non-techie people expecting a "good" computer/laptop for £100-200

[dowie]

Unless it breaks.

IF it breaks then (as an individual) you generally get pretty decent service from Apple, though the benefit is that they tend to have fewer issues anyway, see below quote from the IBM guy.

Well besides the desire for an employer to care about their employee, they can also join the frivolous and pointless rat race to show off their temporarily acquired wealth to their temporary friends/foes.

that is a rather minor benefit, simply having a device that is less hassle for the users, has fewer problems and is cheaper overall for the company is perhaps the bigger benefit

Frankly it's even stevens once you get down to brass tacks: you will still be managing a complex system; likely Intel based; likely interacting with other complex systems; and the associated costs throughout. As with all things IT, just because you think you are winning at something or something - financially at that - doesn't mean you actually are getting the perceived benefit. This is similar to the effect of perceived (and self-reported) productivity vs actual work done.

It isn't anywhere close to "even stevens" in a lot of cases, there are objective cost benefits that have been documented over a large sample size at IBM, those aren't merely perceived benefits but a tangible ones.

There might well be places that are quite locked into windows and perhaps Macs are less useful in that case, unless people really really like the hardware and are going to install windows on it or make extensive use of windows applications via a VM. But for a lot of general cases they'd seem to be a better choice:


http://uk.businessinsider.com/an-ibm-it-guy-macs-are-300-cheaper-to-own-than-windows-2016-10

Previn's team is responsible for all the company's workers' computers, not just the Macs. IBM's IT department supports about 604,000 laptops between employees and its more than 100,000 contractors. Most are Windows machines — 442,000 — while 90,000 are Macs and 72,000 are Linux PCs. IBM is adding about 1,300 Macs a week, Previn said.

With another year of working with Macs under his belt, he gave another funny presentation at Jamf's conference.

He reiterated that, in his experience, Mac users needed less help. Though Macs make up about 15% of the PCs in use, only 5% of the help desk is dedicated to supporting them.

Previn said that while a Mac initially cost $117 to $454 more than a similarly configured Windows PC, over four years IBM saves $273 to $543 per Mac compared with a similarly configured Windows PC.

In other words, when you add in all the software a company has to buy from Microsoft to run and manage its Windows devices, Windows PCs are 3 times as expensive, he says.

"It ends up being $57.3 million more expensive per 100,000 Windows machines, or exactly three times the cost," he said. "And this is a conservative number. This represents the best pricing we've ever gotten from Microsoft."

That's a guy whit a large budget, large sample size objectively looking at the costs to his company... I'd say his view on the matter is perhaps much better informed than various random people on a tech forum with a chip on their shoulder re: Macs.

 

[asim18]

As above, that doesn't generalise. Their products aren't more or less disliked than any other big suppliers' output; the Zen spiel and emotional ownership arguments are.

Say, if I had a marketing department going to conferences, plugging graphic arts and not pushing the productivity beyond what their phone can do, then some argument can be made along the lines above. Even so, cost of ownership depends on the length of time the asset is kept, discount you get from Apple for your business, income raised and indirect costs incurred in supporting and accommodating Apple's presence in your ecosystem (noting D.P. posting the above too). Even if you buy into the whole closed garden, you still have to interact with businesses, technology and networks that aren't in it; support your employees trying to get the job done; training; security; and so on. The resale value per unit has to balance out the total cost per unit, otherwise you aren't even getting the benefit of the main advantage. Likewise if your team morale is through the roof, but your margins are still slim, sales steady and average slack doesn't move, then you have made an error.

Frankly it's even stevens once you get down to brass tacks: you will still be managing a complex system; likely Intel based; likely interacting with other complex systems; and the associated costs throughout. As with all things IT, just because you think you are winning at something or something - financially at that - doesn't mean you actually are getting the perceived benefit. This is similar to the effect of perceived (and self-reported) productivity vs actual work done.

