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15" MacBook Pro - 256GB Storage in a $2400 laptop an absolute joke!
- Thread starter JazzyGB1
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The upgrades are right around what Samsung charge for the 960 Pro. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
The amount that they are charging for storage is painful. Apple used to be known for overcharging for RAM (and they still are at $400 for 32gb), but now that you can't swap out storage anymore, they are charging through the roof for SSD storage. $1400 for 2TB is nearly twice what the equivalent M.2 NVME storage costs on amazon. $3400 for 4TB is even more insane.
Where on Amazon are you seeing that price for something equivalent? 960 Pro is between 1050 and 1268. Right around the 1200 dollars Apple are asking.
I don’t know where you got the $1200 but Apple is asking $1400 on top of the included 256gb. If we say the 256gb is $100 of the base price that puts the 2tb at $1500. Currently on Amazon you can get a 2tb 960 pro for $1138 therefore the Apple tax is of 32% which is quite high considering you’re already paying a considerable Apple tax on the device itself.
Yeah for a freaking 5400rpm hard drive. Yeah I think Apple's laptops are overpriced but get real dude.
My mistake on the $1200. I got the upgrade price from the 15” that already had 512Gb. Ok, so $1500 for something with a sticker price of $1300. And of course we have no idea what actual SSD is, so these prices are just guides.
https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...state-drives/ssd-960-pro-m-2-2tb-mz-v6p2t0bw/
Sounds like capitalism to me. Buy something, add value (in this case by putting it in a laptop) and mark it up. Certainly the mark up is nowhere near the ‘nearly twice” someone quoted above.
I agree, they evidently know how to price things correctly! It’s just that those almost necessary upgrades (512gb and 16gb of RAM) are adding quickly to the price of an already expensive machine which can be frustrating when looking at the lineup. Especially considering the nTB hasn’t been updated.
You forget the good old days when apple used industry standard sodimms and SATA. Apple could easily went to M.2 NVME but instead willingly solder the SSD onto the logic board. I bought my 2013 rMBP 13 with 256gb and then just put in a 1TB Apple Samsung SSD for $500 recently. These machines will never be upgradable and are as disposable as an iPad.
Actually, the Samsung 970 M.2 is $794 on Amazon right now. http://a.co/9Z0tW1A
Apple is charging $1400 on top of the 256Gb for something that is available for $600 less. That is insane.
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That’s the Evo, not the Pro. Evo is a bit slower, especially sustained write speeds, and has less endurance.
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Yet if I had to choose between paying $1500 for the Pro vs $8-900 for the Evo I'd gladly get the Evo. It's strange how we get to choose if we want to pay extra for a slightly better CPU yet we're forced to take the top of the line and twice as expensive SSD.
I would agree to some extent. Something MLC based would be almost as fast as TLC for most applications and considerably cheaper. However, while you can certainly argue the toss about CPUs and especially GPUs, there’s no getting away from the fact that Apple have been putting the very best SSDs they can lay their hands on for the MBPs for years now.
As a side note, and not as a dig to you or anyone else here, I do find it amusing and frustrating in equal parts that people have been complaining the machines aren’t pro enough, but when Apple put the best money can buy in people immediately balk at the price.
I know they are a business, but seriously, they could really add a little more value by bumping the storage on the entry level without charging an arm and a leg. But the internal discussion I suspect is, we are making products for people with high income/professional jobs. So, if you are making $20,000 per month, this is nothing for you to buy. If you look at who they used to demo the 2018: Scientist, Videographers, Professional Graphic Artist, Application Devs. These people buy a high end MacBook Pro like the average family on a budget buys a $200 HP Stream at Walmart.
Apple is further solidifying their status as a niche brand.
Apple is further solidifying their status as a niche brand.
Yeah, I guess people want choices but Apple is not much about choices. In fact I'd say it's purposefully limiting choices in a way that makes them more money in the end and they are very successful at it. I'm not complaining because I think they offer the best experience and for now the hardware they offer still fits my budget. I could always get better hardware by building something myself but in the end macOS and well designed devices makes for a much better experience so I'm willing to pay extra for that.
It's interesting how you don't get this much complaining over say the price of a ferrari. It's as if people feel entitled to a macbook at the price they want versus just buying an alternative.
I’m not making anything close to $20k a month, not even half that. However as something I’d use professionally for around 3-4 years I can easily justify a $3k investment. Especially factoring in the $700-800 residual value. $1.50 a day for something I a) make my living on and b) enjoy using doesn’t seem unreasonable.
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They absolutely stack the cards in their favor when designing SKU hierarchies. It’s something you see very commonly in premium brands across all kinds of industries. Look at the options list for, say, a BMW. It gets very expensive, very fast to go above the base configuration. They do it because they can.
I believe it's because we're hooked to the experience. 7 years ago I bought my first Mac, a 15" MBP with a dGPU for less than $2000 CAD and it's been a great device. The best computer I ever owned. Now if I were to buy a similar device I'd have to pay at least $3450 CAD. Sure the CAD is lower than in 2011 but it seems that a lot of people have the same feeling when they look at a replacement for their device. I could also afford it because I'm no longer a student and I make money out of this laptop but still, I just can't bring myself to pay that much for what it is.
On top of that, it seems that Apple is set on neglecting any affordable model they offer like the Mac Mini, the MBA and now the nTB 13" to bring them to a point where you have to be a little naive to buy them new.
Few people owned a Ferrari for years only to realize that a replacement is now out of their budget.
You're missing the point.
I'm not comparing the speed of the storage, I'm comparing the amount.
If 250GB was shipping in a MacBook Pro 2008, it shouldn't still be the same a decade later, certainly not in a 'pro' laptop costing nearly $2500 - I mean come on!
You must take into account the underlying technology though when making a point. Just because you had a 250GB HDD 10 years ago and now pay more for the same storage is an arbitrary point, that same storage is tenfolds faster today, and as a result is tenfolds more expensive. There's also supply issues and global costing problems to take into account but that's another argument really.
It's not just the capacity, it's all the advances it allows, such as size, speed, cooling, redundancy, failure etc. Of course most people would like more space, but most people just use that space to store photos and such. That is like buying a Ferrari to transport your boxes of old photos around, when a van would work just fine. Stuff costs more, it's only value is in the usefulness of it. Most people should use a slower external drive for bulk storage, but cannot understand how to buy a USB-C cable and so demand more internal storage, but won't pay for it.
And what makes you think the SSD in the Macbook is closer to the Pro than the Evo? Not being sarcastic, I actually never thought about it before...
Well for one, the price. But mostly Apple really seemed to have emphasised putting the very best SSDs available in for the last several years. A really quick DDG search and some random sources.
2015
https://www.computerworld.com/artic...e-new-macbook-literally-is-twice-as-fast.html
2016
https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/
2017
https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/macbook-pro-13-inch-with-touch-bar
I didn’t thoroughly read/review them but you can do some searching and you will find the SSDs have been absolutely top drawer. They seem to put a lot of the budget there.
That's not really how it works. Apple does not pay the same price that you or I do on Amazon. Further, 10 years ago, if you didn't like Apple's pricing, you'd get the base configuration (which for the time could store a decent amount) and upgrade the storage or memory yourself. They've soldered it on now. In fact, if the logic board dies, your $1400 2TB storage device is no better than a paperweight.
Apple has always charged more than other manufacturers. It's just that they charged 20-30% more, not 50-100% more as they do today. And they didn't lock the system down to prevent you from choosing your own components.