What's your theory as to why MacBooks now cost so much?

Profit and because they can. People get invested in the eco system. Sure they might lose some - but not enough to likely matter. I see a lot of people frustrated - but most are still sucking up about it.
 
I am reminded of this quote by Steve Jobs from the Isaacson bio:

"My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products," Jobs told Isaacson. "[T]he products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."
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Make up for earnings reports. This is a company that uses proprietary ports for their phones so companies wishing to use it pay a massive per unit licensing fee. Not to mention the fact these dongles cost less than a buck to make over at Foxconn, yet there's a $49 premium. For a ****ing cable.

You cannot, in good faith, tell me Apple increased prices because of R&D costs, ACROSS THE BOARD FOR ALL THEIR HARDWARE, to make up for R&D costs. Not to mention increasing the prices of refurbished units. You've got to be kidding me. They're used hardware that's more than 2 years old. Why is that getting a price increase? This is a company that was once revolutionary and pushed PC OEMs to increase their quality. The hardware now and three years ago is vastly different. All thanks to Apple putting the pressure on.
 
Zenithal said:
Make up for earnings reports. This is a company that uses proprietary ports for their phones so companies wishing to use it pay a massive per unit licensing fee. Not to mention the fact these dongles cost less than a buck to make over at Foxconn, yet there's a $49 premium. For a ****ing cable.
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I'm so glad their stock price tanked following the "event". I hope it crashes completely until they right this ****ing mess.
 
Lucjan said:
Begs the question why they did it? I mean in all seriousness, what amount of users will actually notice the difference between the ~2GB/s SSDs they used in the previous ones?
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That is one I wonder about also also. I have a 2015 rMBP with a 1.5 GB/sec SSD and an older unit with a 0.5 GB/sec SSD. The difference on almost all tasks is undetectable. So why go to 3.0 GB?

Maybe it really did not cost them much money, or their architecture now does a lot more I/O .
 
theBostonian said:
They haven't been released yet ;)

It's a 1st gen product so probably half-baked and full of bugs.
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Stock dropped yesterday during and after the announcement. Dropped a bit today, too. The lowest entry model is available now. The others ship in 3-4 weeks, but often people get them sooner. The stock might drop IF the media keeps harping on how awful this is and when they get their hands on customer units and not testing units.
 
New product with new technology that needs to be shaken down. Higher price means less demand and less pressure on production to get product out the door... assuming that new product launches are going to have teething problems.

Maybe they will slightly reduce the price at next years spec bump? Maybe excessively wishful thinking...
 
Tim Crook
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Spudlicious said:
The folks counting pennies just aren't the demographic in Apple's sights, never have been. It's the rule of P; premium pricing produces pleasurablely plentiful profits.
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Go buy a $1000 hdmi cable then. There's a point where premium dips into 'ripoff territory' and Apple has indeed crossed over
 
Zenithal said:
Stock dropped yesterday during and after the announcement. Dropped a bit today, too. The lowest entry model is available now. The others ship in 3-4 weeks, but often people get them sooner. The stock might drop IF the media keeps harping on how awful this is and when they get their hands on customer units and not testing units.
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I think a lot of stock owners follow social media, probably have AI bots that try and get a feel for the zeitgeist displayed on social media. Most of the comments live tweeted during the event were negative and disparaging.

As I said, they haven't released yet. Once they're out in the wild and glitches start appearing we can expect the stock price to go even lower much like it did following the release of the lacklustre iPhone 6s.
 
theBostonian said:
I think a lot of stock owners follow social media, probably have AI bots that try and get a feel for the zeitgeist displayed on social media. Most of the comments live tweeted during the event were negative and disparaging.

As I said, they haven't released yet. Once they're out in the wild and glitches start appearing we can expect the stock price to go even lower much like it did following the release of the lacklustre iPhone 6s.
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People with a large amount of shares matter more than people with less than 5. The inverse is true if people riding the Apple wave are done and sell in droves. What you're describing is social listening, and it's done by a few professional companies that specialize in the service and call poll social media servers without being banned. Services are usually offered to companies, though I suppose people can sign up for it themselves. SimplyMeasured is one such service.
 
motime said:
I think there are two factors. One is that Microsoft and apple now seem to be competing on who can sell premier laptops for the highest price, yes as stupid as this sounds, people obviously associate price with quality. The other reason seems to me to make up for lower iPhone sales. I think it's a mistake, apple would have done a lot better financially if they priced the notebooks competitively, but you can't have Microsoft laying claim to the best premium notebook out there.
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What product has Apple ever made that was value priced and had any significant effect on their overall bottom line?

