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> It's mostly overpriced shit wrapped in a nice cellophane.

That's orthogonal to the concept of a Veblen good. A Veblen good can very much be shit wrapped in cellophane.

The core trait of a Veblen good is that customers buy it as a status symbol. Also, being overpriced contributes to reduce the number of those who can afford to buy one.

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Apple products have always been status symbols and this Macbook is no different.

One could easily put together a significantly more powerful Linux desktop for a lower price. This has always been the case, but Apple's marketing tries to convince you otherwise. Honestly, I've always been surprised by how effectively their marketing has misled the tech-savvy crowd on HN.

You can’t simply swap OSX for Linux. I heavily use accessibility tools that are just not comparable on Linux. These tools probably cost more than the laptop, even though Apple include it in the OS.

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