Premium Apples!
I’m the “computer guy” to many of my friends. I had a friend ask for recommendations. Specifically, if I thought it was worthwhile buying from Apple.
I told him I’d check on it, but that I didn’t imagine it would be worthwhile. I had no idea how bad Apple would be until I ran the numbers.
For a high end Mac Pro, Apple.com lists a suggested configuration for $2,799. That’s a lot of money, but the machine is pretty impressive:
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors
2GB memory
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
320GB hard drive
16x double-layer SuperDrive
It looks great (but we’d want to add some more memory). Problem is, I priced the same rig, with 180gb more drive space, for $2,360. That makes the Apple $400 more expensive. I guess that’s not sooo bad, since the Mac comes with an OS. Vista ultimate 64 bit edition costs $169 with a system, so that makes the Apple OS more than twice as expensive. Maybe it’s worth it, I doubt it, but maybe.
However, my friend is unlikely to drop 2 grand on a computer and unless you’re rendering massive videos or doing large-scale computational analysis, dual quad core processors (*jazz hands* “Harpertown!” *jazz hands*) don’t actually make much difference. More cores doesn’t mean faster unless the applications are specifically tuned to use those extra cores. Neither World of Warcraft or Club Penguin are specifically tuned.
So I took a look at a “midrange” Mac. The 24inch iMac, which apple retails for $1,799:
2.8GHz Intel Core 2 duo processor
2GB memory
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
320GB hard drive
8x double-layer SuperDrive
24 inch LCD monitor
This is where it got really ugly. I priced the same system for $891. That’s $908 cheaper. $908. The iMac is more than twice as expensive. But the iMac is white. And you can’t upgrade it. And it’s white.
Now, to be sure, I’m not looking at Dell, or HP; I’m building my own. But that means that I can get better hardware than I could at Apple, Dell or HP. Since Apple switched to a commodity platform, they compete within a mature ecosystem of motherboard/ram/drive suppliers. I can get premium components for less, much less, than Apple charges.
I could also upgrade the hard drive, ramp up the video card, downgrade the processor and bulk up the RAM for what would wind up being an even faster, more powerful system, for substantially less money.
So, I guess this is my offer: if you’re thinking of buying an iMac, I’ll build you the equivalent system and only charge a $400 premium! That’s a $500 savings! Buy three! With the savings, you could subscribe to Club Penguin for 25 years. (Or WoW for 9.6 years.)
But in your final analysis of Apple, you are forgetting to itemize the cost of cult membership. Compared to Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate or Branch Davidians, $900 is a downright bargain. Plus it comes with a side of hipster cred!
That’s true…. $900 for cult status is a bargain. How ’bout this? I’ll paste a little pear logo onto the machine I build. Then the machine will look like the ones used in Zoey 101 and iCarly!
The Apple cult has nothing on the cult of Nickelodeon.
:snicker: Desktops. That’s soooo last administration.
Apple is slightly more competitive in the mid-range laptop market, but the paucity of options is still frustrating. And the premium on higher-end laptops is still laughably large. The Macbook pro, for example, comes out about $900 more expensive than a comparable laptop from Dell.
Laptops are more about branding than desktops are anyway. Just as coupes are more about branding than vans. But I drive a van too!
: D
What is seen: Apple charges a premium for Macs. The Mac OS is rock-solid, the machines come with bundled multimedia software that is extremely powerful and intuitive. Apple’s machines feel solid and feature industrial designs that are unique and, to some, quite beautiful. Macs run both OS X and Windows system software.
What is not seen: The hidden cost of your PCs, Pat, which you take for granted because of the knowledge and expertise you’ve built up, is the time it takes to gain the knowledge and know-how required to build your own machine. You actually derive pleasure from this process, so you probably wouldn’t consider it a cost. But it’s a cost, nonetheless. There are also costs associated with deploying solutions to the variety of adware/spyware/viruses that PCs are plagued by that pose no issues to Macs.
Another cost associated with a build-your-own PC from Pat is that it won’t run Apple’s professional multimedia software and may result in sketchy performance/compatibility issues with similar professional PC software. Not an issue for many, but an issue for some, like me.