Well said. And dont believe the nonsense about Mac's being more economical in the long run, they only get less support calls because the Mac's are used for different, less critical show off purposes. While windows machines will be used for more complicated tasks.

If they're both running the same crap, Adobe for example, then they will get the same support calls too, you can't just take two sets of systems which are going to be doing completely different things and compare them based on support calls lmao.

 

[PardonTheWait]

I simply cannot find one legitimate, non showoff, reason why a Mac is better at anything.

Heck even the exclusivity aspect of being presentable is just wrong. I'd be ashamed to pull out a Mac at a business meeting for example lol, the most mass produced and lie-marketed systems ever. Doesn't give a good message about the person if he's easily manipulated.

They're not priced so differently from other high-end machines built to the same nice standard really.

It's just a preference for me. I like the hardware and especially the software.

However I do feel that they're losing their way badly under Tim Cook and the prices are moving towards unacceptably high for me, they're no longer innovating like they used to, and when they do, I really feel like they're dropping the ball a lot. They're becoming basically impossible to fix without help from Apple, and are becoming made up of less and less components as far as repair is concerned. A broken keyboard key - which can happen easily because of DUST, can mean a whole new top case, which includes the top case itself, the keyboard, trackpad and battery. That's a massive pain in warranty, and a show-stopper outside of warranty.

I know some of this is due to the miniaturisation of everything and isn't unique to Apple, but they're definitely worse for it that many other companies, and they're starting to go more and more against what they used to stand for. I've been using them for something stupid like 16 years now and it's only recently I'm starting to think seriously about moving away from them entirely.

They're just.. I don't know, I feel like they're going wrong. Steve Jobs wasn't a great person but he ran the company properly.

 

[ultralaser]

I simply cannot find one legitimate, non showoff, reason why a Mac is better at anything.

Heck even the exclusivity aspect of being presentable is just wrong. I'd be ashamed to pull out a Mac at a business meeting for example lol, the most mass produced and lie-marketed systems ever. Doesn't give a good message about the person if he's easily manipulated.

So I'm not overly an Apple fan (actually over in the Apple area of the forum I'm quite critical of them recently) that said the software ecosystem they have is much more functional, easy to use and integrated than I find Google or any other major platform to be honest. On the hardware side, whilst it is horrifically expensive, it's often outlived rivals for me (bar a significant margin too). That is no excuse for the ridiculous pricing though!

 

[datalol-jack]

It isn't anywhere close to "even stevens" in a lot of cases, there are objective cost benefits that have been documented over a large sample size at IBM, those aren't merely perceived benefits but a tangible ones.

There might well be places that are quite locked into windows and perhaps Macs are less useful in that case, unless people really really like the hardware and are going to install windows on it or make extensive use of windows applications via a VM. But for a lot of general cases they'd seem to be a better choice:


http://uk.businessinsider.com/an-ibm-it-guy-macs-are-300-cheaper-to-own-than-windows-2016-10



That's a guy whit a large budget, large sample size objectively looking at the costs to his company... I'd say his view on the matter is perhaps much better informed than various random people on a tech forum with a chip on their shoulder re: Macs.

What is said lot of cases? Is your case that general? The problem I had is with the argument above generalising. Apple products are not be all and end all in all business applications, as you yourself admit. They aren't, and their benefits are very context dependent. Which again you seem to be at least aware of.

IBM's one sample. It is an interesting talk from someone in the field and not just blowing hot air. But there are caveats: he still spends most of his budget, time and company output on Windows PCs - a fact of a very established base, with growth presumably not at zero. If it were a simple matter of 'show them, and they'll come' then why is the Apple base barely outperforming standard units with Linux on them (where software savings could be even greater)? Inertia, or is there something wrong with the value proposition given the applications? Microsoft would discount if it were under credible threat. Clearly at IBM it isn't.

