[lolinder]

The same thing can be (and is!) said about luxury car brands. That's what makes the MacBook Air a luxury item.

Most people, when given the pitch you just gave me for a 2x increase in price, will choose the cheaper item, just like they choose the cheaper car.

[vundercind]

They’re tools. This attempt to treat them as luxury goods doesn’t hold with those. It’s entirely common for even people who want to do some home repair—let alone professionals—but aren’t clueless about DIY to spend 2x the cheapest option, because they know the cheapest one is actually worth $0. More will advocate spending way more than 2x, as long as you’re 100% sure you’re going to use it a lot (like, say, a phone or laptop, even for a lot of non-computer-geeks). This is true even if they’re just buying a simple lowish-power impact driver, nothing fancy, not the most powerful one, not the one with the most features. Still, they’ll often not go for the cheapest one, because those are generally not even fit for their intended purpose.

[edit] I mean sure there are people who just want the Apple logo, I’m not saying there are zero of those, but they’re also excellent, reliable tools (by the standards of computers—so, still bad) and a good chunk of their buyers are there for that. Even the ones who only have a phone.

[lolinder]

I didn't go for the cheapest option: I'm typing this on a laptop that I bought a few months ago for $1200. It has an aluminum case, 32GB RAM, an AMD Ryzen CPU that benchmarks similar to the M3, and 1TB SSD. I can open it up and replace parts with ease.

The equivalent from Apple would currently run me $3200. If I'm willing to compromise to 24GB of RAM I can get one for $2200.

What makes an Apple device a luxury item isn't that it's more expensive, it's that no matter what specs you pick it will always be much more expensive than equivalent specs from a non-luxury provider. The things that Apple provides are not the headline stats that matter for a tool-user, they're luxury properties that don't actually matter to most people.

Note that there's nothing wrong with buying a luxury item! It's entirely unsurprising that most people on HN looking at the latest M4 chip prefer luxury computers, and that's fine!

[vundercind]

Huh. Most of the folks I know on Apple stuff started out PC (and sometimes Android—I did) and maybe even made fun of Apple devices for a while, but switched after exposure to them because they turned out to be far, far better tools. And not even much more expensive, if at all, for TCO, given the longevity and resale value.

[lolinder]

Eh, I have to use a MacBook Pro for work because of IT rules and I'm still not sold. Might be because I'm a Linux person who absolutely must have a fully customizable environment, but MacOS always feels so limited.

The devices are great and feel great. Definitely high quality (arguably, luxury!). The OS leaves a lot to be desired for me.

[vundercind]

I spent about a decade before switching using Linux as my main :-) Mostly Gentoo and Ubuntu (man, it was good in the first few releases)

Got a job in dual-platform mobile dev and was issued a MacBook. Exposure to dozens of phones and tablets from both ecosystem. I was converted within a year.

(I barely customize anything these days, fwiw—hit the toggle for “caps as an extra ctrl”, brew install spectacle, done. Used to have opinions about my graphical login manager, use custom icon sets, all that stuff)

[musicale]

> no matter what specs you pick it will always be much more expensive than equivalent specs from a non-luxury provider

On the phone side, I guess you would call Samsung and Google luxury providers? On the laptop side there are a number of differentiating features that are of general interest.

> The things that Apple provides are not the headline stats that matter for a tool-user, they're luxury properties that don't actually matter to most people

Things that might matter to regular people (and tool users):

- design and build for something you use all day

- mic and speakers that don't sound like garbage (very noticeable and relevant in the zoom/hybrid work era)

- excellent display

- excellent battery life

- seamless integration with iPhone, iPad, AirPods

- whole widget: fewer headaches vs. Windows (ymmv); better app consistency vs. Linux

- in-person service/support at Apple stores

It's hard to argue that Apple didn't reset expectations for laptop battery life (and fanless performance) with the M1 MacBook Air. If Ryzen has caught up, then competition is a good thing for all of us (maybe not intel though...) In general Apple isn't bleeding edge, but they innovate with high quality, very usable implementations (wi-fi (1999), gigabit ethernet (2001), modern MacBook Pro design (2001), "air"/ultrabook form factors (2008), thunderbolt (2011), "retina" display and standard ssd (2012), usb-c (2016), M1: SoC/SiP/unified memory/ARM/asymmetric cores/neural engine/power efficiency/battery life (2020) ...and occasionally with dubious features like the touchbar and butterfly keyboard (2016).)

[musicale]

Looking even further back in Apple laptop history, we find interesting features like rear keyboard placement (1991), 4 pound laptop with dock for desktop use (1992), and trackpad (1994). Apple's eMate 300 (1997) was a Newton laptop rather than a Mac, but it had an ARM processor, flash storage, and 20+ hour battery life, making it something of an ancestor to the Mac M1.

[landswipe]

Once Arm and battery life shift occurs with Linux and Windows, they'll (ie. Apple) be on the front foot again with something new, that's the beauty of competition.

[vundercind]

I dunno, they still had a strong real-world advantage in battery life on laptops when they were still on Intel. A lot of it happens in the software.

[faeriechangling]

>The things that Apple provides are not the headline stats that matter for a tool-user, they're luxury properties that don't actually matter to most people.

Here lies the rub, ARE those the stats that matter? Or does the screen, touchpad, speakers, battery life, software, support services, etc. matter more?

I feel people just TOTALLY gloss over the fact that Apple is crushing the competition in terms of trackpads + speakers + battery life, which are hardly irrelevant parts of most people's computing experience. Many people hardly use their computers to compute - they mostly use them to input and display information. For such users, memory capacity and processing performance ARE frills, and Apple is a market leader where it's delivering value.

Also even in compute, apple is selling computers with a 512-bit or 1024-bit LPDDR5x bus for a lower price than you can get from the competition. Apple is also frequently leading the pack in terms of compute/watt. This has more niche appeal, but I've seen people buy Apple to run LLM inferencing 24/7 while the Mac Studio sips power.

[wiseowise]

> It has an aluminum case, 32GB RAM, an AMD Ryzen CPU that benchmarks similar to the M3, and 1TB SSD.

How much does it weight? Battery life? Screen quality? Keyboard? Speakers?

[Shtirlic]

Lenovo Thinkpad p14s(t14) gen 4, 7840U, $1300, oled 2.8K 400 nits P3, 64gb RAM, 1TB, keyboard excellent, speakers shitty(using sony wh-1000xm4), battery(52.5Wh) life not good not bad, OLED screen draws huge amount of power. weight ~3 lb.

[wiseowise]

This spec costs 2k euro in NL. Fully specd Air (15 inch) is 2,5k euro, with arguably better everything except RAM and is completely silent. Doesn’t look that much different to me in terms of price.

[lupire]

Luxury car market is 20% of US car market. Even more among people who can afford the option. It's not "most people" but it's not an outlier either.

[bigstrat2003]

Also, those things aren't even true about Apple devices. Apple fanboys have been convinced that their hardware really is way better than everything else for decades. It has never been true and still isn't.