6 ms·

I believe these are actually one of the lowest markups Apple has and in general a great deal. Consider this: 1. 14” or 16” custom miniLED display 2. Anodized o

I believe these are actually one of the lowest markups Apple has and in general a great deal. Consider this: 1. 14” or 16” custom miniLED display 2. Anodized one-piece aluminum clamshell 3. Completely custom SoC (much more expensive than buying Intel’s latest, at least in the short-term) 4. Completely custom OS with a full suite of native apps 5. Custom MagSafe adapter 6. Thunderbolt 4 (3 of them) Now consider that this laptop outperforms most desktop workstations that cost $4k+…and does it on 16h of battery life. If you’re in the market for a high-performance computer, you’d have to be dense to not buy one of these (or building x86 firmware)

asdff 5y ago
They must be getting their bread by charging $400 for the ram upgrade instead of the traditional $200 apple price for what should be $80 of memory.
- fouc 5y ago
  > traditional $200 apple price That might've been for when it was only an 8GB increase in RAM.
  - asdff 5y ago
    That's also what it was when it was a 2gb increase in RAM. RAM has gotten a lot cheaper per GB than what Apple continues to charge per GB and thats honestly never not the case. Only now its worse, especially when you have developers trapped in docker centric workflows where they need to have more memory, no way around it, and apple decides to raise prices on their already high markup.
- keymone 5y ago
  That ram is no longer a commodity ram sticks, can’t compare prices directly
  - adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
    Good point. The ram is cheaper for them because they aren't buying the dimms, just the silicon.
    - ascom 5y ago
      Apple is using very high bandwidth LPDDR5 - it can't be cheap.
    - keymone 5y ago
      yeah, because plugging more silicon into ready-to-ship cpu modules is so easy.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  Instead of complaining that RAM updates are so expensive, we could frame it as "Apple takes a lower margin on entry level configurations so they can offer the same quality hardware to price concious consumers".
Maakuth 5y ago
Whether some parts are custom or standard start to lose their meaning in Apple's scale. Probably you're right in the SoC case, reserving that sweet 5nm capacity from TSMC likely costs a lot. But the rest of your list is similar to any Apple device, so it shouldn't factor in the markup difference between these machines and their other products. Even the SoC investment is benefiting the whole product portfolio, even though this version is specific to laptops for now.
capableweb 5y ago
> Now consider that this laptop outperforms most desktop workstations that cost $4k+…and does it on 16h of battery life. > If you’re in the market for a high-performance computer, you’d have to be dense to not buy one of these (or building x86 firmware) I'd love to see which $4000+ desktop gets beaten by any M1 processor. $4000 is A LOT for a desktop computer. I paid (in total, with upgrades over the years) around ~$1600 and easily beats anything provided by Apple.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  That seems unlikely. From recent benchmarks you need to go into $1000+ territory for the CPU alone to get close to M1 multi-core performance. And then there’s the GPU, you can’t even get a 2070 for that amount at the moment.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    > From recent benchmarks you need to go into $1000+ territory for the CPU alone to get close to M1 multi-core performance I don't think so, quick comparison, with numbers from https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-Pro-10-Core-3200-MHz-vs-AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-1950X/4580vs3058 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-Pro-10-Core-32...: - Apple M1 Pro 10 Core 3200 MHz - Score: 23730 - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X - Score: 27293 - Price: ~$499 And I just spent 2 minutes digging up those numbers, didn't even look very carefully.
    - ricardobeat 5y ago
      The latest Ryzen CPU is the 5950X, costing near 1k, and it’s behind M1 in that same site’s leaderboard: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html All the recent M1 benchmarks from respectable news sites confirm the same for the majority of multi core real workloads. tl;dr you absolutely will not beat M1 Pro with a $1500 PC for work.
      - capableweb 5y ago
tester34 5y ago
>Now consider that this laptop outperforms most desktop workstations that cost $4k+ I'd really want to see that setup and benchmark
saagarjha 5y ago
> much more expensive than buying Intel’s latest, at least in the short-term This sounds very unlikely? Apple has been building their own silicon for a decade, I am sure they are saving significant money on their chips.
whycombagator 5y ago
> Now consider that this laptop outperforms most desktop workstations that cost $4k+ You can spec the 14” & 16” to well past $4k also.

