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In my case, I feel that Apple has priced itself out of the EU market with the latest Macs and iDevices. The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is

In my case, I feel that Apple has priced itself out of the EU market with the latest Macs and iDevices. The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm replacing it with a Framework laptop.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
A base Macbook Air with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage costs the same as the monthly salary of my country's prime minister :D
- ghostwriter 4y ago
  Their monthly salary is usually on top of other benefits such as subsidized/free accomodation in their capital, food and travel expenses coverage, and so on. They definitely can allow themselves a new Macbook if they wanted to buy it on their monthly salary. Most of the time they get that for free from extra allowances too.
  - pchangr 4y ago
    I think they’re just making a point about purchasing power.
  - piva00 4y ago
    You are right but completely missing the point. The case is not that the PM couldn't have access to a Macbook if they so wanted but that it'd take the head of government of a country a whole month of their take-home salary to afford one. It's quite absurd, not the accessibility for the PM but to give a hint to how the average person of said country would definitely be priced out.
    - chii 4y ago
      But a mac air is a luxury item, and its pricing reflects that. I don't think it's absurd at all. A similarly capable laptop could be had for a much lower price, so people that complain they cannot get this luxury item for an "affordable" price just sounds entitled to me.
      - spaceman_2020 4y ago
        I'm not asking for Apple to reduce prices - that's their prerogative. I'm simply pointing out the absurdy of the pricing in context of this news story about falling sales.
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        This doesn't read like a complaint about the pricing per se. It's more like pointing out Apple's low sales might have something to do with their high pricing and then providing that the pricing is unattainable for laypeople by way of stating the single figurehead of a country will still be out a month's income if they want one.
        s3p 4y ago
        It does read like a complaint about the pricing
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - spoiler 4y ago
        Some people use Macs for work. I guess you can think of it as a long-ish investment and get it on finance, but considering how quickly hardware becomes outdated in some industries where Macs are are either a technical or social must-have, the prices do seem absurd...
        wincy 4y ago
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. The cheapest iPhone they sell you is the SE, a phone with a low-res, dim display, that's worse than what Android phones had 10 years ago (have the SE from work and my dusty old 2012 Samsung Note 2's OLED display just blows it out of the water), all starting at a whopping 549 Euros, more than my rent. Apple's pricing is just nuts in Europe. For up to 399 I might give it a pass, but at 549 they're just taking the mickey. The iPad 9 was also a pretty good deal at ~380 Euros until they replaced it with the iPad 10 at ~540 Euros. Absolutely mental. It fells they're pulling "an Nvidia" on us and just jacking up the prices for no reason.
- makingstuffs 4y ago
  I 100% agree about the hardware but I have to say the selling point of apple is the OS. I have an iPhone SE 2020 and the screen broke. This caused me to use my QA device (Samsung S21+) while I returned to the city from the mountains. It was a horrendous experience. The camera is unquestionably better in the Samsung but that is about all the positives I could take from my week of using it. Android was just an abysmal experience from my perspective. Nothing on it seems intuitive and everything feels like a ploy to get you to use a product which will siphon your data off to Google. Obviously this is just my own personal anecdotal experience so take it with a pinch of salt. But there will no doubt be others feeling the same. I miss my old 3310 if I am honest. I’ve been looking at dumb phones recently. I just need one with WhatApp so I can talk to my family around the world ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - seized 4y ago
    Pixels are IME the Android equal to iPhones. Much cleaner and nicer experience than Samsung.
    - FullyFunctional 4y ago
      Security is not remotely comparable. Google couldn't even be bother to fix the glaring Wifi attack that their _own_ team found. I would be scared to own an Android phone, even a Pixel. Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBxBUIoeNYo&t=603s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBxBUIoeNYo&t=603s
JansjoFromIkea 4y ago
The M2 air for me is working more as a means for me to talk myself into getting an M1 Pro 14" than anything else. Creating a mental process like this: - "I'd like an M1 Pro 14, but it's too expensive" - "A 16GB M1 Air would more than suffice and they're now at okayish prices refurbished" - "Oh! there's a new M2 Air and it's like a pretty nice middle point between the M1 Air and the M1 Pro" - "Oh wait, 16GB is only a few hundred less than an M1 Pro" - "...I guess I should just splash out and get the M1 Pro??" I'm probably still just gonna get an M1 Air when I need to instead but the amount of time I've entertained getting an M2 Air versus using it to compare against alternatives on either side has been absolutely minimal. My work M1 Pro has drastically improved my quality of life so I'm not entertaining anything other than Apple, but the M2 is decidedly underwhelming comparing to the seismic shift that was the M1.
- glogla 4y ago
  Don't do it. I bought M1 Air instead of M1 14" Pro to save money and now I regret it. The Pro's display and speakers are much better I now watch movies on work M1 14" Pro. M2 Air might be good too, I don't know. But if I could go back, I'd go to M1 Pro.
- Fnoord 4y ago
  Yeah, I did exactly this. My colleague was raving about the M2 Air, and I looked into it, compared it with M1 Pro, and told myself: this one's worth it (things like the fantastic screen and available ports). I did buy my M1 Pro on sale, but I only saved a couple hundred EUR compared to release price. As a pro relatively late adopter I didn't have much transition difficulty because everything was ported, as a con I missed out on a few months of support (for resale value / EOL etc). Compared to the MBP 2015 (which didn't get the update to macOS 13) I was using: it never gets hot, the fans barely ever spin, it probably uses a lot less W so saves me energy, yet its a lot more powerful. The only thing I miss on my M1 Pro, is USB-A (which I'm invested in, e.g. my YubiKeys and something like a HackRF or Proxmark), but its got 3 (!!) USB-C and I got adapters. I would've gone to Framework, but while the Linux desktop has come from a long, long way (my reference point being I started using WMs in the 90s, with my first being FVWM on RedHat 5.2) I prefer macOS with a plethora of FOSS utilities, and I am not disappointed by macOS on the ARM-based M-series. With a Framework, I could open it up myself and it seems pretty idiot-proof. I love the modularity of the ports but in the end they're just internal USB-C adapters. So while aesthetically nice, with 3 USB-C (and a SD and HDMI) I'm good to go.
mrweasel 4y ago
Some where someone wrote: It's not that Apples hardware isn't cost competitive, they just don't have en entry level option (or even a low mid-level option). The cheapest MacBook Air, which is fine for most of my needs is €1260/$1370 and while it's a wonderful laptop, it's just a bit much for running Safari, VSCode and a terminal. It really is a €950 laptop, but if they could hit that price then what else would you really want to buy? A major issue for me is that I wouldn't know what else to get. Given the current state of Windows, I'm not running out to get a Windows machine. Honestly, if the layout of my house was different, so I could get my desk closer to the living room and family, I'd go for a desktop running Linux next time around. Other than that, I think Apple have the market cornered. You want a great laptop, with an OS that just works (for most people), then what else are you going to buy?
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  The sticker shock of having to purchase the RAM/storage for the lifetime of the device isn't typical, and is above market rates for those things.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Their base models are usually vaguely reasonably priced. But they charge a huge markup for RAM/disk upgrades.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    I got a surprise when going to System76’s buy page. Upgrades to 1To or 32GB are only two-digit numbers, not three digits! Coming from Apple, it’s refreshing. (But the second adapter is 110$ and requires a separate 120$ shipment).
- fastaguy88 4y ago
  Yesterday, the cheapest MacBook Air (M1, 8Gb/256GB) was under $800 at Costco in the US.
  - mrweasel 4y ago
wasyl 4y ago
4 years ago I bought a maxed out (except storage) MBP 15" for ~3.5k EUR. A similarly specced machine now is 4.7k EUR, and a maxed out (except storage) one is 5.2k EUR. I'd really want to upgrade to a machine with M chip but with current prices I can't reasonably justify that. Instead, I got a PC with 8c/16t Ryzen with similar performance in my workload for fraction of the price, and simply use the MBP only when needed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- mgraupner 4y ago
  For 3600€ you could get the M2 Pro 16" with 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD which is a much faster machine than the on you bought 4 years ago, even if the specs might not have changed that much. Could not argue about the price of a Ryzen, can't beat that. :)
  - codedokode 4y ago
    I am surprised that you pay the price of 7 ordinary laptops and get only 32 Gb of RAM and only 1 Tb of storage.
    - mgraupner 4y ago
      Why would you compare the price of an ordinary laptop with that of an extraordinary one? People buy Mercedes and not Lada Niva for a reason my friend, even though both of them can drive. ;)
- victorbstan 4y ago
  Agree with this sentiment. Many years ago I bought a maxed out MacBook Pro for about ~ $3000 CAD and now the prices go up to ~ $6000. Technology is supposed to get better and cheaper over time. They really are trying to squeeze every cent out of consumers they can. There’s also another side to it. I think a big “buyer” of apple hardware were startups and tech companies that were providing these machines to their employees. With the tech layoff and freezes in hiring this should impact the number of Macs purchased, I suspect.
piva00 4y ago
Same feeling to me, I bought a M1 Air 16GB RAM + 512GB storage in 2020 which serves me really well to this day, when I saw the new M2 MBA I thought on getting one for myself and passing down the current M1 to my girlfriend but when I saw the prices for a 512GB storage + 16GB RAM I just gave up. There's no reason for me to get rid of my M1 right now, it'd be a luxury in itself, the absurd price just made it very easy to talk myself out of it.
