Apple - The High Street Rip Off

Posted on 25 Sep 2009 at 15:34

Darien Graham-Smith puts Apple's famously slick high-street stores to the test

The assistant nodded sympathetically as I reeled off my cover story. My girlfriend was happy with her old Windows laptop, but it was getting on a bit and she'd asked me to find a replacement - maybe a PC, maybe a Mac.

No problem, he said. He'd had a similar experience, switching to the Mac because his PC was "always freezing, and so unstable". Actually, that wasn't similar at all, but I let it go.

He asked me what applications my girlfriend used. "Oh, you know," I replied airily. "She likes to upload her digital photos to Facebook, watch iPlayer..." Knowing Apple's cheapest laptop was a £749 MacBook, I was interested to see how he'd try to justify the price.

But to my surprise he actually recommended an £899 MacBook Pro. "It is definitely more expensive than a PC," he admitted. "But you pay for the development: the case is one piece of aluminium. And the battery is built into the computer so it lasts two hours longer than a normal computer."

The battery is built into the computer so it lasts two hours longer than a normal computer

Why this one, I wondered, and not the £749 MacBook? "The £749 one is plastic," came the sniffy response. "This one's aluminium." Again with the aluminium.

He reeled off a few other differences: the MacBook Pro had a push-to-click trackpad, a backlit keyboard, FireWire 800 and an SD card slot. Nice luxuries, yes, but did we really need an £899 computer? "Try it for three months and you will see," he assured me. It seemed a very expensive experiment. I made my excuses.

When I returned a few days later my hopes weren't high. But this time a more thoughtful assistant listened to my story and came up with a different recommendation.

"Your girlfriend will be fine with the MacBook," he assured me. "It's powerful enough to do everything she wants." He was right, but he could see I was uncertain about spending even £749.

"Yeah, I know," he laughed. "It is more expensive than a PC. But you can save some money because of all the applications that come with it. Buy Apple's own office software and it's half the price of Microsoft's."

Buy Apple's own office software and it's half the price of Microsoft's

"And," he added conspiratorially, "you know what? In three years you can probably sell this on for £300. Macs really hold their value, much more than PCs." Which is true.

He fired up iPhoto, to demonstrate how my girlfriend could use it to organise and enhance her digital images, and I admit I was impressed by how knowledgeable and honest he was.

It's a pity not everyone at the Apple Store is so helpful: if I'd gone with the first assistant I'd have come away distinctly poorer.

Carphone Warehouse

Tesco

Independent Retailers

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