By "average" I'm speaking more in terms of demographics. Most Mac users (myself included) don't anything special on the Mac that they couldn't do on a $500 Windows PC. However, not everyone can afford a $1699 rMBP, or even a $999 MacBook Air. Macs typically appeals to people in upper income groups with higher levels of education, much the same way that BMW appeals to a different audience from Chevrolet, so do Apple products as compared to HP and Dell. A Chevy Malibu and a BMW 335 will do equally well at getting someone to work or the grocery store. But I doubt people would say that BMW is aiming for the "average" audience. (There I go again with car analogies).
I agree, from that particular point of view.
However, I save up in order to buy my Macs, because I am an average user with regards to use (neither programmer nor creative professional), and would typically not be able to drop $2500 on a whim. I just cannot go back to PC hardware (or software on a permanent basis; occasional/secondary use is fine). Macs are the only computers that give me the flexibility to move between worlds, smoothly and painlessly.
So while the car analogy doesn't fit exactly, I can say that regardless of whether BMW is aiming for a different audience, anyone who values them can buy one with the proper preparation. And so it is with Macs. Apple is very good at pricing things right at the edge of reach..call it greed, consumer-gouging, or just plain capitalism/business sense, it is irrelevant and another story entirely. They're selling at the prices they set (like crazy), because they can get away with it. I don't like it from the consumer sense, but if I could, I'd do the same from the business standpoint.
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Starbucks Yuppies, trustafarian boomers, and classrooms filled with students $200K in debt.
Yeah, they're all over the place and I sold a bunch of them.
Hahahahaha, "trustafarian boomers"!! I love it.
Too true, but not limited to them. There's the rest of us too that just love the product strictly for what it is and what it can do (don't do Starbucks, middle-class, middle-aged father of 6, $250k mortgage).
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Im looking at the 2.9 i7. $400 off retail!!!! Thats an amazing deal!!!! The wife may be getting a new Mac.
This is the best way to buy Macs.
However, we have a new problem: the soldered RAM on the Airs and Retinas mean you have to wait for it to become available. This sucks. RAM is something that I never want to leave on the low end.
OWC regularly tests and shows that for many Macs the RAM ceiling imposed by Apple can be exceeded as new chips are released. Whether or not this is still the case, I don't know. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as a Mac is/should not (in my mind, at least) be the same as an idevice when it comes to that.