amigakid wrote:
Yeah the Macbooks are nice, but i can't agree that with the price tag they are worth it.
While I myself feel that they are bit higher priced than they should (should be $200-300 less I think), unfortunately that only feels so when one considers the hardware inside.
For example, we think: Intel CPUs: ah, those are so cheap, they're everywhere. DDR RAM: super cheap. Hard drives: commodity. WiFi: what's new?
But the truth is, you're not paying for that when you are buying a Mac. Partially, you're paying for the superior Mac OS X experience, but beyond that, what you are trully paying for is innovation all over the board that's usually not bundled in a single "PC" (more correctly called a clone, because a Mac is a Personal Computer too).
For example, who in the industry uses all green tech for the materials of the laptop? Apple does. Who uses high-end aluminum parts that are crafted from a single block of aluminum, so as they are lighter and thinner? Apple does. Of course some other company might as well, BUT the key difference is that Apple measures distances in micro meters, not millimeters. What that means is that things fit perfectly, they also have very very accurate and slick design. You might not notice it right away, and certainly most people don't notice it consciously, but it's what makes people, overall, attribute that "WOW" factor (case and point, our original poster) when talking about the new Macs. And that's what's part of the price tag.
Now think back to the last time you visited a clone shop: when was the last time you wowed at a computer you saw? I personally don't recall my last time (although I probably have at some point - I know I did for Amigas).
And just to point out a little example of where the extreme industrial design and engineering used by Apple to make the WOW factor in their products: have you noticed how the older Macs that had a built-in camera had a little hole next to the lens for the "it's on" light? Well, the newer ones also have the "it's on" light, however they don't have a hole. Typically a clone manufacturer would put an LED in that hole and it would try to be flush with the surface, although most times a little bit of the plastic of the LED would be sticking out. Many such holes and protrusions and lines make things look "busy" and unclean. This means that mentally your brain has to deal with the extra "math" as it does line and edge detection and object recognition. What Apple did is create a new way of "etching" metal/aluminum so as to wear down the thickness of the material just enough so that light from an LED can come out, yet light from the outside won't penetrate the aluminum and thus your eye would be able to spot the hole. Thus your eye NEVER ses the hole or the LED, yet you see the "it's on" light when you need to! Talk about meticulous design. Once again: consciously, you wouldn't even think about this stuff, but your unconscious brain, mysteriously (until you read my explanation) would "feel better" while looking at a Mac.
Finally, when you get a Mac, you get almost the latest in technology but not only in their highest end models, but also some of the mid and low end models. For example in the new laptop series you'll get:
* LED backlit displays
* 802.11n WiFi
* Bluetooth + EDR
* multi-touch trackpad
* dual analog/digital output over the headphone jacks
* Gigabit Ethernet
* Firewire 800 on the bigger models (which for me gets over 50MB/sec to my external disks)
* most recent generation of Intel and NVidia chips & chipsets (1066MHz FSB for fast 2GB DDR3 RAM, 9400M iGPU)
* and in many cases industry-leading-moves such as the inclusion of the Mini Display Port (just as Apple was the very first to move entirely to USB instead of legacy ports, to include Firewire, and other new standards, thus ensuring future compatibility, guaranteed support and longer lifespan for the product).
* optional factory install SSD storage of course (don't forget, most people don't feel comfortable opening their > $1000 machines to add things, just in case they might void their warranty)
* 5 hours of usage
* iLife '08 (fantastic creativity software package)
* free shipping
* $100 coupon deal for printer
A quick search on Dell's site yielded this system for the same approximate price:
Dell XPS M1330If you ask me, I'd rather get the Macbook for that cash!
OH, and you get virtually "twice the computer" because you can also run Windows on it if you ever need to. That's a big deal, because you know what? You can't easily play Crisis on Mac OS X yet. However you also don't have anything on the Windows side close to such things such as:
Delicious Library
amigakid wrote:
Personally i'd rather buy a used laptop and put SUSE on it lol.
It's just not the same thing. Stop thinking that you're only buying raw hardware parts. You're buying a computing experience, which is DEFINITELY not the same for a SUSE user and a Mac user.
This same thinking can be applied to Amigas, because seriously, Amigas were just "PCs". Heck, most of the hardware was using identical components in many places (RAM, disks, CPUs, various non-custom chips, video chips, etc.). HOWEVER, the package (both hardware and software) differentiated the final result of the user experience.
