You're not adding in the value of Win7: youre simply assuming OSX is more valuable, which isnt true to everyone. Myself, I think OSX has useful features and is cool, but I greatly prefer Win7 for a number of reasons. If we were to go by the vendor's own pricing, however, Win7 would be substantially more valuable at $150 vs the $30 for OSX. Not that that indicates anything at all, really.
The argument that everything about OSX is better stems from ignorance. Ive seen my share of issues on OSX, and my share of crummy native apps (like Mac Mail, which throws up and dies if you have stuff in your outbox when the SMTP server is unavailable). Its a choice of preference and need; there are some apps which you would be stupid to buy on Windows because all the prime development happens for the Mac version; conversely if your life is SMB shares and Outlook youd probably be foolish to go spend all that money on a Mac because youre just going to be a second class citizen.
And apparently not everyone DOES know that apple gouges on hardware, as evidenced by the poster above, and the fact that my post with links got modded troll while a responder with no links or evidence gets modded informative by the Mac Defenders Brigade.
Why dont you link the Mac you are referencing? Because the stock Macs listed on the apple website @ 1799 and 2199 do NOT come with 8GB RAM standard (its a several hundred dollar upgrade, or at least was 2 days ago), nor do they come with SSDs, and they have an inferior video card.
You say youve proven what i said to be BS, but you havent even linked this Mac that youre talking about. Here, ill save you the effort and link direct to the bog-standard mac configs: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD103LL/A? $1799, with ONLY 4GB of ram, NO ssd, (only a 500GB 5400RP drive), and a core i7 (which until 2 days ago was a distinctly inferior Sandy Bridge)
If you want that 8GB (which you claim to be standard), you need to go up to their $2100 model: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD104LL/A? Except that they STILL dont include an SSD: That costs an extra $900, despite the availability of MUCH cheaper 512GB SSDs out there... like the much esteemed Crucial M4 at only $414, which is once again 1/2 the price of the Mac hardware (despite it very likely being the same underlying hardware).
For the things you claim to be standard (SSD, 8GB RAM, Ivy Bridge), you would need to shell out $3199, while I could get a comparable laptop at $1400 or less EASILY. By slapping an SSD into the lenovo, I would have that laptop for $1100.
Compare to this other offering from MSI: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152349 Which not only comes with 8GB RAM, a 50% bigger drive stock, and an identical processor, but also has a substantially beefier video card (GTX 660 / 2GB vs the MBP's 650GT / 1GB).
Listen, you can argue that you get other benefits with the MBP like higher maximum ram (but even thats not true, I can easily find laptops with 16GB maximum) or a better resolution, but the more you try to tack onto the MBP the higher that markup will be. I will lay down a wager that ANY configuration of MBP you can come up with, I can match for 1/2 the price (except for screen resolution). Please dont bother disputing this unless you have a link to the Mac store to back your statements up.
Maybe youre right when it comes to Mac users, but I have a feeling there will be droves of employees rushing out to buy one when they realize that in order to connect to corporate network on their Mac they need ethernet.
Please tell me youre not claiming that Gigabit ethernet is going obsolete due to the mighty power of Wireless N.
See, with that iMac story, Apple was phasing it out because there were more widely used, better alternatives out there. There isnt, with GigE, because WIreless N has barely the same real-world bandwith of 100mbit ethernet.
Maybe if your entire day revolves around going to the coffee shop, ethernet is irrelevant; but for the vast majority of business use out there it is very much alive.
I would like to see how that sub-$500 laptop is doing after 4 years...my bet is you'd probably need to retrieve it from a landfill first.
Ill let you know in 3 more years how my HP Probook is doing. $500 and a year later, and the battery still handles like a champ (~3-5 hours depending on usage), and quite snappy.
A car is a long-term investment, and at least that lexus wont go badly out of date within 2 years-- its value will decline at something like 10-15% a year.
