Wow, the first few paragraphs really had me going there. "I've got the argument to end all arguments! Finally, a truly compelling reason why Macs are the bestest! Once and for all, the debate is over! I've got the secret formula!"

The big super-awesome extra-special mega-groovy reason Macs are totally tubular is......

......wait for it......

......wait for it.....

.......wait for it......

...............RESALE VALUE!

[cue the disappointing "whoops, you've lost" music from "The Price Is Right"]

buy the used PC and install Linux.

Mac OS is for grandma.

I do computer support for a local school district. When we look at the value of a computer, we look at its lifespan. The average PC remains functional for 3 years; the average Mac remains functional for 5 years. When you plug that into your Total Cost of Ownership calculations, the Mac comes out looking pretty good. Resale value is a reflection of the Mac's greater useful lifespan.

Roughly 3 out of 4 letters so far offers a variation of this:

I don't WANT to resell my computer. I want to keep it until it dies...

as a "rebuttal" to Farhad's main point. And fair enough. But then the question becomes "How much use do you get out of it, then, on average, until it dies?"

I'm typing this on an iBook I bought in 2002. It's running the latest version of OS X. It's running it very fast. It's had a hard life and been around the planet 4 times. It's produced tens of thousands of words, hundreds of business plans, and stores all the music I own, and all the photos I've generated in 5 years.

Imagine a hypothetical "PC" laptop purchased in 2002.

*It wouldn't be capable of running Vista (not that you'd want to!)

*It would run very slowly, with loads of crudulous registry/spyware/hidden process issues, unless I'd wasted hundreds of hours "cleaning up" after it.

*It would probably have had major-part replacement at least twice (if you go on the regularly published averages for these things)

So think of another excuse, Mac-haters, because "I don't care about resale I use my machines until they die" still leaves you somewhere in Western China with a bad case of the latest Outlook Express social engineering virus meaning you just ain't gonna hit that deadline... or maybe that's just me...

Check it out:

All stats not given are identical for the two machines.

Apple website

Mac Mini 2 GB Ram, Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHZ; wired keyboard and basic mouse, 20 in monitor, iWork, 160 GB HD at 5400rpm 1 firewire, 4 usb ports;bluetooth

Before tax price $1800

Compusa Website:

HP Pavilion a6220n Minitower 2 GB RAM expandable to 8GB; Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHZ (2.0 GHZ no longer available in this store.) keyboard and scroll mouse, Viewsonic 22 in monitor, MS Works 8, 400 GB HD at 7200 rpm, card reader for most types of memory cards, 3 open slots for faster Video cards, 2 Firwire, 6 USB ports; 1 5.25 in open internal bay, 1 3.5 in external open bay,usb bluetooth adapter

Before tax price $1049

The way this article was slanted reminds me of the quality of prewar intel coming out of Iraq.

1) I buy computers to *use*. Resale value is way down on the list.

2) If everyone bought macs, resale value would drop. Econ 101, dude.

Let's look a bit further. Manjoo's whimsical argument has been put to rest by astute commenters here. Why did he have to make it in the first place?

Because the Mac had inferior specs and cost more. This is not an accident --- it's the business model. Here's the essence of high-end niche marketing: figure out how to make things expensive, proprietary, and identifiable. Daring additional fillip: emphasize ostentation by making them conspicuously flawed as well.

The underlying puzzle, for me, is that this stance, which has been Apple's all along, is tied to a sense of righteous populist rebellion.

I'll go to my Talmud class. This is silly. Computers are just tools, and the one rule for tools is: the right one for the job. I can't put an Oracle 11g instance on a Mac, so it doesn't matter how cheap a Mac is. Similarly, if I had a need to draw pictures of some sort, the Mac is the obvious choice.

Otherwise, the interface difference is like the choice between a stick and an automatic. Finally, the fact that the Mac is prettier is like choosing a car based on its color.

Listen, I'm a Mac fan. I've owned Macs for almost 20 years, often in conjunction with PCs, sometimes just Macs. They are undoubtedly a better computer in every way, shape and form. But this argument that resale value proves that Macs are cheaper than PCs is silly. It's made sillier by the declaration that this is the ultimate argument and that it will settle things once and for all. The resale market is barely a drop in the bucket of total computer sales. Sure, there are always a couple of dozen Macs on eBay - about the daily sales from any one Apple Store. We could even argue that the reason Macs have a higher re-sale value is that there are so few of them to buy.

If you want to argue that the cost of owning a Mac is less than the cost of owning a PC, that is a story I'd like to read. In fact, it gets written every couple of years in MacWorld. Compare the cost of additional software, virus protection, network connections and whatever other Mac-standard items that must be purchased separately for a PC. Compare the costs of maintenance over a standard 3 year life. Mention that Macs typically last 5 years rather than the 2.5 average of a PC. Those are valid arguments. Resale value? I doubt that more than 2% of Mac-owners sell their older models.

Hey Farhad,

Great argument, you just made. I love Macs, they are soooo cool.

But alas, I'm one of those people who has thousands of dollars of software from the likes of Adobe, Canopus, Cineform and Boris. And if I want to switch to a Mac, which sometimes I would like to do, because after all, Macs are sooooo cool, I'd either have to buy the software again or give it up cuz there's no Mac version. Or darn, when I peruse download.com looking for a tool, I'm so often relieved to find what I need, and it runs on Windows only, if I had a coool Mac, I'd be screwed.

I live in a small town called Sedona Arizona. It's a beautiful place, but try to get Mac support. Good luck. I've seen my friends switch to Macs one by one and drop like flies one by one as their bullet-proof super-cool Macs have teensy weensy little anomolies that nobody in town can fix. So they pay and pay to get their problem solved, but I guess that doesn't count as part of the ownership cost. Our Mac experts charge 20-40% more per hour than the typical Windows tech, but I guess that doesn't count either.

Why?

Their Macs are soooo cool.