Beware booking a vacation on your MacBook

The MacBook I’m typing this post on was in fact not only probably the most-expensive single purchase I’ve ever made, but also the only thing I’ve ever intentionally saved up for and successfully achieved (yes I’m 30 and know how sad this sounds). I justified the expense because the MacBook  has saved me hours of lost productivity due to crashing PCs, viruses and the frustration of searching for hours to try to figure out how to do a simple goddamn screen capture on Windows. Turns out, travel-booking site Orbitz thinks I’m some sort of fancy plutocrat who uses iPads for toilet paper and blows through MacBooks like they’re pita chips. Via NPR and WSJ today:

“Orbitz Worldwide Inc. has found that people who use Apple Inc.’s Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see.”

The noive!

The logic seems to be if you paid a premium for your computer, you’d be willing to pay a premium for a hotel. Our logic is that if you paid a premium for your computer because you need it to work, live, make money and do everything else with your life, you will be looking for the cheapest, dingiest hotel you can find (that has wifi, of course).

So far only this Orbitz scheme has come to light, but if it starts happening with other companies, we might have to dig up that dusty ol desktop Dell just to make purchases. In which case I expect to be presented with the saddest, slowest-updating hotel options available.