Why your Apple computers are so expensive?

[bfdd]

You are paying a premium for the brand. Same reason Sony was able to ask for so much even after their quality slipped. Apple is seen as this hip brand that makes awesome products, and they do make some good and some decent products(others I think are stupid), but there are much better buys out there for your dollar than Apple.

The build quality on the MB Pros is nice and they're really nice machines, I don't like the keyboard though. I also love the gestures you can make on the trackpad, but dollar to dollar you can buy a better machine hardware wise(including just as nice of a screen) for hundreds cheaper.

 

[Zebo]

Apples stores, sturdily built, just work, not whored out with ad ware, no vents on bottom so you can actually use it on your lap unlike most laptops is why I liked it. I have a Thinkpad X300 too for similar reasons but that cost almost as much as MBP. You get what you pay for.

 

[Fingolfin269]

The build quality on the MB Pros is nice and they're really nice machines, I don't like the keyboard though. I also love the gestures you can make on the trackpad, but dollar to dollar you can buy a better machine hardware wise(including just as nice of a screen) for hundreds cheaper.

I have asked and asked in this thread. Will you finally be the one to answer? Please link to something comparable to a 13"mbp that is hundreds cheaper and comes with at least the same feature set/quality. (screen, touchpad, software, etc.)

 

[Ns1]

I have asked and asked in this thread. Will you finally be the one to answer? Please link to something comparable to a 13"mbp that is hundreds cheaper and comes with at least the same feature set/quality. (screen, touchpad, software, etc.)

I'll bite


Dell Studio 14
NEW 2010 Intel® Core™ i3-350M 2.26GHz (3M cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
14.0” High Definition (720p) LED Display with TrueLife™ and Camera
8X Slot Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
4GB1 Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
320GB2 SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Intel® HD Graphics
High Definition Audio 2.0
Dell 1501 Wireless-N
56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
NEW 2010 Intel® Core™ i3-350M 2.26GHz (3M cache)
1 Year Basic Service Plan
Black Chainlink
Dell Studio 14 price includes $78 instant discount.

Studio 14 (1458)
closer look
Starting Price $797.99
Total Savings $78.00
Subtotal $719.99

SEEMS way better spec'ed than a 13"MB, but every Dell I've purchased for relatives (and I ALWAYS tell them to buy Dell) feels like shit compared to my 2+ year old MB

Probably like buying a higher spec'ed hyundai compared to a BMW 325.

 

[AMCRambler]

Holy shit, that has to be ivy league.

There has to be $50k of profit for apple in that room.

That's college man. Universitys will actually spec which systems they want their students to buy and will sell them directly. The reason for this being the same reason any large company standardizes, ease of support. That particular college chose Mac. I bet it's not a tech school though. If it is, I guarantee their computer labs have pc's.

If I showed you a pic of a class from where I went to college they'd all be sitting there with Lenovo's with a few Dell's, HP's and Macs sprinkled in.

 

[Nik]

Some people want upgraded laptops and not barebones.

13" is not upgraded. It IS barebones.

 

[Ns1]

13" is not upgraded. It IS barebones.

no Nik, 13" is a choice.

 

[AMCRambler]

That's college man. Universitys will actually spec which systems they want their students to buy and will sell them directly. The reason for this being the same reason any large company standardizes, ease of support. That particular college chose Mac. I bet it's not a tech school though. If it is, I guarantee their computer labs have pc's.

If I showed you a pic of a class from where I went to college they'd all be sitting there with Lenovo's with a few Dell's, HP's and Macs sprinkled in.

EDIT: Lol I was right. Tineye sais Missouri School of Journalism. Awwww, they're all writers.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I'll bite

(dell laptop snip)

SEEMS way better spec'ed than a 13"MB, but every Dell I've purchased for relatives (and I ALWAYS tell them to buy Dell) seems like shit compared to my 2+ year old MB

Probably like buying a higher spec'ed hyundai compared to a BMW 325.

I think that's the issue. People always want to bring up a dell but come on I think deep down everyone knows it's not an apples to apples quality comparison. At least not the studio line.

 

[Fingolfin269]

13" is not upgraded. It IS barebones.

