And itis not only the Cube thatis priced wrong. I visited Appleis online store and compared its top-of-the-line G4 to a similar model offered by Gateway on its Web site. The 500-megahertz dual-processor G4 with 256 megabytes of memory costs $7,598 from Apple. A 700-MHz Gateway with a single processor boasting the same memory goes for $2,549.
Can now be seen as:
And itis not only the Cube thatis priced wrong. I visited Appleis online store and compared its top-of-the-line G4 to a similar model offered by Gateway on its Web site. The 500-megahertz dual-processor G4 with 256 megabytes of memory costs $7,598 from Apple. A 700-MHz Gateway with a single processor boasting the same memory goes for $2,549. Take out the huge $4,000 Apple flat-panel monitor and the $700 Gateway monitor to make a better comparison, and thereis still an $1,800 price differential.
Much better, to be sure, but it is still a poor comparison. Whereis the Gigabit Ethernet on the Gateway machine? Whereis the DVD-RAM drive? The argument could be made that Gateway doesnit include those things because their customers donit want them, but Appleis customers can replace the DVD-RAM drive with a cheaper one too. To Mr. Jaffeis credit, he apologizes for the original comparison in a forum post on this subject, however he still has some issues just plain wrong. According to that post:
Thank you all for your thoughtful and carefully argued comments. Apple fans tend to be a highly intelligent and opinionated lot–and I really do mean that in a good way. Nevertheless I disagree with you about every complaint except for one. It was unfair of me to not mention that the Apple computer I used in my comparison had a $4000 monitor. I asked the editors to correct that and we are in the process of doing so.
Despite that omission on my part, the comparison still holds up. Take out $4000 from the price of the Apple and $700 from the price of the Gateway for its 17" monitor, and you still have an $1800 price differential. Thatis stunning for two computers that do roughly the same thing at roughly the same speed.
The rest of the forum post is a rebuttal to criticisms posted by BusinessWeek readers.