[vehemenz]

About the final point—are Macs really "high cost"? Looking at their current lineup, configured with a minimum of 16GB and 512GB:

  M1 Mac Mini .......... $1099
  M1 MacBook Air ....... $1399
  M1 iMac ......,....... $1699
  M1 Pro Mac Studio .... $1999
  M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14" $1999
  M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16" $2499

I'll restrain myself from listing the ways comparing Macs to PCs is not apples to apples. Unless you go for costly storage upgrades (which I agree are overpriced), all of these prices are pretty reasonable for a 4-year ownership period. Considering Macs are typically owned longer than PCs, I don't see how anyone that can afford comparable PCs or UltraBooks would be priced out of Apple products.

[sokoloff]

I think the “Macs are owned longer than PCs” is under-appreciated. My previous MBPro was 6 years old when I upgraded. My wife’s daily as a freelance editor is a mid-2013 MacBook Air. That puts our total capital cost for that computer at under $10/mo.

What would high-cost really be? $5/workday isn’t even high-cost to me if it was a daily coffee bill, but certainly not if it’s your main computing device.

[awilfox]

Oh, my grandmother is still happily using her mid-2012 iMac, and my 2011 MBP is still kicking around for the occasional 32-bit only app (some older games mostly).

The problem is initial capex: you have to have that amount of money all at once, even if it is cheaper in the long run. Some people do not have access to even credit of that amount, let alone the cash for it.

[pmontra]

My HP ZBook 15 from 2014 cumulatively cost me some 2000 Euro considering all the upgrades and replacements. 2 1TB SSD, 32 GB RAM, at least a couple of keyboards (key wear after years of use.) So it's 8 years and going. If the benchmark is the 300 Euro supermarket laptop, well, I've seen friends changing one every two years and another one telling me that it's crazy she has to change her one because it's not even 20 years old (maybe one of the first Vista PCs.)

About my own laptop, given my kind of work (web development Rails, Django, Elixir) I don't see reasons to buy something more recent and faster. On a current project Rails test suite it's slower than a M1 75 s vs 50 s but I can live with that considering that we're not running all tests every time. Typing in an editor is as fast as any computer was in the last 30+ years. I expect to have to replace it either because of missing spare parts or some NVIDIA / Linux kernel incompatibilities in the next years.

[tharne]

> I think the “Macs are owned longer than PCs” is under-appreciated.

I don't like Macs these days, but this is 100% true. In my experience, people who buy macs keep them significantly longer, so comparing simply the price tag of Mac vs. PC is very misleading. The correct comparison is "total cost of ownership".

[perfopt]

Length of use really depends on the user. I typically use any computer system or Phone for 5-6 years at the minimum. Usually with a battery change after year 3 (or 4 if I am lucky).

As for desktops, I use them for even longer. I still use a first gen PPC Mac Mini as a in-home music streamer. I no longer run Mac OS X on it since there are no security updates.

[diffeomorphism]

Are they? There does not seem to be a real difference to other $1000 or $2000 PC Laptops.

[somebehemoth]

> I don't see how anyone that can afford comparable PCs or UltraBooks would be priced out of Apple products.

And if they can’t afford comparable PC’s, then Macs are not affordable. There are many affordable non-mac options.

[vehemenz]

The claim here is that people are priced out of Macs, not that they aren't more expensive. If a Mac is $2100 instead of $700, that's only a few hundred dollars more per year, or $20-30 a month.

In the US, $20 or $30 is negligible to the frivolous expenses of the average household budget. In laptop-buying households, even more so. Let's not confuse misperception of value to affordability.

[somebehemoth]

People literally are priced out of macs. Nothing you say changes that fact.

> About the final point—are Macs really "high cost"?

There are zero low cost macs, while other low cost computers are abundant.

> If a Mac is $2100 instead of $700, that's only a few hundred dollars more per year, or $20-30 a month.

Your concept of what “average people” can afford is very convenient for your argument because you made it up. To most people a product that is $1400 more expensive is considered much, much more expensive. The fact that you have to invent a payment plan to support your argument says a lot.

I like macs, they are nice. But they are high priced and expensive. They can be both worth the extra money while also being too high priced for a huge number of average people.

