4 ms·

Wow, if you actually look at the hardware is it really that high-end?

jcromartie 17y ago
From some standpoints, yes. The design and build quality of machines like the MacBook Pro certainly trumps anything available from commodity PC makers.
- javanix 17y ago
  It certainly trumps something that sells for $600, but is the build quality all that much better than a comparably priced ThinkPad or one of Dell's new high-end machines? The only real hardware advantage that I can find which isn't available elsewhere is the nice, fully internal battery that the Pros come with now. You can get one that performs similarly from Lenovo, but it doesn't look as elegant.
  - Retric 17y ago
    In less than 3 years my sister's 1700$ dell lost 5 keys (she was typing on the rubber under the keys) and 15% of the screen stopped working (thin lines from top to bottom). She replaced it a few months ago with a 2400$ apple laptop. She did not need more speed, or memory just something that would survive constant use. PS: She did not have the free time to mail it back to be fixed, and waited for a break so she could migrate to the next machine. I suggested a new Dell every 18 months, but that was not worth the hassle. And worst case she can show up at the apple store and get it fixed while she waits.
    - cstejerean 17y ago
      Why did your sister need a $2400 apple laptop if not for the speed and memory? If you are in the US at least you shouldn't have to spend that much for a new Mac. The 13" MBP starts $1200 and you can get a 15.4" MBP starting at $1700 from Amazon, with free shipping and no sales tax (in the majority of states).
      - Retric 17y ago
        It's not about need, she bumped the RAM, Disk, and added the AppleCare Protection Plan because she felt it was a reasonable thing to do. Honestly, spending less than 3k for something you are going to use several hours a day for a few years seems reasonable to me.
  - jcromartie 17y ago
    Yes, I do think it's better. I've got a ThinkPad T400, a white MacBook right here (and my wife has a Pro). The T400 has five buttons around the trackpad... and Apple accomplishes the same functionality with one trackpad and one button (and no button on the new models). The T400 has a lit keyboard toggled by a key. The light is actually just an LED pointing down from the lid. I can see the PCB it's attached to. Compare that to Apple's ambient light sensing backlit keys. There is a key on the T400 to zoom the screen, but it just changes the resolution! Compare that to control+two-finger-drag on the MacBook, which smoothly zooms in on any region of the screen. The T400 has a physical switch on a corner of the case to turn off the wireless hardware. The MacBook provides it through a menu. The T400 for some reason still has a plain old full-sized VGA connector with screw posts, compared to mini-DVI. It's a holistic thing, I guess. A design is either "together" or not. Lenovo doesn't have it.
    - w1ntermute 17y ago
      "The T400 for some reason still has a plain old full-sized VGA connector with screw posts, compared to mini-DVI." Why would you want mini-DVI? Mini-DVI is a proprietary Apple-only connector that forces you to buy an adapter so that you can connect all other hardware to it. By the way, the T400s has DisplayPort, which, OTOH, is an open standard.
    - rg 17y ago
      Some of these points have pros and cons, actually. The T400 appears to have five buttons around the trackpad because it has an exta "trackpoint" red nub in the keyboard, so you can handle cursor, scrolling, and typing without moving either hand from the keyboard--indispensable to all the people who have learned to use it. The T400 has an LED to illuminate keyboard and slightly more so you can turn it on or off when you need to, rather than when an ambient light sensor thinks best, and you can hold anything under the light to see it. (Think airplanes.) Very useful. The T400 has a physical switch to turn off wireless hardware so you can do it when the machine is off, quickly, without booting up and using a menu, and so you can physically verify its status. The T400 has connectors for devices most often found in its environment. ThinkPad evolves its connectors, but a little more conservatively than Apple. Which plan is best depends on what particular users need to connect. You also get some complaints that a new Mac can't connect to existing peripherals. Design is vital, Apple has some great design points, but ThinkPad has some different but equally great design points. Read David Hill's blog (http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/ http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/) for insight into the meticulous design thinking behind ThinkPad.
zimbabwe 17y ago
Hardware in terms of ram, graphics card, hard disk: Not in a distinguishable way. Hardware in terms of firm design, usability, compactness, and aesthetic: I can't think of anything that comes close to Apple's design. I can barely think of computers that come close to looking as good, and those are ones that don't feel good when you're actually using them.
thomaspaine 17y ago
It wasn't the hardware the convinced me to buy a mac, it was OS X. A company I interned at lent me a powerbook, and after about a week of using it I had basically stopped using my thinkpad altogether. The user experience of windows XP always felt super clunky and glued together after that. Also, OS X was my first real exposure to working in a unix based environment. Some people may disagree, but I discovered a definite preference for working in unix/linux. I eventually replaced the OS on my old desktop with Ubuntu, which is nice, but it's still hard for me to imagine a non-technical person like my girlfriend using Ubuntu. However, my girlfriend has switched over to OS X as well, and is much happier than when she was on windows xp. I guess I see OS X as basically being a linux distro with an excellent user experience. Of course, your mileage may differ.
- pavel_lishin 17y ago
  I didn't mind the user experience of XP; in fact, there are a lot of things I still prefer in Windows over OS X. However, the BSD back-end of OS X has completely sold me on mac laptops as a work machine forever. (I know I can install Cygwin, or switch to an actual linux desktop, but those are the things that feel clunky and glued together to me.)
djahng 17y ago
Open up a Mac Pro, then open up a Dell. You don't need to be an electrical engineer to appreciate the difference.
- mynameishere 17y ago
  It's always fun to actually compare the specs of comparable products: (An HP) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4375471&CatId=6 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det... http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=NDE4NDIwNA http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=... Very, very similar. The apple's CPU is about 200 dollars more, and its video card about 100 dollars more. But the difference in the computers' prices is about 1500 dollars. To me, it's a pretty big ripoff, but I guess that's the value of branding. BMW and Lexus are also ripoffs by any objective standard.
  - pavel_lishin 17y ago
    > BMW and Lexus are also ripoffs by any objective standard. Very well said. I bought a mac laptop because I enjoy working on it much more than I do a windows PC; I didn't make the choice by comparing the prices of the components, or the relative value of the chemicals involved in assembling the thing.
diskrete 17y ago
Hardware is not what defines “high-end” any more. Go into Best Buy and you’ll see RAM, CPU speed and hard disk sizes listed on the features tags. Those specs are increasingly meaningless for most consumers as any computer in the store will do what they need. The more they focus on these specs, the more PC makers allow their product to become a commodity. Design, usability, buying experience and after-sales service are what really differentiate computers. If any computer is sufficient to do my daily tasks, I’m going to look for the cheapest one available. But I’ll pay more if you can sell me on those intangible benefits. That’s the high-end of the market.

