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is breathing light really a requirement? I would prefer faster and cheaper computers. IMHO I find Apple computers to be equivalent of SUV's. You can get a descent laptop at nearly 20-30% cheaper from Dell/HP/ASUS.

Maybe only Americans can afford such frivolity. The difference in price between a good Dell laptop and Apple one is same as wage for 1-2 months for a middle class person in most parts of the worlds.




I own a MacBook. I'm an a limited budget, and yet I paid more for it than I could have for similar spec non Apple hardware. You know why? Because I like it.

My life is full of crappy cheap gadgets and things. Nearly everything I deal with on a day to day basis has been designed to be manufactured as cheaply and as quickly as possible, and it's evident. I like using my little MacBook; it's slim, it's light, it's beautifully built, it's aesthetically pleasing, it has a great keyboard, there's nothing else out there that comes close to the trackpad, it's full of nice touches and it feels like someone has put a lot of thought into it's design.

About the same time, my sister bought herself a Toshiba laptop that, on paper, was equivalent to my macbook, but it cost her about 25% less. The toshiba is almost twice as fat, has a horrid keyboard, an even worse touch pad, a battery life of about two hours and flexes like you wouldn't believe.

I guess it's similar to buying expensive clothes or paying more for a nice car (I have neither)


After a few years, my macbook has basically fallen apart, gotten stains that wont come out from book covers, the top case still cracking even after replacing it several times over. The build quality is pretty irritating. My girlfriends netbook of 2 years although works just fine and is of identical thickness. I would like a sony vaio Z series with it's 13" 1080p screen, dual SSDs and 3 pounds of weight vs. a macbook, but have to use it because of iPhone development.


Mine's one of the early unibody Al ones, back before everything except the white ones were badged 'Pro'.


Use a little rubbing alcohol. It literally pulls all the dirt/stains off.


I agree macs are beautiful and buying good tools is smart, but I love my Toshiba. It's a tank. It's been around the world with me, banged around on trains, planes, buses in second and third world countries, I've slept on top of my laptop bag with the sucker inside, and it still runs. It's got cracks in the case and the keyboard is battered, but it still runs. My old Toshiba was a tank too, it went five years before dying, and I run my laptops hard.

I love the aesthetics of a Macbook Air for instance, but I'd be terrified to travel with one the way I travel.


You like paying for highly polished mediocrity


If that's how you see it, then yes, I guess I do. (obvious troll is obvious?)

The thing I've learned is that people often value things differently to how I do, and for reasons I don't often understand.

Personally, I find Windows to be a hugely annoying OS to use, and very limiting, but I understand that for almost everybody else it suits their needs fine and they like it. I'm a big fan of Linux, but I realise that may not suit everyone.

Same with music; you wouldn't believe what I listen to, and I don't imagine for a second you'd like it (hint: if an album doesn't have at least a few tracks that go for over 10 minutes, I'm not interested), and the reverse is possibly true as well.

What am I getting at here? Thankfully, we're not all clones of each other, and often personal tastes are very different. Expecting some stranger to justify their choices to you kind of indicates you haven't figured this yet.


Thank you for having one of the few reasoned statements of why you like a mac I've seen in this post! It's a breath of fresh air!

You like it simply because you like it. You recognize some people may not like it, and may like other things. And that's ok. You think your Mac is fine for you, and does what you want to do the way you want to do them and it may or may not be the case for other people and find that to be and alright way for the world to be.

Enlightened.


Except macs cost less and are better in every way. It is kinda funny that you guys have been telling this lie for 20 years and you think people don't all know you're full of it. Pathetic, but funny.


Oh great, it's you again. Apparently you're not getting it. Start engaging this community more intelligently or go back to 4Chan.


Lowercase c.


I always love ot laugh at people who equate "goosteppinb with the crowd" with "intelligence".

You know what is intelligent? Having a counter argument. All you have is snotty insults.

Kinda proves my point for me.


