Why Do Laptop Makers Have Such Terrible Websites
I think there&#x27;s a real reason here which the article doesn&#x27;t mention: the more confused you are about what you&#x27;re purchasing, the more likely you are to pay more and get less.<p>If the site can guide you to last year&#x27;s model without you realizing, then they profit. If it isn&#x27;t easy to discover there&#x27;s a similar laptop for the same price but a faster processor, then they profit.<p>A lot of consumers will give up trying to understand, and simply pick a more (overly) expensive one because it&#x27;ll &quot;have to&quot; be good if it&#x27;s that expensive.<p>This effectively allows manufacturers to achieve price discrimination: those who don&#x27;t have time to research for hours will pay more, those who really don&#x27;t have money will take the time and figure out the best deal in the end. (It&#x27;s the same way grocery store coupons allow those who really need to save costs pay less, as long as they&#x27;ll go to the effort of clipping.)<p>So why doesn&#x27;t Apple do this?<p>Because Apple is by-definition high end. They&#x27;re not going after bargain hunters, so they can afford a simple, cleaner site where everything is clear and comparable. They don&#x27;t need to do price discrimination as much. (Obviously they still do though, it&#x27;s just by charging way more for upgrades, like maximum-sized-storage iPhones and MacBooks.)