The MacBook Air is not a luxury device. That meme is out of date
How is something that is twice as expensive as the competition not a luxury device?
EDIT: Because there's repeated confusion in the replies: I am not saying that a MacBook Air is not objectively a better device. I'm saying it is better by metrics that fall strictly into the "luxury" category.
Better build quality, system-on-a-chip, better OS, better battery life, aluminum case—all of these are luxury characteristics that someone who is looking for a functional device that meets their needs at a decent price won't have as dealbreakers.
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-i7-11370H-Micro-Edge-Anti...
The point isn't that the MacBook Air isn't better by some metrics than PC laptops. A Rolls-Royce is "better" by certain metrics than a Toyota, too. What makes a device luxury is if it costs substantially more than competing products that the average person would consider a valid replacement.
MacBook Air (2022): https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-2022
Ryzen 5 5500U (CPU): https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-5-5500u
Ryzen 5 5500U (APU, similar laptop): https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/compute/6751456
But what is that, exactly? If you look at all aspects of a laptop: CPU, RAM, SSD, battery life, screen quality, build quality, touchpad, OS, and put them in order of importance for the average consumer, what would be on top? I don't think it's the tech specs.
For instance, I would be willing to bet that for a large number of consumers, battery life is far more important than the tech specs, which means that a valid replacement for their MacBook must have equivalent battery life. You also have to consider things like the expected lifespan of the laptop and its resale value to properly compare their costs. It's not simple.
Closer to $999 then $500.
https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-IdeaPad-Ryzen5-5500U-1920x1080...
An 18 hour battery life is a luxury characteristic, not something penny pinchers will typically be selecting on.
Apple likes to overcharge for storage, but the drives are _really_ good.
As I said in another comment:
The point isn't that the MacBook Air isn't better by some metrics than PC laptops. A Rolls-Royce is "better" by certain metrics than a Toyota, too. What makes a device luxury is if it costs substantially more than competing products that the average person would consider a valid replacement.
Except Apple wanted $3,000 for 7TB of SSD (considering the base price already included 1TB).
Instead, I bought a 4xM.2 PCI card, and 4 2TB Samsung Pro SSDs.
I paid $1,300 for it, got to keep the 1TB "system" SSD.
And I get faster speeds from it, 6.8GBps versus 5.5GBps off the system drive.
For $2,000 I could have got the PCI 4.0 version and SSDs, and get 26GBps.
... for an eye watering $3,000 over the exact same spec Mac Studio.
I liked my cheesegrater, though I didn't like the heat output.
And I cannot justify that. I sacrificed half the throughput (2800MBps) for $379 and got an external 4 x M.2 TB3 enclosure.
Oh, and a USB 3 hub to replace one I had installed in the cheesegrater to augment the built in ports. $400 give or take.
Like I say Audi is a luxury car because a Toyota costs less than half as much, and you ask "what about a Toyota with leather seats"?
My experiences (multiple) with Genius Bar have been decidedly more "meh" to outright frustrating, versus "luxury", oftentimes where I know more than the Genius.
Logic Board issues where on a brand new macOS install I could reproducibly cause a kernel panic around graphics hardware. There was an open recall (finally, after waiting MONTHS) on this. It covered my Mac. But because it passed their diagnostic tool, they would only offer to replace the board on a time and materials basis.
I had a screen delamination issue. "It's not that bad - you can't see it when the screen is on, and you have to look for it". Huh. Great "luxury" experience.
And then the multiple "we are going to price this so outrageously, and use that as an excuse to try to upsell". Like the MBA that wouldn't charge due to a circuit issue. Battery fine, healthy. Laptop, fine, healthy, on AC. Just couldn't deliver current to the battery. Me, thinking sure, $300ish maybe with a little effort.
"That's going to be $899 to repair. That's only $100 less than a new MBA, maybe we should take a look at some of the new models?" Uh, no. I'm not paying $900 for a laptop that spends 99% (well, 100% now) of its life on AC power.
Nobody is away from a power source for longer than 18 hours. MOST people don't need the performance that a macbook air has, their NEEDS would be met by a raspberry pi... that is, basic finances, logging into various services, online banking, things that first world citizens "rely" on.
