I have been an Apple customer for about two decades. I have owned most of their notebooks and loved even their most quirky machines. I loved the Cube. I adored the table lamp style iMac. I love the Powerbook Duo. The first MacBook was all I could think about when in the intensive care unit, fighting for my life. And every 18-months, I upgraded. It was not a tough decision — a year or so later, the machine lost about a fourth of its value — and it allowed me to buy the newest model.
Not anymore. I had bought a brand new 16-inch MacBook Pro at the end of 2019. I wanted a photo editing machine, especially for use when traveling to far off destinations. It is a pretty fantastic photo editing machine. However, it sucks when attached to Apple’s XDR Display. In a quiet room, MacBook Pro fans are like afterburners on some random street racer in Fast and the Furious. The (clearly first world) problem has gone away in the 2020 version of the MacBook Pros.
So I wondered, how much can I get for my 8-month old Macbook Pro? I mean if it was not too much, I would be happy to upgrade to new model. Unfortunately, the cost is too much. Apple’s official trade-in says that I could get $1530, which is what you could get on eBay. That is a depreciation of $3000 or about $375-a-month. Ouch! The upgrade is not as automatic as it used to be. Maybe it is the news of the pending launch of ARM-based machines that has depressed the prices. An alternative theory is that Apple and its machines are so commonplace and people don’t buy laptops as often that Mac machines have lost any resale value.
