I’m a longtime PC user who is now on a Macbook Pro. I’ve been price conscious in the past, to the point where I usually built my own desktops.
Here are some of the things I think justify the $2000 price of my laptop:

First and foremost: OSX, I would gladly pay an extra $300 for being able to sleep my machine by closing the lid, and wake it with no problems, ever. My uptime on the laptop averages around a month between shutdowns. My time from lid-open to working is an average of 3-5 seconds. On my acer windows laptop, I’m lucky if the thing wakes up at all.
I won’t even get into all the nice-to-have apps that come with it.

I’d also gladly spend some extra money for the light sensor, which controls my screen brightness and keyboard illumination automatically. Never having to fiddle with those controls is great.

I’ll spend more for multi-touch, too. I no longer use a mouse at all with this computer unless I am playing a game where the extra buttons on my Logitech Rev MX are useful. I work all day using the touchpad. Going back to my acer feels like stepping back in time, it is so clunky.

Other niceties:
independent volume control depending on whether your headphone are plugged in or not.

multi-monitor support that ‘just works’ whenever I plug in or remove the video cable. No changing display settings.

magsafe power cords that have saved my ass more than once.

And lastly, the display on this thing is better than any other laptop I’ve had. I actually enjoy watching TV on it.

The comparisons made in that article are incorrect.

I don’t own a single Apple product but that article was so lacking in facts or even proper logic that I can’t believe JK even mentioned it.

1. You can’t compare Average Selling Price because everyone knows Apple only sells higher end hardware, they don’t have Celerons or Atoms or even Core 2 Duo below 2Ghz in their lineup.

2. The HP laptop mentioned had 4GB RAM and 320GB HDD – but what about the rest of the specs…something smells fishy…(and he definitely doesn’t understand ’shared graphics’).

3. iMac vs Inspiron 518 – look at the differences! Graphics, Bluetooth, Wifi, Webcam are the technical ones but what about the better, higher resolution, screen. What about the amount of space it takes up on your desk, or the amount of electricity. That’s not even counting the looks. People who buy an iMac buy it for the all-in-one feature, surely that’s apparent! So compare it with HP or Dell’s iMac clones.

Another difference in desktop prices – the Mac Pro is more like a Dell server than a desktop. So again, price comparisons would be like comparing apples to oranges.

OK, I’ve had enough of this totally false propaganda.

Firstly, the original story relates to ASP (average selling price) not comparing products like for like. Apple don’t sell many cheap PCs so right from the first paragraph this is an irrelevant comparison

Secondly, I went to the Dell website and built an Inspiron 518 with the same specs as a baseline iMac being careful not to forget the good monitor with the webcam, the ATI graphics and the 802.11n networking. Admittedly I gave is 2GB of RAM but Vista eats most of that. The result $1,019 vs the baseline iMac’s $1,199 !! Even the photos above show the Dell equivalent of the iMac the XPSOne which is $100 more!

Thirdly, although Wintel sale tactics imply otherwise, hardware is only half of the equation and the lesser important half as it’s the software design quality which dictates usefulness. Windows was, is and always will be a poor copy of MacOS, having used both extensively there is no comparison – the Mac wins and is definitely worth the 10% premium

Keep trying

McD

AlfieJr,

I guess I shouldn’t have said I’ve never used them, because I have.

The point is I don’t use them regularly enough for them to matter. I can appreciate that these apps make a difference to some people. However, to me, these apps just waste hard drive space.

And, whether you like it or not, you over paid for those apps, and you had no choice about whether they’re on there or not.

One man’s crapware is another man’s treasure.

Quite astonishing figures..but as stated above user experience also matters.

My sister in law is still regretting not to have spent that more money after one week using an HP laptop with VISTA… She envies our Macbooks every day (mine and my wife’s). You pay more but you get MUCH more.

“macs have some too: a demo of MS Office.”

Ooooooh, how clever. They must love you down at the Apple store.

sorry nate, but the Vista apps package just doesn’t match the iLife suite. if you have used them both, you’d know. you have to buy an Adobe suite or something like it for Windows to match iLife. but then as you said, you haven’t used them. so you don’t know what you’re talking about. and neither is crapware by any definition of the term. “crapware” is the third-party demo and teaser “light” software most PC makers preload for a fee paid by those third parties. it’s not about your opinion, it’s a category in software marketing techniques.

macs have some too: a demo of MS Office.

penguin for the win

*Blarg. Change that second “MacBooks” in the second paragraph to “iBooks”.

