Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

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> And as IBM reported a couple weeks ago, even at higher prices, Macs tend to be cheaper to own.

>but that still puts me only about $1600 into this device

I always forget how dis-attached and money-blind pro-apple authors are from the 98% of people and how they approach money. I guess if I was in the 1%, I'd also think Apple was the cheap option! (I'd probably also think that about Lexus and BMW...)

$1600 over 6 years, or about $270 a year, is not inexpensive and the false label "cheaper to own" is absurd to the highest degree.

I could go out right now and buy a $600 laptop, a $200 chromebook, and be out $800 dollars. Then I could build a $500 rather powerful budget desktop, and be at $1300, with three devices, and have $300 leftover for repairs or upgrades.

I could buy a $800 laptop and another one in 3-6 years for that price.

I could buy an iPad, a Chromebook, and a $600 laptop. I could buy three $500 laptops.

There is no universe in existence where spending $1600 total cost of ownership in 6 years approaches ANYTHING CLOSE to "cheaper to own".

Frankly, I DON'T EVEN KNOW windows users who have spent $1600 in the past 6 years total, except for hardcore PC gamers whose hardware so dramatically eclipses the medium-grade consumer level tech in Apple laptops that to compare them is entertaining and silly.

When my son went to college I told him, you can have an AirBook, or you can get a Levono Yoga and replace it every 2 years. He choose the Yoga and he is still using it 3 years later.

If the machines have the same build quality (or, another more subtle thing Apple's laptops have, an air around them that they should be handled with care) and the software is secure (Windows had (has?) real problems with viruses and shit), then I don't see why anyone would have to replace their laptop after 5 years anymore. CPU's are fast enough and software isn't getting more bloated. Memory is abundant and cheap. SSD's solved the last main bottleneck in computers 5+ years ago.

I have a PC at home, almost passing the 5 year mark now. No problems with it, fast enough, plays the latest games. Only problems I've had with it was corrupted memory banks, but I'm inclined to think that's more to do with installing it myself than anything.

How do viruses relate to hardware longevity? Are there viruses in the wild bricking Windows PCs?

I bought an $850 Thinkpad T410 in 2010. Every time I've checked new laptops in the past couple of years I concluded that it wasn't worth upgrading - I'd only get a twofold increase in performance for $800+.

(Also reduced weight and increased battery life, but as a 6 ft. guy with a roommy backpack, carrying a 5 lbs laptop and a 1.5 lbs spare battery is not a problem.)

It still works fine but I ended up buying a higher spec'ed* mint-condition refurbished T410 for $250 this year, and a USB3 expansion card. I expect to get a good run out of it since I can cannibalize the old one for parts.

Not everyone has the time and know-how to service their own laptop, but for someone who does, like me, the nice thing with the Thinkpad ecosystem is the abundance of cheap end-of-lease refurbished parts and accessories, which are i) cheap and ii) probably better maintained than what you can get used from some bloke on craigslist.

(But the flipside is that new Lenovo parts and accessories are horrendously overpriced, since they target businesses.)

*HDD vs SSD, 8gb vs 4gb memory, i7 vs i5, 1400x900 vs 1280x800, discrete vs integrated graphics.

My Lenovo, which cost >$800 and had a $120 SSD upgrade from 2007 still runs just fine. What alternative evidence is there that macs last longer other than fanatical circle jerking?

Do those upgrades listed include labor at apple care? The numbers don't even add up.

Not to mention, unless there have been some large strides in macOS lately, older apple products seem to lag pretty hard when you upgrade to the current OS and basically stop working if you don't. Windows 10 runs great on old PCs and many apps still function all the way back to Windows Vista.

From what I found, Apple's laptops are sligthly above average in terms of reliability [0]. Sqaretrade sells warranties though, so there might be some selection bias, but I'm not sure if it would benefit Apple or not.

[0] https://resource.squaretrade.com/laptop-reliability-1109

I'm willing to assume the selection bias affects all brands in a similar enough way to call it even. The bigger issues is that this is 7 years old now, I wouldn't rely on it too much unless you're buying an 8-10 year old laptop.

Parent didn't include a link, but I guess they're talking about this: http://www.businessinsider.com/an-ibm-it-guy-macs-are-300-ch...

The IBM guy said Macs are more expensive to buy but cheaper to support, because

>Only 5% of IBM's Mac employees needed help-desk support, versus 40% of PC users

Guessing what percentage of Linux users needed help desk support is left as an exercise to the reader.

The economics of a business maintaining a fleet of laptops for mostly clueless users vs a tech-savvy individual maintaining their own laptop are not the same.

Also keep in mind that IBM started a Mac enterprise integration service last year. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Indeed. As soon as you're willing to accept something a bit less pretty and slighly clunkier in usability, you can save a huge amount of money over Apple devices.

from the article:

->socking it to the customer when a new product is released is a tradition in Cupertino dating back to the Apple III.

Remember the original 128K Macintosh cost more than $2400 and it was close to useless.

____ Does anyone know at what point it was that Apple blew up after firing jobs and had to call him back. was it before or after this?

> Remember the original 128K Macintosh cost more than $2400 and it was close to useless.

As opposed to the other 68K offerings at the time it was pretty good, it brought window managed user interfaces to the masses (rather than those Apollo workstations that probably nobody remembers).

The ST was a game changer price wise but that 'useless' 128K Mac in many ways wrote history.

I'd never heard of the Apple III.

My question was where it fitted in Jobs 86 departure from apple.

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