New Imacs/Minis/Mac Pro's & AEBS/Time Capsule

[jamin100]

The UK apple store has just come back online after the desktop refresh..

Not too impressed to be honest. Specs are ok on the new machines but prices suck!

the lowest mac mini has seen a price jump from £391 to £499

[baxter]

Extremely disappointed in the price increases for the iMac and Mac Mini..

Had planned to buy around 50 iMacs in the summer, but might have to consider a 'downgrade' to the Mac Mini and a cheap flat panel to keep within budget.

Nice one Apple! Once again ignoring the education market.

[Messa]

TBH, since when has any manufacturer's focus been on education - their in business to make money and get as many people as they can to buy them, IMO for the small amount of schools that can actually justify/afford Apple products it's not worth apple focusing on that market.

The prices aint all that bad considering on the £1200 one there is a 24" screen and it comes with 4GB Ram as standard.

Quad core iMac's would have been awesome but hey ho, im not all that dissapointed.

[mac_shinobi]

bit sucky on the DDR3 ram as I just got a Mac Pro august / sept time but oh well - will most likely keep this for a few good years so maybe the next time I get one it will be DDR4 or better RAM and faster graphics etc

[mac_shinobi]

TBH, since when has any manufacturer's focus been on education - their in business to make money and get as many people as they can to buy them, IMO for the small amount of schools that can actually justify/afford Apple products it's not worth apple focusing on that market.

The prices aint all that bad considering on the £1200 one there is a 24" screen and it comes with 4GB Ram as standard.

Quad cores would have been awesome but hey ho, im not all that dissapointed.

the 8 core mac pro has 6 gigs of ram instead of a measley 2 - ok its 6 1 gig sticks but hey

[Rozzer]

Extremely disappointed in the price increases for the iMac and Mac Mini..

Had planned to buy around 50 iMacs in the summer, but might have to consider a 'downgrade' to the Mac Mini and a cheap flat panel to keep within budget.

Nice one Apple! Once again ignoring the education market.

Second that! I am not at all happy with the cost for the new iMacs. I have basically bought as many of the previous range as i can get my hands on.

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

You might all be guilty of jumping to an unwarranted conclusion?

Don't forget the prices you're seeing on the web site do not necessarily reflect the pricing policy for educational institutions. Apple have always had and AFAIK still have an aggressive pricing policy when it comes to education. How can this be seen as ignoring education?

To say otherwise is simply wrong and slightly naive.

Most of you are in education and must have been involved at some level when purchasing IT? Do you not compare the unit price you pay against the unit price available commercially?

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[laputa01]

I order about 100 Mac Minis a year through a company called Solutions-inc in Brighton.
Give these guys and try and mention Alan Li from the Bridge Academy to see if they can sort you out with any deals.

Also try Toucan if you haven't already.
Good luck
A

[Ric_]

Don't forget the prices you're seeing on the web site do not necessarily reflect the pricing policy for educational institutions. Apple have always had and AFAIK still have an aggressive pricing policy when it comes to education. How can this be seen as ignoring education?

tbh, I haven't been all that impressed of late with Apple education pricing. 'Apple Solution Providers' can't seem to shift the price much from that on the online education store... and £775 is still a lot for an iMac (even if it is £100 less than retail).

[DMcCoy]

Hi

You might all be guilty of jumping to an unwarranted conclusion?

Don't forget the prices you're seeing on the web site do not necessarily reflect the pricing policy for educational institutions. Apple have always had and AFAIK still have an aggressive pricing policy when it comes to education. How can this be seen as ignoring education?

To say otherwise is simply wrong and slightly naive.

Most of you are in education and must have been involved at some level when purchasing IT? Do you not compare the unit price you pay against the unit price available commercially?

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

But they do ignore education.

I wanted multiple copies of iWork and iLife. I had to order through the volume licensing and not the education store. When they turn up I simply have 40 boxes of each, not very useful for iWork license keys.

There are virtually no upgrade license for any apple products.

Applecare is horrendously expensive, but with my vast failure rate from the first set of machines we had, I'd never buy one without it now (even after apple carefully acknowledged it as a manufacturing fault, whilst the same time not admitting to anything).

Apples method for network home directories is incredibly inefficient, constantly reading and writing to large numbers of files in the rediected library, hammering the file servers mercilessly.

