And so continues Apple's disgraceful Add-a-Feature-Raise-the-Price game that has become the norm in recent years.
Gone are the days of Apple's VALUE ADD UPDATES. For nearly 10 years from 2007 - 2016 this was one of the best and most attractive and appreciable aspects of Apple's product business. They would replace an existing product with an entirely new model that was better in every way than it was yesterday, and the price remained the same. That was a big part of Apple loyalty, as much as the ecosystem itself. But that's over now, and the money whores have taken over.
This must be the latest talking point on the list, I’m seeing it in a lot of threads recently. It has about as much validity as the others. Selling prices are driven by cost, and Apple’s gross margin has actually eroded a bit since 2016—but that doesn’t fit your narrative, does it?
In the last year alone, quite a few products stayed exactly the same price. With an updated CPU and adding Pencil support, the 2018 entry level iPad stayed at the 2017 price of $329. The 2017 cost-reduced model itself was the least expensive iPad ever, $329 vs. $499 previously, with double the storage capacity.
The 2018 13/15” MacBook Pro models stayed at the 2016 price of $1,799/2,399, while the 13” went from dual to quad-core, and the 15” was upgraded from quad to hexa-core.
The iPhone XS replaced the X, and though the XS is better in almost every way, the price stayed at $999. The XS Max $100 premium is quite reasonable, I’m sure you’d agree. One could argue the XR was introduced at the same price point as the $699/799 8/8 Plus, being at the $749 midpoint. Plus, it has FaceID and a larger display, with longer battery life, along with other improvements.
The 2019 AirPods got the new H1 chip, Hey Siri support and a 50% increase in talk time, while staying at the 2016 price of $159. HomePod got a $50 price cut to $299, and there were reductions in price for some larger SSD and RAM configs for Mac.
The Mac mini had only a small price
increase of $50 to $799, for a much better machine, though Apple did drop some lower performing SKUs (configs with 4GB RAM and/or HDD/Fusion drives) from the lineup. iMac prices stayed the same, RAM capacity was increased.
iPad Pro did have significant price increases, $150 for the smaller model, $200 for the 12.9”. But the 10.5” became 11” and the 12.9 had a meaningful reduction in overall size. Both models got FaceID and USB-C, as well as magnetic attachment and wireless charging for the newly supported Pencil 2. Both got the A12X, a low-volume SoC exclusive to iPad Pro, which no doubt adds incremental cost.
MacBook Air went up $200 but (finally) got a Retina display and also TouchID. All in all, a good year for upgrades, imho.
