Apple Computers in India

Apple Computers in India : Rotten?

Apple has redefined the lifestyle products and the way people compute. However, in India, they have different ideas for marketing their products. First, I must admit that the title is not my original. I have been trying to think of something different, but this one seems to say it all. I absolutely adore their products but only because they offer a credible alternative to Windows which remains a crappy mainstream stuff. I came across an article on The Statesman, which describes the current predicament of a hardcore Windows user.

He has talked of shifting to Linux. I would agree about Linux being the open source thingy but still, it needs some brain racking to get it of the ground. I sure need to invest in time and make that happen. However, I still hold that in the current crop of Operating Systems, Apple Mac OS is the trump. Whatever user reviews I have had, they say that its crash proof.

Obviously one would want to have such a system. However, currently in India they have a huge premium, which would shy the devil off the prices. I enquired once from a dealer in Chandigarh, a place near mine, about the prices. I could not believe my ears when he demanded money upfront to see the system! Any talk of logic or sense evaded him and I decided to focus my energies for an eMac somewhere else.

I ventured and called up many dealers in New Delhi. Some were either abusive or indifferent. The ones I could talk some sense into were not very coy about disclosing the prices as the way they were. For the same system, i.e. eMac, they were quoting different prices.

I believe that I could make some sense of the differing prices as well as the way they wanted to sell it. It is a huge margin game and anyone willing to take a better cut in the same, would be trumps. Of course, I emailed the Apples representatives in Bangalore. Oh the Techie capital of India. They do not have a valid email id! Most of mail I sent across was bounced back. I gave up the idea of buying one and settled in for an AMD.

I also heard that Apples tend to have low RAM which makes them huff and puff through applications where instead they ought to be breezing through. It is unfair to pay up a huge price for something when the comparative product for Windows platform can be had for far less. I believe that it is because Windows is far more common and manufacturers have devoted far more energy to the same. Mac Mini is designed to give an answer to the same to create a dent in the low-end PC market. However, with the expected price tag of Rs 32,990(approx $750) for the low end version its far way too much for a 64 bit AMD running about 256 MB RAM.

Apple India has seen a flurry of exits of high profile chiefs and there exists no credible mechanism that could check in the distribution network on the ground. I, for example, would love to castrate the dealer in Chandigarh for demeaning my experience with the Apples. It is the impression that one gets across the board. I mean, it is asinine that Apples have not concentrated at the high-end work that happens in this country.

The animation is getting off the ground. In scientific institutions, protein modeling is the in thing. All this requires RAW computing power that only Apples can provide. There are no major issues with the product. I know certain somebody who got an Apple from US, shipped all the way. For 8 years, it gave a flawless performance. 8 years! In that time Windows has gone from bad (Windows 98) to worse (Widows XP)!

Its hard to deny the title here…”ROTTEN APPLES”.

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri.