Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Retina MacBook Pros are actually cheaper to manufacture

steve-p said:
Yeah, right. Just think how cheap an iPhone should be by your logic, as it has so much less raw materials, packaging, transport costs, smaller pixels, etc than a MBP :rolleyes: I guess you overlooked the part where R&D costs and fabrication costs need to be recovered from sales, and where smaller pixels actually cost more, not less to make.
Click to expand...
Apple is doing very, very well, so you don't have to talk about need for such-and-such price to recover from R&D costs.
Best information we got is estimated price of $160 vs. $68 for older display. Not that much, really.

Do you really think they are not cutting costs all those years? Longer you are in some business, easier you manage to cut costs on many things.
 
Puevlo said:
People who think the Retina MacBook Pros are a good deal need to realise they are being taken for a ride. They are actually cheaper to build than a regular MacBook Pro.

It is smaller therefore there is less raw material that needs to be spent on it. This also means more can be transported within the same amount of packaging saving money on transport. Also, just like transistors, smaller pixels are actually cheaper and easier to manufacture.

There is also no expensive optical drive that needs to be included.

There is not one aspect of a Retina MacBook Pro that costs more than the base MacBook Pro.

I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. You cannot.
Click to expand...
You just listed a load of stuff that I don't care about. Is it a benefit to the consumer that the older MacBook pro uses more raw materials? No. What does benefit me is that the screen is amazing, it is portable, it looks gorgeous and will see me through for 3 years. Just what I want.
The legacy MBP is still an amazing machine and I would recommend it to anyone, but I found more value in the retina. Point is, get what you need, get what you want and don't shout other people down for their choices.
 
Taking into account the cost of retina panel, the cost of R&D,...etc I still don't understand why the price of the 2.3ghz rMBP is the same as the 2.6ghz cMBP...

The cost of manufacturing a new product that includes a new design (thiner), new technologies (retina panel, flash ssd, better airflow, battery... whatever else I missed to enumerate in the rMBP model) should normally be higher than a legacy one (cMBP).

Don't tell me that 0.3ghz cpu speed difference increases that much the cost of the cMBP!

What's the trick here? Could someone objective with common sense explain what's going on with Apple prices?
 
Puevlo said:
People who think the Retina MacBook Pros are a good deal need to realise they are being taken for a ride. They are actually cheaper to build than a regular MacBook Pro.

It is smaller therefore there is less raw material that needs to be spent on it. This also means more can be transported within the same amount of packaging saving money on transport. Also, just like transistors, smaller pixels are actually cheaper and easier to manufacture.

There is also no expensive optical drive that needs to be included.

There is not one aspect of a Retina MacBook Pro that costs more than the base MacBook Pro.

I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. You cannot.
Click to expand...
I bet the Sony Z-series is cheaper to manufacture than its MSRP suggests.

Smaller transistors are NOT easier to manufacture and definately are not cheaper. OP = So much fail.
 
So how drunk was the OP when he/she made this thread? It's the only explanation that I can think of to make such a ridiculous post in the first place....obvious troll attempt. 6/10
 
mohsy90 said:
I'm curious as to where the down vote button went, wanted to down vote the crap out of the OP.
Click to expand...

I *just* now noticed this. What's the logic or announcement on this?

I feel like this is no different than the "give everyone a trophy" mentality. Guess they don't want to hurt anyones' feelings. This board is getting crazy with moderation. I've been warned and accused of rule violations on some really silly stuff lately.

I'm sure I'm breaking some rule about criticizing the admins.
 
Fortimir said:
I *just* now noticed this. What's the logic or announcement on this?

I feel like this is no different than the "give everyone a trophy" mentality. This board is getting crazy with moderation. I've been warned and accused of rule violations on some really silly stuff lately.
Click to expand...

Yeah, not sure why it's been removed. Definitely helped to weed out the ridiculous posts.
 
mohsy90 said:
Yeah, not sure why it's been removed. Definitely helped to weed out the ridiculous posts.
Click to expand...

