What computer do you have?

[johan]

The only reason I use them is because they cost anywhere from about the same price to maybe twice or three times as much as a pc of comparable spec, but its been my experience that they last about 5 times longer. If my experience changes, I will seek other options. Shrug.

If you build your own PC desktops (or get a shop to do it for you) then you can buy quality components for it that last. Or learn how to fix them whenever anything goes wrong. It's why I would never touch Apple with a 10 foot barge pole. They don't want you to open up their gadgets and do what you like with it.

Not that I've ever noticed a PC not last a very long time. I like my equipment to last at least a decade.

mmmm yeah, about that....

Although I've moved on to better things, there was a time when I did computer tech work for a living. So I've built more than my fair share of desktops for myself and for clients over the years. The macs I'm talking about are laptops. I have zero desire to build after market laptops. Nor do I recommend anyone entertain anyone's custom built after market laptops.

As desktops go? I recently rebuilt my studio music machine from parts. Why? Because the music composition/recording software I use and love is windows only. There is finally a mac beta version due in the next few months. If a fully baked mac version were available now? I'd have to seriously weigh options over whether I'd build a PC or just buy a mac for about the same money. Why? Why not?

Car guys will eat me for breakfast here but I'll use the analogy anyway. A corvette is a fast car and so is a porsche. The corvette gets its fast via a huge engine that turns copious amounts of dinosaur bones into horsepower at an alarming rate. Porsche does the same thing by cramming as much torque as possible into a very light weight vehicle. 

And so it is with PC's and macs. I can build a PC muscle car that achieves performance via raw horsepower. And thus needs regular upgrades to constantly raise said horsepower in order to keep up performance as software updates continue to impose higher and higher loads of the hardware. Or you can get a mac with similar torque and much more lightweight software which will therefore run great now and continue to run great even after years of software upgrades. 

For me? Its a very close race. Obviously for you its less so. 

Does apple build in planned obsolescence? Of course they do. But I've run macs all way to their obsolescence and I've run PC's until they were well past the point of deserving resuscitation and I have to tell you, in my experience from a practical usability point of view, the mac was much more usuable for much longer. And that's with regular hardware upgrades and clean OS installs for the PC and almost no hardware upgrades or clean OS installs on the macs. 

Believe me, I was as hard core of a PC only guy as they come. I bought my first mac ONLY so I could learn my way around the OS and therefore expand client base to include mac users. After using both side by side for many years, I got to the point where I could no longer argue with results. They are hands down a better value for my mission and the mission of most others that I know. If they're not a better value for you then they're not. But to be perfectly blunt, I did this shit for a  living for many years. So please quote me and try to make out like I don't know what I'm talking about because it's disrespectful and quite frankly, kind of annoying.

[Sterben]

I have as MSI GE 62 Apacahe pro, it's been a great laptop for me. (https://gaming.msi.com/products/notebook...Apache-Pro)

[The Valkyrie]

A very old, unreliable Toshiba laptop.

Will hopefully be replacing it when I get back.

[Tiberius]

Tiberius, I'm sorry, but you lose this argument. Apple has a deliberate policy of overcharging for repairs, or for doing unnecessary repairs, especially for items that are no longer under warranty. It's one of the many ways that Apple finds to keep draining customers' money after the initial sale.

It's not uncommon, for example, that a simple chip burns out on a motherboard, and Apple insists that the motherboard must be replaced for hundreds of dollars, when a $10 chip and two minutes with a soldering iron could completely restore the product. PC repair doesn't have this problem-- because you can literally choose almost any tech dude within 10 km who can diagnose hardware problems and either fix them, replace them with used parts, or sell one of multiple alternatives from various companies to repair the product.

Now, I'm not saying that Mac products are bad. Obviously, they are good, because many high-end professionals choose them. But Apple's customer culture is patronizing and downright insulting. I fucking hate that company so much, not because of what they make, but because of how they think about customers-- Sheeple, for sure.

What argument? All I've argued is that MacBooks are user-serviceable, as in, you can remove the parts that often need replacing (that is, HDD, RAM, battery).

I never made this into an argument about customer service. That's entirely different. Aractus started moving the goalposts and bringing up stuff completely unrelated to the discussion.

