M1 vs. M2 MacBook Pro: Is It Worth the Upgrade?

[Bazza1]

I keep forgetting what a slouch the m 1 was 🤦‍♀️...

Yeah - the M1 a whole 18% slower than the M2? 🥺

And, let's face it, this Fall it will be 2 years old. Practically obsolete - especially with the next OS signifying that MacBooks 5 years old will be incapable of running it.

Yup, the M1 is now running on borrowed time. 🙄

 

[George Dawes]

I was …. Joking 🙃

Thought the facepalm would’ve given it away

 

[Bazza1]

I was …. Joking 🙃

Thought the facepalm would’ve given it away

Yeah. I got that. 🤪

I wasn't. 😉

 

[TallManNY]

'Anticipated inflation' is an interesting rationale for hiking prices.

"Hi, this is your local grocery store. We're just letting you know that while we still have a numbers of items that cost us the same to buy and put out on the shelves, we're going to crank their prices in anticipation of the possibility of price rises we have yet to see. Please don't see this as profit-making on our part".

And doubtless the Chinese workers will fully realize the benefits of a 20% price increase in their own wallets for assembling the M2.

'Free' certainly has nothing to do with price increases - that oxymoron even more so when Apple is involved.

Yeah, funny. But Apple creates all sorts of problems for itself by picking a price and then rarely changing it for that item as long as it sells the item. See the ridiculous price it still charges for Mac Pros. Since they probably expect to sell that exact laptop at that exact price for the next 18 months or so, they have to pick that price with a lot of thought about what things are going to look like in the next 18 months.

Well I'm sure the Chinese companies are charging Apple more for basically the same stuff these days. If they pass any of that down to their workers, I don't know and probably Apple only has a vague idea and then only for its biggest suppliers.

 

[Funny Apple Man]

And, let's face it, this Fall it will be 2 years old. Practically obsolete - especially with the next OS signifying that MacBooks 5 years old will be incapable of running it.

Yup, the M1 is now running on borrowed time. 🙄

They want to kill off the Intel Macs as soon as possible just like the last transition, I doubt AS Macs would only get 5 years of support. Apple likes preaching about the stuff they do to save the environment, but if they continue on with this short support then that would be more e-waste.

 

[name99]

Yeah, funny. But Apple creates all sorts of problems for itself by picking a price and then rarely changing it for that item as long as it sells the item. See the ridiculous price it still charges for Mac Pros. Since they probably expect to sell that exact laptop at that exact price for the next 18 months or so, they have to pick that price with a lot of thought about what things are going to look like in the next 18 months.

Please provide evidence for these "problems" caused by a static price.

Even for the case of the Mac Pro, I mean, honestly do you think they WANT to sell any of those right now? They'd much rather you look at the price, get the message, and wait a few months till the Apple Silicon version is available.

 

[TallManNY]

Please provide evidence for these "problems" caused by a static price.

Even for the case of the Mac Pro, I mean, honestly do you think they WANT to sell any of those right now? They'd much rather you look at the price, get the message, and wait a few months till the Apple Silicon version is available.

I see some swings in their sales of the laptops and other products, including supply constraints every time they launch one. I think this is in part caused by the fact that Apple keeps its prices constant. This was more of a problem when their products got older and weren't refreshed as often. They were selling devices that were two and sometimes even three years old at the same price that they launched them at. I think Apple would sell their product a bit more at a steady stream if they lowered the price each year to reflect that the product was older and a bit more out of date.

Anyway, if I had to set a price now, in this environment, and I felt like there was a good chance I was going to keep that price in place for that product for more than a year and maybe even two years, I might factor in that inflation would eat into my margins over those one to two years. Maybe that is partly what is going on here.

As for the Mac Pro, I think it is a little silly to keep a price that, according to you, is supposed to punish the buyer or teach the buyer a lesson not to buy the product. Or just a price to convince the buyer not to buy.

 

[julianps]

'Anticipated inflation' is an interesting rationale for hiking prices.

Where component prices are relatively steady, and the market in goods is 'fairly competitive', businesses will cost goods leaving the factory based on prices they already paid (called first-in-first-out, or FIFO). For components where prices are governed by exchanges (precious metals, for example) then pricing will shift towards market price at the time (so, last-in-first-out, or LIFO). But where a portfolio of costs are universally volatile, it is a defensive policy to cost using next-in-first-out (NIFO). As payroll is an input cost, where the labour component cost is similarly volatile the cost model using NIFO-based pricing will be predicated on anticipated future labour cost too. (Heavily simplified; costing and cost accounting is not for the faint-hearted.)

But a business also has indirect costs, including cost of capital (i.e. interest charges and dividend rates) so that there is (profit-)margin volatility to consider as well.

It seems to me that AAPL is after telling Wall St. that despite general market slowdown and (rampantly) increasing input costs, AAPL can maintain traditionally healthy margins, and dividend payouts. Within that context, the accelerated arrival of "M2-lite", SSD-Slowdown-gate on the base-model 13" Pro and 'anticipated inflation' all makes perfect sense.

iFixit put up an interesting video, a year ago, which has a take on how not to buy into Apple's hype.

As the man said "Work it harder, make it better/Do it faster makes us stronger/More than ever hour after hour/Work is never over".