[acdha]

Windows has distinct groups: the people who buy whatever costs $700 at Costco every 10 years / when it breaks don’t care but there’s also a vocal enthusiast community who do upgrade frequently. That group gets more attention since it’s a profitable niche and gaming generates a lot of revenue.

[andrewprock]

I used buy a $700 Windows laptop every 18 months in the 2000s. Then I got fed up with them just falling apart and switched to Macbooks. My 2013 purchase is still alive and being used by the kids.

[hrmmm]

In the 2000s, I went through a wide variety of PC laptops (Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell, Alienware, Sony, etc.) all within the range of $1200-$6500 and they all died within 3 years (except for the cheapest one which was a Lenovo with Linux). Some died within a year.

When my first Macbook lasted for more than 3 or 4 years I was surprised that I was upgrading before it died. I went through many upgrades with almost zero issues(one HDD failure, one battery failure). I still have a 2012 Macbook Pro that I've since installed Linux on.

When I bought the first touchbar Macbook (late 2015?) I spent around $6k maxing out the options, and I was surprised at how totally trash it was. Hardware QC issues were shocking: particles under the screen from manufacturing, keys stuck within the first hour of usage, external monitor issues, touchbar issues...

I haven't bought a laptop since.

[luma]

Did you buy a macbook for $700? That was a pretty low price back then which meant you were buying devices made to a price. Buying a Macbook is one solution, another would have been to spend more money on a higher quality Wintel system.

[andrewprock]

No, it was around $1100 IIRC, maybe as much as $1300.

[luma]

Right, so when spend twice as much you wind up with a better device. I think this might be only tangentially related to the fact that it was an Apple product, rather, you weren't purchasing the cheapest available device.

[andrewprock]

Ten years ago Apple was by far the highest quality laptop manufacturer. There was essentially no other option back in the early 2010s. Even now laptops with a "retina" display are not always easy to find for other manufacturers. In retrospect, that was probably the killer feature which induced me to switch.

[acdha]

Yeah, the quality of PC laptops has improved but that really just means you can get closer to equivalent quality at equivalent pricing. I've heard people claim to have saved a ton but every single time I used one there was some noticeable quality decrease, which I find kind of refreshing as a reminder that the market does actually work pretty well.

[schizm]

Did you treat the MB differently because you paid more? If so, that may have yielded longer life in addition to quality design, etc.

[andrewprock]

Not really. The difference in build quality was night and day; metal vs. plastic, keyboard that doesn't flex, etc.