The definition of luxury is "great comfort and extravagance", and every current Apple product fits that definition. Past Apple definitely had non-luxury products, as recently as the iPhone C (discontinued 10 years ago)... but Apple has eliminated all low-value options from their lineup.
M-series Macs is when MacBooks stopped sucking at battery life without sleeping and wrecking state every moment they could.
Most people, when given the pitch you just gave me for a 2x increase in price, will choose the cheaper item, just like they choose the cheaper car.
[edit] I mean sure there are people who just want the Apple logo, I’m not saying there are zero of those, but they’re also excellent, reliable tools (by the standards of computers—so, still bad) and a good chunk of their buyers are there for that. Even the ones who only have a phone.
The equivalent from Apple would currently run me $3200. If I'm willing to compromise to 24GB of RAM I can get one for $2200.
What makes an Apple device a luxury item isn't that it's more expensive, it's that no matter what specs you pick it will always be much more expensive than equivalent specs from a non-luxury provider. The things that Apple provides are not the headline stats that matter for a tool-user, they're luxury properties that don't actually matter to most people.
Note that there's nothing wrong with buying a luxury item! It's entirely unsurprising that most people on HN looking at the latest M4 chip prefer luxury computers, and that's fine!
The devices are great and feel great. Definitely high quality (arguably, luxury!). The OS leaves a lot to be desired for me.
Got a job in dual-platform mobile dev and was issued a MacBook. Exposure to dozens of phones and tablets from both ecosystem. I was converted within a year.
(I barely customize anything these days, fwiw—hit the toggle for “caps as an extra ctrl”, brew install spectacle, done. Used to have opinions about my graphical login manager, use custom icon sets, all that stuff)
On the phone side, I guess you would call Samsung and Google luxury providers? On the laptop side there are a number of differentiating features that are of general interest.
> The things that Apple provides are not the headline stats that matter for a tool-user, they're luxury properties that don't actually matter to most people
Things that might matter to regular people (and tool users):
- design and build for something you use all day
- mic and speakers that don't sound like garbage (very noticeable and relevant in the zoom/hybrid work era)
- excellent display
- excellent battery life
- seamless integration with iPhone, iPad, AirPods
- whole widget: fewer headaches vs. Windows (ymmv); better app consistency vs. Linux
- in-person service/support at Apple stores
It's hard to argue that Apple didn't reset expectations for laptop battery life (and fanless performance) with the M1 MacBook Air. If Ryzen has caught up, then competition is a good thing for all of us (maybe not intel though...) In general Apple isn't bleeding edge, but they innovate with high quality, very usable implementations (wi-fi (1999), gigabit ethernet (2001), modern MacBook Pro design (2001), "air"/ultrabook form factors (2008), thunderbolt (2011), "retina" display and standard ssd (2012), usb-c (2016), M1: SoC/SiP/unified memory/ARM/asymmetric cores/neural engine/power efficiency/battery life (2020) ...and occasionally with dubious features like the touchbar and butterfly keyboard (2016).)
How much does it weight? Battery life? Screen quality? Keyboard? Speakers?
Here lies the rub, ARE those the stats that matter? Or does the screen, touchpad, speakers, battery life, software, support services, etc. matter more?
I feel people just TOTALLY gloss over the fact that Apple is crushing the competition in terms of trackpads + speakers + battery life, which are hardly irrelevant parts of most people's computing experience. Many people hardly use their computers to compute - they mostly use them to input and display information. For such users, memory capacity and processing performance ARE frills, and Apple is a market leader where it's delivering value.
Also even in compute, apple is selling computers with a 512-bit or 1024-bit LPDDR5x bus for a lower price than you can get from the competition. Apple is also frequently leading the pack in terms of compute/watt. This has more niche appeal, but I've seen people buy Apple to run LLM inferencing 24/7 while the Mac Studio sips power.
Im a Linux guy but am forced to use Mac's and windows every now and then.
Windows has outpaced macos for a decade straight.
