Hello everyone,
I’ve mentioned this before, but I simply still don’t have the time to read the messages here.
The last 12 months have been pretty hectic, with:
- Trump’s tariffs, which brought UPS logistics to a standstill and resulted in dozens of packages being returned and having to be reshipped at our expense
- a serious health issue with my business partner (who hasn’t been able to work for several months), plus family matters on my end
- two manufacturing issues (and NAND programming problems) with our batches 3 and 4.
- in October, our suppliers’ breach of a major supply contract that we had paid for in advance, but which was canceled following the skyrocketing prices of NANDs
That’s a lot to handle.
Out of a sense of honesty (and the near-certain failure of any legal action), I absorbed all the cost of the supplier’s contract cancellation and the NAND price increase entirely on my own.
This turned the small profit I had made into a loss (I mention this because a few people have accused me of lining my own pockets).
I’m currently finishing up the corrections for the misprogrammed kits; it’s a massive undertaking.
I reiterate my apologies for all the shipping delays.
Many customers canceled their orders and got their $800–$900 back (on my end, each cancellation cost me fees).
Several customers dishonestly got refunds from their banks despite having received their deliveries—obviously, none of them came here to brag about it!
The hundreds of customers who waited patiently received kits that today cost no less than $1,500 (or much more at Apple).
I still have about a hundred left to deliver, and I apologize again.
There are now MacStudio kits sellers who are far more responsive than I am, and I’ve always said: that’s a good thing.
You should know that, in fact, a manufacturer in Shenzhen sells its products as white-label goods to several different sellers.
To be clear, the sellers that some people mention here have never designed anything, haven’t been in business long, don’t even test their products (they don’t even have testing equipment), and obviously haven’t written an installation manual.
They simply resell the products while pocketing a substantial markup.
To give you an idea, the “factory direct” purchase prices for the 8TB Mac Studio kits were around $700 three months ago and have risen to $1,050 right now.
Some sellers are therefore making a $600 profit without having designed or manufactured anything, taken any risks, or even written a manual.
I’ll readily admit, though, that they sell quickly and efficiently.
As for me, once I’ve finished clearing out my backlog and restored responsive customer service, I’ll start coming back here to answer questions.
I also plan to resume sales at that time, sourcing from the same manufacturer that supplies all the sellers: when no one was manufacturing, I had no choice but to do everything myself (PCB and soldering), but now that’s no longer necessary.
This will allow me to offer fast delivery times.
However, I will continue to test every board sent out (several hours of read/write testing).
Above all, I will continue to sell at a margin I consider reasonable, which I hope will, through competition, keep prices low for everyone—including my competitors (some do indeed "stick" to my prices !)
I’d like to remind you that I’ve always been committed to helping the Mac community:
- I wrote a RAM guide in 2000 (to adapt PC RAM for Macs)
- I contributed significantly to making NVMe SSD upgrades reliable and functional, with hundreds of posts here on MacRumors (by the way, thanks to my work, a forum reader founded a company, Fledging. He has thanked me several times for making his startup possible)
- I was the first to add the full NVMe driver to the BootROM in Mac Pro 5,1 and all MacBook Air/Pro models, before Apple integrated it
- and I was the first person in the world to prove that updates could be performed on Mac Studio models
In the future, I hope to finish developing a technique for replacing LCD panels that’s easier than using heat… but that’s not happening anytime soon !
Once again, I haven’t finished catching up yet with backlog, so I won’t be able to read the replies here right away—apologies in advance.