My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it.
How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates.
The only reason why I replaced the old 13 with the air was bc the 13 could not render 4k 60fps on an external display. Otherwise, I would have kept using it.
The old 13 cost me about $1600 USD new (256GB HD, 8 GB ram). Amortize that cost over 9 years and that doesn't seem so bad. Even my iphone 8 is still going strong.
Another anecdote - my current employer gave me a new macbook pro 15 when I started here back in 2017. It took my abuse well and the only reason I am not still using it is bc my employer forced me to upgrade when the m1 pros came out.
You probably won't need to replace your air for like 7 years, or when apple stops updates for your machine.
EDIT - I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product.
> I am surprised I am getting downvoted
> FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time.
> You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product.
- 2013 MB (Glorious, ran forever, needed more RAM and speed)
- 2016 MBP (bad keyboard, then rapid battery expansion)
- 2018 MBP (battery expansion, then logic board failure)
- 2019/2020 MBP (logic board failure)
- M1 MBP 13" (nothing, it's running beautifully.)
IIRC, all of the above failures happened just outside of the warranty period. For personal MacBooks, I will no longer go without AppleCare+. The risk of failure and accidental damage is too great.
We have an org with thousands of MBPs with similar experiences. It got bad enough that discussions were had about switching staff to Chromebooks or Windows laptops. (Chromebooks didn't meet requirements and Windows laptops are even worse for hardware and software reasons)
All of these devices basically sat on a desk in a ~68F office most of the time.
They are, though.
I'm on my 4th MacBook and all have lasted me at least 5 years. The reason I upgrade them is to get more speed/specs, not because they stopped working, I even sold them and made back some small $$.
PS The touchbar thing was nonsense, I didn't jump on that, as well as other gimmicks. Still the MBP is a solid option.
I use my MBP 6-8 hours every. single. day. I plug two monitors to it and leave everything on 24/7 (I only dim the screen but never close it). I'm sure I put way more use into them than the average user. I once went close to two years without a restart.
No other laptop I've owned has been as reliable as the MBPs.
... but yes this is still an anecdote.
2016-2020 the dark ages but outside of that 4 year period (that Apple has firmly reversed course on), Apple's reputation for excellent laptops is well deserved.
Baking on the memory? It's frustrating and gimps the device lifespan, but arguably unavoidable with the bandwidth Apple is targeting. Without replaceable storage though, every Apple Silicon device is effectively a ticking time-bomb. These devices will all hit their TBW limit long before they're unusable, and Apple refused to anticipate this because... it side-steps their pricing scheme?
The current Macbook lineup is a step in the right direction, but far from perfect. Even ignoring my hundred gripes with MacOS, I think there are clear hardware improvements they can make with future iterations. None of these improvements seem particularly profitable though, so I'm not counting on Apple adding them.
However, Apple’s base model is frankly silly. A solid 2TB NVME drive is only 150$, slapping the equivalent of 20$ worth of storage on a 1,500$ laptop is crazy.
A failure != a brand new laptop, especially with applecare.
IMO chromebooks are worse but cheaper so you feel better just tossing them out. Windows laptops are worse .. so your position is Apple sux bucause the laptops fai sometimes. But window laptops fail more ... so ...
so what? Hardware fails sometimes, Apple has great support and actually own up to defective products. Sure I'm a little miffed that I can't generally fix them myself (and especially miffed that they solder storage onto a mainboard and don't use something like m.2). But every last apple laptop i've owned that I have replaced for speed reasons has gone to someone else who's used it for years after i've been done with it. (Well save one that took an unfortunate tumble into a lake.. no saving that one, RIP last macbook I ever owned with an optical drive)
Apple does not have support good enough for professionals, my colleagues are suffering with defective MacBooks until they can justify a full replacement, because Apple repairs cost a lot of time, while Lenovo sends a repairperson with tools and replacement parts to my office.
A replacement display is basically 70+% the cost of the entire machine.
AppleCare had to replace two of them on my Sandy Bridge MacBook Air. They blamed the bag I kept it in(when replacing it the second time), but they also sold me the bag.
This one is pricier but also doubles as a docking station/100w PD:
https://www.kensington.com/p/products/device-docking-connect...
They have some cheaper, more basic models too.
edit: for the record I think this limit is stupid and the biggest flaw of the Air. You're right that other than that, it's a damn near perfect daily driver.
It handles it just fine at 8-10% CPU usage on an M1.
You: sample size = 1
Maybe parents opinion is coloured negatively by hearing about failing machines of colleagues. They even said that Windows machines were worse.
Maybe you have been lucky.
Zero snark intended.
My wife has been using Macs for a long time now while I use both Macs and Dells with Linux and, occasionally, a Lenovo or an HP. We have gone through at least 10 Macs in total and none of them failed in less than 8 years. One got a puffy battery (replaced in warranty), one got chipped when it fell from the desk (a white MacBook, Apple replaced the bottom, keyboard, and palm rest for free, even though the machine was out of warranty, but was listed in a recall for the palm rest). Some HDs died and some flash got upgraded. While it's not a daily driver, even the white MacBook is still going strong (as is the Bondi Blue iMac, the eMac, and the dual G5, none of which get much uptime these days, but boot up just fine every month or so). Both our current Macs (a 13" Pro and an i5 Mini) are from 2014 and will be replaced by M2 ones because they can't get the newest OS (while I can get away with it, my wife won't for long due to professional compliance rules).
No consumer-grade PC laptop or desktop of mine lasted that long in active use (some x86 servers did, as all the Sun and IBM PPC/POWER stuff) without extensive overhauling. Even my Thinkpads got cracks after five years.
The thing that worries me the most with the newer Macs is the flash storage - when it dies, I don't expect them to be repairable. I hope Apple includes M.2 slots in the future, even if the laptops need to be bulkier because of that.
That's the problem. You need to discharge the battery once in a while or it builds up gas and expands. I had a 2015 that was perfect until I stopped going anywhere in March 2020. So I basically didn't unplug it for a year, and then the battery got explodey.
So now that I still work at home, I make sure to unplug my laptop once in a while just to drain it down a bit.
Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted here. You still need to unplug your older Macs that don't have the software and firmware updates that do this automatically now.
