I'm waiting for a lower price on the new MacBook Air 1.5tb version, or perhaps an option for 1tb, which would be sufficient for me.
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Apple Lowers Price of MacBook Pro's High-End SSD Upgrade Options
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Currently, there is nothing like it in the market and, therefore, a market price does not yet exist. Once Dell, HP or Lenovo implement their own solution (4TB NVMe m.2 or raw NAND) then a market price becomes relevant. I suspect 4TB NVMe m.2 sticks are coming, but I do not see Samsung or anyone else rushing them to market.
If I were to theorize that two Samsung 970 Pros in a 2TB capacity actually existed with a discounted price of around $700 each in the current marketplace, and used two of them to create a RAID 0 in a laptop capable of hosting two m.2 slots, then the market price is $1400.00 or around half of what Apple charges.
I have no comment on parochial this or that as it is not germane to the conversation, IMHO.
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I think $1999 USD is a possibility in the future as long as you know that a solution at that price point will have an integrated GPU and not a discrete GPU. However, $1799 USD is not a realistic retail price at this point.
Dude, go outside... live the world... have fun! Or call the police if Apple keeps you hostage at Cupertino! Hahahahaha
No market for 4TB? There's not just Apple and there are not just laptops. The world is full of alternatives! You can actually choose what to buy with your money too, as crazy as it may sound. If you end up enjoying the world, spend some time at school too: there are awesome economy classes. If not, you can get some at YouTube too.
I like you
Enjoy!
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Dude, go outside... live the world... have fun! Or call the police if Apple keeps you hostage at Cupertino! Hahahahaha
No market for 4TB? There's not just Apple and there are not just laptops. The world is full of alternatives! You can actually choose what to buy with your money too, as crazy as it may sound. If you end up enjoying the world, spend some time at school too: there are awesome economy classes. If not, you can get some at YouTube too.
I like you
Oh, I live...even if today is a bit of a sick day. Cupertino does not hold me hostage...I will dunk on them as much as I will defend them. My record skews a bit more towards defense, but I digress.
I never said there was not a market for 4TB of NVMe storage, but I am saying that not one major (Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo) PC OEM is offering 4TB of NVMe storage in their laptops nor are the major storage players offering a single m.2 NVMe 4GB stick. Yet. Only Apple is crazy enough to do that. And anyone crazy enough (figure of speech) to buy that BTO option on their MacBook Pro is going to pay for it dearly. Is it overpriced? Only to those who don't really need it, but want it. Apple has never, ever given storage or memory away to its users and it something to either live with or live without.
I am sure Sager has something running around with two m.2 slots and will sell you a RAID 0 with two 2TB 970 EVOs, but they have nowhere near the volume of Apple. Also, that Sager is probably close to 2" thick and weighs 7 to 8 lbs.
Yes, I am aware that there is a world outside the walled garden. I am staring at a Dell Inspiron laptop in need of a nuke and a rebuild, a Dell Vostro Core 2 Duo (ditto a nuke) and my custom built PC in an NZXT Source 530 case that I need to make time to salvage the GTX 960 in it for a Mac Pro 3,1 I got as a gift (don't ask), rely on the iGPU and put two IronWolf Pro drives inside for a storage server. There are some wonderful PCs out there, but they are few and far between and my usage of Windows 10 is a self imposed limitation. I just do not enjoy using it.
Economy classes? I thought that was just for the airlines, but I will check out the YouTube.
Apologies, I should have specified I meant adjusted for inflation. Which would put it at ~$2,000 USD.
I think that $1999 or $2099 is possible, as long as everyone prepares themselves for the reality that there would be no discrete GPU. Depending on how long Apple intends to use Intel CPUs, I can see the return of a lower tier 15” MacBook Pro once Sunny Cove-based 45w TDP H-Series CPUs w/Gen 11 iGPUs are shipping in large quantities.
Being 10nm might make the existing chassis more palatable heat wise and allow Apple some measure of height to replace the butterfly mechanism. Interesting days ahead.
