Queen6
macrumors G5
Can usually eek out a good decade with a Mac. I just keep repurposing them or gift to the family.
Q-6
Q-6
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Are PCs becoming worse value than Macs?
- Thread starter Gourlish
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maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
Yes and no. My M1 is definitely chugging along, and I foresee my M4 Max being useful for years to come. I think I'll largely move on from that when I see something bigger and better from Apple. Hell, I was (am ) tempted about the M5 Max Studio (or M5 Ultra Studio, though that's beyond my budget)
Queen6
macrumors G5
Just depends on the usage Mike. Have basically replaced my M1 MBP with an Honor tablet that can roll as a fully functional PC as it has a proprietary OS and physical KB & touchpad. It's faster and has significantly longer runtime on battery which a major factor. Is a serious machine top tier Snapdragon SOC, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and frankly in the day came in at a fraction of the price of a new Mac.
Don't need a Max as the MechRevo W11 Pro PC covers the heavy lifting. It's real bad on battery, 30 minutes maybe 45 at a push. Equally it tears strips off desktop's and even in the deep jungles of PNG we magically have to capacity to produce AC power...
Q-6
Use case and specifications are important here. It's hard to beat a Mac Mini for basic usage (nothing else from a reputable manufacturer comes close at the base price), but, if you need, say, 128GB or 256GB of RAM and/or more than a terabyte of local storage, Apple either has nothing for you or the price is far higher than the equivalent PC, plus you are stuck with non-upgradable RAM and storage. If you need ECC RAM, Apple no longer has anything for you. If you need one or more high end GPUs, Apple has nothing. If you need long-term support for a particular OS version, Apple won't help you. If you need redundant internal storage, Apple no longer has any offerings.
Apple is not universally better or worse at providing value, since users have many different needs.
Apple is not universally better or worse at providing value, since users have many different needs.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
ECC is system dependant. Apple builds their systems without the "need" for ecc ram. You can do redunant external storage called a NAS. Load it with drives, tuck it away and away you go. Tons of storage. Yes, drive space is expensive, see previous comments.
Naraxus
macrumors 68030
Go get yourself an Asus then. Enjoy all the bloatware, spyware & trial software crap that comes preinstalled.
Meanwhile I'll be enjoying my stress-free, bloat-free Macs🍹
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
That's a re install fix. easy peasy. I agree we should not have to need to do that, but once done, you have clean windows on a very capable platform. I do it on every one of my machines regardless of brand. Erase the SSD and install brand free Windows.
Depends on your ideals. Anything that ran Windows has for the past thirty years felt like a waste of money to me.
Luftkopf
macrumors 65816
I got a good 12 years of driving AutoCAD with my 2012 11" MacBook Air, and I hope to get 10 off my M3 Pro. 2 years in and I don't see why I shouldn't.
I never got close to that with any PC laptop I ever owned. Usually they were toast in 3 years, or at least on life-support. I don't know what things are like in Windows-Laptop Land, and frankly I don't care. Someone would have to pay me a significant amount of money to make me give up my Macs and switch to Windows.
I still have a Windows PC which I use as little as possible. It's been unplugged for at least a month now, and looks to be staying that way.
Value is so individual and subjective. A Windows laptop is, to me, worthless. Even if it were the most powerful laptop in all history, what am I supposed to do with it? Is it going to comfortably last a decade of daily use? Many others in this thread are the opposite, and that's cool. It's good that we still have choice.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
Both my windows systems are 6 years old now. My dell laptop is starting to have motherboard issues. As mentioned it's been used HEAVILY. It's been everywhere with us pushing out videos and photos constantly and doing other creative tasks for our businesses.
I have no complaints other than the fact that the board is starting to fail. I may just purchase a new replacement board for now and continue on. My workstation a dell xps 8940 (the last good dell system), Has been basically flawless in the time I have owned it. I did a bunch of upgrades to it and it is been rock solid. I don't get everyone's silly comments that windows desktops are garbage after 3 years. BS.
I have used my workstation heavily as well and it's been perfect. I will be upgrading the i/0 to either a new 43 inch widescreen or 2 27's and moving to full logitech MX based items for my desk. My wife has her old dell laptop that keeps chugging along for now. I will be doing an upgrade to her systems soon too.
But We have had great luck with windows for the most part. the dell side of things is a mixed bag, but it's issues started happening after the 5-6 year mark.
I have no complaints other than the fact that the board is starting to fail. I may just purchase a new replacement board for now and continue on. My workstation a dell xps 8940 (the last good dell system), Has been basically flawless in the time I have owned it. I did a bunch of upgrades to it and it is been rock solid. I don't get everyone's silly comments that windows desktops are garbage after 3 years. BS.
I have used my workstation heavily as well and it's been perfect. I will be upgrading the i/0 to either a new 43 inch widescreen or 2 27's and moving to full logitech MX based items for my desk. My wife has her old dell laptop that keeps chugging along for now. I will be doing an upgrade to her systems soon too.
But We have had great luck with windows for the most part. the dell side of things is a mixed bag, but it's issues started happening after the 5-6 year mark.
