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guest_
· 5 years ago
· FIRST
Well- not quite $5k for the case- but as a mostly metal artistic case- several hundred dollars tends to be what you can get a fancy looking plastic case for. “I’d never buy one of those! I only buy $50 or less cases!” Oh. Ok. Well- this isn’t for you. It’s for people who like nice looking cases and would buy a $200+ case if they were doing their own build. Now- a windows license is $100+, OSX is $25. The cost of development and updates to the OS are included in the hardware price- since it’s less common and more difficult to run OSX on home built hardware- the cost of software is amortized in the hardware as Apple knows they’ll most likely be the supplier of the machine you run it on, and those upgrading with old machines can upgrade OS for dirt cheap. Wow. How thoughtful.
guest_
· 5 years ago
Now- the architecture of the Apple system is such that you can’t run just ANY ram or components you want. Even on the intell machines. So you can’t just buy any $50 ram card that fits the slot and shove it in- even if you’re building your own machine to run OSX. A capable but low end machine roughly equivalent to a several generation old Mac Pro costs about $500 to build. But- it won’t be able to crunch heavy stuff like a pro. It’ll just do low hp processing like web browsing and the like as fast.
guest_
· 5 years ago
But you CAN, with some know how, build an OSX machine that keeps up with a modern pro for less than retail- but that’s true of any off the shelf PC and most other things- one you build yourself will often cost less than most things you can buy- but you have to know how, and spend your time and effort on it. It also doesn’t just “plug in and run out of the box...” you’ll have to do bios set up, installs, DSDT’s...
guest_
· 5 years ago
And when you’re done- it still probably won’t function as “clean” and “smoothly” as an off the shelf machine. I mean hell man- a steak at a steak house can be $30-70 in the low to mid price range and I can get 2-5 steaks of like quality from the store and cook them myself for $5-20. Do you add the cost of ingredients of a pizza or a soup or a slice of cake from a restaurant too? Most people aren’t eating out to save money you know?
guest_
· 5 years ago
Tl:dr- you can make a vibrator for yourself or your partner out of like $1.00 by wrapping an old motor and some batteries in duct tape. Bring that out on a first date and I’ll give odds that most people aren’t coming back unless you really put it down with your dumpster toy. Some people like nice, polished, well made looking things and are ok spending money on them. The costs of the hardware used are only part of the equation- they wrap up r&d and software costs in there too.
