Are Apple Laptops worth their price?

Question

Are Apple Laptops worth their price?

Answer 1

Pros(on your question list): compatible with everything(except windows drm files) . they can burn cds dvds, as long as they have a dvd/cd player, external or internal. the reason they're immune to viruses is because of low market share.iTunes is built for OS X, it's better with it. Battery is about 7 hours surfing the web, drops to 2 while playing Minecraft. Yes, it has a caps lock light. it's WAY better at editing than windows out of the box. It's dosen't have a retina display yet, but the OS X mountain lion beta reveals that it might soon have. It keeps its initial speed.



Cons: Windows based wireless printers won't work. home network(as in home network, not Wi-Fi) will not work is it's windows based. Wi-fi is easier than windows though.



Besides your questions: Windows laptops are less sturdy, unless you go to the same price range. OS X. People say that for the same specs you can get something 400$ cheaper. Maybe 100$ but not 400$.

Answer 2

The MacBook Air is no good.



In my opinion the Macbook Pros are good laptops, but not completely worth their price; however, if luxury is something you care about then they might be what you are looking for.



sturdiness - not so great

reliability - Good

speed - above average, but not top of the line

hard drive space - This can vary and easily be increased/decreased.



compatibility with devices - Mouses, keyboards, hard drives, flash drives and many other things are neutral only specific hardware be problematic/non-compatible.



Support for software - hard to say. You will have to look to see if each program has a Mac version or not.



How easily to they connect to home networks?

Same as any other in my opinion



How easily can you add a wireless printer?

See above answer.



Is it true that they really are immune to viruses?

Viruses are not an issue, and the existing malware has to be installed by the user for it to infect the computer. It's easy enough to remove.



Is it more stable with iTunes than Windows 7?

Yes



How long does the battery last?

Realistically, probably 5 to 6 hours, depending on what you are doing.



How much better is it at video/song editing than Windows?

No better, no worse. Different people will give you different answers on this one based on their preferences.



And most importantly, does it keep its initial speed after 6 months, a year, or five years?

Depends on the user. If you keep applications running in the background all the time it will slow down until you stop them. Fragmentation is not an issue.

Answer 3

Not in my opinion as they have the same components as most PC laptops except for the operating system and the name.

Answer 4

no they are not worth the 1k you can get a pc with the same or better processor hard drive etc. for cheaper then a mac

Answer 5

They are worth it to 12% of all people in the U.S.



Retina display (do you mean camera?) is bought separately. So is retina recognition software. You will need to find a company that makes recognition software for OS X. If you need to run Windows software, you simply install Windows on the Mac. All modern Macs run Windows fine as well as all Windows software.



Photoshop first distribution was March 1989 and it was Mac only. First Windows version was November 1992. More than 80% of pro photographers use the Mac version.



I have found no problem using iTunes in Windows 7, but I don't use Windows more than ten minutes a week (mostly for the many security updates).



I don't use WinSCP, but you can safely bet that any "Win" app is for Windows. If it is an FTP app, OS X does FTP with no added software.



All printers need drivers. Dozens of popular dedicated printer drivers are part of the default installation of OS X. For others (particularly for all-in-one devices) see what the makers site says. Typically, anything from Epson has Mac drives (pro photographers choose Epson 10 to 1).



Speed of a processor and RAM does not change after six months. It's like wondering if a light bulb will be as bright later. What changes is the file system (could develop errors), the space on the HDD (too full means slower), and the startup apps (when you install apps, they sometimes add some startup stuff that slows the system). Of course, a virus or worm can slow the system, too. Over the past ten years, there have been only a few worms for OS X, and no true viruses. A virus is typically designed to damage system files. That is not an option with any UNIX-based system. If you install Windows on a Mac, you can get any malware any PC can get. BTW, one slower for NTFS and Windows is drive fragmentation. Not ever a problem with Mac file system, except when dealing with rendering many huge video files in Final Cut Pro to the OS X drive volume. It would be very amateurish to do video editing with a notebook, and even stranger to render video to the system boot volume. All video pros use a Mac Pro tower with four internal HDDs and perhaps an external drive array. They will be backing up, erasing and starting over every day or two, so that typically keeps fragmentation to a minimum.



Internet speed can change when the style of web pages changes. Today's web pages are much more resource hungry than those we surfed five years ago. Even Youtube has become mostly HD MP4 files instead of those old standard FLV files, so all five year old computers are slower now because the web pages are loaded with advanced features now.



As for specific hardware add-ons, check the site for it, such as Logitech, to see if the device needs drivers (most BlueTooth devices do not), and if the site offers both Mac and Windows drivers.



You really need to just walk into any shop that sells Macs and look at one. All Macs except the Air and Mac Mini have DVD burners. For those, buy the external burner if you are among the few people who still buy DVDs. Any DVD burner can burn CDs as well. Not all DVD burners can burn dual-layer DVDs, but all Apple computers with DVD burners can. Apple is leading the march away from optical disc. All new Apple computers have hidden partition for system restore and Internet restore (works even with a blank HDD), so if you use NetFlix or iTunes for buying movies and music cheaply, no need for optical disc at all-- except to install Windows if you want to use Windows. I have Windows installed on three of my Macs, but I never use it. I don't play with games, and I don't think about "Does this app come in an OS X version?" I think "Can I do this task?" About 99.9999% of the time, I can do it without Windows.



I think Yahoo Answers has a limit of 10 question amendments, so I'm done with all the extras.



There are some exact features of Apple computers that attract folks. You have to decide if those features make sense for you....

-- Aluminum uni-body case for durability.

-- Firewire 800 (on all but the Air) for faster copying of files to and from and external HDD, and for target disk mode.

-- Thunderbolt for even faster copying to ext. HDD (20 times faster than USB 3.0), and for target display mode.

-- EFI firmware for faster boot time and less trouble with software-hardware setup (no BIOS).

-- Mac ROM for advanced features, such as one-key boot to a Startup Manager (system boot selector), 4-key reset of NVRAM, and ability to install both Windows and OS X with no buggy hack.



These "components" are found on 0-1% of PCs. That means the Apple brand computer is not "just like a PC" at all. It has advanced hardware design that most PC geeks are not even aware of and usually don't even understand.



An overly-simplistic view would be that a BMW is just an over-priced Chevy-- has the exact same specs, four wheels. This view is most common among Chevy owners.