You know, it’s not always, but apple does sell things that are price-competitive with similarly performing competing products.
Some iterations of the Mac Mini have been hard to beat with a tiny PC with similar performance.
The M1 MacBooks had some surprisingly cheap options for the relatively premium laptops they were.
Samsung’s Ultra phones tend to cost more or less the same as the Apple Pro Max phones.
The main difference is sometimes just that Apple doesn’t make low-end or low-mid-range, or sometimes not even anything below “relatively high-end”, products in a particular category.
Can confirm on the MacBook side. My girlfriend got a m series macbook and it’s better than anything in it’s price range. That device is so snappy while having a battery life that’s incomparable to anything with windows
I’ve owned 4 MacBooks. A white plastic one, a 13" MBP, a 15" MBP, and now a 15" M2 Air.
I’ve had the Air for a year and I still can’t wrap my head around how it’s technically in a class below the fully specced 15" 2015 MBP, but outperforms it in literally every way. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that, even without Apple Silicon, computer tech jumped on in leaps and bounds in the 8 years between my last two, but the performance difference is astonishing.
Sure, it’s a lot of money for an ‘entry level’ laptop, but this fucker is going to last me ten years or more. When Apple no doubt drop OS support for it in a few years, Asahi Linux will almost certainly be rock solid enough to fully replace macOS.
Samsung offers a lot more models so they tend to have a higher high end and a lower low end than Apple.
What’s next? Google becoming evil ?
Impossible, they are so quirky they let their workers play xbox 360 at work, they are surely a good company with good intentions.
Does less
Cost more
Fuck you
Pro versions: Does a little more
Costs even more
Fuck you as well
Pro versions: Does a little more
Costs even more
Best regards
idk why you got downvoted i think this was a good iteration
Wasn’t that always the case? I mean compared to my IBM PC clone, mine did way more and cost way less. And it was upgradeable. And mine could play games.
But does it have a cool rainbow apple?
Who cares when it could run Doom in full screen?
Gaming aside (though that particular gap is beginning to close) I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve wanted to do with my various Macs over the years that I couldn’t because of macOS.
The closest I can get to is running radio station playout software, but that was less something I needed to do, and more an itch I fancied scratching at that moment. Other than that, my Macs have always had a way to do exactly what I wanted with them.
Want wheels sucker?
Luxury brand is what happened.
(First it was colored plastic.)
I love the look of colored plastics.
Join us at /3dprinting
Does a small handful of things extremely well, is otherwise stupidly limited by choice and costs way too much.
Think different, even if it means thinking worse.
What small handful of things?
They certainly hold their value if you are somebody who sells their old hardware for upgrades. I’ve traded up on several occasions for a not insignificant discount.
Macs are like uncannily good at real-time audio processing, also audio and MIDI routing in general has less friction. Less tinkering in general when connecting external synths
Like with anything you can find tons of people online who have no issues with their windows based production setup, YMMV. But macs are ubiquitous in the music space, from my experience I think it’s deserved
Apple’s had good audio processing since their first computers. In fact, they were sued a few times by The Beatles’ label - Apple Corp - for making an Apple computer that could play music.
14 hours of lifetime on Macbook while also being silent is great.
My Linux nerd friend swore by Intel Macs for recording/mixing music for years.
He hasn’t tried the Apple silicon macs at all though.
I’ve been in the unix and Linux world for 10 years now, with forays into administering windows when necessary.
I currently write software for Linux hosts, I have tux tattooed on my chest, literally.
Today the only laptop I’d purchase is an Apple silicon machine.
The only thing I miss is i3.
- Best trackpads. By far. Gaming? Use a controller. I will die on this hill.
- All of their OSes are a great user experience. They’re stable, they’re intuitive, and–most importantly–they’re aesthetically pleasing.
- Logic Pro.
- Actually, basically every app that Apple makes is pretty good. I would swap out the majority of the software on my Pixel for Apple apps if it wasn’t proprietary and exclusive.
- iPhone videos are outstanding. My Pixel can’t match my old 13 Pro’s video, and it’s a newer phone. Photos are also slightly worse here, but not after some editing.
