right smart back in 2006 you could own aMac minifor £ 499 , aniMacstarted at £ 639 ( position for the education market ) , and aMacBookcould set you back £ 749 . Back then we might have thought those were gamy price , but over the eld that keep an eye on prices were set to increase .
Over the preceding eight eld , as Apple saw astonishing succeeder with theiPhoneandiPad , and we matt-up the impact of a global recession , we ’ve seenMacshit criminal record high prices .
During that period we ’ve regard £ 599 for the submission - levelMac miniin 2010 ; £ 1,149 for anentry - point iMacin 2013 ; and the first MacBook Pro with Retina exhibit be a staggering £ 1,799 when it establish in June 2012 .
And while the submission price of theMacBook Airhas reduced from £ 1,299 when it launched in January 2008 , to £ 749 now , it ’s still not the loud everMac laptop computer . Back in January 2008 you could get a white MacBook for £ 719 .
Thankfully , it now look like the year of the luxuriously - price Mac are coming to a close . Mac prices are lastly on the declination . Over recent months Apple has been subdue price across its chain of Macs . Today you’re able to grease one’s palms aMac minifor £ 499 , aniMacfor £ 899 , theMacBook Airis £ 749 , and theRetina MacBook Pronow starts at £ 1,099 .
take :
Apple ’s Leontyne Price - clipping has also extended to the Apple TV , now £ 20 less at £ 79 , and the iPod touch is now £ 40 punk at £ 159 . Even Apple ’s Malcolm stock is now more affordable after the troupe split the stock at the rootage of June . you may now own Apple bloodline for less than $ 100 ( £ 58 ) a share , which is much more approachable than the $ 646 it closed on pre - split .
More affordable Apples
So , is Apple becoming more affordable ? Is the so - call “ Apple Tax ” now a thing of the past ? Probably not – Apple is a premium make and its mathematical product sit at a premium price point . It ’s never been Apple ’s philosophical system to make flash products , as Steve Jobs once say : “ We does n’t know how to make a $ 500 computer that ’s not a piece of junk . ”
But Apple does n’t need to make a garish Mac ; it just needs to make Macs more attractive when liken to the respite of the global PC grocery store .
This is a challenge in itself because the spheric microcomputer business has been shrinking over the preceding few years as multitude twist to tablets and smartphones , rather than upgrade laptop and desktops . Apple already seems to be the winner in this situation , with the iPad in the forefront of the move to tablet computer science , but how can it win moreMac market sharein what is already a declining securities industry ?
Apple ca n’t avoid the overall personal computer sales slump , so the price cuts are of import if Apple is to sell more Macs in the current market . As Apple lowers price , the Mac is edging nearer to the sweet spot at which Apple should be able to continue to grown grocery store share despite the lag in the overall PC market place .
The new lower price for the MacBook Air mean that – at least if you focus on the US pricing ( starting at $ 899 ) – Apple ’s entry - level laptop sit within the most pop price range for laptops . harmonize to JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall , in 2013 55 % of laptops that shipped were priced between $ 500 ( £ 293 ) and $ 1,000 ( £ 586 ) but in 2013 Apple did n’t have a example at that Mary Leontyne Price . Now it does . ( take note those US prices exclude taxation ) .
At the newfangled price point , the 11 in 256 GB MacBook Air ( £ 899 ) also compares very favourably with the 10.6 in Microsoft Surface 2 Pro lozenge ( £ 879 ) , which offer the same memory space but no keyboard .
The Mac advantage
Macs also have some important vantage over the rest of the PC grocery . They pop the question better than average battery life , next operating arrangement updates are free , and in a grocery store where people await longer before buying replacement system , and rely on their iPhones and iPads for the day to day computing needs , many will reckon to buy a simple machine with more ripe features when the meter does total to promote . The low - priced , low-toned - speced personal computer will surely suffer most in this trend off from PCs to pill and smartphones , while middling priced but high speced Macs will still be an attractive investment because they can offer something that smartphones and lozenge ca n’t .
Apple also benefits from the so - called iPhone halo effect , as consumer with iPhones wishing to interchange their PC , look to Apple for their next laptop computer or desktop . It is sure to help that Apple is aiming to make the whole experience of owning a Mac , iPhone and iPad even better when newContinuityfeatures make it with OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 afterward this year .
Winning Mac market share
So with all these factors in Apple ’s favour : lower price ; the iPhone ’s popularity ; premium , full - speced products ; and continuity features to unify Mac and iOS products ; could Apple terminate up leading the PC market ? It seems a crazy idea , and if you compare sales of all PCs to all Mac sales , Apple has its employment cut out . harmonize to Gartner estimate , in 2013 309 million Windows microcomputer were ship worldwide . This compared to 16.4 Macs send in 2013 .
However , when it add up to US PC trafficker shipments , Apple is now the third most popular microcomputer manufacturer , behind Dell and HP . According to Gartner figures from April 2014 , HP shipped 3,527,266 microcomputer ( 25 % market place part ) , Dell shipped 3,357,968 PCs ( 23.8 % ) , Apple ship 1,521,309 ( 10.8 % ) , Lenovo shipped 1,459,693 ( 10.4 % ) and Toshiba shipped 1,188,135 ( 8.4 % ) . As sales of Dell and HP microcomputer decline , it is feasible that Apple could become the phone number one microcomputer manufacturing , at least in the US , even if it does n’t sell the most personal computer over all .
The Mac is already hold industry trends by spring up while the quietus of the personal computer market is shrinking , asApple CFO Luca Maestrisaid back in April : “ mack have gained global market share for 31 of last 32 quarter . ” The one quarter Apple missed was due to its bankruptcy to manufacturer the new iMac chop-chop enough to meet need .
These latest cost drops could be what Apple needs to actuate it to the top of the PC manufacturing business charts .
Read : Expert Office for iPad and iPhone tip
And : How to manage Macs on a Windows internet
