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I run desktop linux at home, and agree with the concerns/frustrations about running MacOS but I've never understood the complaints about Apple's pricing. The p

I run desktop linux at home, and agree with the concerns/frustrations about running MacOS but I've never understood the complaints about Apple's pricing. The products do come at a bit of a premium, but, in my experience, it's well earned and is a premium experience as well. There have been occasional periods of sub-par hardware, but generally (and especially current generation) Apple's hardware is extremely well designed and durable. On top of that, I don't get the software engineer aversion to paying for quality tools. How many hours a year do you spend on a computer? How many hours over the lifetime of the computer will you spend? Even if devs weren't generally in top income brackets it would still be easily justifiable to spend several thousand dollars on tools that you were happy with. Again, I completely understand not wanting to go with Apple in order to have much finer grained control over your system. But if Apple is selling what you're buying, then the pricing is more than fair imho.

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ddtaylor 3y ago
> Apple's hardware is extremely well designed and durable. It's well designed, yes, but it's certainly not durable. The entire device will have to get scrapped and replaced if even the slightest thing goes wrong with any of it.
- AYBABTME 3y ago
  Ah yes, like my 2016 MBPr that's still working like new, and had the battery replaced afresh for pretty cheap last year at the Apple Store.
  - Taywee 3y ago
    How cheap is "pretty cheap"? They wanted $300 to replace the trackpad that suddenly stopped working on its own on my 2019 one. Looking at the price estimator, battery service is like $250. That's not cheap.
    - glenngillen 3y ago
      They did a full motherboard and keyboard replacement of my 2016 MacBook last year for no cost even though it was wwaaaayyyy out of warranty because the fault was a known issue.
      - bombolo 3y ago
        [flagged]
        Taywee 3y ago
        They'll do free replacements if it's a known defect, and especially if it's widely experienced. Even Nintendo does that if they sniff a potential class action and want to avoid it.
        ddtaylor 3y ago
        Usually only after a very large public spat about how they are not being responsible for the problem. They have in the past denied problems that were widespread (board warp, keyboard, etc.) until either lawsuits or extreme push-back from the community - usually when they release a new product with those mistakes removed and it's impossible to deny them any more. Painting Apple out to be a company that "does the right thing" without being forced to do so isn't accurate.
        ElFitz 3y ago
        Even without that. I won’t go into details, but they went out of their way quite a few times, without me having to pay a dime, and no defect whatsoever was involved. But perhaps I’m just lucky.
        bombolo 3y ago
        > They'll do free replacements if it's a known defect Opposite of what happened to me. "oh yes this happens all the time… it will be 80€" Amazing service :D
        ddtaylor 3y ago
  - zimpenfish 3y ago
    I believe my parents are still chugging along with my ~2010 MBP after a couple of home-done battery swaps. Obviously not the fastest laptop in the world but never had any problems with the hardware.
    - ddtaylor 3y ago
      > ~2010 MBP Completely unsupported by Apple. Doesn't get OS updates or security updates. No apps get updates for it anymore through the App Store. Saying that using a 2010 computer when it's an Apple computer is actually one of the worst arguments you can make in this context. Virtually any other computer running any other OS is more supported.
      - passthejoe 3y ago
        My 2011 iMac is screaming fast with Debian Linux.
      - noisy_boy 3y ago
        I totally get your point about security updates but maybe, making some generalizations here, it is not a terrible thing that the machine OPs parents use, doesn't get unexpected surprises - no unexpected family tech support calls. Us technology folks love the new and the shiny but predictability is a premium for the older generation (again generalizing - there are seniors who can run hoops around the average developer with their tech skills but thats not the norm).
        zimpenfish 3y ago
        > no unexpected family tech support calls. My father has been doing embedded software development since the early 80s. Thankfully the only tech support messages I get are when I break things like their email.
      - zimpenfish 3y ago
