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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Have you even considered supply and demand?
At the lower initial purchase price more new less expensive windows PCs are purchased. Thus more are available used, driving down their price, but not necessarily the value.
"Consider this example: Last Thanksgiving, you could have purchased a fairly well-outfitted Windows desktop -- the HP Pavilion Media Center A1640n -- on sale from some retail outlets for $699.
Around the same time, you might instead have picked up Apple's top-of-the-line Mac Mini, ... The Mac Mini would have set you back $799, or $100 more than the HP."
The HP system includes a monitor, keyboard and mouse for the $699 price. The Mac Mini doesn't. By the time the buyer adds those components, the price disparity becomes significantly more than your $100 figure.
Look, I just bought a MacBook Pro, but I'm not fooling myself into believing it is cheaper than a comparably equipped PC laptop. And, as others have already pointed out, resale value plays no role in my purchase decisions. I keep all my consumer electronics equipment as long as they work. And when they fail, they'll have no market value.
Like most things the cost of an item is dependant on many factors. I would like to own a Mac, if for no other reason because I like computers (I have 3 laptops and a desktop). I have toyed with buying one for years, but I write software for the PC. The real cost for me would be buying Mac software. Photoshop, Pro-tools and office alone would cost more than the computer. I have not looked into it recently, but there is also the problem of trying to manage SQL Server through a Mac (which I would guess is nearly impossible).
At the end of the day, I see the Mac as begin slightly better than the PC (a lot better in some areas like graphics, video and sound editing), but not worth the extra investment. However, if I was buying a computer for my retired parents to check their email and do fun stuff, I would buy them a Mac because I know it would just work, but stop trying to convince anyone it is cheaper.
...that you have to use the "Ignition" key to turn the engine off? (I don't know which dipstick I'm mocking, but seriously, did you get that one off an email chain letter "joke". Ho ho ha ha hee!)
Let's face it, if Steve Jobs had licensed the Mac OS to other manufacturers, we'd all be using Macs, not PCs. But he didn't, so that's the way it is.
>>>I Think We Pissed Off The Microsoft Fan Boys!...
>>>I don’t want to get to intellectual, but that’s the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard!
>>>Please explain what software a Mac “can’t” run?
Uh, tons. Try Adobe Audition, for one (see my previous post). If you're a gamer, fugeddaboudit. Roxio EZ-CD/DVD creator? Nope, need to buy the Mac-only Toast.
BootCamp? Great if you have an Intel-based Mac running OS X. A coaster if you have anything else.
Look, I'm neither a "Microsoft Fan Boy" or an Apple geek. I'm a guy who has one of each at home and invests no emotional capital in them or in any consumer product or gadget - car, TV, stereo, iPod, etc. They are machines desgined to do a job, no more, no less, and getting all hot-and-bothered about one or the other smacks of some kind of emotionally-stunted consumermist fetish.
I had to visit the "Knowledge Bar" when my PowerBook froze up after eight months (so much for the vaunted stability - turns out an automatic upgrade to the latest version of Apple's QuickTime had crashed the OS). The folks there were very helpful, but the whole thing felt like some kind of crazy cult that they were thrilled to let me in on. No secret handshake, but close. It was weird and goofy.
As far as software choices for a Mac, well, visit your local Apple Store and take a look at the display of programs for sale. Or go to most any on-line software vendor (including Mac-specific ones) and feast your eyes on your limitless choices.
DanielM, you make two very good and important points (that the difference in resale value depends on what time frame post-purchase we are considering, and that most people don't resell their computers after a short number of years). A lot of people have been saying "but people don't resell their computers!" but I want to make that argument clearer, because maybe Manjoo's point is that people should resell their computers. So more on that below.
But first, I want to say that I am open to Manjoo's main argument (that Macs are cheaper than PCs in the long run because they retain their value better for resale), but the data he presents is much too simplistic and anecdotal to effectively defend it. The situation is so complicated that the data would be hard (though not impossibly hard) to compile, and any generalization (such as the one he makes) is likely to turn out to be false. One would have to take into account different brands of PC, different price ranges and tech specs, and different amounts of time to resell. But anyway, as far as that goes, it is an empirical question and one that could be answered through research.
However, there is also the probably fatal flaw that, even if it does turn out to be cheaper to buy a new Mac and resell your old one every few years than it would be to do that with a PC, it's still got to be more expensive to buy and sell your computer every few years than just to keep the one you have until it doesn't work anymore. So if we're looking for what is cheaper, Manjoo's path doesn't help.
As an example, I recently bought a new computer to replace the one I had for the last 7 years. I did so because the old one broke and I can't fix it, so of course I won't be reselling it. I could try harder to fix it and then resell it, but if I could fix it then I still wouldn't sell it because I'd be keeping it instead of buying a new one. Most people (who aren't tech bloggers) can't buy a new computer every couple years just because it's convenient or cool; they only do so when they need to, and that's because their old one is a junker (which probably has close to zero resale value).
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