Moonshine Macs To End the Apple Tax

Cosmo Catalano March 12th, 2009

I’ve been paying the Apple tax, in one way or another, since 1984 and I’ve been doing it with a minimal amount of grumbling. But that last batch of MacBooks really irked me, especially the $700+ up-sell if you want FireWire. (Apple’s poverty prize, a three-year-old design with some new parts wedged into it, hardly merits mention here.)

dell-mini-9-mac-os-x.jpg
Consider this your call to rebellion.

But some recent developments may finally crack the whip on Apple’s runaway markups. It’s gotten to the point that, roughly the price of no-frills aluminum MacBook, now you can get an iMac and decently sleek, ultra-portable Dell netbook.

The desktop machine buries the $2000 MacBook Pro in terms of performance, and the netbook does the same in terms of portability. That’s two machines for 30% less than the cost of one. And, in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the past month, yes: they both run OS X.

I realize that there are some DIY costs involved with the Hackintosh, and maybe 1% of users really do need the MBP’s combo of power and portability (with another 9% self-absorbed enough to think they do). Heck, I’ll even admit that if I were man of means, the light-up keys might just be worth the two grand.

But much like Sam Adams before it, I think Apple has drastically overestimated its consumer appeal in harsh economic times. As the hackers churn out more Grandma-ready mods, and as the economic grindstone keeps milling idiot consumers into tech-savvy flour, Apple will have to seriously re-evaluate its pricing strategy.

  • http://joyeur.com David Young

    I couldn’t agree with you more. Apple is skirting on thin ice. Frankly, the rise of web apps compound the problem. I can get better from Dell. I just want the OS from Apple.

    dy

    Typed from a $1K dell 4-core with 4GB RAM. Apple won’t ever come close to that.

  • http://www.sublime.org Robin Barooah

    So what you’re saying is that you bought the desktop machine from Apple, and then a netbook from Dell, and you hacked it to run OSX?

    Fair enough, but I’m not sure how you get from this choice to the rest of your analysis. Since you were happy enough with the iMac to buy it, it sounds as though what you are really complaining about is the lack of an ultra-cheap NetBook from Apple – a complaint that many would agree about.

    If you’d really wanted a high performance 15″ laptop but wanted to avoid the Apple Tax, wouldn’t you have bough one of those from Dell and hacked that and saved even more money?

    My point is that the comments you’ve made about the MBP don’t seem to have a lot to do with the choice you actually made.

  • http://blog.magnetk.com Cosmo Catalano

    That’s the thing—I’m not looking for a 15″ high performance laptop. I’m looking to have my needs met for the lowest possible price. Portability is an absolute must, so a desktop machine has been out of the question in the past. If I want FireWire, this means dropping $2000 on a 15″ MacBook Pro.

    Baby laptops with OS X—and programs like ExpanDrive that let you effortlessly access a home machine—essentially make portability a $400 add-on to any desktop. Not a bad deal, I’d say.

    Sure, I could try hacking OS X onto higher-end Dell laptop, but that’s risky. If my Dell Mini9 decides not to work, I’ve still got an iMac that will run until I can figure things out. If the 15″ Dell went down, I’d be in all sorts of trouble. Plus, I’d still have less processing power for butt-in-chair work like video editing than the iMac gives me.

    I don’t see Apple ever making a netbook. It would gut sales for all but their highest-end MBP. Why sell someone a $500 computer when they’re already lining up to spend $1000?

  • http://www.sublime.org Robin Barooah

    Fair enough. That said, ‘meeting one’s needs for the lowest possible price’ has never really been one of Apple’s intentions or even pretentions. And the risk you’re talking about with the Dell – is that because of the unsupported / hacked nature, or because you don’t trust Dell hardware? Either way, hardly a grandma ready mod if you need a genuine machine as a backup in case things go wrong.

    Once again – I’m not knocking your choice – just suggesting that it doesn’t imply the negativity about the MBP and it’s market positioning that you imply in your original posting.

    What it does seem to imply is that for someone with reasonable hacking skills, getting a Dell NetBook as a portable second machine instead of the admittedly very costly MacBook Air is a very appealing proposition if price is the main criterion and you don’t care about legality or stability so much.

  • http://redbonecodehounds.com Jed

    I played around with the OSx86 project through two upgrades of leopard. Truth be told, keeping the machine running is kindof a pain. The real question is: what do you get on an 8gb drive running a trimmed down version of OS X for browsing the web that you don’t get from a legally and freely available version of linux, like gOS? In my mind with everything moving to software as a service, you are not really giving up much to use linux on a netbook. I can’t agree more whole-heartedly with expecting apple to distribute at least a lite version of their OS for free and with the apple tax issue. Why does extra ram from Apple cost twice what it does at newegg? if you buy a $2000 laptop, the least one could do is throw in 60 bucks worth of ram to top it off. On a positive note, the release of a 24″ iMac for 1500 is a good sign of prices moving in the more desirable direction. Well and well, with the release of iPhone 3.0 and cut and paste combined with bluetooth, and the positive dialog surrounding tethering, the next apple netbook may also be your cell phone.

  • Haig Evans-Kavaldjian

    Does anyone think running VNC on a netbook, back to an iMac, is a viable option on a reasonably fast network connection? Yes, it means the iMac is unavailable for someone chair-in-butt in front of it, and using physical media attached to the netbook might be tricky at best, but…

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