Why are MBPs so over-priced?

[smirking]

The problem is : THIS PRODUCT DOESN'T EXIST. Neither on Amazon or Monoprice you can find a simple USB C Hub to get more USB C port.

Hmmm, I wonder why that is. Yeah, you're right... it's really hard to find any hub that gives you more USB-C ports. They all give you legacy ports.

Well, a quick search did turn up a handful of hubs that give you 2 USB-C ports, so something of this sort is out there. We're just not seeing the 10-port hubs we're used to seeing out of USB-A land.

Here's one: https://www.amazon.com/ICZI-Reader-Chromebook-Macbook-Lenovo/dp/B06WWPBWS7/

This issue never occurred to me because I don't have this problem. I have a 15" MBP with 4 USB-C ports plus an LG 5K Ultrafine that has 4 USB-C ports on it. One of those is used to link my display to my laptop and to power it so I have a total of 7 USB-C ports.

 

[macintoshmac]

About that USB C thing. I kind of used to think like you. That USB C is just a transition, Apple is just accelerating it, just buy new cables for everything.

However, experience quickly taught me that this is simply not a valid solution.

By that I mean, let's say hypothetically you have an USB C mouse, an USB C thumb drive and an USB C SDCard reader.

You have 2 USB C port on the nTB MBP, and one is used for charging. So you only have one usable port left(it's the computer I own)

One easy solution would be to use a simple USB C hub to multiply your number of USB C ports to plug everything at the same time. The kind of hub you could find literally everywhere for USB A.

The problem is : THIS PRODUCT DOESN'T EXIST. Neither on Amazon or Monoprice you can find a simple USB C Hub to get more USB C port. Every single adapter you will find will multiply a single USB C port into a ******** of USB A port, HDMI/VGA, Ethernet, SD Card and if you are lucky 1 USB C port for power in.

So basically, right now, even if you converted all your devices and cables to USB C ones, you would run very fast into that simple ecosystem limitation. It simply wouldn't work the minute you needed to plug 1 device more than your MBP have (and you have to count the fact you need 1 port for charging). It's literally the worst thing you could do, to convert everything to USB C.

If you have multiple USB devices you wish to keep using, your only solution is really a big dongle to create a variety of ports and keep using USB A devices.

All of this made me realize that the future with "All USB C peripherals and cables without dongles" won't ever happen.

You are right, the max they offer is 2 USB-C ports, such as the OWC dock or the cheaper Belkin F4U090btBLK USB-IF Certified 4-Port Mini USB-C Hub. For my use (external hard drives, card reader, flash drive, printer setups) what I did was buy Belkin cables (for the hard drives and card reader and printer) and I bought a USB-C to female USB-A dongle for emergency uses of existing cables and paraphernalia, plus a new USB-C flash drive.

This set up then makes me just as fine as before. Use cases vary, such as with you, you could not find a proper replacement. But most here on the forum think about dongles in cases where fresh cables could do the trick better (so it seems).

 

[robvas]

The LG 4K USB-C monitor has 3 USB-C ports you can use it as a hub. However they are only USB 2.0

 

[cynics]

Overpriced is a subjective term. It just depends on how much value you find in a product. Something doesn’t need to be expensive to be overpriced, for example everything from Harbor Freight is overpriced although it’s cheap.

Apple still has a “Devils in the details” approach. For example their USB C implementation being tied into the cpu is better than most of the competition use of USB C and offers faster throughput. Trackpad is awesome, speakers are amazing for a laptop. SSDs are not only pcie but near the fastest on the market. Things like that.

I won’t deny there are things people want or need that are missing. For those people the MBP will feel overpriced.

 

[stockscalper]

I didn't mind paying more for MacBooks back in the day because they were of high quality and lasted for years. Now, not so much so.

 

[smirking]

I didn't mind paying more for MacBooks back in the day because they were of high quality and lasted for years. Now, not so much so.

