Apple products are priced too high?

[Astra.Xtreme]

Apple is competitive in the ultrabook category. Once you leave that, the disparity between price and hardware features quickly grows.

Provide examples, please.

[Samhayes]

Apple charges what they think the market will bear. 

 

QED

 

Folks line up to pay for what they feel is an incomparable value proposition

[vanx]

Just like that category from an episode of Friends where it was Chandler and Joey vs Monica and Rachel: it's all relative!

[adrynalyne]

Provide examples, please.

I feel confident you can do it yourself.

 

Start by comparing a Thinkpad W541 to an MBP.

 

Please leave out silliness like the beauty of an MBP, because thats not what I look for in a computer. Stick with specs.

[mkol]

Apple is for rich people. It's like a club and has status value.....

[Astra.Xtreme]

I feel confident you can do it yourself.

 

Start by comparing a Thinkpad W541 to an MBP.

 

Please leave out silliness like the beauty of an MBP, because thats not what I look for in a computer. Stick with specs.

Uh, YOU made the claim, so YOU prove it...

 

A W541 with a 3K display, 256GB SSD, and 16GB RAM is right around $1950...

vs $1999 for the MBP

 

Try again...

 

When the MBP line is refreshed in a couple weeks, the prices will undoubtedly go down.  Then they'll actually be cheaper than everybody else.  GASP!

[roosevelt]

Apple is for rich people. It's like a club and has status value.....

 

Yes, compared to Windows, Ubuntu or other operating systems in the market or products, Apple is def. bit pricey. I didn't start using Apple products until the late 2011 and now, if you ask me to go back to my Windows machine, I get that weary feeling. The main thing that really motivates me to use Apple is their UI, the simplistic design, clutter free EXTREMELY SEXY apps, and the fact that it's speed is still the same when I first bought it. I don't know if anything has changed in Windows but Windows machines tend to get slower overtime. And you have to use tools like Memory Optimizer, Defragmenter to keep it running smooth.

 

Other than a Mac, I also own a badass Alienware laptop! I say badass because that has 32 GB RAM, iCore 7 processor, and other good stuff. That Alienware baby is a gaming and heavy duty GFX godfather in my opinion. But then again, when I have to choose between my 15" Macbook Pro (running 16 GB RAM with iCore 7) and the Alienware beast, I always pick the Macbook Pro!

 

Some people are motivated by visuals more than other factors. So, if you ask me to write a novel then I get more done when I type it in the Ulysses app on a Mac (OS X) than Microsoft Word in Windows or openoffice, etc. Just because the apps are designed differently and appeals very differently to me. So, you might be right that Apple does appeal to only a certain group of people but not necessarily just the rich.

[Gotenks98]

Yes without a doubt they are too high. Often times you are only getting 1 or 2 good new features but getting last years technology. Apple take the strategy that some body who does not know any better will buy it at that price instead of making it more affordable and more people buy into it. Apple has the potential to steal all of the PC market share but the price point is whats keeping it from happening. I only broken down and bought Macs because of my job. Otherwise I never would have gotten them.

[ctebah]

Yes without a doubt they are too high. Often times you are only getting 1 or 2 good new features but getting last years technology. Apple take the strategy that some body who does not know any better will buy it at that price instead of making it more affordable and more people buy into it. Apple has the potential to steal all of the PC market share but the price point is whats keeping it from happening. I only broken down and bought Macs because of my job. Otherwise I never would have gotten them.

Apple already stole the majority of the PC market profits and it's the ONLY way to measure success of a company. Apple isn't in it for the market share and never will be. All of their products are in a niche market.

[Astra.Xtreme]

Yes without a doubt they are too high. Often times you are only getting 1 or 2 good new features but getting last years technology. Apple take the strategy that some body who does not know any better will buy it at that price instead of making it more affordable and more people buy into it. Apple has the potential to steal all of the PC market share but the price point is whats keeping it from happening. I only broken down and bought Macs because of my job. Otherwise I never would have gotten them.

