Apple Loses Its Shine

[equalme]

Well I've never been a real fanboy of either sides.

My very first smartphone was the original iPhone which was innovative at that time. Used it for two years before switching over to Android for then three years. Now I am back to the iPhone 5 which I fell right back in love with. It's simple, works, fast, and glitches less than Android did. I also hated how with each major update with the Android, they always changed some crap around that was very annoying (i.e. removing the contact list tab from the phone command).

Now with the PC world, I've always built my own desktops and owned a few laptops (Asus FX, HP, Dell). The HP and Dell laptops were only consumer series so the price were around $6-700. Quality was crap. Plastic body and hinges ended up getting loose after a year or two.

After I sold off my desktop, I decided I wanted a higher quality laptop..something thin and light. Now I've only messed with OSX a few times at the store and really had no clue how everything worked in it. So it came down to either the Macbook Air or the Samsung 9-series. I was also deciding between the 13" or 15". I took one look at the Samsung 9-series and noticed that the screen quality on the 13" vs 15" was completely different. Further research into it showed that Samsung used different panels on them..seems reasonable if only the difference in quality was not so apparent.

I ended up settling for 13" for better portability. At least the Samsung 9-series 13" had the good screen, and I was pretty set on purchasing the Samsung....until I found out that it only came in 4GB memory with no option to upgrade or custom order. Really?!

Now I'm a owner of a 13" Macbook Air which I use quite often everyday. I have gotten used to OSX and can see my future upgrades will be with Apple as well. The one thing I do love the best about the MacBooks is the mag-charge connection. IMO, all products should have this, but I guess Apple has a patent on it probably.

By the way, I don't see myself upgrading every year just because Apple comes out with something new. I only upgrade my phone every two years whenever my plan is up for renewal and I get the subsidized phone price. And since I don't play pc games anymore, the MBA will stay for quite a few years.

 

[buddybd]

^^I'm in a similar boat as you are anthongy except I still play games.

At the time of my purchase (July 2011) not a single Ultrabook came close to what the Air was back then, so the decision was easy. But UBs have changed a lot since then and the MBA design is still the same as it was 4 years ago.

Apple can be so slow to adapt at times, once they get a lead on something, they milk it till they have no choice but to do something else.

Their shares were overpriced anyway, 700/share never was a stable point, and anyone with 1/10th of a brain knows that. Losing it's shine? Maybe, but share prices are definitely not an indicator of that. It'll come up again after their TV release, and up again when they do something new.

 

[c3141hf]

In other words, the Apple machine isn't 2x-3x more?

I configured the most expensive Macbook Pro I could and then configured a Precision using whatever it took to raise its price to the same price as the Macbook Pro. I actually had to drop the Macbook Pro down to 512GB because I couldn't get the price of the Precision high enough to match the 756GB without going over (the only options were the use of a desktop processor or two 512GB SSDs in RAID 0).

The Precision has far superior specs. It has faster RAM, a better GPU, better wireless, military grade construction, dual pointing (trackpad and pointing stick), three mouse buttons, built in optical, many more ports (no need for expensive Thunderbolt cables) and user serviceability. The only thing the Retina has over the Precision is the display and that benefit is marginal at best (not to mention the image persistence problems that people have been having with them).