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BB membership $50 for a chance to buy a MacBook with 8GB of RAM, NO THANK YOU.
I do get the more expensive total membership as you get AppleCare included with it. I've got free AppleCare on 3 iPhone 15 Pro's, 3 MacBooks, 2 Apple Watches, and 2 iPad Pros. Add that all up and it's much more expensive to buy the AC+ separately.
 
This got me to shop for what I really want, which is an upgrade from my 16" intel MBP. Instead of one of these models I looked at BB's 15" MBA with 16/1T configuration and at this point, Apple's got some 'splaining to do. Apple offers me $690 for my old laptop but BB offers $800. The laptop I want is $1649 at BB, $1759 at Apple's EDU store. How can BB beat Apple at their own devices by $200?
 
Being able to usually only find 16GB RAM models as BTO directly from Apple means they are basically never available on sale at all the 3rd party retailers

That makes the bump from 8gb to 16gb even more egregious

The gouging and greed from Apple is OFF the charts at this point
Only thing apple is not doing right now is to 100x the price of all the products they sell to completely price them out of reach by 99% of people. Maybe Apple will sell their electronics as fashion luxury items again.
Haven't you heard? Based on Apple's new math, 8GB = 16GB ;)
Nah, when we reach 2025, Apple’s new math gonna be 8GB = 256GB. And you know what? Apple Fans will tout how inhumanely efficient their 8GB RAM chip is despite being 1/32 of the size of PC RAM.
 
With sales of base models happening quite often, one has to wonder why they dont offer as much sales on BTO config compared to base model. Could it be sensible people pay up the upgrade price and those base config are harder to sell than what Apple fans like to brag?

Maybe being content with the choice is different from happy with the choice.
 
A 15" MacBook Air M2 16/512 is $1,439.00 (Apple Certified Refurb) while new is $1,699.00. A 14" MacBook Pro M3 Pro 18/512 is $1,999.00. Compared to refurb or even new, that's more than a couple hundred extra.

Is the 14" MacBook Pro M3 Pro 18/512 a better computer? Sure, no doubt about it. But not everyone needs one or wants to/can afford to pay up to $560 more.
Well, I wouldn't compare the M3 Pro vs. the M2 Air and a refurbished model to a new model. FWIW, an M1 14" 16/512 refurb from Best Buy is the same price as the M2 Air refurb you mention, and I'd definitely take that.

I was really just trying to point out that the prices of the SSD and memory upgrades are insane. The MBA is great if you can live with 8/256, but it quickly becomes insane to upgrade those numbers to 16/512.
 
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