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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1053
Gartner: Mac Networking "Less Expensive"
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
October 3rd 2002
Wi-fi networking wars.
A Gartner Group analyst has opined that Mac networking can be "less expensive" than
performing the same task on PCs, says an article at Newsfactor.
Despite the slightly lower cost of entry on PCs for some networking equipment -
particularly wireless like 802.11b - Macs still beat PCs on easy installation and user
interface.
"What I'm hearing is that non-techies are still having a hard time deploying them on
their own," Alan Promisel, an IDC analyst, is quoted as saying in the article.
Wireless cards for PCs can be be bought for around $80, while Apple sells its Airport
card for $99. Apple's Airport Base Station is $299, while access points for PCs can be
as low as $120. However, Macs can use any access point; it does not need to be Apple's
Base Station. When using OS 9 at least, consumers have a wide choice of PC cards for
use in PowerBooks, such as Lucent's Orinoco PC cards, which work with both Mac and PC
notebooks.
Apple originally had a significant price advantage, upon release of the iBook in late
1999, which first sported Airport technology. For at least 12 months, PC wireless
solutions comparable to Apple's cost around $700-$1,000.
The major difference is that components are integrated in Apple's wireless setup,
whereas PC users may be using several different pieces of equipment which may not
operate together. Some PCs, for example, still do not ship with Ethernet as standard,
while most Macs built since 1994 have had built-in Ethernet.
"With all Mac, it's nice and integrated, which is not true if you build it yourself,"
said another analyst in the article.
Analysis: While Apple were ahead of the game here by at least 12 months, they didn't
leverage this advantage as fully as they might have. Now, as ever, the PC industry has
caught up to some extent. The long-touted 50Mbps Airport II has yet to appear. In some
respects, Apple has even gone backwards, with poor reception on TiBooks.
Airport represents a lesson for Apple, a lesson that it would do well to take note of.
FireWire II, with 800Mbps performance, is around the corner, and this trumps USB 2.0
well and truly in any speed comparison. Unlike 802.11b, IEEE-1394b (FireWire II) is a
technology Apple can exert control over, and the faster the company gets super-quick
FireWire onto the mobos of its Mac lineup, the better.
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