You can always find an overpriced laptop that will match Apple's price. The thing is, you can almost always find a much cheaper laptop which will do just fine. With Apple you don't have choice. It's either expensive, or nothing.
The thing is, do anybody who wants a 17" laptop needs a Core i7 CPU, high end display panel, a thunderbolt port and a upper-midrange AMD GPU? I don't think so. That why I also think that most people buying a $2500 macbook pro would have been better with a (much) cheaper alternative, which might even have more RAM and a real HDMI port, two things that matters probably more to the average user than any advantage that the Apple laptop might have.
I just checked and a high quality Asus 17" laptop is about $900. $1600 less than the cheapest 17" Apple laptop. It isn't as good. It has 200 less MHz and the resolution is only 1600x900. But heck, buy two of these and you will have one spare and still save $700.
Not a cracked case, but creaky palmrests, keyboard keys becoming unresponsive, the touchpad buttons becoming loose...
Never had any of these issues. My mother's old Dell laptop had a faulty keyboard after something like 6 years. Not that it was unresponsive, but a few keys were no longer working. She insisted on having it repaired so I ordered a new keyboard for like $20 on ebay. Big deal. Most people change their laptop before it breaks physically anyway. What I've changed the most is probably hard drives, and all companies use the same brands.
I have yet to see any non-anecdotal report of Macbooks lasting any longer than other PCs.
Asus is the only company I know with 2 years warranties on laptop. All others (including Apple) seems to have a 1 year warranty. If their laptops were so good, why don't they give 5 year warranty?
I never replaced a laptop because of a cracked case. So I couldn't care less about the durability of an aluminum case. Now, if you are telling me that the intel CPU in an Apple laptop last longer than a similar intel CPU in a Toshiba/Acer/Asus/Dell, I will call BS. Same thing for the RAM/hard drive/etc.
By buying a $700 laptop every three years, you get a much better overall experience than buying a $1400 Apple laptop every six years.
Asus came first, followed by Toshiba, in terms of reliability. Sony came better than Apple. HP was the worst. Even worse than Acer and Gateway.
Apple did slightly better than the average, but given that what they call "premium laptops" (those over $1000), which include almost all Apple laptops, also did better than the average, Apple didn't score any better than the competition.
Why tax the ISPs to pay for music? Why not tax music sales to pay for music? Would make more sense. Or why not tax the recording industry to finance the internet?
Would be better if Apple, Microsoft and RIM all died. This way there would be less fragmentation. Only a single platform to write for: Android. Who needs competition anyway?
Skype was closed even before Microsoft bought it. Good thing if Microsoft can accelerate the transition to alternatives. Seriously, it's not as if Skype invented VoIP or Videochat.
I bet the average wallet is larger than a Galaxy S2. Smartphones are especially thinner. Wallet in one pocket, smartphone in the other. What's the problem again?
Market share matters because if iPhones drop to let say 5% of market share people will stop developing for it. And without that, the iPhone is nothing.
Can you just drag and drop a bunch of MP3 files like you do with any non-Apple MP3 player? No? Then it's locked down. It's nice to see that some people made a reverse-engineered library for emulating iTunes but it still doesn't make it open.
It doesn't matter if people do or do not install apps outside the Android market. Even inside the market what you can find is way less restrictive than what you have in Apple's app store. You can find, for instance, apps that only work on rooted devices. And if one day Google decide to ask $1000 to continue to have the right to download apps from the market, you can say F*CK YOU I will just go somewhere else instead. This is a sufficient insensitive for Google to never make such an evil move.
With Apple, on the other hand, you are at their mercy. The more market share Apple will have, the more locked down their devices will be and the less freedom you will have. I even heard that on SIM-locked iPhones carriers can decide whether you can tether your phone or not. You can't avoid that without jailbreaking beacause the APN menu is hidden. On Android the carrier doesn't even know if you are tethering or browsing on your phone. And even if they had a different APN for tethering, nothing stops you from changing the APN. Even if I had an iPhone I would thank everyone who doesn't have any Apple device for keeping Apple from taking too much of my freedom.
You know that many other companies offer what you just described? I don't even get why you story should be any interesting. If only you presented the advantages of Apple networking gear and why a DD-Wrt user should switch? I hope you don't think that Apple invented fallback to 802.11g or the 5 GHz band?
Really I don't understand why you have a +3 score.
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You can always find an overpriced laptop that will match Apple's price.
The thing is, you can almost always find a much cheaper laptop which will do just fine. With Apple you don't have choice. It's either expensive, or nothing.
The thing is, do anybody who wants a 17" laptop needs a Core i7 CPU, high end display panel, a thunderbolt port and a upper-midrange AMD GPU?
I don't think so. That why I also think that most people buying a $2500 macbook pro would have been better with a (much) cheaper alternative, which might even have more RAM and a real HDMI port, two things that matters probably more to the average user than any advantage that the Apple laptop might have.
I just checked and a high quality Asus 17" laptop is about $900. $1600 less than the cheapest 17" Apple laptop. It isn't as good. It has 200 less MHz and the resolution is only 1600x900. But heck, buy two of these and you will have one spare and still save $700.