Macos looks like it hasn't been updated in years. It's constantly bugging me for passwords for random things. It is objectively the worst OS. I'd rather work on a Chromebook.
Maybe the only reason why Windows outpaced macos in this for you is because Windows started as crap and is now barely looks like a proper OS?
https://ntdev.blog/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windows-how-many-...
Thank God Mac hasn't changed that much. I absolutely love its UI.
A good deal on a luxury item still gets you a luxury item.
And if we want to compare Walmart to Walmart, this thing currently runs for $359 and has 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and a CPU that benchmarks slightly faster than the M2:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Aspire-3-15-6-inch-Laptop-AM...
I think you unjustifiably downplay how much of a selling point a screen that looks great (or at least decent) on the floor is. And I know tons of devs that put up with the 45% NTSC abominations on Thinkpads that aren’t even suitable for casual photo editing or web media, just because you make do with that doesn’t automatically make a halfway decent display on a laptop a “luxury”.
Sorry, but don’t buy the “everything that isn’t a $300 econo shit laptop is luxury” thesis repeated ad nauseum.
But the definition of luxury varies a lot by product category. Still, high-end and luxury are separate concepts, which ven when they do overlap.
It is true though that luxury goods are, often, top of the line as well. Cars and watches are often examples of this. Clothes are a much more mixed bag, with some luxury brands using excellent materials and craftsmanship, while others use flashy design and branding with mediocre materials and craftsmanship.
Exactly where Apple sits is very debatable in my experience. I would personally say that many of their products are far too affordable and simple to be considered luxury products - the iPhone in particular. The laptops I'm less sure about.
This comes up so often in these flame wars where people are really saying “I do/don’t think you need that feature” and won’t accept that other people aren’t starting from the same point. I remember in the 90s reading some dude on Fidonet arguing that Macs were overpriced because they had unnecessary frills like sound cards and color displays; I wasn’t a Mac user then but still knew this was not a persuasive argument.
I'm seeing significant differences in the performance between Acer Aspire A315 to M2 Macbook Air; the Acer is ~33% of the M2 for 50% the price.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/5942766?baselin...
$999 amortized over 3 years is $30/mo which is less than what even middle class people spend on coffee.
> 3.92 lb
Battery life
> 6.5 h
Probably half of that.
Fans that sound like jet engine, screen quality which would force me to stab my eyes, speakers sounding worse than a toilet, plastic build.
I'm not convinced.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40292804
tl;dr is that Walmart is also selling an Acer for $359 that beats that device on every headline metric.
It's nice to know that I could get the old-gen model for slightly cheaper, but that's still an outrageous price if the MacBook Air isn't to be considered a luxury item.
8gb of ram was pathetic in 2018, and is SUPER pathetic in 2024.
These products may not offer you much value and you don't have to buy them. Clearly plenty of people and institutions bought them because they believed they offered the best value to them.
Try this:
No one calls a Toyota Camry with base options luxury but it works well for a long time and has good quality.
The features that Apple adds on top of that are strictly optional. You can very much prefer them and think that they're essential, but that doesn't make it so. Some people feel that way about leather seats.
You can buy a version of <insert product here> from Walmart at 1/2 price of a "normal" retailer. Does that mean every "normal" retailer is actually a luxury goods dealer?
Is my diner a luxury restaurant because a burger costs twice as much as McDonald's?
Stop the silliness.
So for me, yes, MacBook Airs, like the lovely M1 I'm writing this on (I love my job!) are luxury goods.
Just because Ferraris cost half a million doesn't mean a 50k BMW isn't luxury.
That's for the 8GB model (which is already too low unless you use your Mac for the same use cases as you would use an iPad), 16GB is $200 extra.
What percent of that retailer's products does that comparison apply to?
If it's more than half then yeah that's probably a luxury goods dealer.
Equivalent device?! Find me Windows laptop in ANY price category that can match weight, fanless design, screen quality, battery life, speakers quality and battery life of Air.
Cost comparisons alone are stupid. And “this AMD benchmarks the same as an M2” is a useless comparison since regular people don’t buy laptops for raw compute power.
I have used both. I think the Mac experience is significantly better. No one is looking at me.