Mac Book

[Geoff]

As i've said before, everyone has their own opinions. When it comes to desktops, personally I love to game, but I also love to build my own systems and upgrade regularly. And with laptops, I like having the choice of different companies with different offerings, which is one reason I believe Mac's are so expensive - no direct competition like it is between HP and Dell for instance.

 

[tlarkin]

Yeah well there is more to it than that, but the competition helps drive prices down you are right. At the same time though since there are so many other companies that design and manufacture hardware, you are getting hardware from the lowest bidder in your HP or Dell.

Apple designs all their hardware themselves. They have their own engineers designing their circuit boards from ground up. So, the cost is more to begin with. Where as HP or Dell use hardware that is designed by someone else and the lowest bidder gets the bid.

I will also go as far as to say that in most cases by design one motherboard is not that different from another physically speaking. its design is definitely different. Which can have an impact on performance overall.

I am just saying that there is more quality control gone into making a Mac computer so the it costs more to make it, and they need to make their money so they charge a bit more to make their money. I used to work for an AASP several years ago, and I saw the wholesale cost of apple computers and the mark up isn't all that great and is comparable to PCs easily.

Sure you get tons of choices and that may be a huge factor but at the end of the day most people just want their computer to work.

As for desktops go, I fully agree with you. I build all my desktops and buy older (cheaper) Mac ones. I have a dual 500 G4 and a dual 1.25 G4 MDD desktops at my home. They still run OS X fairly quick and fairly well. I don't know any PC that is 4 to 5 years old that can run Vista. That kind of says something in my mind.

I am not bashing PCs because I like them as well. I use XP and Linux, but refuse to use vista at this point in time, and for the most part I like my windows machine. I just don't try to say that Macs are too expensive because you are getting more of a computer for your buck in reality.

 

[The_Beast]

Apples look nice but I would get a PC

 

[luckyedboy66]

Yeah well there is more to it than that, but the competition helps drive prices down you are right. At the same time though since there are so many other companies that design and manufacture hardware, you are getting hardware from the lowest bidder in your HP or Dell.

Apple designs all their hardware themselves. They have their own engineers designing their circuit boards from ground up. So, the cost is more to begin with. Where as HP or Dell use hardware that is designed by someone else and the lowest bidder gets the bid.

I will also go as far as to say that in most cases by design one motherboard is not that different from another physically speaking. its design is definitely different. Which can have an impact on performance overall.

I am just saying that there is more quality control gone into making a Mac computer so the it costs more to make it, and they need to make their money so they charge a bit more to make their money. I used to work for an AASP several years ago, and I saw the wholesale cost of apple computers and the mark up isn't all that great and is comparable to PCs easily.

Sure you get tons of choices and that may be a huge factor but at the end of the day most people just want their computer to work.

As for desktops go, I fully agree with you. I build all my desktops and buy older (cheaper) Mac ones. I have a dual 500 G4 and a dual 1.25 G4 MDD desktops at my home. They still run OS X fairly quick and fairly well. I don't know any PC that is 4 to 5 years old that can run Vista. That kind of says something in my mind.

I am not bashing PCs because I like them as well. I use XP and Linux, but refuse to use vista at this point in time, and for the most part I like my windows machine. I just don't try to say that Macs are too expensive because you are getting more of a computer for your buck in reality.

i see where you are coming from when you say PC companies buy parts from "the lowest bidder", but you make it sound as though the "lowest bidder" sells crap. the fact is, PC companies arent gunna buy cheap unreliable parts. they offer warenties, and it would be a pain in the arse to refund the POS parts.
so, i would say they buy from the "lowest reputable bidder".

 

[tlarkin]

i see where you are coming from when you say PC companies buy parts from "the lowest bidder", but you make it sound as though the "lowest bidder" sells crap. the fact is, PC companies arent gunna buy cheap unreliable parts. they offer warenties, and it would be a pain in the arse to refund the POS parts.
so, i would say they buy from the "lowest reputable bidder".

Um how do you know this? I do this type of stuff for a living and my organization is a self maintainer for HP, Apple, and Gateway products. I order parts all the time for HP computers and I know what type of parts they are. When you look at a sub 1000 dollar laptop versus a macbook which starts at 1000 I can assure you that more quality control has gone into the Macbook.

Electronics are so massively produced these days it doesn't matter if they have to hand out some replacement parts for warranty. I personally do warranty repair on all of our computers at my work, which consist of HP business class desktops and laptops, Gateway laptops, and Macintosh desktop and laptops. Along with HP Proliant servers. I can tell you that I repair the PCs waaaaaaay more than the Macs. Even though we have more PCs than macs but I have to order parts almost every single day for the PCs. I haven't done a hardware level repair on a Mac in probably 6 months. Of course not all PCs break, and again I am not saying that PCs suck. I am just pointing out that Macs are higher end machines thats all.

That right there should tell you something.