yes oled touchbar costs more than the traditional fn keys, the touchid and sapphire cost more than a normal power button , the T1 chip for secure toucid and facetime cost more. These are add-ons that cost 100$ more than previous model that doesn't have any of that, specs bump are for the same price
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What's your theory as to why MacBooks now cost so much?
- Thread starter Luba
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I must say pure greed... They think they can get away with it.
When you think about it, people who are going to use these computers are going to be making enough money to cover its cost in about 1-2 months.
What bothers me though is that the high prices for joke specs . No USB, $2300 laptop thats coms with 256GB storage(what a joke!), and a gpu that will not be able to run games from 2 years ago (think about 2 years in the future!). You also can't upgrade it. THIS bothers me.
When you think about it, people who are going to use these computers are going to be making enough money to cover its cost in about 1-2 months.
What bothers me though is that the high prices for joke specs . No USB, $2300 laptop thats coms with 256GB storage(what a joke!), and a gpu that will not be able to run games from 2 years ago (think about 2 years in the future!). You also can't upgrade it. THIS bothers me.
For a machine of this capability and how I would use it everyday, it would be half a months work but I'm not going to budge with this price as these prices dictate I have too much money as they're priced badly imo.
My speculation for the high price: expensive display assembly (16:10 wide-gamut with 500nits!, thats something fairly new and advanced, the process is probably still not 100% perfect), expensive SSD, the TouchBar, bad GPU yields. Alltogether, not very surprising that the price is what it is. It will go down as the process is refined.
Dare I say it, we are the reason. Competition is the reason why the prices have increased.
Competition have caught up, to get Microsoft reference architecture hardware to run with Windows 10 had become more expensive than the equivalent Macbook Pro's. The Macbook Air / Pro was fantastic value when you consider it compared to the competition. And don't give me that a Surfacebook is only $1350, in a sensible and comparable configuration it is actually on par in cost compared to a 13" Macbook Pro. This is throughout the industry when you have comparable models they are in the similar price range.
Heck also take a look regarding the phones; Google Pixel, Samsung they are all getting more expensive. It really wouldn't surprise me when the next iPhone would be a lot more expensive.
The competition is driving up the prices, Apple sees them getting away charching even more for their product. So why won't they have some of that?
Who is doing that and the true underlying cause; us. We are paying the money and valueing those products at those prices.
The whole Brexit theory is interesting, but doesn't explain why our friends in the US, Canada and across the rest of Europe also complain about the price increases. I mean lets get real; base model in the UK £1,449 and in the US $1,499, so take away 20% VAT, and convert to dollars, the UK price is: £1,207.50 * 1.22 (todays exchange rate) = $1,471.94. So in effect it is actually still cheaper than in the US
<sorry for political commentary>just typical more doom and gloom from those who wanted to remain with false facts</political commentary>
Competition have caught up, to get Microsoft reference architecture hardware to run with Windows 10 had become more expensive than the equivalent Macbook Pro's. The Macbook Air / Pro was fantastic value when you consider it compared to the competition. And don't give me that a Surfacebook is only $1350, in a sensible and comparable configuration it is actually on par in cost compared to a 13" Macbook Pro. This is throughout the industry when you have comparable models they are in the similar price range.
Heck also take a look regarding the phones; Google Pixel, Samsung they are all getting more expensive. It really wouldn't surprise me when the next iPhone would be a lot more expensive.
The competition is driving up the prices, Apple sees them getting away charching even more for their product. So why won't they have some of that?
Who is doing that and the true underlying cause; us. We are paying the money and valueing those products at those prices.
The whole Brexit theory is interesting, but doesn't explain why our friends in the US, Canada and across the rest of Europe also complain about the price increases. I mean lets get real; base model in the UK £1,449 and in the US $1,499, so take away 20% VAT, and convert to dollars, the UK price is: £1,207.50 * 1.22 (todays exchange rate) = $1,471.94. So in effect it is actually still cheaper than in the US
<sorry for political commentary>just typical more doom and gloom from those who wanted to remain with false facts</political commentary>Question to you people: why was the first unibody 15" $1999? Why was the first retina 15" $2199? The prices then went down.