IBM is also in a unique position of writing, deploying and managing their own software. Costs of these projects are rarely discussed in detail by IT bods in talks like these, especially when new systems are introduced. How much is/was spent per platform (Windows, Linux, OSX)? And is the value proposition the same where the platform is the browser, say, and not the underlying client (in which case cheaper hardware is preferred)? How much of support time is absorbed by Apple themselves? Average time to resolution? Just because I'm calling Apple and not my own IT team, does not mean I am not spending billable hours on the phone to support.

He further makes the argument on direct software costs, which still relies on accruing the expense of the Apple product over four years. This is outside the one year limited warranty window and the average time the underlying hardware manufacturer expects the units not to fail. The cost of support can be queried further too. How is it counted? Are cloud platforms included, say Office365? How is a call from a Microsoft product user on a Mac logged? What happens to the calls at interactions of all three common platforms?

Then it becomes clear IBM has application specific clusters of technology by department. What's the average case that trends through all departments and functions? There's some discussion from which you can infer what your bog standard IBMer does day-to-day regardless whether he's in dev or sales, but it's not clear. So it's also not clear which direct costs will be necessary and which indirect costs can be dismissed to justify higher initial outlay on hardware. Do the savings continue to scale?

I would like to get the same talk from his accounts department, in short.

 

[almoststew1990]

I just bought a Netbook for £30 should be able to play Fortnite right guys????

 

[Amp34]

CPUs aren't "broadly the same", they're the exact same chips aren't they? Apple doesn't get bespoke Intel chips do they? But you can prove me wrong I don't really like researching Apple specifications because all the buzzwords/neurolinguistic mind control on their website just depresses me.


I mean the bespoke/proprietary hardware in a Mac is going to be outdated very quickly anyway. Anyone buying a new macbook 12 months after release is getting old tech.


If you have systems from several manufacturers, all with the same level of hardware, the Apple system is going to be more expensive by at least £400-£5000 (especially if you have extra options like ssds). If you think that level of premium is worth an extra 45 minutes of battery life and a cheap mass produced metal chassis, as well as having to put up with old hardware like outdated SSDs, then I just strongly disagree.

I guessed you missed the bit where I said high end laptops of every manufacturer, not just Apple? I wasn’t talking about Apple specifically..

And yes, in many instances they’re broadly the same. They may be the same series (say an i5 U chip of similar vintage), but 100-200Mhz different in speed, one in a cheap laptop, one in a high end laptop from Dell, MS or Apple. To me that’s broadly the same, maybe to you too that’s not?

And Apple laptops being consistently more expensive - it’s debatable, it really depends on the specific models being compared. As an example one of the reasons I bought the Air when I did was because it was cheaper than the Sony option I was comparing it to. They’re recent hike in prices has gone against them though, but you can almost certainly still get a more expensive laptops from other manufacturers.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

So I'm not overly an Apple fan (actually over in the Apple area of the forum I'm quite critical of them recently) that said the software ecosystem they have is much more functional, easy to use and integrated than I find Google or any other major platform to be honest. On the hardware side, whilst it is horrifically expensive, it's often outlived rivals for me (bar a significant margin too). That is no excuse for the ridiculous pricing though!

personally i don't count outliving rivals as a valid reason to buy one. rivals will last well beyond their use by date.

i have a HP laptop. must be 5+ years old. still going strong. paid £300 when it was new. it's got an i3, 6GB of RAM. 750GB hard drive and a 30 GB ssd drive used as a cache. so a hybrid so to speak. 720P screen which is enough tbh.

it's got to the point I want to upgrade but anything that is better now costs roughly double £600.

it's cost me pennies to buy and use and as far as i am concerned it doesn't owe me anything now. i'll probably be able to sell it for £150 due to the specs are still pretty good for a laptop. especially the 6GB of RAM. so it's cost me less than £30 a year of ownership if I did sell.

I'm looking for i5, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD - using Moore's law I should be able to get that for £300 new now but I can't. i guess this laptop will easily last 10 years. it's still pretty good.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Interesting how this pretty much dissolved into a Apple Vs the rest thread that has almost nothing to do with the OP.... back to topic.

