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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.
Ever priced a stick or two of RAM from Apple?
I know it doesn't affects us geeks, but it'll give Grandma a heart attack.
The Apple tax is the lack of variety.
It isn't that the expensive laptops aren't worth it.
It's that there is no low cost Macs.
pretty exhaustive comparison
I don't think it was exhaustive at all. What I feel like I'm buying when I buy a laptop is more than what this article implies. I am buying into a brick of hardware where if one piece fails or becomes obsolete, it might as well be the whole brick. Which is why it surprises me that talk of hard drives (though they are the easiest component to replace) doesn't even list the manufacturer of the drive! How about a Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) of each of the products used? How about even just telling me that all the USB ports are 2.0 (I mean, I'm assuming that but who knows)? And what about the support that comes with each laptop as far as # of updates (BIOS/firmware) issued for the mainboard and all devices?
High-end laptops tend to carry high-end prices, whether their operating system hails from Cupertino or Redmond.
Actually I advise people that high end Macs are a tiny bit more expensive than high end other laptops while low end Macs are much more expensive (percentage wise) to low end Dells or HPs. And I think that's better information (and I thought I read that in the article). You usually get what you pay for and I wish the article had done a more thorough analysis of the laptops component by component.
My work here is dung.
... the question is also, "does Lauren need an expensive notebook."
Let's say the MacBook CAN justify its $2800 pricetag (i.e., it's not overpriced hardware, it's just good/expensive hardware and a lot of it). Ok, so the question is, is a $2800 laptop necessary? My $1350 dell ($2050 minus $800 deal) has been working for several years now (battery has died, that's about it. It's old enough that it has a dual core Centrino (32 bit processor).
"Overpriced Mac" can mean more than "the hardware added up doesn't equal the pricetag" ... it can also mean "it's twice as much as you need to spend for what you're going to do with it."
The question isn't "what does a comparably specced machine cost". It's "what does a machine that does what I need cost". I can get a $500-700 PC Laptop that will work great for most of my use. I can't touch that with a Mac.
I know no one reads the fine articles but does no one really watch the fine videos? Or does everyone here have Silverlight install?
Would someone be kind enough to post up a non-Silverlight version. Bonus points for a direct link to an open video format (i.e. not flash), but I'm not picky.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
Haven't we all reached the conclusion that:
a) no, Macs are not significantly more expensive than PCs
and
b) there are far fewer hardware configurations available such that when you take any one premium feature and then try to go bargain hunting on other features, Macs will be significantly more expensive.
If you want a laptop with a 17" screen, 512M RAM and a 60G HD, suddenly you're comparing an $800 PC against a $2700 MBP since Apple doesn't make a computer with a 17" screen and less than 2G RAM. But if you actually want all the stuff in the 17" MBP, a comparable PC won't be all that differently priced.
Long story short, buying a Mac forces you to upgrade in areas that you may not need whereas buying a PC allows you to save money on any component of the system that is less important to you.
The way most of these comparisons work is that they take the feature set of the most expensive laptop and start there as a base point, or start at the most feature rich, like this review did. I've seen the commercial in question and the girl/actress/whatever had two requirements: a 17 inch screen and a sub thousand dollar price. Say what you will about that but that seems like a pretty common way to start shopping. Sure, the Macbook Pro is $2800 (?!) but I'm sure it has a ton of stuff she's simply not interested or aware of. The general public likes cheap computers, and I personally think it's a pretty effective ad.
It would be nice if they could have had a longer version where she's in the Apple store and finds her 17" laptop but not at the price she wants.
Effective ad for me, but it's personally not going to influence any of my purchases. I buy most of my stuff off Craigslist (17 inchers for under $100? yum - that's what she said).
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
To me on the the biggest issues with Apple is that they don't really offer a full range of configurations. So if for instance somebody wants a mid-range tower they are out of luck. Or a consumer notebook with a big screen. What they do make I think is competitive in those markets. But an expanded lineup would really help.
We look at this question, not in as much depth, on nearly every Mac story.
Fixed that for you.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
It's part of Apple's strategy. They offer hardware that makes their machines operate at a level that they find acceptable. HP, Dell etc. build machines at price points that they think will sell.
I know I'll spark off a debate on this one but you never hear folks complaining that Macs are slow. Part of that is likely to do with OSX but the other part has just as much to do with the fact that Macs are NEVER sold under powered.
On the other hand we have PC manufacturers selling dirt cheap machines that "run" Vista but not well. If those same manufacturers only sold machines that ran their intended software well, the price point comparison would be pretty moot.
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
Giving the Apple a point for "construction" seems a little dubious to me. There's no doubt that the fancy aluminum shell on the Mac is much sturdier than my all plastic Dell from work, but my Dell laptop seems to stand up just fine to the rigors I put it through. If the Mac were made of aircraft grade aluminum, would it be even better? Not really.