zitterbewegung 4y ago
Honestly the best value is to buy a used or discounted M1 air. M2 on an air can throttle and the M1 base models even have a faster SSD.
- Teever 4y ago
  Damn straight. I just got a m1 air 8gb w/ 256gb for $975 CAD on FB marketplace in December. It was in absolute mint condition with 7 cycles on the battery and 1 year left on applecare (which apparently means i can renew it even as the second owner.) My take is that a lot of people got these wizzbang new laptops through some spending account for WFH during covid, they never left the house with them and now theyre selling them as they go back to the office.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  I agree with this. I got the M1 Air as soon as it launched, it's insanely fast, there's no fan so there's no noise, and the battery goes for 15+ hours (granted I mostly just use the iTerm and a browser window).
donkeyd 4y ago
Almost exactly 2 years ago, I bought an M1 Air for €1050. That same M1 Air is still being sold by that same store, but now costs €1126. That's a 7% rise in price for a laptop that's now 2,5 years old. This is just ridiculous.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Technically the price did still fall in real terms. Not great, though.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Adjusted for inflation 1050 EUR in 2021 is 1,189.2 EUR in 2023. You're right that's a 7% increase in nominal terms but a 5.5% decrease in real dollar terms.
    - FranzFerdiNaN 4y ago
      The tech is also 2.5 years older, which should be taken j to account.
  - LoveMortuus 4y ago
    Technically correct, but I doubt salaries followed the inflation, so for most of people, it's just more expensive. :/
    - ajross 4y ago
      Salary growth leads inflation in virtually all cases, and in this one too. (Realized I can still edit: reply after reply is trying to interpret this as a statement about causality, which it emphatically is not. I'm just saying that ordering is complicated in feedback systems, and that the needed salary growth to compensate for existing inflation largely already happened. This is doubly or triply true for the tech salaries people here are making.)
      - 4y ago
4ec0755f5522 4y ago
I consider the Mac base models quite affordable for the quality and performance. But for my use I need more RAM and would prefer more storage, and these prices are absolutely beyond ridiculous.
- FullyFunctional 4y ago
  A first world problem sure, but it's really frustrating that all the deals are for 8 GB versions. With non-upgradable memory, I'd never buy 8 GB laptop I intend to keep 5+ years. Not even with macOS's famous memory frugality.
slowmotiony 4y ago
Electronics prices in the EU are simply crazy. Recently i wanted to get a small mini-PC that would be energy efficient and I could run some AI experiments on. Reading online forums, everyone's like "just get a mac mini, couple hundred bucks and you're golden". I check the apple website and turns out they actually cost almost a thousand euro for the 16GB/256GB model. But its the same with a lot of other electronics too - people online will tell you something like "just get a raspberry for $40" but then you look at the European ebay and you're in for at least a 100 euro and that's for a used one.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  Rasbpis are expensive because people started using them for products (why make a board to flash these lights when I can put a cheap Pi in there with a program to do it?) and during the chip shortage they started prioritizing businesses -- which is against their self-described mission, but whatever. They still haven't caught up production enough to stifle the price increases.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Yeah they really caused some bad blood with this business prioritisation.. Not just with us in the community but also with Broadcom who now view them as competitors as opposed to a friendly outreach project. They should have stuck with their core IMO.
    - enumjorge 4y ago
      I'm not very deep in the raspberry PI world, mostly because it's been hard getting a hold of one. Are there alternatives that the community has gravitated towards?
      - Eisenstein 4y ago
        Check out Pine64: * https://pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/ https://pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/ The Rock64 fits in a Pi3 case and is roughly equiv. and runs DietPi (makes a good Pihole). The RockPro64 is a great media machine. The A64 doesn't really do it for me but I am sure it has applications. My one big complaint about the Rock64 design is that the tiny barrel power plug (the same size and voltage used for USB powered hubs) is right next to the 3.5mm audio jack and fits inside and if you mistakenly put it in it will fry the board (ask me how I know). I have taken to popping the connector off shitty headphones and putting it in the audio jack so that can't happen.
TrevorJ 4y ago
The prices are bad enough, but what really seals the deal is the forced obsolescence. I have an older macbook that I was trying to upgrade to the newer OS and they make it basically impossible. I struggled for a few days on it, then I just installed ubuntu and it works perfectly. Apple's value proposition seems to be "pay an arm and a leg for something we will break anytime we think you should give us more money."
- arcticbull 4y ago
  New macOS historically runs on devices between 5 and 10 years old. Longest in recent memory was El Cap which supported 8-10 year old devices. Shortest was Snow Leopard, which supported 3 year old devices. Ventura is lower, 4-5 years, but that happens periodically when aligned with major architectural changes. [edit] Honestly, their support cycle is pretty impressive. And just because they don't release a newer version of macOS doesn't mean software stops working.
  - myself248 4y ago
    Why should 4-5 years be lauded? I daily-drive an AthlonXP machine from 2008. Nothing about the hardware requires dropping support. (Linux has, sadly but understandably, dropped support for the older 386/486/ppro architectures in the name of kernel sanity, but I wouldn't run a desktop with any of those anyway.) Dropping support for hardware that still runs perfectly fine, and isn't a heinous mess of architectural workarounds, is nothing more than a crass money-grab. Which is completely understandable for a company whose job is to make money, but I still don't see why that's praiseworthy.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - wtallis 4y ago
      It's one thing for the Linux kernel to still support 15+ year-old hardware (the Athlon XP was already pretty old by 2008). It's a very different thing for a full desktop OS to still support it in a feature-complete way. Historically, Apple seems to prefer to drop support for old hardware rather than maintain a long list of caveats about which features cannot run on older machines. Throughout the Intel Mac era, Apple was clearly trying to raise the bar for baseline GPU performance to ensure the graphical effects really would run "perfectly fine" as you put it, though they were stymied by some of Intel's anti-competitive behavior. Their decision to drop support for the 32-bit kernel and firmware was quite reasonable, though the later decision to drop support for 32-bit applications was more of a problem for users.
scarface74 4y ago
iPhones are close to 40% of the market in the Eu https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe And Mac sales increased https://appleworld.today/archives/101858?noamp=available https://appleworld.today/archives/101858?noamp=available
varispeed 4y ago
> with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. Technically it is replaceable - replacement of surface mount components isn't actually too difficult and tools that are needed are affordable. Problem is that the Apple won't give an option to buy memory or SSD chips on an open market. While the replacement wouldn't be feasible for a typical laptop user, plenty of mobile repair shops would have done the upgrade with pleasure provided they could get access to chips. Something we really need legislators to step in. Unfortunately in the EU the coming right to repair law is completely useless.
- nrki 4y ago
  > Technically it is replaceable It's not user-replaceable. It would not be _that_ difficult for Apple to keep a SODIMM slot free, or even come up with a new standard - as they are wont to do. Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money - it's as simple as that.
  - sliken 4y ago
    Well trick is, decent iGPUs need better than 128 bit wide DDR5 @ 5200 Mhz. So apple's solution is a small CPU package with ram on board that lets them do 128, 256, 512, and 1024 bit wide memory interfaces. All but the 1024 bit wide are low power enough to be in thin laptops. Considering even the Ryzen 7950x or Intel I9 for desktops are 128 bit wide that's a pretty huge difference. You have to move up to Epyc, Threadripper, Xeon, or a Workstation CPU to get more than 128 bits, and those aren't available on laptops. So I'm going to have to disagree with the "Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money".
  - varispeed 4y ago
    > It's not user-replaceable. Well, it's not because Apple doesn't give access to parts, otherwise it would be. Not sure how use of hot air station suddenly makes it something that a user can't do? You can buy a hot air station for less than $100 and it will do the job. Only caveat is that the replacement part needs to be new (so it has pre-applied solder balls) - otherwise you'd need to reball which a bit more difficult, but not something that can't be done at home.
bloqs 4y ago
this is exactly my issue. I was able to get an opened but unused macbook pro M1 2020 from Amazon for £799/€909 in 2021, with 8GB ram and 512GB SSD. It's been an excellent purchase, and I've been happy with it but faced with paying much more, I'd likely opt for something else.
game_the0ry 4y ago
FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it. How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. The only reason why I replaced the old 13 with the air was bc the 13 could not render 4k 60fps on an external display. Otherwise, I would have kept using it. The old 13 cost me about $1600 USD new (256GB HD, 8 GB ram). Amortize that cost over 9 years and that doesn't seem so bad. Even my iphone 8 is still going strong. Another anecdote - my current employer gave me a new macbook pro 15 when I started here back in 2017. It took my abuse well and the only reason I am not still using it is bc my employer forced me to upgrade when the m1 pros came out. You probably won't need to replace your air for like 7 years, or when apple stops updates for your machine. EDIT - I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product.
- gaoshan 4y ago
  I'm still rocking a maxed out MacBook Pro from 2013. The battery IS shot but plugged in and connected to a monitor it still gets the job done as a home machine.
  - ecliptik 4y ago
