my sister needs a new macbook for school, said school requires macbook nothing else. i looked at the specs https://www.apple.com/au/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air/space-grey…, 2 core 1.6ghz, 128ssd, 13'3 1600p monitor, 8gb 2133 ram, and $1699? i dont know the exact price of the components but i think this is worth $600 at max, $1699 and a 2 core 1.6ghz boost 3.6ghz, is this meant to be a joke? how did apple manage to get schools to require their rip off junk? told her i can build her a 4k beast for that price but she said macbook only because school requires it (which will play 720p @ 10-20fps, and modern games wont even run on 2 cores), what the phuck seriously how did they get schools to require it.
How Does Apple Get Away with The MacBook?
Gerry H on 19/11/2019 - 16:43
Last edited 19/11/2019 - 16:45
Last edited 19/11/2019 - 16:45
Comments
"the good'ol macs cant get a virus?" is this sarcasm?
People can't be bothered to write viruses for Macs because they're much less common than PCs and hence not worth the effort 😉
you would think that the people who do buy them have more money so the ransoms would be more lucrative…
Virus's aren't just OS targeting, they can target your browser too which is what I see alot of these days.
MAC's are also far more common now. They are 100% out their in the wild.
@Zondor: Browsers have limited access to your computer. What browser virus did you encounter if you don't mind me asking?
*Windows based PCs. Macs don't get as many viruses because its based off unix which is much more secure than windows.
Well it's damn bloody hard to install anything with administrative privileges, imagine what hell the malware creator would have to go through!🤣😂
There's an increasing amount of malware being written for Macs.
They can, however the roots of Mac OS stem from Linux, with the key differentiation from Windows being the level of isolation and compartmentalization between applications and programs.
Windows doesn't have the same isolation and protection and allows more flexibility and function between applications.
One of the biggest complains with Apple OS (Phones and Mac's) is the lack of application integration. ie: you can't just get a print driver or print application and it works with all applications like you can with Windows.
While this is a downside as far as features and functionality, it offers a greatly improved security posture. (ie: a virus impacting Safari can't access your banking application), it doesn't equal immunity.however the roots of Mac OS stem from Linux
From UNIX? yes.
From Linux? no.
See the family tree - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution…
Correct, sorry I was trying to keep it familiar.
The argument around that windows is less secure than Mac these days is so wrong. Most of the time Windows is less secure because people just click yes on everything. Windows with correct configuration of priviledge is very secure and it has similar level of isolation. Viruses etc will run at user priviledge instead of admin onr
Some of your points are correct.
With windows, if setup correctly permissions can provide mitigation. But that is very different to each application being isolated by the Operating System. Just very different levels of isolation and protection.We run applocker at work and have had 0 viruses ever since we implemented it.
It's not exactly what most users do though.
@kasp: Everyone at my work hated it as they weren't able to whitelist all of our own inhouse applications. They disabled it.
Q:how does apple get away with the macbook?
sorry only people who camped for 4 nights in front of apple store to buy generic new iphone can answer this
What about the prices for upgraded RAM and storage for this laptop. Add $320 for another 8 gb of ram. $900 for 1tb SSD. Insane.
Your sister needs to change schools.
Hooray for our "free market". The next thing will be schools banning students from using Huawei smartphones due to security concerns.
I thought all smartphones would be banned
Dare to dream…
Dream it possible
They are in WA from next year.
They're quite nice laptops to use, but man what a ripoff. and ridiculous that any school would require them. what's the justification for that? theres basically nothing exclusive to macs that doesnt have some decent alternative, including lazy IT staff.
On the plus side, they hold up well over time and have very good build quality, so a used model would do quite well. I've had a bunch of used macbooks (good resale value had me hooked on buying low/selling high for a while) including one that looked like it had been stepped on a few times. there was a massive dent in the side, the lid was a bit bent etc. but it worked well, went with me overseas for a few months of study without issues.
I'd suggest a 2015 13" Pro. Has the old awesome keyboard and useful ports. Should be around $700 or something maybe and would still be good for quite a while, assuming her use isn't especially heavy. (Stay away from the older Airs, not worth the crap screen).
I'm guessing the build quality is one factor. I used my macbook daily for years before I parked it. I still fire it up every so often.
I'm also guessing ease of use, and everything just works how its supposed to 99% of the time, unlike Windows….
While i agree they are expensive, the one thing people don't consider with the cost is the level of support that Apple provides, not just while in warranty even quite a while after in my case (several times).
