Man how often do I hear "I don't want ads on my desktop" or "I want higher quality hardware" or "I'd pay more for a system that X" and then in the same breath someone says something ridiculous like "the apple tax".
It's like in cell phones. People bemoan how expensive iPhones are and brag about how cheap you can get an Android phone. An iPhone is $600 but you can get an Android phone for $100! Then I ask which Android phone I should get and I'm told "Samsung Galaxy S8", which is the same price as an iPhone!
I'm told Apple laptops are too expensive, so I ask which Windows laptop I should get and I'm told a Surface, a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, an XPS 13... all of which are exactly comparable in price with a Macbook.
It's almost like "the apple tax" doesn't exist and people are just mad that Apple doesn't make cheap low quality products that the person complaining would never buy anyway.
> Man how often do I hear "I don't want ads on my desktop"
OS X has plenty of ads and nags for iCloud and Apple Music FYI.
Fill up your iCloud space and it will ask you to buy more on every boot.
Siri on OS X was artificially limited to only play music from Apple Music but not your iTunes library when even the iPhone 4 could play music stored in its internal app.
Wow, if that classifies as an ad I don't even know what the definition of advertising is anymore.
I want a car that doesn't come with advertising built in. Every time I'm low on gas it starts dinging and flashing lights at me, and - can you believe this, people - if I refuse to buy any more, the car won't even start! And don't get me started on what happens every 10,000 miles... demanding I change the oil! I'm not a sucker, I won't fall for their advertising!
If your car said "You're almost out of gas, stop by your nearest Exxon station and fill up!" or "It's been 10,000 miles, drive on over to Jiffy Lube for an oil change", then surely that would be an ad.
It's an ad because they are advertising the iCloud service to you. It's not just that they say "Your iCloud is running out of free space", it's that they say "Your iCloud is running out of free space, buy more space here!"
You're using iCloud. Do you expect it to say "your iCloud space is filling up, buy more space on OneDrive or Google Drive here!"? My cell carrier sends me a notice every month that I need to continue paying them or I will lose service. Sure I can switch to another carrier, but if I want normal service to keep happening like it has happened in the past, I will need to send more money as per the agreement I signed.
That's not an advertisement. That's a critical notification about a service you've chosen to use. It's not any different just because they offered a free trial.
It's not that they say "Your iCloud is running out of free space." or "Your iCloud is running out of free space, buy more space here!" it's that they say "sign up for iCloud and store your X!". The first two are status updates for a service that's already being used. The last is an ad.
Umm...those are the exact kind of "ads" people complain about for Windows (this is basically the exact same thing as the OneDrive info strip inside File Explorer).
There are similar popups for Safari on iOS, and for Chrome when you use gmail on iOS. There used to be Chrome adds on the google homepage when you hit it with a non-chrome browser, but they didn't load for me when I tried it today.
I have never seen a safari ad and chrome ads on Google's page used to unobtrusively trigger for outdated browsers, which is arguably more relevant to the user.
The edge notifications look like a system alert and trigger constantly.
Fwiw GM cars with OnStar spam you with nags to activate it, which is super annoying. The iCloud "out of space, manage or ignore?" Thing pops up on my watch, on CarPlay, and a few times a day on my phone. It's super annoying that there's no option to say "OK + I don't care".
You choose to use iCloud and then consider it an ad when you run out of space and it asks you to upgrade ? You choose to use iTunes and then consider it an ad when Apple asks you to sign up for Apple Music which is the streaming service for iTunes.
> People bemoan how expensive iPhones are and brag about how cheap you can get an Android phone. An iPhone is $600 but you can get an Android phone for $100! Then I ask which Android phone I should get and I'm told "Samsung Galaxy S8", which is the same price as an iPhone!
I know your being facetious, but the easy answer to that question is the Moto G5 Plus, which you can pick up for $230 in most any Best Buy or Costco in the US.
There are many other good choices there too.
