It's not the five minutes of extra work; it's the cognitive overhead of knowing how to do this stuff. Talk to someone who knows nothing about computers, sometime. You'll find all kinds of misconceptions and worries. "What if I plug it in wrong and break it?" tops the list, usually.
Believe it or not, some people don't want the clutter of extra cables and another box on the desktop to get tangled up in the other stuff. They'll pay the extra to have a clean setup on their desk.
Apple knows some people treat PCs like furniture. That may make you grind your teeth, but at least you have the option.
Surely, if you examine your own life, you will find many instances where you trade time for money.
Do you mend your own socks instead of throwing them out? Change your own oil in your car? Sweep your own chimney? Grow your own food? Roast and brew all of the coffee you drink? Come on.
Wholeheartedly agree, and have noticed my self-perceived break even point on the trade off between time and money moves toward sacrificing money the older I get. My father in law has a memorable quote that sticks with me: "is your time not worth more than that?"
Unless it's something I enjoy doing or my ironic sense of thrift kicks into high gear, I'll sacrifice the money when reasonable.
I do a few of those, but it's a matter of cost benefit. Growing all your own food would probably cost more than buying in many cases. You have to be extremely rich to value your time in the thousands per hour.
> You have to be extremely rich to value your
> time in the thousands per hour.
You and I can simply add a monitor in a few minutes, but it's not five-minute job if it's not a process you're familiar with. There are a lot of questions.
- What monitor do I even buy?
- What's a good monitor brand?
- Do I have to buy an Apple-branded monitor? If not, do I have to look for "Mac compatible" or something on the box?
- I have to buy cables?
- What cables do I need? (The customer will probably need an adapter, at least, as most monitors do not include a Mini-DP connector/adapter)
- Can I just use my TV?
And so on and so forth. It's a lot more than just the physical act of plugging a monitor in.
Again, it's so easy for us, but you if you work in the tech industry you really need to think outside of your own head sometimes. Imagine if car manufacturers expected us to manually adjust the fuel/air mix in the engine because it's just a "five minute job."
You could start by estimating the time cost correctly. You're assuming that the time required to select the right monitor is zero, that the time required to understand the various connection standards is zero, etc., etc., etc. The only cost you're counting is the act of unboxing and plugging it in.
Maybe you and I keep track of this stuff professionally or as a hobby, but most "grandmothers" don't. Quick: What's the best lock-in amplifier for rejecting mains interference. What? You don't know what dynamic reserve means? Jeez, you're such a dummy.
Think about how you would go about buying a piece of technical equipment outside your domain of expertise. That's what a "grandmother" is doing when he/she is buying a monitor.
I once paid $100 to a car mechanic for a job that took him about 5 minutes. The reason I did it was that I didn't know how to do it myself, so I paid whatever it took to get the job done. "Grandma" here is similar.
Always buy refurbished directly from Apple. You get a full year of AppleCare warranty attached to the purchase and can buy more years of AppleCare after that.
I've had nothing but good experiences with this - bought several refurb Macs from Apple and each one has been indistinguishable from a new machine. I always extend my warranty as well.
The only downside is that Apple will charge sales tax, which can be substantial on a $1,000 or $2,000 item. Last time I bought a MBP it was actually cheaper to get a new one from Amazon because they were discounting it. (That was before Amazon started charging sales tax in my state, obviously - otherwise it would have been a wash)
http://www.refurb.me/ is monitoring service for the official Apple refurb store. Because it's hard to know when the product that you want to buy will become available. RefurbMe will alert you by email or SMS to go buy it on the Apple Store.
Perhaps for iOS devices, but the desktop stuff can run for a long time on older hardware.
I'm personally using a refurbed Early 2008 iMac that runs Mavericks just fine. It needed more RAM and hard drive space, but that was nothing that I couldn't have purchased when I bought the machine.
