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Apple Doubles the Price of RAM Upgrade on Entry-Level 13-Inch MacBook Pro
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For some reason Apple uses SSDs that are much slower in the important random 4KB read/write department 🤷♂️
Apple MacBook Pro 16 2019 Laptop Review: A convincing Core i9-9880H and Radeon Pro 5500M powered multimedia laptop
Notebookcheck.com reviews the flagship model of the MacBook Pro 16, Apple's latest multimedia laptop. The machine comes with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M GPU and an Intel Core i9-9880H CPU, along with 16 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM and a 1 TB SSD. Read on to find out why have awarded the MacBook Pro 16 top...
Read 4K: 55MB/s - competition: 100+
Write 4K: 16MB/s - competition: 45+
This counts a lot when opening programs, since it will have look up many small parts and write out diagnostics and other state to disk.
If you have very many parallel readers and writers (high queue depth, QD) then it will be speed up. But a lot of software will remain fairly single threaded (not-parallel), because that it easier to reason about.
On average you loose about a quarter of the performance by using macOS over Linux, Windows is sort of halfway. But on different tests the ordering can be quite different. So YMMV.
That said, my HP 450 G6 will also grind to a halt when opening a Jetbrains editor with a couple of projects.
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I can confirm this applied for Asian too, 20,000 yen, not final price. With tax it would around 22,000. Shame.
Are we sure the $100 upgrade was there from the start ?
Before the new Magic Keyboard MBP, 16GB DRAM Upgrade and 256GB+ SSD Upgrade has always costed $200. Whether that is on previous MacBook Pro or the newer released MacBook Air. And I remember you always have to choose between 16GB or 512GB for the same price. That is the $200 upgrade.
And it doesn't make sense for Apple price it $100. May be it was a recent error ?
Before the new Magic Keyboard MBP, 16GB DRAM Upgrade and 256GB+ SSD Upgrade has always costed $200. Whether that is on previous MacBook Pro or the newer released MacBook Air. And I remember you always have to choose between 16GB or 512GB for the same price. That is the $200 upgrade.
And it doesn't make sense for Apple price it $100. May be it was a recent error ?
It was $100 at the start - but I agree it was an error at that price point and they were waiting for an opportune time to change it.
Honestly losing interest in Apple and Apple products with every macrumors post I read.
It’s not the ram price, but every little (and not so little) thing for the last 3+ years.
The notch was probably the beginning of the end for me.
It’s not the ram price, but every little (and not so little) thing for the last 3+ years.
The notch was probably the beginning of the end for me.
Thanks. In that case those who got upgrade within the past 30 days had a decent discount.
That’s the old wisdom, but with the RAM soldered to the logic board there’s not much choice.
Apple wants to be seen to be eco-friendly. It's not the same thing.
It's not just the pro range, the price of memory on the Air's have doubled too *
Apple today doubled the price for upgrading the RAM on the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, with customers in the United States now being charged $200 to move from 8GB to 16GB compared to the previous $100 upgrade price. Similar increases are seen in other countries, such as moving from EUR125 to EUR250 in Germany and from £100 to £200 in the United Kingdom.
Current pricing on RAM upgrade for entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro
While Apple does sometimes adjust upgrade pricing as its costs for components change over time, what makes today's change unusual beyond the fact that it is an increase rather than a typical decrease is that the 13-inch MacBook Pro just launched less than a month ago.
The entry-level model is largely similar to its predecessor, using the same 8th-generation Intel processors and many other internal components have similarly been carried over. Still, it is considered an updated model with changes like the new Magic Keyboard and it's extremely rare for Apple to adjust pricing so soon after launch, suggesting an unexpected increase in Apple's costs being passed along to consumers.
RAM upgrade pricing yesterday
Supply chains around the world have been disrupted in recent months due to the current health situation, but China, where most of Apple's manufacturing partners operate, has been reopening ahead of many other countries around the world as it was the first to shut down. So with pricing having been set on the 13-inch MacBook Pro just a month ago, the supply situation should generally have improved since then rather than worsened.