I'm simply pointing out why OP had battery problems.
That's still a defect; the laptop battery management should do that for you. As an example, the Dell laptops I'm used to automatically drain the battery to ~95% when plugged in all the time (it appears to be at 100% while on AC, but when you unplug it you can see the true charge).
Except when they’re not and Apple tries very hard to bury the problem while the machine is still relevant, so your choices are either to pay for (expensive) repairs out of pocket or dump it and buy a different model. Then years later once the machine is obsolete for most, will they finally give in and offer a free repair to the lucky ones who have been left holding these hot potatoes of a defective model. Not every time though, sometimes they just won’t accept responsibility at all, ever.
See the GPU issues, the battery issues, the butterfly keyboards, the yellow tinted panels…
also macs were very early to hop on the ssd train and that was an insane advantage over most windows machines. I think that gap has closed substantially at this point.
Maybe it's different now (I haven't used Windows in decades, so I don't know) but I will say that it never felt that way to me. Perhaps because Apple controls the OS and the hardware, and has the ability to either spend extra time optimizing for older known hardware that falls within a support window or to delay a feature that would be problematic for older-but-supported hardware, but my lived experience with Apple hardware is that I get a lot more practical longevity out of it without having to work to squeeze every last drop of performance out of it.
Yes, I can always take a $1200 Windows machine and put XFCE or Xubuntu or Mate on it and it'll extend its life considerably, but as someone who has always tried to extend the life of my components as long as possible (the server at my feet is an Athlon FX) -- it's always just felt easier on Apple hardware.
It's even easier still with non-Windows PC operating systems, but ... has Windows gotten better on this regard or is that longevity still bolstered by migrating away from Windows?
I don't think they spend any real time optimizing for old hardware, for example APFS is just a turd on HDD systems and yet they forced everyone on it and worse yet kept selling HDD iMacs on the low end (which really wasn't that low).
Meanwhile MS announces in advance what the support window will be. With Windows 10 there was barely any difference in requirements from Windows 8 so pretty much everything that wasn't a bottom tier netbook or tablet from 2010 still works fine and is supported until 2025. Meanwhile the 2013 Mac Pro which was an expensive beast and sold until late 2019 won't even get some security updates in 2025.
Linux and the BSDs also announce ahead of time the support period and there's a plethora of options for aging hardware.
Hardware as high quality as Apple is harder to come by though, and generally commands the same price premium.
Ignore 'build quality' that is marketing nonsense that companies use to exploit you.
Last year I picked up a computer with these requirements for $550. Its been flawless.
If I was going to spend another $700, I'd either get 2, or upgrade my video card.
I have no doubt that Windows laptop build quality has improved in the last decade, in no small part to chasing after Apple, but at this point I can't imagine going back to Windows so I'll never really know.
If anything, the repairability and upgradability that prevented old Macs from being e-waste is gone now. It's hard to imagine Apple pushing the envelope on reusability or device longevity in their current era.
I've worked at orgs that used a variety of expensive windows laptops, because they kept having abysmal failure rates and switching every year.
They already had stacks of failed Surface Books and ASUS Zenbooks.
Maybe my HP Elitebook would have lasted, but it was terrible to use the whole time.
Not that my Mac experience has been flawless, but the odds seem to be far better.
Come on...can we tone down the ridiculous statements here, please?
I don't know what your friends did to this hardware, but there isn't anything out there you HAVE to replace "almost yearly". Not even for that price.
Other people have noted that shelling out the same for Windows hardware might get you better quality, but there's also the possibility that people who spend that much don't want to shell that out again so they take better care of their stuff.
Then they recalled the 2012 MBAs because of failing SSDs in October 2013 and refused to refund my Apple care because they did me a "favour" and I got a good "deal" with getting Apple care because I shouldn't have been able to buy it post-warranty. It didn't matter that they recalled the SSD literally 2 months later free of charge, they wouldn't let me get rid of the Apple care and have it refunded.
In April 2016 the battery died on me and it was out of Apple care warranty because the Apple care was June 2012 - June 2015 instead of the August 2013 I purchased it on and being valid until August 2016. So that cost me another $250 to replace. Another repair I had to pay for that should have been free.
Finally in 2019 I updated to Catalina and it hosed the entire laptop which was working flawlessly before the update. It started randomly beach balling after about an hour of use and would stutter every couple of minutes until it eventually would lock up and turn off completely. Then it would randomly show the flashing question mark when booting up and it stopped working completely. The laptop couldn't even factory restore itself or stay on long enough to be restored over the internet. I brought it to Apple a few times, they didn't detect anything wrong with the laptop, and I eventually gave up on it. I still have no clue what that update did to kill my entire laptop but I was done putting money into it at that point.
It really annoys me that the laptop died for no reason overnight after an OS upgrade and Apple couldn't even come up with an explanation or attempt to fix it. I've done some Googling recently because this was in my mind again and apparently Catalina bricked a lot of laptops but I can't seem to find any acknowledgment from Apple on that.
I'd guess that the compounding exceptions of your situtation (paying for AppleCare in liu of paying for a repair, then that repair being being of a service program) were sufficiently illegible to Apple that you didn't (couldn't?) get a refund.
At the risk of sounding like a dead meme, "a laptop going strong for over 9 years" is already the default for the kinds of folks who would opt for Linux and who would replace their laptops HDD with an SSD.
My $800 laptop from 2015 has been 16GiB RAM and 512TB SSD and it still works perfectly (save for an Ethernet port which I regrettably damaged). It's running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, which is supported for three more years as of this comment.
This is kind of a standard experience for people in Linux land. So by comparison, a $1600 laptop with 8GiB RAM and a 256GB HDD which is no longer receiving security updates does not sound like a good deal.
My own experience (4 MacBooks Pros) and that of providing MacBook Air and Pros to a dozen or so staff (with 50 or so on non-Mac kit) leads me to conclude this statement is not true.
They are great as long as they work but no better in terms of longevity to equivalent kit from other manufacturers, at least in my limited, non-scientific, IMHO experience.
- M1 mba, 1 usb port dead.
- 15' mbp 2019, all ports dead. I have been told that the logicboard is dead, and they wanted 850 euro to replace it.
