temporary credit card then don’t pay after receiving the device and cancel the virtual card…? 99% off laptop
“How to land yourself in prison for fraud in one simple step…”
Companies with high-end products have the biggest profit margin cushions to deal with. I had little sympathy for Apple raising prices already, but this is absurd.
…Minus the payments already provided, right?
It’s very vague. If you could use this as a rent-to-own it’s perhaps not so bad, but if it’s just rent-to-still-not-be-able-to-own it sucks.
You’ll still pay way more.
This sounds exactly like what the major cell providers do with phones, or at least what AT&T does. Monthly interest-free payment to pay for the phone in 24 or 36 months, ‘upgrade’ available at half or an arbitrary percentage of the device having been paid off. It’s ‘your’ device, but to sell it you have to pay off the balance remaining on the note. If you upgrade early, and the device is still in good condition, they zero out the note at that point, but it still counts as buying a new device, so you incur tax + an arbitrary ‘activation’ fee just like you bought a new device with cash.
That’s…worse
Aaaand there we go, as predicted for the lady decade. You won’t own anything and you’ll like it. You will lease pur hardware and we will know everything about you.
Fuck all of this
Leasing / renting will defeat RAM prices…somehow.
I know. Typical click bait headline.
Apple is in kind of a precarious position, though, aren’t they? They’re pretty much a hardware-first, consumer facing company.
If the crash manifests, they’ll be in a good position, though.
Probably just defeating reduced sales. Its not for you, it is to benefit them.
Leasing is not renting
For tech stuff basically a financial entity buys the goods for you at full MSRP (they calculate a almost 100% depreciation over the term), then you pay that full price + interest over 48/60 installments, and when you’re done, they take the goods back and sell it back via some liquidator.
And because the financial entity bought the stuff for you especially to lease it, you’re contractually obligated to pay until the end of the contract, can’t just get it for a month and then be done with it
You paid $1200 to use something worth $900 for four years and then it’s not yours
Unless you’re a business and the accountant says that’s better for taxes, leasing something doesn’t make sense
I hope you’re not saying this in general terms, because leasing absolutely has its benefits even to individuals, especially for cars.
for cars it makes sense only if you really need to have a new vehicle every 3 years and you really need to have an all inclusive insurance that covers everything
otherwise you save thousands by taking a loan, get limited liability insurance, then sell it after 5-6 years
although the absolute savings (for a newish vehicle and not a shitbox) is to get a used one ex-leasing (max 3 years old, low mileage, all maintenance made correctly because the leasing company paid for it) then sell it after 3-4 years (or keep it until it becames a shitbox)
Heck, even paying for full comprehensive insurance, you still come out ahead by buying on a loan and keeping it for more than 3 years.
The crux is that decently priced loans are denied to the people who actually need it, but leases are not.
Google novated leases and you’ll see why you’re wrong.
They seems better, never heard them before, not a thing in my country
To be fair, there are millions of Americans who upgrade their phones with their cell carrier every year. Technically this is a 2-year loan that will pay off the device if you do nothing, or give you the option to trade in the device after 1 year of payments in exchange for a new device. This pays off the original loan, assuming the device is in good working order.
The details matter here, but this is also very similar in the end result as a lease. You pay every month for an installment, get to use the latest and greatest hardware, and can trade it in for a new model. This model works very well for phones. Why not apply a similar principle to a laptop, but amortize the upfront cost over 4 or 5 years with the option to trade-in and upgrade after two years?
It’s interesting enough for businesses that it may be a great model. The amount of older e-waste laptops filling closets and IT departments is staggering.
Phones you can usually keep once you pay it off though. Once you conplete the plan for the laptop you have to return it or likely pay a lump payment (if im understanding this correctly)
🤮
Disgusting
How is that a defeating ram prices for fucks sake. Only defeat is happening on user side. Is there any media that can’t publish pro corpo articles anymore?
It ain’t perfect but it’s pretty good and gets better all the time:
https://asahilinux.org/fedora/
Get an “old” m1 and rock out. Fuck Apple.
This is why I will never sell my M1 MBA.
Thanks, but no.
The beginning of HaaS (Hardware as a service)
[it is very bad]
Not the beginning, ‘Device as a Service’ has been the buzzword as of late, but basically has been a thing for decades. I remember twenty years ago scratching my head at why the company I worked at paid more to lease desktops for three years than it would have cost to just buy them outright, or even finance them.
The amount we spend on cloud hosting I keep suggesting (and I think they are starting to listen) that having on-prem hardware makes financial sense again. We have the staff to run them already anyway.
Heh, to some extent I think the hardware vendors have done this to themselves.
They try to balance “good TCO if you just buy it” but simultaneously say “but it sucks to own the equipment you need to pay us exorbitant services fees to make it easier to own”.
Nothing unique to IT, certainly car manufacturers love to first sell you on how robust the car is and then try to scare you into thinking it’ll turn to dust if you don’t buy extended warranties…
It’s already here unfortunately. For example, you can now lease a PlayStation 5
We used to rent a PS2 from blockbuster back when it was the current gen lol
The cloud is already a thing.
Wasn’t this the goal from the start? With the inflated RAM prices, you not owning computing. Well, they’ll surely find some idiots.