@ Steve Spera

“I love these arguments because, while they seem relevant at face value, they ignore build quality. Let’s face it, the HP systems noted in the article are bottom of the barrel systems and the build quality shows – cheap and flimsy. HP subcontracts out their manufacture and slaps their name on it.”

Considering I paid a few hundred dollars more for my MacBook last year, you think they could keep something as basic as the casing from cracking. Yet right underneath where that plastic bumper rests, the palmrest casing cracked and split off (and where the magnet rested that holds the lid shut), literally a week after my warranty was up. And no, I never slammed the lid shut; perhaps if I did, it would have cracked earlier and I could have had it replaced for free. I’m amazed that nobody told Apple about this amazing material innovation called “rubber” that many other companies use in their bumpers to separate the two halves. Maybe they could spare a bit of cash from the premium I’m paying them? Must be too exotic for them or something…

Yes, you can tell apart the build quality from current MacBooks and their PC brethren, but let me tell you something: you can definitely tell apart the build quality from the older MacBooks and the current line – and it definitely isn’t because of improvements.

And if you really think Apple built up their own group of factories to produce Apple products instead of subcontracting it out just like EVERY OTHER brand, you’re sorely mistaken.

I think PC’s will always give you a better system for the price (especially if you build your machine yourself). Mac’s are not high end computers they are Mid or Mid-High end machines at best. You cannot buy a professional grade graphics card in their laptops let alone the new models that are in PC laptops, and the Mac Pro does not support the top of the line graphics cards when they come out. Apple will never put the best and greatest into their machines but always keep decent specs, but marketing will always trump anything else to most people. As long as Apple markets their products well they will continue to sell at high profits compared to others (look at the iPods for instance). For the most part people by Apple for the OS it seems more than anything else. If Apple ever let others build machines for OS X Apple will die like they almost did when Motorola built better machines for less in the early days (that is what I have heard and read else where can not remember site reference).

My (short) experience with Mac pricing is that when the new Mac models are released, they are competitively priced (equivalent spec’d models from Dell/HP/etc run about the same).

But after the Mac models have sat on the shelves for a month or two with no price change and no hardware change… well, right about now is the worst possible time to buy a Macbook. You can buy something from Dell/HP with the same specs for about $300 less.

Smart shoppers don’t pay for any of the software that you’ve suggested is required, AlfieJr.

Vista includes software similar to the iLife suite. Personally, I’ve never used any of this software on a Mac or PC, though. So, to me, it all falls into the “crapware” category.

I can’t remember a time that I’ve ever had to pay for security software. The best options I’m aware of are free.

So, I don’t know where you got this $200.00 software requirement as a cost of entry.

to get meaningful price comparisons, adjustments are necessary first, assuming the hardware specs are already as close as possible (which can be a bit complicated):

- for PC’s add the costs of buying unavoidable security software and some software suite to match the Mac’s excellent bundled iLife programs. this adds up to about $200.

- some would also factor in a ‘cost’ for getting rid of all the PC bundled crapware. how much is your time worth?

and just like any consumer product, the cheapest stuff, the low-end PC’s – probably are not as rugged or dependable. if you really would not buy it for yourself, then don’t use it for a price comparison. start with the least expensive model you actually would lay out your own money for.

with these necessary adjustments, the price differential narrows a lot.

and there is another way to look at it. once you have a Mac, for a couple hundred bucks you can install Windows on it and also have an excellent PC. which is to say in essence you are getting two computers for the price of one plus.

smart shoppers take all these things into account.

Wow, indeed. That attitude about getting a better job or two just to afford a Mac is exactly why I’ve always hated Apple and their average users. What a snob!
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Anyway, to the article– I don’t think comparing a $700 low-end PC to a Mac is all that effective. Price out a system with equal specs, and the price difference diminishes greatly, although it still puts Mac on the high side most of the time.

To me, the big difference is the customization. For the same amount of money, I can customize nearly every aspect of the system and still leave myself open to upgrades later. Macs you get what you see and that’s it. It’s all about Apple’s effort to control the entire experience. That is just what they do. You either like that and comply with the “simplicity”, or you are like me and prefer the customization and options and flexibility of a PC.

I wouldn’t wish an Apple on my enemies, but if they choose it on their own because it fits a need, then more power to them.