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

Could be because of all the returns by OCD nut jobs. People who freak out when they turn out the lights and can still see a black screen, or panic when the tint is off .0002%. Like a mental illness tax; we are actually paying their doctor bills! :D Gosh darn, welfare state!

Just a theory. (and kidding, of course)

Of course with this theory Apple are the good guys and WE are the bad guys.
 
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Redesign, touch bar, super fast SSD, P3 screen.

New machines probably cost more to produce and apple wants to keep profits margins up.
 
less units of laptops sold every year, less units of laptop related hardware manufactured, cost per unit is likely slowly increasing as fixed costs (tooling, machinery, real estate lease etc.) are allocated across less volume. my guess is component OEMs are pushing back and thus Apple is raising prices.
 
Not sure why people are touting the new features of the MacBook Pro as the reason why even the 12" MacBook has gone up in price (USD). Those explanations do nothing to explain the 12" MacBook price increase.

I suspect the price increase is in part due to pricing being seen on all devices in the industry. Those Razer Blades with their high prices. The Surface Books with their prices. It's had a ripple affect in that Apple has seen that people are willing to pay that much for a portable system and so they start with that pricing structure as a base, add some features, and then increase the price to account for that, and then tack on a certain percentage "for the experience". We're left with a starting price of about $2000 for a 13" with Touch Bar, with half of its TB3 crippled, only a dual core processor, and limited RAM (LPDDR3).

The excuse from them about more RAM using too much power is kinda BS, btw. DDR4 operates at 1.2V. LPDDR3 operates at 1.2V (Corrected from before). Something is fishy with their excuse, IMO. Are they really that much "on the edge" with their power design? Absolutely no room at all for anything else. Maybe I'm a skeptic, but I don't buy it.

Anyway, the market will decide if prices will drop in the future. i.e.: vote with our wallets.
 
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duervo said:
Not sure why people are touting the new features of the MacBook Pro as the reason why even the 12" MacBook has gone up in price (USD). Those explanations do nothing to explain the 12" MacBook price increase.

I suspect the price increase is in part due to pricing being seen on all devices in the industry. Those Razer Blades with their high prices. The Surface Books with their prices. It's had a ripple affect in that Apple has seen that people are willing to pay that much for a portable system and so they start with that pricing structure as a base, add some features, and then increase the price to account for that, and then tack on a certain percentage "for the experience". We're left with a starting price of about $2000 for a 13" with Touch Bar, with half of its TB3 crippled, only a dual core processor, and limited RAM (LPDDR3).

The excuse from them about more RAM using too much power is kinda BS, btw. DDR4 operates at 1.2V. LPDDR3 operates at 1.8V. Something is fishy with their excuse, IMO.

Anyway, the market will decide if prices will drop in the future. i.e.: vote with our wallets.
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I haven't looked at laptop prices for a while, but all makers seem to have increased their prices. No more of these sub $500 laptops. Sounds like it's a combo of factors. Labor in China has probably gone up, the volume of laptops sold is fewer now since there are alternatives for casual surfers (tablets), thus the remaining buyers for laptops are users who must have one and aren't as price sensitive.
 
Luba said:
I haven't looked at laptop prices for a while, but all makers seem to have increased their prices. No more of these sub $500 laptops. Sounds like it's a combo of factors. Labor in China has probably gone up, the volume of laptops sold is fewer now since there are alternatives for casual surfers (tablets), thus the remaining buyers for laptops are users who must have one and aren't as price sensitive.
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If it's due in part to a shrinking of the whole PC industry due to proliferation of tablets, then things won't be getting better anytime soon. If they continue on the current track, sales will continue to slide. We may even see some vendors go out of business, or at least see less "innovation" due to reduced budgets. I guess we'll see.
 
The original 15" retina started at $2200 and only had 8gb ram. If you upgraded to 16gb it was $200 and you're now at $2400 which is the same price as the new one. For the same price you paid in 2012 you get: much better screen, way faster storage, smaller, weighs less, Touch ID, touch bar, graphics fast enough to easily push the display (especially at higher resolution), better battery life, better speakers, more powerful CPU.

The top 2012 model was $2700 for 512 of storage. New one is $2800 so it's gone up by $100, a 4% increase.
 
glindon said:
The original 15" retina started at $2200 and only had 8gb ram. If you upgraded to 16gb it was $200 and you're now at $2400 which is the same price as the new one. For the same price you paid in 2012 you get: much better screen, way faster storage, smaller, weighs less, Touch ID, touch bar, graphics fast enough to easily push the display (especially at higher resolution), better battery life, better speakers, more powerful CPU.