From some standpoints, yes. The design and build quality of machines like the MacBook Pro certainly trumps anything available from commodity PC makers.

javanix 17y ago
It certainly trumps something that sells for $600, but is the build quality all that much better than a comparably priced ThinkPad or one of Dell's new high-end machines? The only real hardware advantage that I can find which isn't available elsewhere is the nice, fully internal battery that the Pros come with now. You can get one that performs similarly from Lenovo, but it doesn't look as elegant.
- Retric 17y ago
  In less than 3 years my sister's 1700$ dell lost 5 keys (she was typing on the rubber under the keys) and 15% of the screen stopped working (thin lines from top to bottom). She replaced it a few months ago with a 2400$ apple laptop. She did not need more speed, or memory just something that would survive constant use. PS: She did not have the free time to mail it back to be fixed, and waited for a break so she could migrate to the next machine. I suggested a new Dell every 18 months, but that was not worth the hassle. And worst case she can show up at the apple store and get it fixed while she waits.
  - cstejerean 17y ago
    Why did your sister need a $2400 apple laptop if not for the speed and memory? If you are in the US at least you shouldn't have to spend that much for a new Mac. The 13" MBP starts $1200 and you can get a 15.4" MBP starting at $1700 from Amazon, with free shipping and no sales tax (in the majority of states).
    - Retric 17y ago
      It's not about need, she bumped the RAM, Disk, and added the AppleCare Protection Plan because she felt it was a reasonable thing to do. Honestly, spending less than 3k for something you are going to use several hours a day for a few years seems reasonable to me.
- jcromartie 17y ago
  Yes, I do think it's better. I've got a ThinkPad T400, a white MacBook right here (and my wife has a Pro). The T400 has five buttons around the trackpad... and Apple accomplishes the same functionality with one trackpad and one button (and no button on the new models). The T400 has a lit keyboard toggled by a key. The light is actually just an LED pointing down from the lid. I can see the PCB it's attached to. Compare that to Apple's ambient light sensing backlit keys. There is a key on the T400 to zoom the screen, but it just changes the resolution! Compare that to control+two-finger-drag on the MacBook, which smoothly zooms in on any region of the screen. The T400 has a physical switch on a corner of the case to turn off the wireless hardware. The MacBook provides it through a menu. The T400 for some reason still has a plain old full-sized VGA connector with screw posts, compared to mini-DVI. It's a holistic thing, I guess. A design is either "together" or not. Lenovo doesn't have it.
  - w1ntermute 17y ago
    "The T400 for some reason still has a plain old full-sized VGA connector with screw posts, compared to mini-DVI." Why would you want mini-DVI? Mini-DVI is a proprietary Apple-only connector that forces you to buy an adapter so that you can connect all other hardware to it. By the way, the T400s has DisplayPort, which, OTOH, is an open standard.
  - rg 17y ago
    Some of these points have pros and cons, actually. The T400 appears to have five buttons around the trackpad because it has an exta "trackpoint" red nub in the keyboard, so you can handle cursor, scrolling, and typing without moving either hand from the keyboard--indispensable to all the people who have learned to use it. The T400 has an LED to illuminate keyboard and slightly more so you can turn it on or off when you need to, rather than when an ambient light sensor thinks best, and you can hold anything under the light to see it. (Think airplanes.) Very useful. The T400 has a physical switch to turn off wireless hardware so you can do it when the machine is off, quickly, without booting up and using a menu, and so you can physically verify its status. The T400 has connectors for devices most often found in its environment. ThinkPad evolves its connectors, but a little more conservatively than Apple. Which plan is best depends on what particular users need to connect. You also get some complaints that a new Mac can't connect to existing peripherals. Design is vital, Apple has some great design points, but ThinkPad has some different but equally great design points. Read David Hill's blog (http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/ http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/) for insight into the meticulous design thinking behind ThinkPad.

