I've never been a fan of Apple products, mainly because of their habit of boxing old technology in a pretty shiny package and selling it at a much higher price.
Just to prove a point, I thought it would be interesting to see how absurdly overpriced Apple products are.
The contestants
In this comparison, I chose my mediocre spec'd 13" Dell XPS m1330 (from June 2008) and pitted it against the latest 13" Apple MacBook Pro (May 2010) with the appropriate options selected to allow the products to match as closely as possible.
Comparisons
The width of this blog doesn't really allow tabular data to be listed that well, so I had to put it all into a picture instead.
The original spreadsheet can be downloaded from here.
The total price of the Dell XPS was $1,496.28, far less than the asking price of $1,988.01 for the Apple MacBook Pro.
Remembering that this was a moderately spec'd machine from two years ago, you are paying $491.73 more for something that is similar and cheaper. The MacBook Pro doesn't offer much in comparison even though its price will heavily outweigh its worth.
However with all that said, Apple make great looking products which are extraordinarily well presented by their monstrously effective marketing team.
Apple's stocks since the release of the iPod, amazingly immune to the global financial crisis compared to HP, Dell, Lenovo and Nokia.
Their 1,000% growth (yes, one thousand percent) since the release of the first iPod is pretty damn impressive.
I openly welcome any comments to correct me if there is anything wrong in this list.
References
- 13" Apple MacBook Pro information from customisation page and Apple Store.
- 13" Dell XPS m1330 information from my invoice and CNET (for weight and dimensions).
- Prices are as of June 2008 and May 2010.
- Google Finance for the stock chart.
Update
03/06/2010 - Multi-touch trackpad on Dell XPS m1330
