why are macs so goddam expensive???

Kronos · Post by **Kronos** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 5:19 am 0

i think apple take the piss with their UK pricing....or is it just me?

gawd help them when a PPC mac emu of acceptable quality is finally published

limb_clock · Post by **limb_clock** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 6:23 am 0

i think it's that Apple has already installed the OS with the computer, so that you also pay for the lisence fee of the Os as well. Also, the parts used, might be expensive.

moobaa · Post by **moobaa** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 9:02 am 0

Um... you get what you pay for, maybe? Want decent build engineering and integration, then pay for it...

skab · Post by **skab** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 9:15 am 0

It's always the same weird thinking. Even people who sit in front of a screen the whole day don't want to spend the extra hundreds of bucks for a decent machine. Yet at the same time many of them spend thousands for a fat car they only use for commuting a couple minutes every day.

I mean, seriously, if price is everything that matters, why did BMW just have their best selling year ever? Can't all be Mac-buyers. Shouldn't all PC-buyers be driving Kias or rusty old Toyotas then?

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 9:39 am 0

Old_but_still_a_kid wrote:i think apple take the piss with their UK pricing....or is it just me?

Wrong. Amazingly Apple's pricing is usually quite close to the US price plus
the VAT. They are one of the better companies when it comes to pricing.

Bog · Post by **Bog** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:01 am 0

I don't really get it with Macs.

I don't see how it can be so much more difficult/expensive to have a Mac with the same clockspeed range as current PCs. Really, I don't. They're gorgeous devices, with an ease of use and level of style that's unique. Yes, they're pricey - so are Alienware PCs. I'd gladly pay Mac prices if the Mac was as fast as a PC. Sadly, they ain't, which makes 'em completely unsuitable for my purposes.

Which is sad. And makes me all, y'know... stabby.

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:06 am 0

Bog wrote: I don't see how it can be so much more difficult/expensive to have a Mac with the same clockspeed range as current PCs. Really, I don't. They're gorgeous devices, with an ease of use and level of style that's unique. Yes, they're pricey - so are Alienware PCs. I'd gladly pay Mac prices if the Mac was as fast as a PC. Sadly, they ain't, which makes 'em completely unsuitable for my purposes.

It's true that PCs are faster, but the performance gap has closed
a bit with the G5, and key Mac apps are often well optimised.

FWIW x86 doesn't realise yet but it and the PC as we know
it are dead men walking.

Bog · Post by **Bog** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:19 am 0

FWIW x86 doesn't realise yet but it and the PC as we know
it are dead men walking.

D'you know something I don't? The bottom line that I can see is: you can buy a P4 3GHz HT machine with a half-gig of RAM, a decent size disk, a decent GeForce or ATI card and all the trimmings for about Â£600. A Mac G5 (he says, looking at Amazon's price guide) for similar power (2x2GHz) is about Â£2500. So I could get four PCs for the same money, and still have enough left over to bring 'em all up to a gig of RAM.

That's an *enormous* disparity in price/processing power. Didn't that, you know, largely kill Silicon Graphics?

What's wrong with my thinking here? If x86 is a "dead man walking", then what the hell am I gonna play Half-Life2 on?

Bubba · Post by **Bubba** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:20 am 0

Dual 1.8ghz G5 - Base model, no extras:

US Price: $1999 = Â£1074.85
UK Price: Â£1449 (Â£1233.19 ex vat)

Now by any stretch of the imagination this isn't a very good value machine. Ok, it's got a couple of processors and a sexy case, but apart from this the specification sucks. 80gb of hdd? Pfft - I'd expect at least 200gb in a machine of this price, given that it's only an extra Â£20 or so to go to 200gb - this just strikes me as stingy. Same with 256mb of ram - OS X likes it's ram so why cripple a machine with plenty of CPU grunt with such a piddly amount of ram. And don't even get me started on the 5200 GPU...

.

Macs are expensive, and even more expensive in the UK than in the US. But still, if it does what you want, and you object to using PC's / Windows (personally I don't have a problem with either) then go for it. Laptops are a different matter, and I'd be sorely tempted by an apple laptop if I was buying now - they just need to get rid of the one frigging button touchpad and I'd be there!