Why do you think there is a huge difference between the amount people are willing to drop on a phone vs a laptop or tablet. £700-£1000 on a phone over 24 months no problem. £400-500 on a laptop to last 4-5 years "you what mate? or "HOW MUCH?!?!???!"

 

[ultralaser]

Interesting how this pretty much dissolved into a Apple Vs the rest thread that has almost nothing to do with the OP.... back to topic.

Why do you think there is a huge difference between the amount people are willing to drop on a phone vs a laptop or tablet. £700-£1000 on a phone over 24 months no problem. £400-500 on a laptop to last 4-5 years "you what mate? or "HOW MUCH?!?!???!"

So I think an flagship phone is as much a fashion / status symbol as it is a phone for many, whereas a laptop, no one sees it?

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Interesting how this pretty much dissolved into a Apple Vs the rest thread that has almost nothing to do with the OP.... back to topic.

Why do you think there is a huge difference between the amount people are willing to drop on a phone vs a laptop or tablet. £700-£1000 on a phone over 24 months no problem. £400-500 on a laptop to last 4-5 years "you what mate? or "HOW MUCH?!?!???!"

i guess it's because phones are pretty much interest free over 2 years.

a laptop is £500 up front.

my phone cost me £160. redmi note 5 ai dual camera. next phone will be poccophone f1 for less than £240.

people who spend more than £500 on a phone these days clearly don't do it all up front or if they do they would have no issues spending a grand on a laptop i imagine.

 

[ultralaser]

personally i don't count outliving rivals as a valid reason to buy one. rivals will last well beyond their use by date.

i have a HP laptop. must be 5+ years old. still going strong. paid £300 when it was new. it's got an i3, 6GB of RAM. 750GB hard drive and a 30 GB ssd drive used as a cache. so a hybrid so to speak. 720P screen which is enough tbh.

it's got to the point I want to upgrade but anything that is better now costs roughly double £600.

it's cost me pennies to buy and use and as far as i am concerned it doesn't owe me anything now. i'll probably be able to sell it for £150 due to the specs are still pretty good for a laptop. especially the 6GB of RAM. so it's cost me less than £30 a year of ownership if I did sell.

I'm looking for i5, 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD - using Moore's law I should be able to get that for £300 new now but I can't. i guess this laptop will easily last 10 years. it's still pretty good.

Well there is a definite difference, I've had a VERY wide range of laptops of pretty much every major brand and price point over the last 15 years and HP (especially the consumer garbage) is pretty pants (the Elitebook range used to be okay). Like I say I'm not overly keen on Apple these days but they are very well built and hard to break - and when you're paying over £1K for a laptop that's a really important feature. Kudos for keeping an old HP laptop up and running but the newer ones are pants, good luck with the one you have and hope it serves you well for many years to come!

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Well there is a definite difference, I've had a VERY wide range of laptops of pretty much every major brand and price point over the last 15 years and HP (especially the consumer garbage) is pretty pants (the Elitebook range used to be okay). Like I say I'm not overly keen on Apple these days but they are very well built and hard to break - and when you're paying over £1K for a laptop that's a really important feature. Kudos for keeping an old HP laptop up and running but the newer ones are pants, good luck with the one you have and hope it serves you well for many years to come!

it's used almost daily too. i just installed a virtual machine on it. it runs like silk thanks to the 6GB of RAM. if a decent laptop came up for say £600 and was interest free for 24 months i imagine most people would insta buy it. i bought this in december a week before christmas. i find HP do a sale every year around this time as people are skint and they have sales targets they need to meet. you get £500 laptops for £300 usually.

if a similar deal comes up and i spot it i will probably go for it. however this £300 laptop owes me nothing. i personally don't see the point in spending ridiculous money on computers because a new faster processor will be out within 12-18 months. so buying mid end is usually best and upgrade regularly. like £2K on an apple laptop. that £2K i could buy laptops for pretty much my whole life and still have change left over if i keep selling the old ones to recoup costs. with apple £2K would only last me 10 years.

