I read this morning that the pricing for the new Macbooks were announced. While I don’t see the price as necessarily expensive, it remains a lot of money at R19k for the entry level model.

As is the tradition on the internet, there’s a huge amount of unnecessary Apple hate. One comment in particular stood out:

For that money I can build a PC that is much, MUCH more powerful than any MAC.

While he had a valid argument, let me put this out there:

The list price of a new Mercedes Benz SL65 AMG is R2.7million. For that money, you’re getting one of the most beautiful cars ever build, with a 463kW 6.0l V12 biturbo engine. No arguments that it’s a beast, but also cost a lot of money.

On the flipside, you could start with a 1400 Nissan bakkie as a donor vehicle, add a huge V8 engine, work magic with all sorts of mechanical tricks like lightweight pistons and performance camshafts and turbochargers and nitrous oxide systems (and other things I know very little about) to build yourself a really, really fast car. Chances are you’d not only come in cheaper, but also have a lot more power than the Benz does. You’d absolutely kill the AMG on the quarter mile, and be the envy of everyone who understands about these things. The cherry on top is citing the numbers your bakkie does on the dyno to impress your friends. 

But you’d still driving a 1400 bakkie.

With the SL, you’re getting the beautifully designed interior, an exhaust note that should be sold as a CD single, a dealer and support network across the world and other things that you wouldn’t have with your more powerful bakkie. For the most part, that’s okay with the bakkie owner, because he is capable to repair what breaks himself, and he isn’t interested to spend money to win any prizes for best looking car: it’s *all* about the performance to him.

Just like the high performance parts used in the bakkie analogy above, high-end PCs can cost a whole lot more than their Apple counterparts. PC users want to tinker and fiddle. They need to know why PSU model A is better than PSU model B, they want to upgrade the graphics card and see the difference in a game. They need to know every specification and how this higher/ lower number makes the machine better than before. They want to debate if faster RAM beats more RAM in a graphics card. PC users understand the difference between socket 478 and 775. They want to unbox all the parts and create something magnificent, an engineering masterpiece that is so much more than the sum of it’s parts, a final product to absolutely kick ass compared to what they had before and be the envy of their peers: they have a passion to create these monster machines themselves.

Apple users want to take the machine out the box, plug it in and start working. They don’t really care much for how fast the CPU is. The clock speed the RAM doesn’t matter. If they need to buy an adapter so that a Thunderbolt port turns into an Ethernet port, they go shopping.

It’s here that the Apple versus PC war comes to battle: the one side cares more about performance, the other side cares more about design. The PC side takes a clinical approach to purchasing a computer: cost and specifications contribute heavily in their purchasing decisions. Apple users want ease of use and beauty in design. Like with the SL65, you’re going to pay for having a beautifully designed machine, even if you could get better specs for a lower price.

My Macs are works of art, and like other art I own, I only need to justify the price to myself. I know that the cost of the paint, canvas and frame is but a fraction of the price of the painting, and I’m happy to pay an artist for their skill to create something I like to look at. I love walking into my office and seeing my pair of Thunderbolt monitors – they are as pretty to me today as the day I took them out of their boxes. These two monitors are more than just computer hardware: they are functional pieces of art on my desk.

The guy posting the comment is right: Apple products do (sometimes) cost more than their PC counterparts, and I know I could have the same performance for less money/ better performance for the same money, but that’s not what I’m after. I want something that works out the box and looks fantastic, and the 1400 bakkie, despite being faster and cheaper, isn’t that.