The fact that these price drops make no difference at all on barrier to entry, speaks how ridiculously overpriced they are. There’s no excuse for it.
Samsung 860 Pro MZ-76P4T0BW 4TB, Samsung V-NAND, SATA III 6GB/s, R/W(Max) 560MB/s/530MB/s, 2.5". 7mm, 5 Years Warranty NZ$1199, or US$824.
That's nice, but that's not what was being discussed, since the above is 2.5" SATA based package.
To go faster than SATA requires a different interface: PCIe, U.2 or the M.2 sticks running NVMe qualify. M.2's are probably the most popular of these and that's what's being discussed as "no one is selling 4TB configurations (yet)".
Pragmatically, this is in the context of more mainstream desktop computing, not industrial servers, such as being able to find them on someplace like Newegg.com to purchase at retail. For example, Samsung has an 8TB NVMe stick, but it isn't M.2 .. its the NF1 form factor:
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-ssd-pcie-4.0-nf1,37345.html
The PM983 appears to be an NF1 form factor, so its wider than the conventional consumer M.2 sticks, which means that it may not necessarily be a 'drop-in'.
Even so, at USD$1375 retail equivalent, it illustrates the degree of Apple's markup, even after this latest price cut.
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EVERY Mac I had owned in the past I upgraded the RAM and the HD (started with a 512KE)
None of this is possible now.
Then there is the added expense of the dongles needed to do anything useful with the USB-C ports.
I currently have 6 Macs, 2 ATVs, 2 iPhones, and iWatch, 2 iPads, 3 Airport units , but I now also have 1 Linux box, a Raspberry Pi, Android TV box.The wireless units will be the first to go, followed by the ATVs and if any of the Macs fail they will be replaced by Linux boxes.
I have $70 sitting in iTunes for the last 3 years, nothing I want to spend it on. Since Apple stopped discounting iTunes cards in NZ, we stopped buying them as stocking fillers for the kids. The HomePod is not available in NZ even though it is in Australia and all Apple stuff for NZ comes from Australia. Apples video content in NZ is almost nil anyway.
I do not buy software "subscriptions", nor have I anything on iCloud, no iTunes streaming (I have a radio for that).
Netflix is good for us and I have 12 months of Free Amazon.
Apple has nothing I want anymore.
I think the 2016-2018 models are most fairly compared the previous model. The cheapest 2015 was $1,999, but that model had integrated graphics. The cheapest 2015 with a discrete graphics chip was $2,499.
Some (not you) like to blame the Touch Bar for a price increase but it’s more accurately attributed to the discrete graphics chip.
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Even by Apple standards, a $500 increase for a low-end GPU is a lot.
Well, I hear you but it is what it is. People have been complaining about Apple’s high prices for at least 35 years. They charge what people are willing to pay, and yes, SSD upgrade prices are certainly high. The 32GB RAM upgrade is not too bad at $400. (To me that’s a no-brainer but many just get the 16GB base amount.)
Apple reduced the price from the $2,499 2015 model to $2,399 in 2016, even while they added the Touch Bar (with TouchID). That’s a win in my books. In 2019 it’s still $2,399, and now has a six-core CPU and can be configured with 32GB of RAM and Vega 16 or 20. A better keyboard would be welcome, maybe that will come this year with a platform refresh... hard to say.
I think I'd almost be OK with the SSD pricing if the 4TB upgrade wasn't at such a steep premium compared to the others.
Indeed, it is. What I've been finding chronically frustrating over the past few years is how so many people try to rationalize Apple's price increases under the guise of "Inflation".
The problem with this defense is that much of IT technology just doesn't work that way. For example, a couple of years ago, I was on an R&D project to improve the manufacturability of a new chip design ... long story short (and without violating NDA's), for less than $5M, we cut the manufacturing cost by 80%.
That's why COTS SSDs are now pushing down to $100-$150 per TB (retail) and so forth.
I agree with you, my ssd comparison comment was more highlighting at the over reaction to the price difference, as you can see that went from $100 hd to $1300 pretty quickly. Like you, I also have found I want nothing in their current product range