I also have an answer that makes most sense to me: new, more expensive manufacturing process. Look at the display assembly. Its a wide-gamut retina screen at 500 nits. This is massively brighter than any of the competition, suggesting that Apple is really using some very new process here. E.g. XPS 15" at 285 nits, gaming 4K laptops at around 320nits (Blade, Alienware etc.). Also, its a 16:9 display, which is more expensive than the 16:10 ones found in the most of the similarly specced items. Or the SSD. At 3100GB/s its literally the fastest thing on the market. Nobody, I repeat, nobody ships anything comparable. So yeh, its expensive.
I also have an answer that makes most sense to me: new, more expensive manufacturing process. Look at the display assembly. Its a wide-gamut retina screen at 500 nits. This is massively brighter than any of the competition, suggesting that Apple is really using some very new process here. E.g. XPS 15" at 285 nits, gaming 4K laptops at around 320nits (Blade, Alienware etc.). Also, its a 16:9 display, which is more expensive than the 16:10 ones found in the most of the similarly specced items. Or the SSD. At 3100GB/s its literally the fastest thing on the market. Nobody, I repeat, nobody ships anything comparable. So yeh, its expensive.
From all my laptops my Macbook Pro from 2011 is by far the best laptop I ever had and from an economical POV the cheapest. After a couple of years I added some RAM and replaced my HDD with 512GB SSD, total costs of the upgrades was about 250 euro's making the total cost of my laptop over the 6 years to 1500 euro's.
The problem today is that (with the exception of the SSD it seems) upgrading is not that straight forward anymore so I have serious doubts of the longevity of a MBP purchase today.
I could of course try to max out the specifications and pay the prices for the RAM and SSD that is probably build by gnomes and that only by moonlight (which is the only sane explanation why RAM or a SSD upgrades in 2016 costs that much) but that drives the price so high that I should be high paying these kind of prices.
My theory: These are the first signs that China is no longer an ultra low cost producer. The tech industry is raising prices because they can no longer get product manufactured in China at almost zero cost. Prices will continue to climb while features stagnate. Eventually production will return back to the west.
This is probably true actually. The benefits of manufacturing in China today are not as great as they were 10 years ago. That is for sure.
I do anticipate the next iPhone also seeing a price hike and if you think people are pissed about the pricing of these new MacBook pros just wait until the raise the prices across the line on the next iPhone. These forums will be filled with hate when most folks have to spend over $1000 to get the iPhones they want.
I think this, uh, price controversy is largely due to what comes down to a miscalculation on Apple's part of the way the market feels towards Apple products right now..
I'm far from an expert in the field, but it seems to me that the costs of producing an international mass-market product have somewhat been abstracted away from the setting of the price at which the final product is positioned in the market at. By that I mean to say it's probably no longer any specific kind of increase (or decrease) in the costs of components or R &D that directly and necessarily impact on what price they choose to sell the product at. I think at this level of product, these costs are absorbed (even if they are taken into consideration), and the more important factor is really what they believe the entire product range _should_ be priced at, based on probably very sophisticated research of what the market will bear.
A few years back there was quite a concerted effort (if I remember correctly) by Apple to come across as far more competitive on a feature-by-feature/price comparison to other choices on the market. They even made a point of bringing it up in some of their product launches, and there seemed to be an official line in the press showing that Apple were actively trying to address this feeling that their products were more expensive for no reason. At the time though, (again if I remember correctly), they were really in that major push to own the smart phone market, and they were at the time nowhere near the "mainstream" company that they have since become. So in retrospect it seems like at that specific time, it was very important to them to temper their reputation for elite products with a sense that they were good value for money as well. The term "aggressive pricing" was thrown around a lot then, if not directly said by Apple (although I do recall Phil Schiller using that term once), they certainly welcomed that kind of talk. This was also at a time when the market was still going nuts around the idea of the "sub $1000 netbook", and Apple didn't have a strong presence anywhere near that area. Also, importantly, the notebook line-up they had at the time was already mature and stable for some time, so there was really not a great deal of fiercely marketable innovation they could point to in order to really stir the market into a frenzy to pay premium prices. They were more concerned about creating this frenzy in the new product categories they were pushing out - the iPhone and iPad. So for many reasons it was a smart time to project an image of price-reasonability for what you got in the notebook space.