    Maxed out Macbook Air 2013 here. Replacing the battery was surprisingly easy and cost about $30. I should replace the SSD at some point too. It's still getting new MacOS releases/updates using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. Once MacOS is ARM only will put Linux or OpenBSD on it and see how long it goes. 1. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    I dont know how comfortable you are with with opening laptops but please make sure there is no spicy pillow issue (expanded lithium ion battery) in your machine because they represent a real fire hazard. Replacing old batteries is sometimes extremely affordable if you're willing to open the machine yourself.
noelwelsh 4y ago
I'm mostly Linux these days, but I also have a second hand M1. If you're in the UK, I got mine from: https://www.hoxtonmacs.co.uk/ https://www.hoxtonmacs.co.uk/ It's not a massive markdown from a new machine, but it works as if new.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
The amount of people that do almost nothing beside use spreadsheets, the browser, and email is pretty significant. The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing. I would be astounded if ~80% of users get any material benefit from a laptop newer than a high-end device from 4 years ago.
- brundolf 4y ago
  The first thing I noticed when getting an M1 was that Jira became fast
  - switch007 4y ago
    Give them time, they’ll fix that
- dchftcs 4y ago
  >The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing. Seems apt to post this exceptionally cheesy Mac ad: https://youtu.be/8kF5x2D3rqo https://youtu.be/8kF5x2D3rqo
- microtonal 4y ago
  Or you know, maybe they like that it has an improved camera, better battery life (eg. after switching from Intel to Apple Silicon), larger color space which allows them to edit photos better, or the laptop got better speakers, or the laptop became more thin, or added support for fast charging, or maybe many crappy Electron apps makes them update more regularly? People can have all kinds of good reasons to update their laptop. That said, I know plenty of Mac users who upgrade maybe every 4 or 5 years.
- JALTU 4y ago
  Yup - I was happily doing everything I always do (as above) on my 15" 2012 MBP w/ 16GB memory up until some power chip on the mobo died. It was only lagging a bit w/ certain websites in Chrome. I still have three other Macs from around 2012 working just fine, one being my music server. So I was asking myself if I "need" the fancy laptop screen and excellent audio of a 14" MBP for $2K (no video production, no graphic design, no VR/AR, but hey, Electron apps all day long!). Answer is no, clearly. But any Apple Silicon at this point is (hopefully) another ten year machine.
jwr 4y ago
I run a small self-funded SaaS and work+develop (Clojure) on an Apple machine. Functionality-wise I find it difficult to even consider an alternative (yes, I have used Linux as my main machine, I know the disadvantages very well). Now, as for pricing, lets look at some real data: * my previous MBP 16" lasted me 29 months, salvage value was around 50%, and the amortized cost was around 42€/month * for my current 16" MBP (M1) I'm assuming 24 months with similar salvage value, which puts me at around 60€/month The M1 MBP is a spectacular machine. It's faster than nearly anything else I can get. It's also portable, which means I only need one machine for home, office or travel work. At 60€/month I find it to be a fantastic value proposition and I don't think it's overpriced at all. I'm not saying you're wrong, just showing that a totally different point of view is possible, especially if you use the machine for work.
amir734jj 4y ago
Agreed. I loved my Coporate MacBook pro. It was durable and battery lasted long. But it costed about $3k and I can't afford it. Instead, I bought a System 76 ($1200) + Desktop PC I built myself ($600). I am not a gamer. I only do programming and you don't need a fancy hardware to run vim.
seydor 4y ago
Apple is competing with LVMH since years ago. Nothing is absurd
ummonk 4y ago
You know you can just buy the iPhone 13 Mini right?
jollyllama 4y ago
Correct. It's a terrible deal relative to buying a mac ~5-6 years ago, when the price for a base spec model was more reasonable and you could upgrade it yourself.
javier2 4y ago
I feel the same. Macs are just way too expensive in EU market to recommend for normal people. You can get a real good internet+netflix machine for 800EUR. In my opinion Apple prices themselves out as the quality of the 800EUR market range increased dramatically over the past four years. Most people dont need a M1, so they can buy cheaper.
madduci 4y ago
Not only Macbooks, also the iPads have seen an absurd increase in price, especially the iPad Mini, going from 379 € to 579€. Sure, newer devices are faster and their lifecycle is longer, but the prices are becoming really out of reality.
lalhadudki 4y ago
It's always been an upper middle class, aspirational middle class affair no?
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. I wonder why the Apple executive leadership doens't come together and say: 1. let's lower prices 2. let's keep prices the same but offer 16GB + 512GB of storage my hypothetical retort would be "they don't need to if people keep buying their product" but, if the article headline is true about sales being down, then they need to run some kind of sale or re-evaulate i guess i wonder what their margins are on their M2 Mac line of hardware > It is generally believed that Apple has a profit margin of around 40-45% on its products. > Using the mid-point of that range (42.5%), we can approximate the hypothetical cost of manufacturing an Apple M2 laptop as follows: > Hypothetical Cost = Sale Price / (1 + Margin) > Hypothetical Cost = $1200 / (1 + 0.425) > Hypothetical Cost = $842.11
twawaaay 4y ago
I think the answer isn't that simple. It depends. For me my M1 Macbook Pro has the following pros: * It just works. I detest Windows. I love Linux but lately I started spending too much time maintaining it, I have busy life and decided that taking care of my OS is a luxury and I would rather use something that is acceptable than spend a lot of time getting to perfect. * It is viable powerful workstation. I just connect it to a good docking station and have a nice setup with two 60Hz 4k monitors. It is silent and usually cold while in this setup. And it is surprisingly (and I mean it) powerful. * It has gorgeous display. For hugging together and watching movies with my kids and wife. * It is a status symbol. All people at my company who mean anything have one and it is easier for me to just fit in and pick other, more meaningful battles. * It is durable. It will last me a long time, hopefully. It is true that it is fragile, but it is mostly fragile in certain ways that I can manage around. I am generally gentle and caring about my gadgets. If I don't kill it in a stupid way there is good chance it will be perfectly good working laptop for many, many years to come. I can hand it down to one of my family while I get a newer machine.
- FullyFunctional 4y ago
  My $0.02: in my world nobody gives a #### about status, but while I agree with your list, I feel it misses the single biggest feature: * the power efficiency of the M1 means you can _actually_ use it an entire day on a charge _without_ having to compromise on performance. That is a huge issue. I'd amend your last point with: at least in North America, getting service for the Apple products is very streamlined and that has enabled me to keep even a 2008 MBP alive until today. For me that is a huge deal as I hate donating to the landfill.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > It is a status symbol. All people at my company who mean anything have one Watching all this unfold as the DevOps guy was funny. "Don't go buy the new Macbooks, it breaks our build pipeline and you can no longer run production locall- wait, what's that? We ordered 20 last week before anyone even tested it? Sigh..." It doesn't matter to them. They're content spending 5 hours tweaking their Mac setup for every 60 minutes they spend improving production. Do I envy that naivete? I'm not sure anymore.
bodge5000 4y ago
> non-replaceable ram and ssd This is what kills it for me. When the M1 macs came out I was quite enthusiastic to use them, but just wasn't ready to drop that kind of money on an unknown OS. So I brought a cheaper, refurbished MBA (8gb ram, 256gb ssd) and loved it. The trouble is, 256gb ssd would be too small for me as a daily driver, ideally I'd want at least 1tb, but my only option to get that is to buy a whole new mac. Its hard to justify spending ~£3000 on what is effectively for me just a bigger ssd.
warner25 4y ago
Yeah, that's more than I paid for my Framework with the 11th Gen i7, 32 GB of memory, and 1 TB of storage. I've been saying for a while that Framework doesn't get enough credit for how competitive their prices are on the higher-end options. When I was buying mine, comparable machines from Apple, Microsoft, Lenovo, and Dell were like double the price. The ability to repair and upgrade was icing-on-the-cake for me.
mrbonner 4y ago
I am in the same boat as you. I have an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM. I am eyeing the M2 Mac Air or the Pro. But, as I assess my situation, I use the M1 Air for light coding tasks: to learn stuff outside of my working hours, and not to run something like LLMs with it. So, even with 8GB of RAM, I rarely feel I need to upgrade to 16GB. Though, I would probably upgrade to M2 with 16GB if the price is not that steep. For now, I am happy with the M1 Air and I still think it is easily the best laptop I have ever had in my life.
Google234 4y ago
EU forces a 2 year warranty compared to the us 1 year one so that adds some cost
asow92 4y ago
> My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm replacing it with a Framework laptop. IMHO, the Mac and Framework are different products for different people: The Mac is for generalists who just need a computer that's easy to use and gets things done whereas the framework is for techies who need to get things done, but also care about open architecture, upgradability, and tinkering with esoteric Linux distros. Many of these generalists on the Mac side don't need more than a web browser for most of their tasks and are willing to pay more because they don't want to care about the details: they just want a computer that works. This isn't to say one or the other is better, but that they are solving for fundamentally different problems.
leokennis 4y ago
I used to justify Apple’s very high prices with “the hardware and software are premium”. For me, the hardware is still without a doubt premium. Great build quality, fantastic processors etc. iOS is still pretty good as well. But MacOS…damn what a mess. I’m starting to think I’m better of using a framework laptop with a user friendly Linux GUI running on it.
- scns 4y ago
  Maybe hold out for Asahi Linux? Patience is a skill that can pay big dividends.
lasftew 4y ago
Not really? Here is a listing in Germany for 1246 EUR (including VAT), which is not cheap but substantially lower than 1500 EUR: https://www.galaxus.de/de/s1/product/apple-macbook-air-2022-1360-m2-8-gb-256-gb-de-notebook-21108618 https://www.galaxus.de/de/s1/product/apple-macbook-air-2022-...
twblalock 4y ago
Almost everything electronic is overpriced in the EU because of high taxes.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

