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>That's very debatable. Even individuals on HN (which is rare atmosphere) defended Apple's claims. This isn't an accident, it happens due to Apple's pricing/ma

>That's very debatable. Even individuals on HN (which is rare atmosphere) defended Apple's claims. This isn't an accident, it happens due to Apple's pricing/marketing strategy. If you can convince people to pay a premium for your product (when compared to competitors), people psychologically _need_ that product to be better than the cheaper alternatives, or else they feel ripped off. Best to ignore anecdotes from customers and instead rely only on hard benchmarks/data and make purchasing decisions based on what is most suited to you.

stouset 5y ago
Apple products have been competitively priced against similar-performing hardware for years. The so-called "Apple tax" is a myth.
- sitzkrieg 5y ago
  uhhh in what alternative reality is this true?
  - mwint 5y ago
    The one that started roughly the time M1 started shipping in a laptop with good build quality and decent keyboard.
    - stouset 5y ago
      Honestly well before then. Phones—Apple's largest product by far—have been competitively priced their entire lifespan. One might even argue based on performance numbers and battery lifespan that they've been by far the best deal. As far as I understand it, their laptops have also been within a pretty reasonable margin of being competitively priced (at least for base models) for many years. Sure you can find cheaper alternatives, but those usually come with significant sacrifices (build quality, missing features or lower-quality versions of those features), etc. Obviously different people can vary widely in how much they value feature sets, but competitors' laptop models that line up closely in those feature sets have tended to be around the same price for awhile now.
  - evilduck 5y ago
    In most realities. If you list all dimensions of Apple's computing products as a radar chart and as a consumer that chart "shape" meets your needs, you will not find a competitor that meets those same needs on all of those dimensions but is also meaningfully cheaper. You can find comparable devices that are comparatively priced, and you can find cheaper devices that come with a slew of compromises, but Apple is incredibly hard to beat at their own game.
    - newaccount74 5y ago
      That's kind of a weird way to look at it. It assumes that your needs match exactly what Apple offers, which is rarely the case. For most users, Apple devices come with their own set of compromises. Instead of taking Apple's devices as the benchmark, and trying to find a device that's cheaper and better on all axes, you have to start with the users requirements, and see where you get from there. For example, if your requirement is "I want a silent machine for programming with lots of RAM for running VMs" then it's very unlikely that the cheapest option is going to be a Mac. If your requirement is "I want a machine for checking my emails and watching Netflix with a big screen" then it's also very unlikely that the cheapest option is a Mac. The only scenario where a Mac is reasonably priced is if your requirement is "I want a machine that is exactly like one of the few machines that Apple sells and I don't mind its shortcomings".
- zamalek 5y ago
  This is definitely not the case. I purchased a 32GB 8-core AMD CPU laptop (1060 NVIDIA GPU, unfortunately), in 2019, for $1100. There wasn't, and still is not, an Apple SKU that approaches anywhere near to the performance/dollar. Apple products have a very distinct and precise market. It's "good enough shit" for "I'm not willing to bother" price. That has _extreme_ value in the modern market. If you're asking anything serious of their hardware then you are, either, ignorant about what else is on offer (having only used Apple hardware for the past <many> years), or have workloads that so-happen to fall into that extremely narrow niche. > Similar-performing hardware for years In the past year I have <been forced to> worked with Apple hardware as a daily driver. When did you last you've use one of the alternatives as a daily driver? I mean, fuck, imagine for a second that Windows updates took 45min, because Apple updates sure as fuck do. That's a hard pill to swallow when my NixOS updates take 0 seconds.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    GP's claim has been publicly proven time and again, yet the myth persists because of the failure to actually match Apple's hardware feature for feature, spec for spec. Sure, you can build your own laptop without magsafe or Thunderbolt for <$x, but then you've failed to actually match Apple's hw and specs. Once you actually do that, you'll discover you can not duplicate any Apple hardware at any time in history with third-party off-the-shelf hardware without spending $100-$1000 more. And this does not take into account that Macs, as a rule, will remain in use longer and retain their re-sale value far better than any PC, so the total cost of ownership ends up being a lot less, and even this is not taking into account all the users' time Windows invariably wastes on idiotic things like randomly dropping a driver spontaneously without cause and requiring some attention to restore functionality of, say, a printer. Try using the search engine of your choice with the terms, "macs are more expensive," and nearly all the results reveal the notion that macs are more expensive was always a myth.

