Gaming Why are Macs really expensive?

[JaapDaniels]

The build quality is really good

Wow i never would have expected so much credits for apple/mac here.
Specially since they don't make that much that's new or specially high quality to me.
No active anti hacking, using a linux as base for software, limitting my freedom of software and sites.
okay i give it credit for the high res display, and color debth but that's as much i can give for apple.

 

[BullyWiiPlaza]

You pay for the crappy wannabe high quality brand that Apple wishes to be but in reality sucks/is the same as others at best so Apple products are all just a scam. Thanks to all of their idiotic sheep/fan boys they can do this. An electronic device needs to have good hardware and not look well-designed but is behind the current technology standard and still expensive. You think Apple is innovative? If that is so, they must have invented a lot but in reality they invented nothing.

 

[Zerousen]

I love Apple products for their build quality, but I don't really care for iOS or Mac OS at all.

 

[FAST6191]

As others said it is quite a bit of branding. They do make their own OS which has some stuff and the parts they use are... maybe not top tier but the last of the sensible price ranges before then, often with a slight proprietary twist. Said proprietary twist is quite annoying as well -- sitting in my scrap pile right now waiting for me to do something (probably convert it into a screen http://gbatemp.net/threads/anybody-tried-converting-a-mac-to-normal-screen.395098/ ) is an otherwise fairly nice computer that I scrapped because apple wanted £250 at least (considerably more if other parts are gone) and ebay were not much better for parts which for the PC market using the quite literal same chip model are £25.
They can be a pain to work on as well but then again no all in one thing is ever all that easy.

What is worse though is there is basically nobody playing the same game -- I would struggle to match performance hardware in an off the shelf PC, much less laptop. It is doable and certainly if I build something myself I can beat it handily but if I get asked to kit out a fleet then I probably do not want to be building (and thus warrantying) stuff. There was once a saying in IT circles along the lines of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", by similar token if I am talking to someone that does not know tech I would find it hard to say go to Dell/Samsung/Lenovo/Toshiba/HP/.... and buy this model.

Very high build quality, very appealing design, status associated item.
You could certainly use a good old Volkswagen for any useful thing you do with a Ferrari, so why does a Ferrari cost so much? (You may say it is design, speed, whatever but it is mostly status associated brand)
Other than that MacBook Pros are really well built, very compact, with outstanding battery life... Very good quality, just not for gaming, and overpriced.

It is doubly amusing for if you pull apart a modern Bentley you are likely to find a bunch of VW parts staring back at you.

 

[insidexdeath]

The build quality, extremely good battery life(which no laptop has so far), screen quality, OS X is actually pretty fast and stable(no weird bugs or lags) and the looks are actually appealing. Basically, if you buy a Mac, it'll last longer with you. There's literally nothing negative to say about the Mac's except for the fact that their prices are quite high, but it's worth it imo.

 

[DarkFlare69]

They're pretty stable, high quality materials, and name brand. Yeah, peopld are willing to pay $600+ just to say they have a mac. You can get an equal or better PC for $400

 

[ninditsu]

You can get nice build quality and similar to better aesthetics in many Windows laptops now. Some can even be hackintoshed to run OSX with very good stability now and are much more powerful and I mean powerful with a quad core i7 and decent NVIDIA gtx or quadro graphics. Apple does not come close with those GT's. The price is also much nicer with about $1000-$1500 rather than the ridiculous $2000-$2800. If you don't see the nice looking ones then you aren't looking. Or are looking at the too low ranges since I am talking about the comparable price ranges.

When are you not without a plug where you need battery life? You are spoiling yourselves with battery life complaints.

So, who needs to buy a Mac anymore? Whoever says they are too lazy to hackintosh or don't have time are lying. Everyone has time or at least a friend who can do it for them.

With that said, Apple's products are actually well designed. But the specs are low because they have a large amount of people to pay whilst keeping their higher ups paid wayyyyy better. (Think about how much engineers are paid, then think about how many Apple should have. Multiple teams for multiple products.)

Also the greed factor. So there's that and I don't blame them at all. They are indeed good marketers but I do believe they are going downhill since Jobs' passing, slowly but surely.

Well I said my part. Agree or disagree, express it and continue the conversation because deep down I don't care either way.

 

[insidexdeath]

Better PC how? Specs wise, maybe, but build quality, stability, battery life and screen quality is what matters to a normal user, such as a student or a business man.

 

[aaronz77]

They're expensive because those darn Chinese people want so much per hour! Little crooks!

 

[pastaconsumer]

Why has no one mentioned hackintoshes? They are DIY Macs YOU make and they run OSX.

