For the record, I’ve been using computers since 1980. (Commodore PET)
My first “PC” cost near $5000 and it was 33MHZ, less than 200 MB HD, probably 2 megs of ram (386). Compared to the Amigas of the time, it sucked and was more expensive… But it had King’s Quest and times were changing, floppy disks too.
I once upgraded to 8 megs of ram, it cost me near $1000.
I spent the 90s (10 years) until 2004 building my own machines, sometimes with elaborate video cards for film editing, these cost an assload.
I’ve installed and used Redhat, Corel, Caldera, Coyote, Slackware, Knoppix, Centos, and Ubuntu linuxes over the years. FreeBSD in there, for good measure. I’ve run OS/2, Windows 3.11, Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP…
It’s not like I don’t know computers… I’m just sick of them. I know I’m not getting “maximum power” with my Mac laptop, but over the years I’ve learned that this is bullshit. Upgrades are painful on any platform.
Here’s a list of peripherals that I paid for, that became obsolete: 386/486 motherboards, pentium motherboards, pentium II motherboards, ZIP drives, tape backup system, PS/2 mouse, PS/2 joystick, a variety of modems, ISA cards, PCI cards, SCSI… The list goes on.
When you buy a car that goes 300 MPH but costs a ton in gas and you drive it at 80 over 65% of the time…
Apple rips you off. No doubt. But if you value the included software and OS and the “all-in-one” solution, it’s still an educated decision. You can upgrade the most common parts (HD, Ram, external peripherals) easy and cheaper if you don’t buy direct.
PC’s are cheap, 30 years later…