Uh, what are you talking about?  All of their computer refreshes use the latest processors... The release that's coming up in a few weeks will be the same.  Apple has always targeted the high-end computer market, and the prices are right in line with everybody else.  The reason why they don't take more of the market is because Windows has been the norm for decades, and the ecosystem isn't going to magically change, nor is Apple pushing for that to happen.

 

I advise you do some research before making an uninformed statement...

[zhangm Supervisor]

I don't know if anything has changed in Windows but Windows machines tend to get slower overtime. And you have to use tools like Memory Optimizer, Defragmenter to keep it running smooth.

This is basically fiction. Also, all modern operating systems optimize data arrangement where applicable. The process is now transparent.

 

 

Evidence suggests that the prices are not too high because there are enough units sold to in part, keep Apple a successful company.

 

I'm not seeing an argument that says buying a Windows or Linux-based machine is any more from lack of "knowing better" than buying an Apple computer.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Apple is competitive in the ultrabook category. Once you leave that, the disparity between price and hardware features quickly grows.

Quite the opposite.

A Mac Pro (base) with the following spec:

3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor

12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory

Dual AMD FirePro D300

with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM each

256GB PCIe-based flash storage1

is

[ctebah]

Apple being overpriced is becoming a myth. People should do proper research on prices when buying any product and then include the warranty and customer service.

Toshiba and HP have by far the worst customer service IMO.

[perochan]

Personally, Apple products are a bit overpriced but you are buying their superior quality in detail inside out. Every details are being considered before they go to consumers and their resell value is high too.

 

Consider this, I bought a macbook pro back in 2008 around $1500 (dont remember the exact price)) i think and 3-4 years later I sold it for almost $300. If this were a Dell or HP or Acer or Asus laptop, you barely get any money back.

[adrynalyne]

Quite the opposite.

A Mac Pro (base) with the following spec:

3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor

12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory

Dual AMD FirePro D300

with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM each

256GB PCIe-based flash storage1

is

[adrynalyne]

Uh, YOU made the claim, so YOU prove it...

 

A W541 with a 3K display, 256GB SSD, and 16GB RAM is right around $1950...

vs $1999 for the MBP

 

Try again...

 

When the MBP line is refreshed in a couple weeks, the prices will undoubtedly go down.  Then they'll actually be cheaper than everybody else.  GASP!

 

 

Uh huh.

 

Except I can grab the MBP that starts at 2499 and add a 1tb SSD to it and hit 3k and thats with the slower i7..

 

On the W541, I can go 3k multitouch screen, faster i7, 4GB ram, extended battery, and a 500GB HDD for 1781.  Then I can go to newegg, add a 1tb SSD (or two 512s) and 32GB ram, and max out at 2426.

 

Twice the ram, faster cpu, and 500 bucks cheaper.

 

Upgrade the CPUs in both (w541 geting extreme edition), there is still a 300 dollar discrepancy. I guess you could get base upgrades and update the MBP....oh wait.

 

Awating the imminent "but apple is higher quality and better" built comments... 

[xWhiplash]

That still is not a fair comparison. What is the weight of the W541? Battery life?

Also, SATA SSD is not the same as a PCIe SSD. so you have to look at that too.

Finally, what happens when your system has issues? Now that you have custom RAM and SSD, it will be more difficult for the OEM to work on it.

Also, what about Apple's iWork office suite? It is free now. Say what you want about it, but it costs more than $0 to develop. So they need to make that up somehow. Same with GarageBand.

[Le Passant]

I agree that their products are pricey, but Apple is in a league of its own. 

 

Their product lineup is simple to understand, they don't bombard the market with tons of crap just to see what sells. They are focused. The combination of hardware and software is just great. Developers on OSX are passionate about the platform and it shows because there's a ton of well designed apps and utilities. It's a question of preference, or course, but to me OSX is a joy to use.  

 

The support at the Apple store is very good and friendly. The employees are always smiling and passionate about their job and working at Apple.  