That you can read a thread like this and describe the sleep LED behavior as "frivolity" nicely encapsulates not only why Apple does well, but why a certain segment of its competition will never grasp why it keeps getting beaten.


Conversely, it also encapsulates why Apple will never do well with a particular segment of its competition ;)


Apple can't do well for that segment of the market until those people start to take Apple seriously. Right now, the prevailing opinion among Apple detractors seems to be that all the little touches are "fluff" and polish that don't add up to any monetary value at all.

Evidence of this abounds: my favorite example is the multitouch touchpad that Apple uses. If somebody is saying something good about a pointing device on a non-Apple laptop, odds are good that they've never spent time with Apple's touchpad. It's that much better, but if you haven't used it and you don't trust Apple or anybody who uses Apple products, you'll probably never assign it more than about $5 of value, when experienced users would easily value it at ten times that. (That's why it isn't insane for apple to release a standalone touchpad for $70).

Fortunately for Apple, far more people have been willing to try the iPhone than have been willing to try their computers, and many of them have discovered that "not sucking" is worth more than a few hundred megahertz. The "halo effect" is real, and is not due entirely to people "buying in" to an Apple lifestyle.

The people who have strong technical or financial barriers to using Apple computers are far outnumbered by the proud Apple haters who haven't actually used a Mac long enough to appreciate the little things. However, unless somebody else starts releasing well designed computer hardware and software, Apple will eventually win over most of the haters through sheer ubiquity. (I expect that at some point, there will be a tipping point where hating Apple becomes uncool. If we pass that tipping point before Apple has serious competition, Apple will probably achieve a near-monopoly.)


> Fortunately for Apple, far more people have been willing to try the iPhone than have been willing to try their computers

Most people I know that have (and love) the iPhone today hated it before they tried it. I had a friend who kept saying his Windows Mobile phone was fine for all the stuff he needed, and there was no reason to get an iPhone. After he moved in with me in Vancouver (from New Brunswick) and saw how fluid it was for me to use my iPhone, and how I never had to dick around with it uselessly like he did with his just to get it to work, he switched.

Two years of me telling him it was great, and he didn't believe me. A week of seeing me use it changed his mind.


"If somebody is saying something good about a pointing device on a non-Apple laptop, odds are good that they've never spent time with Apple's touchpad. It's that much better"

Personally, I despise the acceleration curve Apple uses when I'm using a mouse with my MBP. I went through all kinds of contortions to deal with it or change it. I tossed out my mighty mouse after a couple months due to crud build-up and returned the magic mouse because it was virtually impossible to use without hand cramps or having it slide across my desk.

The only thing I really think is special about the trackpad on my MBP is its size, but I've found that the pad on my Dell just seems to work better with higher accuracy and less padding around and the ergonomics "feel" better to me.

I'd pay extra money for them to un-suck their pointy interface devices and software. They're really that bad.

Why I can't I hook up something like an iPad to my Mac as an interface device? Mirror the screen on it so I have some direct eye-finger synergy? I'd pay for something like that, with a nice capacitive touch screen.


You'd pay for a VNC client? iTeleport is great.


You know....I don't know how I didn't think of that.


Why the hell does you divides the world between Apple haters and Apple fans?


I'm actually dividing the world between people who value good design in the things they use every day, and people who don't value good design. It's just a peculiarity of the market that Apple is the only computer company that is currently effectively targeting the former group. I realize that not all of the latter group actively criticize Apple and Apple users, but they are still likely to be surprised when they sit down and really use an Apple product.


What do you need faster for? Unless we're talking about gaming or rendering I would rather have a computer that loads Firefox half a second slower than one with a clunkier UI and less attention to detail.

>Maybe only Americans can afford such frivolity.

Tell us more about how you're better than us, please.


