Folks, I have heard words lately I never wanted to hear in my life. It turns out my little sister is going away to college and I have been asked to finance a Mac for her. This is just the wrong request to make of a guy like me.
I was shown a CSUSF bookstore offering for an outdated and outmoded laptop that was current circa 2007. It was a Core 2 model running at 2.26Ghz, loaded with 2GB of RAM, and equipped with a 250GB disk. The price tag was over $900. Allegedly, she was catching a break on the price. This price was the result of a good sized student discount.
Anyone who knows something about laptop pricing these days will be laughing his ass off right about now. That is a clearance model. The exact equivalent from HP, Dell, Lenovo or Sony will fetch no more than $599 right about now.
To make matters worse, the current Core i5 model laptops from Apple run right around $1,800. I can show you a better Core i7 from HP for a meager $800. This is less than half the price; More like 45% of the price.
Now that Apple makes 100% pure Intel machines, they have no place to run to and no place to hide. Perfect head-to-head comparisons are now possible. Other firms are using the exact same Mobos, CPUs, GPUs, and Samsung LED LCD screens Apple... er... Foxconn is using to make Apple notebooks.
For all practical purposes, Apple laptops and Windows laptops are identical now. The visual styling maybe a tad different, but this is of no importance. The operating system is the main and only key difference. It boils down to OSX versus Windows7. That's the end of the story.
OH BUT THE TOUCH PAD MOUSE WITH GESTURES IS SO MUCH BETTER!
That is now an option with most PC laptops. The options adds about $100 to price tag. This cannot explain a more than two-fold increase in price.
Pray tell why OSX should more than double the cost of the machine? There is no answer. OSX development costs a lot, and Apple cannot spread this cost over the large market Windows has. However, this cost does not even come close to explaining the doubling of the Apple price-tag.
There is but one solution: Apple demands a very handsome profit for each and everyone of their items. They have never wanted to sell in volume. They have never tried to corner the market. They have always fostered an elitist mentality. They have always wanted to be a Rolls Royce vendor.
They could afford to sell their products at a much cheaper price. They simply don't want to.
I could afford to spend the money. I simply don't want to. In fact, I would be a complete idiot if I did so. A computer is not like a Le Creuset enameled cast iron pan. I will never be able to pass it down to my grandkids. The laptop I buy today is guaranteed to be undesirable rubbish in just 3 years or less. A man would have to be a fool to buy an heirloom quality computer.
The farce goes even deeper than this. There is almost no reason to prefer Mac OSX over Windows7 except for bad prejudices, usually based in creative cultures such as sound mixing. Anything OSX can do, Windows can do better. Windows can do anything better than Mac. I don't care whether it is simple job-apps like word processing, spreadsheets, project plans, or more complicated tasks such as 3d visual effects. Windows 7 does it all.
Unless I was totally dedicated and committed to developing software for the UNIX environment (something I am not) I can see no early reason why I would want OSX. OSX is the Rolls Royce of UNIX. This I will gladly admit. If I were a LAMP stack developer, I would want Mac OSX. Otherwise, I simply have no use for the critter.
So why do fools buy into the idea of Macintosh? Let me reply with a question. Why do fools buy into the idea of expensive enameled cast iron from France when cheap stainless steel gets it done, and is preferred by the expert chefs? You can have an entire set of stainless steel cookware for about the price of a 7.25 quart Le Creuset French Oven. Don't believe me? Check it out:
I am afraid it goes deeper than this. Cookware doesn't quite have the dimension of religion that the Mac carries with it.
You see, Apple has always been cultic in its orientation. They have always attempted to breed a false sense of morality into their users. It is immoral and unethical to buy anything but. Your Mac is like your wife. Having a PC is like cheating on your wife. Also, you are violating the ethics of your religion. You are committing heresy, like an apostate, if you do. This will make you an antichrist in our community.
Creative types enforce the laws of Macintosh. They insist you be a bad-ass rebel against Windows7, and they insist you rebel in exact conformity with their demands. If you go any other way, the community will more or less lock you out.
I myself have witnessed sound engineers feigning difficulties with FAT32 format hard drives, unwilling to accept digital soundwaves recorded on a Windows PC. I have seen these greazie basterds waste my brother's precious studio time and money, attempting to get over technical difficulties that did not exist.
I have personally humiliated such drippy-hippies by showing them how to use their Macs to open these files without any difficulty. I have witnessed these humiliated drippy-hippies lecturing my brother about how he really should own a Mac, or he can't really share and participate in the sound engineering community... This after I have shown said hippy that there are no real problems in using Windows sound files.
Mac is a fascistic intellectual orthodoxy enforced among certain creative types. As is often the case with orthodoxy, the law has no real merit, it's just the law.