A base Macbook Air with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage costs the same as the monthly salary of my country's prime minister :D

ghostwriter 4y ago
Their monthly salary is usually on top of other benefits such as subsidized/free accomodation in their capital, food and travel expenses coverage, and so on. They definitely can allow themselves a new Macbook if they wanted to buy it on their monthly salary. Most of the time they get that for free from extra allowances too.
- pchangr 4y ago
  I think they’re just making a point about purchasing power.
- piva00 4y ago
  You are right but completely missing the point. The case is not that the PM couldn't have access to a Macbook if they so wanted but that it'd take the head of government of a country a whole month of their take-home salary to afford one. It's quite absurd, not the accessibility for the PM but to give a hint to how the average person of said country would definitely be priced out.
  - chii 4y ago
    But a mac air is a luxury item, and its pricing reflects that. I don't think it's absurd at all. A similarly capable laptop could be had for a much lower price, so people that complain they cannot get this luxury item for an "affordable" price just sounds entitled to me.
    - spaceman_2020 4y ago
      I'm not asking for Apple to reduce prices - that's their prerogative. I'm simply pointing out the absurdy of the pricing in context of this news story about falling sales.
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      This doesn't read like a complaint about the pricing per se. It's more like pointing out Apple's low sales might have something to do with their high pricing and then providing that the pricing is unattainable for laypeople by way of stating the single figurehead of a country will still be out a month's income if they want one.
      - s3p 4y ago
        It does read like a complaint about the pricing
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - spoiler 4y ago
      Some people use Macs for work. I guess you can think of it as a long-ish investment and get it on finance, but considering how quickly hardware becomes outdated in some industries where Macs are are either a technical or social must-have, the prices do seem absurd...
      - wincy 4y ago