zimbabwe 17y ago

Hardware in terms of ram, graphics card, hard disk: Not in a distinguishable way. Hardware in terms of firm design, usability, compactness, and aesthetic: I can't think of anything that comes close to Apple's design. I can barely think of computers that come close to looking as good, and those are ones that don't feel good when you're actually using them.

thomaspaine 17y ago

It wasn't the hardware the convinced me to buy a mac, it was OS X. A company I interned at lent me a powerbook, and after about a week of using it I had basically stopped using my thinkpad altogether. The user experience of windows XP always felt super clunky and glued together after that. Also, OS X was my first real exposure to working in a unix based environment. Some people may disagree, but I discovered a definite preference for working in unix/linux. I eventually replaced the OS on my old desktop with Ubuntu, which is nice, but it's still hard for me to imagine a non-technical person like my girlfriend using Ubuntu. However, my girlfriend has switched over to OS X as well, and is much happier than when she was on windows xp. I guess I see OS X as basically being a linux distro with an excellent user experience. Of course, your mileage may differ.

pavel_lishin 17y ago
I didn't mind the user experience of XP; in fact, there are a lot of things I still prefer in Windows over OS X. However, the BSD back-end of OS X has completely sold me on mac laptops as a work machine forever. (I know I can install Cygwin, or switch to an actual linux desktop, but those are the things that feel clunky and glued together to me.)

djahng 17y ago

Open up a Mac Pro, then open up a Dell. You don't need to be an electrical engineer to appreciate the difference.

mynameishere 17y ago
It's always fun to actually compare the specs of comparable products: (An HP) http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4375471&CatId=6 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det... http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=NDE4NDIwNA http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/configure/MB871LL/A?mco=... Very, very similar. The apple's CPU is about 200 dollars more, and its video card about 100 dollars more. But the difference in the computers' prices is about 1500 dollars. To me, it's a pretty big ripoff, but I guess that's the value of branding. BMW and Lexus are also ripoffs by any objective standard.
- pavel_lishin 17y ago
  > BMW and Lexus are also ripoffs by any objective standard. Very well said. I bought a mac laptop because I enjoy working on it much more than I do a windows PC; I didn't make the choice by comparing the prices of the components, or the relative value of the chemicals involved in assembling the thing.

diskrete 17y ago

Hardware is not what defines “high-end” any more. Go into Best Buy and you’ll see RAM, CPU speed and hard disk sizes listed on the features tags. Those specs are increasingly meaningless for most consumers as any computer in the store will do what they need. The more they focus on these specs, the more PC makers allow their product to become a commodity. Design, usability, buying experience and after-sales service are what really differentiate computers. If any computer is sufficient to do my daily tasks, I’m going to look for the cheapest one available. But I’ll pay more if you can sell me on those intangible benefits. That’s the high-end of the market.