The top 2012 model was $2700 for 512 of storage. New one is $2800 so it's gone up by $100, a 4% increase.
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What was the max'ed out 2012? I seem to remember $3k-ish. To max out the 2016 it would be $4.3k.
 
The edges of the chassis are less sharp than on the old rMBP, which in turn was less sharp than the MBA. Smoothing those edges costs a lot. :D
 
glindon said:
The original 15" retina started at $2200 and only had 8gb ram. If you upgraded to 16gb it was $200 and you're now at $2400 which is the same price as the new one. For the same price you paid in 2012 you get: much better screen, way faster storage, smaller, weighs less, Touch ID, touch bar, graphics fast enough to easily push the display (especially at higher resolution), better battery life, better speakers, more powerful CPU.

The top 2012 model was $2700 for 512 of storage. New one is $2800 so it's gone up by $100, a 4% increase.
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That's flawed. Using hindsight to justify the current cost of technology. Hindsight in general, is a bad thing to be using when trying to justify anything. Using it to justify current tach compared to old is even worse, since it's common knowledge that tech depreciates at a very significant rate.

Using that same logic: 6 years ago, I got 48GB DDR3 RAM for $400 (12 x 4GB ... it was $199.99 for each pack of 6.) Today, with that logic, I should be able to get 48GB DDR4, and pay the exact same, and I should be thanking my lucky stars for the privilege of paying so "little". When in reality, today, taking that same $400, I can get 64GB of DDR4 RAM. ... I'm gonna add a little edit here ... Apple (and Microsoft, too, for that matter) would want you to pay $400 for that 48GB DDR4, and people would actually do so, thinking they were getting a good deal, because hey ... "that's what it cost 6 years ago, and this is now DDR4, not that old ****** DDR3 they had back then." While I'm at it, I should go buy 8GB of 1GB sticks of DDR4 RAM today (well, you can't, but bear with me to make my point here,) pay $600 for it, and walk away believing I got a good deal, because that's what 8x1GB cost 12 years ago ... Not this "crazy" price of $43.99 for 1x8GB stick of Kingston Fury DDR4.

The problem that I have with all of this pricing that's been happening, is not only the fact that it seems to be trend happening all over the place lately (i.e.: Surface Book, for one example,) but also that these companies are announcing this crap in such a manner that's supposed to make us think that it's all the most amazing stuff to grace the planet Earth, and people seem to actually believe them. When on Earth did we all start to take PR and marketing "smoke and mirrors" at face value?
 
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Luba said:
What was the max'ed out 2012? I seem to remember $3k-ish. To max out the 2016 it would be $4.3k.
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So according to a review from Washington Post:

"For $200 at the time of purchase, you can upgrade the RAM to 16GB. And while you’re at it, feel free to boost the CPU to 2.7GHz and the flash storage to 768GB, all-in-all adding $950 to the price."

So $3650 for a top 2012 and you only got 768gb of flash. Also is seems the $2700 2012 only had 8gb ram so the 2016 is actually $100 cheaper with the same 16gb of ram.
 
Anyone who says the price increase is due to R&D just doesn't want to consider that Apple has $240 billion of pure cash to spend on R&D and whatever the hell it wants.
 
Maintaining exclusivity has been part of their m.o. for a while, especially with the "Pro" line. 1500 for the base new mbp seems very expensive, but my maxed out 2009 13 MBP cost 1900 new, and that was 7 years ago. As you go up in the model range, so does the amount of disposable income the buyer supposedly has.

People also say 700$ for a phone is crazy, but the very first iphone was that price, and so was the motorola razr before that.
 
SilenceBe said:
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.
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Preach, sister or brother.

In 2011, I bought a top of the line 15" MacBook Pro (4GBs RAM, 750GB hard drive, 2.2GHZ quad core i7 CPU, SuperDrive, Firewire 800, ThunderBolt, SDXC card slot, non-retina dispay) for $2,200. It was future proofed, which for my use case means the ports and CPU would last me at least five years, and I could upgrade it as needed. And upgrade it I did. It now has 16GBs RAM, I removed the SuperDrive and replaced it with a 1TB Hybrid drive, and also replaced the 750GB hard drive with a corresponding SSD. All this for about $600-$700, relying on sales. I could upgrade it even more with faster RAM and dual SSDs.