Also, I think you'll find that when it comes to laptops, replacing stuff like the CPU and GPU is hard whichever laptop you use. Unless the industry has changed in the last few years anyway.

Apple do sell their AppleCare warranty which supports all sorts of stuff. I've used it in the past to get a new battery, new power cable, etc.

[SteelCurtain]

I don't like the company, but I don't like Micro$oft either.

I don't like iPhones, that's for sure, but I will be purchasing a MacBook Pro next year. I just absolutely need a Mac platform.

[Gemini]

This one that I built a couple years ago. https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ih78822/saved/

I don't game much on it nowadays but it runs the ones I play fine.

[Aractus]

Nice moving the goalposts there. You asked if you could "replace the most common bits that wear out". I linked to a tutorial from ifixit.com, which as you are probably aware, is a highly recommended site for making repairs to various pieces of tech. So, regardless of what the sticker says (it's a sticker, not a ribbon cable, that has that message on it), you can remove the battery and replace it.

As to where you buy a new battery from, have you ever heard of Amazon?

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?...ok+battery

"This item does not ship to Canberra, Australia."

Lithium Ion batteries cannot be carried by air, so how long do you think it would take to arrive in Australia IF I could buy one?

And before you ask, no you cannot get them on Amazon Australia, and the ones sold on eBay are almost certainly fakes (recycled old batteries - heck that's probably what's on Amazon too). For example notice that this one does not carry the C-Tick. Which means that they need to be an approved importanter and have had the item tested and have a certificate issued for it  - which they don't have either (more info on all that here). It's actually not at all difficult or expensive to have a cert issued for an electronics product you are importing, so the fact that the products on eBay do not carry them shows they have been illegally imported, have not been tested or approved for use in Australia, and therefore are almost certainly fakes (reused batteries).

The mechanism that allows the battery to be easily removed, and also holds the battery in place, is bulkier than a battery which is built into the laptop. That should just be obvious.

You say that laptops do not need to be as thin as tablets, and that's your opinion. Apple isn't selling its products to you, it's selling them to a wider audience. People seem to like thinner laptops. That has been a trend across all personal laptops for years.

Weight, not thickness, is the more important aspect here.

This is veering into a debate about which laptops are better / have more features. I'm not interested in debating that because ultimately people decide based on personal preferences. I'm only interested in correcting misinformation.

It's not a "feature" Tiberius, it's the durability design of the product. And since it's a standard design now for laptops in that price range, people could reasonably expect their Macbooks to be spill resistant if Apple does not make it clear that there is a critical design flaw in their products at the time of sale. Again, I'm talking Australian consumer law - I know that in the USA there is not as much protection for consumers, but what I'm saying is that this feature is so standard now in laptops of that price range that I strongly believe that Apple would lose a court case held against them - just as they did for refusing to honour statutory warranties. Because it is reasonable for a consumer who has owned a Lenovo, Dell, HP, Toshiba, or ASUS in the absence of clear information otherwise to assume that a new Macbook would also be spill resistant.

What I'm talking about is hardware design. I agree 100% with Louis Rossmann when he says "software is opinion, but hardware is not opinion. It's a fact that many of these things are manufactured like shit" That quote is right at the start of the video I posted here, and I could not have put it better myself.

So sue them, or have the Australian government sue them. This has nothing to do with their laptops being user-serviceable.

I takes the ACCC something like 2-3 years to act on these matters, because of how long it takes them to build a case. The right thing to do is for the company to obey the law in the first place, or for consumers not to purchase things from Apple. Especially not laptops. Spilling something on your keyboard should not render an expensive laptop unusable.

I disagree, and unless you have actual evidence to back that statement up, you are just making stuff up.

Again, watch the video I posted. The hinges in Macbooks from that time (and I imagine this applies to 2009 ones too) were deliberately designed to crack. There's nothing you can do to stop it, and this obvious "design flaw", or from Apples POV obsolescence planning, was carried on year after year.  That's simply a fact, it can't be argued since they took a good design that works for every other laptop on the market, and worked for Apple, and delicately chose to redesign how the hinge attaches to the screen so that the frame holding it is weakened by the screw hole, gets hairline fractures, and eventually snaps. Like I said - not opinion, that's fact.