After 3 years, a laptop's value has plummeted to roughly $50, and it makes little difference whether its a mac or not. They make pretty terrible investments.
And, also, if you can't manage to set up an Airport Express using the utility it comes with, then you'll need to help to use a computer in any useful capacity at all.
You dont do IT for a living, do you? There are many users who could figure that out and would pop the CD in and begin configuring it; but there are at least as many who would immediately call their IT guy or geek friend because experience has led them to believe that if they try, and screw it up, it will much more difficult than if they had just called their techie friend to begin with.
And I would gladly beat the specs (excluding monitor) of ANY macbook you could throw at me, for half the price or less. If I were feeling daring I might even offer to let you choose what brand of laptop I have to use; its not like these are hard to find prices or anything.
The thing is, 8GB of ram is more and more becoming standard, where Apple still wants to charge you a $200 upgrade for that extra $40 stick of RAM. If you cant see how badly theyre gouging you, I really suggest you do a little more research.
What is your wireless router hooked to the modem with? Oh, thats right, ethernet. What connection will cheaply (~$200) support 48 simultaneous gigabit connections? Ethernet.
Good luck getting your small business to invest in a mesh of Wifi APs capable of that throughput for that many users.
I would also remark that if you dont have daily access to an ethernet port, you either dont have a job / go to school, or else are in the minority.
Then buy a boss $500 screen, keyboard, and mouse, and get some real work done, and have enough money left over for a second laptop.
Seriously, I hope you arent in charge of budgeting anywhere, because there are very few people who need a 2880x1800 screen for work, and those that do are very likely going to fork over for a station (keyboard, mouse, spare screen) as well which pretty much kills the point of having an integrated hi-def screen.
Most people do just fine on a 1366x768 screen. Ive recommended the model I am using (HP probook) to a large number of clients spanning healthcare, business development, consulting, and other fields, and basically all of them LOVE the laptops and do "real" work on them. The only complaints have been that the 15" screen was too LARGE.
The thing is, other than the screen, the Macs tend to be worse spec-wise than that half-priced PC. They also tend on average to last 3 years, with the Macs lasting (if the propaganda being believed) 3-5. This means after 5 years, I have a much newer laptop with far superior specs at the same price as that one Mac, not to mention not carrying around a gigantic thief-magnet.
Spending oodles of cash on a computer very rarely makes sense due to the incredible rate of development there. Possibly if the MPG were going up by 150% every year, people would be less likely to fork out $30k+ on vehicles either, because it would be a terrible investment.
Macs hold their value because people think they do. They tend to cost >2x as much as a comparable (or better) laptop, with the only upside being a superior screen on the Mac. I dont know of any laptop whose value after 3 years hasnt plummeted to ~$100 or less, mac or otherwise.
Are you saying that Laptop should be held up thickness wise, at the point where the body can accomodate an RJ45?
Oh come on, this isnt a difficult engineering problem. You have a springloaded pop-out RJ45 jack that is a rigid frame with 8 electrical connector pins. Ive seen it done on older laptops. It doesnt need to be terribly thick (just thick enough for rigidity), and doesnt require a dongle.
I don't know too many frequent travelers that don't carry around an AirPort Express
I dont know too many who know how or have the desire to use an AirPort Express, let alone own one. Ive never set one up, but presumably you have to configure it with an SSID and key, which is beyond many users. Ethernet "just works" in far more scenarios, far more reliably.
Im sure they are wonderful like so many other things, but for a "you need to do a close comparison to see a difference", I think Macs tend to make a rather poor budgeting choice.
Before you buy that mac with the shiney display, just be aware you are literally paying >2x (and over $1000 more) for OSX and a higher resolution monitor, as well as (generally) WORSE specs everywhere else. If its worth it to you, fine, but I would never be able to justify that expenditure myself when there are so many awesome sub-$500 laptops floating around.
Except that ethernet isnt rarely used. I get the impression that every one of my friends with a laptop has used ethernet at sometime or another (if not on a regular basis) because its more reliable than wifi, and it just works even if you know nothing about network config.
