At least I know it's not for anyone. Mind you that battery in the retina laptops are glued down to the frame and the trackpad cable(At least in the case of the 15" 2012 model). You will have a very hard time removing the battery packs without bursting them or ripping cables.
As a tinkerer, I don't like that the batteries are glued down, and I think that's a little unnecessary of Apple to do, but I understand why they do it. Invariably, someone will open one up to try and replace the battery with a cheap aftermarket one when the original one dies. The cheap aftermarket battery likely won't perform as well as an OEM battery, and the consumer who fixed it himself would then blame Apple, rather than himself for buying a crappy cheap, knockoff battery.
Apple is forcing you to go back to them for service to ensure that a minimum "standard" of quality and experience is ensured. Yes, that is pandering to the lowest common denominator, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on perspective), this is a trend that you see across multiple industries. Just look at new cars nowadays and how easy they are to fix on your own.
I'm not asking why Apple's willing to sell at that price point, I'm wondering why people are willing buy at that price point. I, too, would sell my products at the highest price point possible, but I wouldn't buy stuff at whatever price point someone sees fit.
I understand that you are genuinely baffled and not mocking at all, but in the end, Apple products are premium products, and are designed and engineered as such. Premium products will have a premium price.
It's like if you're buying a car, you could buy a Kia or a Mercedes. In the end, they do the same thing; they transport you from one place to another. However, they go about it very differently, and one will be a lot higher quality than the other, and one will also charge a lot more than the other.
If it's only about price, then why do people still buy Mercedes cars?
So: What do people see in a Mac that makes them pay twice as much as they would for a Windows laptop? I get yelled at daily by customers that are sorely pissed off by the fact that we're charging 30 bucks a year for a credit card, but Apple's customers don't mind paying a premium of 700 bucks or whatever the price difference is... I genuinly can not understand it. But that's probably for another thread, I suppose.
I buy a Mac because of the design details and features they think about that most other cheap computer companies don't think about. Details like having a backlit keyboard that uses soft white LEDs that change in intensity automatically based on the surroundings brightness and that don't blind you. Specially engineered fans that try to reduce fan noise. Solid, sturdy, quality case construction. Thinness and lightness. Excellent battery life. Beautiful, high resolution IPS screens. Large, responsive trackpad. This isn't it, but to have thought about it
Sure, some of these features do get incorporated into Windows manufacturers' top of their line machines, but at that point, you're looking at a small difference in price, and often not nearly as well done.
Beyond the features and the fact that I prefer the Mac OS, my experience with Windows laptops is that I need to buy a new one every couple of years. I admit, I don't baby my computers. The Windows laptops I've had lasted only a couple of years, while the Macs I've had lasted twice as long. At my rate, in the long run, as long as a "comparable spec" Windows laptop is slightly more than half the Mac's price, then it actually comes out to be
more expensive for me to buy Windows laptops.
The MBP I looked at for comparison had neither a Retina screen (which I did state), nor an SSD (which I should have). It (the Acer) doesn't come with an aluminion body, that's for sure. Don't know about the battery life, and I've got to admit - I don't know what Thunderbolt is.
Are you looking at
this one? That's a 1500 Euro 13 inch MBP that has all the things NLxAROSA talked about (retina screen, flash memory, Thunderbolt).
Applecare are not the only ones that are nice. I once bought a new Logitech mouse on ebay(Got the wrong mouse from seller), it broke, and asked for a replacement from Logitech. Logitech does not sell on ebay(Thus no warranty for the item) so they gave me a one time only replacement(Sent the bad one back to them) due to my predicament.
Any premium service will bend over backwards for you. AppleCare is expensive, but like the rest of the stuff, is premium. I bet if you get the premium warranty contract from Dell, they'll be really nice to you and replace things for free without fuss too.
) vs oranges. That 800-euro Acer (probably) does not come with:
I bought a flat screen TV 32 inches, a PS3, a Logitech G27 and my Laptop with a very good GT630M Video Card for 1520€... (both MacBooks just have the VERY basic HD4000 from intel...) I would definately NOT go for it...
dd:
