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Mac Tax, Dell Tax, HP Tax
Harry writes "Microsoft's new Windows ad, with shopper Lauren buying a cheap 17-inch HP laptop instead of a $2,800 MacBook Pro, has unleashed the whole 'Are Macs Expensive?' debate again. I'm diving in with a pretty exhaustive comparison of the MacBook Pro against machines from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Sony that were as comparably configured as I could manage. The conclusion: High-end laptops tend to carry high-end prices, whether their operating system hails from Cupertino or Redmond. And the MacBook Pro wasn't the priciest of the systems I compared." We looked at this question, not in as much depth, a couple of years back.
Macs are expensive. They're not high-end. They're just expensive. My computers perform a lot better than any Mac and they are all cheaper than the cheapest Mac.
Macs are expensive.
You get what you pay for.
There are always trade off's when buying cheap Win laptops at
big box stores.
The cost benefit of Win based laptops is usually eaten up later
on in the ownership of that laptop when you are paying someone
to remove spyware and virii at $70-$100 per hour.
Pay now, or pay later.
It should be noted that the MB Pro's are not geared (marketed)
at joe sixpack and his grandma. And Apple does not get
worried or upset if you (joe sixpack) buys a Dell instead of
a Mac. Their equipment sells itself to many who get the opportunity
to try it out first. You may not be Apples target audience.
A tax is when the mafia, I mean the government, threatens to kidnap you and throw you in prison if you don't give them X amount of money. The surcharge one must pay for an Apple-branded, if any, is a branding/peace of mind/affinity surcharge, not a tax. You're voluntarily paying more a product that you believe, for concrete or abstract, sentimental reasons, is worth more than another product at a lower price that may be substantially similar. A tax is something that if you don't pay, the government threatens you with violence over. Apple item X being more than Other OEM Y is a pricing differential, one that the consumer voluntarily pays for. Or in my case, I voluntarily choose not to, and Jobs' Mob isn't threatening to throw me in prison for not buying Apple.
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...Show me a Macbook that I can buy for just $400.....
Show me a new BMW, Lexus or Mercedes Benz I can buy for under $19995.95! You can't? Oh, I see, those companies don't make a car for that price.
Any computer, no matter what its price, is nothing more than a pile of metal, plastic and silicon designed to run software. In Apple's case, it is the software you do get, such as OSX and the iLife programs, as well as the software you do NOT get, such as trialware, spyware, adware pre-installed by the manufacturer, as well as the reservoir of tens of thousands of viruses, worms, Trojans and other malicious code. Any of Apple's computers can run programming from Redmond or open source. However, such a Mac will always be inferior in every way to the product that Apple delivers to their customers. Even a Hackintosh made by some other hardware manufacturer, or put together from the correct collection of spare parts, will be a better overall computer system running OSX, than it would have been with other software.
All theory is gray