Are Apple's Price Drops Aimed at Linux?

I don't think Apple is out to get Linux or anybody else for that matter. Apple is trying to keep up with the market.

The days that Apple carried that etherial magic of being truly different, with their promise of "It just works!", are rapidly coming to an end. When they used exotic hardware, they produced these machines that only a handful of people truly knew through and through, so there could be that smidge of truth in their claims.

Today, Apple is just one hardware manufacturer amongst the many. They sell x86 laptops and desktops. They produce halfway decent software. They make music players and mobile phones.

The biggest problem Apple has on the computing side is their use of non-exotic, off-the-shelf and run-of-the-mill parts. Although Apple is still top notch in industrial design when it comes to computing, their machines can be compared oranges to oranges with the competition. Before Apple went x86, "we from the Cult of Intel" couldn't really compare PPC 970 to Intel Pentium III. PPC just might be that magic chip, that makes computing an exceptional joy.

These days an Intel Core 2 Duo is an Intel Core 2 Duo. An Ati is an Ati and an NVIDIA is an NVIDIA. When a comparable hardware line-up is put next to each other, and Apple is twice as pricy on average, people just conclude that Apple makes very expensive casings. Since most of us just chuck our boxen under the desk, looks aren't that important...

The magic of "It just works!" and the mysticism of Mac OS X are slowly waning too, thanks in large part to the OSX86 community. Apple's UNIX isn't that magic OS that is engineered so well that it survives anything you throw at it. As it turns out OS X only runs well and hassle free on the measily amount of hardware that Apple pre-selected. In that respect OS X is a lot less impressive than other OSes, including Windows, which run on super computers and the neighbors kitchensink.

When it comes to consumer gadgets, Apple is very successful with the iPod. For some strange reason, every other music player manufacturer is trying to produce an "iPod killer", which seems to be code for bland knock-off product. Here Apple is king, with no competitor close to overtaking. On the iPhone front, Apple isn't so lucky. The other phone manufacturers are not trying to produce an "iPhone killer". They actually do their own thing and come up with amazing devices. Here Apple is just one of the many, like they are in the PC department.

Trying to be a premium manufacturer, when every other Joe, Dick and Harry is very close to matching your offerings, is hard. Apple could do two things, ridiculously crank up the hardware specs and make their gadgets exotic again (and unreachable for the many) or bite the bullet and price their hardware more realistically, considering they don't offer that much difference to their competitors.