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Apple's computers are actually quite competitive when comparing price-to-performance. Beyond that, they have great build quality, battery life, components, and

Apple's computers are actually quite competitive when comparing price-to-performance. Beyond that, they have great build quality, battery life, components, and support which all adds up to being a great package for their cost. Seriously, this whole "Apple is too expensive" talking point died long ago. When the MacBook Air first came out, it was $1,800 ($2,500 adjusted for inflation) with a slow Intel C2D proc. Now you can get an M1 MacBook Air for $1k or an M2 for $1,200.

nicoburns 4y ago
The base models are reasonably competitive. But if you want to upgrade anything then they become extortionate.
nightski 4y ago
I'd argue price/performance is where they are the weakest. Especially when you want more than the bare minimum ram or ssd. An Apple replacement for my current notebook would cost over $5k and I spent a fraction of that. Battery life is really the core differentiator at the moment.
- slikrick 4y ago
  meanwhile new 4000 series laptops are routinely costing more than MacBook pros, apple is winning the price/performance category in every style of laptop, as much as you may not like it.
- wtallis 4y ago
  > An Apple replacement for my current notebook would cost over $5k and I spent a fraction of that. What if you price out a replacement with the full RAM and SSD capacity you want from the OEM rather than as an aftermarket upgrade? I think the problem usually is not so much "Apple over-charges for upgrades" as it is "all OEMs over-charge for upgrades", with a side of "Apple uses non-upgradable storage".
  - tadbit 4y ago
    > What if you price out a replacement with the full RAM and SSD capacity you want from the OEM rather than as an aftermarket upgrade? Moot point. Of course if you tie your hands behind your back your options will be limited. The point, for the parent, is that they aren't limited by insane markup pricing.
    - wtallis 4y ago
      It's important to correctly identify the underlying problem and whatever tradeoffs are involved. It's unproductive to bitch specifically about Apple's expensive storage and memory upgrades when it's actually an industry norm. It might be more fruitful to discuss why OEMs in general are able to get away with such steep upgrade pricing, and it's definitely more interesting and appropriate for HN to debate the pros and cons of Apple's soldered memory and storage.
      - cstrahan 4y ago
        It’s also important to realize that no one was “bitching” in this thread. It was claimed that the price price wasn’t all that bad, to which someone raised a counterpoint. The reality is that, if you need a lot of RAM and SSD space, it’s going to cost you a lot more than buying a laptop and replacing the RAM and SSD yourself. If someone said that the price of SSD and RAM in, say, a System76 laptop was outrageous and that’s why they won’t buy one, that would be a bit silly since they can upgrade those themselves. What you can’t do is perform a RAM or SSD upgrade on a MacBook. So it’s a reasonable issue to have with their pricing. To throw one more datapoint in: for my own development, I have to closely manage (closing and reopening stuff constantly, paying the cognitive overhead of context switching as I go) just to keep RAM use between 32gb-64gb — use never managed to go below the former, and the latter is the total my laptop can support. I’m usually sitting around 90%-95% utilization. So 64gb is an absolute minimum for what I can reasonably get away with (and I’d be much more productive if my laptop had the same 128gb my desktop has). Some people just need as much RAM and storage they can get their hands on, and that quickly makes the MacBook a really expensive option. No bitching (really, no sentiment at all), just facts and reasoning.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Did you take into account the different RAM architecture? Sure you can get bigger RAM, but that’s not nearly the same as what the M series offers (and it shows on benchmarks) - you might be better off with a 16GB MacBook, than a 32GB other laptop. Oh, and it’s not like this form factor/higher quality displays, etc would be cheap by other manufacturers.
  - MutableLambda 4y ago
    It's on-die, but it's not really any faster. The latency and bandwidth are pretty OK by today's standards. I suspect it's on-die because M1/M2 grew out of mobile CPUs. You might be referring to fast SSDs, but that's mainly true only for Pro versions. People who need >32 GB RAM usually know why they need it, you cannot really be running simulations out of your SSD swap. I'm not saying it's a proper use-case for a MacBook, I'm just saying that this guy might have some special requirements that do not align well with Apple laptops price-wise.
    - rsaxvc 4y ago
      RAMs on M1 are in separate die in the same package. This let's Apple make fewer die SKUs, as well as use differently optimize die processes. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgrades-possible/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgr...
    - sliken 4y ago
      Bandwidth on the macs is pretty good. M2 = 100GB/sec peak, M2 pro = 200GB/sec peak, M2 Max = 400GB/sec peak. A $3k lenovo thinkpad p16 uses DDR4-4800 or 76.8GB/sec peak. That also ignores the arm relaxes memory model, which means you get (on average) a greater fraction of peak bandwidth when running something memory intensive. So apple does 1.3x, 2.6x, or 5.2x better. On a desktop you can get another 2x with the M1 Extreme. Seems quite a bit better than "Pretty ok", it's a big part of why the apple's get great GPU performance compared to Intel/AMD laptops with an iGPU and run at a small fraction of the power of the dGPUs used in laptops.

