[a_plastic_bag]

> And as IBM reported a couple weeks ago, even at higher prices, Macs tend to be cheaper to own. I’m writing this on a mid-2010 non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro I bought six years ago last June. Yes, over time I increased the memory to from four to 16 gigs, took the hard drive up from 240 gigs to a terabyte Fusion drive, replaced both the battery and the keyboard when they wore out, but that still puts me only about $1600 into this device with which I have so far generated well over $1 million in revenue.

His arguments makes no sense to me. How is it cheaper to own a laptop that is expensive in the first place, but is also one of the less upgradeable ones on the market (making it more expensive to run post-warranty)?

And no, that's not what IBM reported either. They reported that Macs are cheaper to use as company PCs (which doesn't necessarily extrapolate to the laptop market as a whole).

[renaudg]

For an individual, the TCO argument for Macs still holds, but it's a bit different :

- Don't just look at the initial outlay that gets you on the Apple ladder : Macs also have a much, much better resale value than PCs, even years later. It's incremental and relatively painless if you upgrade regularly.

- You're a human, your peace of mind matters and your time isn't free. Buy stuff that brings you joy or at a minimum, stuff that doesn't feel like death by a thousand cuts day after day. And you might not recognize that before you've tried a Mac, seriously (I used to be a hardcore desktop Linux guy until 2004)

As someone who briefly lost faith in Apple last year, then went ahead and built a Hackintosh ("why not?"), I can't stress the second point nearly enough.

My high end 32GB 4Ghz Core i7 box with Thunderbolt and a 32" screen cost me about 25% less than a top of the line iMac that satisfies the same use cases. Great.

The money I saved is roughly what I make in 1-2 days, but I've spent at least a dozen evenings so far researching / troubleshooting / preparing for OS upgrades. Plus I need to reboot the box once after each cold boot before it will see my TB devices and I can play music on my audio interface. Great. Not to mention the floor/desk space compared to an iMac.

The tinkering was fun at times, I don't completely regret trying, but frankly life is too short : guess who's going back to the Mac next time ?

[nicolas_t]

Yes the entire argument from IBM revolved around lower costs for company's helpdesks because mac users needed less help.

But, to be fair, apple's computers tend to be well built and not break easily. I had a powerbook that lasted 9 years (used for a few years then gave it to my parents). All the apple computers I bought lasted a long time (except for a second gen macbook air I had). I've had a small toshiba laptop and it broke after 3 years shortly after the insurance stopped.

It's anecdotal but I've seen it also with friends.