Not a cracked case, but creaky palmrests, keyboard keys becoming unresponsive, the touchpad buttons becoming loose...
Never had any of these issues. My mother's old Dell laptop had a faulty keyboard after something like 6 years. Not that it was unresponsive, but a few keys were no longer working. She insisted on having it repaired so I ordered a new keyboard for like $20 on ebay. Big deal. Most people change their laptop before it breaks physically anyway. What I've changed the most is probably hard drives, and all companies use the same brands.
Oh yeah and according to square trade, Lenovo's reliability is just between Dell and Acer, below average.
http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf
And however much you want to fight it: Apple tools do get the job done, and last longer while doing it.
I'd like to believe it, but I didn't find any scientific evidence supporting it. All I hear is anecdotal statements such as:
HP sucks, Lenovo rules!!!
Dell sucks, Apple rules!!!
Acer sucks, my friend's Acer lasted only 6 months!!!
I have yet to see any non-anecdotal report of Macbooks lasting any longer than other PCs.
Asus is the only company I know with 2 years warranties on laptop. All others (including Apple) seems to have a 1 year warranty. If their laptops were so good, why don't they give 5 year warranty?
I never replaced a laptop because of a cracked case. So I couldn't care less about the durability of an aluminum case.
Now, if you are telling me that the intel CPU in an Apple laptop last longer than a similar intel CPU in a Toshiba/Acer/Asus/Dell, I will call BS. Same thing for the RAM/hard drive/etc.
By buying a $700 laptop every three years, you get a much better overall experience than buying a $1400 Apple laptop every six years.
Squaretrade made statistics with over 30,000 laptops
http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109/?ccode=bs_war_buyerblog
Asus came first, followed by Toshiba, in terms of reliability. Sony came better than Apple. HP was the worst. Even worse than Acer and Gateway.
Apple did slightly better than the average, but given that what they call "premium laptops" (those over $1000), which include almost all Apple laptops, also did better than the average, Apple didn't score any better than the competition.
The 16GB Asus Transformer 10" was $400. And the new 32GB Transformer prime will be $500 in a few days, still $100 less than the lower end iPad2.
Will the Apple laptop last longer? No? Then why do you call it "better build quality"? It's a laptop, not a piece of art or a jewelry.
PPC had fallen behind even before apple made the switch to intel. Those G4 Powerbooks weren't as powerful in common tasks as x86 PCs.
Why tax the ISPs to pay for music?
Why not tax music sales to pay for music? Would make more sense.
Or why not tax the recording industry to finance the internet?
With only 100MB you don't have to worry about messaging, it's virtually unlimited. With half a gig, you can probably say the same for VoIP.
Would be better if Apple, Microsoft and RIM all died. This way there would be less fragmentation. Only a single platform to write for: Android.
Who needs competition anyway?
It scales down the video to 1024x576 and display black bars on top and bottom. Or stretch it vertically to full screen.
wrongs numbers. The US provides about 22% of the funding to the UNESCO
yes, and the Apple app store too.
That's why we need to make sure we don't use Skype, so that less people use it, so that it never gets to a point where we become forced to use it.
Skype was closed even before Microsoft bought it. Good thing if Microsoft can accelerate the transition to alternatives.
Seriously, it's not as if Skype invented VoIP or Videochat.
I don't know. I have a 4" smartphone and can touch all 4 corners easily with only 1 hand.
I bet the average wallet is larger than a Galaxy S2. Smartphones are especially thinner.
Wallet in one pocket, smartphone in the other. What's the problem again?
Market share matters because if iPhones drop to let say 5% of market share people will stop developing for it. And without that, the iPhone is nothing.
Apple will need to sue more to regain its position.
Can you just drag and drop a bunch of MP3 files like you do with any non-Apple MP3 player? No? Then it's locked down.
It's nice to see that some people made a reverse-engineered library for emulating iTunes but it still doesn't make it open.
It doesn't matter if people do or do not install apps outside the Android market. Even inside the market what you can find is way less restrictive than what you have in Apple's app store. You can find, for instance, apps that only work on rooted devices. And if one day Google decide to ask $1000 to continue to have the right to download apps from the market, you can say F*CK YOU I will just go somewhere else instead. This is a sufficient insensitive for Google to never make such an evil move.
With Apple, on the other hand, you are at their mercy. The more market share Apple will have, the more locked down their devices will be and the less freedom you will have. I even heard that on SIM-locked iPhones carriers can decide whether you can tether your phone or not. You can't avoid that without jailbreaking beacause the APN menu is hidden. On Android the carrier doesn't even know if you are tethering or browsing on your phone. And even if they had a different APN for tethering, nothing stops you from changing the APN.
Even if I had an iPhone I would thank everyone who doesn't have any Apple device for keeping Apple from taking too much of my freedom.
And this is why people buy iOS devices for themselves, friends or family.
Last time I checked people were buying more Androids than iPhones.
You know that many other companies offer what you just described? I don't even get why you story should be any interesting.
If only you presented the advantages of Apple networking gear and why a DD-Wrt user should switch? I hope you don't think that Apple invented fallback to 802.11g or the 5 GHz band?
Really I don't understand why you have a +3 score.