A CNET interview with Brad Brooks, corporate vice president, Windows Consumer Product Marketing, reveals that
Apple's customers are still subject to a hidden "tax". Brooks explains that while Apple's #1 selling feature is the Mac's ability to run
Windows in a virtual machine, users end up paying for two operating systems
and a license to use Parallels, to get the end results.
Just to get a few things out of the way, the Mac's flagship feature is NOT its ability to run Windows in Boot Camp, or
Parallels or whatever, while Apple's computing solutions deliver advantages that at some point just aren't comparable with Microsoft's. Having said all that, here's why Microsoft thinks Apple's customers are being tricked into paying more for what they'd be able to get by just going with the PC,
“If people want a Windows experience, then start with a machine that was built for the Windows experience,” said Brooks. “There's no question, if you look at it, and go to Apple's Web site today, their No. 1 selling feature that they're telling students as to why buy a Mac is because it does run Windows, and that you can get Office when you're running it in Boot Camp or Parallels. But, then you're just paying that tax again. You're paying for an upgrade to Windows, you're paying for the full version of Office, where you could get all of that at one price, at a price point that with a Blu-ray disk drive you can get with an $800 range from an HP or Sony”.
Leaving
Blu-ray out, Parallels, unlike Boot Camp, provides Mac users with the ability to run both OSes (Mac OS X and Windows) simultaneously. The user can actually drag and drop files from a Mac app to a Windows app, and it just works. With hundreds of artists out there who need the Mac's usability and Windows' software compatibility, a machine able to run both Mac OS X and Windows makes sense, don't you agree?
The
interviewers didn't back off one bit, having heard Brooks' assertions. In fact, they pressed Microsoft's guy to try and put his finger on exactly why people seem so willing to pay for this so called hidden Apple tax, despite this “bleak” reality. His response was, “You know, I think it's a good point. I think the question is, though, do customers really know what they're getting into? I don't personally believe that customers really know that a copy of Parallels is going to cost them $80, or that when they really look at what they're going to have to pay in terms of another $200 for a (full boxed copy of Windows), that they're going to pay for another $149 for MobileMe to put on there, Internet services, which they can basically get all the same functionality when they have Windows and Windows Live working together”.
Well, were you aware that Parallels' virtualization software costs money, or did you think Boot Camp was all you needed? A Windows user's comments on this would be greatly appreciated as well.
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