Apple doesn’t ask you to decide based on non-sensical marketing blabber like that. They use it, sure, but it isn’t central in the decision process of the buyer.

One other point: all three Macs I've owned were ready to use out of the box. No stickers, no crapware, no nothing. Contrast this with a recent Anandtech review of a recent Sony Vaio that, hardware-wise, is quite nice, but:

Because of that initial bloat I have a hard time recommending the VAIO S to any end user that can't fix it (including but not limited to just plain physically upgrading the hard drive) or doesn't know someone who can. This is an otherwise fantastic notebook with a lot of potential just looking for the right user, but if you're not comfortable getting elbow deep in cleaning it out (or preferably doing a clean Windows 7 installation), it's not going to be the notebook for you. For those of you who are willing and able to put in the time, though, you'll likely be very well served by the Sony VAIO S.

(http://www.anandtech.com/show/4748/sony-vaio-sb-all-day-cons...)

I read something like that and think, "Where's the MacBook Air link again..."

The guys at the Microsoft store I visited made clueless look bright. Apparently they keep getting new machines in with no training at all.

A clean install is really easy -- maybe one hour if you sit and watch it, fifteen minutes if you use your old laptop while it's going... why would you let a cost of <one hour drive your buying decision?

Setup time is part of the cost of a system. I'm sure that the apple machine isn't actually ready for you to use it out of the box -- if you're like most HN readers you'll have tons of tweaks you need to install before the computer actually works the way you want it to.

I'm writing this on a x220 with a 240GB Vertex3 under the hood, which is 4-10x faster than my coworker's13" 240GB macbook air for bioinformatics workloads. It cost about $100 more, and yes it required a clean install as part of setup.

The profit I've made on that $100 + 1 hour is insane... probably 100x return so far this year on decreased compile & run times (calculated as delta in experiments per day times my annual salary)

I don't believe you.

If it was major number crunching, you'd batch that crap on the fastest servers you could afford.

If it's interactive, the computer is waiting on you more than doing work.

Just admit it: you're a technophile that likes to fiddle with all the knobs. Fine. Whatever floats your boat.

But don't play stupid about the OP's article.

HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. have TERRIBLE marketing communications supported by TERRIBLE product family line ups.

The OP's point (hello!) is Apple's simplified product family allows them to achieve better economies of scale then their competitors.

Very simple.

Secondly, the HN crowd doesn't seem to consider that when selling to large corporations the Dell, Lenovo, etc. "overly complex" approach makes sense -- that there might be a reason that apple isn't the #1 computer manufacturer, especially for institutional purchases.

Fourthly, before talking about "mostly waiting on user input" you should consider the research. ("1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted") start with http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

Fifthly, you seem unfamiliar with how scientific computing works. Here's the process:

1. Hypothesis (usually but not always done by professor or adviser)

2. Find a dataset, or multiple datasets that should be able to falsify #1

3. Code up an initial test in R or Mathematica (or Matlab if you don't like FP) -- does the correlation even exist? How well do the off-the-shelf methods work?

4. If you think you can do better, write it up in C++/Java, testing as you go

5. If the process requires a lot of CPU time for near perfection (NN / RBM / GA / GP), run task on server for use in your publication (graphs / discrimination percentages)

Only #5 is really effective to put on the server... Working with Mathematica remotely is a PITA with non-university hardware (licences), and remote interfaces have annoyingly high latency IMHO.

Sixthly, I do like fiddling with knobs, but to use your own turn of phrase back at you... just admit it: you didn't think before writing what you wrote. You're not analyzing and trying to understand anything in your post, only stating an opinion backed up with no facts. Like a child wandering in to a university lecture and announcing that there are no negative numbers because your teacher told you so.

That you were not downvoted to oblivion before I saw this is merely symptomatic of HNs irrational love of apple products.

Do you buy a new refrigerator expecting to have to clean out the compressor the minute you take it home? I certainly hope not.

To put more forcefully: if I needed to maintain one of those room sized refrigerators, and could save $10,000 for a couple hours of messing with a compressor the decision is a no brainer.

I agree that mortals can't/won't do this -- doesn't mean the HN crowd is being intelligent when they say what the guy I replied to was saying :p

EDIT: Downvoters, please explain -- For people with high computing requirements who insist on the x220 / Macbook air form factor, this is an accurate picture of the ROI.

Look at the performance differences between the macbook air ssd (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) and the vertex 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/ocz-vertex-3-240gb-review...). If your job commonly has you IO bound you will see at least 100 hours of your life saved over the 2,000 hours of a year of 40 hour work weeks (a 5% savings -- not all your time will be spent IO bound). And that's not including the difference between a 2.7 Ghz and a 1.7 Ghz processor...

ps I did not downvote.

(for those curious here is the breakdown of why pbreit is wrong:

1. The guy I was replying to is by definition an HNer, and was talking about buying an air over a sony SB due to reinstall concerns. My "how odd" was in reply / directly to him.