Not at all. Have you heard of the m11x?

 

[Nik]

no Nik, 13" is a choice.

Yay semantics!

 

[Blackjack200]

Yay semantics!

It's not semantics, 15 inch laptops are much larger than 13 inch laptops, which not everyone wants. When I shopped laptops I deliberately only looked at 13" machines. High performance laptops that small can be very expensive.

 

[dpodblood]

I am not for or against macs, but I just did a quick compare and here's what I found:

Personally I would go for the cheaper Alienware with better specs.

 

[Ns1]

Personally I would go for the cheaper Alienware with better specs.

Dude, is that an Alienware M15x?

the goddamn thing weighs 9 pounds!!!

+

Battery life testing on something like the M15x is generally a task that borders on the ridiculous, but given what Alienware has said about the M15x I was curious to see what would happen. With the 9-cell, doing reasonable day-to-day works tasks, the system lasted for under 2 hours. Users with this setup that want to do mobile work should probably budget for about 90-110 minutes of life from the system, and certainly not any serious gaming. For mobile use you’ll want to enable the Stealth mode, which limits clock speeds in order to save battery life. It helps, but this is not a highly mobile computer.

LOL

The MBP you linked to weighs 5.6 pounds, and gets a minimum of ~3 hours of battery life, and caps out at over 8 hours.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3669/...o-more-battery-life-tests-display-evaluated/2

Don't get me wrong, if you need a laptop for gaming then the Alienware is it, but if you're not gaming and you bring your laptop around...

 

[bfdd]

I have asked and asked in this thread. Will you finally be the one to answer? Please link to something comparable to a 13"mbp that is hundreds cheaper and comes with at least the same feature set/quality. (screen, touchpad, software, etc.)

You won't find a laptop with gestures outside of Apple, that said I do like the Lenovo touch pad better than the Apples, based solely on how it feels on my finger. Screens, have a look around Apple has good screens but they're not alone anymore. LCD prices, especially for laptops, have dropped considerably in price and it's not that hard to find high quality screens on mid priced laptops. Software, what do you mean? I personally feel OSX is lacking compared to Windows and I'm not a fan of Apple software in the least. I find iTunes to be atrocious on Windows, it's like a high school kid made it in VB6.

Anything I can do on a Macbook Pro I can do on a Windows machine, the reverse isn't 100% true. You're also locked into certain types of hardware etc. Like I said I do like the MBP and imo they are Apples best product, I just wouldn't buy one because I know I can get more for my dollar. If money isn't an issue, then by all means buy what you like best, I just happen to always consider money an issue.

 

[MrX8503]

I am not for or against macs, but I just did a quick compare and here's what I found:

Personally I would go for the cheaper Alienware with better specs.

The Alienware is cheaper....but...its almost 2" Thick and 9lbs.

The MBP 15" is .95" thin and 5.5lbs? To put that in perspective the Alienware is the size of two MBPs stack on top of each other.

These are the reasons why you can never really directly compare specs and say "This is a better deal". Some may want specs, some may want form factor.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I am not for or against macs, but I just did a quick compare and here's what I found:

Personally I would go for the cheaper Alienware with better specs.

What's the difference in size and battery life though? In other words, that's not a direct comparison (I'm not saying its not a valid comparison as well, just that there are still some other factors worth considering).

 

[bfdd]

The Alienware is cheaper....but...its almost 2" Thick and 9lbs.

The MBP 15" is .95" thin and 5.5lbs? To put that in perspective the Alienware is the size of two MBPs stack on top of each other.

These are the reasons why you can never really directly compare specs and say "This is a better deal". Some may want specs, some may want form factor.

Form factor is nice, but the reason the Alienware is thicker and 9lbs is because it has more hardware, not to mention it probably has far superior cooling compared to the MBP which is known to get incredibly hot. Form factor and design are awesome, except when they make your laptop 20F hotter than it needs to be.

 

[bfdd]

What's the difference in size and battery life though? In other words, that's not a direct comparison (I'm not saying its not a valid comparison as well, just that there are still some other factors worth considering).

