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Why a Mac costs more than a PC...
- Thread starter Giuly
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Sorry OP but you're totally wrong. If you think that makes macbooks be cheaper than others, you're saying apple is charging us for a bunch of software which we may not want. And all software can be found for free, everyone knows that. I agree that apple's software is good (although I haven't tried many of them), but only a 20% of macbook owners use more than half that software regularly. Which means they paid for the rest of the software without wanting it.
Although I don't agree that the bundled software increases the value for everyone, it does for many people.
You can't, however, say that software doesn't count because you can just pirate it. Using that argument, I can say that the price of the hardware doesn't matter either because I can just break into Best Buy and steal one.
You can't, however, say that software doesn't count because you can just pirate it. Using that argument, I can say that the price of the hardware doesn't matter either because I can just break into Best Buy and steal one.
This is very true. It's the way it is and I don't mind.
After all if one doesn't believe the price is worth it, just don't buy one.
Why not just accept that we pay for styling, good service, and the name.
There are other products on the market overpriced just like the Mac. No big deal.
A lot of the cost comes from a mixture of things - brand name, obviously, but the money spent in design also plays a large role. Macs are a lot cleaner, simpler, and easier to use. To make a complicated device, like a computer, that streamlined takes careful thought and planning as well as strong controls as to what can run and what 3rd parties are allowed to use.
As a PC gamer and enthusiast for almost 15 years I used to think this was irrationally restrictive. However as my gaming habits have shifted I find my home-made super system slowly deteriorating. Most of what I use the computer for now is writing, reading, watching shows or listening to music. None of these really require anything super powerful.
A lot of people have already said it right. A computer is a tool. You should buy based on what you need and note that power isn't always the most important aspect to consider. A machete is powerful - but you wouldn't want to buy one if you're looking to just slice tomatoes.
Although that would be pretty awesome.
As a PC gamer and enthusiast for almost 15 years I used to think this was irrationally restrictive. However as my gaming habits have shifted I find my home-made super system slowly deteriorating. Most of what I use the computer for now is writing, reading, watching shows or listening to music. None of these really require anything super powerful.
A lot of people have already said it right. A computer is a tool. You should buy based on what you need and note that power isn't always the most important aspect to consider. A machete is powerful - but you wouldn't want to buy one if you're looking to just slice tomatoes.
Although that would be pretty awesome.
One issue with PC's vs Mac's ive noticed is that you can build yourself a powerful PC for booku bucks, and then spend more money almost every other month updating it with new software and graphics card to stay at the best, but eventually your system is going to be rubbish and you will have to replace a lot more then just a ram stick or two. PC's just wear down after awhile. I've owned my current computer for 3 or so years now and it still runs but its had a lot of problems and its easily beaten by a lot of cheaper computers now.
Granted the macs of old are replaced by macs of new, but those old macs still work just fine for what most people need (web surfing, watching stuff on youtube, writing, etc). PC's just don't seem to have as much life in them. My mom's computer is very old, like 8 years and it barely runs at all. Takes almost 5 minutes to fully boot and runs like crap. My dads old apple mac (you know, the ones you had when you were in elementary school or jr high) runs just fine. Neither of them do anything besides check emails and stuff.
Mac is a brand name and you are paying for that. With a PC you have Microsoft but a lot of third parties that make parts for the machines which is why they are cheaper, and sometimes that cheapness comes at a price of durability. Mac's are expensive, but they last. I don't think many people can -honestly- argue that they don't. Yes, you won't be using an Imac you buy tomorrow 10 years down the road to run photoshop 24 v 2 or something like that, but you will still be able to use it to surf, chat, and all the other stuff you need and chances are it will still run at similar speeds to when you first bought it.
I have been very impressed with Macs. I've always been a PC gamer but I never believed that macs were of lesser quality. PC's were just always easier for me to tinker with.
Granted the macs of old are replaced by macs of new, but those old macs still work just fine for what most people need (web surfing, watching stuff on youtube, writing, etc). PC's just don't seem to have as much life in them. My mom's computer is very old, like 8 years and it barely runs at all. Takes almost 5 minutes to fully boot and runs like crap. My dads old apple mac (you know, the ones you had when you were in elementary school or jr high) runs just fine. Neither of them do anything besides check emails and stuff.
Mac is a brand name and you are paying for that. With a PC you have Microsoft but a lot of third parties that make parts for the machines which is why they are cheaper, and sometimes that cheapness comes at a price of durability. Mac's are expensive, but they last. I don't think many people can -honestly- argue that they don't. Yes, you won't be using an Imac you buy tomorrow 10 years down the road to run photoshop 24 v 2 or something like that, but you will still be able to use it to surf, chat, and all the other stuff you need and chances are it will still run at similar speeds to when you first bought it.
I have been very impressed with Macs. I've always been a PC gamer but I never believed that macs were of lesser quality. PC's were just always easier for me to tinker with.
You realize that Mac and PC hardware is virtually identical these days? You can pretty much count on the same cpu, hard drive, optical drive, ram, and video card suppliers.
The only real difference is in the actual chassis/keyboard/etc.