2. Macs aren't ready to use out of the box. No computer is. You need to, at the very least, install all the apps you use and copy over your data. This takes considerable time. Did it come with Chrome? Did it come with Office? Did it come with (your editor of choice)? Did it come with Little Snitch? 1password? The caps-lock key switched to a control key? Inconsolata installed? No. And that's not a complete list by a long shot. Adding an hour long reinstall to this list isn't a big deal.

3. The x220 and Macbook air do have the same form factor from a functional perspective. They both are quite easy to keep with you at all times, hence both inhabiting the thin and light category used by most review sites. Yes the air is thinner, but it gives up being able to accept good hard drives to do so... making the x220 the smallest you can go and still get good performance.

4. I wasn't exaggerating the value of my work. I don't even think my numbers were above average for engineer pay...)

As for #3, only one of the laptops you listed fits comfortably in my girlfriend's purse. As for the Air's hard drive? She has zero complaints, and I doubt her (or many others) would notice tiny differences in sequential read times (which is, I think, a measure of app-opening performance).

re 2: It takes an hour to reinstall windows. If you swap out the hard drive (so a vertex 3 in a MBP), this is something you have to do with an apple anyway. One hour is not "much more work". Don't kid yourself.

re 3: If the MBA owner does anything CPU intensive they will likely profit by upgrading to the x220. Look at the real world numbers (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...) to get a better picture here. x220 numbers are harder to show, as no reviewers saw fit to review with a good hard drive in it -- just compare with the MBP in that review and know that the x220 with a vertex 3 is between 2 and 10x the 2010 15" MBP on those benchmarks (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6056&re...).

But really, I think you're probably right -- it sounds like a mac would be better for you

My girlfriend, and everyone else in the humongous non-power-user subset, does not care about how a Vertex 3 can bury an Air's SSD. She doesn't know the Vertex exists! If she did, she'd probably ask why she should spend $300 on it if her Air already works amazingly well.

We're talking about different groups here. You're talking about the type of people who read computer hardware blogs like Anandtech. I'm talking about everyone else in the world.

1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted. This turns out to make a big difference in productivity. See http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

I'm talking about anyone who values their time. You're talking about secretaries looking at cat pictures. You're also doing that on a thread started when a HNer said he purchases laptops via the same method.

Please:

1. Read the whole thread to ensure your "points" weren't already made elsewhere

2. Consider not replying when you don't have any information not obviously inferable from your previous post.

Calm down there, Sparky. Are you really suggesting someone doesn't value their time because they bought an Air over an X220 with a SSD? You understand that such an assertion is ridiculous, right?

Here's a "point" for you: given the economic concept of utility, are you shocked that someone would pass on an X220 + Vertex in favor of an Air and a month of groceries? How about the idea that the marginal benefit of a Vertex 3 over an Air may be tiny enough to some that they'll pass?

We haven't even discussed failure rates, which are anecdotally bad on older Vertexes; can you blame someone for choosing an Air, along with 3 years of service at any Apple Store?

Also, another "point" for you: I sincerely doubt you would've responded like that in person, so you should probably re-read HN's commenting rules and think twice next time.

2. Diminishing marginal utility is not usually considered to apply to time -- are you saying that your girlfriend would rather use a mac than add an additional ~year of work/play time to her lifespan?

3. Note that the concept of diminishing marginal utility is different than the concept of utility.

4. I'm like this in person.

Now, there are reasons to get a strong laptop. A good one is if you need some serious power on the go. Are you running that bioinformatics software while on an airplane?

Rather than suggesting I google something (what, "windows backup software"? and spend several days becoming familiar with the myriad solutions?) since you seem to be so informed on similarly performing backup software as Time Machine and this is a site meant to have civil discussions, perhaps you can recommend a Windows backup solution that can restore all your apps as easily as Time Machine can. Or, for that matter, how I can network two Windows machines together and copy all the apps from one machine to the other like I can on a Mac by copying the contents of the Applications folder.

2. There are many many different backup solutions for windows -- many of which are far better than Time Machine for certain use cases (say, managing backups for several thousand machines). You probably want to look at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/01/whats-your-backup-s... for a simple solution.

This comment continues in that line again and paints your absurd outlier case of 4-10x improvement as "an accurate picture of the return on investment" while again committing the error of thinking these 2 machines have the same form factor.

The EC2 option has always interested me, but short of EBS RAID its IO actually isn't better than a vertex 3 -- they're crazy fast; if you haven't tried them I highly recommend you do :)

See http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/14709-Windows-7-Dig...

But Aunt Tillie sure would.

When I buy a MacBook Pro I know that I get a computer that is powerful enough for me and just works. I am not going to spend a premium and computer that I hope I can get to work. If I spend that much on something I should not have to fiddle with doing reinstalls.

As a first-time Mac buyer last year I was certainly confused about the difference between the plastic MacBook and the MacBook Pro.

I find it hard to believe that simplicity of choice is a reason people buy Apple laptops.

If you're looking at the various MacBook models, you've pretty much already made a conscious decision to consider buying from Apple for reasons that had nothing to do with how many models were on display.

It was probably the reputation for good design, easy software, lack of shovelware, no viruses etc...