 aspect ratio; 720 by 480 pix­els at 3:2 aspect ratio
Graph­ics and Video Support NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graph­ics proces­sor with dual-link DVI sup­port; 256MB of GDDR3 mem­oryDual dis­play and video mir­ror­ing: Simul­ta­ne­ously sup­ports full native res­o­lu­tion on the built-in dis­play and up to 2560 by 1600 pix­els on an exter­nal dis­play, both at mil­lions of colors

DVI out­put port

VGA out­put using included DVI to VGA adapter

Built-in iSight camera

 NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graph­ics proces­sor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main mem­oryExtended desk­top and video mir­ror­ing: Simul­ta­ne­ously sup­ports full native res­o­lu­tion on the built-in dis­play and up to 2560 by 1600 pix­els on an exter­nal dis­play, both at mil­lions of colors

Mini Dis­play­Port

Built-in iSight camera
Proces­sor and Memory 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo proces­sor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache run­ning 1:1 with proces­sor speed

2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 mem­ory; two SO-DIMM slots sup­port up to 4GB

800MHz frontside bus

 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo proces­sor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache run­ning 1:1 with proces­sor speed

2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots sup­port up to 4GB

1066MHz frontside bus
Stor­age 200GB or 250GB 5400-rpm Ser­ial ATA hard drive

8x slot-loading Super­Drive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Max­i­mum write: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R; 4x DVD-R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD+R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD-RW, DVD+RW; 24x CD-R; 10x CD-RW

Max­i­mum read: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-ROM; 6x DVD-ROM (dou­ble layer DVD-9), DVD-R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD+R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD-RW, DVD+RW; 24x CD

 250GB 5400-rpm Ser­ial ATA hard disk drive
8x slot-loading Super­Drive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Max­i­mum write: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R; 4x DVD-R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD+R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD-RW, DVD+RW; 24x CD-R; 10x CD-RW

Max­i­mum read: 8x DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-ROM; 6x DVD-ROM (dou­ble layer DVD-9), DVD-R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD+R DL (dou­ble layer), DVD-RW, and DVD+RW; 24x CD
Bat­tery and Power 60-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery85W MagSafe Power Adapter with cable man­age­ment sys­tem
MagSafe power adapter port		 45-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery60W MagSafe Power Adapter with cable man­age­ment system

MagSafe power port

So by the look of it,it’s not an exact match. The screen of the old Mac­Book Pro is, of course, larger, which accounts for it being heav­ier and big­ger. But other fea­tures seem to have dis­ap­peared: The 2 firewire ports are gone, as is the Express­Card slot; So is the antiglare screen (with glossy avail­able as an option instead of a default) and the DVI port. Oh, and the sup­ported screen res­o­lu­tion goes from a top of 1440 by 900 to 1280 by 800.

On the plus side, the multi-touch pad is a glassy button-less one, a new video card is avail­able, as is a larger hard drive (50 more Gb to use) and a speed­ier moth­er­board is avail­able. Also, it appears that the bat­tery is now a 45-watt-hour one instead of a 60-watt one so I sus­pect that there are some power enhance­ments in this new machine.

Are the two machines sim­i­lar? No. How­ever, each of them has pluses and minuses and they are only $400 apart which, con­sid­er­ing some of the things that have been dropped and added, seems to point to a machine that, assum­ing depre­ci­a­tion, is prob­a­bly in line, price-wise, with the ear­lier one.

Originally published on October 14, 2008 in Business, Technology . You may find related thoughts pieces under the following terms: , , , , ,

  • Joe C

    That’s not at all what Steve said. What he said was that there were three things (Metal Enclo­sure, Back­lit LED dis­play, Faster Graph­ics) that Mac­Book own­ers were ask­ing for. To get THOSE THREE THINGS before would cost you $1999, but now, you could get THOSE THREE THINGS for $1299. Thus the $700 sav­ings. He never said the new Mac­Book was exactly the old Mac­Book Pro. Only that the fea­tures peo­ple were com­plain­ing most about were now offered in the cheaper con­sumer line.

  • Cur­tis Carmack

    Also, the dif­fer­ence is $400, not $300. If you’re going to get into that much detail (which I actu­ally found quite help­ful), you’ll have to get the price dif­fer­ence right, too.

  • http://www.tnl.net/blog/ Tris­tan Louis

    ooops… Thanks Cur­tis… Cor­rect­ing it…