Any mac diehards starting to become a bit concerned with the prices?

Nexus said:
Back when I used to use PCs at home, you always had to keep upgrading them, because they always started to struggle, especially with games.
Click to expand...

Until recently you never would have needed to upgrade a Mac as there were no real games for it ;) My work PC is over 3 years old and runs office/software dev stuff just fine.

I like some things on the iMac I now use 90% of the day but I surprised at how unstable it is. 3rd party apps seem very capable of killing it and coming out of sleep the network subsystem can fail. I can see some plus points for a switch to OSX but my experience so far is mixed.
 
Nexus said:
Personally, my response to this is...

How often do you need a new machine?

Back when I used to use PCs at home, you always had to keep upgrading them, because they always started to struggle, especially with games.

My first Mac was a Powerbook G4, it's about five and a half years old now and I still use it as a laptop just fine. Then I bought a Mac Pro a couple of years ago, and I don't see myself needing to upgrade from that for quite some time.

So yeah, they might be high prices initially, but then I feel I've gotten a lot of use out of them. I don't really see the need to be upgrading on them all the time, unless you are the type of person who has to have the new Mac Book Pro/Mac Book/Mini whatever....
Click to expand...

Your post actually got me thinking more so than I was :p

The MacBook I currently have is a 2Ghz Core Duo. It is still functioning (after a free keyboard replacement, RAM upgrade, 2 HDD upgrades, battery replacement and power adapter replacement ;) ) even though I think the wireless has taken a turn for the nearly-b0rked :eek: So I'm back on ethernet now.

In the middle of 2006 it cost £899 (£850 with a student discount) which didn't seem all that extreme considering very few laptops had a Core Duo and no PC laptop could touch the 4-6hrs battery life.

So why did I get it?

Latest CPU technology
Long battery life
1 Year Old OS (Tiger) as opposed to a 5 year old one (XP) that just generally interested me
Highly portable
Decent enough price
Everything Mac OS X/iLife brought to the package

The only thing for me, personally, that hasn't changed is the long battery life. In the current MacBook/13" MacBook Pro models:

Old CPU technology
<1 Year Old OS (Snow Leopard) as opposed to a <1 Year Old PC one (7)
Netbooks are the new highly portable
Base price is going up
Whatever your opinion on Snow Leopard vs. 7... they are much closer in terms of awesomeness than XP & Vista ever was to OS X Tiger or Leopard.
With iLife I only really use iPhoto, and Apple have done some things to annoy me that have made me switch to Picasa.

So while I could spend £1000 on a new Mac portable. I could just as easily get a £250 netbook and build a £750 desktop PC or any such combination for the price... even save the money :D
 
The build quality has vastly improved though, the screens have improved, the keyboards have improved, the trackpads have definitely improved and there's still nothing on the market to compete with them. They're smaller and lighter compared to older builds. There's more to it the GHz.
 
I don't think I'll be replacing my Macbook (alu unibody) with another Apple machine based on current prices to be honest although it's got a lot of life in it yet. I actually prefer Windows 7 after recently wiping my Hackingtosh to try it a few weeks ago and with prices so vastly inflated on Apple products I can no longer justify the extra expense. My old Mac Mini has been replaced by an Asus Revo for HTPC purposes (although only because the logic board went in it) so I'm down to just a Dell Mini 10V and the Macbook running OSX now.
 
mr.sly said:
The build quality has vastly improved though, the screens have improved, the keyboards have improved, the trackpads have definitely improved and there's still nothing on the market to compete with them. They're smaller and lighter compared to older builds. There's more to it the GHz.
Click to expand...

They're meant to improve as time goes on and always have, it's only lately it's being accompanied by savage pricing increases. You shouldn't pay for a better machine than last year's - that's progress. It should be better and the same price, or cheaper. Maybe a little more if it's a whole boatload of improvements.
 
Maybe it's tied in to the manufacturing process? This NEW type of unibody case (for mac books and now the mini) are probably very expensive to develop and produce (at least initially) and costs need to be clawed back in somehow.

Before, all their machines were encased in plastic (cheap to manufacture).
 
PardonTheWait said:
They're meant to improve as time goes on and always have, it's only lately it's being accompanied by savage pricing increases. You shouldn't pay for a better machine than last year's - that's progress. It should be better and the same price, or cheaper. Maybe a little more if it's a whole boatload of improvements.
Click to expand...

"All new Mac Pro with 24 core processor and Blu-Ray RW

Just £73,000. A great workhorse at an unbelievable price."
 
PardonTheWait said:
They're meant to improve as time goes on and always have, it's only lately it's being accompanied by savage pricing increases. You shouldn't pay for a better machine than last year's - that's progress. It should be better and the same price, or cheaper. Maybe a little more if it's a whole boatload of improvements.
Click to expand...

Apart from the new Mini that is usually the case though. The new iPhone for example, much improved over the last model and its a little more expensive.
 
EVH said:
I'm worried.

Entry level laptops costing £700 is a complete joke.
Click to expand...

I agree. I'm currently looking for a laptop, and while I use OSX at work and like it (Unix + usability = win), it's too hard to justify a Macbook/MBP when I compare specs & prices with Windows laptops.

