Fuck Slashdot. “…Paying an extra $500 for a computer [with the same] hardware…”
Bullshit. Cheap PCs use cheap parts to get the prices so low. Apple uses higher quality components. This is not a valid argument. I wish people would stop bringing it up.
I agree with most posters here that this is a great ad. It is effective, and it delivers its message clearly. What most consumers won’t get from the ad, though, is that Apple doesn’t sell entry-level 17" laptops, which is what Lauren was looking to buy. If price is a primary concern, don’t buy from Apple.
But the ad is not targeted at every computer shopper, only those that value low-cost over performance and quality. The consumers that shop for mega-somethings and giga-somethings, because that’s what years of marketing has drilled into their heads. Those of us who already know enough about the computers mentioned in this ad, won’t be swayed by its message.
I work for a component manufacturer. Many of the components in an Apple are the same as in a Dell or a Lenovo or an HP or…there are only so many SSD, memory, display, power, motherboard, hard drive manufacturers out there - and manufacturer much prefer to multisource.
Apple makes lovely things. Their strength is industrial design. But don’t fool yourself that their components come off a different line.
(I have a six year old Dell D600 that is working very well - right now its limping along with the Windows 7 beta on it. But it still runs XP wonderfully and Linux like a champ.)
Having had both a MacBook Pro 17" ($3200 with lots of trimmings) and a HP Compaq 17" (ended up being $1500 with lots of trimmings) open in front of me in the last year (I’m a jack-of-all-trades System Administrator), this is just flat-out wrong–the components in each are of similar quality.
The biggest difference is in OSX and, to a significant extent, in the outer case tooling–inside it’s steel frames and arbitrary x86-compatible components all around.
Sorry, this is just wrong. The MacBook Pros are only about $150 more expensive than PC laptops with similar components. If you just compare the most obvious specs, you may not realize this - but when you look into the specific processor models, cache sizes, hard disk speed, and so forth, you realize the PC laptops are using cheaper components to keep the price down.
Apple doesn’t make any cheap computers, but that doesn’t mean their computers are overpriced. They’re expensive, but not really any more expensive than a PC laptop with the same components.
And they are not all the same on the inside - the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are made out of a single block of aluminum. There is no “steel frame” inside - the aluminum case is the frame. They are incredibly sturdy.
That isn’t needed by everyone - and if you want to pay for that in the non-Mac market, those sorts of computers are available at Mac like prices on Wintel machines.
I looked up the specific processor models, hard disk speed and capacity as well as RAM and screen size. I found plenty of options most for $1,000 less than the mac book pro.
I have used my new laptop for several years, and all I put on it is:
a Security Suite (which if her laptop used Vsita and she was careful and used a couple of decent freeware products out there might be unnessesary)
Office (got at a super discount)
And Diablo, which I got as a gift.
Pretty much, you can do browsing and email without adding anything you can’t get for free.
I say this as a person who actually thinks highly of Apple in general, but there isn’t a lot of “super-special” hardware inside a Macbook Pro. Hell, the discrete graphic chip, the 9600M GT, is available in a sub $500 notebook The processor, which is a “Penryn” Core 2 Duo T95xx, is available in all sorts of notebooks, including sub $1000 dollar varieties. Can you name an individual computer component in the Macbook Pro that can’t be found (or its equivalent) in far cheaper notebooks on the PC side?
Better yet, tell us which specs you think cause the Apple to stand out, and we’ll see if we can’t build you a cheaper PC that meets or exceeds those.
The term “fanboy” must be the Godwin equivalent of the Mac/PC argument. It’s like some retarded form of reverse snobbishness – “I’m so much hipper than thou because I’m not a Mac user.”
Laptop screens are LCDs, not LEDs. They are always backlit, but the backlight is typically a fluorescent tube. Now LCD screens are coming out that are backlit with LEDs, which are better in numerous ways.
LCD = liquid-crystal display
LED = light-emitting diode
The similar acronyms are just a coincidence - they’re completely different things.
While we’re talking about these things - Firewire 800? Optical audio in/out ports? A multitouch trackpad? Infrared remote? Backlit keyboard? An 8-hour battery life? A light sensor to adjust the screen brightness? An accelerometer to protect the hard drive from damage when the hard drive is moved?
Once you’ve found a laptop that has all that stuff - is it still as thin and light as the 17" MacBook Pro?
And that’s not even counting the little, peripheral things…how large and heavy is the power adapter? Is it some enormous brick you have to lug with you? The MacBook power adapter is small and light, and has a clever arrangement that lets you plug it directly into a wall if you don’t need a long cable. Is the power cable connected magnetically, so your laptop isn’t ripped off your desk if some klutz trips over the cable? There are lots of little things that Apple puts extra effort into, and those all add up.
I think Apple makes the best laptops available, and it annoys me when people suggest that they’re all hype and marketing and appearance. Because by extension, they’re implying that I’m a sucker or something for having bought one - or that I just bought one to look “cool”, or whatever.
Well it goes best ways, many Apple fans (not necessarily you) simply will not admit that there is a market for lower cost PCs. Is it possible (and I may be doing the crazy talk thing here), that there is a market and a use for both PCs and Macs?
Who are these morons, and where can I see them in their native environment? I’m the proud owner of a recently acquired iMac, but I will be the first to tell you that there is certainly a market, probably an extremely large market, for lower cost PCs. Anybody who says otherwise is out of his or her gourd.