Digital Trends

NPD numbers show that Macs cost double PCs on average, and hardware specs don't necessarily account for the difference.

It’s common knowledge that Macs carry a premium over their Windows-based competition. Anyone who has ever peeked at a Sunday newspaper circular knows that Mac buyers ante up more, but crunching the numbers on just how much churns up quite an impressive statistic: they cost double on average.

Eweek’s own Mac advocate Joe Wilcox consulted the marketing research firm NPD Group in his quest for numbers and found that on average, PC notebooks sell for $700 while Mac notebooks sell for $1,515, 2.1 times as much. If that sounds like old news, it’s not: The gap has actually widened significantly in just two years as PC prices plunge lower and Macs hover around the same. Back in June 2006, for instance, the average PC notebook ran for $877, while Macs were still at $1,574, putting them at 1.8 times as much.

Taking hardware specs into account doesn’t do Apple any favors, as comparing mid-priced machines from both sides of the brand equation often turns up a Windows machine that has better specs than its Mac equivalent, and costs half as much. Wilcox’s own example using an iMac and a Dell Inspiron shows that PCs may come up short on frills like webcams and Bluetooth, but still manage to outstrip their more expensive Mac counterparts in essentials like processor speed, RAM, and hard drive capacity.

But the trend could be headed the opposite direction in the future. Apple forewarned investors in July that margins would drop in the future, likely meaning lower prices, and the continual drop in PC prices that has been driving the disparity ever higher seems to have slowed down as well.