I’m looking at buying a MacBook in the next month or so to stand as the powerhouse behind my Final year dissertation – “Some sort of Interactive Learning application for the iPhone platform” (not the official title!). I went into PC World today to check out the models, and was looking primarily at the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pros, each with 2.53Ghz processor and 4Gb of RAM.
Anyway, the people at PC World told me that they had basically quote “…Stopped selling the 13″ model due to lack of stock country wide”. I asked why the lack of stock, when such product was in such high demand, to which I got a shrug of the shoulders.
Now, normally I would drop it at that point, but when walking out of the shop I couldn’t help but wonder why Apple would (assuming a little here) produce less of the 13″ model than the 15″ (more conventional) model, as they both contained exactly the same hardware (minus the screen, of cause).
Could it be to sell more of the higher models? No, because there is a 17″ powerhouse also on sale!
Could it be due to lack of 13″ screens? No, because both the 13″ and 15″ screens are produced on site at the same factory using the same resources.
Could it be to promote another product? Possibly, but this just seemed like bad marketing at a time of such high demand.
And then I stumbled across what I think is most likely the answer. The iPad. With its 9″ screen, it is very similar to the small notebook that Apple sell – with almost identical processing power, resolution and alike. My thoughts are that perhaps they have halted production on the 13″ model in preparation (i.e. to build demand even higher) for the iPad.
It all made sense, as the PC world sales person had said the regular shipment had ceased late February. Bingo!
HOLD THE iPHONE! – I got home and rang Apple, only to discover that they had plenty of 13″ models in stock – Could it be that my focus should be on PC World’s marketing, instead of Apple?
Damn you PC World, and please don’t file a law suit, Apple UK!
computer and technology specialist