Except now you have more crap to lug around, which defeats the purpose of a thinner laptop. If this were some rarely used feature (COUGH FIREWIRE), then yea, dongle-ize it. Ethernet though? Youve got to be kidding.
Yes, I hate carrying around my integrated gbit NIC on my HP Probook. The thing is so awkward to pry out of the case every time I want to remove it.
Are you seriously arguing that its more convenient to have to carry this around as a dongle? What is this, 1999? Ethernet is ubiquitous! Whats next in the name of "slimming", lightpeak-based dongles to add USB functionality again? Why not remove ALL other ports and have everything chain off of a single firewire interface?
And in case someone would remark that "those are low quality laptops", I would remark, I would rather buy the cheapo laptop, have it die in 3 years, and buy a new one; the upshot is that in 3 years time I would have paid slightly less than the Macbook, and would have a brand new laptop.
Baloney. (And in case you missed it, the HP actually has substantially better specs than the Macbook).
While the pic is a year old, I would gladly take it as a challenge to beat any Macbook someone could link, for roughly 1/2 the price on PC hardware. For instance...
Slashdot Mirror
You're not adding in the value of Win7: youre simply assuming OSX is more valuable, which isnt true to everyone. Myself, I think OSX has useful features and is cool, but I greatly prefer Win7 for a number of reasons. If we were to go by the vendor's own pricing, however, Win7 would be substantially more valuable at $150 vs the $30 for OSX. Not that that indicates anything at all, really.
The argument that everything about OSX is better stems from ignorance. Ive seen my share of issues on OSX, and my share of crummy native apps (like Mac Mail, which throws up and dies if you have stuff in your outbox when the SMTP server is unavailable). Its a choice of preference and need; there are some apps which you would be stupid to buy on Windows because all the prime development happens for the Mac version; conversely if your life is SMB shares and Outlook youd probably be foolish to go spend all that money on a Mac because youre just going to be a second class citizen.
And apparently not everyone DOES know that apple gouges on hardware, as evidenced by the poster above, and the fact that my post with links got modded troll while a responder with no links or evidence gets modded informative by the Mac Defenders Brigade.
Why dont you link the Mac you are referencing? Because the stock Macs listed on the apple website @ 1799 and 2199 do NOT come with 8GB RAM standard (its a several hundred dollar upgrade, or at least was 2 days ago), nor do they come with SSDs, and they have an inferior video card.
You say youve proven what i said to be BS, but you havent even linked this Mac that youre talking about. Here, ill save you the effort and link direct to the bog-standard mac configs:
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD103LL/A?
$1799, with ONLY 4GB of ram, NO ssd, (only a 500GB 5400RP drive), and a core i7 (which until 2 days ago was a distinctly inferior Sandy Bridge)
If you want that 8GB (which you claim to be standard), you need to go up to their $2100 model:
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD104LL/A?
Except that they STILL dont include an SSD: That costs an extra $900, despite the availability of MUCH cheaper 512GB SSDs out there...
like the much esteemed Crucial M4 at only $414, which is once again 1/2 the price of the Mac hardware (despite it very likely being the same underlying hardware).
For the things you claim to be standard (SSD, 8GB RAM, Ivy Bridge), you would need to shell out $3199, while I could get a comparable laptop at $1400 or less EASILY. By slapping an SSD into the lenovo, I would have that laptop for $1100.
Compare to this other offering from MSI:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152349
Which not only comes with 8GB RAM, a 50% bigger drive stock, and an identical processor, but also has a substantially beefier video card (GTX 660 / 2GB vs the MBP's 650GT / 1GB).
Listen, you can argue that you get other benefits with the MBP like higher maximum ram (but even thats not true, I can easily find laptops with 16GB maximum) or a better resolution, but the more you try to tack onto the MBP the higher that markup will be. I will lay down a wager that ANY configuration of MBP you can come up with, I can match for 1/2 the price (except for screen resolution). Please dont bother disputing this unless you have a link to the Mac store to back your statements up.