This is nothing new for Apple. In fact, it's exactly the business model that has turned them into the most profitable company in the world.
 
myscrnnm said:
Not just inflation. But also research and development. This isn't just a spec bump, which is what a lot of people seem to be treating it as. As much as the new MacBook Pros share with their predecessors cosmetically, the new models are completely redesigned. The form factor is different, the trackpad larger, the keyboard uses a different mechanism, and hinges are all-new, et cetera.

I'm sure the 2008 and 2012 MacBook Pros were quite expensive for their time too. People have just forgotten how much new tech costs because it's been too long for them. I'm sure the cost for components like the CPU, RAM, and SSD aren't that much more for Apple over the last-gen components, but new stuff like the OLED panel in the Touch Bar, the TouchID reader, all-new T1 security enclave, et cetera should add to the cost as well.
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This makes a lot of sense. We may not like it. But I think there is some merit with this. Thanks!
 
I think it's pretty obvious. $200 was added to recoup the costs of R&D. $300 was added for the Touch Bar (plus the Apple Watch chip that powers it).

Prices will come down by about $200 over the next couple refreshes.
 
Branskins said:
There is a lot of technology packed into the Touch Bar. It is essentially an mini Apple Watch. The T1 chip is the S1 chip from the Apple Watch and it is running watchOS (called embeddedOS apparently).

The T1 chip allows for secure Apple Pay as well as secure control over the camera.

So:

This plus R&D may account for the increased price. There is a lot of thought (i.e. security) and technology packed into the new machines
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Also a lot of stuff that no one asked for, unfortunately.
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zhenya said:
What product has Apple ever made that was value priced and had any significant effect on their overall bottom line?

This is nothing new for Apple. In fact, it's exactly the business model that has turned them into the most profitable company in the world.
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I got a couple people to switch to Apple, because of the Mac mini. This included iPhones, iPads, and a couple portables.

Now I can't, in good conscience, advise people to go with Apple. In fact, I tell them to avoid, because the value has decreased for the basic user, as Apple glued EVERYHTING in, and Macs can't be upgraded.

A couple of families, who were never Apple customers, bought into the system because of the value priced, upgradeable mini. But I'm sure you don't consider that significant, right?
 
TheDoubler55 said:
New Model, New cool Touchbar.. price raise!
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Apparently it's made of sapphire crystal, rumor has it.

RHD 42 said:
New development and tooling for the stupid touch bar so we can have emojis and Applepay neither of which I care about on a pro machine.
Apple are turning into a toy shop.
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Think big.

Think the touch bar expanding to the whole dang keyboard. Think the haptic technology helping folks think they're actually pressing on a button when they're not.

You're ragging on a touch bar that you haven't even tried yet or see what it can do.

The price increase sucks..but it's a sharp turn in the grand scheme of things.
 
Pretty obvious Apple wants to move on from making computers, this is just a step towards that. Milk their most loyal customers as much as they can to find the breaking point and then exit the business when sales go down. It is something Jobs himself Spoke about in the 90's...
 
rainafterthesun said:
Apparently it's made of sapphire crystal, rumor has it.



Think big.

Think the touch bar expanding to the whole dang keyboard. Think the haptic technology helping folks think they're actually pressing on a button when they're not.

You're ragging on a touch bar that you haven't even tried yet or see what it can do.

The price increase sucks..but it's a sharp turn in the grand scheme of things.
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:p:p
 
It's just classic Apple. Why is everyone surprised? This is how they do it... in a few yrs, the same form factor MacBook Pro will have better components and cost a bit less. Remember when the Air was first released, with a traditional spinning hard drive, in 2008, for $1799??? That's the equivalent of over $2000 in today's dollars. For the entry level Air. If you maxed that sucker out with an SSD, it cost $3500. And was super popular. And everyone complained and lost their bananas over the ridiculous price... but tons of people bought them, and it endured, because it was thin and light and innovative. Now the Air has better specs than it did when it first launched, and costs less.
It's just how they roll, people...
 
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