[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.