- Objectively better build quality
if you ignore planned obscelecense. My MacBook just feels well built. It feels sturdy and durableeven if a speck of dust can kill the display, and every factor of the build is just better than anything else available. Phones are mostly up to spec, but my Pixel just doesn’t feel as nice as my old iPhone, especially the objectively worse button and camera layout.
Mostly everything else? No. I can’t install cool FOSS projects on my phone, or know what’s running on it. I prefer Linux as an OS, but not any DE compared to macOS. I’ve also had some periods where stuff doesn’t just work, such as iCloud fucking my free space and wiping almost my entire system when I try to fix the issue as per instructions I was given by an employee. Then, there’s just that Apple is gross. I don’t need to explain that, or anything about repair. Else… the closed source software is excellent closed source software. The unrepairable, proprietary hardware is excellent hardware.
They’re just a few steps from being better than any other company or project… a couple of several thousand mile long steps.
Excellent summation, mate. I would have agreed with 2 even five years ago. Sadly not anymore.
Yeah. I don’t have an iPhone anymore due to this downward trend. I still think macOS holds up well now, though, despite their insistence on killing off old app support for no reason.
Also, I’m a musician. Linux has nothing up to par with Logic, and going Windows is utterly stupid. Best option right now, or I’m out my literal largest hobby… unless I start making stuff oldschool style.
Not gonna lie. If I had the equipment and knowledge, I would.
Number one is because they’ve patented the trackpad sol noone else can use the newer style. Number 6 is madecompletely moot by the high price and the fact that many other vendors have laptops with BETTER build quality. Especially if you factor in all the engineering missteps they seem to constantly make.
Doubt me? Just look up Luis Rossman teardown videos. He’ll show you actual macs from customers, that he takes appart onscreen, and shows you exactly how Apple makes extremely basic engineering mistakes.
Don’t like him? Look up anyone else that gets under the hood of Apple products without being in Apple’s cultish parts program.
Other vendors with better build quality? Show me some examples with evidence.
A louis rossman video is not evidence. All that tells us is that apple has made some mistakes in some of their products.
…The speck of dust comment was, I kid you not, a direct reference to Louis Rossmann. I avoid GrapheneOS due to one of his videos. I use GrayJay. I suggest his repair store to others. The point is the outward build quality–the body–and not smaller internal components. Others are undeniably better… but my hands aren’t touching those components. They’re touching the shell. Keyboard. Trackpad. Glass. That was the point being made.
In other words… ratio.
EDIT: I’m searching Kagi for anything related to the trackpad comment… and this just seems unsubstantiated. Apple doesn’t own gestures. Nothing burger here. Quite a shame. I was ready for a heated debate, but dinner’s already been served.
Um, being a status symbol, and um, its got some good software…
seeing the mac logo im thinking this was when steve jobs was between. Nobody wanted an apple in 1999 and even early 2000’s I remember a guy who used to stick apple stickets on his ibm to deter thieves.
Apple purchased NeXT in 1997. Steve became the i(nterim)CEO shortly after. iMac was first introduced in 1998. Steve was running the show already. That’s around when the logo stopped being multi-colored.
Thanks for the context. One thing I liked about ios was the way it used many next things (that and I was so jacked that it was built on freebsd). They were my favorite machines back in 1994ish. I was aware jobs went from there back to apple but I thought it was more a falling out previous to that. I was a fanboy by 2005 (well as much as Im gonna be about anything) but it only lasted half a decade as the service at the mac store faltered combined with the whole iminmalist thing when I like them due to maximalist.
A study from 2022 found that deploying Macs in the enterprise has a lower TCO than Windows. Mainly because they have to buy less extra software and they don’t need as many IT staff to support them. Also, employees with Macs are more productive and do better on their performance reviews.
Depends on the enterprise. If you’re a 1 user to 1 device shop maybe. If you’re an institution with shared devices…good fucking luck, be prepared to enter device management hell
MacOS supports PAM and LDAP just like any enterprise-class UNIX system, as well as lots of enterprise class device management tools such as InTune.
If you know what you’re doing, it’s more manageable than Windows, even.
