Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Making the Apple Switch....

With all the wonderful Macs coming out… just about all of the time, along with a large population of the technology world screaming “Apple”, who can ignore the urge to jump on the Apple boat in 2007? Apple’s now can run Windows & OS X at the same time, at separate times on different partitions, have been able to run Linux forever, have supposedly screaming fast Intel Core Duo II Processors, come with video cams built into them, are as skinny and lightweight as ever, offer beautiful glossy screens now… and yet, why am I still feeling ripped off?!?!?!

They’re beautiful, and the OS has been wonderful for some years now. The urge to use an OS built on top of a variant of FreeBSD is awesome… I just can’t ignore the stats. I venture over to Apple.com to look at the MacBooks available, to spec & price one out, there’s a whole four options. I guess Apple likes to keep it simple. They’re customizable to a degree anyway, so I’m trying to ignore that. I’m looking at the pics… the website is set up awesome as always… and one can’t ignore all the catchy phrasing and advertising that Apple has put into it, but I’m not seeing anything to that speaks to the tech in me. Where’s the power? How much RAM? How much space am I getting? Etc., etc., etc. I continue to click around, act if as I’m ready to buy one, and finally get to what I’m looking for; the breakdown of what actually is in this thing.

There’s MacBook & then there’s MacBook Pro. At first, there’s no clear discretion between the two. At closer glance, one determining factor is what screen size do you want? MacBook is available in 13” white and black, whereas MacBook Pro is available in 15” && 17”. If you already know which size screen you want, that basically makes up your mind right there. I on the other hand, happened to see the black (now I guess it was a MacBook) in person, and was basically drooling over how gorgeous it looked. At this point, I’m irritated. I would never want a screen any smaller than 15”. Why am I limited to 13” if I want a black MacBook??? Why can’t I get the 15” or 17” in black if I want to? Why in the world would this restriction ever be placed on me? It seems soo meaningless to make that type of restriction on the customer and the only reason I can think of would have to be Apple’s advantage in marketing down the road and maximizing their sales over time. Imagine, in some small amount of months from now, now Apple wants to sale MacBook Pro’s in black. Now for all the filthy rich people out there, who bought black MacBooks because they cared more about their color & uniqueness than performance, they go out and RE-buy MacBook Pro’s in black. Now Apple has gotten you coming and going, sold more laptops, and is basically a very very evil company. Trust me, they are.

Going on, I want 15”! Bump that, black isn’t worth getting a tiny tiny little screen. Now I’ve got two choices, it appears. The way the site is designed you don’t see any customization options until the end. When looking at the 15” model, there’s two options, one for $1,999 and the next one for $2,499. First impression… these comps had better have some awesome stats! For $2,500, this laptop had better fly away and come back with the printed morning paper every morning! I’m reading the stats, and sorry to say they’re ordinary. For Apple’s prearranged higher model 15” model MacBook Pro, for $500 more than the lower one, I’m getting a gig more RAM, and the same d@mn video card but with a different amount of built on RAM, and a different processor – which in my opinion is the same d@mn one as well (clocks at 2.33 instead of 2.16 WOMP WOMP)! That’s it! That’s the only differences written here. I can’t believe it.

I can not believe Apple is still ripping people off with these things. I thought it was finally time to jump on the boat… I want one, I do, but I can’t waste my money like that. The fact remains, only way I’d buy one of these new was if I had money laying around which I absolutely didn’t need (fact is I don’t!). $2,500 is more than any other laptop manufacturer you can find without absolutely looking for it, and those stats are just barely higher than normal. It’s ridiculous, and that’s not even the 17” model! Can you believe it costs $2,799?!?!? Same damn stats again, but with 40 more gigs on the hard drive, … and 2x more speed on the DVD-burner. Unbelievable… I’m done. Apple, you lose, you get no recommendations from me.