stouset 5y ago

Apple products have been competitively priced against similar-performing hardware for years. The so-called "Apple tax" is a myth.

sitzkrieg 5y ago
uhhh in what alternative reality is this true?
- mwint 5y ago
  The one that started roughly the time M1 started shipping in a laptop with good build quality and decent keyboard.
  - stouset 5y ago
    Honestly well before then. Phones—Apple's largest product by far—have been competitively priced their entire lifespan. One might even argue based on performance numbers and battery lifespan that they've been by far the best deal. As far as I understand it, their laptops have also been within a pretty reasonable margin of being competitively priced (at least for base models) for many years. Sure you can find cheaper alternatives, but those usually come with significant sacrifices (build quality, missing features or lower-quality versions of those features), etc. Obviously different people can vary widely in how much they value feature sets, but competitors' laptop models that line up closely in those feature sets have tended to be around the same price for awhile now.
- evilduck 5y ago
  In most realities. If you list all dimensions of Apple's computing products as a radar chart and as a consumer that chart "shape" meets your needs, you will not find a competitor that meets those same needs on all of those dimensions but is also meaningfully cheaper. You can find comparable devices that are comparatively priced, and you can find cheaper devices that come with a slew of compromises, but Apple is incredibly hard to beat at their own game.
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    That's kind of a weird way to look at it. It assumes that your needs match exactly what Apple offers, which is rarely the case. For most users, Apple devices come with their own set of compromises. Instead of taking Apple's devices as the benchmark, and trying to find a device that's cheaper and better on all axes, you have to start with the users requirements, and see where you get from there. For example, if your requirement is "I want a silent machine for programming with lots of RAM for running VMs" then it's very unlikely that the cheapest option is going to be a Mac. If your requirement is "I want a machine for checking my emails and watching Netflix with a big screen" then it's also very unlikely that the cheapest option is a Mac. The only scenario where a Mac is reasonably priced is if your requirement is "I want a machine that is exactly like one of the few machines that Apple sells and I don't mind its shortcomings".
zamalek 5y ago
This is definitely not the case. I purchased a 32GB 8-core AMD CPU laptop (1060 NVIDIA GPU, unfortunately), in 2019, for $1100. There wasn't, and still is not, an Apple SKU that approaches anywhere near to the performance/dollar. Apple products have a very distinct and precise market. It's "good enough shit" for "I'm not willing to bother" price. That has _extreme_ value in the modern market. If you're asking anything serious of their hardware then you are, either, ignorant about what else is on offer (having only used Apple hardware for the past <many> years), or have workloads that so-happen to fall into that extremely narrow niche. > Similar-performing hardware for years In the past year I have <been forced to> worked with Apple hardware as a daily driver. When did you last you've use one of the alternatives as a daily driver? I mean, fuck, imagine for a second that Windows updates took 45min, because Apple updates sure as fuck do. That's a hard pill to swallow when my NixOS updates take 0 seconds.
- Maursault 5y ago
  GP's claim has been publicly proven time and again, yet the myth persists because of the failure to actually match Apple's hardware feature for feature, spec for spec. Sure, you can build your own laptop without magsafe or Thunderbolt for <$x, but then you've failed to actually match Apple's hw and specs. Once you actually do that, you'll discover you can not duplicate any Apple hardware at any time in history with third-party off-the-shelf hardware without spending $100-$1000 more. And this does not take into account that Macs, as a rule, will remain in use longer and retain their re-sale value far better than any PC, so the total cost of ownership ends up being a lot less, and even this is not taking into account all the users' time Windows invariably wastes on idiotic things like randomly dropping a driver spontaneously without cause and requiring some attention to restore functionality of, say, a printer. Try using the search engine of your choice with the terms, "macs are more expensive," and nearly all the results reveal the notion that macs are more expensive was always a myth.