Apple's Most Devoted Fans Once Again Take Center Stage in a New Edition of 'The Cult of Mac'

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Um no. “Extraordinarily” inflated prices? Extraordinarily “inflated” prices? Prices are “massively” more than Apple of old? (A IIe cost $5000 in today’s dollars.) Prices are more expensive now than before yet decrease by waiting? Prices drop in a year due to Moore’s Law??

I don’t think even you know what you're saying.

I'm not even talking about the purchase price, I'm talking about the fact that you can't upgrade RAM or SSD after you buy a MBP, and that's what makes it massively more expensive. For example, I can buy a 2TB SSD outright from MacSales for US$420 (https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/macbook-pro-retina-display/2013-2014-2015), but if I buy a 16" MBP, the cost of the 2TB SSD is US$800 ($200 per 512GB upgrade), yep, twice the price. In my book, twice the price is exactly "extraordinarily inflated prices". (And this after Apple just recently cut the cost of their SSD upgrades - that 2TB was US$1500 just a few months ago!!!!)

Moore's Law refers to his observation that the number of transistors in IC's double every two years. Although this wasn't specifically referring to SSDs, the inference is that the size of SSDs double every two years. Related to this is that the doubled size SSD is of the same, or lower price. So if you buy a 2TB SSD two years from now, it will be the same or cheaper price than a 1TB SSD of today. So yes, prices of RAM and SSD drop over time due to Moore's Law (and the size options get bigger).

Combine those two factors, and the result is that prices are exactly "massively more than Apple of old". I wasn't comparing to so far back as IIe, but if you want to talk about that, then the reality is that computers were way more expensive back then, and have gotten cheaper, but if I want a 16" MBP with the specs I am going to foreseeably need in the near future, then I'm not looking at cheaper at all. The Apple of old I'm talking about is more like the Unibody MBP and Retina MBP. For example, in 2012 I bought a brand new Unibody MBP off the shelf with minimum specs. I immediately went and bought 8GB RAM from a non-Apple shop and swapped it for the 4GB that it came with (and put the 4GB in my mum's laptop). The following year I took on a C# contract, so had to run a Windows VM with Visual Studio and SQL Server, and thus upgraded to 16GB (and put the 8GB in my mate's laptop - who was also running VMWare and page faulting - he was blown away by the difference it made). If back then the RAM was soldered, then I would have guessed at my future needs and paid the Extraordinary Apple Tax for 8GB RAM. I wouldn't have foreseen needing 16GB, and when I got that contract, I would have had to sell my laptop and buy a new one (and my mate would have to do the same if he wanted to use the VMWare applications he needed). Yep, MASSIVELY more expensive total cost of ownership!!!! But worse, when I bought the laptop, 16GB wasn't even an option, so I couldn't have pre-upgraded to it even if I had foreseen the need. But because it wasn't soldered, well what do you know, I could upgrade to 16GB as technology improved (yep, Moore's Law again), how wonderful. I also over the years upgraded the HD twice. Two years ago, my 2012 laptop died, so I went to buy a new one, but that idea came to a grinding halt when I realised the extraordinary cost of 2017 MBPs, especially due to needing to pre-upgrade the RAM and SSD to what I would have to GUESS I would need in the near future. So I didn't have the budget, and instead bought my current 2015 Retina MBP second hand. It came with already maxed out 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD, which I have since upgraded to 1TB (and put the 512 in my son's MBA), and will probably upgrade to 2TB sometime soonish. Can you tell me what a brand new MBP with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD cost back in 2017? Pretty damn ridiculously expensive right! I know, because that was what I was looking at, and my budget said no way in hell. 2012 was WAAAAY cheaper than 2017 for MBPs, but it should be the other way around.

Do you still think I don't know what I am saying?

 

[iShater]

Yep exactly. And I haven't only stopped recommending Mac to friends, I've stopped buying it myself. I'm still hanging onto my 2015 MBP, but I don't know what I will do when it dies. The 16" pro finally seems to have sorted out the most horrible issues of the 2016-2019 models, but due to lack of upgradeability, I would want to get 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD at a minimum, but then the price is just ridiculous, I simply can't afford it. The only way I can see myself sticking with Apple is if my 2015 holds on for a few more years and I upgrade it to a second hand 16".

I got my 2015MBP (mid-range) 2nd hand in 2017, and just picked up another one (top of the line) at the end of a corporate lease and got the battery and top case replaced, that will not become my main system. I expect I will be keeping these until they croak. They are fast enough for quite a number of games (including new ones like TR, Battletech), and are good for programming and pics, etc.

Once they are down, 2nd hand 16" might do it for me, or i might just get a faster desktop machine for whatever is needed and keep the old MBPs as daily use machines.

 

[MacBH928]

Big yikes. Let's not forget what we're talking about here. A corporation. It's totally cool to like a product. It's totally cool to go to midnight releases, etc. They're fun! But at the end of the day, it's a problem when you're basically treating a company like a sports team, like your tribe. You pay them thousands of combined dollars for their products. And you follow them blindly... why? So you can pay them thousands more? They're a business. This goes for any company, by the way.

Actually, I will root for a business if they offer a great product the solves my problems. There are many of them. ProtonMail gives you free encrypted email, Toyota gives you reliable long lasting cars... you get the idea. Problem is many businesses go bust or bad over time.

The problem is when we see people blindly following evil companies like I have seen people believing in the Google products, trust Facebook with their info, continue to buy super expensive fashion items because it carries "the name"...etc

A sports team is a corporation too so I don't see any difference between a team's fans and Apple fans.

This is probably only in the US and I never understood how would you cheer a corporation. Sport teams in the rest of the world usually represent someone like a region or a city. I heard sport teams in USA can change their HQ anytime, like the Chicago Bulls could be the Dallas Bulls next year. A concept I can not fathom.

I would argue it’s a huge difference. You pay a “lot” (subjective) of money for Apple products and then use them heavily for everything from family pictures to listening to music to watching videos/movies to stay informed and countless other things. You can use it to make money. It is the most useful money “thrown” away ever. From sports you (or at least me) get nothing. People pay how much for VIP boxes, season passes? How much on alcohol that they can get ten times cheaper home vs bar. tens of thousands of dollars And nobody calls them sheeps. Computing devices (microprocessors) are the most useful things that mankind has ever created and they are worth every single dollar.

Microprocessors are like giving birth...no one takes a moment to appreciate how spectacular it is. It makes calculations on its own...on a thin slice wafer of metal. You did not store the the answer in it, it answered you.