asdff 5y ago

They must be getting their bread by charging $400 for the ram upgrade instead of the traditional $200 apple price for what should be $80 of memory.

fouc 5y ago
> traditional $200 apple price That might've been for when it was only an 8GB increase in RAM.
- asdff 5y ago
  That's also what it was when it was a 2gb increase in RAM. RAM has gotten a lot cheaper per GB than what Apple continues to charge per GB and thats honestly never not the case. Only now its worse, especially when you have developers trapped in docker centric workflows where they need to have more memory, no way around it, and apple decides to raise prices on their already high markup.
keymone 5y ago
That ram is no longer a commodity ram sticks, can’t compare prices directly
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  Good point. The ram is cheaper for them because they aren't buying the dimms, just the silicon.
  - ascom 5y ago
    Apple is using very high bandwidth LPDDR5 - it can't be cheap.
  - keymone 5y ago
    yeah, because plugging more silicon into ready-to-ship cpu modules is so easy.
newaccount74 5y ago
Instead of complaining that RAM updates are so expensive, we could frame it as "Apple takes a lower margin on entry level configurations so they can offer the same quality hardware to price concious consumers".

Maakuth 5y ago

Whether some parts are custom or standard start to lose their meaning in Apple's scale. Probably you're right in the SoC case, reserving that sweet 5nm capacity from TSMC likely costs a lot. But the rest of your list is similar to any Apple device, so it shouldn't factor in the markup difference between these machines and their other products. Even the SoC investment is benefiting the whole product portfolio, even though this version is specific to laptops for now.

capableweb 5y ago

> Now consider that this laptop outperforms most desktop workstations that cost $4k+…and does it on 16h of battery life. > If you’re in the market for a high-performance computer, you’d have to be dense to not buy one of these (or building x86 firmware) I'd love to see which $4000+ desktop gets beaten by any M1 processor. $4000 is A LOT for a desktop computer. I paid (in total, with upgrades over the years) around ~$1600 and easily beats anything provided by Apple.

ricardobeat 5y ago
That seems unlikely. From recent benchmarks you need to go into $1000+ territory for the CPU alone to get close to M1 multi-core performance. And then there’s the GPU, you can’t even get a 2070 for that amount at the moment.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > From recent benchmarks you need to go into $1000+ territory for the CPU alone to get close to M1 multi-core performance I don't think so, quick comparison, with numbers from https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-Pro-10-Core-3200-MHz-vs-AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-1950X/4580vs3058 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-Pro-10-Core-32...: - Apple M1 Pro 10 Core 3200 MHz - Score: 23730 - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X - Score: 27293 - Price: ~$499 And I just spent 2 minutes digging up those numbers, didn't even look very carefully.
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    The latest Ryzen CPU is the 5950X, costing near 1k, and it’s behind M1 in that same site’s leaderboard: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html All the recent M1 benchmarks from respectable news sites confirm the same for the majority of multi core real workloads. tl;dr you absolutely will not beat M1 Pro with a $1500 PC for work.
    - capableweb 5y ago

tester34 5y ago

>Now consider that this laptop outperforms most desktop workstations that cost $4k+ I'd really want to see that setup and benchmark

saagarjha 5y ago

> much more expensive than buying Intel’s latest, at least in the short-term This sounds very unlikely? Apple has been building their own silicon for a decade, I am sure they are saving significant money on their chips.

whycombagator 5y ago

> Now consider that this laptop outperforms most desktop workstations that cost $4k+ You can spec the 14” & 16” to well past $4k also.