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. The cheapest iPhone they sell you is the SE, a phone with a low-res, dim display, that's worse than what Android phones had 10 years ago (have the SE from work and my dusty old 2012 Samsung Note 2's OLED display just blows it out of the water), all starting at a whopping 549 Euros, more than my rent. Apple's pricing is just nuts in Europe. For up to 399 I might give it a pass, but at 549 they're just taking the mickey. The iPad 9 was also a pretty good deal at ~380 Euros until they replaced it with the iPad 10 at ~540 Euros. Absolutely mental. It fells they're pulling "an Nvidia" on us and just jacking up the prices for no reason.

makingstuffs 4y ago
I 100% agree about the hardware but I have to say the selling point of apple is the OS. I have an iPhone SE 2020 and the screen broke. This caused me to use my QA device (Samsung S21+) while I returned to the city from the mountains. It was a horrendous experience. The camera is unquestionably better in the Samsung but that is about all the positives I could take from my week of using it. Android was just an abysmal experience from my perspective. Nothing on it seems intuitive and everything feels like a ploy to get you to use a product which will siphon your data off to Google. Obviously this is just my own personal anecdotal experience so take it with a pinch of salt. But there will no doubt be others feeling the same. I miss my old 3310 if I am honest. I’ve been looking at dumb phones recently. I just need one with WhatApp so I can talk to my family around the world ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- seized 4y ago
  Pixels are IME the Android equal to iPhones. Much cleaner and nicer experience than Samsung.
  - FullyFunctional 4y ago
    Security is not remotely comparable. Google couldn't even be bother to fix the glaring Wifi attack that their _own_ team found. I would be scared to own an Android phone, even a Pixel. Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBxBUIoeNYo&t=603s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBxBUIoeNYo&t=603s

JansjoFromIkea 4y ago

The M2 air for me is working more as a means for me to talk myself into getting an M1 Pro 14" than anything else. Creating a mental process like this: - "I'd like an M1 Pro 14, but it's too expensive" - "A 16GB M1 Air would more than suffice and they're now at okayish prices refurbished" - "Oh! there's a new M2 Air and it's like a pretty nice middle point between the M1 Air and the M1 Pro" - "Oh wait, 16GB is only a few hundred less than an M1 Pro" - "...I guess I should just splash out and get the M1 Pro??" I'm probably still just gonna get an M1 Air when I need to instead but the amount of time I've entertained getting an M2 Air versus using it to compare against alternatives on either side has been absolutely minimal. My work M1 Pro has drastically improved my quality of life so I'm not entertaining anything other than Apple, but the M2 is decidedly underwhelming comparing to the seismic shift that was the M1.

glogla 4y ago
Don't do it. I bought M1 Air instead of M1 14" Pro to save money and now I regret it. The Pro's display and speakers are much better I now watch movies on work M1 14" Pro. M2 Air might be good too, I don't know. But if I could go back, I'd go to M1 Pro.
Fnoord 4y ago
Yeah, I did exactly this. My colleague was raving about the M2 Air, and I looked into it, compared it with M1 Pro, and told myself: this one's worth it (things like the fantastic screen and available ports). I did buy my M1 Pro on sale, but I only saved a couple hundred EUR compared to release price. As a pro relatively late adopter I didn't have much transition difficulty because everything was ported, as a con I missed out on a few months of support (for resale value / EOL etc). Compared to the MBP 2015 (which didn't get the update to macOS 13) I was using: it never gets hot, the fans barely ever spin, it probably uses a lot less W so saves me energy, yet its a lot more powerful. The only thing I miss on my M1 Pro, is USB-A (which I'm invested in, e.g. my YubiKeys and something like a HackRF or Proxmark), but its got 3 (!!) USB-C and I got adapters. I would've gone to Framework, but while the Linux desktop has come from a long, long way (my reference point being I started using WMs in the 90s, with my first being FVWM on RedHat 5.2) I prefer macOS with a plethora of FOSS utilities, and I am not disappointed by macOS on the ARM-based M-series. With a Framework, I could open it up myself and it seems pretty idiot-proof. I love the modularity of the ports but in the end they're just internal USB-C adapters. So while aesthetically nice, with 3 USB-C (and a SD and HDMI) I'm good to go.

mrweasel 4y ago

Some where someone wrote: It's not that Apples hardware isn't cost competitive, they just don't have en entry level option (or even a low mid-level option). The cheapest MacBook Air, which is fine for most of my needs is €1260/$1370 and while it's a wonderful laptop, it's just a bit much for running Safari, VSCode and a terminal. It really is a €950 laptop, but if they could hit that price then what else would you really want to buy? A major issue for me is that I wouldn't know what else to get. Given the current state of Windows, I'm not running out to get a Windows machine. Honestly, if the layout of my house was different, so I could get my desk closer to the living room and family, I'd go for a desktop running Linux next time around. Other than that, I think Apple have the market cornered. You want a great laptop, with an OS that just works (for most people), then what else are you going to buy?