Now what I think has happened is that (probably incorrectly), Apple have made the internal decision that they've significantly enhanced the category again and so going on past experience, they've gone for pricing that reflects what they've been able to set for other times they were on the edge of the envelope with their range. Problem with this is, they might think that's what they've just launched, but a lot of customers don't seem to think so. The other side-effect of a premium pricing model for a product range is that it consolidates a sense of superior quality in the marketplace, which has been a very important factor in creating the famous "halo" effect on to the rest of Apple's product range. I think Apple have never felt comfortable coming across as too competitive with pricing, it goes against their quality premium brand. So they were probably eager to get back to slightly higher pricing again as soon as they felt they could justify it. Where I think they've miscalculated though is that the halo effect never came from premium pricing alone. It also (and in large part) came from the fierce loyalty and clear example of satisfaction shown by professional users in a number of key industries - photography, media, editing, music production, design etc etc. These users were never won over solely by class-leading design or even by an OS they broadly preferred. And definitely not by the just because it costs more argument, which can work with the tacky nouveau-riche market. They were won over by what felt for many years like a covenant between Apple and them to provide machines that truly supported their needs, software and specific configuration requirements. Not just in terms of pure specs (because that has always been hit and miss), but in broader terms - a kind of "sure, maybe it's missing that one port I could use, but the whole deal just _works_ and is so much better than the alternative" deal.
So who knows how it will play out? Doesn't seem to me like a redesign with some new innovation (that users arguably wanted or don't care about) is necessarily the kind of understanding the real Apple aficionados signed up for and have been shown to be willing to pay more for in the past. Many of these users are approaching intervention-level fear for their friend Apple who seems to be suffering from some kind of dangerous industrial design anorexia, wilfully ignoring to give customers a 32GB RAM option (that they actually are asking for) and giving them instead a trimmer chassis by a bunch of millimetres (that nobody seems to specifically be asking for). One can only wonder if they're going to be able to maintain this halo effect of "real" power-users for much longer. They risk creating a very different kind of halo effect - a much tackier bling bling one. If the users who made the products so hyped because they really were the people out there making our cool music, movies, fashion shoots and so on, move to something else, then maybe the only high-end users they'll have left will be just people with more money than sense... That would be a real shame, after all these years of creative (and other) industry support.
I'm far from an expert in the field, but it seems to me that the costs of producing an international mass-market product have somewhat been abstracted away from the setting of the price at which the final product is positioned in the market at. By that I mean to say it's probably no longer any specific kind of increase (or decrease) in the costs of components or R &D that directly and necessarily impact on what price they choose to sell the product at. I think at this level of product, these costs are absorbed (even if they are taken into consideration), and the more important factor is really what they believe the entire product range _should_ be priced at, based on probably very sophisticated research of what the market will bear.
A few years back there was quite a concerted effort (if I remember correctly) by Apple to come across as far more competitive on a feature-by-feature/price comparison to other choices on the market. They even made a point of bringing it up in some of their product launches, and there seemed to be an official line in the press showing that Apple were actively trying to address this feeling that their products were more expensive for no reason. At the time though, (again if I remember correctly), they were really in that major push to own the smart phone market, and they were at the time nowhere near the "mainstream" company that they have since become. So in retrospect it seems like at that specific time, it was very important to them to temper their reputation for elite products with a sense that they were good value for money as well. The term "aggressive pricing" was thrown around a lot then, if not directly said by Apple (although I do recall Phil Schiller using that term once), they certainly welcomed that kind of talk. This was also at a time when the market was still going nuts around the idea of the "sub $1000 netbook", and Apple didn't have a strong presence anywhere near that area. Also, importantly, the notebook line-up they had at the time was already mature and stable for some time, so there was really not a great deal of fiercely marketable innovation they could point to in order to really stir the market into a frenzy to pay premium prices. They were more concerned about creating this frenzy in the new product categories they were pushing out - the iPhone and iPad. So for many reasons it was a smart time to project an image of price-reasonability for what you got in the notebook space.