On about 2000 macbooks, 2000 thinkbooks and 6000 hp elitebooks, all of various generations, the macbooks scored best on reliability and best on 'how many tickets do these users create for our service desk'.
The cost savings are there. But obviously there was still a significant amount of issues with these laptops. They are not perfect, but they performed better than the other two families.
The big issue with macbooks is usually that if they fail after 3 years, they are an immediate write off. The others get repaired. Oh and those butterfly keyboard years were horrible and nearly stopped us from allowing macbooks apparently.
That was also true for older macs, which were cheaper.
I believe that the Apple Silicon macs are the highest-margin macs Apple has ever made, since they no longer have to pay Intel for the CPUs or AMD for the GPUs.
I can see no technical or logistical reason why Apple had to increase prices, and believe it is entirely driven by the idea that the market can bear it.
I am not convinced. Most of the development cost for Apple Silicon is already covered by the iphone and ipad. They always had to pay for manufacturing and logistics so that's not a new thing, and I bet they paid AMD and Intel way more than they pay TSMC even now.
That doesn't sound right. The m series chips are literally copy pasted from their a series and they operate at a scale where they probably get nice economies of scale. I bet they increased their margins a substancial amount.
The problem with these kinds of anecdotes is they lack a control. If you compared an identically priced PC laptop you might find that there's almost no difference. You're just making an assumption without any actual contrasting data to back it up.
But new Macs with soldered RAM and soldered storage and glued batteries may feel nicer on the Apple Store shelf, but a few years down the road when the base model specs are no longer adequate and the latest OSX releases drop them from support, you won't be able to repeat that process.
Or alternatively there were 3rd party providers of them
17 or so year old IBM T41 stopped working about 2 years ago.
I think this is standard for most laptops that cost over $600
Or at least my experience with my Asus and Acer brand 'gaming' laptops.
My computer from 2014 is still my daily driver and I use it for modern gaming. This 2014 computer even does CAD with no slowdowns, its really hard to justify buying something new. I can afford a new computer, I just havent had a reason to. Maybe with AI, I might spend like 35k on a tower so I can run my own LLMs.
No. The spare parts are available 5 years since the end of sale of the product; may be longer, if they are available, but max for 7 years. Batteries for 10.
See here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
I also have 2015 13" MBP. It is perfectly fine hardware-wise, but it is not supported by the current OS already. (It is supported by Monterey, which still receives security updates). I also have 2012 Thinkpad (T430s). It is also perfectly fine hardware-wise, and it is supported by current OS (both Windows and Linux), and neither of them even plans to obsolete them. (Heck, Linux distributions are just starting carefully considering x86-64 microarchitectures).
> the anti-apple bias is strong enough
You should consider whether you are not having apple-bias. The Job's RDF joke existed not without a reason.
There is no Apple-bias. Apple hardware is not really any better than other brands, but they are chic and you pay for it. That's almost always been the case, speaking as a Mac guy before it became cool (pre-iPod). Stories of longevity for any brand are generally from people who take care of their stuff, but you can find exceptions even here.
I bought a refurbished Lenovo laptop 10 years ago for $300, it's still going strong after updating to an SSD a couple of years ago. The comparable Apple hardware would have cost 3x that. I also don't have to worry about losing security updates because my hardware doesn't go EOL like you just described.
My ASUS G73 is 12 years old. I stuffed it with 32GB RAM and it works just fine. I use it to create 3D models and assemblies. I do clone the SSD once in a while but still there was no need to replace.
Since I use it mostly as a portable desktop (external keyboard, mouse and 4K monitor) the relevant parts are pristine.
Well, nothing went wrong with all the computers I've ever had, but that's just an anecdotal measure of reliability, not of sustainability.
Very weird logic.
It's still getting new MacOS releases/updates using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. Once MacOS is ARM only will put Linux or OpenBSD on it and see how long it goes.
Replacing old batteries is sometimes extremely affordable if you're willing to open the machine yourself.
He basically never used it as a laptop, and it's been plugged in to an external monitor and keyboard for many years. He used to stack paper on top of it until I told him to stop it so it could vent better. I would update the software, but I think it's been a while since there's been a new security update. I picked it up recently while visiting and noticed it wouldn't close all the way - uh oh.
So I told him his battery was going bad and could explode. He took it to an independent repair shop the next day. They replaced it with a new battery and cleaned out over a decade of dust in the chassis for $120.
I tried to impress upon him that having the same computer for over 10 years without ever having to take it in (or really do any kind of maintenance besides software updates) is extraordinary - he understands now that computers are a little more like cars. They need to be serviced sometimes. Not nearly as frequently as cars. And those laptops were not known for having good thermals.
I'm on the verge of buying him a new MacBook just so he will be on the latest software - but for what he does (email, web browsing) the Air works just as well as it did in 2011.
I think I might end up getting him a gently used M1 Mac Mini though since it never moves from his desk and it would be under $500.
Anyways, I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro and it's hard to see myself buying a new Macbook Pro in the next 5 years minimum. I just don't need to. They fixed pretty much all of the problems their laptops had.
Perhaps i'm just lucky... but I use it everyday for hours. It traveled to super remote places.
I want to use it for 2 or 3 more years (10 years in total would be nice!)
There is an application called "AlDente" that lets you control this more precisely - not only can you essentially force it to hold at a specific charge level at any time, but you can also configure battery temperature limits (battery won't charge above, eg, 35C) and also "sailing mode" which gives it some hysteresis so it won't immediately charge up to 80% (or whatever you set) but rather stay at (eg) 76% if you run unplugged for a few minutes.
How much memory do you have? Seemed like my biggest concern when it came to this generation of MacBooks and longevity.
This isn't to defend Apple's stingy memory and storage specs, I just don't end up needing more than that really for the kind of work I do.
The base SSD was 500GB too. Which I'm using like... half of? It's the same thing with iPhones. The base storage amount for Pro models is 128GB and I never run up against that limit. Maybe if I took way more pictures and videos.
I store all my important data in different versions of the cloud (code I write in remote Github repos, files in Google Drive) so on device stuff is more ephemeral.
If I was a professional photographer or video editor, I'd care a lot more. Again, I think they should offer more a base but I don't ever run into actually needing it so it's not a pain point for me.