> I'm told Apple laptops are too expensive, so I ask which Windows laptop I should get and I'm told a Surface, a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, an XPS 13... all of which are exactly comparable in price with a Macbook.
I don't think that's true. Apple store is down for WWDC today, but as of yesterday a 13' MacBook Pro is $1,300. The closest matching Dell XPS 13 is only $1,000. It has a lower resolution screen, but a newer gen processor and 10% more battery.
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Fundamentally, Apple products carry a premium price. Some non-Apple products also carry a premium price (see the Surface Book as a good example). But that doesn't mean the "Apple Tax" (higher margins) aren't real, or that there aren't comparable products without it.
Again, the lineup is being refreshed today, so this may all change. But the Mac Pro is the typical perfect example of this -- you can build or buy a more powerful, smaller, faster PC including licensed Windows 10 Pro for much cheaper than a Mac, literally just a small fraction of the Mac Pro's current price.
Not sure I agree on the cell phones at all. I have plenty of relatives who are very satisfied with their Moto Gs and for whom the alternative would have been an iPhone at 3x the price.
If you want equivalent specs then sure, the prices are going to be similar but that's the whole point, with Android (and a PC) you've got a wide range of _choices_ on many parts of the specifications/price spectrum. With Apple you've got far fewer.
The same goes for laptops where you listed three different manufacturers.
So what you're saying is comparable hardware costs the same no matter if its Android or Apple, the difference is Apple doesn't make low-end devices.
That is literally exactly what I said. If a Galaxy S8 and an iPhone with the same hardware costs the same price, there is no such thing as "the apple tax". None. Can't happen. They cost the same. The only difference is that Apple doesn't make anything cheaper, but google "best laptops 2017" and guess what? They all cost the same as a Macbook.
So as it turns out, Apple's prices are comparable with their direct competitors. Ergo, the Apple tax doesn't exist.
I originally said "It's almost like "the apple tax" doesn't exist and people are just mad that Apple doesn't make cheap low quality products"
You replied "Not sure I agree on the cell phones at all."
Your justification for that was "Apple's prices are comparable with their direct competitors for similar specifications but they just don't provide a low end."
It is a complete non-sequitur to say they're charging you a premium to buy a high-end device if you want a low-end one. They charge exactly the same for exactly the same. Not a tax.
Fact: Apple's prices are competitive with comparable devices.
Fact: Apple only competes in the high end market.
Not fact: Apple forces you to buy their products even if you can't afford it.
For the target of the sku you'd be looking at Mac Pros which are uber expensive and have not been updated for ages also the GPU options are limited compared to a wintel workstation if you want to use CUDA etal.
Laptops are an second pc for work station users sorry a MacBook "pro" is marketing speak.
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I'm told Apple laptops are too expensive, so I ask which Windows laptop I should get and I'm told a Surface, a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, an XPS 13... all of which are exactly comparable in price with a Macbook.
My ThinkPad is easy to repair (already did a small repair myself), has support for a docking station (currently I don't need it, but a friend loves it), has an ethernet port (I won't buy a laptop that has no ethernet ports), allows one to buy a battery (or even buy a larger battery if I prefer one), allows me to add additional RAM myself if I conclude that I need more, ...
Man how often do I hear "I don't want ads on my desktop" or "I want higher quality hardware" or "I'd pay more for a system that X" and then in the same breath someone says something ridiculous like "the apple tax".
It's like in cell phones. People bemoan how expensive iPhones are and brag about how cheap you can get an Android phone. An iPhone is $600 but you can get an Android phone for $100! Then I ask which Android phone I should get and I'm told "Samsung Galaxy S8", which is the same price as an iPhone!
I'm told Apple laptops are too expensive, so I ask which Windows laptop I should get and I'm told a Surface, a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, an XPS 13... all of which are exactly comparable in price with a Macbook.
It's almost like "the apple tax" doesn't exist and people are just mad that Apple doesn't make cheap low quality products that the person complaining would never buy anyway.