One of our users was having difficulties with their mac and using some web software.  I decided to go peruse the landscape and see how much of a premium people were paying for their macs.  I priced out a Dell and a Mac from their websites.  I tried to get them as close to the same configuration, from a hardware standpoint, as I could.  I found the following:

Apple Macbook Pro

Dell XPS 17

There are several important differences in the hardware:

1. The mac doesn’t have a blueray player, but the dell does.
2. The mac has a slightly slower processor.
3. The mac claims to have a better battery, but doesn’t list the specifics, so there’s no way to tell.
4. The mac doesn’t list the video card stats, so there’s no way to tell how comparable they are, but they’re probably close.
5. The mac doesn’t come with any additional software.  No iWorks, iPhoto, etc.  They were left to their default of None, so arguably, the Dell is more functional out of the box.
6. Other than changing the hardware specs to be close, all other configuration options were left at their default.

So riddle me this, Batman:  Why do people buy Macs?  I have several dev buddies that own them, but I can’t justify the cost.  First, most of them load bootcamp and/or parallels at extra cost to run windows 7 and windows apps.  The hardware isn’t as good.  The price is almost twice as expensive.

How do you justify the premium price?