[criddell]

I’ve found that the $1000 Mac laptop is worth about $500 after 3 years and the $500 laptop is worth $50. The price difference over time really isn’t that big and the Mac is going to have a better trackpad and display and longer battery life.

[Marsymars]

Yeah but in the longer term the price trends to $0 either way, and Windows will get software support for longer.

My mom is happily using a Lenovo from 2013 and looking to upgrade because it doesn't support Windows 11 and Win10 is running out of support. A contemporary Mac would have been the 2012 Mac Mini which would have received its final OS update with 10.15 Catalina in 2019, and would have received its final security update in 2022. (Desktop, so no difference in peripherals, etc.)

Incidentally, I actually purchased both the Lenovo and a 2012 Mac Mini (refurb) so I have the pricing data - the Lenovo was $540 and the Mac Mini was $730 - and then both took aftermarket memory and SSD upgrades.

[dangus]

That just means that the not-Mac is way more accessible. The high resale value makes Macs more expensive overall for everybody.

Also a lot of people prefer windows. It’s got a lot more applications than Mac. It has way more historical enterprise support and management capability as well. If you had a Mac at a big company 20 years ago the IT tooling was trash compared to windows. It’s probably still inferior to this day.

[criddell]

> It’s got a lot more applications than Mac.

The Mac can (legally) run more software than any other computer. Aside from macOS software, there's a bunch of iOS and iPadOS software that you can run, and you can run a Windows, Linux, and Android software via VMs.

[dangus]

Yeah…I don’t think so. Moving the goalposts to include Parallels/VMs and iOS/iPadOS apps that lack a touch screen on on Mac and are frequently blocked from being run on Mac by developers doesn’t count.

Let’s not forget that you’re now talking about buying a $100/year license; in just a few years you could buy a whole Windows computer with a permanent license for that money.

And if you’re going to talk about how great VMs are on Mac we can’t leave out how it’s the worst Docker/podman platform available.

[whatever1]

If your $1000 MacBook breaks after a year you need $1000 to repair it.

A 500 laptop is probably more repairable and worst case you pay $500 to get a new one. Not to mention battery replacement etc.

The expected total cost of ownership is very high for a Mac. It’s like owning a Mercedes. Maybe you can afford to buy one, but you cannot afford maintenance.

[sgarland]

As a sibling comment said, what maintenance? The only problem I’ve ever had with any Mac was a bad keyboard on my M4 MBP, and that showed itself so quickly that even without AppleCare it would have been covered.

Between work and personal, I’ve had an Intel Air, 2x Intel Pros, M1 Air, 2x M3 Pros, and an M4 Pro. My wife has an M1 Air. My in-laws have an M3 iMac. My mom has… some version of an Apple Silicon laptop.

That is a decent amount of computers stretching over many years. The only maintenance required has been the aforementioned keyboard.

[whatever1]

My shift button popped off my M1 MacBook. Apple judged it was my fault. Guess the repair price. Yes almost full laptop price.

If that had happened to any other laptop I would be able either replace just the broken keycap, or just the keyboard.

And no, apple care+ that covers accidents is not cheap either at $150/year.

[ajross]

Oh, come on. Laptops are mobile devices that live in bags and backpacks and they break all the time. I've had more laptop failures than cracked phones, even. You absolutely need an answer for "what happens if my screen gets cracked", just ask any college student. Windows junk is cheaper, it just is.

In pre-college education, the answer is often "use any other junky Chromebook from anywhere in the world", which is cheaper still.

[sgarland]

Maybe you need a better backpack? I’ve had zero cracked screens. I’ve also never cracked my phone screen, though, so there’s that.

I did drop my watch last week, and the second hand fell off, though.

[ajross]

The very existence of the Genius Bar falsifies your point, though. The fact that you, personally, are exceedingly careful about your devices isn't an argument against the clear truth that (1) the rest of us yahoos clearly aren't and (2) macs are expensive to repair.

[culopatin]

What maintenance? AppleCare also exists if you worry about such things.

[serf]

larger initial purchases are harder on the lower income earners regardless of the long term value they offer; that's one of the hard parts about being poor, it also makes positive economic decisions harder to accomplish.