The upgrade pricing will only go up. So, I guess the Apple stance is either you can afford Apple or you can’t…
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Kuo: MacBook Sales Down 30% Amid No New Products for Remainder of 2023
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You might check some of the many deals on MBP 14 M1 Pro right now. Easy to get one for $1279. Sealed Apple Recertified. There are deals on 15" MBA and 16" MBP M1 Pro. Just look around.
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Maybe if Apple stops being greedy and put regular speed SSD's in all the base models, just like what we had with M1 Mac's, it would sell better.
We will see. With ML/LLM tech going mainstream, RAM will be much more important in the future. All those 8GB machines will become obsolete very quickly. At some point Apple will have make a move.
AT&T isn't giving me a discount for not buying a new iPhone "on them" -- my price stays the same. So, yes, if I can get a new phone for $5-$10 per month after bill credit, THEY are paying for the phone, not me. I think I have $180 out of pocket for my 13 Pro Max which was about $1200.
Well I'm waiting for the new M3 before updating from a 2019 MBP, still working decently. But really looking forward to be on an Apple Silicon, with more features and battery life. M2 Macs would be excellent, but why not wait a little more? I hope it'll be a little bit more than a better chip: hopefully a better screen, etc.
Apple has made it difficult to directly compare. Not impossible, but I know you will be pedantic and reject everything in favour of Apple. And given how small a percentage of PC and Mac sales are at this level you're already stacking the deck. So I will just point out this:
The M2 Ultra Mac studio with 2TB of storage and 64 gig of ram is $5400. (upping to 8TB of storage makes is $7200).
Prices checked at Newegg:
An Intel i9-13900KS with slightly better performance than the M2 Ultra is $730.
An 970EVO Plus 2TB SSD is $130.
64 gig of PC5-62400 RAM is $400 from just about every major manufacturer.
Budget $1500 for a GPU, Case, MB, and PS, and you're still at half the price of the Mac Studio 2TB.
See the problem is, the M1 Air was so incredibly great (imo the best computer Apple has ever built) that they have failed to carry that momentum forward. The size, thinness, usability etc of the M1 Air is a masterclass and will be a very functional laptop for 99.999% of people. They can be had for dirt cheap on the resale market too.
Apple instead decided to redesign the Air and make a 15" version for the M2 and it just doesn't have the appeal of the original. Also the M2 chip isn't leaps and bounds better than M1 so there's no FOMO for M1 owners.
As far as the Pro line, those are niche anyway due to their extreme pricing. Most people do not need the power of those laptops to do basic tasks a regular M1 can do. Those laptops are supposed to be used for intense video editing and other professional things or maybe you have the ability to spend the kind of money needed for the better screen and speakers. But again, the Pro laptops are very overpowered for most use cases lol.
Apple instead decided to redesign the Air and make a 15" version for the M2 and it just doesn't have the appeal of the original. Also the M2 chip isn't leaps and bounds better than M1 so there's no FOMO for M1 owners.
As far as the Pro line, those are niche anyway due to their extreme pricing. Most people do not need the power of those laptops to do basic tasks a regular M1 can do. Those laptops are supposed to be used for intense video editing and other professional things or maybe you have the ability to spend the kind of money needed for the better screen and speakers. But again, the Pro laptops are very overpowered for most use cases lol.
You're right, they don't… initially. And Apple is clearly relying on that for their "Sucker's Buy" entry-level system spec'ing and pricing.
However… customers don't usually stay ignorant for long. They eventually start to complain about performance, "Why is my computer slow?" And when they, inevitably, hear the answer, "Because Apple shortchanged you on the components they put in that model", they almost always—right then and there—decide to never buy a Mac again. They'll go back to the Windows world… where they expect that kind of nonsense.
This is why this Exec Team's short-sighted greed will eventually befall it. Thing is, this exact thing happened to Apple before; it has been warned about, repeatedly… but none of these idiots were at Apple then, so they're doomed to repeat it. Sure, more money involved, the size of the company bigger, yes, yes… but all mighty eventually fall. All.
And this was 100% avoidable if Apple would have just stuck to it's "first principles", as Elon constantly preaches: if Apple would just deliver the best devices for value (a price that is commensurate, which can be higher than competition) and back that up with customer service and support that matches their PR narrative, they'd not be facing this. Instead, they chose massive stock options, gaslighting consumers with propaganda, and "luxury" faux-quality. It's made them rich; but the community is now poorer, and it is finally starting to really show.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe if Apple stops 'nickel and dime-ing' us on base upgrades (just start us off with 16/512 on every Mac already), then more people could justify the cost and not have to look for a clearly inferior Windows machine just because it's cheaper.