        > Completely unsupported by Apple. Doesn't get OS updates or security updates. Sure but the original point was that the hardware was "certainly not durable". Every one of my Mac laptops (except for the 12" 2012 MacBook which is my local emergency machine) since ~2010 is still in active use by family. There's nothing wrong with the hardwares.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    The next revision of the MBPr didn't have such luck on the design/durability side (I owned both, and heartfully share your praise of the 2016 version) iPad had similar ill fated designs. I went to replace the battery of an iPad Pro and was offered a new one for the price of the battery, as a standard procedure (it's glued to the motherboard under all the other components, so no in-store replacement)
deleted 3y ago
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thx-2718 3y ago
There's other reasons not to like Apple hardware. For one the difficulty they engineer into their devices when it comes to repairing and servicing them. Then there's the use of child and/or slave labor. (if a child or a slave is making a product I expect it to be priced as such then/s) Removal or weird choices in terms of ports and which cables you may use. Question becomes for an independent software developer whether it's better to write off $7k or $3k and have $4k more in your pocket. Edit: Thank you apple fan boys for your downvotes! :D
- threeseed 3y ago
  Apple does not intentionally use child or slave labour. And of all the OEMs they have always been the most aggressive at auditing their supply chain.
  - thx-2718 3y ago
    You can not in good faith argue that executives along the way didn't turn a blind eye to these issues when they saw the price tag for those contracts. edit: Here's more to back my point: https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/22/iphone-maker-wistron-quits/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/22/iphone-maker-wistron-quits/ If Apple isn't paying it's manufacturers enough to turn a profit then how long until a manufacturer cuts corners and abuses labor to make money?
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    Then why do they seem to lobby in favor of slave labor? [0] At least for me it's difficult to come up with a reason why Apple might do this aside from knowingly profiting from it. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-uighur/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...
- tredre3 3y ago
  > Then there's the use of child and/or slave labor. It doesn't make it any better, but let's keep in mind that this is true for ALL current laptop brands unfortunately. They all come from the same factories. If anything I trust Apple more to audit their supply chain for human rights violations that I would trust eg Dell or Lenovo (and I use those brands exclusively myself).
Taywee 3y ago
It's the combination of OS and price. When Apple is very often double or more the price for competitive products, charges exorbitant prices for modest upgrades (currently $200 difference between 8 and 16 GB RAM. Over $400 for 1 TB SSD when a good 1TB M.2 goes for about $55), the OS is annoying and restrictive, and my choices for replacement OSes are all very experimental compared to non-Apple hardware, why would I spend significantly more for a significantly worse experience? And I'm happy to pay for quality tools, but I'm not spending $20 for copy-paste (edit: hyperbole. Every time I find some missing simple functionality that is available for free and easy on Linux, the Apple equivalent is available on the app store for a significant charge. Some games are simply more expensive on iOS than elsewhere because the developers know Apple users will pay more). Apple is still largely in the "luxury designer product with a consumer base of 10% historical savvy users who prefer it and 90% rich kids who like the logo and don't mind flushing money down the drain for a brand".
- tredre3 3y ago
  > When Apple is very often double or more the price for competitive products This is a complete lie. I've used PCs for 30 years and I'm not an apple fanboy but when you actually look at the market, there's only very few products that can compete to the macbooks to begin with and they're always in the same price range or more expensive. > charges exorbitant prices for modest upgrades (currently $200 difference between 8 and 16 GB RAM. This is true, but it's also true in the PC world. And PC laptops increasingly come with soldered RAMs so you don't even have the advantage of upgrading it yourself anymore.
  - Taywee 3y ago
    Macs are PCs. And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me.
    - joshmanders 3y ago
      > Macs are PCs. This is just being pedantic. "Mac vs PC" is just a widely known way to distinguish between Mac's and non-Mac's. > And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me. Ok now instead of looking at number of GB of RAM you get per price and show me quality and efficiency between these. I'm no hardware nerd/genius but from what I understand the Apple Silicon was out performing even what Apple CLAIMED in their keynotes and that caused everyone to scramble because they couldn't sit on their thumbs anymore. (Cough Intel) So yeah, you may get same numbers of RAM, but that RAM isn't equal.
