Are Apple's Macs Overpriced?

aye so true! Even though these specific examples are outdated, they are still valid because today's macs are just as overpriced hehe

I don't see any high quality coming from Mac hardware, it's pretty much the same deal with regular PCs. The only thing that really sets them apart is the operating system itself.

by default apple uses higher quality boards in their prebuilt systems as compared to a dell or HP

For example if you look on the inside of a max system, the surface mount components, (capacitors, regulators and various other hardware, is similar to what you will find in a $80-$110

while with your average dell PC, you are seeing the lower quality caps and components that you will generally see on a $30-40 board. But apple is not not more quality than the components you that will be used with a decent system that you build yourself.

I have had many lower end Dell computer and even after leaving them on 24/7, the motherboard has lasted the life cycle of the computer. Sure Apple might use higher quality products but chances are you won't be using the same computer in 5 years anyways.

Actually, I was thinking more of the PCs that are self built with high quality and yet they're still affordable. One such example would be Asus motherboards.

The components themselves are not magically better quality than components from non-mac systems. They are exactly the same. The difference is that there exist no cheap low-quality components on mac systems. However this is not necessarily a good thing, I'd rather spend less money on a computer I'm not worried about breaking down or won't be using/keeping for long. You see no macs below 1000€ because as Jobs said "we don't ship crapware" and I believe that's detrimental to Apples success, you are alienating 90% of computer consumers.

Say what? My office has a crap load of Dell PCs from yesteryear which have Pentium 4 processors, and they handle the office work pretty well. Though one of them sounds like it's a Boeing about to take off.

not really, while some of the hardware can last a long time, apple tries to push people into the mac lifestyle which involved getting a new mac every 1-2 years.

In fact they design some of their systems to start having problems after 1-2 years This is mainly evident by their use of non user replaceable batteries (which are starting to encroach onto their laptop computers).

Doing things like upgrading memory has become harder on many of their modern systems and they test to drop support for older hardware very quickly, in some cases artificially.

For example there are some versions of the mac OS that will install on a system with 1GB of memory, and a slightly newer version that will come with newer macs that wants 2GB ram even though the newer version uses the same or less memory at startup, but still will not allow you to install.

Many average users do not know how to upgrade the memory on their mac and some will buy a new system when software updates become more difficult rather than attempt to upgrade the hardware.

so overall, while some of the apple hardware may be of premium quality, the company designs things in a way that causes the system to become obsolete or less than desirable in an artificial manner and not a manner of which true hardware obsolesces will drive a hardware upgrade.

Every company pushes people to upgrade to the newest product, its up to the consumer to decide what to do. Poor consumer knowledge is to blame, not the companies because they all try to make a profit which keeps them alive. The consumer needs to take control of their knowledge and learn what there computers can do and what they can do to extend the life of their computers.

Great post! I agree with all here, especially how you expressed your opinion by telling why Macs are not overpriced with good detailed reasons.

I especially dislike when people don't give why. They just say - its too much money just get something else that can do the same - when it really can't do the same.