There’s also a hardcore community of Mac users, professional and casual alike, who are extremely eager to share their knowledge, insights, and recommendations in a way that is both heartening and effective. The uniformity of the hardware and OS X’s tight integration with the Mac is a boon in this regard. I wouldn’t deny that there are such communities of users on the Windows side, but they are generally dealing with far more complex trouble-shooting scenarios. What error on which version of Windows on what configuration of which brand PC? Yikes.
As “the computer guy” to many of my friends, as somebody who saved a company tens of thousands of dollars in annual “consultant” fees by switching it from PCs to Macs, I obviously come to this discussion with a different perspective.
By the way, Apple recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Mac! Though some people (ahem) seem to relish attacking the legions of people who love Apple’s computers/OS, I’m a happy member of that community who would observe that there seems to be plenty of smug, provincial, self-righteousness to go around among users of both platforms.
“there seems to be plenty of smug, provincial, self-righteousness to go around”
True dat. And we haven’t even brought in the linux fanboys.
I don’t dispute the charm of the Mac, and–as I pointed out–the premium systems are price-competitive. And while I think it makes enormous sense to run a Mac if you’re going to do ~any~ serious video work, that’s a small segment of the public and probably not the public that’s looking for mid-range a computer.
Hardly anyone spends much time in their OS; they spend most of their time in applications. With the proliferation of open-source projects, there are free alternatives for most productivity apps (word processing, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, image editing, page-layout, sound editing, etc… etc…)
Essentially, it’s a $900 premium for industrial design and a suite of functional applications. $900 seems like a lot to pay for iLife and a white chassis.
As for the hidden costs of pc ownership: ehhh. I’m unconvinced. Macs are starting to see viruses and trojans, and I haven’t run anti-virus software on any of my pcs for years and have had zero problems and zero infections. And sure, I have a fair amount of accumulated knowledge, but that’s not a cost, that’s capital. : D (It is, after all, how I make money!)
My friend asked me about Macs and I looked into it hoping that I’d be able to tell him to go for it. But money’s tight and he’s looking for word-processing, email, and the web. And for what he needs and wants, Apple is just way, way too expensive. (Twice as much!)
Let’s rephrase the discussion for a sec: imagine we’re car shopping instead. You can get a well-equipped new Toyota Corrola for about $18,000. Now imagine if Honda priced the civic at $40,000. I’d never, ever recommend the civic.
Apple offers few options and little room for customization. If you fit their target user, then great! If not, then tough. It’s their way or no way. My favorite example of this is the “gapless playback” check in iTunes. Some albums (like Pink Floyd’s _The Wall_) are intended to be heard without gaps between tracks. To accommodate these albums, iTunes does a bit-by-bit check against all mp3 files in an iTunes library. It doesn’t check for the albums that are flagged for gapless playback, it checks every song. And because iTunes isn’t properly multi-threaded, it locks the UI while scanning the library. If you have a large library of mp3 music, this can take hours and hours. And… you can’t turn it off. It effectively renders iTunes unusable if you have a large library of music to import. But, Apple’s official response is: “It’s a feature, not a bug.” Ugh.
I often hear about how “rock-solid” Mac apps are, but my experience with iTunes has been so thoroughly, incredibly awful (Apple violates their own EULA, iTunes installs sniffers, spyware, and third-party software without notice), it violates basic standards of desktop application programming: it doesn’t multithread background processes, the UI is awkward, it completely lacks support for multiple accounts or users… ugh. More people use iTunes than ~any~ other software Apple makes (except quicktime… no, don’t get me started on the security vulnerabilities in quicktime) and it’s simply terrible software. And the support is non-existent. OK… [breathe]… [breathe] iTunes rant over.
The use of radical individualist iconography in the Apple marketing campaign has always struck me as odd. Apple is by far the most authoritarian (well, maybe tied with Oracle) software/computer company in the market. Rather than build an ecosystem around the software, Mac tries to lock users into hardware/software combinations that ultimately don’t serve the interests of the user.
I’m glad that Apple is doing better, by the way. I’d like them to do so well that they lower their prices! : D
But, until they do, their users will continue to pay what I think is an unjustifiable premium for mid-range hardware. $900!!! more than double the price for the same hardware!
Building your own pc isn’t very hard. Go to mwave.com and browse around. I know, I know, some people don’t want to bother. That’s why I’m offering such a great deal! I’ll do it for $400! You can even get the computer in white! Save $500!
I’m eagerly awaiting my first order!