Well, Stephen Wildstrom, your ilk has once again done a great disservice to the Mac community by posting a flamebait article titled “Wow! Macs Really Are Overpriced” wherein you try to establish a roughly 50% premium by comparing the Macbook Pro to a comparably equipped Dell laptop. Let’s have a chat about this:
First of all, while you got a majority of the specs matched, you seemed to forget about a few components that bump the price of the Dell up to a hair under $1500, not the $1324 that your asserted (these settings would be Internal Bluetooth, Internal 802.11 N card, respectively). But even with all of those specs matching, you’re forgetting what a lot of people go out of their way to buy a Mac for in the first place: the quality of the hardware and operating system.
With the Dell, you’re getting a plastic shell and LCD cover on your laptop versus a lightweight aluminum shell and glass LCD cover on the Macbook Pro. No MagSafe power adaptor on the Dell. No FireWire 800 (although it’s reasonable to argue there’s a niche market for this). An underpowered graphics card in the Dell. Backlit keyboard on the MacBook with automatic brightness adjustment versus standard keyboard on the Dell.
Then we come to the no-brainer choice: Windows Vista versus OS X. When you consider all the software that’s bundled with OS X (which you did) PLUS the sheer ease of use factor, it doesn’t matter if the $500 you save can buy you a copy of MS Office and Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere. Couple that with the fact that most people enjoy the whole “no viruses or virus scanning software” facet of the Mac and the advent of excellent virtualization programs that let you run Windows side-by-side with OS X and the choice is simple for most users (and often worth the price of admission).
You then try to neatly wrap up this oblong package with the following line:
In today’s market, those Apple prices look unsustainable, especially with Microsoft getting ready to replace the clunky Vista with a considerably slicker Windows 7.
This assumes a few things about you, Stephen. (1) You didn’t happen to read about how Apple’s Quarterly profits, once again, exceeded expectations. (2) You believe that Windows 7, which I admit already seems like an improvement, will motivate people to purchase new PCs. If anything, I believe PC users are more cautious about their software purchases after the huge disappointment that was Vista. (3) You think that Apple will let OS X stagnate until the release of Windows 7, which is definitely not that case as Snow Leopard is tentatively scheduled for a June release.
I say, let’s call a ceasefire to the fruitless attempts to compare the cost of a Mac with the value of a Mac. Sure, if the bottom line for you is the number on the price tag, then you’ll probably never purchase an Apple product. But if you appreciate a decent computing experience coupled with ease of use and a machine you won’t likely have to replace anytime soon, do yourself a favor and consider the value of a Mac.
I completely agree with you. Too many times do I find that people just look at the price and some of the specs – too quickly do they then say Windows/PC is a better option.
You don’t get the same user experience or lifetime with Windows that you do get in a Mac.
Regardless of the price, I would buy a Mac over a PC any day because they have their UI down to the t.