I resent that remark, because I own a Mac and drive an SUV, and the SUV is exactly the kind of cheap-falling-apart-crap that the Mac is the total antithesis of. Maybe it's possible to make a well-designed SUV, but mine is just awful. Latest example: the gas cap doesn't screw on and off like an ordinary fucking gas cap, it's a turn-1/8-of-a-turn-and-pull-out gas cap, with a lock. So, with all those moving parts, it broke and I had to spend like $80 getting a shop to forcibly remove the thing and replace it with another gas cap (non-locking, so it's more reliable). This is when it got permanently jammed--when it was only temporarily jammed, the only way to put gas in the damned tank was to rear back and kick it in the gas cap, which allows you to unlock and remove the gas cap in the usual fashion. This little fix permanently bent my fuel door out of position.

And newer SUV's are even worse. You can't even see out of the back of a fucking 08 Explorer.


Did you pay Apple prices? A Range Rover, BMW X5 or VW Touareg isn't like some godawful Explorer.


With even worse reliability statistics!


The cost of owning a device is more than just what you initially pay. If you don't understand this you're never going to be well to do.

I have about 6 different brands of laptop, which I use as my desktop and carry with me on my long commute. Every one of them started having odd hardware issues. The latest was a Acer. Within 2 weeks the backlight stopped working. I got it fixed (no laptop for at least 2 weeks) and within another month it was broken again. It continued to be a problem until the warranty expired. I'll never touch another Acer product as long as I live.

Mac can and will have lemons like any company does, but their support makes me not have to fear this. That alone is worth any little extra I pay.


If you prefer cheaper computers, buy a used one or two generations back model. Simple as that. Better than buying crap just for the psychological satisfaction of having something "new".


Normally I would agree with you, but having owned both I disagree. I think the latest generation of Macbook Pro's are just heads and tails above the older generations.


Crap people buy crap computers. They aren't even thinking about it. It's like they don't think they are worthy enough, and so they're jealous of those of us with more Self esteem.


I don't think anyone is saying it's a requirement. Just a nice touch. Many people who work in technology are paid quite well and can afford to buy what they want instead of the bare minimum of what they need. I'd rather not be rude but since you went there why even buy a new computer at all? You could donate that money to one of those unfortunate places and feed a family for half a year.


Right, except the "SUV" is smaller, looks nicer, has a better OS, etc...

And you can buy a HP/Dell that costs exactly the same as your Mac, if you looked at the more expensive end of their lineup.

Apple does not make cheap computers. HP/Dell make both.

And who really cares about faster these days?


Faster is just one part of the whole experience. Buy a ssd and put that as your main drive in a mbp and you will have a faster computer and one that is aesthetically pleasing. The trackpad on the mbp makes it usable as a laptop without any peripherals. The fact that I can have my mbp sleep and wake with a reliability is one of the largest selling points to me. Every windows computer I have ever owned has consistently failed me on this point.

Edit: I guess I should make it clear that I am agreeing with you.


> Every windows computer I have ever owned has consistently failed me on this point.

Ever tried ThinkPad? :)


The lenovo one yeah:) it also failed it's motherboard for no reason. Maybe by the time I got that one from work I was too gun shy to give it a thorough test of the sleeping abilities though.


I assume I got few upvotes as well, its sad to see HN overtaken by Apple fanboi's.

For those who disliked the comment didn't the POTUS [Obama] himself comment that iPad was a distraction.


You didn't even spell decent right, you wrote descent... And anyways, I don't want a "descent" laptop, I want one that I actually like using. I have a Dell for work and a Macbook for home. There is absolutely no comparison, Windows ruins the experience and hardware is not the sum of the product. Specs are meaningless, it's how the product actually performs.


But how much does the timing of the blinking light add to the cost of a macbook? Would it cost $10 less if it pulsed 40 beats/minutes like a Dell? Of course not. Maybe only Cornell students like yourself can afford such false dichotomy. By the way, did you know that the difference in annual tuition between Cornell and an excellent public school like the University of Michigan is three years salary for a middle class person in someplace like Mumbia, India? Is an Ivy League education really a requirement?




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