Upgrading the 2016 15" MBPs does not look like it's an option (it looks like you can upgrade the non-strip 13" MBP), so if I want to ensure it lasts 5 more years, I'd need to pay out over $4,200 for the top of the line 15" MBP. And even then, since I'm currently pushing what I can do with 16GBs of RAM, I know I'll actually need 32GBs in the next year or so and that is not an option for the 2016 MBPs. So, top of the line for me, is near twice as much, with a higher risk of needing a new computer before five years are up.
 
jeremiah256 said:
Preach, sister or brother.

In 2011, I bought a top of the line 15" MacBook Pro (4GBs RAM, 750GB hard drive, 2.2GHZ quad core i7 CPU, SuperDrive, Firewire 800, ThunderBolt, SDXC card slot, non-retina dispay) for $2,200. It was future proofed, which for my use case means the ports and CPU would last me at least five years, and I could upgrade it as needed. And upgrade it I did. It now has 16GBs RAM, I removed the SuperDrive and replaced it with a 1TB Hybrid drive, and also replaced the 750GB hard drive with a corresponding SSD. All this for about $600-$700, relying on sales. I could upgrade it even more with faster RAM and dual SSDs.

Upgrading the 2016 15" MBPs does not look like it's an option (it looks like you can upgrade the non-strip 13" MBP), so if I want to ensure it lasts 5 more years, I'd need to pay out over $4,200 for the top of the line 15" MBP. And even then, since I'm currently pushing what I can do with 16GBs of RAM, I know I'll actually need 32GBs in the next year or so and that is not an option for the 2016 MBPs. So, top of the line for me, is near twice as much, with a higher risk of needing a new computer before five years are up.
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So you can't future proof, actually in your case the 15" MBP doesn't have enough RAM already. Do you think it's better to get a configuration that's good for 2 years, max 3 years, and then buy a new machine versus maxing it out now for $4.2k and hope it's still good after 5 years?
 
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Luba said:
So you can't future proof, actually in your case the 15" MBP doesn't have enough RAM already. Do you think it's better to get a configuration that's good for 2 years, max 3 years, and then buy a new machine versus maxing it out now for $4.2k and hope it's still good after 5 years?
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Consider looking at it from a different point of view:

how long did it take for you - in addition to paying for everything else in your life and slowly increasing your wealth in general - to save up that $4.2k you were now planning to use for the MacBook Pro?

If it took you one year to save up, I think you're fine whichever way you go. If it took you three years, then yeah, you might want to give some serious consideration to purchasing a less expensive setup that you are reasonably sure will last you for two years, because in that two years' time - considering you'll have some of the money you saved left over to begin with - you should be able to again save up to that $4.2k for the next machine (assuming you maintain your current level of wealth increase per year).
 
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Luba said:
So you can't future proof, actually in your case the 15" MBP doesn't have enough RAM already. Do you think it's better to get a configuration that's good for 2 years, max 3 years, and then buy a new machine versus maxing it out now for $4.2k and hope it's still good after 5 years?
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Ack. It's causing me mental anguish to consider purchasing a base model computer to last 2 years at the same price I spend on a top model that lasted 5, going on 6 years. And since this computer is going to be used to (hopefully) advance my livelihood, I can't personally justify spending over $4K for something I'm afraid will be struggling to keep up in less than one year.

I'll know more by the end of April 2017. I'll then have to deal with adding Photoshop and Unity 3D to my toolset. My guess is, I'll be purchasing either a 32GB capable PC laptop, or building a VMware solution and then using any computer I want to access it. Either way, it doesn't look like I'll be purchasing a MBP any time soon.
 
R&D. New tooling. Early adopter tax.

I can totally see a the MacBook Pros getting a price drop in a year or two. Like what they did with the rMBPs.
 
They're re-positioning their laptops to be purely high end premium products. Pure and simple. Over the last few years they've been selling quite a few mid-range model's. I'm guessing they see lower laptop sales overall going forward so are looking to achieve a larger profit margin on each unit?

Smaller range, higher entry point aimed at as wide a possible audience as possible (of those who can afford it), sorry professionals unfortunately we're such a small market segment to Apple now.

Doesn't mean they're not still fantastic laptops, I've been to see one over the weekend and it's the small form and feel of the device that impressed me. There's a lot of frustration on here over the price and lack of options which is understandable. Sadly Apple have been heading in this direction since they dropped the 17" and started soldering RAM to the board.
 
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