These look pretty interesting. RTX Spark-powered, OLED screens, all-day battery life. The mini PC interests me most though as I don't want a laptop. No prices yet though.
press.asus.com
ASUS ProArt P16, P14 & Mini PC Powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark at Computex 2026
ASUS unveils the new ProArt P16, P14 laptops and ProArt Mini PC powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark at Computex 2026. Discover 1 petaflop AI performance, 128GB unified memory, Lumina Pro OLED displays, all-day battery life, and local AI agents launching fall 2026.
press.asus.com
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
Im expecting north of 5000 american for the base model laptop. They are not going to be affordable.These look pretty interesting. RTX Spark-powered, OLED screens, all-day battery life. The mini PC interests me most though as I don't want a laptop. No prices yet though.
ASUS ProArt P16, P14 & Mini PC Powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark at Computex 2026
ASUS unveils the new ProArt P16, P14 laptops and ProArt Mini PC powered by NVIDIA RTX Spark at Computex 2026. Discover 1 petaflop AI performance, 128GB unified memory, Lumina Pro OLED displays, all-day battery life, and local AI agents launching fall 2026.
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
I'm not so sure. While the ram/ssd shortages are going to play into the pricing, I do think they will be competitively priced. I don't think we'll be seeing anything higher then MBPs, that would be suicide
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
The current P series from Asus and the surfaces from MS are priced way higher than Apple now. I don't see anything changing in that regard.
dmr727
macrumors G4
We can already see the 'desktop' version of the Spark priced at about $4700 for 128GB/4TB. So it does stand to reason that a premium laptop built around the same SOC will be well north of $5K for the same configuration.
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I paid £4600 (approx $6150 USD) for my 16" M5 MBP (which I returned) which has no OLED screen and only 64GB Ram/ 2TB drive so thats not really affordable to many people. I bought for business and I guess many looking at around this price will be too.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
If I do like the systems and what not, I will be buying for personal business ventures we are doing. If it were completely personal, I would not buy it at all.
GeorgeRussell
macrumors newbie
As great as AI is, always double check! The fact that the numbers are so close should've been a clue!
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
And you speak for everyone in the world? I love my current dell, the motherboard is getting replaced and I will use it until it dies or I feel the need to purchase something new. It still works perfectly. Has no "slow downs", i think thats the term people use when they screw up their install so bad that it has to be redone? I have had the same OS besides updates on this system since new. I mirrored the drive when I installed the new SSD for extra storage.
It's 6 years old just as fast, snappy and useable since the day I bought it. The motherboard has some sort of video error happening intermittently. Like once every 2 or 3 weeks. The new motherboard will be here soon. I have heard of many many macs with logic boards failing and having to either purchase new mac or paying supreme prices for replacements through apple since they have all hardware locked to the machine now.
Luftkopf
macrumors 65816
I can’t see how “Depends on your ideals” is a claim that the words that follow are a universal declaration that don’t allow room for difference of thought.
My brother had an i5 Mac mini that was defective. It got repaired. I still run it as a print server at my friend’s place. My friend had to replace his 5 year old MacBook Pro after he accidentally dropped it on a tile floor. That’s it. Out of dozen or so people who I provide family and friends tech support to, all of whom now use Macs, that’s the entire list of problems encountered in the last 15 years. My life got a LOT easier when they all switched.
I never did find a nicely built Windows laptop before I gave up trying. Now, even if you gave me a PC laptop that was as well built and designed as a MacBook, it would still be utterly useless to me. I used Windows since either 2.0 or 2.1, and never hated it, not even Vista. Windows 11 did it. It was the version that pushed me over the edge. Windows 10 was ok. I didn’t love it, but I was happy to boot up my PC when I wanted to play a game, or use it when my MacBook wasn’t easy to grab.
Now it’s not even plugged in. Now it’s just an emergency backup for the hypothetical event my MacBook gets damaged, and I need to keep working while I wait for it to be fixed under AppleCare. If I get a Mac mini, my PC won’t even have that role anymore.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
Luftkopf
macrumors 65816
Sorry. I’m not following. Maybe I’m just over-tired from having a five-month-old baby.
I wouldn’t say it’s been 30 years, but anything running Windows in the last 5 years has seemed like waste of money to me. The value in a windows system has been shrinking rapidly for me over the past 20 years.
I’m glad you like your Dell. Life is better when we like the tools we work with.
The gap is closing, but I can still build a PC for half the price of an Apple computer with similar performance. In gaming the distance between Nvidia GPUs (and AMD for that matter) and Apple silicon is wide. Apple does win in efficiency and some creative workflows. Of course I am only referencing desktop systems for the above.
I have both a PC desktop and a MacBook Pro, the PC is regelated to gaming only while my Mac takes care of everything else. This is how it has been for me for decades now. Although the IIGS was a pretty cool gaming system..... Clearly dating myself there.
I have both a PC desktop and a MacBook Pro, the PC is regelated to gaming only while my Mac takes care of everything else. This is how it has been for me for decades now. Although the IIGS was a pretty cool gaming system..... Clearly dating myself there.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
Congrats, first off. Have fun with your new baby. I was stating everyone does not feel the same when it comes to windows.
Luftkopf
macrumors 65816
Thank you, she is amazing, it’s fun watching her grow so quick!
That’s cool, I’m glad you have an OS you like, life is just better when you enjoy the tools you use, but I didn’t think the referenced post precluded that as an option, hence my confusion.