^^^^^
Sure, but the case, keyboard, mouse/trackpad are custom Apple. Obviously important components when talking durability.
I'm pretty sure the display panels aren't custom to Apple (maybe a little when they make a big order), but in general Apple uses high-quality displays (not always, clearly).
I'm a pretty practical and techincal person and this whole PC vs. Mac thing is pretty settled to me, at least for now:
In general, Macs are better and they are worth the price difference.
You can buy PCs of equal or higher quality, but it requires care and research... When I was young I loved to endlessly research my next tech purchase. But now I just want to buy something when I need it with the least fuss possible. So I just buy the Mac. (And the equal or higher quality PC ends up at least as expensive as the Mac anyway.)
Those Mac vs. PC ads are B.S. of course. Macs aren't perfect. They're just better than Windows (and the difference isn't so great as it used to be with W7).
I finally got my wife to convert to Mac a few years ago. I was desperate to get out of the tech support business! (She's a solo practitioner attorney and I was her tech support). It's like night and day. She still calls me, but now the solution is exactly the same thing every time: "un-plug and plug in the printer. Unplug and plug in the white thing on the wall (Airport Express). Wait 1 minute. Make sure xxxx is selected as your printer. Try to print again." It's a joke between us now. So not perfect, but much easier.
Sure, but the case, keyboard, mouse/trackpad are custom Apple. Obviously important components when talking durability.
I'm pretty sure the display panels aren't custom to Apple (maybe a little when they make a big order), but in general Apple uses high-quality displays (not always, clearly).
I'm a pretty practical and techincal person and this whole PC vs. Mac thing is pretty settled to me, at least for now:
In general, Macs are better and they are worth the price difference.
You can buy PCs of equal or higher quality, but it requires care and research... When I was young I loved to endlessly research my next tech purchase. But now I just want to buy something when I need it with the least fuss possible. So I just buy the Mac. (And the equal or higher quality PC ends up at least as expensive as the Mac anyway.)
Those Mac vs. PC ads are B.S. of course. Macs aren't perfect. They're just better than Windows (and the difference isn't so great as it used to be with W7).
I finally got my wife to convert to Mac a few years ago. I was desperate to get out of the tech support business! (She's a solo practitioner attorney and I was her tech support). It's like night and day. She still calls me, but now the solution is exactly the same thing every time: "un-plug and plug in the printer. Unplug and plug in the white thing on the wall (Airport Express). Wait 1 minute. Make sure xxxx is selected as your printer. Try to print again." It's a joke between us now. So not perfect, but much easier.
I've heard 75% of statistics are made up by 90% of people. I think there's an 80% chance of that being true.
Also...pay for your software. Developers deserve to be paid regardless of what you think is a "fair" price. And "everyone does it" doesn't justify it, it just makes you look like a fool. Have a nice day.
The total user experience with a product is what matters in the end, and lots of different factors influence that experience. I won't go into all of them here, because they vary from person-to-person. However, I will briefly summarize my journey to purchasing my first Apple system.
I was burned by faulty hardware with my Dell laptop (not literally burned ... heh.) The LCD display had "bleeding" issues a month after I bought it. Then, a year later, the hard drive failed on it, and it took me two months of arguing with Dell Support to get it replaced.
I switched to HP for the next one. Although it was a much better experience than the Dell laptop, hairline fractures began to occur around the display hinges through "normal wear and tear" (HP's words), and the battery was recalled twice due to fire safety hazards. When the warranty expired on the HP, I chose to switch to Apple because I was impressed with the build quality of their products that I had seen with co-workers and friends that purchased them.
It's been 2.5 years now that I have owned my MacBook Pro 4,1 and it still runs great. With my previous laptops, I had already needed to call Support multiple times for each of them after 2.5 years. The chassis on my MBP still looks brand new, and the system meets my needs now just as much as it did the day I bought it. In the end, this is all I expect from a system, and all I want, and it was not something that I was getting from my previous laptops.
I was burned by faulty hardware with my Dell laptop (not literally burned ... heh.) The LCD display had "bleeding" issues a month after I bought it. Then, a year later, the hard drive failed on it, and it took me two months of arguing with Dell Support to get it replaced.
I switched to HP for the next one. Although it was a much better experience than the Dell laptop, hairline fractures began to occur around the display hinges through "normal wear and tear" (HP's words), and the battery was recalled twice due to fire safety hazards. When the warranty expired on the HP, I chose to switch to Apple because I was impressed with the build quality of their products that I had seen with co-workers and friends that purchased them.
It's been 2.5 years now that I have owned my MacBook Pro 4,1 and it still runs great. With my previous laptops, I had already needed to call Support multiple times for each of them after 2.5 years. The chassis on my MBP still looks brand new, and the system meets my needs now just as much as it did the day I bought it. In the end, this is all I expect from a system, and all I want, and it was not something that I was getting from my previous laptops.
