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Comment by smitherfield | Hacker News Reader

> In corporate politics that would be a suicide. Only Jobs was powerful enough to make mistakes.

To wit: an insignificant change (dropping skeuomorphic UI) was coincident with Scott Forstall being canned.

> Many people overpay for Apple products because they want to look as real professionals. Majority don't care which laptop is the thinnest, they use products used by opinion leadres.

I used to think this way, until I went through 3 PC laptops in 2 years. Macs are worth every penny of the premium Apple commands, and more.

That said, to keep me as a customer they are going to have to do a better job convincing me they aren't planning to discontinue the Mac lineup. And they'll have to offer a more convincing spec bump over my 2014 15" rMBP, which remains borderline-overkill for my needs.

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I hope you are not comparing $700 PC laptops to a $2k MBP here, because there are a lot of very rigid and durable PC laptops available.

The problem with this is that dgregd claimed that MBP owners overpaid for their laptop. So in order to contest that claim it's natural to compare a MBP against a cheaper PC laptop to demonstrate the differences. Once you're comparing a $2k PC laptop against a $2k MBP, it's a lot harder to maintain the narrative that the MBP user overpaid.

A $1400 MBP - I bought it on clearance after the 2015 refresh. And I was thinking more of my $900 2011 MBA.

The PCs all failed spontaneously; it's not even like I dropped them or anything. And only one was the hard drive.

Forstall got canned for the Maps fiasco. Which, by the way, Apple did apologize for, in a public letter from Tim Cook.

>I used to think this way, until I went through 3 PC laptops in 2 years. Macs are worth every penny of the premium Apple commands, and more.

Maybe you should stop shopping for cheap, consumer-grade crap and get a real laptop like a Thinkpad or Latitude.

Then we're into the same price category as Apple, for anvil-esque hunks of plastic with tiny trackpads and low-resolution screens.

The Thinkpad Helix 2 I'm currently sat at cost me 600 quid earlier this year (and is the 8Gb RAM model so not completely un-comparable to the lower end of the new macbooks)

The Latitudes I get are hunks of magnesium and aluminum, not plastic.

I don't give a shit about trackpads; I use the Trackpoints (which Macs don't have) since they're much easier and faster to use, and a separate mouse most of the time. No touchpad compares to a real mouse, just like a touchscreen keyboard will never compare to a real keyboard.

They're available with high-resolution screens, and even better, they're matte (Macs are not, they're glossy), so I can see them in different lighting situations.

Finally, I get mine at dirt-cheap prices by buying them used, because corporations buy these things in bulk and only keep them for a couple of years before liquidating them. So there's a very healthy used market with machines in excellent, near-new shape because they don't hold their resale value the way Macs do with their cultist followers (and the fact that most people have zero awareness of enterprise laptops). And since computers aren't actually improving technologically any more, a 3-year-old laptop in excellent condition is just as productive and useful as a brand-new one, but at a fraction of the cost.

> No touchpad compares to a real mouse

Depending on your work, I think this is an outdated viewpoint.

Apple sells large, detached trackpads, and they're quite popular amongst people I know (all hardcore programmers):

https://www.apple.com/magic-accessories/

I personally still prefer a mouse when at a desktop, but it can't be denied that Apple's trackpads and their gesture support are incredibly good.

> Maybe you should stop shopping for cheap, consumer-grade crap and get a real laptop like a Thinkpad or Latitude.

If only that were true. Lenovo products are high priced chunks of thin, flexible plastic.

You're basically comparing 30th floor office space to a freaking warehouse.

Had a latitude 7440 before my Mac. The difference is still significant, sometimes I have to boot it back up and this makes me sad. The touchpad alone is worth upgrading for.

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