Cheers

Bubba
(Happy Yosemite G3-450 owner)

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:29 am 0

Bubba wrote:
Macs are expensive, and even more expensive in the UK than in the US.

I wasn't disputing them being expensive but the mark up for that
computer is 15% at the moment at a point when the pound has been very
high relative to the dollar. More often or not Apple's UK prices are
around 10% higher. I think that's not a bad markup for a much
smaller market. You can find far worse examples of 'rip-off Britain'.
I can think of one PC I'm always keeping a eye out for that has
the old $=Â£ trick. It would be the best value PC on the market at
the right price IMHO.

Also I think people confuse the issue of cost and value. Macs are
way cheaper than when they launched 20 years ago and stupendously
more powerful, even if you consider the cost to be high the value
is enormously improved.

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:38 am 0

Bog wrote: D'you know something I don't? The bottom line that I can see is: you can buy a P4 3GHz HT machine with a half-gig of RAM, a decent size disk, a decent GeForce or ATI card and all the trimmings for about Â£600. A Mac G5 (he says, looking at Amazon's price guide) for similar power (2x2GHz) is about Â£2500. So I could get four PCs for the same money, and still have enough left over to bring 'em all up to a gig of RAM.

FWIW you can get a crap PC for fuck all. Price up a dual Xeon with
XP Pro and the gap isn't as large. You can buy all your kit of
Ebay if you want the best price performance. Good luck with those
Via chipset Celerons.

Bog wrote: That's an *enormous* disparity in price/processing power. Didn't that, you know, largely kill Silicon Graphics?

Yeah but that was Â£20,000 workstations getting their throat cut by
Â£2,000 PCs. The gap isn't as large. I know plenty of people who
buy PCs ~Â£2000 and manage to end up with single processors.

Bog wrote: What's wrong with my thinking here? If x86 is a "dead man walking", then what the hell am I gonna play Half-Life2 on?

Half-Life2? x86. Half-Life3? Other platforms.

Post by **RiK** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:43 am 0

I built a new PC recently, 3.2Ghz A64, 1Gb Ram, 250Gb Hd, Radeon X800Pro, Dual Layer DVD Writer etc and had change from a grand. Add the the 20" TFT I have on order at the mo added to that and I'm still under Â£1700.

If someone would care to spec up a (really) equivalent Mac for the same same sort of money then I would be sorely tempted, but at the moment they seem to be *miles* apart in terms of price.

I figure to get amac with anything like that sort of processing grunt you'd have to be looking at the dual G5's and looking at the spec of the cheapest G5:

Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5
256MB Ram, 80GB HDD, 8x SuperDrive
GeForce FX 5200 with 64MB

so far, 50% more expensive for a MINIMUM spec machine

Up the spec to a gig of ram, 250Gb HD and Radeon 9800 and the subtotal is now Â£2009. i.e. DOUBLE the cost for a similar spec..

I'd love a mac, but at that price they are MILES out...

gravy · Post by **gravy** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:52 am 0

Macs do have a lower speed/price ratio than most PC's.

Still, haven't seen that many "fuck me I love my PC" posts

venusian · Post by **venusian** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:55 am 0

RiK wrote:I built a new PC recently

That's part of answer, surely. How much would a prebuild from Sony, for instance, have cost?

Kemper_Boyd · Post by **Kemper_Boyd** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 11:57 am 0

Dual 1.8 GHz G5, Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL, 2 x 250 GB SATA,
2 GB PC3200. 20" Iiyama TFT.

Â£2571 (Â£3020) Pricey but that machine is a monster.

FWIW when I was at uni, not THAT long ago, the big
monster machine was a brand spanking new Sparc
Server 2000 with dual 50 MHz SuperSPARCs, 64 MB
or RAM, and it was connected to a very expensive
new type of storage system called a RAID array,
an Auspex one with 10GB of storage. This was seriously
kick arse kit and could serve the needs of many hundreds
of users.

I honesly feel that people have no sense of perspective
here. One day when a PowerMac with 10 GHz 4 way
G7s costs Â£800 and comes with 8 GB of RAM, people
will still bitch that it's twice as epensive as a Packard
Bell PC from Dixons.

YakYak

why are macs so goddam expensive???

why are macs so goddam expensive???

Re: why are macs so goddam expensive???