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MacBooks are supposedly "overpriced", except he couldn't find any entirely comparable hardware--not even counting the value of having macOS. So in what sense ar

by wrs 10y ago

MacBooks are supposedly "overpriced", except he couldn't find any entirely comparable hardware--not even counting the value of having macOS. So in what sense are they overpriced? It seems the other manufacturers care about this market niche even less than Apple does.

dilap 10y ago
They're overpriced compared to what we had back in the day with the mb airs -- great performance and specs, sitting in the $1000-$1500 price slot, $2K pimped.
- paulcole 10y ago
  funny, when I go to the grocery store, their oranges are way more expensive than the apples I bought a decade ago.
jychang 10y ago
Eh, I use a Macbook Pro as my primary machine, and that's overselling it. Sure, the people who say "look at this $700 machine with the same specs as a Macbook Pro" are stupid, but there's a couple of comparable laptops. Most notably, the Dell XPS 15 even puts the MBP to shame in some areas, and it basically runs linux out of the box despite what this article says. I'd get it if I wasn't happy with my current 15 inch rMBP.
makomk 10y ago
MacBooks are generally fairly reasonably priced so long as you want the exact, precise hardware configuration they want, with no feature they don't offer or that are madatory but you don't need. Also, I'm pretty sure none of the MacBooks meet his "Linux compatible out the box" criteria either.
superuser2 10y ago
They're "overpriced" because you can buy more GHz, cores, GB ram, and GB storage for drastically less money. What you can't find is screen resolution, quality of the keyboard, trackpad, and hinge, battery life, and general polish ("marketing") along with the other specs, while still costing less.
- redler 10y ago
  I agree, but I wouldn't characterize polish as "marketing". Polish includes design cohesion, build quality, choice of materials, a philosophy of engineering in service of the user experience (consider the comment elsewhere in this thread about how Apple has bespoke handling for Thunderbolt to allow it to power down at idle), and software/hardware integration. It's arguable that Apple has slipped in some of these areas, but none of them are "marketing", and all of them contribute to the sense of quality (and to cost).
  - superuser2 10y ago
    I agree, but I think most critics of Apple would claim that only specs are real, and what we're talking about here is an illusion created by branding.
    - redler 10y ago
      I think we're on the same page. Apple's relatively costly products will be seen as an especially bad value by those who do not see value in polish and attention to detail (or who believe polish and attention to detail -- particularly Apple's --- are a marketing illusion).

by wrs 10y ago

dilap 10y ago

They're overpriced compared to what we had back in the day with the mb airs -- great performance and specs, sitting in the $1000-$1500 price slot, $2K pimped.

paulcole 10y ago
funny, when I go to the grocery store, their oranges are way more expensive than the apples I bought a decade ago.

jychang 10y ago

Eh, I use a Macbook Pro as my primary machine, and that's overselling it. Sure, the people who say "look at this $700 machine with the same specs as a Macbook Pro" are stupid, but there's a couple of comparable laptops. Most notably, the Dell XPS 15 even puts the MBP to shame in some areas, and it basically runs linux out of the box despite what this article says. I'd get it if I wasn't happy with my current 15 inch rMBP.

makomk 10y ago

MacBooks are generally fairly reasonably priced so long as you want the exact, precise hardware configuration they want, with no feature they don't offer or that are madatory but you don't need. Also, I'm pretty sure none of the MacBooks meet his "Linux compatible out the box" criteria either.

superuser2 10y ago

They're "overpriced" because you can buy more GHz, cores, GB ram, and GB storage for drastically less money. What you can't find is screen resolution, quality of the keyboard, trackpad, and hinge, battery life, and general polish ("marketing") along with the other specs, while still costing less.

redler 10y ago
I agree, but I wouldn't characterize polish as "marketing". Polish includes design cohesion, build quality, choice of materials, a philosophy of engineering in service of the user experience (consider the comment elsewhere in this thread about how Apple has bespoke handling for Thunderbolt to allow it to power down at idle), and software/hardware integration. It's arguable that Apple has slipped in some of these areas, but none of them are "marketing", and all of them contribute to the sense of quality (and to cost).
- superuser2 10y ago
  I agree, but I think most critics of Apple would claim that only specs are real, and what we're talking about here is an illusion created by branding.
  - redler 10y ago
    I think we're on the same page. Apple's relatively costly products will be seen as an especially bad value by those who do not see value in polish and attention to detail (or who believe polish and attention to detail -- particularly Apple's --- are a marketing illusion).