While the premium is indeed high, the total cost of the tool even at the premium is quite low. I think you can get the 14 M3 Max fairly decked out at around $5-7k. Not even close to a new car these days.
Maybe I am in the minority but I see it as a tool. My workflows work well in MacOS, I like the build quality of the tool. My replacement timeline is generally pretty long. The value this tool generates is massive compared to the cost of it.
I remember how often coworkers would joke about the cost of a Kinesis keyboard. They would die if they were a mechanic.
Do people actually care about costs this low for business use? Thats just a minor cost.
Certainly there is a line to when it makes sense to compare costs but we are talking about sub $10k costs for a tool that lets say has a 3 year life for a business, so $3300 per year or $275 per month. I would think most of the individuals on this forum are generating more than $275 of value per month on their laptop.
Its less about justifying and more that the cost is meaningless compared to the value. There is some intersection of objective and subjective analysis here, I don't care if you want a $10k laptop that runs linux.
> Do people actually care about costs this low for business use? Thats just a minor cost.
Yes, in many places outside of SV, they do. $10k is slightly less than what I paid for my car, it’s more than a year of rent and is more than some (unfortunate) people in this country make in a year. And this is still Europe, a country with paved roads, fiber internet and free healthcare.
I do my job on a $1700 MacBook, I could probably do it on a $300 Thinkpad and I personally could go and buy a $10k laptop, but my girlfriend would without doubt leave me on the very same day.
Surprisingly, I care about things like battery life, noise and being able to put a laptop on my lap without the heat ensuring that there will never be any little Scarfaces
What are you talking about? Just the four cards is $10k, and then you still need to buy the rest of the computer. And you probably can’t take it with you and use it from the coffee shop or the couch.
And yes, Windows systems are bad. They shipped broken TouchID for years, and they don’t trust you to turn off OneDrive (and will re-enable at every turn). Edge just gave me a toolbar yesterday that looked like browser chrome, but was actually a GamePass ad. I’m just pulling the easiest examples, listen to Windows Weekly for a full enumeration.
A car that cheap will nickle and dime you until you've spend 5x its initial price. If you dont get lucky and it dies on you before your money was better spent by car mechanics.
