I’ve been thinking about getting a Mac for about 3 years.  Today I finally broke down and bought one (mini Mac).  Before I get to that, a brief note on how Apple discourages people from buying their stuff:

Apple is unique in the PC Biz in many ways, including how they release, promote and sell their computers.  A typical PC company like Dell is constantly revising their products, and adjusting system prices as their component prices fall (and/or in response to competitors).  If a new processor, say a 4.0 GHz CPU is introduced, you can count on Dell having a PC available incorporating it within a week or two, and a steady month-by-month fall in that PCs price thereafter (and a steady improvement in supporting software and hardware, as better stuff becomes available).  When you buy a Dell, you know that 6 months from now, a better Dell will be available at a cheaper price, but the price drop/performance improvement is gradual, so you never feel TOO much buyer’s remorse as steadily better machines appear.

Apple, by contrast, rarely changes anything within a given computer lineup (iMacs, PowerBooks, etc), except at single event occurrences, often in conjunction with trade shows.  But when a change does occur, it’s not gradual – it’s more like a 30% performance improvement or cost drop or the like.  And if you just bought your Mac the week prior, you feel really stupid when the new ones roll out for $300 less.

So, you feel like you have to game the system – always trying to buy just after a new computer has been announced.  But even then, Apple works hard to make you feel like an overpaying stooge in other ways.  Most notably, Apple is now in the habit of upgrading their operating system, OS-X, at roughly 12 month intervals.  And they charge users $129 per upgrade.  (Windows XP has gone through its last two major upgrades – service packs 1 and 2, without charging end-users).  It’s been announced by Apple that their next OS-X upgrade (10.4) will be released in June.  So I feel like a stooge for buying a mini Mac today, knowing that if I just waited 3 months, I’d get that new OS for free.   But if I waited for the OS upgrade, then they’d probably be rumbling about something else that’s really cool and would be available if I just waited another 3 months. 

Apple could mitigate this problem in a few ways.  For software in particular, it would be nice if they offered free upgrades for software released within, say 3 months of your computer purchase, and a substantial discount for new versions released within 6-12 months of your purchase. 

A major reason why I’ve held off on a Mac purchase for the last 3 years is that, whenever the mood/need for a Mac struck me, it seemed to be the wrong moment to buy (i.e. something cool was right around the corner), and whenever something cool came out, it wasn’t a buying moment for me.

Anyways, I finally broke down today and bought it because I’ve been playing with several cross-platform development systems (Flash, Java, C with SDL), and need a Mac as a testing platform.  The mini Mac set me back a bit more than I’d planned.  The base price of the machine is $500, but I had to add a keyboard (don’t have a USB one), and extra RAM (standard is only 256, which is not sufficient for serious use of OS-X).  With shipping, the machine was $625. 

But the real kicker was the KVM switch.  For those who’ve never used one, a KVM switch is a device that allows you to share one *K*eyboard, *M*ouse and *V*ideo Monitor (hence the KVM acronym), among multiple machines.  I bought a Belkin 4-port KVM (allowing me to share the devices among 4 PCs), with some cables, for $275.  So all told, my $500 mini-Mac set me back $900.  I’ll post some Mac thoughts when it arrives (mini Macs and KVM switches are both back-ordered by 2+ weeks)