I could imagine upgrading to the M3 or even M4 MBA, but at that point it will have been 4–5 years on the M1.
A $200 Chromebook will work fine.
I assume Windows is doing better on that front than ChromeOS. MacOS sure as hell is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32474827
And the problem with apple hardware is you barely can fix anything yourself and without Apple care it costs a lot of money because they can't replace single parts but only complete modules.
So we are talking about ~ 30 years cumulative ownership with 3 battery changes and 3 MagSafes. Not bad in my book. If you want to nuke e waste, buy a Mac and hope it’s not a lemon. They rarely are
Personally I have a mid-2012 13" MBP, 16GB, 1TB SSD, 2K external display and a third displayLink display running Ventura and it's still going strong. I have several more for giving coding lessons / as backups for me ;) I dream of the day Apple goes back to making something as serviceable as them, but I won't lose sleep waiting.
OTOH, literally every Mac owner I know has had to replace their Mac laptop multiple times due to various hardware issues. (And yes, that includes Macbook Pros, Airs, etc.)
It's great that Apple has such good support. I couldn't tell you what Dell or IBM's support is like; I've never had to use it.
I agree with you, but that doesn’t change the fact outside the US, many Apple products are 15+% more expensive than they were a few years ago. In the UK we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis—my bills have shot up and I simply don’t have the extra disposable income.
I mean shit, I’m a decently paid developer (for the north of the UK, so not London) and until my most recent rise a base 16” MacBook Pro cost almost an entire month’s take-home salary.
> and she abuses the shit out of it.
It is all own stories. Go to any university or school. Give the student a mac. Wait for a few months and see.
In my experience, this was true during the 68k and PPC days, but after the x64 transition quality went downhill, fast.
Don't use an Apple Reseller for this without checking Apple's battery replacement price first. The reseller I went to quoted 2.5x the price, and said they were unaware of Apple's price (seems unlikely), which they could not match.
this isn't "anti-apple bias", i like macs and will keep buying them. but the claim that they're more durable or longer-lasting than equivalent windows laptops is just nonsense. you can't expect 9 years out of one, but if you're very very lucky it might last that long.
my Acer chromebook that i bought in 2013 is "still going strong". so is the pair of the absolute cheapest possible dell inspiron i bought in 2012 for rental customers to use at outdoor events. but i'm not going around telling people they should expect acer or dell laptops to last a decade.
you simply don't need to upgrade computers like you did in the 90s and early 2000s.
I suspect many of us agree, and full disclaimer I am an Apple customer since about 1990. That said - that so many base units across their product line come with paltry specs is really upsetting. Frankly, it feels like environmental waste for them to still be selling machines with only 8gb ram / less than 1TB min storage. Sure, I've heard their song-and-dance about storage in the cloud and how because of their memory management 8gb isn't really just 8gb - and I find those arguments to be horse pucky.
Also - if your battery is still kicking after 9 years consider yourself very, very, weirdly lucky. I bet if you put our a survey you would find a number of us who didn't come close to that, whether due to keyboard issues, battery, etc.
Macbooks are great if you get a model without some serious design fault - like screen protection peeling off, or butterly keyboard breaking.
My mother still uses my even more cheapo laptop from 2010 - my brother in law replaced the HDD with an SSD, but that's the extent of maintenance done. The battery sort of works, but barely.
Meanwhile my work MBP in 2019 started developing keyboard issues after a few months of use - just like the units my two coworkers from the same room had. To be fair that was a particularly bad model year.
A laptop generally should last seven years, but most people here don't see their devices reach that age because they pass them on after less than three.
Apple should start at 512GB. It doesn't meaningfully increase their BOM, and gets rid of a lot of user frustration.
Also, I notice you had a 2014 machine, so you skipped the keyboard issues that plagued Apple until ~2021.
I very much enjoy using my Macbook over any windows laptop (the trackpad and keyboard are just so much better), but I am concerned about spending $3k on another laptop in a year or so when this one runs into an issue again.
As other posters have demonstrated, having a laptop last this long is part good design and part good luck.
My own personal anecdote is that I spilled a trivial amount of booze on my MacBook 9 years ago and was left with the option of whether I wanted to replace the entire lower case. While it was my fault for drinking and computing, I just see it as being an expensive device to maintain when you accidentally damage it. I'd rather play a lower stakes game with a cheaper product that I'd buy more frequently as my needs change over the years.
I've spilled more drinks onto a single Thinkpad than I've killed Apples with. Thinkpads (used to?) have a pan under the keys with a drainage hole that goes out below the laptop. No damage whatsoever from several spills.
Apple has a lot of fanboys that are not entirely rational about their fanboyism.
Take it in, thinking okay, maybe $300 for parts and labor.
Hah, no. "So we're looking at $950..."
followed by the Apple guy then saying "How about we look at getting you into a new MacBook instead?"
Nah. It worked fine, and was mostly attached to her desk and digital piano, and continued to work just fine on AC power.
Very often! I'm not an Apple person, but every laptop I've ever owned has kept going strong well past the 10 year mark.
Have a look at Open Core Legacy Patcher (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/), it’s great! My wife is using my old 2011 17” MBP as a desktop laptop, it works flawlessly on Ventura 13.3 :)
yeah, Apple computers do last long. But it is ridiculous that you can’t upgrade RAM or hard disk or pretty much anything, after spending THAT much money.
It may last, but a laptop with 8GB of RAM becomes less and less useful over time
A small part of the reasons I downvoted you is this flamey statement here, because you seem more worried about the downvotes you were getting than with the content of your message and seem to base your opinion an what you think other people will like to hear, and when that doesn't work and people downvote you, you then resort to generalize and perhaps falsely calling people who disagree with you that they must have an anti Apple bias when that's not true.
You should always speak your mind free regardless of other people's upvotes or downvotes, and not start to attack those who don't agree with you as if only your opinion is the right one and everyone else who disagrees must certainly be biased.
Back on topic, no, I don't have an Apple bias, and the main reason I downvoted you is that I don't agree with your assessment of Apple making sustainable products when they've demonstrated time and time again being at the forefront of the anti right-to-repair movement and did everything they could to make sure to restrict, disable and discourage third party repairs as much as possible. See Luis Rossman's and Linus Tech Tips's videos. That's not what a sustainable company does.
