Mac prices: Bargains to some, still too high for others

Lauren would have felt so uncool at yesterday's Worldwide Developer's Conference keynote speech. You remember Lauren, right? She was the gal in the Microsoft commercial who actually wanted to buy a Mac but had to walk out of Apple store when she discovered there was no 17-inch laptop there for under $1,000.

Sure, the 17-inch Macs are a better bargain this week than they were last week - a more powerful machine that's $300 cheaper. But no, Lauren, it's still not under $1,000. The 17-inch is down to $2,499.

You see, when it comes to Macs and PCs, pricing is a relative thing. At the developer's conference yesterday, I'd swear that I heard gasps of delight among the cheers as Marketing VP Phil Schiller announced the price for the 13-inch Macbook Pro (note the "Pro" in the name) could be yours for $1,199. (Did you hear the gasps?)

Mac owners have had a taste of something better in computing and understand that there's a premium price that must be paid to get that something better - and they're willing to pay. Sure, you could probably pick up two Windows machines (17-inch machines, at that) for the same $1,199 - but there's an old saying about getting what you pay for (cough cough... Windows.)

Here we are in an historic economic slump and companies across a number of sectors are trying to find that magic number that will bring customers back without compromising too much of the bottom line. Today's pricing announcement is Apple's way of saying that it's no different.

Of course, some of you might think that Macs are still over-priced, but these are bargain prices for the technology that Apple is putting into these machines - 7 hour batteries, all of that RAM and the performance graphics card. Yes, $1,199 is a bargain.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so. My colleague Andrew Nusca, in a blog post yesterday, said, "...it's cheaper than ever to buy a Mac." and even one his readers chimed in by saying, "...those prices are sweet. And VERY competitive."