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Comment by tredre3 | Hacker News Reader

> When Apple is very often double or more the price for competitive products

This is a complete lie. I've used PCs for 30 years and I'm not an apple fanboy but when you actually look at the market, there's only very few products that can compete to the macbooks to begin with and they're always in the same price range or more expensive.

> charges exorbitant prices for modest upgrades (currently $200 difference between 8 and 16 GB RAM.

This is true, but it's also true in the PC world. And PC laptops increasingly come with soldered RAMs so you don't even have the advantage of upgrading it yourself anymore.

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Macs are PCs.

And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me.

> Macs are PCs.

This is just being pedantic. "Mac vs PC" is just a widely known way to distinguish between Mac's and non-Mac's.

> And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me.

Ok now instead of looking at number of GB of RAM you get per price and show me quality and efficiency between these. I'm no hardware nerd/genius but from what I understand the Apple Silicon was out performing even what Apple CLAIMED in their keynotes and that caused everyone to scramble because they couldn't sit on their thumbs anymore. (Cough Intel)

So yeah, you may get same numbers of RAM, but that RAM isn't equal.

Apple marketing made "Mac vs PC" to try to differentiate themselves, and I refuse to adopt their marketing terms as if they are facts. Most people who work with computers will call a Mac a Mac, but won't use the "PC" category as if it doesn't include Apple PCs.

Apple Silicon is really good for what it does. Apple does not create its RAM and the RAM is indeed equal for a significant markup.

It's more than that. Historically (from 80's onward), "PC" meant "IBM PC or compatible." You could argue that x86 Macs are actually PCs.

Yeah, and you could argue that ARM and RISC-V Windows and Linux wouldn't be PCs, but I don't really see the value in using the terminology for such a dated use. It's not really useful anymore since none of the same software is compatible across different OSes anymore.

"Mac vs PC" was way after Windows software was already not compatible with IBM PCs, so by that point, the implication was just "PC == x86", and Apple was already transitioning to Intel as well. "PC" being tied to a specific Intel processor is confusing. It's all very bizarre and mostly marketing.

It's very much of a piece with Apple's infamous "what's a computer" iPad ad. Apple have always been trying to position their products as existing in some sort of technological alternate universe ("Think Different"). They go out of their way to avoid applying conventional terminology; you will never see them call AirPods "earbuds", for instance. This extends even down to the banal - their just-announced AR goggles are fastened to the user's head by way of a "Head Band", because heaven forfend such advanced technology be sullied with anything so prosaic as a "strap".

This relentless self-othering has a dark side; apart from being good marketing, it also conveniently excuses behavior that might otherwise be regarded as unacceptable - much like how rebranding small LTE-enabled computers as "mobile" reset user expectations across the board for things like admin control, advertising in the UI, the worth of software, and other pesky social mores inconvenient to the money-extracting classes.

Pedantic perhaps, but not a terrible thing to draw attention to.

My definition: Does it run x86 Windows, without a VM or emulator? Then it’s a “PC”

> And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module

To be fair to Apple, theirs is LPDDR5 rather than DDR4, and it’s built into the SOC so it’s a different product.

You can currently only buy a system with 16gb of DDR5 from framework as part of a preorder bundle, not separately, and that’s a c£400 bump which makes the system much more expensive than the mac.

To be fair to framework, they are going to release a separate ddr5 module according to their store which will be cheaper than the Mac option, but if you are buying right now (which is what counts) then Mac is cheaper.

All my laptops including recent ones have upgradeable RAM and SSDs. I usually buy laptop with smallest amount of RAM and SSD and then upgrade those myself. Way cheaper.

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