As Cheap as 'Apples' NOT dell...

[W1nTry]

All I have to say is... LIKE WHOA... when did THIS EVER happen?

Apple thrashes Dell on Mac Pro pricing

Amazing grates

By Dean Pullen: Thursday 10 August 2006, 05:21
 
THE MAC PRO was unveiled at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WDCC) a couple of days ago. Its a formidable system, based around a two Intel Xeon 'Woodcrest' processor dual core system, similar to what Dell is offering within the Dell Precision 490 range for small businesses.

We thought it would be interesting to compare pricing between similarly specced systems from Dell and Apple, and were gobsmacked at the results - this should be very good reading for Apple advocates after our previous commentary, which discussed the poor showing from Apple at this year's WDCC.

Let's get the base specifications out of the way first, so its clear the systems are very similarly specified. Considering the recent Apple move towards Intel architecture, the specs are almost indistinguishable:

Dell base specs
Dell Precision 490
Graphics Card - 128MB PCIe nVidia Quadro NVS 285
Memory - 1GB, DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz, ECC (2x512mb DIMMS)
HDD - 160gb 7200rpm SATA
Optical - 16X DVD+/-RW drive
KB/Mouse - USB Entry Quietkey, Dell standard USB 2-Button Optical Mouse
Sound and Firewire- Onboard AC97 sound and 1394a Controller Card
No monitor
Three year onsite economy service & support
Apple base specs
Mac Pro
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB
Memory - 1GB, DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz, ECC (2x512mb DIMMS)
HDD - 160GB 7200rpm SATA
Optical - Superdrive dual-layer DVD+/-RW drive
KB/Mouse - Apple Keyboard and Apple Mighty Mouse
Sound and Firewire - FireWire 800/400 and sound with various I/O inc. optical
No monitor
One year standard AppleCare

Now let's take a look at different processor configurations and the resulting pricing from the US stores.

Dual Core Intel Xeon 2GHz x 2 (4MB shared L2 cache)
Dell: $2,086.00 (with a $200 discount for small business)
Apple: $2,124.00

Dual Core Intel Xeon 2.66GHz x 2 (4MB shared L2 cache)
Dell: $2,866.00 (with a $200 discount for small business)
Apple: $2,424.00

Dual Core Intel Xeon 3GHz x 2 (4MB shared L2 cache)
Dell: $3,686.00 (with a $200 discount for small business)
Apple: $3,224.00

You can see Dell pips Apple by a tiny $38 for the 2GHz option, but then is whipped into shape by Apple with a $442 saving on the 2.66GHz option and a similarly large margin with the 3ghz processors - $462 per system. It must be noted that the machine from Dell does have a three year on-site warranty whereas the Apple has only the one year, but this is less important to small businesses who have their own IT support, and consumers who wish to get the cheapest deal - something Dell usually wins hands down.

This is quite incredible. Any major OEM has trouble matching pricing with Dell, considering the massive volume discount Dell gets from Intel. But Apple aren't only matching them on the lower specs, they're thrashing them on the higher specced systems - relatively huge margins of pricing difference.

You have to wonder what sort of discounts Apple are getting from Intel, and if this is why Dell is now holding hands with AMD. µ