This comment is built on the premise, that apple is trying to offer cheap alternative to pc laptop. I doubt that. Mac laptop is in itself, something not very cheap, middle market.

If you want mobility and you want OS X then you only have one choice. Apple knows this and that is way they charge what they charge. They could come in with a Mac with no iSight and probably a single core processor, but then you wont really get the multithreaded experience that Apple is trying to offer through their very responsive OS. I just finished working on my coworkers Mac which is a single processor G4 400 MHz, they I came back to my dual core G5, the experience is undeniably batter on the newer faster hardware. Besides iLife is getting more ambitions with each release, so again the more robust the specks the better the experience. Isn't the experience really what makes a Mac a Mac?

It's good to see I'm not the only one who finds that while Apple may be charging a reasonable price for the products it DOES offer, that doesn't mean there are not still significant holes in its product line -- and these holes remain glaring at the low-end of the consumer level. In recent weeks I have cited the low-end desktop niche which Apple haspreviously (and successfully) served, and now it appears that we can add a low-end notebook niche to the list as well.

It IS possible to develop a high-quality product for this niche without requiring that Apple out-Dell Dell at its own game. I don't expect Apple will become a de facto assembler with ultra low margins. Nor do I advocate that. But it IS possible for Apple to provide a viable (and profitable) desktop consumer model at $799-$999 and a viable (and profitable) notebook consumer model at $899-$999. How do I know this?

Because Apple has done it before.

There's gold in them thar hills and Apple should not ignore this market at the very moment that the Windows OS can be run on Macs.

Apple has a pretty good track record over the past years of nailing it on the price.

Over and over again people complain that Apple is going to miss out because it's pricing is too high.

Some things never change.

One other minor change (I think it's a change) adds $38 to the price: the DVI/DVI and DVI/VGA adapters are no longer included -- they were with our G3/500 iBook. Now they're $19 each...

-rob.

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Apple has a pretty good track record over the past years of nailing it on the price.

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Didn't I say exactly that in the Weblog entry?

Apples been in business for 30 years, and, during that time, its gotten pretty good at figuring out what price the market is willing to bear.