my 2 pennies...
Hey guys, long time no post. I'm going to law school this fall and am in the market for a new laptop. So these are my thoughts, it's rather long, so I hope you'll bear with me...
For me, it's not a matter of liking or disliking apple. The issue for me as a soon-to-be-buyer is... how much is it worth? Right now I am typing on an older hp pavilion laptop I've owned since about 2004. The only hardware problem I've ever had was the power port where the ac jack plugs in... had to have it fixed 2 years ago, and it's going right now as we speak, so luckily, I'll be getting a new laptop soon. Let me be the first to say, OS X is amazing. My dad actually bought a blackbook at my encouragement, when leopard first came out. He loves it. My best friend has a white macbook, loves it. I'd love to buy the unibody macbook, but when I consider that I'll need a laptop for 3 years, it's just pretty tough to justify the cost of the macs. For example, even the low-end unibody is 1300... with a tiny 160gb HDD and no backlit keyboard. That's just kind of ridiculous, am I not the only one who feels this way? Now look at this computer ...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9022979&type=product&id=1218009474848 ... great battery life a la macbook, bigger hdd, 4gigs ram, a bit faster processor, bluetooth, wireless n, and backlit keyboard... and 2yr manufacturer warranty. And that's just one example, but a fairly close one for my purpose here. And that's 800. Now, I ABSOLUTELY am willing to pay a premium for getting to use OS X, but not a $500 premium. That's just outrageous. Of course I'll be waiting until the end of june to buy anything, that's probably when windows 7 free upgrade certificates will be available with all new windows computer purchases.
Moving on to the OS issues, as I've said, I openly admit that OS X is the superior operating system over vista, and I am willing to pay a premium for that luxury. But at the same time, I've used windows going back to version 3.1... so I know my way around that OS very well, so "problems" don't really intimidate me the way they might for a novice computer user who is "scared" of having to troubleshoot a hardware conflict or whatever the case may be. And in all honesty, I have XP on my laptop, and I've never had any catastrophic problems with it due to the OS.
Back when my power port broke a couple of years ago my computer just shut off while I was doing an update... so yeah, I had to do a full hdd recovery ... but that was mainly due to my computer screwing me, and not the OS. PS... I also loooove the magnet power jack apple uses, great invention, I bet macbooks never have powerport issues, as every other laptop gets those issues, not just HP. But really, to fix that powerport issue, it was really inexpensive, sub $100 repair I believe.
In any case, I guess my point is... windows computers, when you consider the price, they just aren't THAT bad, and macbooks aren't THAT good so as to command a $500 premium. Really, to get a comparable hdd size and backlit keyboard, the better comparison and most deserved one is to the $1600 macbook. So really, then, the premium is $800. I mean, seriously? Hell, even if that toshiba was totally shot after 2 years (and I see no reason why it would, as I said, even this "crap" HP is still kicking after 5 years, and it's workable, the port isn't totally dead, started slowly dying about 3 weeks ago, and I'm fairly certain that toshiba is better than HP), I could buy a new one (and updated I guess since it'd be 2 years later) and have owned two fairly decent computers for the price of a macbook. I just think that's sort of ridiculous, and while I'd LOVE to have a macbook, I simply can't justify the expense of one even though I could afford to buy one. And backups are a nonissue, plenty of space on my ipod classic to do backups.
A fundamental question arises, which is, why pay more than necessary, even if you have the money? I'm the consumer, and companies have to earn my dollars, bottom line. I go to one movie theater over another, why? Because the popcorn is better, or the sound is, or the picture, or the seating, etc., etc. Companies need to earn my business and justify the higher price they charge if that's the case. So then, does Apple do so with their macbooks? And I just have to conclude, much to my admitted discontent, that they don't. OS X is great, no doubt, I'd love to have a macbook and that operating system, but not for a 600-800 premium. By all accounts of the windows 7 testing, even that toshiba would be overpowered to run that operating system, so I don't want to, nor do I think it necessary for any of us here to debate the finepoints, especially with the lame commercials going back and forth recently between pc's and macs (you don't need 4gb ram for leopard, blah blah... well, from what people are saying, you don't need that much to run windows 7 either, so that issue becomes moot... it's vista that is bloated and hoggish), and it's not my intent to get into that line of a discussion.
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say to be honest! lol. Bottom line, I don't dislike Apple at all, I think OS X is amazing. But the macbooks themselves are just overpriced in my opinion. The luxury of getting to use OS X just isn't worth twice the price of a hardware-wise comparable computer. I really don't want to have any fanboys going crazy over this post, and I'm trying to phrase this entire post as respectfully as I can. I would LOVE to get a macbook, but not if it's essentially twice the price of a comparable laptop (minus the OS... and yes, I realize the speakers suck on that toshiba... but I'm a law student. I need to write papers, and I have headphones and speakers of my own after all, and that toshiba is just an example, but it's definitely a laptop I'm considering buying when windows 7 certificates pop out next month, maybe by then it'll even get a price drop ... I know macbooks won't, sadly.
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So let's say windows OS costs $300, well, I'd pay that much of a price to "buy" myself out of windows, which means the macbook should really cost about 1100, not 1300 ... well, 1500 (for the model that feature-wise is analogous to the computer I linked to for my comparison). Alright, I hope we can keep having a friendly conversation. As I said, I'm in the market for a new laptop, and I'm always open to being convinced otherwise, I just haven't been able to convince myself over the past couple of weeks that a macbook really is worth all that cost... take it easy fellas!!
Mike
