211–220 of 392 posts
Too late. I was an Apple user for years but I recently purchased an AMD Ryzen based development box which I am extremely happy with. My iPhone SE will be my last iPhone as well - I won't purchase an expensive mobile 'phone that lacks something as basic as a headphone jack.
Nobody cares about headphone jacks.
Love the device but I can't get over how expensive it has gotten. A 20% price bump... Sure, there's still the old Macbook Air around, but it wasn't updated and is based on a decade old model with a CPU/GPU that's a 3 years old (5th gen i5 from 2015), and a 128 PPI screen, that's a bit ridiculous. If you want a modern machine you're looking at $1200 for the cheapest model. That isn't even too bad but when you go abroa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are comparing prices without VAT to prices with VAT. In France VAT is 20%, quite typical in the EU, so the comparison is not fair at all. There's VAT in many states and cities in the United States, although typically at rates much lower than in the EU. Buying a MacBook Air in New York City for instance will be at least $1,300 (combined VAT rate of 8.875%). [EDIT] Granted, the exchange rate is not great, but it's…
There’s currently no VAT in the US, there used to be a VAT in Michigan but currently there are only sales and use taxes, which aren’t universal. Buying a MacBoox Air for $1,199 in Oregon will cost $1,199 out of pocket.
Love the device but I can't get over how expensive it has gotten. A 20% price bump... Sure, there's still the old Macbook Air around, but it wasn't updated and is based on a decade old model with a CPU/GPU that's a 3 years old (5th gen i5 from 2015), and a 128 PPI screen, that's a bit ridiculous. If you want a modern machine you're looking at $1200 for the cheapest model. That isn't even too bad but when you go abroa…
The EU has higher warranty coverage (2 years instead of one), and that is priced in. The second year of keyboard replacements surely drives up the price.
You can get 2 extra years of warranty for $250 through an AppleCare product. I'd assume the third year is most expensive, so the first year would be less than $125, perhaps $100.
And I'd assume they make a bit of profit on this insurance product, meaning the true cost of the warranty is less than $100, say it's $90 (assuming unusually low profit margins for Apple).
Further this product offers discounted service fees for accidental damage too, which isn't part of a regular warranty. As such, the cost of the warranty itself is likely to be even less than $90.
All of these are assumptions pulled out of my ass but I think it's probably safe to say the extra first year of the warranty to cost Apple less than $100.
The VAT in the US averages $100. That still leaves a $250 gap with EU prices. Definitely not as big as it seemed to me originally. Still I'd hope that gap may narrow a little bit in future!
As for the specific keyboard issue, I believe the warranty on that (and some other big Apple issues) is extended by a few years everywhere, so shouldn't explain regional differences in pricing.
I wonder if a lot of people are leaving the Mac ecosystem. Apple has been selling roughly ~19M Mac per year since 2012, and its new user to Mac has also been steady at ~50%. Apple has had 60M Mac user in 2012 announced in WWDC, and they has been nearing 100M since early 2017. I assume that actual number is larger than 90M at the time, so after nearly 20 Months, ~20M New Mac Users on board, it manage to add a total ~1…
Given that 15 minutes later, in the iPad part of the event, they claimed the new iPad is faster than 92% of all notebooks sold in the last year, the writing is on the wall. For me, the next Macbook to be excited about, would be one with an ARM processor. Still, really disappointing that for the new Air they do not allow you to go to 1TB SSD, but they won't allow you upgrade from a dual-core i5. Feels like a political…
I've long been convinced the intention is to kill off the MacBook lineup.
Love the device but I can't get over how expensive it has gotten. A 20% price bump... Sure, there's still the old Macbook Air around, but it wasn't updated and is based on a decade old model with a CPU/GPU that's a 3 years old (5th gen i5 from 2015), and a 128 PPI screen, that's a bit ridiculous. If you want a modern machine you're looking at $1200 for the cheapest model. That isn't even too bad but when you go abroa…
You are comparing prices without VAT to prices with VAT. In France VAT is 20%, quite typical in the EU, so the comparison is not fair at all. There's VAT in many states and cities in the United States, although typically at rates much lower than in the EU. Buying a MacBook Air in New York City for instance will be at least $1,300 (combined VAT rate of 8.875%). [EDIT] Granted, the exchange rate is not great, but it's…
But average sales tax in the US is about $100. It's still a $350 difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
USB-C is cool but there's no reason they couldn't make a MagSafe USB-C port.
3rd party companies make these[0]. It's a little plug into the USB-C port, then a break away cable. My only complaint about the usb-c is that they're on the same side. I've gotten used to flipping back and forth on my mbp for plugging it in. (different setup at home and work) [0] https://www.amazon.com/Griffin-BreakSafe-Magnetic-Breakaway-...
It worked, but it seemed to take 2x - 3x longer to charge using that cable than a normal USB C cable.
I never tried it on anything else though, so I'm not sure if I had a bad cable or not. It worked, it just charged very slowly compared to normal cables.
Am I the only one, who is excited and considering buying this thing? I'm still on 2012 Air. It's good device, but showing it's age (slow CPU and only 4GB of Ram, the screen resolution is joke). But new Air seems very compelling to me. I'll miss the magsafe though. Also I would like to know if the SSD can be upgraded later (unofficially of course). 2012 Air SSD can be replaced, using cheap reduction (from proprietary…
1) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Looyat-Magnetic-Cable-Macbook-Black...