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by tagrun 1099 days ago
> Look at the price of the MacBook Air. Then tell me you can get anything that remotely approaches that level of performance from any other major vendor, at anything remotely close to the same price.

> You can't, because it doesn't exist.

Your tunnel vision is appalling. You're obviously not aware of what the market is offering.

From Apple, at $1000, you get an overly priced laptop with weak specs: 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM and an M1 CPU (which is weaker than a Core i5-1240P or Core i5-1335U), with no path to upgrade: https://www.apple.com/macbook-air-m1/ That's essentially a mid-range tablet in a laptop form which is poised to become an e-waste in a few years.

You can get a laptop with such specs for around half of that price from virtually any vendor.

However, it's not just the base price: want 2TB storage? I can just get a Samsung Pro 990 2TB for $160-$170 an install it, but Apple won't allow you to do it and will charge you $800 for their soldered 2TB SSD. Want more RAM? You can get 64GB DDR5 for less than $150, whereas with Mac Book Air 16GB is the max you can get (which makes it is pretty useless for science or engineering applications, and 16GB RAM will probably become very limiting even for casual users in the near future) and it costs an extra $200.

I will also have the option to upgrade it to an 8TB (or 16TB by then, who knows) SSD and 96GB DDR5 when their prices come further down in the future, adding more to its life. I will also be able to easily replace the battery myself when the time comes. Whereas your option to upgrade will be to buy the brand new M6 or whatever Mac laptop, perhaps for another $2000 with hopefully half the RAM and SSD of what I will have.

Like most people who use laptop for work, 18 hours of battery life isn't addressing a real need that I have. People have mostly moved on to smart phones and tablets for watching video, casual browsing, etc in the absence of an electrical outlet. Nonetheless, for those who actually need such long battery life, it is possible to buy such laptops from other vendors for still half the price at those specs though (like Acer Swift 3 mentioned in another comment).

But nonetheless, you still feel you need to run to defend this company? It sounds like you've invested so much in Apple and just don't want to be wrong about it, even if it means living in a world of alternative facts in which any laptop that "remotely approaches that level of performance from any other major vendor" for $1000 simply "doesn't exist".

1 comments

Which $500 (or $1000) laptop lets you install 64GB RAM?

(The Acer Swift 3 supports max 16GB)

As an example, pretty much any recent Dell Inspiron, which happen to be quite serviceable too.

Such as https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-15-lap... which is $530 at the moment but you can get it for cheaper during Black Friday. The manual may say up to 32GB but installing 64GB works just fine, as the CPU supports up to 64GB.

For $330, you can get an i5 Lenovo IdeaPad 14" today but it goes up to 36GB only because one of the 4GB RAMs is soldered https://www.microcenter.com/product/666315/lenovo-ideapad-3-...

You can install 64GB RAM to i3 laptops as well, which can be as low as ~$300, for example https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-15-lap... is currently $350, but you can get a similar one for ~$200 during Black Friday.

64GB RAM in a laptop may cost a fortune in Apple-land, but it's pretty cheap to get for "normal" laptops.

(You can't upgrade RAM with Acer Swift 3, it's soldered.)

Yes you can upgrade a lot of Dells, but the maximums in their manuals are based on their supported maximums, so if you run in to problems, your Dell support probably won't be of much use.

I find people trying to compare to a Dell (especially to anything which isn't trying to be a competitor - the XPS) come off a bit naive. Once you start talking about the XPS, the price difference shrinks. In the UK the latest XPS 13 with an i7, 32GB and 1TB and the better screen is around £2,000. The M2 Macbook Air 13 with 24GB and 1TB and fast charger is £1,979. The 13 pro with same specs is £2,149.

Having owned an XPS before (with its flexing chassis, coil whine, overheating, cpu throttling, noisy hot fans, smelly plastic), you couldn't pay me to have one.