roqi 3y ago
> The products do come at a bit of a premium, but, in my experience, it's well earned and is a premium experience as well. As a long time Linux and macOS user, I don't agree. Even though macOS is more polished than your average Linux desktop environment, it's really very hard to ignore the unjustified markup. Nowadays I can buy a miniPC with a Ryzen5 and 32GB of RAM for around 400€, but the cheapest Mac mini nowadays sells for over 700€ and comes with 8GB of RAM and an absurd 256GB SSD. Moreover, a Mac mini tops up at 24GB of RAM, and for that you need to pay an additional 460€ for your weak 256GB HD box.
- krger 3y ago
  >Even though macOS is more polished than your average Linux desktop environment, it's really very hard to ignore the unjustified markup. It's justified if people pay it. >Nowadays I can buy a miniPC with a Ryzen5 and 32GB of RAM for around 400€, but the cheapest Mac mini nowadays sells for over 700€ and comes with 8GB of RAM and an absurd 256GB SSD. So what's the problem? If you like running Linux on your Ryzen5 miniPC with 32GB of RAM for 400€, you're more than free to do that. Apple's not stopping you.
  - chc 3y ago
    The original point of this thread is that they'd like to be able to get an M2 PC like that. So that's the problem.
    - krger 3y ago
      I, too, would like to pay Ford prices for a Rivian.
      - Taywee 3y ago
        I'll gladly play Apple processor prices for an Apple processor, but I'm not going to pay Apple PC prices for an Apple PC when all I really want is the CPU.
        3y ago
dijit 3y ago
People get upset because they don't have a "cheap" product offering. With Dell there's the Inspirons With HP there's the Pavillion With Lenovo there's Ideapads and Yoga's and stuff. With Apple, their cheapest laptop is comparable to a business laptop (Elitebook, Latitude), and their most expensive laptops are comparable to the "creator" laptops like Dell XPS or HP ZBook -- except the Apple computers have better build quality than those. But people only look at the spec sheet and claim it's overpriced. Apple are definitely guilty of gouging the price of upgrades, but that's just business sense, if you need the update then you have to trade how much it's worth to you- it's just that other manufacturers do not do that.
- rfoo 3y ago
  > it's just that other manufacturers do not do that. Yeah. So it's just that people don't complain about other manufacturers.
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    > So it's just that people don't complain about other manufacturers. Because nobody expects the quality from these manufacturers like they do from Apple, so they don't get uppity about the price. They want Apple quality without Apple premium, or "to have their cake and eat it too"
- jart 3y ago
  Apple's whole trick to gaining performance is to trade away the ability to upgrade RAM because having the RAM/GPU/CPU all exist within the same chip improves the physical locality which decreases latency.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    This is ultimately the same trick that consoles use in their APUs. At minimum it's a great way to bring power down and enable HSA/Fusion/M1 style unified-memory shenanigans, and in the long term it's going to be the only way forward with rising dGPU costs in the low-end market.
- 3y ago
FireBeyond 3y ago
With my cheesegrater Mac, Apple wanted $3,000 for 160GB of memory (to go from 32 to 192). OWC sells the same memory (same spec, same manufacturer) now for $620, though I believe I paid about $1,000. They also wanted another $3,000 for an 8TB SSD. Similarly, I was able to buy a 4xM.2 PCI card, and populate it with 4 x 2TB SSDs for under $1,500. Furthermore my PCI setup is faster than the Apple system drive (7GBps versus 5.5).
- wfleming 3y ago
  Overcharging on those kinds of bumps is standard industry practice, though. I just checked Lenovo, and they want $224 to bump an X1 from 16GB to 32. And that’s a sale price, the normal price is $340 (which seems largely theoretical since thinkpads are eternally on some kind of sale, but that’s neither here nor there). Apple-to-apple (heh) comparison is tricky in this case since I don’t see LPDDR5 laptop chips for sale on their own, and this is a soldered-on-laptop chip so DIY after buying isn’t feasible, but an entire 32GB DDR5 desktop set can be had for about $100, so even if the low-power laptop form-factor commanded a premium, that’s still pretty egregious. Dell is similar: for a desktop they want $200 to bump from 16GB to 32GB DDR5. Apple might be a bit more daring with those prices than some PC manufacturers, but it’s hardly a behavior unique to them.
  - godelski 3y ago