Maybe youre right when it comes to Mac users, but I have a feeling there will be droves of employees rushing out to buy one when they realize that in order to connect to corporate network on their Mac they need ethernet.
Please tell me youre not claiming that Gigabit ethernet is going obsolete due to the mighty power of Wireless N.
See, with that iMac story, Apple was phasing it out because there were more widely used, better alternatives out there. There isnt, with GigE, because WIreless N has barely the same real-world bandwith of 100mbit ethernet.
Maybe if your entire day revolves around going to the coffee shop, ethernet is irrelevant; but for the vast majority of business use out there it is very much alive.
I would like to see how that sub-$500 laptop is doing after 4 years...my bet is you'd probably need to retrieve it from a landfill first.
Ill let you know in 3 more years how my HP Probook is doing. $500 and a year later, and the battery still handles like a champ (~3-5 hours depending on usage), and quite snappy.
A car is a long-term investment, and at least that lexus wont go badly out of date within 2 years-- its value will decline at something like 10-15% a year.
After 3 years, a laptop's value has plummeted to roughly $50, and it makes little difference whether its a mac or not. They make pretty terrible investments.
And, also, if you can't manage to set up an Airport Express using the utility it comes with, then you'll need to help to use a computer in any useful capacity at all.
You dont do IT for a living, do you? There are many users who could figure that out and would pop the CD in and begin configuring it; but there are at least as many who would immediately call their IT guy or geek friend because experience has led them to believe that if they try, and screw it up, it will much more difficult than if they had just called their techie friend to begin with.
The thing is, other than the screen, the Macs tend to be worse spec-wise than that half-priced PC.
Bullshit.
Rather than retyping it, I will refer you to these two (rather short and sweet) posts.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2908871&cid=40288291
WHat you can get for $480 and 800 these days in the PC worlds.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2906441&cid=40279409
A look both now and a year ago at how you can get a better laptop at half the price.
And I would gladly beat the specs (excluding monitor) of ANY macbook you could throw at me, for half the price or less. If I were feeling daring I might even offer to let you choose what brand of laptop I have to use; its not like these are hard to find prices or anything.
The thing is, 8GB of ram is more and more becoming standard, where Apple still wants to charge you a $200 upgrade for that extra $40 stick of RAM. If you cant see how badly theyre gouging you, I really suggest you do a little more research.
What is your wireless router hooked to the modem with? Oh, thats right, ethernet. What connection will cheaply (~$200) support 48 simultaneous gigabit connections? Ethernet.
Good luck getting your small business to invest in a mesh of Wifi APs capable of that throughput for that many users.
I would also remark that if you dont have daily access to an ethernet port, you either dont have a job / go to school, or else are in the minority.
Then buy a boss $500 screen, keyboard, and mouse, and get some real work done, and have enough money left over for a second laptop.
Seriously, I hope you arent in charge of budgeting anywhere, because there are very few people who need a 2880x1800 screen for work, and those that do are very likely going to fork over for a station (keyboard, mouse, spare screen) as well which pretty much kills the point of having an integrated hi-def screen.
Most people do just fine on a 1366x768 screen. Ive recommended the model I am using (HP probook) to a large number of clients spanning healthcare, business development, consulting, and other fields, and basically all of them LOVE the laptops and do "real" work on them. The only complaints have been that the 15" screen was too LARGE.
http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/302078
Core i5 sandybridge with 4GB RAM ($30 upgrade to 8), 500GB drive; all for $479.
http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/302125
Core i7 Ivy Bridge, 8GB RAM, 1TB drive. All for $799.
Please point me to a similar Mac that is less than double those prices.
