Their machines have always lasted. I bought a refurbished Intel Macbook Pro 13" for personal use in 2015, and kept it for 7 years (I did replace the battery with an iFixit kit along the way). I only upgraded because I figured there's no way I would tell people I work with professionally to depend on hardware that old, so in later 2022 I replaced it with a refurbished M1 MBP 13" which I'm still using and have no plans to replace any time soon.

> I think Apple's real problem is that they built machines that can last.

So do Toyota and Honda, and their sales seems be pretty steady.

I also use the M1 mini. It replaced my 2009 Mac Pro. Apple didn't always make solid machines, like the crap 2016-2019 MBPs, but now they've gotten it right.

This is why they are pushing into services. Now the devices are (profitable) channels for upselling. Cook was willing to do some of this, but the new guy seems more interested in this.

Unfortunately it degrades a major value prop of using Apple in the first place.

Problem? Aren't they selling like cake because of how good their MacBooks are? Other companies aren't that good and I imagine they don't sell as many laptops as Apple does.

Ranking SSDs by random-access performance, where Apple’s costly storage has typically excelled, shows prices ranging from 300-600 USD with cheap and costly outliers; the third-best drive is $360 USD, but the second-best at $450 has IIRC uniquely better thermals among highest-performance SSDs and so can be used at full speed in compact systems like a Mac Mini. That’s perhaps 390€, which is only a 2.8X price multiplier, rather than the 3.6X perceived if only comparing with high-heat, low-cost drives — but, in the live euro market, to the best that I can tell from overseas, this drive is only available at 450-500€, suggesting that in a direct comparison on the open market, Apple is only selling at a 2.4X-2.2X multiplier rather than at 3.6X as claimed.

I have no position on whether this ought to materially alter the outrage, but the point about low-heat components tends to get lost when comparing PC parts and Mac parts, so duly noted.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/benchm...

What would you cut? The Mini has become more expensive because of RAM and SSD prices. There isn't much you could cut to get down to Neo prices.

You'll be looking for a while, looks like they're going for $600-700 used currently. You can get a used M1 Mac Mini for around $350 though. Macs don't depreciate nearly as quickly as PCs do.