I'm glad you've never had any issue with your Macbooks, but one, that's survivorship bias of sample size one, and two, that's just shows reliability, and in no way proves anything about sustainability.
Sustainability would be if you would have had issues and Apple would have provided you with assistance to reapir your old devices on the cheap. But your anecdotal experience of something never going wrong is no proof of sustainability as nothing ever went wrong with my Acer, HP, and Lenovo machines either, but that doesn't mean they're models of sustainability.
Framework is an example of sustainability, not Apple, because sell you with the parts to keep your machines going, in case something goes wrong. Apple does not do that, in fact the opposite:
"Oh, the display cable of your out of warranty Macbook is toast? Bummer. How about buying a new laptop then?"
That's not what a sustainable company does. Ever.
Based on these facts, I would encourage you to reevaluate your stance on what sustainability actually means and how it's defined on a consumer company and products. Peace.
You got my upvote because I have a similar experience - still using my 2014 MacBook Pro.
However, I also agree with the other take I’m seeing in these comments: the current prices do seem disproportionately high (at least in the EU).
I feel I have to go back about 25 years to see the same level of expense for high-end electronics. I genuinely thought we were past that era of rarefied ‘professional’ hardware.
And as others have also pointed out, adding RAM or disk capacity is ridiculously expensive.
But its the same with a lot of other electronics too - people online will tell you something like "just get a raspberry for $40" but then you look at the European ebay and you're in for at least a 100 euro and that's for a used one.
They still haven't caught up production enough to stifle the price increases.
They should have stuck with their core IMO.
* https://pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/
The Rock64 fits in a Pi3 case and is roughly equiv. and runs DietPi (makes a good Pihole).
The RockPro64 is a great media machine.
The A64 doesn't really do it for me but I am sure it has applications.
My one big complaint about the Rock64 design is that the tiny barrel power plug (the same size and voltage used for USB powered hubs) is right next to the 3.5mm audio jack and fits inside and if you mistakenly put it in it will fry the board (ask me how I know). I have taken to popping the connector off shitty headphones and putting it in the audio jack so that can't happen.
For heavier usecases that really there isn't as much of an alternative. Many other boards like the pine64, beagle and orangepi, but their ecosystem lacks sophistication.
I did these calculations a while back on various Mac models and the price difference was actually not that large. The US prices are without VAT. Add the 19 or 21% of VAT that is typical for EU countries and it's almost the same. The difference grew a bit, because the Euro became a bit stronger relative to the USD since Apple made their last announcements.
mini-PC that would be energy efficient and I could run some AI experiments on
Don't do that, an M2 has very limited compute. A cheap RTX2060 Super from some years back will be many many times faster when you use Tensor Cores.
These taxes seem punitive. For essential goods such as computers, that seems way too high.
This has been true for Europe for a long time.
In the early 90's, I had a particular Sony Walkman that I was very fond of. I paid about US$100 for it.
A couple of months later, I accidentally left it on the plane as I was transferring in Paris. When I got to Vienna, I was delighted to discover that it was also available there, so I bought a replacement. I was not delighted to find out that it cost nearly double what I paid for it in the U.S.
There's something about Europe and electronics that always seems to equal higher prices. It's been going on for at least a half a century.
Everything in Canada is usually 10-25% more expensive than the US, besides stuff covered under NAFTA. Consumer things like clothes/electronics are usually the biggest victims.
But I just compared the Apple stores and the base Macbook = $999USD vs $1299CAD, doing pure currency conversion $1299CAD = $965.96USD, so it's technically ~$32USD cheaper in Canada? Probably just out-of-step with currency markets/inflation.
What's that?
I've noticed this as well, but having lived through 2011-2013 when the CAD = USD, Apple has 3-6 month lead times on pricing changes, almost always tied to product releases/store updates.
Maybe it'll get more expensive the next time they release a product, maybe it won't because the difference is currently negligible.
So I went an bout a bunch of mac minis with remote desktop and just looped the digital signage videos via VLC.
I had to do this in some of the salesforce offices I built - like 50 Fremont, Chicago, NYC...
Mac minis were great for the 'bandaid' -- but even then were over priced and a pain to manage...
But I personally do not think Ill be buying another mac object due to appl fking me when my machine was under recall for catching fire, and my machine..... caught fire....
And appl held the machine for two month while 'investigating' and refused to honor the recall because it took them two months to find a moisture sensor that had been set off at some point.
The machine caught fire in my bed while I was watching netflix.
Appls solution was "well you can buy a new machine to replace it at full price" (this was LITERALLY what they said to me in the Union Sq, SF flagship store.
There is only 1 Mac Mini available with M1 CPU and it only has 8GB RAM - that's for $499 and if you add shipping to Europe and tax, probably it will work out closer to $1000 than $499.
There is only 1 Mac Mini available with M1 CPU
He stated specifically Intel machines. The M1 isn't an Intel processor.
And the RPi prices are through the roof everywhere. "Just get a Pi, they are cheap" is basically a pre-2020 sentiment.
I remember being upset that the same laptop cost more in Australia than it did in the US, then I realized that it had a lot more to do with Australia's corporate tax rates. Turns out... companies do pass on taxes to the end purchasers.
It feels, and I don't mean offense here, that if the EU wants to tell companies which power plugs they can use, and stay heavy-handed with corporate tax rates, that people in the EU will need to just accept higher prices as the outcome of their leaders' actions.
Currency fluctuations, and corporate taxes explain all the price differences. Someone said "Oh it costs 7% more now than it did 2 years ago!" Gosh, compared to the rest of everything a price hike of only 7% seems like a really good deal over the last 3 years. =P (But I get we aren't used to tech prices ever going up over time.)
No company is in the business of giving things away, y'know? Anyway Apple just wants a profit of $X per unit. If your country adds a bunch of rules and costs, that's fine it's your right to self-govern and set whatever laws you want, but Apple is still going to get a profit of $X per unit.
Edit: Later today I'm picking up a laptop for a colleague who is coming in to town next week from an EU country. He wanted to buy it in the US since it was so much cheaper. Good timing on this post. (=
He needs to declare it when he returns to the EU, and pay the same taxes. (Assuming it costs more than €430, which is the limit for bringing personal goods into the EU by plane.)
