thoughts on the Apple Tax

I keep on hearing about the Apple Tax again, and I keep on hearing people on both sides of the issue getting quite upset about it. The thing is: both sides are right.

The Apple fanboys say that if you take a Mac and then go to Dell (or Sony, or Lenovo, or whoever) and configure a machine that's as close to identical as you can make it, then the cost of the Mac and the cost of the Dell are just about the same, and the Mac is sometimes cheaper. This is true, and takes no more than five minutes on some hardware manufacturer's website to verify. The PC fanboys respond to this by saying that their hardware is cheaper. This is also true, and takes no more than five seconds at Best Buy to verify.

At this point, where both sides of the argument have made completely accurate statements that really can't be argued, they find other things to argue about. They argue about what reasons people should buy hardware for, and say that anyone who is buying on other criteria is either dishonest or an idiot. They argue about the applications included with purchase. They throw potshots about the operating systems, or the number of buttons on the mice, or a hundred other points.

If you read my blog, you know that I'm an Apple fangirl. I've got two Macs sitting on my desk here at in my office at Microsoft, and a WinXP box that gets used maybe a couple of times per week. At home, there's a total of four Macs and no PCs. I've got an iPhone that I bought on launch day. My fangirl cred is pretty strong here.

But let's not pretend that Apple hardware is, or should be, everything to everyone. If you've only got $300 to spend, you've got the option of some great little netbooks and some pretty reasonable desktops, and all of those options only run Windows. You have to get up to a grand before you can reasonably start to consider a Mac, and that only gives you a single purchase option. (Sorry, while I love the Mini, I don't think that it's a good choice for most buyers.)

I think that it's fair to say that there's an Apple Tax, given that the starting point for buying a Mac is so much higher than the starting point for buying a PC. Arguing about whether the tax is one that's worth paying is a valid discussion, if we can manage to have it without turning it into some kind of holy war. So far, I'm not seeing anyone being terribly willing to have the discussion without getting rabid about it.