In Defense of Apple
Apple — “Let’s see how deep your pockets go”
Apple — “How much will you pay for experience?”
Apple — “Professionals will definitely use a tablet”
Ok enough with the parody quotes.
It seems people love to pick at a single company at a time.
Samsung makes an explosive phone and well…. now the internet wants ISIS Samsung crossovers. Apple makes a phone that’s bezel-less but has a notch and everyone makes fun of it. Printer companies make 240 fold profits off of ink and make a cheap liquid the most expensive liquid on earth — and everyone ignores that.
I was trying really hard there to think of instances of companies and things that companies do that people don’t instantly make fun of with only mentioning Apple once.
Bottom line is — Apple isn’t as bad as you might think when you consider what you get.
Let’s start with 2018. The MacBook Pro 13 inch with 8th gen CPUs starts off at $1,800 and for that, you get a quad core I5, 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD also 4 thunderbolt 3 ports, if that counts for anything. Throughout this article, I will be comparing it against the Dell XPS 13 inch. Mind you, I will be adhering to the $1,800 MacBook Pro 13, and not the $1,300 due to the fact the $1,300 and $1,500 MBP 13 models have not been updated to the 8th gen CPUs yet, and this can change in the coming months. The XPS I am looking to compare it with is $989 right now on the Dell page, but they are advertising it’s $110 off.
Dell for the XPS 13 advertises on their site that their SSD is PCIe based, but according to a test done by LaptopMag, the MBP 13 did 2,519 MB/s file transfer on a 4.9 GB file on the SSD. Compared to the XPS 13, that’s over a 6X improvement, the XPS did 399 MB/s. The synthetics are a bit closer, but still a 2X improvement at least from MBP to XPS. When it comes to video editing, LaptopMag didn’t say how long the footage was they were rendering, but the MBP did better. Transcoding a 4K clip to 1080P took 14:47 in their testing. The XPS trailed behind at 16 minutes flat.
But not everyone needs a 2.5 GB/s transfer rates on their local SSD. I’m also not going to say “nobody needs an extra minute off if they’re anywhere near normal”. MBP has it in the name, it’s made for professionals. Macbook Pros are toted around by people like movie editors, music producers, and all types of other professionals that need more power than you or me. A movie editor won’t be editing a 5-minute clip from 4K to 1080p, they’d be editing 8k files bigger than a lot of games pre 2016 and a lot of professionals use specialized software that is purpose-built for their profession and sometimes are made to be used on macs.
The price difference though isn’t only about speed. The MacBook Pro is made out of simply one block of aluminium. Macbooks are known for impeccable build quality and their materials. Almost everything in and on a MacBook is aluminium, PCB, and glass. I think the only exception to that is the rubber feet. Compared to a lot of laptops that are made straight out of plastic, maybe sometimes a bit of aluminium in the chassis and inside.
Apple isn’t only about the MacBook Pro. The iPhone is the biggest part of Apple. No matter what anyone says, the fact that the iPhone is a big thing is true and will not change for the foreseeable future. iPhones have been pioneers of the smartphone industry. By Apple making the iPhone a fashion statement, they blew up, and along with that so did every other smartphone. The truth is, smartphones would not be anywhere near as complex as they are without the iPhone 2g, 3g, 3gs, 4 and 5s.
Apple always made powerful phones since they have made phones. And even though it seems like they can take things away, in reality, the whole tech industry follows suit and it becomes the norm. Another consequence of Apple’s existence in the smartphone market is positive, the smaller companies that have to really fight for every 0.10% of market share are forced to do so by innovating. They innovate, make a new feature and if it sticks it’s picked up by everyone in the industry.
A few examples are apps. Apps were definitely around before Apple made the app store. But Apple making their App Store and making it so well and convenient definitely drove the popularity of smartphones. There is also the 5s, the first phone with a 64 bit CPU, and now it’s impossible to find a 32 bit CPU in any phone from the past 4 or so years. There is yet again the iPhone X which has made the whole bezel-less game a bunch more competitive. There is now the XS which has not yet shown to influence the industry in major ways just over a month past its launch, but it is the first mainstream phone with a 7 NM CPU. This has to not only be pushing Qualcomm, but Intel especially to make 7 NM CPUs. If TSMC can make a 7 NM CPU why can’t Intel?
In conclusion, in defense of Apple, you do get a decent bit for your money. You get better build quality than most other brands, you get better batteries, faster SSDs than every other brand, and generally a good screen. Apple sets trends. Apple pushes forward the industry in a huge way.
Maybe cut them some slack.
