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Apple can design custom everything and has the economy of scale to justify it. The PC space is also more competitive, Apple managed to associate their brand wit

by simias 6y ago

Apple can design custom everything and has the economy of scale to justify it. The PC space is also more competitive, Apple managed to associate their brand with luxury and charge a huge premium for their hardware, a laptop with equivalent specs would struggle massively to sell at the same price when you could purchase similarly powerful laptops for half the cost that would run the same software. At this point Apple can design any gimmicky piece of hardware, stick their logo on it, sell it for three times the price of equivalent third party products and still run out of stock on launch. You can't beat that.

jbverschoor 6y ago
It wasn't always the case. Also, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. have more than enough economy of scale. $1000 for the M1 air is not a huge premium. It's actually very cheap.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  > It's actually very cheap. Which is a huge problem for the competition. I know that I can get just get a cheap Mac and it will still be fast, it will still have a great screen and the build quality will be higher than the majority of PC laptops. I happen to like macOS, so it's not a huge issue, but if I want to get a laptop for Linux, then I need to go to a store to see the models. Otherwise I can't be sure if I'll like the screen, keyboard or overall look an feel. The minor price difference for an Apple product is acceptable, given that I know what I'll getting a usable laptop regardless of which model I pick.
- simias 6y ago
  It's been the case for a while though, and I know for a fact that Dell offers form factors very similar to MacBooks. But even then, the market is a lot more fragmented when Apple offers a full ecosystem of devices.
- fwip 6y ago
  I don't think $1000 can be called "very cheap" when the median laptop price is around $650, and you can get basic Windows laptops for under $300.
  - taneliv 6y ago
    Yet $1000 is cheaper than some phones from the same manufacturer. Which is, of course, an apples and oranges (pardon the pun) comparison. But boggles my mind, nevertheless.
  - jbverschoor 6y ago
    I expected to pay almost double
- KptMarchewa 6y ago
  Just before M1 it was hugely uncompetitive. Higher ended macs throttled thermally so bad that using more than browser with 10 tabs and Jetbrains IDE caused them to grind to a halt.
jolux 6y ago
The Mac markup is not 100%.
- simias 6y ago
  It depends on the products, for some of them I'm fairly sure it's well beyond that (their new headphones come to mind). For their macbooks you're almost certainly right though.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Yeah. I've said it before, if you do a like-for-like comparison (of notebooks, I've found this to be less true on their desktops) then their prices are often in line with other manufacturers. Every time I've bought a MBP (2007, 2009, 2012, 2017) I've done a comparison with non-Apple laptops and found that a spec-for-spec equivalent from most manufacturers is going to be roughly equivalent in price to Apple's (usually a range of about $300-400 on the prices, Apple being near the top but not always the top). Now, if you spec out their Mac Pro, especially as it gets updated so infrequently, those get very out of line with competitor hardware quickly.
- coder543 6y ago
  For SSD upgrade prices, it is actually more than a 100% markup compared to retail prices for the most premium Samsung PCIe SSDs on the market. Apple's markup is multiple hundreds of percent compared to mid-range PCIe SSDs on the market. Retail prices already include higher profit margins than bulk order prices would include, which makes this markup even more egregious. I calculated it the other day, and Apple is charging $0.52/GB for SSDs on their M1 MacBook Air. Samsung's 980 Pro is under $0.20/GB for the 1TB model on Amazon right now. That is arguably one of the best SSDs on the market right now, and I'm fairly sure Samsung' 980 Pro is actually significantly better than the internal SSD that Apple is using on the M1 MacBook Air. That means Apple is charging a 160% markup above retail price, minimum. The Western Digital SN550 1TB PCIe SSD is priced at about $0.10/GB at retail on Amazon, which means Apple is charging over a 400% markup relative to the retail prices of that perfectly good SSD. Most users would not be able to tell the difference between the SN550 and the internal SSDs Apple is currently using. I recognize that other OEMs can sometimes charge steep upgrade markups too... but Apple's prices for storage are personally annoying to me because the M1 MacBook Air seems reasonably priced until you get into the upgrades. I wanted to get more storage, but I'm not going to pay $0.52/GB for additional storage these days... I just don't find it reasonable.

