[nozzlegear]

The author's price breakdown matches mine almost identically, and like he said: if it weren't for the 0% financing for 12 months, there's no way I would've swallowed that $5000 pill. I still haven't decided if I'm going to return mine or keep it yet. I find it pretty compelling and I like to write code with it in bed or on the couch, but I can't say it's better than my much cheaper (by comparison) iPad Pro for such things.

[fsh]

I just don't get this obsession with taking on debt. "Financing" doesn't make a product any cheaper. If you can't pay $5000 now, you probably shouldn't buy the product.

[jherskovic]

It's better-than-free money. The 0% interest rate means, accounting for inflation, you're getting paid to use Apple's money instead of your own.

I can afford the lump sum, but it's a lot nicer to smooth out the cash flow using Apple's money instead of mine. As long as you're responsible, what's the harm?

[nozzlegear]

This is America baby, I don’t have a debit card I have a credit card. Jokes aside, if I’m going to pay the $5000 anyway and they let me pay for it over 12 months with no interest, I might as well do that and get a little credit score bump as well. I can afford the product, I just decide to pay it in 12 small chunks instead of 1 big chunk.

[archagon]

You can invest the money in the meantime, leading to anywhere from guaranteed 5% to likely 10-30% returns.

[fsh]

I still don't understand why an effective 5% "discount" (not counting the effort to actually invest the money) makes the $5000 pill any easier to swallow. The money is still gone.

[nozzlegear]

You're right about the pill thing, I considered that myself after I wrote my other comment. It's something psychological; I know I'm still paying $5000, but it's easier to do that when I'm only paying $400 per month over 12 months versus one big payment of $5000. Even though I can afford the $5000, it's much harder to convince myself to pull the trigger when I'm looking at that amount of money. I guess that's why it works and all of these big online retailers are doing financing.