It seems that everyone buys laptops in the US and brings them home this way; whether they are in Australia, Costa Rica -- or even the EU -- on a personal level, nobody wants to pay more, especially not more taxes.
The only time I have paid import taxes was when I sent a used phone and laptop to a person on Reddit who needed them in Canada. Even though the devices were over five years old, the Canadian tax authorities wanted me to pay new retail prices for them. I paid the taxes so that the kid could receive the devices. I'm pretty sure I could have just declared them as having a value of $100, but by the time I got involved the kid had already said it was an "Apple Laptop" and the Postal Mounties just assumed a new sticker price. Frustrating.
Add into that things like shipping costs in various areas, and it can all add up.
I don't think it's absurd at all. A similarly capable laptop could be had for a much lower price, so people that complain they cannot get this luxury item for an "affordable" price just sounds entitled to me.
8GB of Ram is luxury?
Rolls Royce is luxury. Luxury means status. A gold plated car is luxury ( for some). It's a whole different league.
Macbooks used to be premium - better performance, better experience. Limited storage is not premium.
If Porshe releases a car with 30 horsepower, and asks for £100,000, we have a word for that.
A joke.
I'm simply pointing out the absurdy of the pricing in context of this news story about falling sales.
I’m sure apple is excited about cultivating this brand identity. If there is one way I can think that they could get away from the “Sony” or Nike model, it’s being seen as a luxury item, a tool of the select few, instead of just a high quality brand, that yes, might be a little more expensive.
-- Just adding a bit that I'd prefer to be less sarcastic than I was in this comment: My point is that I like the Mac brand better as an bit more costly, but upscale, quality tool than a "luxury". Luxury implies that it is impractically expensive (which I think is what is being argued) Maybe it was just the choice of that word.
I'm not sure they even really view themselves as prosumer, but it is a fine line.
(The answer is that only MV is real, not M.)
>...
> It isn’t clear that increasing interest rates will have any impact on lowering prices. The nascent resurgence in inflation being experienced across the world is primarily still due to supply chain disruptions. The mechanism by which rising interest rates are supposed to impact inflation is essentially by increasing unemployment, which weakens workers’ bargaining power and thus slows wage growth. But lowering wage growth won’t do anything to address supply side constraints or energy shortages, which are a driver of ‘cost-push’ rather than ‘demand-pull’ inflation.
> ...
> The trade-off for policy makers between creating jobs and wage growth, while simultaneously controlling inflation, goes back to a 1958 paper by economist William Phillips on the relationship between ‘Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the United Kingdom, 1861-1957’, which became a cornerstone of macroeconomics. The paper identified the correlation between lower unemployment with higher inflation and vice-versa (see Figure 2).
The explanation for this relationship was that as unemployment decreased the ability of workers to bid for higher wages increased due to less competition in the labour market. Higher wages mean more income to spend on goods and services, which leads to prices going up. This is bad for net creditors and net savers, because the inflation cancels out the interest on savings. By contrast, workers and net borrowers benefit from rising wages and prices, as it allows them to pay off their debt more quickly, which is depreciating in real terms relative to their income.
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/11/bank-of-england-rishi-sunak...
Inflation is multifactorial, different types of disruption to the economic web cause different effects on it, the article then goes on to mention the overall lower wages on US and UK post Reagan Thatcher as case study for how labor and wage growth changes inflation rates
(Realized I can still edit: reply after reply is trying to interpret this as a statement about causality, which it emphatically is not. I'm just saying that ordering is complicated in feedback systems, and that the needed salary growth to compensate for existing inflation largely already happened. This is doubly or triply true for the tech salaries people here are making.)
You're right that's a 7% increase in nominal terms but a 5.5% decrease in real dollar terms.
If your country's dollar falls in value, Apple punishes your country. It's not fair to you as an individual, but it's how Apple have operated for at least the last 15 years.
Many people on HN can probably explain why the price is what it is now. That doesn't mean that people are willing (or capable) to pay that much.
Mom makes X
Prices go up
Mom still makes X
One of the best ways to look at the effects of inflation is how long between "upgrades" of various things like cars, computers, phones, TVs, etc.
Also, everyone and their mother wanted to buy the M1 when it came out, because it was just so much better than what came before; but there's no real pressing reason to upgrade to the M2 from the M1, so most of the new purchases will be the last few Intel hold-outs upgrading, or new customers.
At $999 and a major performance increase, a new laptop might be a no-brainer (especially compared to replacing batteries, etc).
But at $1199 and a minor increase, why bother?
Probably not true in general either except in stagflation.
Where are you from? I’d rather hire from your pool than mine (and I pay 20-30% above market range).
Mac is just much less troublesome. As I'm aging and (hopefully) becoming a senior dev, I'm getting more and more focused and want to immediately attack the problems I'm paid to solve, and not endlessly fighting and fine-tuning my machines.
I might be wanting to get back to work soon. Hit me up if you need a seasoned dev.
Could not argue about the price of a Ryzen, can't beat that. :)
* my previous MBP 16" lasted me 29 months, salvage value was around 50%, and the amortized cost was around 42€/month
* for my current 16" MBP (M1) I'm assuming 24 months with similar salvage value, which puts me at around 60€/month
The M1 MBP is a spectacular machine. It's faster than nearly anything else I can get. It's also portable, which means I only need one machine for home, office or travel work. At 60€/month I find it to be a fantastic value proposition and I don't think it's overpriced at all.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just showing that a totally different point of view is possible, especially if you use the machine for work.
The cheapest MacBook Air, which is fine for most of my needs is €1260/$1370 and while it's a wonderful laptop, it's just a bit much for running Safari, VSCode and a terminal. It really is a €950 laptop, but if they could hit that price then what else would you really want to buy?
A major issue for me is that I wouldn't know what else to get. Given the current state of Windows, I'm not running out to get a Windows machine. Honestly, if the layout of my house was different, so I could get my desk closer to the living room and family, I'd go for a desktop running Linux next time around.
Other than that, I think Apple have the market cornered. You want a great laptop, with an OS that just works (for most people), then what else are you going to buy?