 

[dowie]

What is said lot of cases? Is your case that general? The problem I had is with the argument above generalising. Apple products are not be all and end all in all business applications, as you yourself admit. They aren't, and their benefits are very context dependent. Which again you seem to be at least aware of.

Well you've not provided anything to show otherwise, you just made a claim about it being "even stevens" and didn't support it. Above you've got an example of a very large company and a large sample size of laptops used within it which at least you're aware of now. Sure benefits are context dependent but that is perhaps clutching at straws a bit to claim it is "very" context dependent, in a general context it is relevant, there are some exceptions where a windows machine might be more suitable.

Bottom line though is that they've been shown to be cheaper within a company using a large sample of them, not about the same costs but rather showing significant savings.

He further makes the argument on direct software costs, which still relies on accruing the expense of the Apple product over four years. This is outside the one year limited warranty window and the average time the underlying hardware manufacturer expects the units not to fail.

This seems like a non point, even as a consumer you can get cover for a longer period than that but either way it applies both ways and people tend to not get a brand new laptop on an annual basis.

 

[Amp34]

it's used almost daily too. i just installed a virtual machine on it. it runs like silk thanks to the 6GB of RAM. if a decent laptop came up for say £600 and was interest free for 24 months i imagine most people would insta buy it. i bought this in december a week before christmas. i find HP do a sale every year around this time as people are skint and they have sales targets they need to meet. you get £500 laptops for £300 usually.

if a similar deal comes up and i spot it i will probably go for it. however this £300 laptop owes me nothing. i personally don't see the point in spending ridiculous money on computers because a new faster processor will be out within 12-18 months. so buying mid end is usually best and upgrade regularly. like £2K on an apple laptop. that £2K i could buy laptops for pretty much my whole life and still have change left over if i keep selling the old ones to recoup costs. with apple £2K would only last me 10 years.

Presumably you have a very low requirement for a laptop then? Something that stays at home to browse the Internet and do a few slightly more intensive things?

While it’s obviously not the case for everyone, a lot of people spend £1-2k+ on a laptop because they have specific requirements. Perhaps they need a long battery life, high performance for video editing, a machine that can take a pounding, an ultra portable lightweight machine. They’re all good and valid reasons for avoiding those cheap laptops, even though they may be fine for years say at home on a desk, or on a lap in front of the TV.

While it may also be in part a status symbol, students and people that you see using their laptops at coffee shops may actually have a valid reason for the Macbook (or other expensive machine). They’re obviously carrying machines around with them a lot, meaning a durable, lightweight machine with a decent battery life (all $$$) are important. As a student 10 years ago I bought a £1000 13” Dell for this very reason. It was so much better being able to carry it in a normal backpack, in a small sleeve, and not needing a charging cable. All my peers had to carry around big plastic behemoths with lower resolutions screens and a quarter of the battery life that they bought for £400.

“Good” and “overpriced” is very much in the eye of the beholder.

 

[asim18]

I don't get the "great battery life" thing. If you want great battery life for mission critical mobile application you get a laptop with great battery life, IE a high cap battery or swappable battery. Non-apple laptops can have swappable batteries as well as high capacity batteries. And I'm willing to bet if you're doing exactly the same computation, that any windows laptop will be better or within 45 minutes of any apple laptop.

I also don't get the "high performance for video editing" thing either. Video editing isn't exclusive to apple and Adobe premiere pro is a great piece of software. I get the feeling people see apples being used for video productions and they assume they are better. Back when I was editing video my £700 Q6600 system was faster than a £2000 mac pro lol. (and the q6600 system is STILL running TEN years later and has been overclocked since day one; so please no nonsense about the mac pro being able to last longer.

It's shocking how many things people assume are just completely exclusive to apple.

 

[D.P.]

You get an operating system with all laptops.

Not if you are buying whole sale, you might have choices of various windows versions Linux distributions or get the system completely blank for the sys admin to install whatever is used on in site with a site license.


