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All iPads The great memory rip-off
- Thread starter superduperdom
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that's silly and not at all what i'm saying. I did read the linked article and it is absurd. Nobody is being forced to pay anything. Nobody is being ripped off. Terms like profiteering and price gouging simply do not apply to elastic luxury goods such as the iPad.
This article isn't "informing" people of much of anything - it is an appeal to emotion over logic which is the case with your argument as well.
Complain away, but many of your complaints are illogical.
Now, one thing that the article does gloss over but is actually an excellent point in my opinion is the fact that "the true amount of storage space on a new tablet is rarely the same as advertised on the packaging."
What someone paid for something they are now selling to you is completely irrelevant. As someone else posted up thread, the movie theater puts a 1000%+ markup on the price of popcorn relative to the cost of corn. So what?
However what they are selling you should be as advertised. Technically this is of course the case as a 16gb device really does contain 16gb of storage space - but the usable space is going to be less than that - especially after the OS. They explain this somewhere in the ToS, but it is certainly a bit duplicitous...and they ALL do it.
Even a blank 4tb drive, for example, will only have roughly 3.8 TB of usable space when used in an array.
I see no reason why consumers shouldn't attempt to be educated, but i'm of the opinion that when an article such as the one linked, makes 3-4 numerous logical fallacies in the opening paragraphs of its argument, then that's not really what's going on.
It reads more like an entitled appeal for charity...or petulant foot-stamping.
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by the way, i hate arguing with someone with such an awesome signature quote
While most members of a tech forum probably won't be shocked the average consumer likely doesn't know that the incremental cost to Apple is so slight.
From what I understand the entity quoted is the 'Consumers Report' of the UK. Informing the general public of the high margins of storage (not memory, come on people, storage and memory are not the same!) can end up being a PR nightmare for tech companies (not just Apple).
An informed public is the only way to put pressure on these companies to rework their pricing structure and that would be a good thing for consumers.
What I find kind of problematic is that with the iPod Apple always tried to push the memory capacity of the device.
1.Gen: 5gb
2.Gen 10-20gb
3.Gen 15-30 gb
4.Gen 20-40gb
5.Gen 30-60gb
iPad?
****ing 16 Gb for 3 and a half years.
That is simply a rip off. Prices of memory have vastly decreased since then and you still get a pretty small 16gb capacity as a starting point. And you STILL need to pay 100 bucks extra.
And no - just because people buy a lot of iPads doesn't mean it's the right and honest thing for Apple to milk them as much as they can.
1.Gen: 5gb
2.Gen 10-20gb
3.Gen 15-30 gb
4.Gen 20-40gb
5.Gen 30-60gb
iPad?
****ing 16 Gb for 3 and a half years.
That is simply a rip off. Prices of memory have vastly decreased since then and you still get a pretty small 16gb capacity as a starting point. And you STILL need to pay 100 bucks extra.
And no - just because people buy a lot of iPads doesn't mean it's the right and honest thing for Apple to milk them as much as they can.
Um, no. Actually prices have gone UP - if you actually did even the tiniest bit of research you would note that between 2012 - 2013 the 'per GB' price has more than DOUBLED.
Sure Apple is making a huge profit in the higher GB versions, but let us at least stick to SOME semblance of reality, please.
iPod 1 5GB - $399
iPod 1 10GB - $499
The iPods had a $100 price increase for the higher capacities so Apple has been doing this pricing structure for a while, but I do agree that the iPods genially increased the amount of their base capacities. One of the reasons for that may have been that by Gen 5, no one was making a 5 or 10GB iPod-sized hard drive, while the smaller flash storage chips are still begin made. That and larger capacity drives cost less than larger capacity flash chips.
If the prices had gone up in any significant way- how come their iPad margins didn't decrease ?
Even if they went up - still the pricing model went from extremely laughable to only laughable. And keep in mind that with the
iPad 3 apps increased in size due to retina resolution. So customers actually got less storage for the same prices.
Also strangely the MacBook Air and pro retina lines were able to push their ssd storage while maintaining their price.
I have zero problems with apple demanding a
Premium for storage boost. But in late 2013
16gb is just not adequate
Possibly because the price of other components, materials or manufacturing decreased.
You have a great point but you actually combined two separate ways in which consumers are being short-changed. The first has to do with the available or "usable space" (because the OS and other non-user files take up a significant amount of the total space), and the second way has to do with companies playing fast and loose with the definition of GB (and TB).
I'm actually more annoyed about the second way. What gives tech companies the right to arbitrarily redefine a GB as 10^9 or 1,000,000,000 bytes (which is about 5% less than the correct 2^30 or 1,073,741,824 bytes)? All of a sudden, the can sell you a "1 TB" drive that only contains 931 GB of space instead of 1024 GB. It's roughly the same your grocer redefining a pound as 14.5 ounces instead of 16 ounces, or your gas station giving you only 116 fluid ounces instead of 128 fluid ounces and calling it a gallon. You wouldn't stand for that, but nobody is taking the tech companies to task for this not-so-little scam.