I don’t see this mentioned there, but that Apple has largely ignored enterprise works out as a strength; other companies wrote and open sourced pretty good tools. That can result in tools that better meet your needs, and generally will result in a lower TCO.
Yes and by contrast Microsoft has been enshittifying the hell out of Windows in order to extract more and more money out of the corporations they have contracts with. They force everyone to use Teams, Azure, OneDrive, and Office 365 so that they achieve total lock-in and ratchet up the cost of the support contracts.
Microsoft is basically following the same playbook IBM pioneered in the enterprise: use a slick sales team to get your hooks into into the CEO, CIO, and other senior VPs in charge of IT in order to force all their crap onto the company by top-down fiat rather than bottom-up informed decision making.
And since Macs are just UNIX machines under the hood, a lot of those open-source things are already built-in or can be added without much trouble.
They costed less back when the competition was the IBM PC, which cost as much as a car back in the 80s. Hasn’t been true for decades now.
Guess it’s as good a place as ever to remind everyone who uses Patreon that if you are subscribing through Patreon app on iOS that prices are going up in Sept by 50-60% and if you want to save money go through the actual website. This is Apple charging more not Patreon.
The most annoying thing is that in apples terms of service you are not allowed to tell people that you could go to the website for cheaper prices. Or if you don’t offer payments through the app store why you are doing it. (because of apples stupid fee)
Android isn’t really better, but at least you are allowed to link to websites that function out of the play store payments.
Apple is not charging 60% more. That is patreon. How this drivel spreads is beyond me. Apple charges 30%. This has been pretty fucking consistent for a decade. Patreon is telling creators to raise their prices because they (patreon) aren’t going to take the loss, they’re going to force it on their userbase. Patreon could easily just eat the 30% or even 15%, but that would cost them profits so they don’t. And then they claim Apple is costing users a 60% price increase. Fucking ridiculous.
If they’re (Patreon) eating 30%, wouldn’t they lose money per transaction? I assume they take less than 30% of each subscription currently.
You are mistaken there. 60% increase means that patreon gets just as much as they get now, because 60/160 is approx 30%.
Also, just eating 30% margin is absolutely a problem and far from easy
The monopolistic shenanigans aside. I hope that companies also learn from this and have functional websites again and stop forcing people to apps. It’s gonna a be a win win
Why would anyone want to use an app for Patreon, anyway? It’s very much a browser experience.
I don’t disagree on the Patreon app point, but I sub to like 6 podcasts and never visit the app or website. For me it’s very much an RSS feed experience via my preferred podcast app.
It’s also PATREON fucking up. I’ve got a couple people i follow that are moving to Ghost as a hedge.
ghost?
nm I looked it up myself.
Why aren’t more people on ghost? It’s a stupid name for what it does, but the $9 a month and keeping the rest is a great deal if you have more than a handful of subscribers.
Ghost managed hosting gets more expensive as you get more subscribers, I don’t think Patreon does. You also have to set up the payments processor yourself (usually Stripe), and if you self-host, you need to set up an email service like Mailchimp. Ghost also has much more basic community features than Patreon, and doesn’t do per-user RSS feeds, so stuff like subscriber-only podcasts are more difficult.
That aged like milk lol
Just Capitalism Problems
Well, that button probably dates from the late 80s or early 90s, when Apple was comparing Macs to branded IBM PS/2s and such that were sold to schools and enterprises.
And they weren’t wrong, at the time. Those PS/2s were fuckin’ expensive.
apple was never cheaper than their competition, and when IBM got into PCs they were also not even comparable in quality anymore. Reality is that even in the early days apples was also more expensive and they relied on a dedicated fan base to sell their trash, to be fair they sorta earned their reputation in the super early PC space with actually good products but when IBM came in it had better PCs at lower prices and apple was basically riding on pure brand power. Then they had a few good hits with the ipad and later the iphone (tho the ipad was not as significant at the time as people seem to think it was looking back) and now they have been entirely eclipsed when it comes to phones and are once again reliant on hype and brand recognition.
It is not a unique history by any means but i feel it is especially egregious considering just how shit apple products are and how expensive they are.