As an example, my 4 year old phone has some trouble recently, contacted their chat support. They could not resolve the issue, which appears to be software related, it got escalated 4 times in the online chat. Now it's being escalated to the engineering team at Apple to resolve, they are calling later this morning. I've also had repairs/replacements after warranty expired in the past too.
Not sure any other company provides that level of support as least that i've come across.
5 levels of support… at which level do they start supporting?
The main incentive for schools for Apple equipment is the management side of it, you can use anMDM to manage all your iPads/MacBooks etc which will take care of all your profiling, app deployment, security etc. If you have a BYOD program for example, the IT department would have to play support team for every device available & that just takes up way too much of their time.
Also agree with fusili that the level of support Apple provides on equipment with issues is another huge factor in it, having to try to deal with the support teams from HP for example is painful at best.
@salbee28: This is a very good reason to use Apple stuff when managing a large number of users who are probably gonna be a bit hopeless. It's good for IT staff who can do less work, and users who have other stuff to do than tweaking their setups.
The trouble is that it shifts a lot of costs onto whoever purchases the devices.
It makes sense for businesses, if they determine that an office full of Macs will reduce IT costs and improve productivity.
Makes sense for schools, who can reduce IT costs and expect their classes to go smoothly when using electronic devices.But it makes a bit less sense for parents who have the IT and curriculum savings shifted on to them as extra costs.
It'd be more fair if schools looked at the IT savings as say, one less $80k salary and used that to subsidize parent purchases.And that's without getting into whether ipads are gonna rot the kids brains or not, because whatever.
@crentist: This is the reason why most private schools shift the cost however, if parents can afford the exorbitant fees to send their children to a private school, they can usually afford these technology costs, or they will bundle the cost of these into the fees already being paid in a rent to own type scenario.
A large majority of public schools either are a lot more flexible on the BYOD devices to accomodate varying budgets, or they manage their government funding well enough to have school owned devices that are essentially 'loaned' to the students in a class set or 1:1 environment.
@salbee28: If the school is managing the student devices, then they should provide the device for free. Just like in offices.
@leiiv: Which will just result in higher school fees, which no doubt parents will be equally unhappy with & they don't even own something for the extra money they'd be paying.
I know this sounds like a joke but I actually do want to weigh in here - I was having iCloud Keychain issues and it got escalated such that I had a case manager who would liaise with me directly and update me/do remote diagnostics to my iPhone/etc and she said they went back to engineering to get it fixed. I thought it was just the usual BS but sure enough, in the next iOS version, it fixed my issue and she confirmed that my experience was actually used (along with a few others who had the same issue)…
I compare this with the runaround I got from Logitech when even though HEAPs of people reported the issue on forums and to chat, got generic troubleshooting even from their level 1 and level 2 (or so they say), and after checking other forums, turns out I was corresponding with a generic account too (apparently they all use the same 'name').
1st Responders don't necessarily have any IT experience. I suffered through the training 2 years ago, when I was between contracts. My classmates included a housewife, a baker and several teens who hadn't used a Mac. The training lasted 4 weeks and was fairly comprehensive covering MacOS, IPhone and Ipod etc. I lasted 'on the phone' 3 weeks before I quit, but I was topping the stats by then
I bought a DELL for my son, Hexa Core, 16 GB ( upgrade to 32 GB possible at $95 ), 512 GB HR ( Upgrade to 1.5 TB possible for $100 ), 907WHr Battery.
Added 2 year on site warranty for less than $1800. Friend bought the same for her son.
Her son's laptop was a bit wonky, so she called DELL support, and they were at her house, fixing it the next day !!!No need to make appointment at the Apple Geniuses, and drive to THEIR shop.
So, Who has the better service?
Oh, and I had my son's All in one DELL, bought from ebay, repaired twice, at home, under warranty.
To get something looked after at Apple, I hat to make an appointment, for a Saturday, because i work, and then had to wait about 40 minutes, because no Genius was available. Then they told me I should upgrade to new phone.
This is the most common Apple support story "You're going to have to upgrade, we can offer you a discount"
Apple refused to support me even in warranty, lying about moisture damage. I was really into apple back then. Now I've been 10 years without an Apple product. Never going back :)
Hah Hhaaa! I work at a school. You log a job into apple for a broken mac one morning and 3 days later they call back saying mac is ready for repair, please take it into the nearest apple store which is about 8km away for us. I logged a job about a vpp password change and its been with the "engineers" for 3 weeks now. Engineers might be trying to guess the answers to the secret questions from six years ago.
