what's another 3k/employee for a laptop
For mundane business use we're talking about more like $1K (USD) for a Macbook Air versus roughly $700 for a halfway decent Dell.
Or then again... maybe $200 for a Chromebook is a better comparison, for companies that just want to give their employees a way to run web apps and check email.
8GB RAM and 256 SSD? Even my phone has double of that.
Is $200 a good deal for that extra 8GB? Oh hell no. But we're still an extremely long way away from $3K as initially claimed and the idea of "basic" business users needing >8GB is pretty debatable.
This discussion is ridiculous. If somebody is going to claim that Product XYZ is overpriced but obviously had no idea what they're talking about and are objectively off by a factor of greater than 2x -- 130%! -- that's worth pointing out.
By the way. Looking at Dell's mainline 13" Latitude laptops with 16GB, guess what? They start at $1,065 and most of them are more than that.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/scc/sr/laptops/latitude-lapt...
I certainly do know you can certainly get a new Dell with 16GB for less, or even just buy a carload of old laptops from a local e-cycler for like $100 each and slap some DIMMs in them. I've done it. I mean I get it. I'm not saying everybody should roll out a fleet of Macs, I'm pointing out that it's not some totally outlandish thing that costs "$3K" per user.
My first job (small dev agency) after moving to Amsterdam was all Macs despite peanuts salary.
They regularly offered decommissioned Macs on a big discount, so that brings some return.
But it's directly related. If you save money on salaries, you'll save money on IT equipment, office rent, perks, as well.
I've been working in central Europe for a decade and never worked at a compony offering Macs to its workforce. If you move to the super expensive cities, Munich, London, Stockholm, Amsterdam, etc, where wages are much higher, you'll start seeing more Macbooks being offered by emplyers because when you pay a single worker 100k/year and spend millions on your office building, what's another 3k/employee for a laptop? Peanuts. Similarly it's rare to see jobs paid 2k Euros/month but get a 3k Macbook from your employer.