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It's Apple's way of price discrimination. They want to offer computers at every price point, but they don't want to build a dozen different models. So their en

It's Apple's way of price discrimination. They want to offer computers at every price point, but they don't want to build a dozen different models. So their entry level machines are a great deal -- you get the quality of a 5000€ machine for just 2500€ if you can live with limited storage. But if you want enough storage, you're paying the full price... I'm not a fan of their policy, because the result is that lots of people get computers that are artificially crippled by low storage. But there's no way they could keep their entry level prices as low if they charged a fair price for upgrades.

The_Colonel 5y ago
> So their entry level machines are a great deal -- you get the quality of a 5000€ machine for just 2500€ if you can live with limited storage. It sounds really weird to talk about 2500 EUR laptop as "entry level". > They want to offer computers at every price point They don't offer anything under 1000 EUR.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  It's the entry level configuration of that model. Apple is doing the same as car companies: Make the base price of each model as low as possible and then charge ridiculous sums for extras.
qwytw 5y ago
Apple charges what the market will bear (and their guessing, mostly accurately, that people who want an extra 16 GB of memory would rather pay an extra $400 than switch to another laptop manufacturer). Claiming that they are selling their entry levels models at a discount is just silly, Apple has considerably higher margins than other manufacturers. I'm not sure what are their exact margins on laptops, but the 2500€ is more close to being an 1300€ machine than a 5000€ one (since their margins on storage and memory upgrades are almost definitely above 100% this gets worse the more upgrades you get). Not that I'm trying to blame Apple, they've done a great job and it would be irrational for a company to not take the free money (I'd do the same and it's not that their competitors are better, high end PC laptops have similar margins it's just that less people want them so Dell, Lenovo etc. tend to sell them at massive ~50% discounts eventually (same with Android phones) which Apple never does, since their prefer to sell at relatively low volumes but with huge margins). However their prices for ram/storage are objectively predatory and the only reason they can get away with it is because there is no viable competition, it has nothing to do with "subsidizing" entry levels Macs. If they wanted to they could easily cut their prices by 500-1500 across the entire 14/16" mbp range and still remain more profitable than all the other laptop manufacturers.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  Average margins on Macs are high because they charge huge amounts on updates. But I really doubt that the margin on the 2500€ Macbook Pro is 50% as you claim. Maybe the high end has big margins like that (since they overcharge on RAM/SSD), but I really doubt the low end machines have high margins like that. I own one of the new Macbook Pros, and the build quality of them is fantastic. It's the sturdiest computer I've ever seen. It's a huge jump from their previous models, it's even better than the 2015 models, which were already very good. I've opened it up to look at the internals, and there's so much material everywhere. No wonder it's heavier. Even the base plate is a lot stiffer than in the previous models. Now, I must concede that I'm not too familiar with windows laptops, but I've never seen anything remotely comparable to this. If you could point me to a 1300€ windows laptop that's even close to the Macbook Pro in build quality, I'd love to hear about it. And that's not even mentioning how fantastic the display and the speakers are, because they are unbelievable. The only thing that's cheap about the new Macbook Pros is the camera, which unfortunately is still a piece of crap, just with some machine learning algorithms applied (they don't help).
  - qwytw 5y ago
    My point is that Apple is not subsidizing lower end models by selling overpriced ram, if they were fine with the margins other laptop manufacturers have, they could sell their products much cheaper (they could still cut their prices significantly and have considerably higher margins than others) but they don't, because they don't have to (their products are good, there is a huge demand for them and they don't have as much competition as PC makers). Obviously I don't Apple's exact margins, they are probably lower than 50% but not by much however: "But there's no way they could keep their entry level prices as low if they charged a fair price for upgrades." is simply just not true, they obviously could do that if any of the conditions I mentioned changed, they just don't because as any other company Apple seeks to maximize it's profits. Dell XPS, Thinkpad X1, Razer Blade and Surface Laptop lines have pretty decent build quality, of course they all have inferior CPUs which use more power and generate way more heat compared to the Mac (I didn't say you can get one for 1300€, just that that other manufacturers try to price their premium laptop lines at similar level as Apple but usually end up having to sell them at significant discounts)

