this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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The close competition? For the price of a MacBook you could get a beefy ass PC.
That’s not apples to apples. If you spec a windows laptop, good luck getting the same performance and the same battery life and portability at the same price. Also build quality, screen, speaker and trackpad quality will likely not be at apples level from the windows machine. If that’s what you’re in the market for Apple machines are not bad. For instance a photographer/videographer working on location, truly amazing for them. Should everyone buy one? No. Are there a 100 better ways to spend the money if you don’t have that specific Apple favoured use case. Sure, e.g. your mum doesn’t need a MacBook Pro for Facebook / Amazon browsing and your cousin shouldn’t buy a Mac Studio for gaming. But use cases do exist, and for those people Macs are genuinely a good proposition.
I'm willing to bet you could find a laptop with a really nice track pad, screen and camera if you really wanted to for half the price. Everything "quality" about Mac is double the price just for having an apple logo on it.
The issue I have with non-Apple laptops is that comparable performance requires an active cooling system that is often distractingly loud. I am willing and able to pay extra for a platform that lets me focus, and lets me watch some Netflix without having to crank the volume to drown out the fans. Then the all-metal exterior is also quite durable, the trackpad and speakers are top-notch, the Pro comes with that XDR screen, and the battery life is hard to beat. Plus I can take it to a nearby Apple store if I'm having a problem with it, instead of having to mail it to a regional support shop and wait potentially for weeks without the device. It's more than the sum of its parts--and that is reflected in the resale value as well. Some Windows laptops will do specific things better (chiefly game support), but I didn't find anything that was as good overall as an M1 Macbook Pro, and I say that as someone who had never owned a Mac of any kind, despite using PCs since the early 1980s and building them for the last 25 years.
I would have preferred a laptop that could run Windows or Linux, but I just couldn't find anything that was a complete package like the M1 MBP.
I'm in exactly the same camp as you. I haven't bought an M1/2 Mac for personal use yet since Linux support is not there yet, but that may change once Asahi + Fedora comes out
The features you talk about seem pretty easy to put in any laptop. Battery life? Laptop speakers? Screens? Metal case? But sure you get to go pay twice the price for an Apple tech to charge you to replace the entire internals for minor problems. Seems like y'all bought the Kool aid and didn't try to find alternatives because you don't mind throwing some extra money at it. If you throw enough money at anything, generally, you can make it good lol