The Apple Tax

As some of you might read, the Endpoint Technologies Associates just published a report regarding Apple’s Pricing model compared to regular PCs, all sponsored by Microsoft. I’ve just printed out (oh yes, I really wanted to enjoy that one) the report and read it. And read it again. But somehow, I don’t feel pretty satisfied and convinced about buying PCs rather than choosing Apple hardware. Let me clarify what I mean.

First of all, I really like the report. Really. I think it’s great that companies take the different pricing models serious and concentrate on judge them. Even if the whole report is sponsored by Microsoft, I still think it’s good. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe that any Apple-Fanboy might convert back to PCs after reading this white-paper. Still, I think (and hope) that some low-brow end users which might be pondering switching form their PC infrastructure to Macs might think twice.

I’m not saying this because I dislike Macs or because I’m getting paid by Microsoft for writing such lines. I’m just one of those Apple users, who use Macs because he loves the way everything is integrated and works out and because it gives him full-blown power over the whole system, since it’s “just a BSD” what runs under its hood – but I also think, that the iStuff is pretty over-priced for no other reason than maybe coolness, as already mentioned in the report.

The point which disappoints me is, that the report did not mention the stuff that matters – really matters. Instead, to me the whole document looks more like a Blog-entry, packed into a PDF and containing some cool spreadsheets and graphs. The comparisons within the report are just silly for an more experienced user. I don’t want to disassemble the whole document now, but I would like to take a specific part (page 9) as example for the reason I think this document is amateurish.

On page 9, the authors visualized the scenario they’ve described within two comparison-tables, one containing the costs for a PC and the other the costs a Mac would bring with it. The first thing I thought was: How come they include the costs for iLife Upgrade, Mac Office, Quicken and other software on the Mac table, while the PC table totally lacks of these packages? Does either the Dell or the HP, which were used as example devices bring such packages with them? I don’t believe so. Besides, what’s with the MobileMe entry? I mean, what for did they include this entry? They haven’t mentioned that any of the family-members would buy an iPhone or iPod Touch which would need to be synchronized over-the-air. And for Mac-2-Mac synchronizations there are very nice alternatives, starting from a low-level rsync up to Fruux, which by the way doesn’t exist that way for Windows.

Another point I don’t get regards the desktop-devices (HP/MacPro). Why did they choose a MacPro (a device for professional use, e.g. by music-, video- or graphic-artists) over an iMac – which would be way less expensive and also already include a 24″ TFT display, so the available panel could be used as secondary head on the iMac or on the MacBook. And why would they want to upgrade their MacPro/iMac with a ATI Radeon HD 4870 in the third year? For the kid to be able to play his ego-shooters? Oh well, guess what, these games probably won’t be available on the Mac, what kinda makes the whole upgrading thing useless. But how about spending the $260/$350 on an Xbox360 or a Playstation 3, what would be best for gaming and stuff anyway?

In the end, looked from a more experienced view, this report is nice for stopping unexperienced user to throw the rest of their money into Apple’s throat and maybe make Apple lower their prices someday, but actually the arguments mentioned within the report are ridiculous. I’m just waiting for the next “Hi, I’m a PC – and I’m a Mac“-commercial.