3 ms·

uhhh in what alternative reality is this true?

by sitzkrieg 5y ago

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".

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".