I've bought a few Macs from Apple, recently. I bought a Mac Mini about 1.5 years ago and was very pleased. My company bought a MacBook Pro for me a year ago, so I sold my Mini. I left the company about 6 months ago. I was left without a Mac, so I recently bought a MacBook Pro.

So, that's my history with Macs. I've found that ordering a Mac from Apple is fine and all, but there are a few things that are lacking.

1.) It sometimes takes days before items are shipped. Most of these items are coming from China. The shipping process itself takes too long. People can go to Wal-mart and buy a Dell. They can also order a Dell straight from Dell. Chances are, the product will ship a lot fast than a Mac. Of course, you can buy Macs at your local Best Buy or Apple Store as well. Shipping is not really an issue there. It just happened to seem strange to me that it takes so long to get the product straight from Apple when ordering from their online store.

2.) While Macs themselves aren't overpriced when you step back and look at what you are getting for the money, the upgrades for Macs are ridiculous. They are actually unbelievable to anyone who follows hardware prices at all.

For instance, to upgrade a Mac Pro from the standard 3gb of RAM to 16gb of RAM costs $1850. Someone should tell Apple that RAM has been dirt cheap for at least 5 years. One can buy 16gb of 1066mhz ECC PC8500 RAM from Newegg for around $620, or as noted later in this article, one can get the same Ram for as little as $400. That's 4 chips at 4gb each, exactly what Apple offers.

Some may argue that the quality of the RAM is better from Apple. People please...It's the same stuff. Apple doesn't make their own RAM. They order it from the same RAM manufacturers that companies like Dell and HP order from. The same thing goes for hard drives, video cards, and DVD drives. Each of these are not better just because you ordered them from Apple.

I like MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, and iMacs, but I wouldn't advise anyone getting an Apple upgrade for any of them except for the processor. Even with the processor, I would advise to stick with the standard. If you need to upgrade anything else about your Mac, buy the hardware online. Get the specific type needed and buy from an online retailer.

Here is 4gb of 1066mhz ECC memory for just over $100. Get 4 of those and you have saved around $1400 compared to the Apple upgrade.

So, when buying a Mac, it's best to buy from a source other than Apple's online store, if you like getting your packages in a timely manner. If you must get your Mac straight from Apple, do not purchase upgrades from them. Buy your upgrades the smart way, from someone else.