Here is the $699 HP Pavilion laptop at bestbuy.com

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9166635&st=hp+dv7&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1218041148373

It isn’t about hardware, although Apple IS a hardware company. It’s about the whole freaking experience! The integration of everything is what I look forward to when I hit that power switch. Everything just works together, as expected.

Even Parallels, the virtualization people, get this. They’ve built an environment for Windows to run on the Mac that is better than Windows running on a garden variety POS PC. I cloned my Dell laptop and sucked it into my Mac, and the result is an order of magnitude better to use than the original Dell hardware!

Apple is all about the entire computing experience. From the incredibly great service in the Apple Store (at least in Charlotte), to the startup routine you follow to migrate to your new machine from your old one, to the way they design the software so your ten-year-old kids can learn it without manuals, EVERYTHING just works great. Oh, there are some annoying little anomalies every now and then, but they are nothing like what I’ve endured on Windoze machines over the years.

Apple understands what it is selling, and how it relates to what people really want. Once you have truly experienced what they offer, it’s hard to look at a PC as anything other than a second-best commodity.

Unless you buy the exact part number power supply, you’re not getting the same power supply. Unless you buy the exact part number hard drive, you’re not getting the same hard drive. Unless you buy the exact part number screen, you’re not getting the same screen….

From http://www.roughlydrafted.com:
“The new ads don’t go into details on hardware purchases; they simply make the case that PC laptops can be found for cheaper, playing up tight funds in the tough economy. Best Buy actually does sell the DV7-1245DX, an HP notebook with 17” screen, but it lacks fast wireless 802.11n, fast Gigabit Ethernet, digital audio inputs and outputs, weighs 7.75 pounds, and only features the screen resolution of Apple’s 15“ notebooks: 1440 by 900. Technically, it is a 17” notebook in terms of size, but it doesn’t have the 17“ resolution of Apple’s MacBook Pro, which is 1920 by 1200.

One HP buyer pointed out that this model series ”has the worst screen I have ever seen in my life. It’s the 1440×900 screen and the viewing angles are so poor that even when sitting directly eye level with the screen it is totally washed out. If I go a little bit off-axis the screen results in a negative image. I was using the default settings. Unfortunately I didn’t read reviews before i purchased.“

It would be interesting to follow up in a year and see how happy she is with her 7.75 lb. laptop.

Today, everything except the motherboard and the computer case is the same in Macs as it is other PCs. All of the CPUs, GPUs, hard drives, RAM, optical drives, etc. come form the same suppliers, and can be bought “off-the-shelf” by anyone.

The only thing that really differs anymore is the OS. And for us Mac users, that makes all the difference in the world. But Mac OS X can run on almost any PC made by other manufacturers.

Once users had access to software or hardware (EFI-X) boot loaders, they were able to install and run Mac OS X on computers made by other manufacturers, or even their own custom built PCs.

So yes, the Microsoft ad misses the point. The ad doesn’t even advertise Microsoft’s operating system (almost as if they know that they can’t compete in this arena), oddly the ad promotes other PC hardware over Apple’s computers by talking about the price advantage.

The big problem being missed by both Apple and Microsoft is that many people would like to run Mac OS X, but either find Apple’s computers over-priced (which is undeniable considering everyone is using the same hardware components) or the large hole in Apple’s product line (there is only one expandable computer and it starts off at $3,000 and goes up from there.

Apple computers are better designed and built than the average PC, but the price premium you must pay to get that better design and build, and the lack of a reasonably priced expandable Mac, makes it a no-brainer for many people.

Personally, I was ready to buy a Mac Pro and was holding out for the new ones that were recently introduced. I had been using an iMac, and was hoping the new Mac Pros would be more affordable, since computers and component prices in general have dropped greatly in the past year (compare RAM or hard drive prices to a year ago), but the price of the Mac Pro is still stratospheric.

Like many other people I need an expandable computer, but the Mac Pro is just too expensive to consider.

After pricing out a Mac OS X compatible computer that has an Intel 3.0GHz Quad-core CPU, nVidia GeForce 9800 GT, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 1TB hard drive, 5 optical drive bays, 5 hard drive bays, 7 PCI-X slots, DVD burner, Gigabit Ethernet, etc., it was less than half the price of the low-end 4-core Mac Pro. The case isn’t as “pretty” as the aluminum Mac Pro case, but considering that they would both be hidden under my desk it really doesn’t make any difference.

Given the choice of buying this expandable “Mac” for less than $1,500 or paying an additional $2,000 to get a similarly configured low-end 4-core Mac Pro (almost $3,500)… there is no problem choosing.

Honestly, I’d rather have the Mac Pro but it’s not worth an additional $2,000 for the privilege of having it. In the end, it’s really about getting an expandable computer that runs Mac OS X, at an affordable price.

In the 1960s, American car manufacturers offered hundreds of options, many of them tiny details. Sure, you could order a highly customized car, but a) you had to wait for it, b) the chances of it arriving correctly configured were slim and none, and c) it probably cost more than it would’ve without so many choices available.

Nowadays most car models come with many features as standard equipment, and there are few choices: engine, transmission, trim/feature level and some option packages. After that, most options are dealer-installable.

This was in part the result of the “Japanese invasion” in the late 1960s/1970s: it was simpler and cheaper to ship cars across the Pacific with lots of features as standard equipment than to incur delays and higher costs for cars to be built with options.

This approach is a big part of the Apple “value equation”. It’s one thing to compare prices between Macs and PCs, it’s another to compare comparably-equipped computers since Apple offers more features as standard. People are also very good at confusing price and cost, esp. when they ignore ease of use, longevity, maintainability, etc.

I wish someone would publish an “installed base” survey: I suspect Apple’s share would be a lot higher than 10% — my experience is that Macs are viable computers for far longer than Windows PCs. I typically get about 3 years out of a Windows PC, while I get 4.5-5 years out of a Mac (although I can lengthen the life of PC hardware by installing Linux).