More t the point, if you want to use OSX, then you can't just buy some Dell junk and install OSX. OSX and the apple hardware form a complete package, they are inseparable. Therefor,e the cost difference is irrrlevent but you have no other way of using the OS.

You're arguing based on a clearly incorrect assumption that a cheap laptop won't have an operating system when they are certainly "complete packages" too lol.

No, you have already shown your lack of knowledge.

Moreover, when I said complete package, I was not only referring to the computer components (CPU/RM/SSD), but also the choice of OS as explained above, along with a whole host of differences such as the chasis of the laptop, the quality of screens on imacs, the quality of peripherals, the unique design such as the magnetic power attachment that has saved my laptop form my kids, the customer support, long life time of products, support for multiple generations of OSX etc.

If you go to OCUK and start pricing CPUs and RAM sticks then you have already completely failed to understand the basic why people might buy an apply computer.

Also I know windows 10 is horrible but they too have to pay their devs, you seem to assume only Apple needs to pay dev teams. Lol.

I have no idea what on earth you are going on about.

Also "a GUI that runs office and Adobe" lol seriously? Once you have office or Photoshop loaded, the OS GUI becomes completely useless. What has the base OS's GUI got to do with photoshop's interface once you're in Photoshop?

Let me know when you can install Photoshop and MS Office on Linux without using something like Wine or a VM.

IF I could, I would. That is the whole point of OSX. It gives you the power of a proper 'nix like OS, in this case BSD, while simultaneously allowing you to use software that is not available on BSD, Linux, Unix or Solaris.
For everything els,e yes the GUI is useless because I spend 99.9% of my time on a bash command line of our AWS cloud infrastructure. But sometimes I have to write some business letters or prepare a presentation. You opnly get so far using Libbre office and the likes, fine for personal use but becomes a right pain dealing with clients who send you over their powerpoint that get completely corrupted formatting outside MS office.

This is why I think it's sad how little people do on such overpriced crap.

If you understood anything then the words over priced are completely irrelevant. For example, we spend around $100K a year on AWS, we could build the same hardware for probably $20K. is AWS overpriced?
You ahve to look at the bigger picture, the complete package and look at the advantages in terms of return on investment, resources, costs.



If you are paying a developer $130,000 a year, along with another $30-50K in pensions, stock, bonuses and benefits, in an office space that costs around 20-40K a year per an engineer, then why the **** would you care that you spend 2K on a MacBook or 1.6K on some Dell laptop + another hundred or more to install VM ware etc.
Most people just get one to awe at the bells and whistles, and buzzwords. People are so brainwashed it's VERY interesting to see people's defence of their purchase.

I have a q6600 system from 10+years ago, I remember back when I could run Photoshop faster than a top of the line Mac costing 4 times the price. Yet people seem to think Mac's are faster???? Is this based on reality? Or just a defence mechanism to justify getting extorted?

And how fast does it run now?

I didn't pay a penny for my computers, I have nothing to defend. I hate Apple as a company, and Many of their products are terrible. Just your entire post seems to fixate on irrelevant things like cost.

What is the cost of having to use windows + linux + VM ware vs simply using OSX?

What is the cost of the nice Aluminium chassis of Macbooks?

What is the cost of quality components that are less likely to fail?


For many such things have no dollar amount, so any argument based on costs is completely irrelevant.

 

[D.P.]

I don't get the "great battery life" thing. If you want great battery life for mission critical mobile application you get a laptop with great battery life, IE a high cap battery or swappable battery. Non-apple laptops can have swappable batteries as well as high capacity batteries. And I'm willing to bet if you're doing exactly the same computation, that any windows laptop will be better or within 45 minutes of any apple laptop.

I also don't get the "high performance for video editing" thing either. Video editing isn't exclusive to apple and Adobe premiere pro is a great piece of software. I get the feeling people see apples being used for video productions and they assume they are better. Back when I was editing video my £700 Q6600 system was faster than a £2000 mac pro lol. (and the q6600 system is STILL running TEN years later and has been overclocked since day one; so please no nonsense about the mac pro being able to last longer.

