Comment "you rarely get the best bang-for-the-buck" (Score 1) 757
This has been a long-standing "argument" that on quick-glance was accepted by most as true without thinking about it.
[NOTE: I'm addressing more of the historical argument here. Haven't looked at this in a long time. So don't know about the current state, nor do I really care. Computers have changed quite a lot (how many manufacturers still stand? SEE: Next paragraph) and I think Apple has too. So this is more informational to counter the presumptive "truth" that has been perpetuated.]
People would point to the sticker price of a Mac and compare it to a Gateway/e-Machines/Compaq/Etc, and use that as proof that Macs were overpriced.
But that ignored a few key issues.
Anytime a friend tried to make that argument, I would take their choice of new PC to purchase and find the comparable Mac (as best as could be found). Sure enough, the Mac had the higher price point... until... one started looking at what one actually got for their money.
Keep in mind that a lot of things came standard on Macs LOOOOOONG before they were on PCs. Ethernet? On board. (Ignoring things like the fact that networking was included in Macs going back to... the SE? Plus?? Okay, it was AppleTalk, but every single Mac had networking back long before most people knew what a network was.) Sound, in and/or out? On board. (every PC user I knew had to buy SoundBlaster cards. I don't even know if any sound cards were made back then for Macs, outside of specialty/pro set-ups, as there was no need for them.) Etc. Etc.
Just two examples. And old examples, but I deliberately picked those as two things that we cannot imagine NOT getting in a computer today. (Didn't want to get mired in a discussion about some of the newer tech that may or may not stand the test of time.)
There was a lot of technology in Mac users hands long before it was common enough to hit a critical threshold of usefulness for PC users. This not only made the Macs more useful, but opened up a whole host of options to users.
And adding these things to your PC added to the cost, and more often than not, by the time they are brought to parity, the PC wound up costing more.
Which leads to a second point: Quality.
The PC world was fighting itself in a race to the bottom. PC users wanted cheap. And they usually got it in both senses of the word.
Going back to the ethernet example, I remember trying to get one of my Windows boxes set up on the house LAN with all of the other computers. (I had Macs, Windows, and BSD machines, but I'm only comparing the first two, as they are more "consumer".) I went down to the PC Club and got myself a cheap NIC. And then spent WAAAAAY too many hours trying to get it to work. It was a challenge but back then I didn't really think about the cost of my time as "the game was afoot!"
And then, cheap hardware was cheap, but no one really factored in failure or intermittent problems after purchase or even just set-up issues/conflicts as part of the cost of ownership.
But even buying more expensive hardware wasn't guaranteed to work better or not fail. And, of course, this just makes the "cheap PC" less of a bargain and drives the total price even higher.
Macs (in general) used higher quality parts, and those were just included in the price.
So, the "more expensive" Mac, in just about every case, wound up being less expensive than a PC.
Now I mentioned this was more of an historical disabusement of something that was oft just accepted as truth without question. I'd be pressed to think of the last time I did a comparison like this.
Fact is, the world of consumer computers has changed quite a lot. The computer has just become a commodity. Most are used our of the box as is. People buy a computer like it is a toaster... an IoT toaster with 800 features and its own twitter account. I think, outside of servers, very few even come with expansion slots. (Computers. But also toasters.) Most people are content with everything built-in to their laptop, and might have room for a bit more RAM or maybe even a replaceable hard-drive. But then most people would buy a new laptop before they need a bigger drive.
And Apple has changed a lot. I don't doubt that they still use high quality parts/card/components/whatever, but then the surviving companies do too. But Apple has been locking a lot of things down as they push computers to be iPhones. They've lost a lot of their expandability and ability to be customized. And I guess that is fine for most consumers. It is not fine for my use.
It seems Apple hates its "pro" users these days, and I'm not just talking hardware. I have a long list of standard software that Apple has REMOVED functionality from (case in point: The Airport admin tool. A lot of functionality removed rom that. Or how about even something as simple as Network Utility? Sure the average user needs 0% of the functionality, but why punish the handful of us that can actually use it. (Yeah, yeah, yeah... CLI is always an option. But still doesn't justify dumbing down what used to be a fully functional tool.)) And this is not evening mentioning a lot of Pro-level software that got axed.
It used to be another common mis-conception, along with the "higher cost" myth, was the "Mac were less powerful" or "more locked down than PCs", which if you knew what you were doing just wasn't true. (Try getting an older Win laptop to adhere to a new network, without eventually being forced to reboot to get it to work. Every client-side engagement I had, all testing was done on a Mac because they could gracefully switch networks at the click of a button. I could be inside of the network or outside with zero issue.) But I guess that is a point for another day.
