Cost of Ownership for Apple Products

Recently I have been thinking about how do I spend on apple hardware and I started my inventory and Here's the cost breakdown for a family of four with teenage kids. Again I started with no zero apple devices and my foray into apple in 2007 with the launch of iPhone 1 (from my employer)

Assuming 3 Year Cost of Ownership

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+ | Item Description | Amount | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+ | 2 Mac Air (teenagers) = $1k per device * 2 = $2k | $2,000 | | 2 MacBook Pro (2 adults) = $1.5k per device = $3k | $3,000 | | 4 iPhones (2 newer and 2 old gen teenager): $1k avg * 2 + $500 avg * 2 = $3K | $3,000 | | 4 Earbuds (2 Pro + 2 std) $250 * 2 + 100 * 2 = $700 | $700 | | 2 Watches (Only Parents) - $400 * 2 = $800 | $800 | | 1 iPad (Whole family) : $500 | $500 | | Apple Care = 15 devices / $19.99 / 3 devices = $100 per month = $1200 per year * 3 = $3.6k | $3,600 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+ | TOTAL | $13,600 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+------------+

Total = $14k for devices every 3 years. At the end of 3 years you may be left with 30% of value which is $4.2k

Other services that you may use iCloud Storage: 2TB $9.99 App subscriptions Music Streaming services

One more pet peeve of mine with apple is: Most of their starter models (macbooks and mini) have high cpu and low memory (8GB seriously??). I hope they seriously consider updating all starter models to come with 32GB memory which will make it last justifying the high cost of investment.

1 points | by soorya3 1 day ago

3 comments

  • al_borland 1 day ago
    They upgraded everything to start with at least 16GB of RAM to support Apple Intelligence as that continues to roll out.

    3 years may or may not be the service life of these things. I still have an M1 Pro MacBook Pro from 2020. Sometimes I think it’s time for an upgrade, but there is no reason to. The hardware I interact with is basically the same, and the M1 Pro still does whatever I need with ease. The AppleTV I’m using right now is 10 years old and running tvOS 26.

    Also keep in mind that Apple is similarly priced to other products in the same class, so you would have spent the money either way. At least Apple stuff tends to have a higher resale value.

  • k310 1 day ago
    Damn stuff won't die. One ipod touch has zero battery capacity. One ipad Air2 grew a bulge,but still runs, so I wiped it for recycling.

    Imac screen quit. Needs repair.

    Of course stuff gets obsoleted in software conpatibility, but the ipad1 still holds books and music scores, all I asked of it.

    I suggest simplifying life. Write! Decent text editors ran on CP/M. YMMV, of course.

    Jerry Pournelle used to just plain write but got dragged into hardware and software reviews and wars.

    Agree on Apple's low memory entry ststems. At least you can tape an external drive to the case. Not so with menory.

    Then again MS is going "subscription everything" and Apple s/w is mostly free. Open source runs great excrpt that GIMP file dialogs do not grab the keyboard. They used to. Ob well.

    [-]
    • soorya3 14 hours ago
      Hardware are more reliable and lasts longer. The software makes the hardware less useful over time.

      Apple is moving into the subscription everything model slowly if you noticed. You can get new phone every year with Apple Upgrade Program, News+, Fitness+, iCloud+, Apple TV+ etc. Slowly you will be locked into the ecosystem and can't escape it. We might as well call Apple (Google/Amazon to an extent) an utility at this point.