[cletus]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, just proves Gruber's argument that many people buy PCs based on bullet point specs having never seen the enclosure.

With MacBook Pros you get:

- a backlit keyboard with ambient light sensor;

- a high quality display;

- significantly better battery life than any Windows lapt I've ever seen (due in part to software admittedly);

- the best trackpad I've seen on any laptop ever (seriously... Why do Windows laptop trackpads STILL suck??);

- better graphics than much of the laptops Macbooks are compared to;

- a pleasing industrial design.

3 years ago I would've agreed. Now? The "Apple Tax" is small to nonexistent.

Upgrades are often expensive. That's still true but ever big PC manufacturer does this. Dell is probably the worst offender, offering a really crappy spec for a low headline price and then offering, say, a CPU anyone can buy for $300 outright as a $400 upgrade from a $100 CPU. And that's with Dell's buying power.

And yes I know it isn't quite that simple: Dell may have a quota of CPUs they neex to move, etc but the assertion that they charge through the nose for upgrades is (IMHO) irrefutable.

[cheald]

I've seen a lot of MBPs. I've used them. They're really nice. I don't dispute that at all.

My Fedora/Win7 laptop has a backlit keyboard, stunning display, and a great industrial design with an aluminum body. The trackpad is dodgy and the battery life isn't as good as an MBP's, but it also has two batteries that are user-swappable. It doesn't run OS X. It also has HDMI out and a Blu-Ray drive, two "premium" features you aren't going to find on the MBP. It cost half of what an MBP would.

Apple sells a premium product, without a doubt, and more than that, they sell a user experience. It's a great one. They make really solid products. You pay a premium cost for that premium product.

The original assertion was that low-end MBPs basically cost what their competing PC counterparts do - and that's just not true.

[nikster]

There's usually a lot of selective perception involved in things like this.

When you say "X may not be as nice" - that may be irrelevant to you, or hugely relevant to the next person. The point is, it's not the same.

Last time I had a forum argument with a guy who said he could build me a Mac Pro equivalent Dell for half the price. I went to Dell's website - no way. Best I could do was something like $50 less on a $3000 machine. So I dared him to prove it, and he came up with a machine that was worse in every way (oh we don't need a Xenon CPU, let's just go with a C2D... and things like that) and cost half as much. Total joke.

Your laptop that costs half as much - show us a link to the full specs page. This is the internet - prove it.

[cheald]

Mine's an HP Envy 17. I don't typically like HP's notebooks, but this one was too tasty to pass by. I priced out just about everything out there for a new mobile dev workstation, including custom builds, and this one rang all the right bells.

http://bit.ly/d4oj8G

[makmanalp]

What laptop is that, may I ask? I'm in the market for a new one.

[cheald]

See my reply to nikster on this thread. :)

[chime]

> - significantly better battery life than any Windows lapt I've ever seen (due in part to software admittedly);

My 11 month old Acer Timeline gets me 8+ hours of battery life with constant Wifi use. I easily work full days without recharges.

[cletus]

Your Acer Timeline also uses a CULV (Ultra Low Voltage) CPU. Apples and oranges.

Find me a Core 2 Duo (non-ULV) or i3/i5/i7 laptop with equivalent battery life.

The Timelines are a good budget laptop and much better than the Atom-based netbooks (imho). Personally I prefer the Asus UL30A (etc) range but that's really nitpicking.

[chime]

Thanks for teaching me something new today. I did not mean to criticize your arguments on why MBP is a great choice. I just had a personal counter-example to the laptop battery point. Now that you explained why, it makes the reason more evident.

[tbob22]

I have the Sony Vaio Z (2.4ghz Core 2 Duo) and I can get about 6 hours with moderate usage with Wi-Fi (no flash), and about 8 hours using Ethernet.

Also, I got it on sale for $500 almost two years ago. :-]

[narag]

+1 for the Asus UL30. Impresive battery life and a nice screen.

[siglesias]

Don't forget iLife.

[Yaggo]

Anybody have an idea what would cost an equivalent software for Windows? (Offering similar usability, high quality templates/samples/tutorials etc. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if no such a thing exists for Windows.)

[Tyrannosaurs]

I don't think you have to do that, it's far too subjective and there are free equivalents for a lot of stuff (Picassa for iPhoto for instance).

The easiest thing would be to knock the retail price of iLife off ($49) as that's where Apple seem to value it.

[Yaggo]

I don't think retail price really reflects iLife's value, if you need such a software. Because iLife only runs on Macs (sold by Apple), the price of iLife can be subsidized. Still, I agree with you that the value of any software (for an individual) is highly subjective.

Also, the big value of iLife comes from the fact that it comes pre-installed on Macs and integrates well with the rest of the system. That's exactly what Apple sells: a hassle-free experience out of the box. No 3rd party alternatives can offer that.