In real dollars, the cost of Macs are extremely low. $1 in 2000 is about $1.40 now. So the cost of a $1000 13" Mac Air which is a very respectable laptop is about $700 in 2000 dollars.
So the machines are very cheap, even to IBM they are easier to use and require less tech support. For those that want to do some software development with open source, very useful.
While Office 2016 Mac is not as good as Office 2016 Windows, it works fairly well.
And if you really need the Windows 10 OS, you can invest in a Parallels virtual machine.
Besides, for many of us, Apple has stores where we can take the computer into a Genius Bar to get problems fixed.
In NYC, we even have a 24 hour/367 store (Fifth Avenue). There will be a seventh store in Manhattan soon. There is one in Queens, Statin Island, and one in Brooklyn soon.
Other cities have access as well of course.
So, except in certain important cases like gaming and certain specific applications, or cases where the stylus and touch is really important and the Microsoft Surface would be a best choice, a Mac is a better investment for most.
As much as I like my Macs, I don't think you can claim a Mac is cheap now. I was in the market for a new MacBook Pro, but the machine I was looking at was going to cost me over $4000 (Australian, but at today's exchange rates that's still about $3200 USD). Apple really price gouge on SSD & RAM upgrades - there is no way a 1TB SSD costs $800.
I ended up buying a fully-spec'd 2012 MBP instead (more affordable, better keyboard & trackpad than the 2015s) - and shortly after, a friend bought an identically spec'd HP for half the price of my new Mac. I'd love to say I'd bought a more reliable machine, but this MBP has already been back to the Apple Store twice for repairs in just 6 months. Frankly, it's become embarrassing to buy Apple.
So even though I'm that guy who queued up for a day-one iPhone 4, wore Panic Spinner t-shirts into the Apple Store & knew the staff, persuaded clients & work to support Macs... I now recommend PCs and Windows 10 to friends instead. I can't justify the 100% markup anymore. And since Apple stopped updating macOS for my older Macs (a MacBook 1,1 and 3,1) I even run Windows 10 on my old Macs - now I know I'll get security updates until 2020 on those machines, even though Apple insists they're obsolete. (Win10 runs pretty well on them.)
Sorry, you're getting ripped off "Down Under." I've been to Sydney/Melbourne twice and I love it. Bondi Beach Yeah!
But you can get a brand new 15" Macbook Pro Retina for about $1900 total from an authorized dealer. Check out website Appleinsider.com
Besides being able to go to stores for Genius Bar help, you're when you call for customer service or tech support you get Americans who are very helpful and speak English well not people from Philippines, India, whatever. Nothing against these people of course, just when it comes to tech support.
There was a recent NYTimes article about how companies make tech support awful. Apple is not one of them.
My times calling Microsoft Tech support (having to do with Office 2016 Mac and other MS products running in Windows 10 VM) were miserable. Switched to the wrong people, people who can't speak english well, who don't seem to understand what I was talking about. Having to call over and over and over again.
Part of the added cost of Macs is precisely to ensure that you get quality support and is well worth paying for unless you absolutely cannot afford it.
He doesn't even mention a friend having a broken mac, I think you miss-parsed; or maybe I did. "this" mac broke, not "his"?? Certainly you summary is wrong as a synopsis of his comment.
That's correct - by "this" Mac I meant the one I'm typing on now.
It works at the moment, but it has twice lost the startup drive & refused to start without new replacement components from Apple - not something I expect from brand new hardware bought direct from Apple.
Very sorry to hear that you're having problems. Macs have had problems with GPUs in the past in Macbook Pros (2011 version?) where Apple has ended up replacing the entire insides (this happened recently on a friends 17" 2011).
But (knock on aluminum), I've had 4 macs since 2011 all without hardware problems.
> In real dollars, the cost of Macs are extremely low. $1 in 2000 is about $1.40 now. So the cost of a $1000 13" Mac Air which is a very respectable laptop is about $700 in 2000 dollars.
This comparison makes no sense to me. It's 2016, not 2000, so the fact that a Mac Air is $700 in 2000 dollars is a completely random and arbitrary number.
You couldn't buy any laptop of any quality for $700 in 2000. Macs have the reputation of being overpriced, but they are much more affordable than computers at the turn of the century. Of course, PCs are still available for less, but the point is that many people previously unable to afford a Mac can.
Macs have a reputation for being overpriced because their hardware is overpriced compared to similarly speced PCs. Just because they are now more affordable doesn't mean that they're not overpriced.
Macs have a value proposition based on the user experience, quality of software, and quality of hardware. This value proposition is relative and certain market segments have never seen it. Graphic designers appreciate the consistency and accuracy of Apple products in their workflows so the value proposition was high. Gamers however saw anemic hardware and limited support so the value proposition was extremely low. With the arrival of OSX and the growth of the internet and *nix based development, and then with iOS, the value proposition for software developers grew significantly.
Reminds me of buying the Toshiba Satellite 1805-s201 in August 2001. It was the first sub $1000 laptop I saw: $995 with $100 manufacturer rebate. Celeron 800 mhz, 128mb, and 20GB of spinning rust. It was the cheapest laptop and ran the current version AutoCAD without a problem [actually, ADT2 which had a much higher load than typical AutoCAD].
To me, the way to weigh value is relative to workload. Few users are hardware bound and today the most likely bottleneck for ordinary people is going to be GPU, not that I'm saying ordinary users are going to run up against it.
Around that time, I would buy "refurbished" Thinkpads around Canal Street in NYC (where many cheap things are sold) from an authorized dealer for much lower than the regular price.
The "refurbished" were generally returns that were reinspected, etc. The company bought a lot of them.
But to have only spent $700 for a 13" Macbook Air type of machine then! :-)
That's a pointless metric to use for affordability, because that $300 difference is purely inflation. It has absolutely nothing to do with Apple making their products cheaper.
> So the machines are very cheap, even to IBM they are easier to use and require less tech support. For those that want to do some software development with open source, very useful.
This is just untrue at many levels, there is still plenty of early adopter issues going around and there are plenty of people getting new laptops with Windows/Linux OS. It certainly hasn't stopped IBM's contributions to open source before or after.
Did you know that a number of "the masses" that earn little money smoke a pack or two of cigarettes per day? How much do you think this costs on a yearly basis?
In NYC they are $12-$14 per pack, but even in the rest of the country at its lowest cost it has to be several dollars per pack * 365.
Even IBM has gone to using Macs today. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2998315/apple-mac/every...
So the machines are very cheap, even to IBM they are easier to use and require less tech support. For those that want to do some software development with open source, very useful.
While Office 2016 Mac is not as good as Office 2016 Windows, it works fairly well.
And if you really need the Windows 10 OS, you can invest in a Parallels virtual machine.
Besides, for many of us, Apple has stores where we can take the computer into a Genius Bar to get problems fixed.
In NYC, we even have a 24 hour/367 store (Fifth Avenue). There will be a seventh store in Manhattan soon. There is one in Queens, Statin Island, and one in Brooklyn soon.
Other cities have access as well of course.
So, except in certain important cases like gaming and certain specific applications, or cases where the stylus and touch is really important and the Microsoft Surface would be a best choice, a Mac is a better investment for most.