Hell even when it comes to development, you can't just build your iOS/MacOS app on a regular Linux CI machine, no you must have MacOS machines for building, so you need that special hardware on top of all the other expenses.
I almost feel like Apple setup the developer program with the idea that it's just going to be 15 year old prodogies making apps on their parents computer, their whole stack just seems incompatible and PIA to work with when it comes to actual software development. It should be a sign when you have popular products like CodePush that were designed specifically to address the shortcomings of developing iOS apps.
It’s been over a decade since indy developers really made a dent in the App Store.
Android is not exactly a piece of cake to develop for, the tool chain is slow, the emulator is slow, the device market os fragmented and people are still mostly running old versions of Android you have to support.
Not to mention most Android devices on the market are slow.
xcode itself is 12GB and doesn't support partial updates, the projet file is some hot garbage and plays badly with git, the whole ide is lagging pretty hard on clicka, app upload is so broken Apple themselves had ro release a third party tool to bypass it, the developer portal looks like it hasn't changed since 2010 and has a number of shameful bugs...
How slow is the emulator? How many Android versions do you have to test for because of the piss poor support for OS updates from Android manufacturers?
(But the second adapter is 110$ and requires a separate 120$ shipment).
For the time being, there's apparently a customer base willing to pay those prices. They're not spec-competitive, but once you assign value to the brand, and the moral stance of supporting the idea, and the secondary value of intentionally-not-obsolete components, they have a lot going for them.
And notably, the customers who consider those factors to be important, are generally aiming mid-high in the market anyway.
Apple's value proposition seems to be "pay an arm and a leg for something we will break anytime we think you should give us more money."
Ventura is lower, 4-5 years, but that happens periodically when aligned with major architectural changes.
[edit] Honestly, their support cycle is pretty impressive. And just because they don't release a newer version of macOS doesn't mean software stops working.
Dropping support for hardware that still runs perfectly fine, and isn't a heinous mess of architectural workarounds, is nothing more than a crass money-grab. Which is completely understandable for a company whose job is to make money, but I still don't see why that's praiseworthy.
Historically, Apple seems to prefer to drop support for old hardware rather than maintain a long list of caveats about which features cannot run on older machines. Throughout the Intel Mac era, Apple was clearly trying to raise the bar for baseline GPU performance to ensure the graphical effects really would run "perfectly fine" as you put it, though they were stymied by some of Intel's anti-competitive behavior. Their decision to drop support for the 32-bit kernel and firmware was quite reasonable, though the later decision to drop support for 32-bit applications was more of a problem for users.
Does Windows 11 work on that machine? Does Windows 10?
The cross product matrix is already staggering, but imagine testing 10 years of iPhones, 10 years of iPods, however many years of Watch, AirPods, chargers, etc against every Mac released for 10 years - in every configuration? Every time you ship an OS update? Wild.
It's one of several reasons that I stopped buying macs for my personal dev machine and switched to ubuntu. Linux certainly isn't perfect but updates have been more pleasant than on mac or windows.
The cheapest iPhone they sell you is the SE, a phone with a low-res, dim display, that's worse than what Android phones had 10 years ago (have the SE from work and my dusty old 2012 Samsung Note 2's OLED display just blows it out of the water), all starting at a whopping 549 Euros, more than my rent.
Apple's pricing is just nuts in Europe. For up to 399 I might give it a pass, but at 549 they're just taking the mickey.
The iPad 9 was also a pretty good deal at ~380 Euros until they replaced it with the iPad 10 at ~540 Euros. Absolutely mental. It fells they're pulling "an Nvidia" on us and just jacking up the prices for no reason.
It was a horrendous experience. The camera is unquestionably better in the Samsung but that is about all the positives I could take from my week of using it.
Android was just an abysmal experience from my perspective. Nothing on it seems intuitive and everything feels like a ploy to get you to use a product which will siphon your data off to Google.
Obviously this is just my own personal anecdotal experience so take it with a pinch of salt. But there will no doubt be others feeling the same.
I miss my old 3310 if I am honest. I’ve been looking at dumb phones recently. I just need one with WhatApp so I can talk to my family around the world ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm always amused by this kind of comment.
I have been from ios to Android back to ios in the last few years. The two of them are so similar nowadays it's laughable. The UX is nearly identical.
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBxBUIoeNYo&t=603s
Creating a mental process like this: - "I'd like an M1 Pro 14, but it's too expensive" - "A 16GB M1 Air would more than suffice and they're now at okayish prices refurbished" - "Oh! there's a new M2 Air and it's like a pretty nice middle point between the M1 Air and the M1 Pro" - "Oh wait, 16GB is only a few hundred less than an M1 Pro" - "...I guess I should just splash out and get the M1 Pro??"
I'm probably still just gonna get an M1 Air when I need to instead but the amount of time I've entertained getting an M2 Air versus using it to compare against alternatives on either side has been absolutely minimal.
My work M1 Pro has drastically improved my quality of life so I'm not entertaining anything other than Apple, but the M2 is decidedly underwhelming comparing to the seismic shift that was the M1.
The only thing I miss on my M1 Pro, is USB-A (which I'm invested in, e.g. my YubiKeys and something like a HackRF or Proxmark), but its got 3 (!!) USB-C and I got adapters. I would've gone to Framework, but while the Linux desktop has come from a long, long way (my reference point being I started using WMs in the 90s, with my first being FVWM on RedHat 5.2) I prefer macOS with a plethora of FOSS utilities, and I am not disappointed by macOS on the ARM-based M-series. With a Framework, I could open it up myself and it seems pretty idiot-proof. I love the modularity of the ports but in the end they're just internal USB-C adapters. So while aesthetically nice, with 3 USB-C (and a SD and HDMI) I'm good to go.
The inclusion of the HDMI port, and generally how far along we are in the usb-c transition, means that I can probably get away without one of those mini dock dongles that generally are no more than a few usb-a ports, an HDMI port and maybe an ethernet port. I have a couple of tiny usb-c(male) to usb-a(female) in my bag for interfacing if I need to.
Previously I had a 13" M1 work machine and it was also great but skated a bit too close to the 'air' sun. It was almost perfect except I felt like I had to carry that stupid mini-dock dongle with me just about everywhere given that it only had 2 ports, one of which was probably going to be for power. (and no magsafe... boooooo)
M2 Air might be good too, I don't know. But if I could go back, I'd go to M1 Pro.
