Mac Laptops Earn 20% of US Market, 35% of revenue.

[Bitmap Frogs]

epsilon72 said:

That's another thing I don't understand....why pay for what is essentially a specialized *nix system + a few proprietary (and IMHO overpriced) programs, when you can get cheaper non-mac hardware and just run linux + hundreds of open source programs on it for free?  I suppose it may have something to do with the "it just works" thing....but at this point in time if you're really looking for that distros like ubuntu tend to "just work" out of the box as well.

My biggest problem with macs though is also the price.  I bought a Dell laptop about 8 months ago that has a slowish (but adequate) core 2 duo, a dedicated GPU, and 2 gigs of memory for about $650...the cheapest mac laptop at the time had a faster processor, but had no descreet gpu available....not to mention its base price was over $1k....why doesn't apple want to compete in that (my notebook's) segment?

(and no, my laptop is not over 10 pounds, does not overheat, and has decent build quality)

 

 

There are three reasons:

a) maintaining a linux box requires more technical know-how

b) the user interface is ace

c) there are many software niches that aren't properly covered by open source software.

As for price, I suggest you read my first post in this thread - 8 months ago was january, and apple pushed a new macbook revision in february. You were looking at the point where the price difference was higher. Had you waited one month it'd be different. It is to be noted however that apple does prefer to toss up budget towards cpu rather than gpu tho.