Mindwipe 4y ago
The sticker shock of having to purchase the RAM/storage for the lifetime of the device isn't typical, and is above market rates for those things.
nicoburns 4y ago
Their base models are usually vaguely reasonably priced. But they charge a huge markup for RAM/disk upgrades.
- eastbound 4y ago
  I got a surprise when going to System76’s buy page. Upgrades to 1To or 32GB are only two-digit numbers, not three digits! Coming from Apple, it’s refreshing. (But the second adapter is 110$ and requires a separate 120$ shipment).
fastaguy88 4y ago
Yesterday, the cheapest MacBook Air (M1, 8Gb/256GB) was under $800 at Costco in the US.
- mrweasel 4y ago

wasyl 4y ago

4 years ago I bought a maxed out (except storage) MBP 15" for ~3.5k EUR. A similarly specced machine now is 4.7k EUR, and a maxed out (except storage) one is 5.2k EUR. I'd really want to upgrade to a machine with M chip but with current prices I can't reasonably justify that. Instead, I got a PC with 8c/16t Ryzen with similar performance in my workload for fraction of the price, and simply use the MBP only when needed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

mgraupner 4y ago
For 3600€ you could get the M2 Pro 16" with 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD which is a much faster machine than the on you bought 4 years ago, even if the specs might not have changed that much. Could not argue about the price of a Ryzen, can't beat that. :)
- codedokode 4y ago
  I am surprised that you pay the price of 7 ordinary laptops and get only 32 Gb of RAM and only 1 Tb of storage.
  - mgraupner 4y ago
    Why would you compare the price of an ordinary laptop with that of an extraordinary one? People buy Mercedes and not Lada Niva for a reason my friend, even though both of them can drive. ;)
victorbstan 4y ago
Agree with this sentiment. Many years ago I bought a maxed out MacBook Pro for about ~ $3000 CAD and now the prices go up to ~ $6000. Technology is supposed to get better and cheaper over time. They really are trying to squeeze every cent out of consumers they can. There’s also another side to it. I think a big “buyer” of apple hardware were startups and tech companies that were providing these machines to their employees. With the tech layoff and freezes in hiring this should impact the number of Macs purchased, I suspect.

piva00 4y ago

Same feeling to me, I bought a M1 Air 16GB RAM + 512GB storage in 2020 which serves me really well to this day, when I saw the new M2 MBA I thought on getting one for myself and passing down the current M1 to my girlfriend but when I saw the prices for a 512GB storage + 16GB RAM I just gave up. There's no reason for me to get rid of my M1 right now, it'd be a luxury in itself, the absurd price just made it very easy to talk myself out of it.

zitterbewegung 4y ago

Honestly the best value is to buy a used or discounted M1 air. M2 on an air can throttle and the M1 base models even have a faster SSD.

Teever 4y ago
Damn straight. I just got a m1 air 8gb w/ 256gb for $975 CAD on FB marketplace in December. It was in absolute mint condition with 7 cycles on the battery and 1 year left on applecare (which apparently means i can renew it even as the second owner.) My take is that a lot of people got these wizzbang new laptops through some spending account for WFH during covid, they never left the house with them and now theyre selling them as they go back to the office.
wildrhythms 4y ago
I agree with this. I got the M1 Air as soon as it launched, it's insanely fast, there's no fan so there's no noise, and the battery goes for 15+ hours (granted I mostly just use the iTerm and a browser window).

donkeyd 4y ago

Almost exactly 2 years ago, I bought an M1 Air for €1050. That same M1 Air is still being sold by that same store, but now costs €1126. That's a 7% rise in price for a laptop that's now 2,5 years old. This is just ridiculous.

HPsquared 4y ago
Technically the price did still fall in real terms. Not great, though.
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Adjusted for inflation 1050 EUR in 2021 is 1,189.2 EUR in 2023. You're right that's a 7% increase in nominal terms but a 5.5% decrease in real dollar terms.
  - FranzFerdiNaN 4y ago
    The tech is also 2.5 years older, which should be taken j to account.
- LoveMortuus 4y ago
  Technically correct, but I doubt salaries followed the inflation, so for most of people, it's just more expensive. :/
  - ajross 4y ago
    Salary growth leads inflation in virtually all cases, and in this one too. (Realized I can still edit: reply after reply is trying to interpret this as a statement about causality, which it emphatically is not. I'm just saying that ordering is complicated in feedback systems, and that the needed salary growth to compensate for existing inflation largely already happened. This is doubly or triply true for the tech salaries people here are making.)
    - 4y ago

4ec0755f5522 4y ago

I consider the Mac base models quite affordable for the quality and performance. But for my use I need more RAM and would prefer more storage, and these prices are absolutely beyond ridiculous.

FullyFunctional 4y ago
A first world problem sure, but it's really frustrating that all the deals are for 8 GB versions. With non-upgradable memory, I'd never buy 8 GB laptop I intend to keep 5+ years. Not even with macOS's famous memory frugality.

slowmotiony 4y ago

Electronics prices in the EU are simply crazy. Recently i wanted to get a small mini-PC that would be energy efficient and I could run some AI experiments on. Reading online forums, everyone's like "just get a mac mini, couple hundred bucks and you're golden". I check the apple website and turns out they actually cost almost a thousand euro for the 16GB/256GB model. But its the same with a lot of other electronics too - people online will tell you something like "just get a raspberry for $40" but then you look at the European ebay and you're in for at least a 100 euro and that's for a used one.

Eisenstein 4y ago
Rasbpis are expensive because people started using them for products (why make a board to flash these lights when I can put a cheap Pi in there with a program to do it?) and during the chip shortage they started prioritizing businesses -- which is against their self-described mission, but whatever. They still haven't caught up production enough to stifle the price increases.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Yeah they really caused some bad blood with this business prioritisation.. Not just with us in the community but also with Broadcom who now view them as competitors as opposed to a friendly outreach project. They should have stuck with their core IMO.
  - enumjorge 4y ago
    I'm not very deep in the raspberry PI world, mostly because it's been hard getting a hold of one. Are there alternatives that the community has gravitated towards?
    - Eisenstein 4y ago
      Check out Pine64: * https://pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/ https://pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/ The Rock64 fits in a Pi3 case and is roughly equiv. and runs DietPi (makes a good Pihole). The RockPro64 is a great media machine. The A64 doesn't really do it for me but I am sure it has applications. My one big complaint about the Rock64 design is that the tiny barrel power plug (the same size and voltage used for USB powered hubs) is right next to the 3.5mm audio jack and fits inside and if you mistakenly put it in it will fry the board (ask me how I know). I have taken to popping the connector off shitty headphones and putting it in the audio jack so that can't happen.