 

[Tjessx]

Apple is just like every other company a company that aims for profit/survivability of the company.
Most of the price of a macbook (exclusive the metal design and stuff) goes to research.
Apple researches a very wide viority of technology and a lot off stuff that you see in a laptop comes from apple.

A little bit about the build of a macbook pro retina display for example.
Search for a laptop with at least 8gb of DDRL ram, an intel processor, an SSD, aluminium body, and a screen size of 2560-1440.
I can promise you that you won't find one much cheaper.

About the overall "apple is expecive" shit talk.
Apple is indeed expensive, but you get value for your money,
Spectates of a laptop aren't that straight forward. a 2.4 ghz dual core can be much faster then a 3.4 quad core for example.

I got some friends that think they got a better 800dollars laptop compared to my 1200 dollar macbook pro retina,
because their specs say they got a 3.4 ghz quad core AMD processor.
There is a reason that intel processors are much more expensive (on paper) then AMD, and believe it or not it is the same with a macbook.

Never had any problems with mac compared to windows computers, Once you go mac, you never crawl back.
(I'm gonna unwatch this thread since i gonna get a lot of haters, so i probs won't answer on this anymore).

 

[Selim873]

Yeah, it's the brand name for sure. Apple likes to keep its stuff proprietary just like Sony has its own Memory Stick Pros with inflated prices. In all fairness, Sony could have provided SD/microSD support, but they think they could make a few extra dollars doing it their way.

^ This, traded my Xbox One for a Vita. Knew the 32GB stick is $80, but I bought it because I need the space.

 

[Tjessx]

Take it from someone who works in Marketing, it's all just a scam. What retailers pay and manufacturing costs of products is grossly cheap, then grossly marked up because they know people will pay for it. The truth is, we are all just glorified con artists, selling you a product based purely on the name alone and not the quality nor real price of the product.

research, development and thousands of employees, that is what you pay with a mac
+ a well designed product with the newest technology with an OS that is literally made for the product you buy.

 

[LittleFlame]

i like watching apple fans trying to defend their product even when all the proof is shoved in their face they just close their eyes and pretend not to see and/or hear it
as far as i know the one plus it has is it's easy use but really if you're not a technophobe windows or certain versions of freaking Linux are just as easy

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

research, development and thousands of employees, that is what you pay with a mac
+ a well designed product with the newest technology with an OS that is literally made for the product you buy.

you forgot to add an additional few hundred bucks because they're Apple and they know damn well that they're gonna make a killing off of it

 

[Apex]

Apple products usually tend to have some sort of feature that set them apart when they are released. For example, in 2012 they released a notebook computer that used a 3k display, SSD, and they rolled out Thunderbolt ports. A lot of those features are common-place now, but for 2012 that was quite impressive. The build quality is usually top-notch too, most "gaming" laptops will burn out after a few years of use, while most Apple products are designed to last 5+ years.

They are marked up based on raw hardware prices and competitors, but they are usually good investments as long as you know what you're buying ahead of time.

 

[The Catboy]

research, development and thousands of employees, that is what you pay with a mac
+ a well designed product with the newest technology with an OS that is literally made for the product you buy.

Just for the product to be sold to a store for maybe 100$ max, then marked up to 1000$.
Trust me, you always think you are paying for "work put into the product," but that's a bit naïve. The truth is, with most electronics, you are mostly paying for a store's mark up.

 

[FAST6191]

There's literally nothing negative to say about the Mac's except for the fact that their prices are quite high, but it's worth it imo.

They are frequently a pain in the arse to pull apart/service/repair, even more than the regular pain in the arse that is normal laptops, parts are expensive beyond their baseline quality induced prices and harder to source as they are mostly tied to Apple, bootcamp and virtual machines do exist but to then run windows and all the stuff that it entails would then be an additional expense, often I have to buy a nice cable to adapt a port out into a common type (not so bad these days but not absent). How much this troubles people is open for debate but "no negatives except price" is a bit strong.

You also mentioned batteries. I am not seeing it. I have pulled several of them apart and inside are the same types of cells that every other laptop, power tool and portable but high drain devices use. I will give that OSX's power saving options/setup/driver configs out of the box do quite well for it, especially compared to nasty OEM drivers and crapware which does all it can to stop the hard drive spinning down for too long.

Screen quality you say. I do like a calibrated screen. It is not that hard to come by one outside of mac world though.

 

[elmoemo]

It's defo the logo, I got a iPhone 6 for £250 but it is a great phone. I hear macs are great machine but when I used one I couldn't get used to the OS and 1 click mouse lol

 

[HaloEffect17]

I also despise iTunes. Why should people be forced to run their proprietary software? From a consumer's perspective, they should have a choice.

 

[Vipera]

Because Macs are better, obviously.