Giving a "point" to Apple for Firewire seems equally dubious. Most consumers who are choosing between a PC laptop and a Mac likely don't know what FireWire is, and the other laptops all HAVE a FireWire port, just a slower one. FireWire 800 is a "feature" that very few people need.
The point to Apple for "sound" is perhaps most dubious of all, since the Sony has some slick specs in this department as well.
Methinks the TFA is slightly biased.
News at 11.
Whether you want to say Apple doesn't make notebooks most people can afford or they're notebooks are too expensive in general, it's essentially a wash.
Also, the entire basis for this comparison is wrong... as the ad shows, it has nothing to do with the "exact" features. Consumers look for a couple key features and operate "within a market." If you want the real take-away here it's that Apple either a) doesn't understand the market they're targeting with the 13" macbook or b) is purposely trying to drive people to the more expensive machine. Either way, they don't have a product that meets what I think you can safely say is the "vast majority" of US consumers.
Personally I just hate the "I know what's good for you" Apple mantra. I be surprised if more /.ers wouldn't agree given the fact that Apple is essentially the antithesis of open source.
-rt
I don't take anyone questioning whether Macs are expensive seriously. They are, period. Getting the same specs on a Dell may cost the same/nearly as much, but you* can get a laptop that has everything you need for far less than you can get any Mac. The difference is resale value. Look at ebay. A 1 year old iMac with upgraded memory often sells, used, for what it cost new. A year old PC is relatively worthless.
The point? The cost of ownership over 10 years for a Mac vs PC is a whole lot more comparable than the up front cost. You may not have an extra PC laying around a year later after you buy your Mac, but you can upgrade to this-year's-model for next to nothing if you are willing to sell your Mac.
* You being most people
Whale
I've been a Mac user for 6 years now, and have loved every machine I've purchased. Having said that, I'm a certain kind of user who matches the machines that Apple sells. I want mid- to mid-high range hardware, capable of pretty extensive multitasking (which, in my experience, works better under OS X than Windows), and the ability to do graphics design and layout (I admit, this was much more hardware-constrained in 2003 than it is now). Macs are a pretty good fit for the featureset that I want, and are price-competitive with Windows boxes.
HOWEVER in the ad, Lauren wants a machine with a certain amount of raw horsepower, a keyboard she likes (which, with Apple, is either entirely true or entirely not) and a 17" screen. That could mean a wide variety of machines -- processor architectures, memory, integrated or discreet graphics -- but Apple, when you want a 17" laptop, assumes you're a higher-end user, that wants a very well engineered battery, a lot of horsepower, a fast dual-core CPU, etc. etc.
Lauren doesn't. She doesn't want a lot of those things. She just wants a computer with a 17" screen. Apple doesn't sell the machine she wants -- but because there's at least 3 or 4 PC brands at any Best Buy, she can walk in and get what she wants for a fraction of what Apple sells it for.
It's a question of mapping: the goal isn't to take an APPLE to start with then compare it to the price of a similar PC; instead, it's to take a PC you want, and asking if there EVEN IS a similar Mac -- in a lot of cases, there just won't be.
Let's rile them up some more: I've owned four laptops in the last ten years, from IBM, Toshiba, HP, and Apple.
The Macbook Pro was the most expensive, has the worst LCD viewing angle, has the worst speakers, is the only one that overheats if you use it with the lid closed, and the only one to have a battery go all 'splody in slow motion. I also had to reflash the power management firmware because it stop charging due to a bug in the previous version. I don't care how much or how little they cost, I'm never making that mistake again.
Let's say the MacBook CAN justify its $2800 pricetag (i.e., it's not overpriced hardware, it's just good/expensive hardware and a lot of it). Ok, so the question is, is a $2800 laptop necessary?
That's a good question that everyone should ask, but it has nothing to do with a Mac Tax. It's a "high-end computer tax." If Apple is making a business of only selling high-end computers, that's the market they've chosen, nothing wrong with that. Now if you want to say that macs are overpriced, you need to compare equivalently specs, you can't say, "look, the other company sells a less powerful laptop for cheaper." Of course they do, if their less powerful laptop was more expensive than a high-end computer, everyone would buy high-end computers!
I also don't really understand why there's all this hate against people who choose to buy high-end computers. It's true that they're not getting the most bang for the buck, but if it weren't for those buyers financing the high performance parts, the mid-range computers wouldn't advance as quickly. Basically, the reason you can get a very fast machine for cheaper today is precisely because of those people who buy the expensive high-end parts. It's the same concept Tesla Motors is trying to leverage. They can't build an affordable electric car, so they build a car for the rich. Those buyers fund the development of the technology and eventually they'll be able to build an affordable electric car.
