Quote Originally Posted by Fiveways
I'd recommend a Mac because a lot of what you're paying for in that initial purchase is the quality of the display you're getting.

That's a common misconception. Apple's MacBook Pro displays have always used the cheapest, junkiest type of displays possible: 6-bit TN. (At leastfor the 2006-2010 years that I've researched.) In 2010, they used aSamsung LTN154BT08 display panel.Anyone who has used a MBP and a *good* laptop displayside-by-sideknows just how inaccurate the Apple displays are. After that experience, you wouldn't dream of doing any color correction on one.I've compared my $2700 MacBook Pro's 6-bit TN with my $900 no-name laptop's 8-bit S-IPS, and it's night and day.



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I threw my junky 6-bit displays on the trash heap 10 years ago, at the turn of the century. Yet Apple is still putting that cheap garbage on their high-end MBP. Why? It doesn't even make sense. Of all the places they can cut corners, why the display? People are already paying $2,000 for a $1,000 laptop -- why not make it $2,500 and put an 8-bit display on it? Apple customers are used to paying through the nose for everything, what's another $500? I don't know why Apple does it, but I'm embarrassed for them. I hope that Apple will someday upgrade to 8-bit displays, so their poor users can finally enjoy the benefits everyone else has had for the last decade. (Probably not before everyone else has moved to 10-bit.)


Apple's low-end displays and false advertising have been the subject of many class-action lawsuits over the years, at least two of them involving my personal laptop. One of them was because Apple tried to pinch some more penniesby buying NVIDIA's reject video cards -- ones that weren't good enough for normal product standards, but could be put in the very lowest-end laptops. Dell, HP, and the rest bought the chips too and put them in their low-end bargain-bin models, but Apple put them in their $3,000 MacBook Pros. (Unlike other venors, Apple doens't let you choose a better video card, either.) NVIDIA promised Apple that they would last at least three years before they burned out, but it turned out most of them died much sooner (like mine).


But not only do the laptops have terrible display accuracy (due to "TN" LCD), 90's-era 6-bit color (why, Apple, why!?), and reject video cards, but the panels themselves are not even reliable. My MBP is not even four years old and just last month the display died (after months of slowly getting worse -- and it never sees any rough usage). Our excellent local Apple-authorized repair needs $500 to fix it, but even though I paid almost $3000 for it only 3 years ago, I can already get a much faster Windows laptop, brand new, for less than $500. I'm probably going to see if anyone on Craigslist wants to buy a dead MacBook Pro and fix it themselves. My HP laptop is 8 years old and still going strong. I never had to take it in for repair, whereas the MBP went in three times -- twice for repairs covered under the lawsuit, once for a bad power supply. I had hoped to get more than 3.5 years out of it.


Obviously, I've had a much worse experience than some of the other Mac users on this board. But ask yourself this: if Apple is putting all that money from their higher prices into higher quality hardware (e.g. displays), how is it they are able to maintain 2-3X higher margins than the industry average?



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