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Intel macs = lower resale value?

T

Thud

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 6, 2002
Messages
462
Until now, Macs have always been more expensive hardware-wise, but
this has been offset by the fact that they tend to hold their value much better than Wintel machines.
So.. when it comes time to upgrade, you can sell the old Mac and apply that to the cost of the new one.
I think this was because the Mac hardware was more rare, in terms of market share.

Now that Macs and Wintel use essentially the same hardware (Dell and Acer and others have Core Duo notebooks), how will Macs
hold their value? In 3 years, will a 2.0GHz Core Duo notebook be worth anything? If the price on used Wintel notebooks falls through the floor (as they tend to do) won't the same happen
for a Macbook that is essentially the same hardware?

Maybe so, but as of now the up-front price of a Macbook is on par with a Wintel notebook. So the initial cost is comparable (it can be argued that the cost of ownership of the Wintel notebook will be higher) even though resale will be about the same down the road as well.
Is that the trade-off then? Macs become more affordable, in terms of bang for buck, but they won't hold their value as much as they have been known to.
In 2 years, a Quad G5 will probably still be worth a lot of money... but an Intel based Power Mac won't be worth significantly more than a used Wintel box containing the same hardware.
In fact they will be highly sought after, like the G4 cubes.

Are we trading resale value for lower up-front cost? Discuss.
 
I think it's still too early to tell if Intel Macs will hold their resale value like the Motorola Macs have. However, I do think that the Motorola Macs will lose a lot of their resale value once the shift is made to Intel hardware. When they switch, the M-Macs will lose compatibility with the I-Macs and their value as cheap workstations will plummet. Similarly to how 603/604s and G3s dropped through the floor when they couldn't run OSX. No one will want the G5s because they can't run apps made for Intel Macs.

In the computer world, software drives hardware sales. W/O the software, no one buys the hardware.

At least that's my humble opinion. It's probably worth what you paid for it. :D :D

Thud said:
In 2 years, a Quad G5 will probably still be worth a lot of money... but an Intel based Power Mac won't be worth significantly more than a used Wintel box containing the same hardware.
In fact they will be highly sought after, like the G4 cubes.

Are we trading resale value for lower up-front cost? Discuss.
Click to expand...
 
Macs resell higher because of the operating system, not the hardware.

The fact is that a Wintel notebook will still be unable to run OSX or its software so demand for Macs won't change much, Intel or otherwise.

One OS to rule them all,
One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.
 
CPU type has nothing to do with the resale value. As long as x86 is "in", the resale value will be just as high as it was with PPC Macs.
 
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