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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

Ridiculous argument. Macs have never been the value proposition, especially when they get fully loaded. Any literally any point in the history of the Mac, you could say "but you can get a comparable PC cheaper!" and it would be true.

Macs have always been expensive, everyone has always complained that they're expensive, and they will continue to be expensive. This isn't new.

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Nah. In 2013, macs were slightly more expensive than a comparable PC spec-wise, but still a fairly good deal. In 2016, the prices appear to have almost doubled and is totally unreasonable, while the specs are... malnourished. They even took away the escape key and the magsafe port. :(

According to their Amazon product page, the XPS 13 has a 2.5Ghz i5 and 8GB of RAM. It has a 256GB SSD and a 3000x1800 screen. It's selling for $1,350, original price $1,799.

The 13" MacBook with touchbar has a 2.9Ghz i5 with 8GB of RAM. It has a 256GB SSD and a 2560x1600 screen. It's selling for $1,699, original price $1,799.

I know people love to complain about the new MacBook and believe me, I have some complaints about it too, but it's hard to argue with the numbers. If the MacBook is overpriced, Dell is getting away with the same thing, while somehow being highly recommended in every thread on HN.

MacBook: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01LTHXAEU/ref=dp_ob_neva_mob...

Dell: https://www.amazon.com/Dell-XPS9360-3591SLV-Laptop-Generatio...

Because no one's actually buying the Dell ;).

People complain about things they care about.

Yeah, and in every thread about the XPS, there's someone talking about their horrible experience with drivers and support, all the while saying "but the new ones look nice!".

Honestly I would love if everyone switched away from Mac. Apple (like Intel) is at their best when their back is against the wall. When they're running the show, they get lazy.

I noticed the same thing with phones. I've read a lot of comments that the iPhone was much more expensive than Android phones. But whenever I ask for Android recommendations, the very same people would recommend phones like the S7 that are just as expensive as iPhones.

The difference between the Android & iPhone market is the existence of a low end in the Android market. Flagship Android phones cost just as much as iPhones do. But if you're willing to not get the flagship, you can often get budget models for 30-50% of the cost. The Moto G, for example, is a perfectly good phone, as are various budget LG phones. You don't have that option in the Apple ecosystem.

This thread was/is about desktop computers—workstations or gaming PCs, at least up to the root comment about an i7-6700K.

Apple's workstation and gaming machine offerings are widely acknowledged to be significantly under-powered and over-priced.

The comment I replied to say "priced have doubled for 2016", but there were no iMacs released in 2016. The latest iMac is from October 2015. So the only way to compare prices for 2016 models is MacBooks. There is no valid comparison between a brand new Windows desktop vs a brand new Mac desktop because there is no new brand new Mac desktop. The Mac Pro workstation hasn't been updated since 2013, and the Mac Mini hasn't been updated since 2014.

There are no valid comparisons between the prices of a modern Windows desktop and a modern Mac desktop because there is no modern Mac desktop.

I forgot to specify I'm looking at non-US numbers. Apple's been hiking foreign market prices quite a bit. Also, the markup gets worse when you venture into higher specced builds.

You do realize that the Dell is 20% cheaper right? That is a large price difference.. perhaps the issue is that people seem to insinuate that 20% price difference isn't much for them so its not much for everyone.

Also, the real value proposition for PC's is that they go on sale more than once a year and you can generally get discounts, replacement parts, upgrades, spares without that 20% premium again..

Any my first entry into this thread was "Apple computers are always more expensive". The rebuttal was "yeah but they're twice the price of a comparable PC". 20% is right in line with "more expensive" but a far cry from "twice the price".

How much will that Dell be worth vs the MacBook in 3 years? While not a fan of the newest MacBook, I don't have to be because they -last-.

In 2013, I was in the market for a new computer, and my top choices were a System76 Pangolin for $702, or a 15" Retina MBP for $2399. Their basic stats (CPU, RAM, disk, base screen resolution) were largely identical; I think the Pangolin actually had the advantage in disk & CPU. The MBP had a nicer keyboard, screen, touchpad, weight, and battery life though.

I ended up going back to Macs for my 2015 upgrade, but that was largely because I wanted to do Apple Watch development. You've always paid a "Mac tax" for Apple products, and it's usually been in the 2-3x range.

> They even took away the escape key

Wait, really?

No. The TouchBar has replaced the function row of keys, so yeah, there's no physical Esc key, but there is still an Esc key on the TouchBar if you want one. In practice, it's the same thing and works the same way.

Your argument is also ridiculous.

The biggest difference between a PC and an iMac is the form factor. An windows all-in-one pc with the mentioned specs is probably about as expensive as the iMac (if there even exists one).

It would have been better to compare it to an Mac Pro, which probably would be even more expensive...

As for the general price of apple products, Surface book, lenovo, dell xps (outside of USA) are just as expensive as Macbooks. But sure, you can always get a windows laptop with worse specs or quality.

So you can get a PC with Mac Pro specs for the price of an iMac?

Exactly. This has been true of every Apple product. If you compare only the specs, Macs, iPhones, iPads etc. are more expensive. If you factor in resale value or the fact that they last twice as long as a comparable Acer/Samsung device then they are absolutely worth their price.

This is my thought too. PC has always been interesting to people who care about performance, price, future proofing, free software, etc. Specifically glad the author is going to be well, on the side of the Holy Master Race but overall people who want to buy macs are, in my opinion, paying for the shiny brush and Apple not the guts. I run Debian on my thinkpad e5 series without any problems. Ubuntu 16,04 installed with 4k multi monitor support out of the box. Windows is dead, long live Tux

I don't think so, when you compare Macs to Windows machines with similar build quality. I got my 2014 rMBP because it was $200 cheaper than a Surface Pro 3 with the same specs at the time.

Yeah, it's been a historical constant that Apple desktops were very pricey compared to PC with similar specs.

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