And what day was that? They were never as good as people remember them to be. For years I made it a habit of trading in my Macs at the 4 year mark because I've had too many bad experiences with them falling apart if I kept them any longer. I have a 2010, 2012, and 2016 MBP still in my hands now. All of them are in good working order, but the two older ones have both needed repairs done to them. I'm a pretty heavy user. I can't think of any of my Macs that have made it to year five without needing something replaced or repaired (and I'm not counting batteries).

What you get now is better value than you ever got before. That golden age everyone keeps pining about never existed, but it wasn't so long ago that just about every PC Laptop was a bad laptop and that made Macs look invincible in comparison. The gap is a lot smaller these days.

 

[GtrDude]

Because they have a clientele that buys Apple NO Matter What!

They will keep bumping up their prices as high as they can go while they still have people buying their stuff.

Then some of those people attempt to justify their purchase making You Tube videos or coming on here saying stuff like "the corners match perfectly when you close the machine".
Never mind you can't even type on the dang thing.

This was typed on a super trusty 2014 MBA.

 

[batrush]

Because their customers lap it up no matter what.

 

[prospervic]

They’re not over-priced if you take it vantage of the random, but increasingly frequent sales at Best Buy. Right now, they’re holding a “Dad‘s and Grad’s“ sale on non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro's for $300 off. Over memorial day weekend, BB was selling Touch Bar MacBook Pro‘s (including the 15 inch) for $350 off! (That’s when I snagged mine.)

For my money, this is what the pricing should be in the first place.

 

[maflynn]

frequent sales at Best Buy.

Microcenter and B & H Video also have sales on the MBP. Too bad we don't see those sort of sales from Apple.

 

[niploteksi]

And what day was that? They were never as good as people remember them to be. For years I made it a habit of trading in my Macs at the 4 year mark because I've had too many bad experiences with them falling apart if I kept them any longer. I have a 2010, 2012, and 2016 MBP still in my hands now. All of them are in good working order, but the two older ones have both needed repairs done to them. I'm a pretty heavy user. I can't think of any of my Macs that have made it to year five without needing something replaced or repaired (and I'm not counting batteries).

What you get now is better value than you ever got before. That golden age everyone keeps pining about never existed, but it wasn't so long ago that just about every PC Laptop was a bad laptop and that made Macs look invincible in comparison. The gap is a lot smaller these days.

Well, you get more bang for your bucks whatever brand you buy... compared to the good old days. So the gap between PCs and Macs have certainly changed.

I bought the 2016 MacBook Pro 15" and my god what a piece of garbage it is, relatively speaking. It's good to be back on Mac OS, but it's not really any better than Windows these days.

For 3k Euro you should really get a decent laptop. Someone should be fired for letting this laptop through quality control.

 

[GtrDude]

They’re not over-priced if you take it vantage of the random, but increasingly frequent sales at Best Buy. Right now, they’re holding a “Dad‘s and Grad’s“ sale on non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro's for $300 off. Over memorial day weekend, BB was selling Touch Bar MacBook Pro‘s (including the 15 inch) for $350 off! (That’s when I snagged mine.)

For my money, this is what the pricing should be in the first place.

Yes, and the corners match perfectly when the laptop is closed.

 

[stockscalper]

And what day was that? They were never as good as people remember them to be. For years I made it a habit of trading in my Macs at the 4 year mark because I've had too many bad experiences with them falling apart if I kept them any longer. I have a 2010, 2012, and 2016 MBP still in my hands now. All of them are in good working order, but the two older ones have both needed repairs done to them. I'm a pretty heavy user. I can't think of any of my Macs that have made it to year five without needing something replaced or repaired (and I'm not counting batteries).

What you get now is better value than you ever got before. That golden age everyone keeps pining about never existed, but it wasn't so long ago that just about every PC Laptop was a bad laptop and that made Macs look invincible in comparison. The gap is a lot smaller these days.

Well, I disagree. I've used Macs for over 30 years and have a bunch of old ones still running that I've loaded Linux on. The newer ones have a bunch of quality issues - screen, keyboards, junk batteries, etc as the many class action lawsuits bear out.

EDIT: Take a look at the front page today, June 12 and you'll see yet another quality issue with MBP's requiring SSD and board replacement. Add that to the keyboard and other issues these models suffer from and my case is made.