At some point, people HAVE all the computers they need. ;-)
The wait is unbearable when you are running old hardware. I know what's like to want to get the most out of your upgrade cycle.
I have a workstation probably more in line with a M1 Studio. I picked up an HP Z2 small form factor Xeon W1250 (6 core) 32 GB DDR4-3200 RAM, 512GB HP Turbo Z drive, Nvidia T-400 4 GB video, Win 11 Pro for Workstations with 3 years of onsite next day warranty for $1,300.00 from HP direct. Use it for 2D CAD work.
I still think the chip department painted the Mac product team into a corner. They simply can’t offer what they want to.
Back in the dark ages, Apple offered soldered memory and memory slots, soldered cache and cache slots, etc.
Despite the unified memory architecture, I don’t see why there can’t be some kind of secondary memory that sits between the use of disk swapping and main memory, with that space being user upgradable. There may be some performance hit during the swap but no more than to the SSD. And it would theoretically reduce SSD wear.
And there certainly is no reason there can’t be an m.2 SSD secondary slot like many Windows laptops have.
Back in the dark ages, Apple offered soldered memory and memory slots, soldered cache and cache slots, etc.
Despite the unified memory architecture, I don’t see why there can’t be some kind of secondary memory that sits between the use of disk swapping and main memory, with that space being user upgradable. There may be some performance hit during the swap but no more than to the SSD. And it would theoretically reduce SSD wear.
And there certainly is no reason there can’t be an m.2 SSD secondary slot like many Windows laptops have.
Apple doesn't nickel-and-dime customers with upgrades, they arm-and-a-leg them.
Apple will continue to do this for as long as enough people continue to give them an arm-and-a-leg. It's that simple. All of the complaining is fruitless if it isn't followed up with action that results in lower profits for Apple.
Apple is at a point in their company's lifespan where they can reap the benefits of having a loyal customer base that is willing to pay more for less. They're not the first to do this and it is the reasonable thing to do from a shareholder's perspective.
If people are willing to pony up for the outrageously priced (IMO) upgrades why should Apple change that? They aren't concerned about the number of units sold as much as they are about the profit number at the bottom of the balance sheet.
As for people buying "clearly inferior Windows machines just because it's cheaper"... there is little that is true or new in that claim. The two platforms are so different that anyone who wants a Mac will buy one. A Windows system is not a reasonable substitute.
(edit: fixed typo)
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The upgrade pricing is highway robbery, that's for sure.
Stockholders would argue that would tank the profits significantly as a large part of Apple's profits come from ridiculously high-priced upgrades from the base model people pay to get to the 16GB/512GB level.
Why? If you need more memory, simply pay for it.
If you don't need more memory and are fine with the base model (like a lot of people are), why should you have to pay more for computer that exceeds your needs?
Sadly, I get that some people like free stuff, just because.
What a bunch of whiny peasants. Apple, Inc. is a BUSINESS. It's sole purpose is to make as much margin off their product line as possible and report as much profits to their stock holders. You're just too poor and want something for cheap and you have that option - go buy PC parts and build your own. No one is stopping you. But I hear whinging haters yappin' away about how this should not be soldered, that should be upgradeable. You don't like it that way, don't buy. I swear apple buyers like these whinging peasants here in this thread buy refurb and only during BF for a 2 year old apple product and come out swinging that they made the best deal in their life 🙄
But that's not how the industry looks at numbers. It always only looks at the difference between this year last year and what's expected next year from current trends.
Dentistry never ever takes into account any kind of bump or special circumstance. Last year is treated like the new standard and showing a drop means business is in trouble.
Does it makes sense? Not to us regular folk, but there's a good (well, A reason) for every maddening ridiculous financial standard of reading numbers. But more or less this seems like one of those duh kind of topics that doesn't seem to go away. It's not changing. And yes its dumb.
Cheers
The funny thing about this probably not serious rant is that you end up sounding sillier than everyone.
Nobody should even explain to you why you sound ridiculous. Just stew in your own madness, obviously your comment has a ton of fans 😂
PS - Captain obvious is looking for you and he's not happy.
This is 2023…. So how far would you go with this argument? 128/4 as a start: if you need more just pay more? And 256/8 is not future proofing in anyway. More and more Mac software recommend 16gb (games in particular), so yeah in that regard it is a ripoff: your brand new 2023 MacBook Air can’t even run certain software decently, while the cpu and gpu are not the bottleneck.
Not if they drop support for it next year because it doesn't have the latest XT9001SuproModulous Security Chip for your benefit. 😂