First step, you need to learn to admit you were wrong. Sorry, you don't get to just randomly cite incorrect things time after time to support your random strawman because you don't like the price/memory structure choices of Apple.
Oh - and if you look at any OTHER major tablet (aside from bottom feeders 7" Kindle Fire and Nexus 7) you will see ... $100 memory upgrades. Some with 16GB bottom ends, others with 32GB.
Personally I have a bigger issue with there only being 1GB of RAM when 2GB would have made an actual performance difference. Since I can buy more storage but not more RAM ... that seems like more of an issue.
I think the pricing structure was fine 3.5 years ago, but to still have the same pricing structure on the iPads after flash storage prices have come down so much is insulting to Apple's customers.
thank you for clarifying - yes, you are absolutely right.
The point is these are actual manipulations and while you should feel free to believe or complain about anything you want, when it comes to this type of issue I believe it should be actionable (as in companies should be vulnerable to litigation for misrepresenting their products) whereas complaining that apple makes "too much profit" should not be.
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No, an informed public is perhaps one of the ways to put pressure on these companies to rework their pricing structure. The bigger incentive is competition.
If the kid down the street is charging $10 for a glass of lemonade and people are buying it, which do you think will be more effective in bringing that price down: running around telling people "Hey - lemons don't cost anywhere near $10" or opening up your own stand and charging $9?
And how long do you think it would be before someone opened one for $8 and so on?
Even if the guy selling the $10 lemonade really is selling the world's best glass of lemonade, if you're not that thirsty you might just prefer to pay $5 for a pretty-good glass.
It almost sounds like some people in here would advocate mommy and daddy coming out and telling Jr. he isn't allowed to charge $10...
The problem with your analogy is that we can only buy internal storage from apple. It doesnt really matter what the android tablet manufacturers are charging for their internal storage becuase they dont make ipads. Apple can charge whatever they want. Just becuase people buy it doesn't mean it's not a rip off. I don't think anyone is saying that apple shouldn't be able to charge whatever they want, just that it is a relative rip off.
Most android tablets charge half Apple does for the same storage upgrade, that pressure doesn't appear to be doing anything to apple. The lemonade analogy would really only apply if the internal ssd was user serviceable.
There was already a lawsuit against Seagate, et al on that.
Since tera, giga, mega, kilo, etc is based on the metric system (base 10), 1 gigabyte = 10^9 bytes = 1 billion bytes is actually defensible.
IEC and IEEE recommends the use of the folllowing binary prefixes:
kibi = Ki = 2^10
mebi = Mi = 2^20
gibi = Gi = 2^30
tebi = Ti = 2^40
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Really? So unsuspecting customers buy overpriced stuff and are ripped off. Is that what you think is going on here? The 170 million iPads sold over the past what? 3 years? Ripoffs? All of them? Half of them? The last year only since memory prices have dropped?
If it was a rip off, they would not sell. Not that many people can be ripped off for that long a period of time. Yes, they are expensive. Apple has built an image of value and price premium. With things like iCloud adding more value. So they keep their margins high. That's not a rip off. That's good business. Or do you think the iCloud data center pays for itself?
I would indeed say that $300 for 112GB (128gb-16gb) is a rip off. All of those services you listed are included with the 16gb model. I would also wager the vast majority sold are 16gb models.
So what? They still have to be paid for. All those services cost MILLIONS. So Apple charges more to make more to give more.
Did you buy one? What made you get ripped off on PURPOSE?
So what? They still have to be paid for. All those services cost MILLIONS. So Apple charges more to make more to give more.
Did you buy one? What made you get ripped off on PURPOSE?
I bought a 16gb. You seem to be implying that those who buy larger gb models are subsidizing the 16gb buyers. That would frustrate me as a buyer of a larger gb model.
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It's percent, not per cent.
The reason why Apple charges $100 more each time it doubles RAM is profit margin.
While the lowest model still nets a profit, they make more profit on the middle and highest storage capacity. This extra profit further supports new R&D, supporting existing warranty claims and support.
THIS.
Bingo, it pays rent, bonuses, and makes up all of their $7.5 BILLION in profit they made last quarter. How dare they make that much money? They should reduce the price and give back some of that money to consumers. No company should be allowed to make that much money. It should be illegal. And they should stop making us buy their stuff. They should stop making such cool stuff that makes us want to buy it and be ripped off against our will. They should make their stuff a little less cooler so we can resist them. Oh the evil....
I can't make the rolleyes BIG ENOUGH.
We are just saying that storage upgrades are not a good deal. Unplugme's quote essentially agrees.
And thus the Bingo comment. Sorry, that may not be universal. Bingo means right on, correct, I agree, good comment.