4 ms·

Macs are incredibly good value. The M1 Air actually starts at 800$ if you chase the deals and $900 if you buy from Apple with education discount. Nothing ever

by mrtksn 4y ago

Macs are incredibly good value. The M1 Air actually starts at 800$ if you chase the deals and $900 if you buy from Apple with education discount. Nothing ever comes to the quality at that price, so even if you can buy much cheaper laptops those suffer in quality and performance. This means the value per dollar is not any better than MacBook Air, unless you are extremely short on dollars. Also the re-sell value of Apple products is good and combined with the durability of Apple laptops(this is where the repairability folks fail to convince most people because for most people Apple devices don't break down, they become obsolete after extensive use) the money spent on Macs turns to be an investment. The "Apple premium" you pay when you buy an iDevice is actually a recoverable when you sell it.

mschild 4y ago
I agree they are but what if you can't afford to spend 800 or 900 on a laptop? There's also plenty of people who use their laptop until it's dead. Infact, I'd argue it's probably more economical to purchase a repairable laptop and replace parts as needed.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  If you can't afford $900 you shouldn't be buying a laptop unless you absolutely need it in short term to get out of your current situation. You are probably in a precarious state, not really a chooser at this time and all you can do is to sort by price and buy the cheapest.
  - mschild 4y ago
    Thats an incredibly privileged view on this. The world doesn't run high paying western salaries. Most people earn significantly less. The average monthly indian salary, by now the largest country in the world population wise, is roundabout 450 USD. Your advice boils down to just get richer and don't be poor.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      My advice is, don't spend your money on low quality stuff unless you absolutely have to(i.e. maybe you will do some data entry stuff to buy food, then maybe you can spent a few hundred dollars on a laptop but if you are not in that kind of a situation save up buy something of good value later).
    - 0zemp2c 4y ago
      > Thats an incredibly privileged view on this. The world doesn't run high paying western salaries but that hurts Intel too...their profit margins are in their high-end CPUs people keep talking about the cost of Macs but they're cheaper than most Windows laptops... go look at the HP, Lenovo sites...they're not steering people toward $400 laptops
      - mschild 4y ago
        Not massively advertising low cost options and not having any at all are wildly different things. Of course companies push the items with the highest margins. They want to make money after all, but they still have plenty of options in the sub 600 category that will last 5+ years under normal use without issue. There's obviously a market for low priced laptops, otherwise so many companies wouldn't build them. And it doesn't hurt Intel. If the choice for them is to sell a low margin CPU or none at all, they're gonna sell the low margin CPU.
    - mlsu 4y ago
      Not to mention, Apple can be significantly more expensive in other countries due to tariffs and exchange rates.
okasaki 4y ago
If you're looking for value and durability, you can buy a used business laptop like thinkpad or dell latitude. You can get a used thinkpad with an 8th gen intel and 16gb ram for $200 maybe. Sure the cpu will be slower but with 8gb ram on a mac you're not going to be doing much anyway.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  The screen will be terrible, the performance will be 1/3 of the M1 air, the battery life will be useless and the device itself will be heavy. Bad deal overall. At that price I would prefer a Chromebook.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    AMD's 5nm chips compete with and outperform the M1, low end laptops ship with 16GB of media by default, 8-10h of battery life is good enough for most people and Dell XPS laptops, for example, weigh 1.17kg, which is less than the M1 Air.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      Can you give me a link to such a device? Sub 1000 laptop with 10H battery life, lighter and smaller than Air, higher performance than M1 sounds good. I wonder why people buy those about Air heavy, about Air performing premium and expensive laptops then.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        Grabbed a Dev On on sale for $500 and I'm very happy with it.
        mrtksn 4y ago
        Good for you, what's this "Dev" laptop exactly?

by mrtksn 4y ago

mschild 4y ago

I agree they are but what if you can't afford to spend 800 or 900 on a laptop? There's also plenty of people who use their laptop until it's dead. Infact, I'd argue it's probably more economical to purchase a repairable laptop and replace parts as needed.

mrtksn 4y ago
If you can't afford $900 you shouldn't be buying a laptop unless you absolutely need it in short term to get out of your current situation. You are probably in a precarious state, not really a chooser at this time and all you can do is to sort by price and buy the cheapest.
- mschild 4y ago
  Thats an incredibly privileged view on this. The world doesn't run high paying western salaries. Most people earn significantly less. The average monthly indian salary, by now the largest country in the world population wise, is roundabout 450 USD. Your advice boils down to just get richer and don't be poor.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    My advice is, don't spend your money on low quality stuff unless you absolutely have to(i.e. maybe you will do some data entry stuff to buy food, then maybe you can spent a few hundred dollars on a laptop but if you are not in that kind of a situation save up buy something of good value later).
  - 0zemp2c 4y ago
    > Thats an incredibly privileged view on this. The world doesn't run high paying western salaries but that hurts Intel too...their profit margins are in their high-end CPUs people keep talking about the cost of Macs but they're cheaper than most Windows laptops... go look at the HP, Lenovo sites...they're not steering people toward $400 laptops
    - mschild 4y ago
      Not massively advertising low cost options and not having any at all are wildly different things. Of course companies push the items with the highest margins. They want to make money after all, but they still have plenty of options in the sub 600 category that will last 5+ years under normal use without issue. There's obviously a market for low priced laptops, otherwise so many companies wouldn't build them. And it doesn't hurt Intel. If the choice for them is to sell a low margin CPU or none at all, they're gonna sell the low margin CPU.
  - mlsu 4y ago
    Not to mention, Apple can be significantly more expensive in other countries due to tariffs and exchange rates.

okasaki 4y ago

If you're looking for value and durability, you can buy a used business laptop like thinkpad or dell latitude. You can get a used thinkpad with an 8th gen intel and 16gb ram for $200 maybe. Sure the cpu will be slower but with 8gb ram on a mac you're not going to be doing much anyway.

mrtksn 4y ago
The screen will be terrible, the performance will be 1/3 of the M1 air, the battery life will be useless and the device itself will be heavy. Bad deal overall. At that price I would prefer a Chromebook.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  AMD's 5nm chips compete with and outperform the M1, low end laptops ship with 16GB of media by default, 8-10h of battery life is good enough for most people and Dell XPS laptops, for example, weigh 1.17kg, which is less than the M1 Air.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    Can you give me a link to such a device? Sub 1000 laptop with 10H battery life, lighter and smaller than Air, higher performance than M1 sounds good. I wonder why people buy those about Air heavy, about Air performing premium and expensive laptops then.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      Grabbed a Dev On on sale for $500 and I'm very happy with it.
      - mrtksn 4y ago
        Good for you, what's this "Dev" laptop exactly?