I wouldn't count on 10 years of real-world life from a non-upgradeable and 'repair-resistant' device with a glued in battery, even if the hardware specs are good enough to last that long.
> Monthly pricing is available when you select Apple Card Monthly Installments (ACMI) as payment type at checkout at Apple, and is subject to credit approval and credit limit. Financing terms vary by product. Taxes and shipping are not included in ACMI and are subject to your card’s variable APR. See the Apple Card Customer Agreement for more information. ACMI is not available for purchases made online at special storefronts. The last month’s payment for each product will be the product’s purchase price, less all other payments at the monthly payment amount. ACMI financing is subject to change at any time for any reason, including but not limited to, installment term lengths and eligible products. See https://support.apple.com/kb/HT211204 for information about upcoming changes to ACMI financing.
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You do not have to drop $2000 on a new laptop up front.
And that's how you know someone has not used the 8GB MBA model. 8GB is more than enough for the light usage you'd buy a 8GB model to begin with. Which means not running 3 IDEs and 5 VMs at the same time.
That's what most laptops used to cost back in the 1990s or so (after adjusting for inflation). If you look further back in time, hardware was even more expensive - and it couldn't even do 10% of what a modern MacBook does. Modern hardware is ridiculously cheap.
In the 90s most people didn't have a laptop for that very reason. They just owned desktops which were way cheaper.
I studied computer science then and I knew 1 student out of 50 that had an actual laptop. Even at the uni we had to use their computer rooms full of desktops and X terminals.
I had a Gameboy, parents had a PC. Friends all had a game console. NES, SNES, SEGA, Amiga, C=64, etc. PC went booming in 90s though. Because here you could buy a PC tax deductible via a law called 'pc-privé'. This was to stimulate citizens to learn to use a computer in their private time. Still, even with tax deduction a PC was very expensive. Not like a car, but expensive still.
Not really sure they were much cheaper in the 90s. My first PC was a Dell P90 in 1994, IIRC it cost about $2500. There was kind of a mantra at the time that no matter the improvements, you'd always spend about $2500. And adjusted for inflation, that "way cheaper" desktop was over $5K in today's dollars.
Inflation calculator says the Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro I bought in 2007 is something like $4400 now. Bought a small intel ssd for the sata3 port in it too for probably another $500 now
Entry-level price for a new Mac, right now, is $700 (M1 Macbook Air at Walmart). It doesn't get you the best or the fastest, but it's a perfectly usable laptop. Or, if you're okay with something lightly used, a refurbished M1 Mac Mini is ~$500.
The M1 MBA being sold by Best Buy and Walmart are perfectly fine for 99% of the computing world. Maybe not for gamers (most laptops suck for this), or for someone needing to crunch large datasets, but when this first came out, tons of developers were perfectly happy using it, even with small storage. Hell, my iMac I used up until buying a Mac Studio only had 256GB.
Yep. 8 GB RAM isn't great, but for basic use -- web browsing, word processing, some light photo/video editing, etc -- it'll be perfectly adequate. Not everyone needs a supercomputer.
Depends on how much browser tabs they dare to keep open, and how many pictures and videos they want to keep around on their computer stored in high resolution.
As far as the processor goes, the M1 is in active production (e.g. for the iPad Air), and is still a very capable CPU. It may not be the fastest laptop CPU on the market anymore, but it's hardly slow.
I don't understand how this relates to paid warranty or insurance. Your TCO for a non-Apple laptop can also include a protection fee or cost to repair with no insurance.
They have lots of monthly payment plan options here in Canada, and probably in the US too. It even used to be zero interest. Not sure about the rest of the world.
Also many no interest options in India but the prices are higher here, somewhat so for the Macs but significantly higher for the iPhone as it is such a social status thing here in the north.