Sometimes people will post crap that I just think is dumb, but I'm not sure if it's just personal bias or not. When I see a ton of downvotes, it validates that I'm not crazy. Haha.
 
Fortimir said:
Sometimes people will post crap that I just think is dumb, but I'm not sure if it's just personal bias or not. When I see a ton of downvotes, it validates that I'm not crazy. Haha.
Click to expand...

lol, true. btw, nice photog work, was just checking out your site.
 
For christ sake, is there not an ignore button or something on these forums? I would lvoe nothing more than to be able to hide threads like this from my view. Because all I do is waist my time in them that could be spent making a sandwich or something more productive :)
 
Randomoneh said:
As far as I know, estimated price for old display was $68, $160 for new.
And knowing Apple, they have managed to get a pretty good discount on top of that.

And market sets the price, not manufacturing cost.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. Apple knows that they are mainly competing with themselves and that a lot people buying the rMBP are coming from other Macs and would have bought a Mac to replace their old mac even if the rMBP didn't exist.

For that reason, if they reduce the margin on the rMBP too much, well they are losing money since they make less money from their loyal customers and I don't think the rMBP individually has the power to make a lot of people switch to Macs.

It's true though that market will set the cost a bit, but considering that Apple has no competition at all for a laptop like the rMBP (competing laptops are twice as thick and have a 1080p/1200p screen at best), whereas the cMBP does, they could have set margins even higher until competition catches up.

The fact that they keep selling the older cMBP without any price drop and that the rMBP has a fairly reasonable price for what it is shows that they want to push people towards the Retina, and it's logical since it's new their new flagship laptop that make them look like innovators, like Apple likes so much. If it sells more, Retina-enabled apps will be rolled out faster, helping their transition to Retina Macs across all lines.

If they wanted they could have lowered the price of the cMBP a bit while introducing the rMBP at a slightly higher price, that way both would have similar margins. But you know Apple, they like to push what they see as the future and let die what they see as on its way out.

I think your "Market sets the price, not manufacturing cost." would apply much better to PC OEMs, since they don't have the kind of customer loyalty Apple has, especially for Macs.

----------
01mggt said:
For christ sake, is there not an ignore button or something on these forums? I would lvoe nothing more than to be able to hide threads like this from my view. Because all I do is waist my time in them that could be spent making a sandwich or something more productive :)
Click to expand...

Right after they have disabled the downvote button I suggested they make it come back and have an effect. For example, if an OP has less than -10 his thread could stop being bumped to the top everytime someone answers, that way the front page of forums would have less trolls and more relevant content.

Then I've been censored. My post was deleted without any reason.
 
Puevlo said:
People who think the Retina MacBook Pros are a good deal need to realise they are being taken for a ride. They are actually cheaper to build than a regular MacBook Pro.

It is smaller therefore there is less raw material that needs to be spent on it. This also means more can be transported within the same amount of packaging saving money on transport. Also, just like transistors, smaller pixels are actually cheaper and easier to manufacture.

There is also no expensive optical drive that needs to be included.

There is not one aspect of a Retina MacBook Pro that costs more than the base MacBook Pro.

I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. You cannot.
Click to expand...

The issues with your argument are not simply R&D related (as others are pointing out). While R&D may contribute to some of the cost, the main flaw to your argument is:

The cost of technology is not determined by its size. Rather, it is determined by its components. In fact, in technology, making something large into something of a smaller size costs MORE than the larger size itself. The RAM, the SSD, the Quad-Core CPU - are all expensive components. The SSD in particular was not included in the lower-end MBP models, and I feel contributes most to the price gap between the two.

Not to mention that while smaller pixels may or may cost less to create, I can pretty much assure you creating and assembling several smaller pixels is far more expensive than making a larger on of the same size.

The final issue with your argument is simply your argumentative style. You are presenting us with a probatio diabolica - you are asking us to prove you wrong, when the burden of proof (that is, proving the MBPR costs less) is strictly on your shoulders (as you brought up the argument in the first place). We could sit here all day sharing theories as to why the MBPR could or couldn't cost less, but until one of us brings facts to the table, we're all just throwing words around.

