Is Apple Skimping on Computers to Focus on iProducts?

After being a long-time Mac-hater, Apple first piqued my interest in late 1999 with the first images of OS X. Right around this time, however, Intel and AMD pushed their CPU speeds over 1 GHz while Apple was stuck at a measly 500 MHz with the Motorola G4. Sure there was the "megahertz myth," but this only accounted for some of this rather large speed gap, not to mention the premium price for Apple hardware. Apple didn't close the gap for another three years, finally upping clock speeds and featuring dual processors in their high-end machines. Finally, the PowerMac was arguably superior. With the introduction of dual G5 machines in 2003, Apple took the speed crown (surely this is a lengthy discussion in itself and I'm sure some would deny this). Even on its second birthday, my sub $3k dual G5 was still blowing away anything coming out of the PC world. Sure, there was still a price premium, but it was worth it. Fast forward to 2006 and the introduction of the Intel MacPro. Performance increased, but price increased more dramatically. Fast forward again to the present day. There is a huge premium for a MacPro, but the performance simply is not there, even at a price point significantly higher than was the price of a top-of-the-line G5.

Let's look at some Mac and PC setups available today and their respective prices:

• High End iMac: 2.8 GHz Quad-Core i7, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, Radeon HD 4850, DVD-R. $2199

• Entry MacPro: 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Xeon, 3 GB RAM, 640 GB HDD, nVidia GT 120, DVD-R. $2499

• Mid MacPro: Two 2.26 GHZ Quad-Core Xeons, 6 GB RAM, 640 GB HDD, nVidia GT 120, DVD-R. $3299

• High End MacPro: Two 2.93 GHZ Quad-Core Xeons, 6 GB RAM, 640 GB HDD, nVidia GT 120, DVD-R. $5899

• PC: 2.66 GHz Quad-Core i7 (over-clockable to 3.5 to 3.8 GHz on air), 6 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, nVidia GTX 470, Blu-Ray burner. $1630 (throw in two 80 GB SSDs in RAID 0 for another $440 and you have a real beast)

The higher end MacPro's do have eight CPU cores, but they come with at least twice the price tag. Aside from good CPUs, the high end Macs have rather low-end components. The nVidia GT 120 is a $50 graphics card, pretty astoundingly crappy in a nearly $6k computer.

Apple still refuses to adopt Blu-ray into their machines, calling the licensing "a bag of hurt." I say, "who cares." There's Blu-ray in a $300 PS3, make it happen Apple. How can I use my Mac for HD video when I don't have any media to put it on?

Apple has abandoned the high performance home user. Not many people (even if they can afford it) want to drop over $3000 for a computer that is far from the best thing on the market. I feel like Apple is pushing iProducts and doesn't care about performance at a reasonable price.

My solution: Mix Apple's water-cooling solution from the G5 and over-clock some i7's. Throw in a decent GPU for graphic card accelerated operations and maybe an SSD. This would lead to a reasonable price-performance ratio.

Unless Apple introduces something new, the PC has regained the price/performance crown in the desktop market. OS X just is not worth a several thousand dollar premium.