The_Colonel 5y ago

> So their entry level machines are a great deal -- you get the quality of a 5000€ machine for just 2500€ if you can live with limited storage. It sounds really weird to talk about 2500 EUR laptop as "entry level". > They want to offer computers at every price point They don't offer anything under 1000 EUR.

newaccount74 5y ago
It's the entry level configuration of that model. Apple is doing the same as car companies: Make the base price of each model as low as possible and then charge ridiculous sums for extras.

qwytw 5y ago

Apple charges what the market will bear (and their guessing, mostly accurately, that people who want an extra 16 GB of memory would rather pay an extra $400 than switch to another laptop manufacturer). Claiming that they are selling their entry levels models at a discount is just silly, Apple has considerably higher margins than other manufacturers. I'm not sure what are their exact margins on laptops, but the 2500€ is more close to being an 1300€ machine than a 5000€ one (since their margins on storage and memory upgrades are almost definitely above 100% this gets worse the more upgrades you get). Not that I'm trying to blame Apple, they've done a great job and it would be irrational for a company to not take the free money (I'd do the same and it's not that their competitors are better, high end PC laptops have similar margins it's just that less people want them so Dell, Lenovo etc. tend to sell them at massive ~50% discounts eventually (same with Android phones) which Apple never does, since their prefer to sell at relatively low volumes but with huge margins). However their prices for ram/storage are objectively predatory and the only reason they can get away with it is because there is no viable competition, it has nothing to do with "subsidizing" entry levels Macs. If they wanted to they could easily cut their prices by 500-1500 across the entire 14/16" mbp range and still remain more profitable than all the other laptop manufacturers.

newaccount74 5y ago
Average margins on Macs are high because they charge huge amounts on updates. But I really doubt that the margin on the 2500€ Macbook Pro is 50% as you claim. Maybe the high end has big margins like that (since they overcharge on RAM/SSD), but I really doubt the low end machines have high margins like that. I own one of the new Macbook Pros, and the build quality of them is fantastic. It's the sturdiest computer I've ever seen. It's a huge jump from their previous models, it's even better than the 2015 models, which were already very good. I've opened it up to look at the internals, and there's so much material everywhere. No wonder it's heavier. Even the base plate is a lot stiffer than in the previous models. Now, I must concede that I'm not too familiar with windows laptops, but I've never seen anything remotely comparable to this. If you could point me to a 1300€ windows laptop that's even close to the Macbook Pro in build quality, I'd love to hear about it. And that's not even mentioning how fantastic the display and the speakers are, because they are unbelievable. The only thing that's cheap about the new Macbook Pros is the camera, which unfortunately is still a piece of crap, just with some machine learning algorithms applied (they don't help).
- qwytw 5y ago
  My point is that Apple is not subsidizing lower end models by selling overpriced ram, if they were fine with the margins other laptop manufacturers have, they could sell their products much cheaper (they could still cut their prices significantly and have considerably higher margins than others) but they don't, because they don't have to (their products are good, there is a huge demand for them and they don't have as much competition as PC makers). Obviously I don't Apple's exact margins, they are probably lower than 50% but not by much however: "But there's no way they could keep their entry level prices as low if they charged a fair price for upgrades." is simply just not true, they obviously could do that if any of the conditions I mentioned changed, they just don't because as any other company Apple seeks to maximize it's profits. Dell XPS, Thinkpad X1, Razer Blade and Surface Laptop lines have pretty decent build quality, of course they all have inferior CPUs which use more power and generate way more heat compared to the Mac (I didn't say you can get one for 1300€, just that that other manufacturers try to price their premium laptop lines at similar level as Apple but usually end up having to sell them at significant discounts)