Now what I think has happened is that (probably incorrectly), Apple have made the internal decision that they've significantly enhanced the category again and so going on past experience, they've gone for pricing that reflects what they've been able to set for other times they were on the edge of the envelope with their range. Problem with this is, they might think that's what they've just launched, but a lot of customers don't seem to think so. The other side-effect of a premium pricing model for a product range is that it consolidates a sense of superior quality in the marketplace, which has been a very important factor in creating the famous "halo" effect on to the rest of Apple's product range. I think Apple have never felt comfortable coming across as too competitive with pricing, it goes against their quality premium brand. So they were probably eager to get back to slightly higher pricing again as soon as they felt they could justify it. Where I think they've miscalculated though is that the halo effect never came from premium pricing alone. It also (and in large part) came from the fierce loyalty and clear example of satisfaction shown by professional users in a number of key industries - photography, media, editing, music production, design etc etc. These users were never won over solely by class-leading design or even by an OS they broadly preferred. And definitely not by the just because it costs more argument, which can work with the tacky nouveau-riche market. They were won over by what felt for many years like a covenant between Apple and them to provide machines that truly supported their needs, software and specific configuration requirements. Not just in terms of pure specs (because that has always been hit and miss), but in broader terms - a kind of "sure, maybe it's missing that one port I could use, but the whole deal just _works_ and is so much better than the alternative" deal.
So who knows how it will play out? Doesn't seem to me like a redesign with some new innovation (that users arguably wanted or don't care about) is necessarily the kind of understanding the real Apple aficionados signed up for and have been shown to be willing to pay more for in the past. Many of these users are approaching intervention-level fear for their friend Apple who seems to be suffering from some kind of dangerous industrial design anorexia, wilfully ignoring to give customers a 32GB RAM option (that they actually are asking for) and giving them instead a trimmer chassis by a bunch of millimetres (that nobody seems to specifically be asking for). One can only wonder if they're going to be able to maintain this halo effect of "real" power-users for much longer. They risk creating a very different kind of halo effect - a much tackier bling bling one. If the users who made the products so hyped because they really were the people out there making our cool music, movies, fashion shoots and so on, move to something else, then maybe the only high-end users they'll have left will be just people with more money than sense... That would be a real shame, after all these years of creative (and other) industry support.
That’s an option I suppose. Though most people I know that are teenagers also like to game and any Mac at that price will be abysmal for gaming.
OLED screens and additional chips to run the new touch bar? The larger trackpad required most likely a larger magnetic haptic motor? I'm obviously guessing here but those are some ideas for the few hundred additional price hike. It's also a brand new design, so I remember when the Air came out it was very very expensive and then dropped over time. I'd say the prices will drop a couple hundred minimum in 12 months for gen 2.
This is pure speculation but my guess assuming their base operating margins stayed the same.
2008 MacBook Pro started at $1,999 for the 15". 2012 15" Retina MacBook Pro started at $2,199.
So I suppose from that the base price goes up $200 every gen?
You cherry picked 2 examples out of dozens to dismiss the remaining 95% of uses that allow for customizable, contextual shortcuts and tools that devs can utilize.
That's like saying microphones aren't for pro's because Miley Cyrus sang "Party In The USA" on one.
And lucky for you, there's a MBP version without it since real professionals don't send emoji's.
RHD said "pro machine" and I wasn't aware the entire 13" market was disqualified from consideration based on 2" less, I thought it was because you can send emoji's on it... ya know, making it a "toy."
Actually I want a 16", but they don't have that. The bar is a toy, but I apparently can't have a 15" screen without toys.
Steve knows why.