Interesting things about battery life, it's mostly settings inside OSX that contribute to the battery life, not so much the actual design of the product. A lot of these settings do not come as DEFAULT in Windows, but are configured as such in OSX. There have been articles written on it and guides on how to setup Windows to get as much battery life out of it as you would from OSX on the same machine.

 

[Ns1]

Interesting things about battery life, it's mostly settings inside OSX that contribute to the battery life, not so much the actual design of the product. A lot of these settings do not come as DEFAULT in Windows, but are configured as such in OSX. There have been articles written on it and guides on how to setup Windows to get as much battery life out of it as you would from OSX on the same machine.

Appledouche: It just works
Windows Douche: But if you go to settings, and twiddle with this, and then uninstall that, and then download this program to tweak your startup settings, and then download another program to tweak your IE, your shit will last 6+ hours!

I love both OSX and Windows

 

[darkswordsman17]

Interesting things about battery life, it's mostly settings inside OSX that contribute to the battery life, not so much the actual design of the product. A lot of these settings do not come as DEFAULT in Windows, but are configured as such in OSX. There have been articles written on it and guides on how to setup Windows to get as much battery life out of it as you would from OSX on the same machine.

Its true that OSX is a big part of it, but I haven't seen any guides that were able to get Windows machines with comparable battery life that didn't basically outright cripple the performance such that it defeats the point of saying you get better/faster hardware for your money on a regular PC.

Even then, you're not going to match the Macbook battery life without an extended battery, which often is quite a bit more expensive and/or bulkier still, so that it further creates a disparity in form factor/weight while minimizing the extra cost.

On both of these points, I'm absolutely willing to change my thought on this if given evidence though.

Also, plenty of laptops have poor cooling that is both loud and ineffective, so don't act like PCs will have better cooling just because they're bigger. I've sold several laptops basically because they were excessively noisy and still ran quite hot, which combined with the bulkiness of them, made them very poor portable computers.

 

[TheStu]

On the issue of 15" vs 13". It isn't an issue of people being too weak, or something to carry around a 15" machine, heck, I am a big guy and when I was in school I had a 13" MacBook, the scrawniest, frailest guy in class had the 17" Alienware Bismarck that he 'toted' around.

The issue is more that the 13" is a more comfortable size for me. It is big enough to fit a full size keyboard and a decent res, but small enough to fit almost anywhere, closed or open. When I was trying to work on a school project and had to have multiple reference books open, or even just a notepad open next to my laptop on the desk, it was nice having the slightly smaller form factor.

You guys love to go on and on about how great PCs are because you have so many choices... current laptops (including netbooks) come in the following sizes;
10"
11"
12"
13"
14"
15"
16"
17"
18"+ (more rare, but I have seen them, the HP Dragon or something, and the Dell XPS 2001 as examples)

 

[Blackjack200]

16" is pretty rare I think.

 

[TheStu]

16" is pretty rare I think.

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the XPS Studio 16. The 16:9 15" are 15.6" but the 16:10s are 15.4" so it isn't a huge difference.

 

[bfdd]

Its true that OSX is a big part of it, but I haven't seen any guides that were able to get Windows machines with comparable battery life that didn't basically outright cripple the performance such that it defeats the point of saying you get better/faster hardware for your money on a regular PC.

Even then, you're not going to match the Macbook battery life without an extended battery, which often is quite a bit more expensive and/or bulkier still, so that it further creates a disparity in form factor/weight while minimizing the extra cost.

On both of these points, I'm absolutely willing to change my thought on this if given evidence though.

Also, plenty of laptops have poor cooling that is both loud and ineffective, so don't act like PCs will have better cooling just because they're bigger. I've sold several laptops basically because they were excessively noisy and still ran quite hot, which combined with the bulkiness of them, made them very poor portable computers.

They use all 9 cells don't they? Apple that is. I've seen the guides for getting better battery life out of your MBP in Windows, but I don't have them on hand. I might be able to do a little searching and dig it up for you.

edit- For instance when on battery MBP only let you use up to something like 25% of the processors capabilities. You can change these things in Windows, here's a link I dug up really quickly.

http://lifehacker.com/5566020/how-to-maximize-the-battery-life-of-your-windows-laptop