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Comment by kotaKat | Hacker News Reader

I can walk into many Walmarts in the US right now with $699 and walk out with a MBA with the M1. That's a damn good deal.

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That's still ~twice as expensive as the items I linked to below, and that's at clearance prices.

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...

Oh dear. 16:10 screen with superior resolution, brightness and gamut - and it still gets superior battery life driving all those pixels.. that’s a headline feature that even a non-propellerhead can observe (I was honestly surprised when I looked up that Acer screen what a dim, narrow piece of shit it is) - notably there are ballpark priced systems with better screens.

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.

What defines "luxury" exactly if not the combination of price and "premium experience"?

"Luxury" often includes some amount of pure status symbols added to the package, and often on what is actually a sub-par experience. The quintessential luxury tech device were the Vertu phones from just before and even early in the smartphone era - mid-range phones tech and build quality-wise, with encrusted gems and gold inserts and other such bling, sold at several thousand dollars (Edit: they actually ranged between a few thousand dollars all the way to 50,000+).

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.

You just made up the "sub-par experience" as a defining point of a luxury product. A luxury product is defined by being a status symbol (check for all Apple devices) and especially by its price. A luxury car like a Bentley will still you bring from point A to point B like the cheapest Toyota.

I didn't say that sub-par experience was a requirement, I said it was often a part of luxury products. Or, more precisely, I should have said that something being of excellent build quality and offering excellent, top of the line experience is neither sufficient nor necessary for being a luxury good.

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.

Fair enough. Apple is clearly not in the same luxury league like a Bentley or a yatch, but it's totally like a Mercedes, to continue with the car analogy. You get a "plus" for the extra money but then it's open for debate whether that "plus" is worth or not. And it's actually the source of many flamewars on the Internet.

I think the Mercedes comparison (or the more common BMW) one is also useful for getting the idea that not every manufacturer is competing for the same segments but the prices in segments are generally close. No Mercedes is as cheap as a Camry but a Lexus is similar.

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.

Luxury means beauty and comfort, beyond the bare necessity of function.

By that definition, Zara is a luxury clothing brand, Braun is a luxury appliance maker, and Renault is a luxury car brand. I think it requires significantly more.

That would also apply to Apple products then, and especially so to their laptops. I actually bought a MacBook Air recently and the thing that I like most about it is how comfortable the keyboard and especially the trackpad is compared even to high-end ThinkPads. And, on the other hand, the trackpad on my T14s is certainly quite sufficient to operate it, so this comfort that MacBook offers is beyond the bare necessity of function.

I doubt I am alone in saying that I would gladly pay twice the price to avoid having to use Windows. It's the most user-hostile, hand-holdy, second-guess-and-confirm-my-explicit-command-ey os I've used to date. And bloatware baked in? No thanks.

...but that is a luxury.

You're probably right. I am in the middle-class, maybe lower middle-class, and I live in the US. I have advantages and opportunities that many in other circumstances do not and I am sincerely grateful for them.

Damn right it is.

Windows is pretty shit these days, but it's not the only other option. Linux is far more sane than MacOS or Windows.

Good news, not using windows is free.

> this thing currently runs for $359 and has 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and a CPU that benchmarks slightly faster than the M2:

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...

Nowadays (well actually this has been true for the last 10 years) a normal user won't care about that extra perf ratio. The Aspire is "fast enough".

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess we're also looking at 10 hr battery vs 1hr battery.

No brand new laptop has a 1h battery. Also, battery life importance as in "I can work a full day unplugged from AC" it's something that affects only a subset of laptop users, and mostly during some specific conditions (i.e. long travels).

That's more like cheap vs middle of the road. There is no luxury space in laptops - displays, iPads, and workstations maybe but that's it (and those are more pro than luxury).

$999 amortized over 3 years is $30/mo which is less than what even middle class people spend on coffee.

Sorry but linkink Acer crap doesnt help your point.

Weight

> 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.

The Walmart variant was introduced 6 weeks ago to offload excess stocks of a four year old discontinued model. I'm not sure your argument of "at only 70% of the price of a model two generations newer" is the sales pitch you think it is.

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