| 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 ? |