Originally Posted by AutumnBH

You guys ranting on about hardware price are all completely retarded. Seriously, you are mentally facile.

You don't pay the Apple premium because you want the hardware.

You pay the premium because you want to run OS X (without the headaches and lack of futureproofing of a Hackintosh).

Developing rules on a Mac because the interface rocks, there are none of the hardware headaches with trying to get a laptop running with Linux, you can use all the business productivity software you're used to on Windows along with all your unix development tools, there is actually a stable filesystem etc. If it breaks I can walk into an Apple outlet anywhere in the world (I travel a lot) and get it fixed no questions asked.

The initial purchase price is higher but the total cost of ownership is the same or lower.