nicoburns 4y ago

The base models are reasonably competitive. But if you want to upgrade anything then they become extortionate.

nightski 4y ago

I'd argue price/performance is where they are the weakest. Especially when you want more than the bare minimum ram or ssd. An Apple replacement for my current notebook would cost over $5k and I spent a fraction of that. Battery life is really the core differentiator at the moment.

slikrick 4y ago
meanwhile new 4000 series laptops are routinely costing more than MacBook pros, apple is winning the price/performance category in every style of laptop, as much as you may not like it.
wtallis 4y ago
> An Apple replacement for my current notebook would cost over $5k and I spent a fraction of that. What if you price out a replacement with the full RAM and SSD capacity you want from the OEM rather than as an aftermarket upgrade? I think the problem usually is not so much "Apple over-charges for upgrades" as it is "all OEMs over-charge for upgrades", with a side of "Apple uses non-upgradable storage".
- tadbit 4y ago
  > What if you price out a replacement with the full RAM and SSD capacity you want from the OEM rather than as an aftermarket upgrade? Moot point. Of course if you tie your hands behind your back your options will be limited. The point, for the parent, is that they aren't limited by insane markup pricing.
  - wtallis 4y ago
    It's important to correctly identify the underlying problem and whatever tradeoffs are involved. It's unproductive to bitch specifically about Apple's expensive storage and memory upgrades when it's actually an industry norm. It might be more fruitful to discuss why OEMs in general are able to get away with such steep upgrade pricing, and it's definitely more interesting and appropriate for HN to debate the pros and cons of Apple's soldered memory and storage.
    - cstrahan 4y ago
      It’s also important to realize that no one was “bitching” in this thread. It was claimed that the price price wasn’t all that bad, to which someone raised a counterpoint. The reality is that, if you need a lot of RAM and SSD space, it’s going to cost you a lot more than buying a laptop and replacing the RAM and SSD yourself. If someone said that the price of SSD and RAM in, say, a System76 laptop was outrageous and that’s why they won’t buy one, that would be a bit silly since they can upgrade those themselves. What you can’t do is perform a RAM or SSD upgrade on a MacBook. So it’s a reasonable issue to have with their pricing. To throw one more datapoint in: for my own development, I have to closely manage (closing and reopening stuff constantly, paying the cognitive overhead of context switching as I go) just to keep RAM use between 32gb-64gb — use never managed to go below the former, and the latter is the total my laptop can support. I’m usually sitting around 90%-95% utilization. So 64gb is an absolute minimum for what I can reasonably get away with (and I’d be much more productive if my laptop had the same 128gb my desktop has). Some people just need as much RAM and storage they can get their hands on, and that quickly makes the MacBook a really expensive option. No bitching (really, no sentiment at all), just facts and reasoning.
kaba0 4y ago
Did you take into account the different RAM architecture? Sure you can get bigger RAM, but that’s not nearly the same as what the M series offers (and it shows on benchmarks) - you might be better off with a 16GB MacBook, than a 32GB other laptop. Oh, and it’s not like this form factor/higher quality displays, etc would be cheap by other manufacturers.
- MutableLambda 4y ago
  It's on-die, but it's not really any faster. The latency and bandwidth are pretty OK by today's standards. I suspect it's on-die because M1/M2 grew out of mobile CPUs. You might be referring to fast SSDs, but that's mainly true only for Pro versions. People who need >32 GB RAM usually know why they need it, you cannot really be running simulations out of your SSD swap. I'm not saying it's a proper use-case for a MacBook, I'm just saying that this guy might have some special requirements that do not align well with Apple laptops price-wise.
  - rsaxvc 4y ago
    RAMs on M1 are in separate die in the same package. This let's Apple make fewer die SKUs, as well as use differently optimize die processes. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgrades-possible/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgr...
  - sliken 4y ago
    Bandwidth on the macs is pretty good. M2 = 100GB/sec peak, M2 pro = 200GB/sec peak, M2 Max = 400GB/sec peak. A $3k lenovo thinkpad p16 uses DDR4-4800 or 76.8GB/sec peak. That also ignores the arm relaxes memory model, which means you get (on average) a greater fraction of peak bandwidth when running something memory intensive. So apple does 1.3x, 2.6x, or 5.2x better. On a desktop you can get another 2x with the M1 Extreme. Seems quite a bit better than "Pretty ok", it's a big part of why the apple's get great GPU performance compared to Intel/AMD laptops with an iGPU and run at a small fraction of the power of the dGPUs used in laptops.