by simias 6y ago

jbverschoor 6y ago

It wasn't always the case. Also, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. have more than enough economy of scale. $1000 for the M1 air is not a huge premium. It's actually very cheap.

mrweasel 6y ago
> It's actually very cheap. Which is a huge problem for the competition. I know that I can get just get a cheap Mac and it will still be fast, it will still have a great screen and the build quality will be higher than the majority of PC laptops. I happen to like macOS, so it's not a huge issue, but if I want to get a laptop for Linux, then I need to go to a store to see the models. Otherwise I can't be sure if I'll like the screen, keyboard or overall look an feel. The minor price difference for an Apple product is acceptable, given that I know what I'll getting a usable laptop regardless of which model I pick.
simias 6y ago
It's been the case for a while though, and I know for a fact that Dell offers form factors very similar to MacBooks. But even then, the market is a lot more fragmented when Apple offers a full ecosystem of devices.
fwip 6y ago
I don't think $1000 can be called "very cheap" when the median laptop price is around $650, and you can get basic Windows laptops for under $300.
- taneliv 6y ago
  Yet $1000 is cheaper than some phones from the same manufacturer. Which is, of course, an apples and oranges (pardon the pun) comparison. But boggles my mind, nevertheless.
- jbverschoor 6y ago
  I expected to pay almost double
KptMarchewa 6y ago
Just before M1 it was hugely uncompetitive. Higher ended macs throttled thermally so bad that using more than browser with 10 tabs and Jetbrains IDE caused them to grind to a halt.

jolux 6y ago

The Mac markup is not 100%.

simias 6y ago
It depends on the products, for some of them I'm fairly sure it's well beyond that (their new headphones come to mind). For their macbooks you're almost certainly right though.
Jtsummers 6y ago
Yeah. I've said it before, if you do a like-for-like comparison (of notebooks, I've found this to be less true on their desktops) then their prices are often in line with other manufacturers. Every time I've bought a MBP (2007, 2009, 2012, 2017) I've done a comparison with non-Apple laptops and found that a spec-for-spec equivalent from most manufacturers is going to be roughly equivalent in price to Apple's (usually a range of about $300-400 on the prices, Apple being near the top but not always the top). Now, if you spec out their Mac Pro, especially as it gets updated so infrequently, those get very out of line with competitor hardware quickly.
coder543 6y ago
For SSD upgrade prices, it is actually more than a 100% markup compared to retail prices for the most premium Samsung PCIe SSDs on the market. Apple's markup is multiple hundreds of percent compared to mid-range PCIe SSDs on the market. Retail prices already include higher profit margins than bulk order prices would include, which makes this markup even more egregious. I calculated it the other day, and Apple is charging $0.52/GB for SSDs on their M1 MacBook Air. Samsung's 980 Pro is under $0.20/GB for the 1TB model on Amazon right now. That is arguably one of the best SSDs on the market right now, and I'm fairly sure Samsung' 980 Pro is actually significantly better than the internal SSD that Apple is using on the M1 MacBook Air. That means Apple is charging a 160% markup above retail price, minimum. The Western Digital SN550 1TB PCIe SSD is priced at about $0.10/GB at retail on Amazon, which means Apple is charging over a 400% markup relative to the retail prices of that perfectly good SSD. Most users would not be able to tell the difference between the SN550 and the internal SSDs Apple is currently using. I recognize that other OEMs can sometimes charge steep upgrade markups too... but Apple's prices for storage are personally annoying to me because the M1 MacBook Air seems reasonably priced until you get into the upgrades. I wanted to get more storage, but I'm not going to pay $0.52/GB for additional storage these days... I just don't find it reasonable.