I use a 2007 MP at work, which actually IIRC was rather good value for money (at least I remember thinking so at the time).
 
mr.sly said:
Apart from the new Mini that is usually the case though. The new iPhone for example, much improved over the last model and its a little more expensive.
Click to expand...

It is with iPhones and iPods, but as I said in the OP, iMacs, Macbooks and Mac Minis are all now a couple of hundred quid more than they were. We're talking 25% increases in the price of base level machines.
 
mr.sly said:
The build quality has vastly improved though, the screens have improved, the keyboards have improved, the trackpads have definitely improved and there's still nothing on the market to compete with them. They're smaller and lighter compared to older builds. There's more to it the GHz.
Click to expand...

yeah apple are the only company to improve their products over time =)

macs are just horribly priced, esp as people will start gaming on them, then that low end hardware will really start to loose that Apple magic :eek::eek::eek:
 
It's a premium product, always has been, always will be and the exchange rate it adversely affecting the UK (as the figures posted earlier show). I'm not too bothered, I've got consistently 3+ years out of my apple gear which I've never got from a PC before I've got fed up and upgraded it.

I'll pay extra for a well designed, elegant machine, who cares about specs that much - your processor is 10% faster? The 5 minute load average on my laptop is 0.16, god I'm missing that extra 10%....

I'm consistently amused by the insistence on comparing them to bargain basement laptops though, compare to Sony, Dell or HPs premium lines and they loose a little on spec but hardly anything on price. My macbook pro was abut £100 cheaper than my work Dell E4300 all told and they're exceptionally similar in spec (2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, SSD, DVDRW, 13" screen, decent build quality) - that's the fair comparison to make.
 
bigredshark said:
I'm consistently amused by the insistence on comparing them to bargain basement laptops though, compare to Sony, Dell or HPs premium lines and they loose a little on spec but hardly anything on price. My macbook pro was abut £100 cheaper than my work Dell E4300 all told and they're exceptionally similar in spec (2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, SSD, DVDRW, 13" screen, decent build quality) - that's the fair comparison to make.
Click to expand...

Thats a very good point, why do people say why get a macbook for £800 when you can get a windows laptop for £400?

You never hear people use the same comparison with cars like why get a BMW 5 series when you can get a moped?

They both go from A to B, isn't that the point of transportation?
 
I'm becoming more concerned with the number of apple products I want to own. ;)

I want to upgrade my 3GS to an iPhone 4, get an iPad and also one of the new Mac Mini's.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Thats a very good point, why do people say why get a macbook for £800 when you can get a windows laptop for £400?

You never hear people use the same comparison with cars like why get a BMW 5 series when you can get a moped?

They both go from A to B, isn't that the point of transportation?
Click to expand...

That's an absurd analogy..
 
azteched said:
That's an absurd analogy..
Click to expand...

No it's not, you get there the same but its how you get there that's all.

Same with macs isn't it? People always say they do the same thing in different ways. You still get online, you still do the same online shopping, watch the same media, type the same emails but its how you get there.

This is from someone posting it from his iPad btw.
 
bigredshark said:
It's a premium product, always has been, always will be and the exchange rate it adversely affecting the UK (as the figures posted earlier show). I'm not too bothered, I've got consistently 3+ years out of my apple gear which I've never got from a PC before I've got fed up and upgraded it.

I'll pay extra for a well designed, elegant machine, who cares about specs that much - your processor is 10% faster? The 5 minute load average on my laptop is 0.16, god I'm missing that extra 10%....

I'm consistently amused by the insistence on comparing them to bargain basement laptops though, compare to Sony, Dell or HPs premium lines and they loose a little on spec but hardly anything on price. My macbook pro was abut £100 cheaper than my work Dell E4300 all told and they're exceptionally similar in spec (2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, SSD, DVDRW, 13" screen, decent build quality) - that's the fair comparison to make.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong - I'm on your side with this. I've been using Macs 8 years, worked for Apple for two years and have worked at an APR since last September - I'm an Apple person through and through. My beef's not with the prices compared to windows machines, it's compared to Apple machines just a little while previously - I'm starting to think the price hikes can't be justified by the exchange rate at this point, it's starting to get a bit silly imo. It's not all the products, just the actual Macs. The iPhone and iPods are staying pretty much the same, or having minor fluctuations each way. Macs, imo, used to do pretty much the same until the last year or eighteen months.

Just gathering opinions really, on whether it's the exchange rate or what, because I don't know :)
 
buy a windows laptop, install ubuntu, get awesome performance for half the price of a macbook with a better OS and pure opensource goodness!

Or pay Apple to feel superior and elite...go on...you know u want to
 
Raymond Lin said:
No it's not, you get there the same but its how you get there that's all.

Same with macs isn't it? People always say they do the same thing in different ways. You still get online, you still do the same online shopping, watch the same media, type the same emails but its how you get there.
Click to expand...

yeah BMW5 series owners feel better than say ford mondao owners because they spent more money to get from a to b....guess its the same as macs

and really have u ever met a BMQ driver who doesnt act like an elitist dick!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom