| Chromebooks and notebooks with Linux on them do tend to be cheaper than Macbooks. When Apple first started the Apple 1, was $666.66, it was a breakthrough in using cheaper parts to make a cheaper microcomputer for a market that was just growing and didn't discover what these microcomputers could do. Over time the Apple /// and Apple Lisa flopped. Steve Jobs knew he had to innovate to make something to give Apple and advantage over other microcomputer makers. Taking the GUI designed for the Apple Lisa Jobs took over the Macintosh project to make it into a GUI based desktop computer using a mouse. The problem is it cost a few thousand dollars and did not run Apple II software. There were not many apps available for it, so Apple let Jobs go and replaced him with John Sculley. Apple in this post-Jobs era had sold expensive Macintoshes and had a hard time earning money for profits. They brought Steve Jobs back from Next to fix the problem. His solution was a cheaper Mac named the iMac, then later the Mac Mini as an ever cheaper Mac. The Macbooks have always been targeted at developers, web designers, and programmers. People who had a high paying job and could afford a few thousand dollars on a Macbook Pro. Teachers are not paid enough to afford Macbook Pros and have to settle for cheaper things like the Chromebook for like $300 or $200 instead of $2000 for the Macbook Pro and the educational discount. Apple has sort of stopped innovating after the Jobs 2.0 era is over and Tim Cook runs Apple now. Just look at the Mac Pro, it used to be ATX based which means gamers would buy it to upgrade the video card to play more games. Tim Cook changed the Mac Pro to a trashcan tower that can't upgrade the video card, forcing Mac gamers into making Hackintosh systems and eating into Apple's sales. The Amazon Echo and Google Chromecast have sort of beat the AI at Apple. Apple is getting out of Wifi routers and Google now has Google Wifi and taking over Apple's sales. In the Post-Jobs 2.0 era at Apple, it is still profitable via iPhone and iPad sales, but has no endgame for the Macintosh, and left a void that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are looking to fill. |
Did any significant number of users actually do that though? I do remember in the Power Mac G5 era that NVIDIA would, occasionally, vaguely support Mac gaming by releasing high-end consumer-level graphics cards for the Mac, but I truthfully don't remember ever hearing a single user account of a user riding the expandable Mac Pro wave for high-end gaming.