ProAm is probably referring to desktops. I don't feel it's hard to get something equivalent or very near equivalent in power to a Mac Pro and spending 3x less.
When it comes to laptops, the Apple tax is only about 2x more unless you compare it to an MS Surface Laptop which is about equal in price and quality.
Yes I was mainly referring to desktop and laptops. Phones were mostly in the 2x range for a longtime until other companies began to push their 'flagship' phones at high prices as well. I've never been an Apple person but I used to recommend Apple to my non-technical friends and family and say, 'Your going to pay a bit more but not have to worry about it not working, getting viruses (back when this was an issue), etc...' but I don't feel that way anymore.
You can easily build a comparable one for 1/4 of the price. Especially for what most Mac users do with their PC/laptops. Apple has always extraordinarily overcharged/taken advantage of their customers. Of course this is my opinion, and like I said I even used to recommend them to less than technical folks because it used to 'just work'.
Just go spec it out for yourself. Im not doing a homework assignment for you to prove that Apple fleeces it's customers. Especially in regards to a discussion on how Apple quality has dropped so significantly over the past 8 years.
I do it like once a month, and this "3-4x" claim is strictly false. If you spec MBP versus Dell or HP or Lenovo or whatever with the same parts, Apple may be anything between 5%-30% more, nowhere near 300%-400% that you claim.
Ive been following Apple for 10+ years and Im not wrong. Am I exact? No, but close enough. They used to charge you $100 to write software for your own iPhone. But a semantical argument isnt the one Im making.
Just look at amazon, Laptops with 7700hq and gtx1060 start at about $1k.
Equivalent MBP cost almost $3k, while having ddr3 instead of ddr4 and way worse GPU that other vendors pair with this processor.
... ok, I have trouble finding that, from Dell or Lenovo or HP or whoever I can actually buy and get warranty and whatever. BTW --- same parts --- 2GB+/sec SSD, comparable monitor, processor, graphics, battery life, Thunderbolt etc. If it is there I will (well, everyone would) obviously buy right away, but I have trouble finding it.
True, most doesn't come with nvme ssd, but you can always upgrade (which you cannot on a macbook), processors and graphics are way better for half the price, and you usually get a matte screen in which you can actually see anything besides reflections.
You made a claim. If you can't back up that claim with some basic evidence, we tend to call that claim "bullshit".
Given that other posts identify a laptop with a 1920x1080 display to a retina MacBook Pro, the concept of "equivalent" is clearly not the same for everyone.
How so? It does not seem to have a single Thunderbolt 3 port. MBP has four of them. Instead, Xiaomi has a bunch of USB-whatever &c. That is not "better", that is strictly "worse" and cheaper.
Are you serious? Every single person has specs they care about and ones they don’t.
I don’t think the resolution is interesting at all, but I agree some will.
For some people the great MPB trackpad is enough to sell it. Some people want the Xiaomi NVidia GPU. Some want retina screen, some want resolutions with better Linux support.
If you don’t like it don’t get it. But don’t nitpick to try to find some way they aren’t exactly the same: no one thinks that they are.
Nevertheless they are both high quality, i7, 16GB aluminium notebooks which suit developers.
Wait... where is this 3-4x number coming from? Are there any examples?