You for got to mention the free and heavily discounted prices to get Mac computers into schools to get kids hooked on them. Which is something they still do to this I think.
At the same time Windows is going down the drain, so if you compare removed to that it definitely has an edge. And that 8GB Air is not that expensive either… And fanboy can tell you it can swap to SSD so fast blah blah…
But if you have the knowledge to use Linux, there are less and less reasons to go even near removed computers…
So, I lived through that time, and I supported computers professionally during that time. I started working at a university help desk in 1989.
It’s easy to go back and look at Apple products and white-box PCs of the era (or quasi-legit clones like Compaq, HP, Gateway, etc) and say, “oh, on specs, the Apples were MASSIVELY overpriced – you can get a much better deal with the PC”.
The problem was that PCs were nowhere near on par, functionally, with Macintosh.
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Networking. We were running building-wide Appletalk networks – with TCP/IP gateways – over existing phone wires YEARS before anybody figured out how to get coax or 10base-T installed. We were playing NETWORK GAMES (Bolo, anyone) on Mac in the late 80s.
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And when they did… what do you do with networking in DOS? Unless you ran a completely canned network OS (remember Banyan, Novell, etc. ad infinitum?) and canned apps specifically designed to work with it, you were SOL. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 were a joke compared to System 7.
I configured PCs and Macs for the freshman class in 1995. For the Mac? You plug the ethernet port in and the OS does the rest. For the PC… find a DOS-compatible packet driver that works with your network card, get it running, then run Trumpet Winsock in Windows 3.1, then… then… it was a goddamned nightmare. We had to have special clinics just to get people’s PCs up and running with a web browser, and even then, there were about 10% of machines we just had to say “nope”. Can’t find a working driver, can’t get anything working right. Your IRQs are busted? Who fuckin’ knows. I ran the “Ethernet Clinic” until the late 90s, when Windows 98 finally properly integrated the TCP/IP layer in the OS.
- Useful software on the Mac had a pretty consistent look & feel. On the PC? Even in Windows 3.1, it was all over the map. You might have a Windows native program, you might have a DOS program that launches in a console window, you might have a completely different graphical interface embedded in the software (Delphi apps, anyone?). Games were using DOS into the mid 90s because getting anything working right in Windows 3.1 was a total fuckin crap shoot.
Windows 95 started to fix things, finally. And Windows XP would finally bring an OS with stability comparable to Mac (arguably WIndows 2000 as well, but it was never really offered on non-corporate PCs).
The short version is: that $3000 Mac could do a lot more than that $1800 PC, even if the specs said that the CPU was faster on the PC.
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There’s a reason why no-one bought IBM PS/2s. They were horrible value for money.
The real competition at the time was the thousands of other brands selling PCs. By that time IBM was plummeting in sales and other companies were selling most of the PCs. That’s where 95% of the market was.
Certainly, but Apple was comparing itself to other computer companies with international reach, not to the white box PCs coming out of the Floppy Wizard store in the strip center.
My Apple IIC was the stuff back in the 80s.
It was also the last Apple product I owned.
Most of Apple’s history, actually.
Macs have a reputation for being expensive because people compare the cheapest Mac to the cheapest PC, or to a custom-built PC. That’s reasonable if the cheapest PC meets your needs or if you’re into building your own PC, but if you compare a similarly-equipped name-brand PC, the numbers shift a LOT.
From the G3-G5 era ('97-2006) through most of the Intel era (2006-2020), if you went to Dell or HP and configured a machine to match Apple’s specs as closely as possible, you’d find the Macs were almost never much more expensive, and often cheaper. I say this as someone who routinely did such comparisons as part of their job. There were some notable exceptions, like most of the Intel MacBook Air models (they ranged from “okay” to “so bad it feels like a personal insult”), but that was never the rule. Even in the early-mid 90s, while Apple’s own hardware was grossly overpriced, you could by Mac clones for much cheaper (clones were licensed third-parties who made Macs, and they were far and away the best value in the pre-G3 PowerPC era).