The thing is, other than the screen, the Macs tend to be worse spec-wise than that half-priced PC. They also tend on average to last 3 years, with the Macs lasting (if the propaganda being believed) 3-5. This means after 5 years, I have a much newer laptop with far superior specs at the same price as that one Mac, not to mention not carrying around a gigantic thief-magnet.
Spending oodles of cash on a computer very rarely makes sense due to the incredible rate of development there. Possibly if the MPG were going up by 150% every year, people would be less likely to fork out $30k+ on vehicles either, because it would be a terrible investment.
Macs hold their value because people think they do. They tend to cost >2x as much as a comparable (or better) laptop, with the only upside being a superior screen on the Mac. I dont know of any laptop whose value after 3 years hasnt plummeted to ~$100 or less, mac or otherwise.
Are you saying that Laptop should be held up thickness wise, at the point where the body can accomodate an RJ45?
Oh come on, this isnt a difficult engineering problem. You have a springloaded pop-out RJ45 jack that is a rigid frame with 8 electrical connector pins. Ive seen it done on older laptops. It doesnt need to be terribly thick (just thick enough for rigidity), and doesnt require a dongle.
I don't know too many frequent travelers that don't carry around an AirPort Express
I dont know too many who know how or have the desire to use an AirPort Express, let alone own one. Ive never set one up, but presumably you have to configure it with an SSID and key, which is beyond many users. Ethernet "just works" in far more scenarios, far more reliably.
Im sure they are wonderful like so many other things, but for a "you need to do a close comparison to see a difference", I think Macs tend to make a rather poor budgeting choice.
Before you buy that mac with the shiney display, just be aware you are literally paying >2x (and over $1000 more) for OSX and a higher resolution monitor, as well as (generally) WORSE specs everywhere else. If its worth it to you, fine, but I would never be able to justify that expenditure myself when there are so many awesome sub-$500 laptops floating around.
Ill take a $1400 cheaper laptop with a matte screen designed for actual work. Enjoy being gouged though.
Except that ethernet isnt rarely used. I get the impression that every one of my friends with a laptop has used ethernet at sometime or another (if not on a regular basis) because its more reliable than wifi, and it just works even if you know nothing about network config.
Except now you have more crap to lug around, which defeats the purpose of a thinner laptop. If this were some rarely used feature (COUGH FIREWIRE), then yea, dongle-ize it. Ethernet though? Youve got to be kidding.
Yes, I hate carrying around my integrated gbit NIC on my HP Probook. The thing is so awkward to pry out of the case every time I want to remove it.
Are you seriously arguing that its more convenient to have to carry this around as a dongle? What is this, 1999? Ethernet is ubiquitous! Whats next in the name of "slimming", lightpeak-based dongles to add USB functionality again? Why not remove ALL other ports and have everything chain off of a single firewire interface?
Ignorance abounds. If turn the other cheek was an expression of defiance, what about the immediately following verse of giving your cloak too?
If youre posting on slashdot, you are very likely among the top 5% wealthiest individuals in the world.
Just a little perspective.
And in case someone would remark that "those are low quality laptops", I would remark, I would rather buy the cheapo laptop, have it die in 3 years, and buy a new one; the upshot is that in 3 years time I would have paid slightly less than the Macbook, and would have a brand new laptop.
Baloney.
(And in case you missed it, the HP actually has substantially better specs than the Macbook).
While the pic is a year old, I would gladly take it as a challenge to beat any Macbook someone could link, for roughly 1/2 the price on PC hardware. For instance...
http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/302125
VS
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD318LL/A?
Hey look, the lenovo is an Ivy bridge, while the macbook is still on Sandy bridge despite costing ~twice as much! Not to mention double the RAM, a vastly bigger drive, etc etc etc.
If you think you dont get gouged to the bank and back by using a Mac, you simply dont know how to shop for computers.
Baloney.
(TLDR: Macbook with half the ram and worse processor costs double--$2200-- that of a better specc'd HP).
Any piece of hardware you show me at the mac store can be had with equal or greater specs from HP or whomever at roughly 1/2 the cost.