And this, ladies and gentlemen, just proves Gruber's argument that many people buy PCs based on bullet point specs having never seen the enclosure.
With MacBook Pros you get:
- a backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor;
- a high quality display;
- significantly better battery life than any Windows lapt I've ever seen (due in part to software admittedly);
- the best trackpad I've seen on any laptop ever (seriously... Why do Windows laptop trackpads STILL suck??);
- better graphics than much of the laptops Macbooks are compared to;
- a pleasing industrial design.
3 years ago I would've agreed. Now? The "Apple Tax" is small to nonexistent.
Upgrades are often expensive. That's still true but ever big PC manufacturer does this. Dell is probably the worst offender, offering a really crappy spec for a low headline price and then offering, say, a CPU anyone can buy for $300 outright as a $400 upgrade from a $100 CPU. And that's with Dell's buying power.
And yes I know it isn't quite that simple: Dell may have a quota of CPUs they neex to move, etc but the assertion that they charge through the nose for upgrades is (IMHO) irrefutable.
I've seen a lot of MBPs. I've used them. They're really nice. I don't dispute that at all.
My Fedora/Win7 laptop has a backlit keyboard, stunning display, and a great industrial design with an aluminum body. The trackpad is dodgy and the battery life isn't as good as an MBP's, but it also has two batteries that are user-swappable. It doesn't run OS X. It also has HDMI out and a Blu-Ray drive, two "premium" features you aren't going to find on the MBP. It cost half of what an MBP would.
Apple sells a premium product, without a doubt, and more than that, they sell a user experience. It's a great one. They make really solid products. You pay a premium cost for that premium product.
The original assertion was that low-end MBPs basically cost what their competing PC counterparts do - and that's just not true.
There's usually a lot of selective perception involved in things like this.
When you say "X may not be as nice" - that may be irrelevant to you, or hugely relevant to the next person. The point is, it's not the same.
Last time I had a forum argument with a guy who said he could build me a Mac Pro equivalent Dell for half the price. I went to Dell's website - no way. Best I could do was something like $50 less on a $3000 machine. So I dared him to prove it, and he came up with a machine that was worse in every way (oh we don't need a Xenon CPU, let's just go with a C2D... and things like that) and cost half as much. Total joke.
Your laptop that costs half as much - show us a link to the full specs page. This is the internet - prove it.
Mine's an HP Envy 17. I don't typically like HP's notebooks, but this one was too tasty to pass by. I priced out just about everything out there for a new mobile dev workstation, including custom builds, and this one rang all the right bells.
Your Acer Timeline also uses a CULV (Ultra Low Voltage) CPU. Apples and oranges.
Find me a Core 2 Duo (non-ULV) or i3/i5/i7 laptop with equivalent battery life.
The Timelines are a good budget laptop and much better than the Atom-based netbooks (imho). Personally I prefer the Asus UL30A (etc) range but that's really nitpicking.
Thanks for teaching me something new today. I did not mean to criticize your arguments on why MBP is a great choice. I just had a personal counter-example to the laptop battery point. Now that you explained why, it makes the reason more evident.
Anybody have an idea what would cost an equivalent software for Windows? (Offering similar usability, high quality templates/samples/tutorials etc. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if no such a thing exists for Windows.)
I don't think retail price really reflects iLife's value, if you need such a software. Because iLife only runs on Macs (sold by Apple), the price of iLife can be subsidized. Still, I agree with you that the value of any software (for an individual) is highly subjective.
Also, the big value of iLife comes from the fact that it comes pre-installed on Macs and integrates well with the rest of the system. That's exactly what Apple sells: a hassle-free experience out of the box. No 3rd party alternatives can offer that.
With MacBook Pros you get:
- a backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor;
- a high quality display;
- significantly better battery life than any Windows lapt I've ever seen (due in part to software admittedly);
- the best trackpad I've seen on any laptop ever (seriously... Why do Windows laptop trackpads STILL suck??);
- better graphics than much of the laptops Macbooks are compared to;
- a pleasing industrial design.
3 years ago I would've agreed. Now? The "Apple Tax" is small to nonexistent.
Upgrades are often expensive. That's still true but ever big PC manufacturer does this. Dell is probably the worst offender, offering a really crappy spec for a low headline price and then offering, say, a CPU anyone can buy for $300 outright as a $400 upgrade from a $100 CPU. And that's with Dell's buying power.
And yes I know it isn't quite that simple: Dell may have a quota of CPUs they neex to move, etc but the assertion that they charge through the nose for upgrades is (IMHO) irrefutable.