[Sporktacular]

And then there are used options for both PC and Mac, if they're really keen.

[diffeomorphism]

Not really. Just have a look at ebay: Macbooks from 2015 are still expensive.

Partially because Apple's naming is useless, e.g. would you like to buy a macbook air or a macbook air or a macbook air? All very different machines from different years.

[vmception]

please, the market is efficient enough to know to ask for year and model, even which season of that year, for macbooks.

[awilfox]

My concern with the Mac mini in particular is that then you need a display, and honestly, having an LG Ultrafine 4K hooked up to my Mac Studio, you really need a 5K display to get the most out of a Mac.

I think 1440p displays work well too, or at least they did back in 2014 when I was using Macs, but I didn't see any for sale when I was shopping for an interim while I wait three months for the Studio Display to ship.

[Tagbert]

It depends on what your needs are for a monitor. If you are used to 5K 2xRetina then 4K will be a little off. I am currently using a 27” 4K display scaled to 1440p. It is not quite as sharp as a true 5K display but it works well enough. Until recently the only 5K monitor was a pretty weak LG. The new Apple Studio display does finally bring out a desirable monitor but I’m not ready to spend that much for a personal display.

Stay away from an old 2K 1440p at this point. Since Apple removed the old sub pixel rendering, those 1440p panels look too soft anymore. The 4K scaled 1440p looks much sharper than those.

[awilfox]

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the 4K scaled to 1440p as well. Scaled to 1080p looked so crisp and well-rendered I could cry, but the UI elements were far too big.

My main use case for the Mac Studio is photography and video editing, so an Apple Studio display is definitely on my wish list.

[sofixa]

> Considering Macs are typically owned longer than PCs

Are they though? Properly specced PCs have more than decent lives too. The build quality of a Mac or an equivalent-ish ( so not the plastic cheapest possible model ) devicedecent OEM like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus aren't that far off.

[kaba0]

In terms of laptops, my experience is that they are more often subpar than not. Other than Thinkpads perhaps (of which newer ones are quite prone to goddamn throttling, but I guess it is up to intel mostly?)

[sofixa]

If you get the cheapest crap available, yes, they're subpar. Any decent non-consumer oriented cheapest possible Dell, HP, etc. is absolutely fine. There are defects from times to times, of course ( like Apple had with the butterfly keyboard), but build quality is quite similar to Apple.

I have a fancy-ish Asus with aluminium body that is 7 years old now ( that cost 1/3 the price of a MacBook Pro at the time) which, next to my newly issued MBP, looks decent. Weird clickicking sound from the right button on the touchpad, small screen and thick bezels aside ( all of which are more due to the age than anything else) it still works perfectly.

[eternityforest]

4 years?? I expect 5 or 6 from a $600ish laptop.

They're reasonable for top end buyers, but not as reasonable for consumers, and everyday coders.

[StillBored]

$600, 5 year old laptop user here. A couple years in I put another $500 in and upgraded the disk to 2T, and 32G of ram. More recently I put a wifi 6E card in it too.

Its still fine for most things, if I need to compile something large, I connect to my 64 core build machine. But of course I tend to use my (also fairly old) desktop more than the laptop anyway.

PS: It is a cheap dell 14" inspiron with a 1080P screen, integrated GPU, and its a bulletproof linux machine. Supports S3 standby, and idles at a few watt's. So even with its sorta crummy 3 cell battery (also replaced once) it lasts 8+ hours just browsing the web and running a text editor.

[eternityforest]

That's what I did, I got a Vivobook F510UA, and upgraded the RAM to after a few years 24GB, then a few months ago I changed to a 1TB SSD when I started getting bad sectors.

The battery is definitely a bit worn by this point, but I mostly just use it as a desktop, I have a $100 HP from I don't even know when that I use for actual on the go work, it's smaller and lighter and less likely to ruin my life if stolen on the bus. And it's even fast enough to run FreeCAD!

[tzs]

The $1999 minimal Mac Studio is M1 Max and has 32 GB RAM.

[vehemenz]

I forgot about that—an even better value.

Thanks for the correction.