Round 03
Price for power
Base Macs are competitively priced. The bill goes strange the moment you need more memory or storage, because you can never add it later.
The crowd
Opens soon
No crowd score for this round yet — the site won't show one until there are real votes behind it.
HouseRound to Windows
Round to Windows, but pointed at the right target. The base Macs are fine — the house has said so on the card and means it.
The problem is the ladder. $200 for 8 GB of memory and $200 to double the storage, on parts that cost a fraction of that and cannot be changed afterwards. You pay the upgrade price at the checkout or you live with the base config for the life of the machine.
MacThe case for Mac
The entry machines are honestly good value. A base Mac mini undercuts most comparable small desktops, and the Air's performance-per-watt has no direct equivalent.
Resale value is the argument Windows fans skip. A four-year-old MacBook still sells for real money; a four-year-old mid-range PC laptop mostly doesn't. Total cost of ownership is closer than the sticker suggests.
And you get a working machine out of the box — no bundled antivirus trials, no OEM software to uninstall before you can start.
WinThe case for Windows
Spec for spec, at almost every point on the curve, you pay less. That gap widens as the specs climb.
There is no upgrade tax. Memory and storage are commodity parts you can buy at market rate, fit yourself, and add to later when you actually need them.
And the range simply exists: capable machines under $500, workstations over $5,000, and everything in between. Apple offers a narrow band in the upper middle.
Who should actually care
Anyone who needs more than the base memory or storage. If the base config genuinely suits you, this round is much closer than its reputation.
Common questions
Why is Apple memory and storage so expensive?
Apple charges a fixed price per tier — around $200 per memory step and per storage doubling — well above what equivalent capacity costs on the open market. Because it's soldered, buying up front is the only option.
Are Macs cheaper in the long run because of resale value?
Sometimes, genuinely. Macs hold resale value far better than most PCs, which closes a meaningful part of the gap over a four- or five-year life. It rarely closes all of it, and it does nothing for the upgrade pricing.
What's the cheapest way to buy a Mac?
Take the base configuration and put the money you saved into an external SSD. The upgrade ladder is the expensive part, not the machine.