It’s only been sporadically that Apple released really good cheap hardware. The second or third geberation MacBook Air for example was a powerhouse for casual office work. Early M series as well had some good price points. But overall they’ve always charged a lot of RAM and peripherals.
iPhone was always above market, ipad is premium priced (but feels like the only major tablet that gained traction).
The Apple II line, the Macintosh line, and the Macintosh II line generally cost less than an equivalent PC (specifically an IBM PC 5150, XT, or AT), and most PC clones.
Hence why Apple had a huge passionate DIY fandom who even made components and peripherals for those lineages, anywhere from custom memory and processor upgrades, to tape drives that can read almost any format, to predecessors of the “smart home”/IoT systems such as remotely controlling the baby rocker. The last I knew of was an internal floppy drive mod for the iMac.
Now with planned obsolescence in mind, the current Apple regime is trying to disallow anyone from ever prolonging the lifespan of its products.
Makes sense. I bought my first Mac in the mid 2000s (the early Intel models), and back then they were more expensive and did less.
I installed VMware Fusion and Boot Camp and then it did just as much or more than PCs. But the big thing was the total amortized cost was good and printer drivers weren’t pure evil.
Yeah, it’s not a hard rule, it’s just not consistent and depends on your upgrades.
If you bought the mid-late 2010s models for example you basically needed ram upgrades, which cost an arm and a leg. Early M1 the swap was fast so RAM was acceptable at defaults, but also if you bought an M1 or M2 Max you really lucked out with LLMs and prices overall. M3 mini at 64gb I think was unbeatable value.
Current gen everything is fucked, but they’re pushing Mac Studio for LLM clusters and so no, they’re not cheaper anymore. They’re cheaper than a $100K GPU.
When did Apple generally cost less?
It’s only been sporadically that Apple released really good cheap hardware. The second or third geberation MacBook Air for example was a powerhouse for casual office work. Early M series as well had some good price points. But overall they’ve always charged a lot of RAM and peripherals.
iPhone was always above market, ipad is premium priced (but feels like the only major tablet that gained traction).
The Apple II line, the Macintosh line, and the Macintosh II line generally cost less than an equivalent PC (specifically an IBM PC 5150, XT, or AT), and most PC clones.
Apple generally cost less from 1977 to 1993.
Hence why Apple had a huge passionate DIY fandom who even made components and peripherals for those lineages, anywhere from custom memory and processor upgrades, to tape drives that can read almost any format, to predecessors of the “smart home”/IoT systems such as remotely controlling the baby rocker. The last I knew of was an internal floppy drive mod for the iMac.
Now with planned obsolescence in mind, the current Apple regime is trying to disallow anyone from ever prolonging the lifespan of its products.
It never really cost less, but it was there slogan in the 90s.
“Cost less, do more. It’s that simple”.
Makes sense. I bought my first Mac in the mid 2000s (the early Intel models), and back then they were more expensive and did less.
I installed VMware Fusion and Boot Camp and then it did just as much or more than PCs. But the big thing was the total amortized cost was good and printer drivers weren’t pure evil.
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Apple Lisa? Apple II? The first core 2 duo macbooks were actually cheaper than the competition when they came out. I bought one. That’s it I think.
The first generation of Arm Mac’s were pretty cost effective.
Yeah, it’s not a hard rule, it’s just not consistent and depends on your upgrades.
If you bought the mid-late 2010s models for example you basically needed ram upgrades, which cost an arm and a leg. Early M1 the swap was fast so RAM was acceptable at defaults, but also if you bought an M1 or M2 Max you really lucked out with LLMs and prices overall. M3 mini at 64gb I think was unbeatable value.
Current gen everything is fucked, but they’re pushing Mac Studio for LLM clusters and so no, they’re not cheaper anymore. They’re cheaper than a $100K GPU.