Apples vs. Oranges
[ rakaur on Mon May 08 at 11:19 PM // category: apple, hardware, technology ]
I am so ungodly tired of the “Apple MacBook Pro is $x more than a Dell with the same specs!” argument. It’s just wrong, and here’s why.
This post on some kid’s blog made it to the front page of Digg somehow. Let’s ignore the fact that it’s just blog spam. I’m just using it as an example of the billions of idiots out there making this argument.
The guy claims that “A new MacBook Pro with identical features and specs to a Dell Inspiron E1505 costs $1395 more.”
First off, I’m going to go into why comparing an Apple laptop to a Dell laptop is stupid in the first place. I’ll go into the actual wrongness of it all later. That’s not as important as why it’s stupid to compare them.
When comparing these things, people often use analogies. The analogy I find most people using most of the time is the “comparing Apple to Dell is like comparing Toyota to Lexus” argument. I think this argument is stupid, but it holds some validity. I’m not going to use an analogy. It’s way more simple than that. You can’t compare Apple’s top-of-the-line laptop aimed at business users (MacBook Pro) to Dell’s low-end bargain-bin crap aimed at average home users. Of course, you can counter with “it doesn’t mater what the market is if the specs are identical,” but they aren’t (Dell sells cheap components, that’s why they’re cheap). Just for fun, I went to Dell and built a custom XPS system (which is more in line with high-end hardware) which is “identical” to the 17” MBP. The MBP comes out to $2,699 and the XPS comes out to $3,344. The simple fact is the basis for comparison is wrong.
Unfortunately, people are stupid, and so they compare them anyway. Fortunately, people are stupid and never get it right. The guy compared the following specs, and deemed them “identical”:
- 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
- 15.4” wide screen LCD
- 100GB hard drive
- IR remote
- DVD burner
- WiFi and Bluetooth
- 128MB video card
Ok, but, you know, that’s not everything. He fails to mention, off the top of my head:
- FSB speed (likely the same)
- RAM speed (Dell 566MHz, Apple 666MHz)
- Hard drive type and speed (both appear to be SATA, 7200RPM)
- Optical drive write speeds (Dell’s is faster, I’ll wager)
- WiFi types (Dell b/g, Apple a/b/g)
- Form factor (Dell weighs half a pound more, and the MBP is 2/3 the thickness at 1” vs 1.5”)
- Customer support (Dell is India, Apple is “walk into any Apple store and have it fixed while you wait”)
- Component brands (Dell uses cheap components, Apple tends to use higher-end)
- Built-in camera (Dell none, Apple iSight which is an awesome camera compared to webcams)
- Dell has no ambient light sensor
- Dell has no sudden motion detector which saves your hard drive
- Dell has no scrolling trackpad
- Dell has no FireWire
- Dell has no keyboard backlighting
- Dell has no microphone
- Apple has two less USB ports
- Apple has no media card reader
- Apple has a weird new expansion slot
- Dell has no weird new expansion slot
- Ethernet (Dell 10/100, Apple 10/100/1000)
- Sound (Dell has analog line in/out, Apple has combined analog and digital S/PDIF optical in/out)
- Build material (Dell is plastic, Apple is high-grade aluminum)
- Graphics card (Dell has Radeon X1300 or X1400, Apple has X1600)
And that’s off the top of my head, there’s probably more. The guy also has three years of AppleCare in the price of the MBP (which is like $350) because “Apple only provides three months for free,” which is not true. The warranty on all Apple hardware is one year, with three months of free phone support. Apple’s phone support is likely much better than Dell’s, which is outsourced to India (though to be honest I’ve never called either). Saying “the MBP is two thirds the thickness!” is misleading, because that two thirds amounts to only half an inch. The half a pound less is somewhat important, though. People don’t figure eight ounces makes a difference, but when you’re carrying it around along with books all day, it makes a difference. The Dell has none of the Apple extras, such as iSight and fiber optic keyboard backlighting, etc. The LCDs are often compared, but from what I understand Dell makes quite good LCDs, and are probably comparable to Apple’s Cinema Displays. I’m willing to wager the screen brightness on the MBP trumps the Dell’s, though. Both the available video cards on the Dell use shared memory, which means it’s absolutely worthless as a video card anyhow (note that the X1600 on MBPs are shipped underclocked, though). The case is a big one also. I’d much rather have heavy-duty aluminum (read: metal) over a shoddy plastic case that’s far more likely to break and/or crack. Then again, instead of breaking or cracking the aluminum would probably dent. I don’t know which one’s more unseemly.
And then there’s the software factor, which is a whole other can of worms. I happen to prefer Apple’s software (and I’ve just recently started using it, so I am by no means a fanboy) over Windows and Windows software any day. Getting OS X and iLife over Windows XP and whatever crapware Dell preinstalls is worth a few hundred to me.
Also, the prices are way inflated because he adds a ton of crap such as AppleCare, which is a not insignificant price addition. My MBP was $1,799 (before tax, shipping, after student discount, default configuration) and it’s $1,999 for the upped CPU, and probably another $100 for the RAM, which is still no where near his $2,897 quote.
Stop comparing this shit. It’s not even apples vs. oranges. It’s like apples vs. rocks. I’m not a fanboy. I just hate stupid people.
-- rakaur // 2006.05.08 @ 11:19 PM
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