> because $1299 is a fortune

Yes, for some people it is a serious investment.

You might win 500k or more a year, good for you, you are successful. But for people who have kids who will have to go to University ,even at 100k a year , $1300 isn't a small amount of money.

If you think people buy laptops like they buy candies well you're a privileged man, and again I wish you the best,but that's not the reality for most of us.

It's not even so much about it being affordable but rather how much it costs relative to other devices on the market. $1300 is a pretty high price point for a laptop and in that range you're competing with high-end notebooks like Apple. A Chromebook fits a niche for lightweight web-browsers, but I'm not prepared to spend $1300 for a notebook built solely to surf the net.

The thing runs linux. Like if you ever wanted a linux laptop this is for you. I just bought a toshiba cb2, and with crouton installed it's one of the best laptops I think I've ever owned (for the price).

All my laptops run Linux. Two of them came with Linux preinstalled. Two of them came with Windows preinstalled. All four had the preinstalled OS overwritten by my Linux distro of choice. So what they came with isn't really that important. (Granted, if something comes with Linux then that saves you the step of making sure all the hardware has Linux support before you buy it.)

(Random and probably a little minor) But what about those keyboards? How about those Ctrl and alt keys? Have both on each side? Actually in the same order, and spaced well for programming / emacs? That's the reason I hate my Mac pro so much, and I haven't seen a win based keyboard doing much better. The CB key layout is the best I know of.

Well, my current ASUS laptop (about $700 ~3 years ago, including the Swedish 25% VAT, Windows preinstalled) has so far worked almost flawlessly with Linux. My bottom row is Ctrl Fn Super Alt Space AltGR Menu Ctrl. Some keys are a smaller than on a full-size keyboard, but everything (except for home/end/pg/...) is in its usual spot and it works absolutely fine for me (I'm primarily writing in IntelliJ or Vim though, not Emacs).

spot on my friend, I do better than most, and still have to budget for a purchase like that.

what this does mean for me, is that older models will come down in price and become much more affordable. might even be able to pick up last years for $2-400 on ebay.

$500K/year for a developer is generally unrealistic. (Not that they don't exist, but even if you made it your life goal to obtain one of these jobs you probably still shouldn't count on it.) $100K/year for a developer is very realistic, but keep an eye on the cost-of-living; even in the US that can be anything from upper-middle class lifestyle for an individual to "barely getting by" for a family.

I live in the Midwest and have what in the US would be a sanely priced house that bears some resemblance to its cost-of-construction. I have done business trips to Silicon Valley to developers who are making only modestly more than me, if not the same as me, who are living in houses worth 5 times as much on paper (and in their mortgage payments), and they'll be in there putting in top-of-the-line granite countertops or something that I wouldn't dream of putting in. My theory is that their house is just so gosh darned expensive that the idea of dropping $2K on a new laptop or getting The Very Best Countertops (TM) seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the debt they're already carrying anyhow. While I could certainly afford a $2K laptop, it's certainly enough to make me think twice, thrice, and a fourth time before I bought it (and I tend to come in more in the $1K price range when I do, since I run Linux and not Mac. There's some nice stuff at that price point).

This laptop is a niche device, it will not appeal to persons who want the most notebook for the price.

While many of us routinely spend this amount of money on laptops or other hardware, the average Joe doesn't want to spend more than 600-700 euro on a laptop (which translates to up to $650 in practice).

So yes, for most people, this sounds like a fortune for a laptop.

I think it's actually addressed half of shortcomings of the old Pixel: 4GB of memory has been upped to a reasonable 8GB or a generous 16GB. The CPU bump is also a welcome change. Only the limited disk space is an issue.

I just wished they doubled the storage (at least) and sold them with plain old Linux as developer machines. Would be a great way to get into the hearts and minds of many programmers.

It's pretty safe to say this isn't a laptop intended for the Average Joe to purchase. They're not even aiming at that demographic, IMHO.

I do agree that making it more Linux-friendly or selling a pre-installed Linux version would be great.

To ghrifter (I couldn't reply to your thread): yes it's a tax thing, and also the cost associated with the EU mandated 2 year minimal warranty programs. Electronics are generally more expensive in euros than in dollars, even though the exchange rate of a dollar is still below 1.0 euro.

$650 dollars is about 700 euro? Well now's the time to travel to Europe!

(I suppose there is some sort of tax or import cost...?)

That's somewhat subjective.

Personally I wouldn't pay more than $300 a machine and consider $1299 to be pretty extortionate amounts of cash considering the rate of depreciation.

Hey everyone I just worked 2x the time to pay for something shiny with no productivity gain!

(I use a shitty old X201 with 4Gb RAM and an SSD from eBay connected to a monitor I skip dived because it was 5:4 ratio)

To be fair, macs depreciate at a much slower pace than your typical Windows laptop. I just sold my 2009 Mac Pro for $650.

Agreed on that point. I sold a dead logic board 2010 MBP for nearly that in 2013!

A friend of mine just sold his 2009 MacBook Pro for $1500, he originally purchased it for $2400 IIRC. That's only $900 worth of deprecation in 6 years.

Someone must have really loved that particular model. You can get an Apple-refurbished 2013 15in MBPr for that much.

Last year I bought a 2008 MacBook Pro for 200 Eur. Your friend ripped somebody off.

Or you got a REALLY good deal.

This thing was in almost perfect condition, no scratches, drops, nothing.

A friend of mine has just bought an early 2013 retina MBP with 256G SSD, etc. for that price, through classifieds.

I agree, it isn't a fortune, but it isn't cheap either. The people who complain about the price can't/don't want to spend the money to buy a high end device, but they want a high end device.

The people who wine about the costs of going high end (MacBook , Watch, whatever) aren't part of Apple's target demographic. Apple wants to (and always has) sell well made devices to people who don't want cheap, and aren't afraid to pay for it.

Not really.

I'm typing this on Thinkpad T430s with i7, two SSDs (one of them in ultrabay), 3G modem... when it was bought, it was as expensive, as Macbook Pro can be. Yet, I consider the Thinkpad worth the asking price and Macbook Pro not.

It is entirely about what you value in the product you buy. You may be totally utilitarian, or you may want fashion item. In the end, it is just stuff anyways ;)

3 months of average wages where I come from.