 

But like everything in life, Apple is not perfect and there's a lot I don't like about them. All of their desktops, except for the Mac Pro, don't ship with SSDs, so that's an extra, which is a shame. Ram is soldered on, so no upgrade possible, but lots of OEMs are now sadly doing the same.  

[ctebah]

Are there any all-in ones that have a 5K screen and cost about the same as the Apple iMac?

[tsupersonic]

Are there any all-in ones that have a 5K screen and cost about the same as the Apple iMac?

Dell will gladly sell you a 5K monitor for $2499, which is the same cost as the 5k iMac.

 

Lot of pathetic comparisons in this thread, which is par for the course when there is a discussion about Apple and pricing. Who compares a W541 to a MBP? They are in two different classes of laptops...

[dead.cell]

Some advice if you think they're too costly: check out Best Buy's open items. You can usually find something there for a good amount off the price, depending on how long they've been stuck with it.  I know the GM at our location would often drop the price down lower than what he should, just to move it out.

 

I'm actually considering something like this myself for my wife, as she is impatient when it comes to multiple systems that don't talk well with each other. (which I can certainly relate)

 

I may just do a mini for her though.

[Joni_78]

I think their phones are ridiculously overpriced but MacBooks seem to be same range than similar ultrabooks from Samsung and Lenovo for example.

 

I'm actually considering new iMac and MacBook Pro when new models come, I'm really ###### at Microsoft for dropping Media Center from Windows 10.

[Aarya Patil]

In general yes Apple products are priced high when you just look at the components however when you compare Apple's consumer products (all of them bar the Mac Pro pretty much) with higher end systems from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. then the prices are pretty equal. It isn't really fair to compare a Dell Inspiron to a MacBook Pro even if the components are near identical the engineering and build quality of the MacBook Pro is much higher. Also outside of the core components like CPU and GPU Apple do tend to come with higher quality/better parts such as much faster SSDs, higher quality displays, etc.

 

When you look at something like the new MacBook it is pretty damn hard to justify the price for the machine regardless of how impressive the engineering is. I mean look how small they managed to scale down the internal too. It is mental how small it is. However it is crazy expensive because of this.

 

Until very recently the MacBook Pro was pretty much equal in price to similar laptops from Dell and HP. It is only with the most recent models that others have moved into first place for price and performance. It took years for manufactures to catch up with things like the MacBook Air and there still isn't anything like the 5k iMac from other computer makers.

 

Now as to whether the extra work in engineering, build quality and exclusive access to OS X is worth the extra cost is up to the individual. For me I would love a 5k iMac but I really have no use for such a machine. I am quite happy with a mid-range Windows machine from Dell.

[Xenon]

If the hardware price high? Oh yea, and you have to remember that Apple does not allow most upgrades and the time a mac becomes obsolete in the eyes of Apple is much shorter than a PC. If you have the money go for it, but you will be paying a lot more.

[chrisj1968]

This is a pathetic comparison. You are lugging around a desktop replacement that weighs 7.6 lbs, not to mention it's Toshiba. I've had the worst luck with Toshiba laptops, their customer support is an absolute joke. You need to learn how to compare apples to apples (no pun intended) - Windows ultrabook to the MBP. 

 

it may sound pathetic at first but you have to look again. an apple 13" laptop like system with a dated i5 CPU which are all dual cores.... for "close" to the price I paid for more power in my 17" LAPTOP is the logic. paying $1,499 for a 13" macbook and that's the same price I paid for my Qosmio gaming rig with an i7 4700MQ that is a quadcore and in taskmanager it shows 8 virtual cores with mine having double the ram (16GB) , the mack system has a 256GB PCI-e storage, sounds like an SSD but still uses the integrated intel graphics versus my Nvidia Geforce 770m with 3GB AT THE SAME PRICE as what  Ipaid for this.. I'd feel jipped. putting aside the OS, looking straight hardware vs hardware, both intel. APPLE is really ripping people off. my system gave me a 1TB HDD which while not a SSD nor a PCI-e SSD, still I got more bang for my bucks