how are imacs competitive?

The monitor in your Windows PC based machine build is capable of what 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 resolution?

The 27 inch IMac is capable of 2560x1440 resolution, the cheapest monitor like this at NewEgg is about $700.00 for an HP. When you factor that in it gets a little bit more competitive.

People always forget to factor in the quality and resolution of the IMac's monitor when they do these comparisons.

NOTE: That was the cheapest monitor I could find not sure how the quality stacks up with the IMac monitor. Add $200.00 more for the next "Cheapest" Monitor.

 

Please don't use Apple's online store prices when configuring Ram, everyone knows that they are overpriced on Ram upgrades and anyone who can operate a screw driver can update the Ram in less than 5 minutes using cheap off the shelf ram.

 

He didn't. It's clearly stated that the 16 GB RAM is from OWC.

 

Also the iMac pricing is a year out of date. SSDs are not $750 anymore. Do this comparison again when the refresh hits, and you'll see a much narrower chasm -- easily covered by the difference in display.

 

Peceived "quality" and design

You are forgetting the intangibles, as well as slightly comparing apples to oranges. The iMac is a sleak all-in-one, the only valid spec/price comparison is with another all-in-one. HP anyone?

Sure you can price up a bunch of mismatched components and save yourself a few hundred dollars. But you lose out on the little intangible things of beautiful product design, matching keyboard and mouse etc. And of course, brand "value".

It's the same as buying a car. You could save money and get the VW or cheaper still the Seat, but you really want the Audi and they're built from pretty much the same parts.

People pay double or triple the price for "designer" jeans that are made in the same factories as the High Street brands.

Why should computing be any different?

 

I didn't by my iMac for the spec. I bought it for the design and OSX which, in my opinion, cannot be matched.

 

Add the cost of a screen that is actually comparable to the 27" iMac screen, the cost of putting it all together, the cost that you will have if something stops working when you have half a dozen vendors who all claim it is not their fault, the cost of the space for the desktop, the fact that the looks of the iMac actually improves the room it is in, the fact that you have MacOS X, the fact that you can expect a few OS upgrades very cheap (currently $29 for any number of users in your place), and a reputation for quality products.

All that said... Your prices seem to disagree with the Apple US store prices, so what currency are you talking about?

 

Also don't forget service.

The HDD in my 2011 iMac died. Happens, not Apple's fault. Took it to the Polaris (Columbus, OH) Apple store the week before Christmas. The guy told me it would be a week or so. I told him I lived 3 hours away and we were just in town for the weekend. He told me to "Come back in the morning". It was ready.

Dell used to be that good. Don't think they are anymore.

 

A few years ago we were mandated by my daughter's school to buy an HP Elitebook 2730 for her. The thing cost over $2,000 with the mandatory software. They assured us it was an HP "business" model, able to stand the rigors of being lugged around in a teenager's backpack. In her freshman and sophomore years, the machine broke down numerous times. The screen would flicker. The primary and backup batteries wouldn't hold a charge. I had to spend $80 for an AC adapter when it died.

In her junior year, we let her transfer to another school partly for academics but in the back of my mind I had serious doubts about the judgement of any organization that would force such a piece of junk down the throats of their students. When she started her new school, I bought her a black macbook refurb at Microcenter and put the HP down in my shop next to the galvanized pipe. After a year with the older Macbook, she has not had one repair issue. Not one. And this is on a machine that is 2 years older than that useless hunk of HP junk rotting in my basement.

Meanwhile, her former school just announced they are dropping the hp machines in favor of this year's iPad. With their software load and AppleCare that includes accidental damage, the cost will be $750 for the 32 GB model. That's about 1/3 what we wasted on that awful HP thing. They also announced buyback pricing for the HP machines. Ours is now worth $50. That's right. Fifty dollars. My 2+ year old iPad is worth more and I paid 1/4 as much for it. And my 2+ year old iPad is only 6 months newer than her multi-thousand-dollar HP "elite"book.

Anybody that wanders into these forums touting the "deals" on so-called "equivalent hardware" for Windows boxes simply doesn't understand the quality of Apple software and hardware.

Perhaps HP isn't the best example as Lenovo offers some really fine machines but I wanted to provide some specific data on just how rapidly the value of a Windows computer deflates compared to the value of an Apple computer. I never buy my RAM or SSD from Apple, but I always buy my computers from Apple.

 

Is this a store assembled unit, or are you assembling it yourself? If you are assembling it yourself then you have not accounted for the cost of labour and the one-stop warranty coverage that buying a prebuilt system includes .. and adds to the value of the iMac.

 

A lot of us would pay extra for a Mac that wasn't an all-in-one.

It is fallacious to require that a user configure a computer exactly the same as an iMac (or other Mac) when doing a comparison (otherwise, we could go the otherway, and spec a high performance graphics card that isn't available on any Mac). He needs to configure a computer that is appropriate for him (and that should keep in mind whether he wants a screen that is as great as the one in the iMac; I wouldn't do without).

 

Nat to mention a the SSD was twice the size in the iMac that isn't a trivial amt of money difference either

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Well put. I always sell my 3 year old Macs for about 60% of what I bought it for. Hard time selling Windows PC hardware 18 months for more than 20%.

 

One other thing besides the iMac's monitor being better and obviously more expensive, as others have mentioned:

the iMac's SSD I'm assuming was bought from Apple?

I'd do the OWC/Newegg treatment on that too like you did on the RAM.. Apple charges $500 (on top of the regular HDD price) for that..

So you could toss the exact same 128GB SSD from the PC build into the iMac instead and shave several hundred off the price.

 

As someone else mentioned, it's worth also factoring in that Macs hold higher resell value way longer than PC's.