rMBP RAM Price

Its the Apple Tax in play.

 

Apple really has us over a barrel in this situation. There is no way to upgrade the RAM yourself so they could charge even more and there's nothing anyone could do about it

 

On the rMBP it's been $200 or 200€ from the day it became available AFAIK.

 

It was always $200. The only $100 upgrade was the small CPU bump.

 

Now that it's soldered Apple knows you now HAVE to pay it if you think you're going to need it, or you don't get the computer basically.

I hate it but what are you going do... personally I think the path of starting to solder things is a really poor choice.

 

it was exactly that. Unfortunately at the time this was considered on price, now its called fortunately the apple tax

 

I have no problem with RAM being soldered (can't imagine a single downside to it, to be honest) - but Apple upgrade prices are - and always have been - quite ridiculous. And yes, it has always been 200 units for that particular upgrade.

 

You can't think of a single downside to not being able to upgrade your computer in the future if for some reason your usage changes and you require more RAM?

Really?

 

It's only a problem if you don't get 16GB off the bat, since the likelihood of seeing 16GB DDR3 modules to push any current MacBook (or anything with only 2 DIMM slots) to 32GB is rather low.

Still puts buyers in a bit of a bind.

 

I'm just being realistic. What kind of 'usage change' will require you to have 32GB RAM on a laptop (if 16GB DDR3 sticks will ever become a reality, which seems really unlikely). And even if you'll need so much RAM, your CPU will most likely not be able to accommodate your new usage in the first place. With same kind of argument you could complain that your CPU, GPU or VRAM is not being upgradeable. The only problem with the soldered-on RAM is that the upgrade to 16GB is priced so ridiculously. At that price they could have at least used modules with better timings.

 

Okay I can understand that. I was thinking a situation of someone looking at a purchase of a Retina and spending so much already didn't upgrade to 16gb and rather kept it at 8GB. Maybe they didn't understand ram and how much they would need. It's a shame people basically find themselves stuck with no options if they find later on they need 16GB.