Apple crappy discs !

ICBM

OK... and how much would you charge to assemble that? Does it run a legit version of Mac OSX? Does it come with a full warranty, extendable with tech support to three years for about another 10% of the purchase price?

Like I said... you know how to assemble one. The vast majority of Apple users don't, they want an integrated package they can buy from a shop which runs software they find easy to use and comes with a warranty, and looks nice too. All that is worth a fair amount of money to some people - a minority certainly, since Apple don't sell a big proportion of the computers in the world. But if it wasn't, Apple would have crashed and burned a long time ago, instead of being one of the most highly-valued companies in the world.

Even if the product was indistinguishable, actually 57% isn't that big a price difference when you look at it in technology terms - they're both a fraction of what the same computing power would have cost five years ago, and very expensive compared to what it will cost in five years time. It just doesn't make enough difference to outweigh the other factors.

I'm not an unquestioning Apple fanboy by the way. I know full well that I'm paying over the odds in some ways - and there are occasional issues with them too - but I like what I get and I'm happy with what I think is a small upcharge for a *far* nicer product.

Jalapeno

Did a lot of research for Missus' new laptop - similar spec'd PC to a MacBook Air 13" was virtually the same price.

Generally happy with OSX, and it turned out that it wasn't the disc in the end.

It was OSX 10.7 -> 10.8 upgrade that corrupted the disc irrecoverably.  Think I'll wait a month or two before doing that again .....

And yes smartarses - I had a backup :P

monquixote

Jalapeno said:

Did a lot of research for Missus' new laptop - similar spec'd PC to a MacBook Air 13" was virtually the same price.

This^

Once you get into the high end laptop market Apple are actually very competitive on price. 

Drew_TNBD

Just bought an i3 laptop for £250. Put in 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. £500 all in.

Couldn't even sniff a new Macbook for that. It's feckin ZIPPY as well.

monquixote

Drew_fx said:

Just bought an i3 laptop for £250. Put in 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. £500 all in.

Couldn't even sniff a new Macbook for that. It's feckin ZIPPY as well.

At that end of things there is no comparison, but when you are looking at the "ultrabook" type stuff. Apple hold their own and that's with the PC vendors getting a free reference design from Intel.

ICBM

Jalapeno said:

Generally happy with OSX, and it turned out that it wasn't the disc in the end.

It was OSX 10.7 -> 10.8 upgrade that corrupted the disc irrecoverably.  Think I'll wait a month or two before doing that again ...

Fuck! I had a couple of issues with upgrades in the past, but nothing like that... in fact it was the upgrade to 10.8 which cured all of the outstanding issues with 10.7, for me.

Is the disk actually damaged, or will an erase and clean install of 10.8 fix it? I didn't think a software fault could destroy a hard drive, until it happened to one of my external ones...

digitalscream

wibble said:

I didn't realise Apple used off the shelf motherboards and chassis as everyone else and it all magically integrates itself...

Everyone knows manufacturers do not charge cost price for option upgrades

No, they use custom motherboards...just the same way Dell do for all their desktops, and every other laptop manufacturer out there does Anecdotal evidence (listening to people who come to me asking for a fix on their machine with a borked mainboard but can't afford Apple's repair prices) suggests that Apple's boards seem to fail a lot more than the ones in generic PCs.

It's true about aftermarket upgrades, but when the memory comes to you badged as generic Samsung stuff - even with the same part numbers - but costs 3 or 4 times as much as from anywhere else, it's taking the piss a bit. They could at least put a new sticker on it and pretend that it's something different...

Drew_TNBD

The motherboards are neither here nor there really. You get some good configs, you get some bad ones. Depending on the brand. It's mainly about the chipsets, and Apple moved over to Intel chipsets a looooooooooooong time ago. Aside from the way it looks, there really isn't any difference between a PC and a Macbook.

Gulliver

The problem with the new 21.5" iMacs are that you can't upgrade the ram yourself... There's no way to access the innards, without REMOVING THE SCREEN.

guitargeek62

I picked up a new 13" MBA last month with base specs - I got caught out though as I hadn't realised the RAM was non-user replaceable on the newer ones so I'm stuck with 4GB. It's ample for everyday needs, but it'd have been handy to be able to swap it out myself and I'm still not sure I understand the reasoning to make something harder to repair/maintain/upgrade. Same goes for the SSD too (stock 128GB), it's enough for what I bought it for (i.e. actual work), but it would be nice to have the option to upgrade it at a later date.

Still, it's a thing of beauty though. I love OSx, and the hardware, and the trackpad especially. I've been using Mac's on and off for the past 5 years or so, but I've become a complete convert lately.

If I could find a good Mac-based alternative to MS Project (hint hint?), I wouldn't even have bothered installed Win 7 & Parallels this time around either!