With all the Apple related coverage focusing on the new iPhone that is to come this summer, all the other products have been neglected by the press. This is a great injustice as Apple has top of the line products so I will try rectify part of this injustice by writing a piece on the notebook series.

Macs have always been some kind of iconic products that everyone wanted and for the laptop version this statement is pretty much the same. The switch to Intel processors had the potential to change this perspective as there was no hardware difference anymore between the Macs and the other computers. This was not the case as Apple has continued to deliver top quality and there buyers base has broadened covering people who never considered changing their Windows OS for the Mac OS X.

The reason for the migration from non-Apple to Apple laptops is the ability to run both OS X and Windows on the same MacBook. The Macs were now using processors compatible with Microsoft’s OS and Apple made available a program that allowed Windows XP to install on the computer together with their own OS. As a consequence, people who wanted to have a taste of the Apple but missed Windows applications had a workaround for this situation.

But the software was not the only reason for the increase in the MacBook sales so let see the hardware specs of a $1999 MacBook Pro. The Intel Core Duo is a great processor and the 1 GB of RAM is enough even for the most demanding applications available today. The ATI graphics card will flawlessly display the latest eye-candy functions and the 120 Gb SATA hard drive can store thousands of pictures, videos or music files.

All of this sound pretty impressing, but (almost) all the producers offered the Windows OS pre-installed on their laptops and the hardware is pretty much the same as with the Macs. So why is the Mac so desirable? Well, the truth is Apple’s products are (almost) flawless as they don’t offer entry-level solutions, but they offer solutions that will work (apparently this policy is paying off). However, this comes at a cost as the Macs are very expensive products and the number of people willing to spend so much on a computer is small.

The press has its own influence in this perception of Apple and its products as the number of good reviews clearly outnumbers the number of less favorable ones. Mainly because many of the reviewers are proud owners of such products and they are satisfied with them. So the quality comes back at a strength twice in Apple’s favor.

I myself would not pay as much as $2000 or more on a laptop because I consider I don’t need all that power, but still I want a MacBook Pro one because is a sexy product, both in design and in features.

Filed under Apple, Mac