For example, the two generations old Mac Book Pro M1 I'm typing this on was purchased for roughly $1800 three years ago. A search of sold eBay auctions shows this configuration having sold for $1200 today, roughly 67% of the original purchase price. When I've done searches in the past comparing similar generation and original purchase price iPhone devices vs Android devices resell value was something like 30% higher.
I'm not familiar enough with the Dell product line to do a comparison search but I'm pretty sure this is significantly better than a three year old Dell, especially with the lower end models essentially being disposable. The lowest-end Macbook Air of this vintage is selling for 60% of the original purchase price.
Everyone I know keeps Apple packaging for resell when they upgrade which is the "reduce and reuse" portion of the "three Rs" reduce, reuse, recycle from the 90s. iPhone boxes also make excellent electronics project boxes and I use them routinely for ESP based projects, etc because they are so sturdy. Of course I still have all of the original packaging for this Macbook Pro for when I finally resell to offset my next upgrade.
Of course eventually the packaging will need to be recycled at some point down the line but generally speaking Apple devices tend to take much longer to end up as e-waste which is a far bigger issue than paper-based packaging.
Not sure I follow, isn't this a good thing whether you're reselling or buying used? Macbooks like most of these things experience the largest drop for the new purchaser with even second-hand selling doing better on a percentage basis.
> You can get a great deal on used thinkpads that have been treated very well and are in very good condition, as large organizations buy them and then they end up as cheap surplus.
+1. When I buy x86_64 machines off-lease enterprise managed SFFs, laptops, servers, etc are IMO the way to go for this kind of hardware.
A great deal for the person buying used, abysmal resell value for the large orgs dumping these things in bulk to surplus resellers. Not that they care anyway, leasing depreciating hardware combined with the bulk discounts from HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc and often tax advantages make this a win-win-win for all involved.
Builds, doing repairs, upgrades, etc used to be fun but my life and career has gotten so complex I just can't be bothered with it at this point.
Sadly it hasn't been fun for a while but I completely understand the advantages for people who aren't as tired and grumpy as I am.
Traditional PCs kind of depreciate like cars: you get a massive hit at the beginning, but then relatively slow depreciation there on out. Which makes buying second hand a better choice.
Macs depreciate kind of like buildings, slow at first, then it falls off a cliff (around when Apple drops support in the latest OSes), but then slow depreciation again.
The current Apple packaging is 100% recyclable though. There is no plastic. The box is closed with adhesive paper tabs, everything inside is paper, the cable wrap is paper. You can open the box and remove the device and cables and chuck the rest in your bin directly.
I think for most people, the occasional uncrushable box is not a big deal. Where I am, where we open these things all the time, it’s kind of a hassle. But then again we have a machine for crushing boxes.
It’s a little precious, but Apple packaging is hardly “bad.”