Has certainly done that in the iPad and iPhone space. Not so much in the Mac space. the volumes and diversity is different. Mac's have an higher upper half of the marketspace. Most of those are STILL ON Intel solutions 1.25 years into the transition.
Yeah - the iPhone seems to work on a "trickle down" model: The flagship iPhone gets an update every September, regular as clockwork. Back in the day, of course, phone sales were dominated by people who got their phones on contract and were encouraged by the providers to upgrade every year - and AFAIK that hasn't completely gone away today.
The Mac is more "bottom-up", especially when you compare the high-end desktops (...and the Mac Pro/iMac Pro have been a bit of a dumpster fire with a series of dead-end models) - the lower end (of the Mac range) tend to get the most frequent updates.
However I suspect that is partly because the lower-end Macs are the money-spinners - so in terms of
sales I'm guessing that the majority of Apples Mac sales are now of M1 machines.
Problem is - Apple Silicon's big party trick is delivering mid-range desktop performance without mid-range desktop power and thermal requirements, so it is in the MacBook Air/Pro that it really shines. Moreover, some of it's benefits come from the efficient integration of CPU, GPU and RAM into a single package - essentially, laptop technology. Putting Apple Silicon into mid/high-range desktops - where power/thermals are far less critical, and the SoC model has to be scaled to cope with huge RAM and GPU requirements - is going to be more challenging. Also, you're dealing with a more conservative user-base, using specialist software, for whom any workflow change will be hugely expensive and disruptive. We'll see how Apple rise to that, but there's no surprise that the higher-end desktops are the last to appear.
Apple has driven the average Mac selling price up with the M-series ; not down. Apple hasn't demonstrated any huge effort in looking for cheaper Macs.
Not sure whether or not that's true:
- MacBook Air - same entry price
- Mac Mini - $100 cheaper (but it did take a hit on max RAM and display support).
- Low end "2 port" 13" MBP - same entry price
- Higher-end "4-port" 13" MBP vs. 14" MBP - the most significant price increase - $200 -
if you think that's a fair comparison, that's still only the price of the i5 to i7 bump on the old 13" - but you're now getting the same CPU and GPU spec as the 16" whereas the old 13" 4-port still had a lesser CPU and weak Intel graphics. The M1 13" with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD is arguably a better replacement, at $100 less.
- 24" iMac - same entry price - you can argue the toss about whether fewer ports and optional Ethernet is worth the bigger, better screen and more powerful processor.
- the base 16" MBP has gone up a whole $100 (not a big deal on a $2000+ machine)
The base SSD and RAM didn't change, nor did the BTO upgrade prices. Only the Mini and iMac lost the option of cheap third-party RAM upgrades - and that involved dismantling the whole machine which was never something that the
average user would attempt. If there's an effective price rise from the loss of 3rd party RAM options we'll only see that when the 27" iMac (which currently has truly user-upgradeable RAM) is replaced.
On top of that, the entry-level M1 machines are
far more capable than the models they replaced, and it's clear from these forums that some people have been "upgrading" from older MacBook Pros, 27" iMacs etc. to M1 machines rather than holding out for the "Pro" machines. That would push the average selling price
down.
But, no, Apple never worried too much about competing on price with suppliers who only made a profit if they sold you finance, an extended warranty and a Monster HDMI cable.
If anything, in the laptop world, other suppliers have been looking to Apple and adding "premium" models to match Apple's price points - Microsoft (surface pro/book/laptop/studio) and Razer being obvious examples that sell for Apple-like prices, Dell XPS as obviously Apple-inspired products that, while cheaper than Apple, are expensive by PC standards. Of course, Apple (with Sony) effectively invented the modern laptop with the PowerBook 100 (not the first laptop, but the design with the large screen, set-back keyboard, central pointing device was unique at the time).
