Gotta say, had my HP laptop for three years now, Win 7, never had a virus, still runs beautifully, I can play video games (Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, for example) without a hitch, battery still going strong, and IF any components like my battery/hard drive/etc should fail I can replace them myself, or at least at much less expense than with a Mac.

And it cost me $900 (with tax).

To me, the hefty price tag combined with them crippling my ability to modify my OWN computer as I see fit makes Apple very unappealing. Hate Windows? Go install Ubuntu, for crying out loud. Apple’s not worth it.

Just like this, why would you ever buy a Mercedes, BMW, Lexus or anything over than a Chevy Aveo? Well, one is a piece of crap that will get you where you need to go, but you will hate it the whole way and have lots of silly issues with it and the others will be smooth, reliable and simply NICER.

It doesn’t cost $75,000 to make a luxury car but if you want the best, you pay it and for the most part, don’t regret it.

Let’s say you buy a $900 laptop with Windows Vista, which sucks. Ok, you want to upgrade to Win7 ($250$ please) and oh wait, you want to get Windows 8 ($250+ please). So to have the newest operating system on a laptop (oh and replace that crappy battery for another $150 after 2 years) you are already at ~$1500 and it still runs like crap. Hope you are savvy enough to reinstall windows since it has a lot of crap files. Oops, got another virus. Meanwhile, the apple guy who bought a regular macbook pro for 1700$ still doesn’t really have any issues with his computer, doesn’t need a battery for a couple more years and has the newest operating system for a whopping $20 (Mountain Lion let’s you upgrade from 2 OS’s ago). Now it doesn’t seem like such a huge difference does it?

Of course, you could compromise and not upgrade, deal with having to be tethered to a wall outlet, hope you don’t get a BSOD…..Windows machines have a lot of downsides as well if you think about it.

The people who whine about that are the people who would buy this to play games on or to be “cool”. If you are that person, you are an idiot anyways and that’s when it’s a waste of money. Don’t whine about “that’s why I don’t buy Apple stuff”. They are a company and make money off of hardware rather than software.

Since this is a proprietary system only used by Apple you are stating the blindly obvious.

Where does Apple have a laptop that can offer over 24 hours of battery life? (I believe there are some that even offer 30+ hours of battery life). Where is a MacBook Pro that can even hit 10 hours of battery life?

You must be lucky, since I have several friends with 3 year old MBP’s and they are beginning to replace their batteries.

If, and this is a huge IF Macbook owners follow the charging procedures outlined by Apple, and properly maintain them they would have no problem reaching the 5 year mark before that battery would need replacing.

I am on a 2008 MacBook Pro with 977 charging cycles with 93% battery life remaining and still can get 5 sometimes 6 hours on a single charge.

Am I lucky?
Maybe.

Yes, if your $2200 to $4000 MacBook Pro retina breaks, you (basically) have to go out and buy another machine.

Charge Loss – Hours Per Charge – Years of Life100% 7 580% 5.6 1080% 4.48 1580% 3.584 2080% 2.8672 2580% 2.29376 3080% 1.835008 3580% 1.4680064 4080% 1.17440512 4580% 0.939524096 50

Within 50 years I think I’ll get a new MacBook. :)

Two reasons why it is cheaper.
1) Apple buys a MASSIVE amount of chips for memory and such for iPhones, iPads, MacBook Airs, etc.. meaning, more of those chips they buy, cheaper it is for them to buy this. (more devices they use it in, cheaper it is)
2) cheaper to make it non-replaceable.

D