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Comment by ralfd | Hacker News Reader

The winner was Microsoft though. Apple was (is?) the mispriced underdog with 5% market share.

Only if you are excluding their strong position in the smartphone and tablet market. (Not to mention increasing services and headphones (AirPods and Beats)).

For sure. Apple's laptops, while incredibly expensive and profitable, can effectively be considered loss-leaders. Apple is all about brand buy-in, services, warranty sales, etc. Over 50% of their profit is from the iPhone alone. Mac only accounts for about 10% of profit. Even with high retail price, margins are low.

>Apple's laptops, while incredibly expensive and profitable, can effectively be considered loss-leaders.

Things that are incredibly profitable are by definition not loss leaders.

>Even with high retail price, margins are low.

Is this true? Being as how one can purchase a similarly spec'd laptop for a fraction of the cost of a MBP makes me skeptical. I'd assume they're killing it on their laptops.

> one can purchase a similarly spec'd laptop for a fraction of the cost of a MBP

Is this true? Do you have a spec sheet? My own research suggests for about the last 5 years Apple hardware has been pretty competitive.

I'm on you with this. These comparisons are usually made only looking at CPU, RAM and disk, without taking into account that there's quite a lot more to a laptop. Once you take into account the rest of specs, similar high-end laptops are on the same ballpark of cost.

Yes my work dell matches or beats my personal MacBook pro specs in terms of ram and cpu. I’m sure it costed way less too! Oh but it’s the worse computer ever.

The dell is an abhorrent disgrace in every other matter. It weights two tons, is unable to dissipate heat because surprise surprise bulky plastic is bad for that, is filled with weird bugs, has a bizarrely large spacing between keys on the keyboard, a bad screen, bad track pad, terrible battery life, etc

MBP:s don't dissipate heat either. They can't hit their CPU performance ceiling for more than a few seconds.

Apple earns more profits from the Smartphone market than all the other hardware venders combined.

Apple earns more profits from the Tablet market than all the other hardware venders combined.

Apple earns more profits from the PC market than all the other hardware venders combined.

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