    The difference is that you can buy the upgraded parts from a third party. This has always been difficult with Apple. RAM was constantly soldered in, but at least it was possible for an advanced user to upgrade it. Nvme drives had needless proprietary connections. I upgraded my old Intel Air and a $20 adapter and a n Evo Nvme drive was larger and faster than anything Apple would offer, at a cheaper price. The pricing may be standard (a bit higher if we're honest) but the bigger issue is how far Apple goes to make you pay that premium. It borders malicious. It's also not great for waste, considering upgrading is near impossible.
    - wfleming 3y ago
      Laptops, at least, are increasingly all-soldered RAM from many brands. SSDs are mostly still m.2, I think, so at least those are upgradable. Mac Pros were upgradeable until this most recent iteration switching to their ARM chips. The other companies also use lower-spec components than you could buy for less yourself, same as Apple. If anything, the rest of the industry has been moving in Apple’s direction with these kinds of limitations. They’re not more evil than their competition, they’re just ahead of the curve. I agree Apple takes it further with the gouging than others. We should absolutely complain about it and criticize them for gouging! My criticism of the “Apple Tax” complaint is that 1. Nobody ever complains nearly as vociferously about other manufacturers doing similar stuff, and 2. The particular way people complain about Apple’s behavior is always phrased to kind of imply it’s unique and not just a more egregious form of a common behavior.
aktuel 3y ago
I agree with you on the engineering except the ridiculous notch situation and the soldered on SSDs, both are unforgivable. The only saving grace for Apple here is that all other manufacturers outcompete them on the unforgivable sins front.
dathinab 3y ago
> Apple's hardware is extremely well designed and durable. The thing is it often isn't. I mean there are many vendors way worse then Apple. But it often just seems/looks/feels to be extremely well designed and durable. But if you ask someone with expertise they often can point out docents of "corners cut" which are not well designed and hurt durability. E.g. for saving some mm of high, some cents of production cost, some very small amount of weight, or likely but not provable intentional fragility to enforce their ecosystem. IMHO it's very clear that reliability and stability are secondary and looks and feel are main priority. Doesn't mean that they don't have some very good engines giving their best to make things durable but when other constraints matter more it can be hard. But it puts the reason ability of their sometimes very excessive premium prices in question. Especially if you learn of they squeeze out their supply chain in ethical extremely questionable ways while hypocritically pretending to care about issue like child labor (if you squeeze your assembly line provider so hard that they can only make profit by using child labor and disgusting working conditions then no you do not care about child labor no matter how many times you force them to sign a contract where they agree to not use child labor and have proper working conditions).
- zztop44 3y ago
  I’m sure a laptop manufacturing expert would notice all the corners cut. But if I, as someone who uses these computers for ~8 hours a day everyday for more than 5 years per machine, don’t notice them, then does do those cut corners really matter? That said, I agree that Apple’s strategy of maximising shareholder returns by squeezing their supply chain to just under breaking point is disgusting and that they are ethically culpable for the inevitable results. They’re probably not alone in this, but they have the most market power and probably push it the furthest. This is definitely an instance where you can hate the player and the game.
  - e44858 3y ago
    Louis Rossman gives lots of examples on hist YouTube channel. For example, in one case Apple appears to have cut some corners when designing the power supply for the SSD, so that when it fails it dumps 13 volts into the 2.5 volt SSD which permanently damages it: https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 In other videos he shows how Apple puts display data lines right next to high-voltage lines instead of separating them with a ground line, which means you’ll fry the board if you get a tiny bit of moisture in that area. So you will notice these cut corners when your device breaks and the repair costs almost as much as the original device.
gigatexal 3y ago
Yeah I agree. I’m all in on Linux but my wife still runs macOS. I still have an iPhone but you’ll pry Linux and i3 from my cold dead hands. That being said the apple hardware is some of the best. They’ve earned the right to recoup and then some by charging a premium for things even as silly as ram and storage imo. Software and such has taken a bit of a dive of late imo but it’s still a viable platform for devs to sell apps and services into. So shrug.