TrevorJ 4y ago

The prices are bad enough, but what really seals the deal is the forced obsolescence. I have an older macbook that I was trying to upgrade to the newer OS and they make it basically impossible. I struggled for a few days on it, then I just installed ubuntu and it works perfectly. Apple's value proposition seems to be "pay an arm and a leg for something we will break anytime we think you should give us more money."

arcticbull 4y ago
New macOS historically runs on devices between 5 and 10 years old. Longest in recent memory was El Cap which supported 8-10 year old devices. Shortest was Snow Leopard, which supported 3 year old devices. Ventura is lower, 4-5 years, but that happens periodically when aligned with major architectural changes. [edit] Honestly, their support cycle is pretty impressive. And just because they don't release a newer version of macOS doesn't mean software stops working.
- myself248 4y ago
  Why should 4-5 years be lauded? I daily-drive an AthlonXP machine from 2008. Nothing about the hardware requires dropping support. (Linux has, sadly but understandably, dropped support for the older 386/486/ppro architectures in the name of kernel sanity, but I wouldn't run a desktop with any of those anyway.) Dropping support for hardware that still runs perfectly fine, and isn't a heinous mess of architectural workarounds, is nothing more than a crass money-grab. Which is completely understandable for a company whose job is to make money, but I still don't see why that's praiseworthy.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wtallis 4y ago
    It's one thing for the Linux kernel to still support 15+ year-old hardware (the Athlon XP was already pretty old by 2008). It's a very different thing for a full desktop OS to still support it in a feature-complete way. Historically, Apple seems to prefer to drop support for old hardware rather than maintain a long list of caveats about which features cannot run on older machines. Throughout the Intel Mac era, Apple was clearly trying to raise the bar for baseline GPU performance to ensure the graphical effects really would run "perfectly fine" as you put it, though they were stymied by some of Intel's anti-competitive behavior. Their decision to drop support for the 32-bit kernel and firmware was quite reasonable, though the later decision to drop support for 32-bit applications was more of a problem for users.

scarface74 4y ago

iPhones are close to 40% of the market in the Eu https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe And Mac sales increased https://appleworld.today/archives/101858?noamp=available https://appleworld.today/archives/101858?noamp=available

varispeed 4y ago

> with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. Technically it is replaceable - replacement of surface mount components isn't actually too difficult and tools that are needed are affordable. Problem is that the Apple won't give an option to buy memory or SSD chips on an open market. While the replacement wouldn't be feasible for a typical laptop user, plenty of mobile repair shops would have done the upgrade with pleasure provided they could get access to chips. Something we really need legislators to step in. Unfortunately in the EU the coming right to repair law is completely useless.

nrki 4y ago
> Technically it is replaceable It's not user-replaceable. It would not be _that_ difficult for Apple to keep a SODIMM slot free, or even come up with a new standard - as they are wont to do. Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money - it's as simple as that.
- sliken 4y ago
  Well trick is, decent iGPUs need better than 128 bit wide DDR5 @ 5200 Mhz. So apple's solution is a small CPU package with ram on board that lets them do 128, 256, 512, and 1024 bit wide memory interfaces. All but the 1024 bit wide are low power enough to be in thin laptops. Considering even the Ryzen 7950x or Intel I9 for desktops are 128 bit wide that's a pretty huge difference. You have to move up to Epyc, Threadripper, Xeon, or a Workstation CPU to get more than 128 bits, and those aren't available on laptops. So I'm going to have to disagree with the "Apple sacrificed upgradability in the name of making more money".
- varispeed 4y ago
  > It's not user-replaceable. Well, it's not because Apple doesn't give access to parts, otherwise it would be. Not sure how use of hot air station suddenly makes it something that a user can't do? You can buy a hot air station for less than $100 and it will do the job. Only caveat is that the replacement part needs to be new (so it has pre-applied solder balls) - otherwise you'd need to reball which a bit more difficult, but not something that can't be done at home.

bloqs 4y ago

this is exactly my issue. I was able to get an opened but unused macbook pro M1 2020 from Amazon for £799/€909 in 2021, with 8GB ram and 512GB SSD. It's been an excellent purchase, and I've been happy with it but faced with paying much more, I'd likely opt for something else.

game_the0ry 4y ago

FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it. How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years? Even the battery life is still ok. I am going to have to force her to consider the air bc the old 13 is a security risk without OS updates. The only reason why I replaced the old 13 with the air was bc the 13 could not render 4k 60fps on an external display. Otherwise, I would have kept using it. The old 13 cost me about $1600 USD new (256GB HD, 8 GB ram). Amortize that cost over 9 years and that doesn't seem so bad. Even my iphone 8 is still going strong. Another anecdote - my current employer gave me a new macbook pro 15 when I started here back in 2017. It took my abuse well and the only reason I am not still using it is bc my employer forced me to upgrade when the m1 pros came out. You probably won't need to replace your air for like 7 years, or when apple stops updates for your machine. EDIT - I am surprised I am getting downvoted. You would think more folks on HN would be happy about long lasting products but the anti-apple bias is strong enough to override the concern of having a more sustainable product.

gaoshan 4y ago
I'm still rocking a maxed out MacBook Pro from 2013. The battery IS shot but plugged in and connected to a monitor it still gets the job done as a home machine.
- ecliptik 4y ago
  Maxed out Macbook Air 2013 here. Replacing the battery was surprisingly easy and cost about $30. I should replace the SSD at some point too. It's still getting new MacOS releases/updates using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. Once MacOS is ARM only will put Linux or OpenBSD on it and see how long it goes. 1. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I dont know how comfortable you are with with opening laptops but please make sure there is no spicy pillow issue (expanded lithium ion battery) in your machine because they represent a real fire hazard. Replacing old batteries is sometimes extremely affordable if you're willing to open the machine yourself.

noelwelsh 4y ago

I'm mostly Linux these days, but I also have a second hand M1. If you're in the UK, I got mine from: https://www.hoxtonmacs.co.uk/ https://www.hoxtonmacs.co.uk/ It's not a massive markdown from a new machine, but it works as if new.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

The amount of people that do almost nothing beside use spreadsheets, the browser, and email is pretty significant. The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing. I would be astounded if ~80% of users get any material benefit from a laptop newer than a high-end device from 4 years ago.

brundolf 4y ago
The first thing I noticed when getting an M1 was that Jira became fast
- switch007 4y ago
  Give them time, they’ll fix that
dchftcs 4y ago
>The fact that these people keep updating devices constantly is a testament to Apple's marketing. Seems apt to post this exceptionally cheesy Mac ad: https://youtu.be/8kF5x2D3rqo https://youtu.be/8kF5x2D3rqo
microtonal 4y ago
Or you know, maybe they like that it has an improved camera, better battery life (eg. after switching from Intel to Apple Silicon), larger color space which allows them to edit photos better, or the laptop got better speakers, or the laptop became more thin, or added support for fast charging, or maybe many crappy Electron apps makes them update more regularly? People can have all kinds of good reasons to update their laptop. That said, I know plenty of Mac users who upgrade maybe every 4 or 5 years.
JALTU 4y ago
Yup - I was happily doing everything I always do (as above) on my 15" 2012 MBP w/ 16GB memory up until some power chip on the mobo died. It was only lagging a bit w/ certain websites in Chrome. I still have three other Macs from around 2012 working just fine, one being my music server. So I was asking myself if I "need" the fancy laptop screen and excellent audio of a 14" MBP for $2K (no video production, no graphic design, no VR/AR, but hey, Electron apps all day long!). Answer is no, clearly. But any Apple Silicon at this point is (hopefully) another ten year machine.

jwr 4y ago

I run a small self-funded SaaS and work+develop (Clojure) on an Apple machine. Functionality-wise I find it difficult to even consider an alternative (yes, I have used Linux as my main machine, I know the disadvantages very well). Now, as for pricing, lets look at some real data: * my previous MBP 16" lasted me 29 months, salvage value was around 50%, and the amortized cost was around 42€/month * for my current 16" MBP (M1) I'm assuming 24 months with similar salvage value, which puts me at around 60€/month The M1 MBP is a spectacular machine. It's faster than nearly anything else I can get. It's also portable, which means I only need one machine for home, office or travel work. At 60€/month I find it to be a fantastic value proposition and I don't think it's overpriced at all. I'm not saying you're wrong, just showing that a totally different point of view is possible, especially if you use the machine for work.