It's nearing 2.5 years with my MBP now and it's still running as fine as it were the day I got it and that to me is pretty amazing coming from a windows background. All my previous windows machines would need to be formatted after about a year and a half of use. I couldn't be happier with the lower maintenance.
none of that is true, i've had a mac since my first 17" imac and the OS is nice but hardware is always a generation behind
A Mac costs more than a PC if and only if your time is worthless and you don't appreciate reliability. If it's OK that the WLAN or video output refuses to work any time (or the situation is not applicable), buy a PC. If you're prepared to fiddle with DLL files or revert auto-updates which made your system faulty over-night, go for Windows. I'm sick of the resource-hog and unstable OS from Microsoft, and I would choose Linux or Mac OS X over Windows any day.
I always tell my friends that mac is not expensive in fact to sum up all the additional benefits you get from mac:
OSX
Aluminum unibody
Beatiful keyboard
Magic mouse or the nice trackpads
Overall good experience
Then mac is actually reasonably priced.
OSX
Aluminum unibody
Beatiful keyboard
Magic mouse or the nice trackpads
Overall good experience
Then mac is actually reasonably priced.
I'm a rather technical person, and my cheapo Acer laptop from 5 years ago (paid $550 for it) just finally had the DC jack fail.
In those 5 years, I had -0- problems with the laptop running Windows XP. That thing never crashed, never blue screened, never needed rebooting. Just rock solid. Of course, that's probably largely in part because I'm savvy enough to know how to keep from getting infected by running updates/sandboxie/etc.
Most PC users end up thinking their hardware is slow, when it's really just an infection issue.
Today, if my sister/mother wanted to buy a computer, I'd recommend a mac. For technical people like me, the difference in reliability/uptime is almost negligible. That was also based on XP! I can only imagine how much more solid Win7 is these days.
At this point I think I'm mostly tempted to pick up a MBP just to say I gave apple a fair shake. My guess is that my experience won't be considerably better than it would have been on Win7.
Power also matters less these days. Macs have always been less powerful than PC's at the same price point, and in the past that power made a big difference. Today, for most users, there are really diminishing returns as you up the CPU power.
I'm going to try to come up with a super-fair spreadsheet comparison when I purchase something in a month or 2 and will post it here to share.
A few questions for anyone that's done comparison shopping:
- Do any PC's offer an equivalent of magsafe? That's a -huge- selling point for me
- I love the MBP's screen quality. Which PC's are most comparable?
- Can a MBP 13" power dual 24" monitors out of the box? (1920x1200 each)
I got a XPS 15 for $1126. It has:
Intel Core i7-740QM 1,73GHz
6GO,DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 435M 2GO
USB 3, eSata, bluetooth 3.0
HD webcam, backlit keyboard, amazing speakers.
That's why I cannot justify buying a Mac.
I know how to handle a computer. I just love it and it is rock solid.
Intel Core i7-740QM 1,73GHz
6GO,DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GT 435M 2GO
USB 3, eSata, bluetooth 3.0
HD webcam, backlit keyboard, amazing speakers.
That's why I cannot justify buying a Mac.
I know how to handle a computer. I just love it and it is rock solid.
But I hope you got 3 year extended service.. otherwise you'll be replacing it in 1 years time...
Loving this thread, good information. Will forward it to some of my not-so Apple friendly friends
GarfieldH
I'm also a technical person. I use a mac. As you mention viruses/spyware or reliability in general have never been a problem for me in Windows. I also realize that macs are more expensive.
However, windows is actually a hindrance for me. I spent a lot of time in the terminal each day and cygwin simply doesn't cut it. I find it frustrating to use Windows and I use Linux at work. For me OS X is a nice mix of Linux and Windows. I can run all the programs I normally use without too much trouble. For example, LaTeX is one command away (sudo port install texlive) instead of a rather compilcated install process. Also the fact that keyboard shortcuts are standardized across the applications is a big selling point for me, not to mention that the trackpad is the only one I've used that I don't feel uncomfortable with. The multitouch gestures are also very helpful. Nice keyboards. Built in Cisco VPN. Built in backup capabilities. I could go on. There's this notion that Macs aren't very usable for technical people and that is simply not true. Any non-Microsoft specific conference will have a lot of attendants using macs.
I actually started with a Hackintosh because I didn't want to spend a lot of money just to try OS X. After about six months I bought a MacBook.
I still use Windows in the area that it excels: As a game loader.
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How does Linux run on it?
it depends on or what works best for your needs. This is a matter of taste. that it works for me doesn't necessarily mean it works for you.
This is actually pretty damn important. I was at Best Buy the other day playing with various laptops, and was just disgusted at how bad some of the trackpads are on these laptops.
I have no doubt that I'll get by just fine with OSX, but I'm sure there are some Windows components that I'll severely miss. (resizing on all 4 corners of a window to start!)
People find it much easier to shop by specs instead of the experience.
3 GHz? Check
4 GB RAM? check
15" screen? check
Regardless of how much better the computing experience might be on a given Mac, most people look at that checklist first, and some never make it past it.
Very true! Especially on the iMac. Wireless, aluminum KB, and Magic Mouse. Similar PC setup is a cheap plastic, $12 KB, and low end, OEM branded Logitech Mouse...