If they want them, and can afford them, who are you to tell you they're wrong? Especially when you're indirectly benefiting from their choice.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
In my experience, Macs are priced by Apple and rarely discounted much until they are EOLed for the next generation. Sometimes Microcenter or Macmall has $100 off or something like that.
Dell, on the other hand, changes their pricing and offers more often than I change my socks. I've found that you can get killer deals on them if you are willing to wait a few weeks until a deal rolls around. For instance (now expired), there were great deals for 17" laptops at 30-40% off what TFA paid:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/913148
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/912911
Of course, if you are incapable of that kind of patience, preferring instant gratification, then Dell is more than willing to charge you a lot more if you are foolish enough to just go to dell.com and start clicking on things. [ Slightly OT Side Story: Ever since my boss found out that I know how to work the magic dell website, I've earned huge brownie points for buying the same equipment at basically half the great educational rates offered to my university. Actually, at one point I accosted the school's Dell Rep with a printout of the various orders I put in through Dell Home and asked if they would give an educational institution the same deals available to everyone -- no points for guessing the answer. ]
Bottom line: Dell's prices are volatile and the author of TFA is totally clueless on how to best work that.
and I can admit that PCs are WAY cheaper. The issue is that the pricing of Macs is completely devoid of choice. Don't need a built-in, high-res webcam? Too bad! Don't need the latest processor? We know better than you!
If you build a PC laptop like you build a Mac laptop, you may get similar prices in the end. The problem is that you can't build a Mac laptop like you *would* build a PC laptop. One good example is that when choosing a processor, often times the price of the processor will go up exponentially in relation to performance improvements. I have absolutely no need for the utmost in processor performance (everything I do is going to depend more on RAM). However, when buying my new MacBook Pro, I had to get a hefty processor with it. For almost all users (and most users aren't /. readers), processor speed isn't going to matter much. Heck, I make my living on my computer and it doesn't matter much.
It's also that there are good deals and bad deals from every PC company. So, if you cherry pick the outrageously marked up PCs against the Macs, the Macs look good. But you can also find very good PCs that are half the price.
The fact is that for under $700 I can get a Dell Vostro 1510 with the same resolution display, more RAM, but with an Intel Core 2 Duo at 1.8GHz rather than 2.4GHz. Part of the problem is that the latest processors cost a lot more for very little gains - and Apple only offers me the latest, high-margin product. Upgrading the Dell to 2Ghz bumps the price up $125 (for a measly 10% gain in clock speed). That's an about 20% increase in the WHOLE COMPUTER'S PRICE for a 10% gain - possibly an increase of 50% in the processor cost for a 10% boost.
I'm not trying to say that Apple products aren't worth the cost - since I shelled out $2K for one, I clearly think they are. But let's not get into a stupid "Apples are just as cheap" rhetoric match. That's like saying, "Dell costs twice as much if you buy 3 months groceries as part of the purchase". You can rig anything if people are passionate enough - and this is a situation that makes people passionate.
Apple likes to have their high margins. You have to pay up to buy Apple computers. Don't try to justify it as the same price. They aren't. I think they're worth the money, but you need to be able to objectively evaluate situations. Most people can't - they bend data to justify what they wish were true. Apples are wonderful. They aren't cheap.
> neither is reliability, nor support.
Oh puleeeze... A Mac is "just another PC" anymore. Cheap crappy PC components are
just as cheap and crappy regardless of what sort of prissy logo is on the outside
of the machine.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem with this canard, or at least misconception, is that it takes the notion "I would buy this kind of thing if Apple offered it" (which may or may not be true) and assumes that, therefore, it would be a good business move for Apple to offer that configuration.
In the mid 90s, Apple had so many product lines and options that you couldn't keep track of them: Classics, Performas, Quadras, whatever. There were Apple-manufactured machines that had two processors for dual-booting, not to mention several brands of clones. (This is another thing that many people still say: "if only Apple would get their head out of their asses and license their OS to other manufacturers, they would increase their market share, blah blah blah...") At that time, it looked like Apple wasn't long for this world.
After Jobs came back in 1996 (1997? whatever.), the company slowly reined in the product lines and started to concentrate on making a few identifiable, distinct products, with a limited number of options for each. Apple is now a quite successful company, and, while their non-computer products are a large part of this, the company has managed to continue to hang on to, and even expand, its corner of the computer and OS market, a market that is surely stacked against it. Not only that, Apple has become a trendsetter in this market.
You can bet that there are some pretty savvy financial analysts at Apple who have probably looked at this a lot more closely than you have, and, if they really thought demand was high enough for a mid-range tower, they would make one. I would bet that the average computer user (not the average Slashdot reader, which is something else) never expands their PC past the basic configuration that they bought it with during its lifespan, and, furthermore, doesn't need anything more powerful than what comes with a Mac Mini. The population of customers who need more than a Mac Mini, but less than a Mac Pro (like you) is real, but too small to be profitable for Apple. Apple's success is not based on a shotgun approach but on carefully maximizing the profitability of a small number of product lines.