amir734jj 4y ago

Agreed. I loved my Coporate MacBook pro. It was durable and battery lasted long. But it costed about $3k and I can't afford it. Instead, I bought a System 76 ($1200) + Desktop PC I built myself ($600). I am not a gamer. I only do programming and you don't need a fancy hardware to run vim.

seydor 4y ago

Apple is competing with LVMH since years ago. Nothing is absurd

ummonk 4y ago

You know you can just buy the iPhone 13 Mini right?

jollyllama 4y ago

Correct. It's a terrible deal relative to buying a mac ~5-6 years ago, when the price for a base spec model was more reasonable and you could upgrade it yourself.

javier2 4y ago

I feel the same. Macs are just way too expensive in EU market to recommend for normal people. You can get a real good internet+netflix machine for 800EUR. In my opinion Apple prices themselves out as the quality of the 800EUR market range increased dramatically over the past four years. Most people dont need a M1, so they can buy cheaper.

madduci 4y ago

Not only Macbooks, also the iPads have seen an absurd increase in price, especially the iPad Mini, going from 379 € to 579€. Sure, newer devices are faster and their lifecycle is longer, but the prices are becoming really out of reality.

lalhadudki 4y ago

It's always been an upper middle class, aspirational middle class affair no?

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. I wonder why the Apple executive leadership doens't come together and say: 1. let's lower prices 2. let's keep prices the same but offer 16GB + 512GB of storage my hypothetical retort would be "they don't need to if people keep buying their product" but, if the article headline is true about sales being down, then they need to run some kind of sale or re-evaulate i guess i wonder what their margins are on their M2 Mac line of hardware > It is generally believed that Apple has a profit margin of around 40-45% on its products. > Using the mid-point of that range (42.5%), we can approximate the hypothetical cost of manufacturing an Apple M2 laptop as follows: > Hypothetical Cost = Sale Price / (1 + Margin) > Hypothetical Cost = $1200 / (1 + 0.425) > Hypothetical Cost = $842.11

twawaaay 4y ago

I think the answer isn't that simple. It depends. For me my M1 Macbook Pro has the following pros: * It just works. I detest Windows. I love Linux but lately I started spending too much time maintaining it, I have busy life and decided that taking care of my OS is a luxury and I would rather use something that is acceptable than spend a lot of time getting to perfect. * It is viable powerful workstation. I just connect it to a good docking station and have a nice setup with two 60Hz 4k monitors. It is silent and usually cold while in this setup. And it is surprisingly (and I mean it) powerful. * It has gorgeous display. For hugging together and watching movies with my kids and wife. * It is a status symbol. All people at my company who mean anything have one and it is easier for me to just fit in and pick other, more meaningful battles. * It is durable. It will last me a long time, hopefully. It is true that it is fragile, but it is mostly fragile in certain ways that I can manage around. I am generally gentle and caring about my gadgets. If I don't kill it in a stupid way there is good chance it will be perfectly good working laptop for many, many years to come. I can hand it down to one of my family while I get a newer machine.

FullyFunctional 4y ago
My $0.02: in my world nobody gives a #### about status, but while I agree with your list, I feel it misses the single biggest feature: * the power efficiency of the M1 means you can _actually_ use it an entire day on a charge _without_ having to compromise on performance. That is a huge issue. I'd amend your last point with: at least in North America, getting service for the Apple products is very streamlined and that has enabled me to keep even a 2008 MBP alive until today. For me that is a huge deal as I hate donating to the landfill.
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smoldesu 4y ago
> It is a status symbol. All people at my company who mean anything have one Watching all this unfold as the DevOps guy was funny. "Don't go buy the new Macbooks, it breaks our build pipeline and you can no longer run production locall- wait, what's that? We ordered 20 last week before anyone even tested it? Sigh..." It doesn't matter to them. They're content spending 5 hours tweaking their Mac setup for every 60 minutes they spend improving production. Do I envy that naivete? I'm not sure anymore.

bodge5000 4y ago

> non-replaceable ram and ssd This is what kills it for me. When the M1 macs came out I was quite enthusiastic to use them, but just wasn't ready to drop that kind of money on an unknown OS. So I brought a cheaper, refurbished MBA (8gb ram, 256gb ssd) and loved it. The trouble is, 256gb ssd would be too small for me as a daily driver, ideally I'd want at least 1tb, but my only option to get that is to buy a whole new mac. Its hard to justify spending ~£3000 on what is effectively for me just a bigger ssd.

warner25 4y ago

Yeah, that's more than I paid for my Framework with the 11th Gen i7, 32 GB of memory, and 1 TB of storage. I've been saying for a while that Framework doesn't get enough credit for how competitive their prices are on the higher-end options. When I was buying mine, comparable machines from Apple, Microsoft, Lenovo, and Dell were like double the price. The ability to repair and upgrade was icing-on-the-cake for me.

mrbonner 4y ago

I am in the same boat as you. I have an M1 Air with 8GB of RAM. I am eyeing the M2 Mac Air or the Pro. But, as I assess my situation, I use the M1 Air for light coding tasks: to learn stuff outside of my working hours, and not to run something like LLMs with it. So, even with 8GB of RAM, I rarely feel I need to upgrade to 16GB. Though, I would probably upgrade to M2 with 16GB if the price is not that steep. For now, I am happy with the M1 Air and I still think it is easily the best laptop I have ever had in my life.

Google234 4y ago

EU forces a 2 year warranty compared to the us 1 year one so that adds some cost

asow92 4y ago

> My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm replacing it with a Framework laptop. IMHO, the Mac and Framework are different products for different people: The Mac is for generalists who just need a computer that's easy to use and gets things done whereas the framework is for techies who need to get things done, but also care about open architecture, upgradability, and tinkering with esoteric Linux distros. Many of these generalists on the Mac side don't need more than a web browser for most of their tasks and are willing to pay more because they don't want to care about the details: they just want a computer that works. This isn't to say one or the other is better, but that they are solving for fundamentally different problems.

leokennis 4y ago

I used to justify Apple’s very high prices with “the hardware and software are premium”. For me, the hardware is still without a doubt premium. Great build quality, fantastic processors etc. iOS is still pretty good as well. But MacOS…damn what a mess. I’m starting to think I’m better of using a framework laptop with a user friendly Linux GUI running on it.

scns 4y ago
Maybe hold out for Asahi Linux? Patience is a skill that can pay big dividends.

lasftew 4y ago

Not really? Here is a listing in Germany for 1246 EUR (including VAT), which is not cheap but substantially lower than 1500 EUR: https://www.galaxus.de/de/s1/product/apple-macbook-air-2022-1360-m2-8-gb-256-gb-de-notebook-21108618 https://www.galaxus.de/de/s1/product/apple-macbook-air-2022-...

twblalock 4y ago

Almost everything electronic is overpriced in the EU because of high taxes.