Apple MacBook pro...

superscaper

Yes they are overpriced for what they are but the "Apple logo premium" is much less in the macbooks than it used to be.

For me I spent almost *cough* £3k on one recently, because it met all the specs I needed and I just had to suck up the extra I was paying for it being Apple (although OSX was actually one of the reasons I needed to go in the Mac direction). If you were to ignore the premium (as I had to do), then for best build quality/portability laptop, with high resolution screen then it's pretty much the best laptop out there.

And truly I do say that as someone that's actually anti-Apple if anything.

Unfortunately some of the very reasons I don't like Apple and their philosophy is exactly why I had to buy one. Locked down development platform and control of OS installs etc (i.e. true multi platform development while portable). Despite the high cost, I've not regretted getting mine and there's no other laptop that can compete with it for the requirements I need.

I just want to point out that sometimes paying the premium isn't actually because of the "designer" aspect at all. For me it's purely practical. Anyone that knows me would probably be surprised I even own anything by Apple. My main development desktop PC is a home built one with Windows 8.1 as main OS and Linux (and others) virtual machines. I'm definitely not a fan boy of anything and not taken in by marketing and fashion.

swvillafan

@superscraper - thats almost what I would have written except I didnt spend quite as much on my mac. shave a £1000 or so off and you're nearer the mark!

almillar

harrys dad - I'm not an iPhone fan at all, quite the opposite. But just off the top of my head, the iPhone 5 has a metal body and a fingerprint reader that your phone lacks. It doesn't matter whether you want these things, it matters that these things go towards the cost of the phone.
Apple make premium stuff - that has higher profit margins. Dell makes premium stuff too, with similar profit margins. It's just that Dell also makes cheap stuff with lower profit margins, Apple does not.

superscaper

almillar wrote: »

harrys dad - I'm not an iPhone fan at all, quite the opposite. But just off the top of my head, the iPhone 5 has a metal body and a fingerprint reader that your phone lacks. It doesn't matter whether you want these things, it matters that these things go towards the cost of the phone.
Apple make premium stuff - that has higher profit margins. Dell makes premium stuff too, with similar profit margins. It's just that Dell also makes cheap stuff with lower profit margins, Apple does not.

I disagree, when you look at like for like bill of materials, there's much higher margin on Apple stuff. The iPhone 5 for example also is missing things that a lot of phones have, wireless charging, RFID, card slots etc. It's even more apparent when you look at different specs between models of iPhones for the memory/cost increase. It works out at something like 93% margin on the memory alone! (£60 bump in cost for something that cost them £5).