It's shocking how many things people assume are just completely exclusive to apple.

Who is assuming that Video editing is exclusive to Apple or Apple has any real advantage? I don't know anyone who thinks this way at all.


Tell me how good your native Bash terminal is in Windows.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Just saw a 2017 Surface Pro M3 including the keyboard sell for £310 (VGC too). That's a pretty high end piece of kit for not a lot of money (£875 when released a year ago), what a bargain!

Just looked a brand new one is still £600 plus another £125 for the keyboard. There are certainly some deals to be had used and far more computer than a £300 supermarket special is going to get you.

A 1 year old Macbook air would be worth twice that and they are not as good IMO (nice chassis but utterly awful screen in comparison to a Surface Pro).

EDIT:

Video editing can be better on a Mac because of Final Cut Pro, its much faster, far better optimized and suitable for pro work except for all but the most high end use cases.

 

[Sasahara]

Nonsense. My experience proves you wrong. My 6 year old machine still flies along and literally looks brand new still. The new machines with NVMe are even better. Please spec me a Windows laptop with a unibody aluminium chassis, IPS UHD screen with sRGB colour profile, large glass trackpad, USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, server grade motherboard and other internal components, a Coffee Lake processor, and all the usual bells and whistles; that will still be solid, fast and working nicely with the OS and software of the time in six years.

For £500-600.

Go go go.

You can't buy a Mac with those specs for £500-£600.

Spend the same amount of money on a windows laptop and it's likely to perform just as well as the equivalent mac in years time.

Not sure were you get this server grade mobo from, they are no different from any other standard laptop boards. The failure rates for MacBooks are pretty much at the average level for laptops.
Also servers aren't significantly better that other average motherboards. But tend to last longer because they aren't carried around and are generally installed in well maintained server rooms and larger form factor.

Also higher end laptops (both windows and Macs) tend to be treated better and owners tend to be older and more careful.

I've owned 4 laptops and still have them all in working order.

Vaio FS115B Centrino 730 still works, battery is dead. It's not much use now, but can do basic internet and 720p video, it has a really nice VA screen. It's 13.5 Years old. Cost £915 new.
Acer Aspire 5732Z T4400. Battery almost dead. Has been running non stop 24/7 (Bar power cuts) for 3 years. Cost £50 2nd hand with £50 upgraded 7200 rpm HDD £10 to 2 - 4GB Ram, £10 new keyboard. It's over 8 years old, I've had it about 6 years.
Asus E420 M N3540. £168.97 + £50 HDD. 2.5 Years old. Used for video and web. cheap and light laptop that I'm not worried about being damaged when out and about.
Gigabyte P56XT-CF1 4K 15.6" GTX 1070. 8 months old. Multi use. £1700. Cheaper than a Macbook Pro. I'm pretty sure it's performance will be fine in 6 years. As good as any Kaby Lake Macbook, only battery life is where it will be beaten. Much easier to upgrade, replace parts.

IF it breaks then (as an individual) you generally get pretty decent service from Apple, though the benefit is that they tend to have fewer issues anyway, see below quote from the IBM guy.

Hardware wise failure rate is at industry average for Macbooks. In business time is money, if your not near an apple store and even if your are they are not well known for their speed of repair.
Getting a random windows laptop fixed at a 3rd party can be faster. Or in your own tech department.

Video editing can be better on a Mac because of Final Cut Pro, its much faster, far better optimized and suitable for pro work except for all but the most high end use cases.

Avid Media Composer is the professionals de-facto video editor, but it requires a very high end system.
Premiere Pro is better than Final Cut overall, but Final cut is still very good and one of the easiest to use for the beginner wanting to do more advanced editing.
But I suspect most people doing basic editing would be fine with using shortcut video editor which is free. All these programs bar Final Cut are cross platform.