[Swordmaker]

Is there an "Apple Tax?" Gene Steinberg says "No." PING!

Mac Tax? No! Ping!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Dr. Sivana]

I am okay with Macs, but “Apple just won’t sell stripped machines,” the Mac Mini doesn’t even come with a mouse or keyboard. That is stripped. I’m okay with it, but it is stripped.

[word_warrior_bob]

What about the “PC” tax, I was always buying these expensive machines every couple of years and I wound up cursing at them a lot.

3 + years with an iMac and a Macbook and it still runs the way it did out of the box, how is that possible?

To all of you builders and tinkerers I bought the iMac as a refurb and the Macbook for a third off brand new from Craiglist.

I have no interest in learning to build my own powerful PC on the cheap, nor the interest in the maintenance, updating spyware, anti-virus, adware, etc. and running these programs often.

If you’re idea of a swinging Saturday night consists of a defragging of your PC, well I guess you got the better “deal”.

[eclecticEel]

Apple is a hardware company with a software division.

Microsoft is a software company with a hardware division. (they make X-boxes, keyboards, and mice - no computers)

The supposed Mac/PC battle royale is a media concoction.

[rlmorel]

Here is how I see it:

How many people do you know whose PC became unusable due to adware, trojans or viruses?

How many people do you know whose Mac became unusable due to adware, trojans or viruses?

I think those people who recognize this difference are very willing to pay the perceived “Apple Tax”. I know I am. And this is not to denigrate Windows, I use Windows XP at work, and in a controlled environment with strict controls and constantly updated virus definitions and patch applications, it works fine and is useful for me.

But for home use, I enjoy using a Mac. Just my choice...others may choose differently, and I respect that.

[CodeToad]

The key word here is “retail”. Retail Apple stores sell as many iPods and iPhones as anything else. There are millions of those in use. To say Apple has anything near 48% of the computer market is just hype, even of the consumer home use computer market.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Apple won’t play in the cheap PC playground, because they don’t think it’s worth it."

They also decline to subsidize their machines with gigabytes of performance-sapping crapware, too. You'll spend hours getting rid of that stuff, and some just plain won't leave your machine unscathed (cough McAfee cough).

[dennisw]

Also consider the plight of the PC user with Windows XP installed. If they want to upgrade to Windows 7, which is actually a pretty decent operating system despite still being saddled with such land mines as the dreaded Registry, they are forced to do a clean install. By clean, I mean wiping the hard drive after backing up your stuff to an external drive. Microsoft’s migration utility is limited to your own documents, not applications, such it’s of little help in dealing with the real issues, which involve reinstalling all your apps and hoping all your settings will still work even if they are restored to the same location on your PC’s drive. Yes, that’s not a given

Clean installs were never very difficult. But with the advent of external hard drives there is no excuse and you don't have to be that smart. 
I can think of one legitimate excuse
Many computers today are sold with huge hard drives that are un-partitioned except for a recovery partition
Therefore if someone fills up a 500gb-1000gb hard drive I can see where it can be an imposition to back up all that data without making mistakes onto an external. Then putting all or most back on the hard drive after the re-format or upgrade

The obvious solution is to have a partition for your operating system. For Vista/Windows 7 I allow 40-50gb on a 500gb or larger hard drive. Less on a smaller one

[altair]

On the other hand, there is a Microsoft Tax, even though Windows fans usually can’t handle this uncomfortable truth. It comes in the form of the annual subscription fee paid for name-brand security software, and the higher level of maintenance the PC box usually requires.

Sorry. This article is just too stupid. The "Microsoft Tax" refers to the fact that in the United States it is impossible to walk into a store and buy a generic X86 computer without Microsoft Windows on it. You have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get a refund if you never intend to use it and you don't have a choice about buying Microsoft license in the first place.

If Apples were the *only* X86 PC you could buy, yes, there would be an Apple Tax.

In Manila, I can walk into any computer store and buy a computer without an O/S. Why can I not do that in the US? *That* is the Microsoft Tax.

I want a computer running some flavor of Unix. Linux preferred. I don't particularly care what distro. Mac OS X is acceptable. Microsoft Windows, any version, is not. I don't want to use it, I will not use it, I don't want to pay for it.