I'm just sayin'.
That would also be one of the worst things that could happen to Apple. The company survives and remains extremely profitable by charging a higher margin, which they use to pay for the development and design work that leads to premium fit and finish and software on all their products (from iPod and iPhone to the computers).
If Apple comes out with a commodity computer with no such margin, even if it remains technically profitable, it seems to me that it has the serious potential to eviscerate their pocket cash to the point that the design and research will suffer, and then the premium goes away.
Of course, with the app store practically printing money for them these days, the additional cash flow they already have might make achieving market penetration a more important goal. Time will tell.
To me one of the the biggest issues with Mercedes is that they don't really offer a full range of vehicles. So if for instance somebody wants a pickup truck they are out of luck. Or a dirt bike. What they do make I think is competitive in those markets. But an expanded lineup would really help.
The GGP and the GP had some very interesting points. For what I use a laptop for, a MacBook Pro is just overkill. It's too much machine and there's no reason to spend the money for it. The other laptops makers offer lower end models that are the right fit for me. If Apple did the same, I would consider them, but they don't.
I see. What you're saying is that a Mercedes isn't too much machine for your daily commute to work, and that's why you bought one.
Your idea "picking on the fanboi" was an epic fail, dude. You just reinforced his point. If what you need is a truck or a dirt bike, you shouldn't be looking to buy a Mercedes. Similarly, if what you need can be had in a cheaper laptop, don't buy an Apple. If, on the other hand, you want the extra power because you need it / want it / must compensate for your small dick, you can buy the Apple, the Mercedes, the high-end Sony laptop, or the Aston Martin.
The point of the article and of the poster you were responding to was not that everyone should buy an Apple. It's that spec for spec, the Apple is competitively priced. If you don't need those specs, then you're absolutely right, you shouldn't be buying that computer, be it an Apple or a Sony, or a Dell, or an HP.
There is no "apple tax" there are only expensive high-end computers of all brands. And if you want and can afford them, there's nothing wrong with that. They're subsidizing the development of faster components that will eventually make it down to the affordable, more bang for the buck range you're interest in. So you should thank those people.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
One brand, and a premium one at that, is not well served by having hundreds of different computer models. Sure, Apple could make a cheaper laptop with a 17" screen and they could make a netbook and a mid range tower and all those other things. But now they have the over head of twice as many computers and configurations. Twice the overhead of manufacturing twice the overhead of warehousing cases and other parts that are specific to a given model. (ok, maybe not twice as much, but the overhead is non trivial)
As a result, they might sell a few more computers, but not twice as many. The proper tactic from an economic point of view is to try to make as few models as possible while still covering the needs of as large a user base as possible. This keeps cost down and margins up while still maintaining brisk sales.
Now one could argue that the computers that apple makes aren't the best choices for the market, but I dont know that the data really backs you up. The few extra mid range towers they might sell doesn't really make up for the cost of adding a whole new line when for the vast majority of consumers, an iMac or mac mini is quite sufficient and professionals almost always buy a top of the line machine anyway.
Sometimes I think that we here on slashdot forget that there is a room full of economists, market analysts and manufacturing experts at apple that help shape the nature of the mac line. If a mid range tower was going to help apples bottom line significantly, then they would be making one.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Truthfully, I have to question just how important the "expandability" really is for most people anyway?
There was a time when this was a *huge* deal, but as technology has advanced, I've watched a lot more consolidation.
EG. Back in the days of my Intel 486 motherboard, even the serial and parallel ports were on cards, and I had such options as upgrading a basic 8-bit or 16-bit ISA I/O card with a more capable VESA local-bus version. Now, every PC motherboard you can find has all the ports built right onto it, permanently.
Same goes for sound cards. Remember when *everybody* who was remotely into gaming went out and bought the latest Soundblaster offering (or maybe a "Gravis Ultrasound" or something)? Now, you get full Dolby surround capable sound and often, even optical outputs right on the motherboards.
On the Mac side, I even remember some people arguing they "needed" to go with a PowerMac G5 tower or Mac Pro tower vs. an iMac, because those expansion slots were so critical. Yet, show me how often you see a Mac tower with expansion cards installed in it these days? At least in the days of the G4 towers, you often had an Adaptec SCSI board in there for somebody's scanner, or maybe a card that added more USB ports.
And look at the Windows users who brag about their hardware's superiority, all because they can "upgrade with faster CPUs and video cards". Nice, in theory, but by the time they're ready for that new video or CPU? Most likely, the pin architecture has changed again, rendering the socket they've got unsuitable for that new processor ... or maybe their power supply can't put out the wattage required for that new video board, or ?? You quickly realize it makes more sense to sell the whole machine and start over with a whole new one.
So Apple may just be doing this the sensible way, anyway.