Why hasn't my 8 year old laptop failed yet, if it's designed to fail? Hmm? Literally every other laptop I've had has failed in some way after 1 or 2 years of general use. I carried my MacBook to lectures and back for 3 years, it's been shipped around the world, I've probably dropped it a few times by accident. Still works. Yes, I know this is all anecdotal, but at least it's better than just pulling "facts" out my ass and pretending that Apple purposefully sells shitty laptops.

It doesn't need to completely fail to be rendered unfit for purpose. For all I know, you didn't cycle the battery enough to drain it to the point where it needs replacement. For all I know you're not prone to spilling shit either.

Yet as you admitted, they sell a service to replace the batteries, so it's not like non-technical people are left with no option. If you don't like that, don't buy a MacBook. If you're OK with taking the back of the laptop off (which is designed to come off, by the way) and replacing the battery yourself, you're fine.

Again I'm calling BS on this. 1. no non-technical person ever has a problem swapping out an external battery. 2. It takes 5 minutes work to open a Macbook and change the battery, that's not worth charging people $100+ above the retail cost of the battery for, if anything the service should be performed for free - or cost no more than $10 above the retail cost of the battery.

[Aractus]

Now, I'm not saying that Mac products are bad.  Obviously, they are good, because many high-end professionals choose them.

Most Government agencies and Corporations go with Lenovo, not Apple.

But Apple's customer culture is patronizing and downright insulting.  I fucking hate that company so much, not because of what they make, but because of how they think about customers-- Sheeple, for sure.

Couldn't agree more!

[SteelCurtain]

Again I'm calling BS on this. 1. no non-technical person ever has a problem swapping out an external battery. 2. It takes 5 minutes work to open a Macbook and change the battery, that's not worth charging people $100+ above the retail cost of the battery for, if anything the service should be performed for free - or cost no more than $10 above the retail cost of the battery.

I'm sorry Aractus. Apple is an American company. If they don't conform to Australian law, that's not a fault of the company.

In America, one of the biggest drivers of laptop sales is thinness, lightness, and durability. Apple products, while not as customizable as other products, are all three.

And the market drives what they are able to charge for their services. If people are willing to pay $130 for a battery replacement, then they can charge that much. If people were taking their Macs to a computer service near them for much cheaper, then Apple would lower the cost of their service.

All of the above reasons make me hesitant to buy an Apple product. I don't like the lack of customizability, or the fact that Apple makes a new fucking plug for damn near every device they make, or that official Apple accessories cost 2-3x what every other comparable accessory costs.

I am not the typical Apple consumer. I suspect neither are you. Buy a Google Product. You'll be less angry.

[bennyboy]

What argument? All I've argued is that MacBooks are user-serviceable, as in, you can remove the parts that often need replacing (that is, HDD, RAM, battery).

I never made this into an argument about customer service. That's entirely different. Aractus started moving the goalposts and bringing up stuff completely unrelated to the discussion.

Also, I think you'll find that when it comes to laptops, replacing stuff like the CPU and GPU is hard whichever laptop you use. Unless the industry has changed in the last few years anyway.

Apple do sell their AppleCare warranty which supports all sorts of stuff. I've used it in the past to get a new battery, new power cable, etc.

Okay, okay. My hatred of Apple goes wayyyy back to the first Macs. I was doing an AP computer class (1st year uni credit) in programming, but Apple soooo cock-blocked programmers from having any access to features of the operating system, including graphical routines (drawing shapes etc.) and playing sounds in assembly language. They had a series of technical books you had to buy. So after hours of weedling and begging my school, they bought the books-- which Apple said they'd send "right away," but which arrived months and months later, at the end of the school year. So my computer had about $2000 worth of kindling, and I never got to make my 1st pro app while I was still in high school.

On my Radio Shack Color Computer, you could literally buy a commented print-out of the whole operating system, and you could ALTER IT to function how you wanted. Money at that time was actually made by people making cool new OS mods for that computer. PC computers were similarly easy-- you could buy a non-proprietary book on how to program for the early PCs, and get down to work.

So yeah-- proprietary bullshit, extra costs, shitty service, but all of it in a sparkly, futuristic-looking package.

My opinion of Apple users is that they consider the inflated prices a membership fee to inclusion in a cool vision of the future-- and other users are people who want a product they can use how they want, and for which they can expect reasonably-priced service.