You break a dell though, make a call in the morning and the service guy is in your office at 4:30pm most days with a MB in hand and a spare ssd or two.
Apple support is joke right now. Dell FTW erry day.
Sounds like your service provider is just lazy AF, no one has forced any type of standard of service so a lot of them get away with being incredibly slack because they just don't care. Also if by Apple you are referring to Unisys (for onsite), then yeah they are an actual joke.
I see behind the scenes of an authorised service provider & the average job turnaround is 3 days start to finish, including shipping to & from the end user (including regional schools). But the problem they face is Apple throttling the parts until you have run diagnostics to verify a fault, which means you usually have to have the machine in front of you. There is actually a few decent Apple service providers out there if you are lucky enough to find them ;)
Macs are actually much harder to manage/maintain from an IT support perspective than a Windows system is. It has become increasingly more difficult overtime too with each new macOS release stripping out things to make it harder to manage.
Also honestly whilst IT offers suggestions for device procurement, we don't always get what we want. I would never suggest macbooks or especially ipads but we have them. The principal / people who have the final say just cant look past that glimmer the apple products seem to give off. All practicality & reasoning goes out the window when you desire something.
the thing is, those people that buy apple stuff don't feel being ripped off.
they gladly offer their soul to get apple devices.they gladly offer their
soulkidney to get apple devices.Too late now, but they should have been offering their pancreas.
An eye and a leg. After 2 products they buy, they can't see why they bought an Apple in the first place, but can't run from them either.
Can you not just buy a windows laptop and put macOS on it? Using bootcamp or anything similar?
yea thats what i was thinking, i need to speak to her teachers if a hackintosh is ok. seems school has very strict rules, and its private school too lmao.
I can't see what their argument against that would be. If it is just compatibility for Mac stuff then that should hit all the check boxes, unless of course they want to be difficult.
The same reason you're not allowed to download pirated content on school/Uni connections. It's not legal and they wouldn't want to be caught up in it.
Also OP hasn't considered many other factors like software, support, quality of device, privacy, school system admin/rollout etc. I'm not Macbook fan but it's clear it's not the same value proposition as a plastic Acer chromebook. But their post history likely means they won't understand that either. Specs specs specs, durrr!
@Hybroid: There are many business grade laptops which outspec this for cheaper and have similar quality.
Build a hackintosh and put an Apple decal on it (from any iphone/iPad box) say it’s built to order
seems school has very strict rules, and its private school too lmao
Guess the above reference to a private school tells you why its an expensive MacBook required "No private school with yearly fees of 10-12k would want to lower their profile by allowing windows lappies I think.
So your sis goes to private school and you bit$h about MacBook price :)
its the rip off price i bit$h about. i'd gladly buy her a $2k+ windows laptop with 2080 and 8700k. i dont care about the money, but im sick of being ripped off so badly even for my parent's money (im inheriting afterall).
@Gerry H: On-Sale $1400-$1600 buys more than a capable MacBook with Retina Screen.
You say you would happily buy an unlocked CPU (k) for a child, well I hope you never work in IT support.
Yes you hear it all the time same with the phones, you are not buying the hardware.
Both the CPU and Memory will perform better in the Macbook than a PC, it's all about optimisation and pairing components.
Yes I use a Windows PC and build my own high-end Windows PC rigs.
The entry i5 CPU is fine, the battery will last a lot longer.
Everything is cloud so consider (yes you can't upgrade), but what local storage do you really need? Local storage also needs to be backed up. They get 1TB in the Cloud of O365 just use that and don't worry about backups ect.
If it was windows, sure I wouldn't consider less than 1TB, but I would happily buy a new MacBook with 128gb.
Same with RAM, due to the inbuilt compression RAM also goes a LOT LOT further, but Windows is starting to close the gap on RAM.
@UltimateAI: This is a load of bullocks. Even if it is more optimised, 8GB of RAM is 8GB of RAM. When you can buy a windows computer with 16GB of RAM for the same price or less, the point is moot. There's no way that Apple will be able to use 8GB better than windows can use 16GB. Not even close.
A quick search confirms that ASUS can produce a better laptop for half the price. https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/497582
A quick search confirms that ASUS can produce a better laptop for half the price.