Macs also historically have a lower total cost of ownership, factoring in lifespan (cheap PCs fail frequently), support costs, etc. One of the most recent and extensive analyses of this I know if comes from IBM. See https://www.computerworld.com/article/1666267/ibm-mac-users-are-happier-and-more-productive.html
Toward the tail end of the Intel era, let’s say around 2016-2020, Apple put out some real garbage. e.g. butterfly keyboards and the aforementioned craptastic Airs. But historically those are the exceptions, not the rule.
As for the “does more”, well, that’s debatable. Considering this is using Apple’s 90s logo, I think it’s pretty fair. Compare System 7 (released in '91) to Windows 3.1 (released in '92), and there is no contest. Windows was shit. This was generally true up until the 2000s, when the first few versions of OS X were half-baked and Apple was only just exiting its “beleaguered” period, and the mainstream press kept ringing the death knell. Windows lagged behind its competition by at least a few years up until Microsoft successfully killed or sufficiently hampered all that competition. I don’t think you can make an honest argument in favor of Windows compared to any of its contemporaries in the 90s (e.g. Macintosh, OS/2, BeOS) that doesn’t boil down to “we’re used to it” or “we’re locked in”.
My graphic design teacher in high school had a PowerPC and that thing was awesome.
Windows did a few vital things that Apple failed miserably on in the 90’s.
Mac dropped support for legacy software and hardware on every new OS in the 90’s. Microsoft maintained backwards capability. It was a major reason windows was more resource intensive and had more bugs. It was a smart move because windows OS was able to handle more software and hardware than Macs. This is the top reason why windows demolished Mac in sales.
Microsoft’s business model allowed greater range of pricepoints. Most users in business or at home do not need the capabilities of the lowest priced Mac model. You don’t need much to check e-mail, browse the web, and do some basic word processing. Apple did not service this largest section of the market at all.
Windows benefited by not being tied to the hardware. So if you could slap together a bunch of parts and swap out a few dozen floppies you could get a Windows machine. Which meant there were a ton of companies making Windows machines for cheaper than Apple could make Macs.
Apple tried to allow clones, but ran into the same problem because the clone makers could make cheaper machines by slapping together parts.
Apple tried to allow clones, but ran into the same problem because the clone makers could make cheaper machines by slapping together parts.
Yeah, this is exactly what happened, although some of the clone brands were perfectly high-quality (Power Computing in particular made great machines, usually the fastest on the market). In the Mac community at the time, a lot of people (myself included) wished Apple would just exit the hardware business and focus on what they were good at: software.
Then Steve Jobs came back and did exactly the opposite of that. First order of business was to kill cloning. Then came the iPod.
To be fair, the next generation of Power Macs after that were about half the price of the previous gen.
Prior to Steve coming back Apple had a ton of different product lines. You had three or four models of Performa, then two different lines of Power Macs, three different Powerbooks, and even some servers. This wasted a ton of effort and resources maintaining all these product lines.
Steve divided the segments in to four quadrants on two axes: Portable vs. Desktop and Consumer vs. Professional. I think if they’d have started with simplifying their product line there might still be a market for the clones.
Totally agree. Their product line was an absolute mess back then. Their current lineup is getting a little bloated too. I don’t know why they bother having two laptop product lines anymore when they are so similar.
It’s a shame that they won’t just release macOS as a standalone product, even if it requires specific hardware to run. I would pay for it in a heartbeat.
I was actively into the Hackintosh scene in the early 10s. You could have an insanely powerful build (albeit the parts had to be compatible), and it would still be half the price of a lower end Mac Pro.
Apple is fundamentally a hardware company that uses features, workflows, and integrations to keep people buying hardware.
They’re never going to do something than undercuts hardware sales ever again.
insee it as apple is a full vertical stack conpany who doesnt want to share its vertical stack as it cuts into their profit.
its what nvidia is trying to do, and if windows for arm takes off, i bet that nvidia is ready to attempt to remove all competition on windows due to how reliant some sectors of the industry are for nvidia hardware
They meant that it costs less for apple, not the customer
It doesn’t even do anything more especially for the price. Just make an AMD rig that blows it outta the water ez.
