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My 2004 Corolla is outdated, underpowered, and was "overpriced". It has 250,000 miles, and we use it every day without worrying about breakdowns. Likewise, I us

by akeck 11y ago

My 2004 Corolla is outdated, underpowered, and was "overpriced". It has 250,000 miles, and we use it every day without worrying about breakdowns. Likewise, I use my 2009 MacBook Pro every day without worrying about breakdowns [1]. Quality comes with a steep up-front price that pays you back with a long tail of value. [1] The native Apple hardware has failed exactly once in the MacBook's lifetime (SATA cable)

joshstrange 11y ago
This I've got to agree with, they are EXTREMELY reliable machines in my experience, I've never had an issue with one other than my DVD drive on my first macbook but I never used that really anyways, it honestly could have been broken from the factory and I just noticed it after about a year (still in AppleCare). I watched my friends buy a new PC every 1-2 years because theirs were literally falling apart but continue to buy $500-$600 crap laptops.
restalis 11y ago
They may happen to be reliable because you just take better care of pricey things (but that's not to say that it isn't their merit to turn you into a careful person).
- akeck 11y ago
  True, except I've dropped the MacBook about ten times over its lifetime. I've been more careful with it lately. ;-)
codemod 11y ago
I agree.. My original 2007 iPhone still runs.. my old Macbook ran superbly for 7 years before I replaced it.
pbhowmic 11y ago
I can second that. One thing about every PC of say a comparable price to a MacBook Pro out there I notice is shoddy workmanship, the cut-corners approach they take. Say you went for a $1500 price point. For that, a PC will get you a bigger screen, more memory, more storage but w/o fail, poor quality in every instance. Take battery life, my biggest issue with any Windows laptop. My 2012 MacBook Pro's battery is still going strong. My 2014 Zbook's battery life is less than that of my Macbook. Earlier I had a Dell whose battery fizzled out in 6 months. Ditto the replacement battery. Then there is the Magsafe adapter. The Zbook's adapter's insulation frayed and I discarded it as unsafe. I honestly still see my Macbook in operation for at leats 2 years, I may replace the hard drive with a solidstate to improve performance but that is it.
jerf 11y ago
My ~$1000 Dell Studio 17 that I'm typing this on is now 6 years old. A hard drive failed and I once had to open it up to clean out the rather substantial dust bunny that had collected in front of the fan exhaust. I've lost one of the screws for the bottom plate. That... pretty much runs the damage gamut, knock on wood. Also I have to admit the numeric keypad is pretty dusty. None of the keycaps are even rubbed off. All the ports work. (Or so I assume. I've never tested the firewire or eSATA port.) (Of course, a true Apple fan wouldn't be caught dead with this brick, but, I'm a pretty big guy. In relative terms it is to me like a 15" is for most people.) Yes, you can't get quality without paying for it, but... Apple prices have come in above that. Also just let me point out that I'm on a 6-year-old laptop and while I periodically pop open some shopping websites and browse, I'm almost shocked at how little improvement spending $1000 again would buy me. "A much nicer graphics card" is pretty big, yeah, but that's about it. (I already put an SSD in this thing.) I remember when I could do things like jump from a 486 to a Pentium Pro with 8 times the RAM and 20 times the hard drive etc etc in the same time frame.

by akeck 11y ago

joshstrange 11y ago

This I've got to agree with, they are EXTREMELY reliable machines in my experience, I've never had an issue with one other than my DVD drive on my first macbook but I never used that really anyways, it honestly could have been broken from the factory and I just noticed it after about a year (still in AppleCare). I watched my friends buy a new PC every 1-2 years because theirs were literally falling apart but continue to buy $500-$600 crap laptops.

restalis 11y ago

They may happen to be reliable because you just take better care of pricey things (but that's not to say that it isn't their merit to turn you into a careful person).

akeck 11y ago
True, except I've dropped the MacBook about ten times over its lifetime. I've been more careful with it lately. ;-)

codemod 11y ago

I agree.. My original 2007 iPhone still runs.. my old Macbook ran superbly for 7 years before I replaced it.

pbhowmic 11y ago

I can second that. One thing about every PC of say a comparable price to a MacBook Pro out there I notice is shoddy workmanship, the cut-corners approach they take. Say you went for a $1500 price point. For that, a PC will get you a bigger screen, more memory, more storage but w/o fail, poor quality in every instance. Take battery life, my biggest issue with any Windows laptop. My 2012 MacBook Pro's battery is still going strong. My 2014 Zbook's battery life is less than that of my Macbook. Earlier I had a Dell whose battery fizzled out in 6 months. Ditto the replacement battery. Then there is the Magsafe adapter. The Zbook's adapter's insulation frayed and I discarded it as unsafe. I honestly still see my Macbook in operation for at leats 2 years, I may replace the hard drive with a solidstate to improve performance but that is it.

jerf 11y ago

My ~$1000 Dell Studio 17 that I'm typing this on is now 6 years old. A hard drive failed and I once had to open it up to clean out the rather substantial dust bunny that had collected in front of the fan exhaust. I've lost one of the screws for the bottom plate. That... pretty much runs the damage gamut, knock on wood. Also I have to admit the numeric keypad is pretty dusty. None of the keycaps are even rubbed off. All the ports work. (Or so I assume. I've never tested the firewire or eSATA port.) (Of course, a true Apple fan wouldn't be caught dead with this brick, but, I'm a pretty big guy. In relative terms it is to me like a 15" is for most people.) Yes, you can't get quality without paying for it, but... Apple prices have come in above that. Also just let me point out that I'm on a 6-year-old laptop and while I periodically pop open some shopping websites and browse, I'm almost shocked at how little improvement spending $1000 again would buy me. "A much nicer graphics card" is pretty big, yeah, but that's about it. (I already put an SSD in this thing.) I remember when I could do things like jump from a 486 to a Pentium Pro with 8 times the RAM and 20 times the hard drive etc etc in the same time frame.