You can stick a terabyte of RAM in a junky laptop shell and it isn't going to make it "better".
Go pick up that ASUS laptop in your hands and it won't take long to conclude the macbook build quality is unmatched.
@watwatwat: I've compared my dell latitude against an equivalent macbook air and they were very similar build quality.
@watwatwat: That feeling of quality is just all the parts being either glued or soldered into the shell.
@supersabroso: No offence but you have just shown your cards.
Memory compression, basically gives you a lot more bang for your buck, Sure windows has started doing this, but the maturity of compression in Mac's is well ahead was a mainstay back in 2013
Just like compressing a file on disk, it reduces the physical memory requirements. So you basically only require half the physical ram for the same result, sometimes even less!!
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/
https://www.lifewire.com/understanding-compressed-memory-os-…Putting this aside, the biggest memory performance gain comes from OSX not requiring a swap\page file and when it has one rarely using it.
Where as put 128 GB of Memory in a Windows machine, disable the page file and watch many applications such as JAVA simply crash because they need a pagefile to operate. Windows loves paging!!!I am pro windows, and there are many things I can do on windows I can't do on a Mac, but credit when credit is due.
Where as put 128 GB of Memory in a Windows machine, disable the page file and watch many applications such as JAVA simply crash because they need a pagefile to operate. Windows loves paging!!!
What on earth… I've been using Windows without a paging file ever since 16GB RAM + SSD. I'm not just talking home laptop, but build/dev box's at work. We're a Java shop and I've never heard of anyone having issues with no paging file. If you've got your JVM memory limits configured properly (server or client environment) you're not going to have an issue.
@Gerry H: and private school is not a ripped off when you can get similar education free from the public system?
you got ripped off to a tune of 10-20K every year compared to 1K :-)
A non-technical person shouldn't be using a hackintosh, they are odd at the best of times.
Exactly, they are a nightmare to get running initially and then any OS update can/will break things all over again.
I have a range of Windows and Apple devices (for software development), the latter being more expensive but everything 'just works'.
Yep - I wouldn’t suggest using one for anything remotely important either such as when you’re trying to do an assignment.. And honestly if your sister is in a private school which requires MacBooks, I would guess it probably wouldn’t be a great look for her to rock up with a hackintosh even if it works or has better specs. Inevitably it will have reliability issues (which IMO my MacBooks in the past have been great at being reliable when I needed them to). All it needs is one system update to brick the thing.
Would not recommend a Hackintosh if your sister is not technical.
Will pay for private school, won’t pay the extra $1000 for the MacBook, which will maintain its value exceptionally well because of the very issue you’re complaining about.
Quite a few people who go to private schools arn't rich that are always flexing their wealth everywhere. Their parents have to sacrifice alot to get them to that school in the hope that they'll recieve a good education and be surrounded in a good enviornment. I went to a Catholic school and it was like that for at least 1/2 of the cohort. Please don't always assume that just because they go to one they're rich
@worrierwan: One could say private schools are a rip off considering the public system is perfectly fine. I agree they’re over priced, but so are private schools. You pay more for prestige, but prestige isn’t always better.
As someone that works in IT in a private school, I completely understand why they ask for a specific OS. Supporting multiple Operating Systems is a massive pain in the ass.
They're definitely overpriced though, and I'm glad I work in a Windows OS school.I would send my kid to school with a PC. Screw them. Name and shame school !!!
At our school students buy a Mac and it includes full support and insurance.
That would be very hard to do if you turned up with a random computer.
lol thats clearly nothing more than a correlation with some common underlying cause for work efficiency and tendency to use macs. maybe people who want to use macs are more well organized and obviously these types do better job wise.
Well why would the better workers choose Macs over Windows when they could get a 4K beast with the same price? Surely they would consider that over the overpriced 1600p screens they can get
I am one of the few that got to pick their laptop for work, got myself a nice Surface Book 2
u just defeated urself with that statement. people who play games are clearly less motivated than people who are occupied enough with work everyday to not think about games. to suggest using macs improve work efficiency is beyond retarded. its nothing more than the personality difference of mac vs windows users.
personality difference of mac vs windows users.
I use MacOS, Windows and Ubuntu. Do I have dissociative identity disorder?
to suggest using macs improve work efficiency is beyond retarded
Not really.
Have you seen many comments about people's Macs rebooting on them for updates whilst they're in the middle of something at work? I've seen many, and had many cases myself or with colleagues at work.