Sure, newer devices are faster and their lifecycle is longer, but the prices are becoming really out of reality.
The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing.
I would be astounded if ~80% of users get any material benefit from a laptop newer than a high-end device from 4 years ago.
So I was asking myself if I "need" the fancy laptop screen and excellent audio of a 14" MBP for $2K (no video production, no graphic design, no VR/AR, but hey, Electron apps all day long!).
Answer is no, clearly. But any Apple Silicon at this point is (hopefully) another ten year machine.
That said, I know plenty of Mac users who upgrade maybe every 4 or 5 years.
Seems apt to post this exceptionally cheesy Mac ad: https://youtu.be/8kF5x2D3rqo
This is what kills it for me. When the M1 macs came out I was quite enthusiastic to use them, but just wasn't ready to drop that kind of money on an unknown OS. So I brought a cheaper, refurbished MBA (8gb ram, 256gb ssd) and loved it. The trouble is, 256gb ssd would be too small for me as a daily driver, ideally I'd want at least 1tb, but my only option to get that is to buy a whole new mac. Its hard to justify spending ~£3000 on what is effectively for me just a bigger ssd.
For me my M1 Macbook Pro has the following pros:
* It just works. I detest Windows. I love Linux but lately I started spending too much time maintaining it, I have busy life and decided that taking care of my OS is a luxury and I would rather use something that is acceptable than spend a lot of time getting to perfect.
* It is viable powerful workstation. I just connect it to a good docking station and have a nice setup with two 60Hz 4k monitors. It is silent and usually cold while in this setup. And it is surprisingly (and I mean it) powerful.
* It has gorgeous display. For hugging together and watching movies with my kids and wife.
* It is a status symbol. All people at my company who mean anything have one and it is easier for me to just fit in and pick other, more meaningful battles.
* It is durable. It will last me a long time, hopefully. It is true that it is fragile, but it is mostly fragile in certain ways that I can manage around. I am generally gentle and caring about my gadgets. If I don't kill it in a stupid way there is good chance it will be perfectly good working laptop for many, many years to come. I can hand it down to one of my family while I get a newer machine.
This is a huge factor for me. I have linux on my desktop but my laptops are Mac - I do a lot of graphics and video editing and the color reproduction of Mac displays is reliably faithful at both the hardware and software level. And the M1 is a champ, its performance seems like a miracle for such a quiet cool machine
* the power efficiency of the M1 means you can _actually_ use it an entire day on a charge _without_ having to compromise on performance. That is a huge issue.
I'd amend your last point with: at least in North America, getting service for the Apple products is very streamlined and that has enabled me to keep even a 2008 MBP alive until today. For me that is a huge deal as I hate donating to the landfill.
Watching all this unfold as the DevOps guy was funny. "Don't go buy the new Macbooks, it breaks our build pipeline and you can no longer run production locall- wait, what's that? We ordered 20 last week before anyone even tested it? Sigh..."
It doesn't matter to them. They're content spending 5 hours tweaking their Mac setup for every 60 minutes they spend improving production. Do I envy that naivete? I'm not sure anymore.
It was in absolute mint condition with 7 cycles on the battery and 1 year left on applecare (which apparently means i can renew it even as the second owner.)
My take is that a lot of people got these wizzbang new laptops through some spending account for WFH during covid, they never left the house with them and now theyre selling them as they go back to the office.
https://www.galaxus.de/de/s1/product/apple-macbook-air-2022-...
I wonder why the Apple executive leadership doens't come together and say:
1. let's lower prices
2. let's keep prices the same but offer 16GB + 512GB of storage
my hypothetical retort would be "they don't need to if people keep buying their product" but, if the article headline is true about sales being down, then they need to run some kind of sale or re-evaulate i guess
i wonder what their margins are on their M2 Mac line of hardware
> It is generally believed that Apple has a profit margin of around 40-45% on its products.
> Using the mid-point of that range (42.5%), we can approximate the hypothetical cost of manufacturing an Apple M2 laptop as follows:
> Hypothetical Cost = Sale Price / (1 + Margin)
> Hypothetical Cost = $1200 / (1 + 0.425)
> Hypothetical Cost = $842.11
IMHO, the Mac and Framework are different products for different people: The Mac is for generalists who just need a computer that's easy to use and gets things done whereas the framework is for techies who need to get things done, but also care about open architecture, upgradability, and tinkering with esoteric Linux distros.
Many of these generalists on the Mac side don't need more than a web browser for most of their tasks and are willing to pay more because they don't want to care about the details: they just want a computer that works.
This isn't to say one or the other is better, but that they are solving for fundamentally different problems.
For me, the hardware is still without a doubt premium. Great build quality, fantastic processors etc.
iOS is still pretty good as well. But MacOS…damn what a mess. I’m starting to think I’m better of using a framework laptop with a user friendly Linux GUI running on it.
https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe
And Mac sales increased
Technically it is replaceable - replacement of surface mount components isn't actually too difficult and tools that are needed are affordable. Problem is that the Apple won't give an option to buy memory or SSD chips on an open market. While the replacement wouldn't be feasible for a typical laptop user, plenty of mobile repair shops would have done the upgrade with pleasure provided they could get access to chips.
Something we really need legislators to step in. Unfortunately in the EU the coming right to repair law is completely useless.
It's not user-replaceable. It would not be _that_ difficult for Apple to keep a SODIMM slot free, or even come up with a new standard - as they are wont to do.
Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money - it's as simple as that.
Considering even the Ryzen 7950x or Intel I9 for desktops are 128 bit wide that's a pretty huge difference. You have to move up to Epyc, Threadripper, Xeon, or a Workstation CPU to get more than 128 bits, and those aren't available on laptops.
So I'm going to have to disagree with the "Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money".
Well, it's not because Apple doesn't give access to parts, otherwise it would be.
Not sure how use of hot air station suddenly makes it something that a user can't do?
You can buy a hot air station for less than $100 and it will do the job. Only caveat is that the replacement part needs to be new (so it has pre-applied solder balls) - otherwise you'd need to reball which a bit more difficult, but not something that can't be done at home.