It's not easy if you can't follow step - by - step instructions. I'm not skilled in mechanical work, but I'm about to change brakes for the first time on my gf's car because I researched how to do it and just learned. The videos instructing on how to do it are ~10 minutes long, and the repair manuals describe the process in about a page or two.
Your brake analogy is an interesting one. Yes, the basic brake job of a disk brake vehicle is relatively straightforward. Unless, of course, your car has an SBS system in which case if you don't know to disable it and someone opens a car door while you are pulling the caliper you will have a real mess on your hand. Do you turn or replace rotors after micing them? What do you do if a bleeder screw is frozen? Or a caliper? What is the right spec brake fluid? Torque specs for components? What pads do you want to use? Where to put anti-squeal? What order do you bleed the system? How do you reset the service indicator if the car has one? Properly adjust the parking brake?
Mechanically it is a simple job. It's the details that can kill you.
Building a computer is an identical process. Screw this here, slot this here, push that in there, plug this in there. It's not like you have to discover the process for the first time ever, someone else has already planned it all out for you and given you the direct method of accomplishing it.
It's true the mechanics are simple. It's getting all the pieces to function properly and at the best possible level of performance that can take time.
I'm not sure what time fiddling with settings, and ensuring the drivers are the "right ones" means. Put it together, turn it on, install the OS if it's not already done, press the "update" button. Every product in my computer comes from a manufacturer that provides an auto update feature and I don't need to confirm they're the right one, but the geek in me goes the extra step to double check despite it not being necessary.
I guess you never had a driver update break something in the system. Then again, you point out how like to double check everything; which is just my point. Not everyone knows how or what to double check.
I don't know what you mean by "etc" other than just picking an open ended word to make it seem like this **** is harder than it really is.
It's not hard if you know what you are doing and are comfortable with the technology. Otherwise it can be daunting; especially if yu has to troubleshoot a problem. As for the etc., there are quite a few things you could list that have to be considered that I chose not to; such as getting the right BIOS settings.
Really, people actually make this out to be way more difficult than it has to be. The same way that Firestone made a brake job for two axles to be significantly (I mean maliciously) more expensive than it has to be. Sometimes it's just easier to convince someone it's harder to do just so you can make tons of money off of relatively simple work.
I like how people always seem to think something is easy and anyone can do it, especially if they have never done it before. I've have both done a number of brake jobs and built my own computers. Neither is rocket science, but there are plenty of ways you can screw up and a number of things to consider that make it more than simply plug and play. As for building computers we're talking about building high end gaming systems where performance is important, where getting the maximum performance by having the right components all working at peak performance is important,not some beige box to run Office where you can slap together a bunch of off the shelf discount crap and still have it work fine. To use your car analogy, it's the difference between doing a brake job on a track ready GT3 RS and daily driver Toyota.
Yes, pros can be expensive. But as the story goes, after a customer complained that all the tech did was hit the valve and charge him lot of money when he could have hit the valve with a mallet himself, the tech said "You're not paying me to hit the valve, you're paying me to know where and how hard to hit it."
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From a Mac user's perspective, this is completely embarrassing. In order to play games, a user must resort to renting remote hardware to do it. Most PC users can opt for better hardware, while Mac users get stuck with sloppy-seconds hardware, all in the name of having the slimmest whatever.
I'm guessing Apple sees the future sweet spot for gaming to be in gaming boxes instead of computers; in heir case the Apple TV. They're not interested in the hard core gamer but rather the casual one who also wants their TV set top box and home control system all in one device. That's where the money is so the hard core gamer is ignored.