How about any of the numerous technical issues people have with their Windows PCs/Laptops.
I'm not an Apple fan or user, but their vertical integration removes a significant amount of headache that you get from having various pieces of hardware trying to run the same software.
@Chandler: yes the updates is a huge thing, i forgot about it. but it was only introduced with windows 10. about technical issues, for the lay grandma who only knows how to browse the internet, MAYBE macbooks are better. for semi-knowledgeable-about-pc people (most of ozb) any technical issue they cant resolve requires professional support anyway.
lay grandma who only knows how to browse the internet, MAYBE macbooks are better
I'd actually be giving her an iPad over a Macbook. Possibly a Chromebook? Probably not an Android tablet (do they still exist?). Maybe a Windows laptop…?
Bearing in mind my comment above was talking about OS issues in a organisational environment, not or or a few users at home.
for semi-knowledgeable-about-pc people
There's less of them than you think.
any technical issue they cant resolve requires professional support anyway
And here's a possible answer. The school only wants to deal with (or possibly are only capable of dealing with) the technical issues that come with working with one software package (Mac).
@Chandler: then i wouldnt be very happy with the school, my parents are paying a fortune every year and they couldnt even shell out the dime for windows support? guess she needs to change schools.
Actually this is crap, most studies have shown that office workers benefit from 2 x 1080p screens compared to a single 4k.
Using a Laptop screen day-to-day is not optimal.Even with autoscaling ect, productivity and usability suffered with 2 x 4k screens set to higher resolutions was not optimal.
Not saying don't get 4k HDR, I would just to future proof, just saying there is no link between screen resolution and productivity for office workers.
Clarity and Glare Reduction are bigger factors.
This study is flawed. IBM offered an opt in arrangement. That is you can choose to use a Mac if you want. Thus people who are more comfortable using macs can switch in.
If IBM FORCED all employees, even those not familiar or comfortable with Macs, then it would be worth talking aboutEh. For context, I work at a tech company and everyone is issued with a macbook on the first day of work. You are able to exchange it for a dell precision if you want, and believe it or not, 95% of all employees use mac. Most have never used a mac, including me, and honestly, they are one of the best experiences I've had.
totally get you. The only apple device I would consider buying is the iPad. My 7 year old iPad is still going strong.
I used to like the Macbook Air and used one for the last 8 years. Didn't mind paying the extra then for overall design and I don't really care about the hardware. When I was looking at buying a new laptop earlier this year, I found out that they have been getting issues with their butterfly keyboards for years (still no fix from Apple). I miss some features of Mac OS though.
yea not like im accusing all apple products. iphones are top notch in the phone space, ipads also ok my sis is fine using her ipad pro (for much cheaper than macbook), the specs arent bad for the price. but $1699 entry macbook with 2 core, 128 ssd, 8gb 2133 ram!???? literally a scam. and their dirty marketing made her school force the students to buy this junk.
literally a scam.
Obviously not. It actually is a "top notch device" and the built quality far surpasses every other laptop in existence. A scam would not make them the most valuable company in the world.
You can afford the private school fees so might as well go buy the laptop. They also have an education discount.
figurative speech. and they are the most valuable company due to their dirty marketing practices sucking people into their hard to escape ecosystem and infecting the education system, not because they offer a superior product or innovate constantly (only innovation was iphone LOL, they bought their proprietary software companies and bought their bionic chip design company too). oh build quality costs a fortune and people who arent isheeps really care about "that apple feel". keep saying the macbook is top notch, just making a fool of urself shows u dont even know wat the hardware.
i already said its not about the money, its the principle of not getting ripped off so badly. edu disc is 10% off a product overpriced by 200%.
due to their dirty marketing practices sucking people
Oh I see, you're a biased conspiracy theorist.
Go give the kid your made-at-home laptop running a non-native operating system to save a few bucks. Good luck.
overpriced by 200%.
Just because you can't afford it, it doesn't make it overpriced.
@watwatwat: "Just because you can't afford it, it doesn't make it overpriced."
spoken like a true isheep
@Gerry H: Apple have priced their products at a point to maximise profits and ensure customers keep buying. There are lots of people who always say "I can't believe Apple can charge so much for xyz". If you owned a business, and could get away with high prices and still retain customers, would you change your business model?
If money is factor, don't buy apple products, easy!
its like how some require ipads only as tablets.
apps? the good'ol macs cant get a virus?