Apple does not appear to have altered pricing for RAM upgrades on its other Mac lineups, although different machines use different types of RAM, so a shortage or cost increase for one specific type would not necessarily affect all of Apple's Macs. Even the high-end 13-inch MacBook Pro is unaffected, as it uses a faster type of RAM paired with its newer 10th-generation Intel processors and upgrading from 16GB to 32GB remains priced at $400.
(Thanks, Ashlin!)
Article Link: Apple Doubles the Price of RAM Upgrade on Entry-Level 13-Inch MacBook Pro
That wouldn't explain the difference in the difference between what the 8GB and 16GB costs Apple and what they're selling it for.
It went up by twice as much, which is a lot - almost 10% cost of the actual laptop
I had the entry level MacBook Pro With 16gb ram in the shopping cart and ready to order it until suddenly price increased..well now I am not ordering it..thanks Apple!
Why does shipping to the US make a difference to the cost of a computer coming from Shanghai to my country?
maybe there is some truth but NOT a level that justifies 500%+ markups.
sk hynix and samsung southkorea have a duopoly on nand flash market so they can manipulate and fix prices easily, this is why Ram prices have been overinflated for the last 5 years. Thats why 1000usd+ laptops still have a pathetic 8gb of ram as standard
200USD for 8gb is OBSCENE but they do this because they know they can get away with this, customers will bite because in 2020 16gb Is virtually a necessity.
When will this era of apples disgusting greed stop? This is what i despise most about t cooks reign.
Watch any Steve Jobs keynote when he announces the prices of new products he always made logical explanations justifying the prices without ripping off the customer with anti-consumer practices (example, non soldered in RAM so you could upgrade themselves..).
I wish cook and his culture of bean counting max revenue extracting practices dropped the charade and was truthful with us, just come out and say they are increasing RAM prices because greed is good for the shareholders and they want to extract as much revenue from the customer as possible.
A base model upgraded to 16gb RAM and 512gb SSD now costs $1699.
For $100 more, you can get the 4-port model with the same amount of RAM & SSD that has faster RAM, 10th gen processor, better speakers, better graphics performance, and an extra fan & vents.
For $100 more, you can get the 4-port model with the same amount of RAM & SSD that has faster RAM, 10th gen processor, better speakers, better graphics performance, and an extra fan & vents.
And you better pray the hardware—including RAM and SSD—doesn’t fail or you might as well buy a new computer. Apple computers just aren’t as reliable as they used to be.
Others have said the re-alignment merely brings the price back into line with with published 8Gb to 16Gb BTO upgrades. Any other price matrix calculations merely makes that upgrade uneconomical for the upper SKU 15w MBP and rightly drives the user towards the basic 28w MBP with or without the CPU bump.
You can be sure that a stock $1799 28w MBP (2.0GHz i5) would beat a 1.7GHz i7 upgraded 15w MBP in benchmarks, and then the 28w MBP finishes the contest with the aforementioned faster graphics and RAM, speakers, and additional cooling. All for an extra $100 uplift.
This effectively makes bumped RAM a non starter if you already needed the 512Gb SSD storage space in a 13" MacBook Pro.
Adding too many BTO options to a Mac isn't really a cost effective move anyway, I'd always gravitate towards the SKU that requires the least add-ons to get to the spec you need.
Therefore I can't really get too distressed by the apparent price uplift - congratulations to the people who managed to get the RAM upgraded before the price went up.
If Apple would stop soldering the RAM and SSD to the MB, then the repairs would not cost so much. More modular Windows options are just as fast, so this is strictly a marketing decision.
Also an engineering decision - higher reliability by soldering parts to the motherboard - plus allows thinner enclosure (I said the t* word!).
Although yes, the cost of replacement of motherboard technically higher when it does go wrong Apple are also preventing users from accidentally breaking their expansion ports when 'upgrading' but stuff won't work loose during the working lifetime of the unit.