Printer sharing is still broken in 10.5.0 (.1,.2,.3,.4,.5,.6) having to login to cups to publish it manually.

Support when even hinting of AD integration (such that it is) requires the very expensive support package.

No concept of mandatory profiles, all users require the same crap in their library over and over again.

Pitiful quota support.

Most importantly there are simply no education people at apple to talk to, some for higher education perhaps, but nothing for secondaries and below.


I'd go as far as saying that in my last 5 years working with macs that apple couldn't care less about networks and even less education ones!

[FN-GM]

The best person i found to get Macs from was CPLTD. I purchased 2 mac laptops for myself from them.

[AntonioRocco]

@ Ric

The statement still stands. Pricing for education is less than the commercial sector. Yes you're right it's still expensive but you knew that anyway.

@ DMCoy

I'm sorry to hear your experience has not been great.

I agree with some of your comments. Generally Apple don't behave any differently to any other computer/OS manufacturer. I disagree slightly with your view of Apple's implementation of LDAP. I don't come to the same conclusion. Not when comparing it to the other offerings. Of course it's nowhere near perfect. Neither is Active Directory. At least Apple does try to make their platform work in heterogenous environments. I don't see Microsoft making quite the same effort?

Printer Sharing? Why are you bothering? Let the DC handle it - its better at it anyway.

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[torledo]

Hi

You might all be guilty of jumping to an unwarranted conclusion?

Don't forget the prices you're seeing on the web site do not necessarily reflect the pricing policy for educational institutions. Apple have always had and AFAIK still have an aggressive pricing policy when it comes to education. How can this be seen as ignoring education?

To say otherwise is simply wrong and slightly naive.

Most of you are in education and must have been involved at some level when purchasing IT? Do you not compare the unit price you pay against the unit price available commercially?

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

ofcourse we understand the different between a unit price for educatoin via a reseller and the retail store price.....but unless a member has gotten up really early in the morning i doubt they can do an up do date check on whether unit prices via they're resellers have increased. Perhaps that's something you can do tomorrow.

also with regards to 'aggressive discounting' depends what you mean by aggressive, what does the percentage difference look like between a quote you've received for an imac and the price for the same spec 'as list' on the uk apple store website ? And how does that stack up against other vendors who discount [aggressively or otherwise] for education.

aggressive discounting is only a worthy statement in my view if it can be compared to another vendor. Or even if only as a comparison between discounts offered by apple to education in the US vs the UK.

also, what discounts % wise have you had with bulk orders of say imacs, if any, on top of the education discount ?

i must say i think it would be 'naive' to assume that prices won't be revised upward for education also for the new higher spec models.......but i'll reserve judgement until you can get your quote for the new kit.

[GrumbleDook]

Apple UK / Apple Europe do very little to support education now ... a shame as in the days of the Apple Distinguished School it was good fun. The only really thing is the Apple Teacher Institute and it looks like I won't ever get to one now (not being in a school or an ADE).

Most of their work is now via Apple Solutions Experts who specialise in education (Solutions Inc are a cracking bunch but so are Toucan, AT Computers, KRCS ... in fact most of them are) and there is a constant struggle to get Apple to shift on prices.

I have experienced (to the frustration of one ASE) that you get told to work with an ASE by Apple ... then Apple come back because you are doing a project they can use for PR and undercut the ASE, and you don't get the follow up support that the ASEs provide. Being able to call Solutions Inc and Toucan has been really handy at times.

The only thing you get from the retail stores are the 'JAM' days ... and that is more a drive to get kids in the store to push iMacs, Mac Minis, low end Pro-tools (Final Cut Express, Logic Express, etc) and of course the iPod / iPhone.

On the licence side of things, iLife and iWorks can be done as site licences and you get volume media ... but that only works when you have goodly amounts of machines IIRC.

Disappointed in the price increase, but it was expected to be honest with the naff pound and other increases of costs. It is just annoying that once a price is set it doesn't change the way that other manufacturers / suppliers do.

Love the kit, love the software (apart from the odd strange thing like CUPS *not* being friendly at time or OD-AD breaking between minor upgrades) but still think the approach to education over this side of the water is not right.

[Ric_]

On the licence side of things, iLife and iWorks can be done as site licences and you get volume media ... but that only works when you have goodly amounts of machines IIRC.

Logic can also be bought as a site license and the site licenses are VERY good value for money. You only need about 20 macs too to start getting good value for money IIRC.