Tl;dr - A hypothesis needs evidence. Without such evidence, troll unsuccessful.
 
This thread made me Lol. Anyone who thinks the Retina is cheaper to manufacture needs to take a business class or something. The amount of new technology this laptop contains is astounding. The USB 3.0 ports by themselves are more expensive than 2.0.
 
pgiguere1 said:
I think your "Market sets the price, not manufacturing cost." would apply much better to PC OEMs, since they don't have the kind of customer loyalty Apple has, especially for Macs.
Click to expand...
What I've said is basically this: if enough people are willing to pay $10000 for a product - product will cost $10000. And if people feel something has premium feel to it, they are willing to pay more than they would usually pay.

Do people think that, if Apple manages to manufacture rMBP for $100, that they'll sell it for something close to that cost? Of course not. Market sets the price. If people are willing to pay x, be sure that it will cost x.
ajcadoo said:
This thread made me Lol. Anyone who thinks the Retina is cheaper to manufacture needs to take a business class or something. The amount of new technology this laptop contains is astounding. The USB 3.0 ports by themselves are more expensive than 2.0.
Click to expand...
It's very likely that cost is higher, but not significantly higher.
----------

About downvotes - great. I like it. Everyone has right to say whatever they want. Just because opinion is unpopular doesn't mean it should be ignored. And that's exactly what happens when you allow a bunch of teenagers to express their opinion with thumb down. Proper opinions are sometimes downvoted just because readers are too lazy to actually check if certain statements are true or not.

Downvotes are one of the pillars of hivemind. Demolish it, I say.
 
Last edited:
Puevlo said:
People who think the Retina MacBook Pros are a good deal need to realise they are being taken for a ride. They are actually cheaper to build than a regular MacBook Pro.

It is smaller therefore there is less raw material that needs to be spent on it. This also means more can be transported within the same amount of packaging saving money on transport. Also, just like transistors, smaller pixels are actually cheaper and easier to manufacture.

There is also no expensive optical drive that needs to be included.

There is not one aspect of a Retina MacBook Pro that costs more than the base MacBook Pro.

I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. You cannot.
Click to expand...
I challenge you to prove yourself right. You cannot.
 
pgiguere1 said:
Yes and no. Apple knows that they are mainly competing with themselves and that a lot people buying the rMBP are coming from other Macs and would have bought a Mac to replace their old mac even if the rMBP didn't exist.

For that reason, if they reduce the margin on the rMBP too much, well they are losing money since they make less money from their loyal customers and I don't think the rMBP individually has the power to make a lot of people switch to Macs.

It's true though that market will set the cost a bit, but considering that Apple has no competition at all for a laptop like the rMBP (competing laptops are twice as thick and have a 1080p/1200p screen at best), whereas the cMBP does, they could have set margins even higher until competition catches up.

The fact that they keep selling the older cMBP without any price drop and that the rMBP has a fairly reasonable price for what it is shows that they want to push people towards the Retina, and it's logical since it's new their new flagship laptop that make them look like innovators, like Apple likes so much. If it sells more, Retina-enabled apps will be rolled out faster, helping their transition to Retina Macs across all lines.

If they wanted they could have lowered the price of the cMBP a bit while introducing the rMBP at a slightly higher price, that way both would have similar margins. But you know Apple, they like to push what they see as the future and let die what they see as on its way out.

I think your "Market sets the price, not manufacturing cost." would apply much better to PC OEMs, since they don't have the kind of customer loyalty Apple has, especially for Macs.

----------



Right after they have disabled the downvote button I suggested they make it come back and have an effect. For example, if an OP has less than -10 his thread could stop being bumped to the top everytime someone answers, that way the front page of forums would have less trolls and more relevant content.

Then I've been censored. My post was deleted without any reason.
Click to expand...

Wow, that would have actually been a great option. Too bad it won't happen :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back