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ddtaylor 3y ago

> Apple's hardware is extremely well designed and durable. It's well designed, yes, but it's certainly not durable. The entire device will have to get scrapped and replaced if even the slightest thing goes wrong with any of it.

AYBABTME 3y ago
Ah yes, like my 2016 MBPr that's still working like new, and had the battery replaced afresh for pretty cheap last year at the Apple Store.
- Taywee 3y ago
  How cheap is "pretty cheap"? They wanted $300 to replace the trackpad that suddenly stopped working on its own on my 2019 one. Looking at the price estimator, battery service is like $250. That's not cheap.
  - glenngillen 3y ago
    They did a full motherboard and keyboard replacement of my 2016 MacBook last year for no cost even though it was wwaaaayyyy out of warranty because the fault was a known issue.
    - bombolo 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - Taywee 3y ago
        They'll do free replacements if it's a known defect, and especially if it's widely experienced. Even Nintendo does that if they sniff a potential class action and want to avoid it.
        ddtaylor 3y ago
        Usually only after a very large public spat about how they are not being responsible for the problem. They have in the past denied problems that were widespread (board warp, keyboard, etc.) until either lawsuits or extreme push-back from the community - usually when they release a new product with those mistakes removed and it's impossible to deny them any more. Painting Apple out to be a company that "does the right thing" without being forced to do so isn't accurate.
        ElFitz 3y ago
        Even without that. I won’t go into details, but they went out of their way quite a few times, without me having to pay a dime, and no defect whatsoever was involved. But perhaps I’m just lucky.
        bombolo 3y ago
        > They'll do free replacements if it's a known defect Opposite of what happened to me. "oh yes this happens all the time… it will be 80€" Amazing service :D
      - ddtaylor 3y ago
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  I believe my parents are still chugging along with my ~2010 MBP after a couple of home-done battery swaps. Obviously not the fastest laptop in the world but never had any problems with the hardware.
  - ddtaylor 3y ago
    > ~2010 MBP Completely unsupported by Apple. Doesn't get OS updates or security updates. No apps get updates for it anymore through the App Store. Saying that using a 2010 computer when it's an Apple computer is actually one of the worst arguments you can make in this context. Virtually any other computer running any other OS is more supported.
    - passthejoe 3y ago
      My 2011 iMac is screaming fast with Debian Linux.
    - noisy_boy 3y ago
      I totally get your point about security updates but maybe, making some generalizations here, it is not a terrible thing that the machine OPs parents use, doesn't get unexpected surprises - no unexpected family tech support calls. Us technology folks love the new and the shiny but predictability is a premium for the older generation (again generalizing - there are seniors who can run hoops around the average developer with their tech skills but thats not the norm).
      - zimpenfish 3y ago
        > no unexpected family tech support calls. My father has been doing embedded software development since the early 80s. Thankfully the only tech support messages I get are when I break things like their email.
    - zimpenfish 3y ago
      > Completely unsupported by Apple. Doesn't get OS updates or security updates. Sure but the original point was that the hardware was "certainly not durable". Every one of my Mac laptops (except for the 12" 2012 MacBook which is my local emergency machine) since ~2010 is still in active use by family. There's nothing wrong with the hardwares.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  The next revision of the MBPr didn't have such luck on the design/durability side (I owned both, and heartfully share your praise of the 2016 version) iPad had similar ill fated designs. I went to replace the battery of an iPad Pro and was offered a new one for the price of the battery, as a standard procedure (it's glued to the motherboard under all the other components, so no in-store replacement)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thx-2718 3y ago

There's other reasons not to like Apple hardware. For one the difficulty they engineer into their devices when it comes to repairing and servicing them. Then there's the use of child and/or slave labor. (if a child or a slave is making a product I expect it to be priced as such then/s) Removal or weird choices in terms of ports and which cables you may use. Question becomes for an independent software developer whether it's better to write off $7k or $3k and have $4k more in your pocket. Edit: Thank you apple fan boys for your downvotes! :D

threeseed 3y ago
Apple does not intentionally use child or slave labour. And of all the OEMs they have always been the most aggressive at auditing their supply chain.
- thx-2718 3y ago
  You can not in good faith argue that executives along the way didn't turn a blind eye to these issues when they saw the price tag for those contracts. edit: Here's more to back my point: https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/22/iphone-maker-wistron-quits/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/22/iphone-maker-wistron-quits/ If Apple isn't paying it's manufacturers enough to turn a profit then how long until a manufacturer cuts corners and abuses labor to make money?
- alpaca128 3y ago
  Then why do they seem to lobby in favor of slave labor? [0] At least for me it's difficult to come up with a reason why Apple might do this aside from knowingly profiting from it. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-uighur/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...
tredre3 3y ago
> Then there's the use of child and/or slave labor. It doesn't make it any better, but let's keep in mind that this is true for ALL current laptop brands unfortunately. They all come from the same factories. If anything I trust Apple more to audit their supply chain for human rights violations that I would trust eg Dell or Lenovo (and I use those brands exclusively myself).

Taywee 3y ago

It's the combination of OS and price. When Apple is very often double or more the price for competitive products, charges exorbitant prices for modest upgrades (currently $200 difference between 8 and 16 GB RAM. Over $400 for 1 TB SSD when a good 1TB M.2 goes for about $55), the OS is annoying and restrictive, and my choices for replacement OSes are all very experimental compared to non-Apple hardware, why would I spend significantly more for a significantly worse experience? And I'm happy to pay for quality tools, but I'm not spending $20 for copy-paste (edit: hyperbole. Every time I find some missing simple functionality that is available for free and easy on Linux, the Apple equivalent is available on the app store for a significant charge. Some games are simply more expensive on iOS than elsewhere because the developers know Apple users will pay more). Apple is still largely in the "luxury designer product with a consumer base of 10% historical savvy users who prefer it and 90% rich kids who like the logo and don't mind flushing money down the drain for a brand".

tredre3 3y ago
> When Apple is very often double or more the price for competitive products This is a complete lie. I've used PCs for 30 years and I'm not an apple fanboy but when you actually look at the market, there's only very few products that can compete to the macbooks to begin with and they're always in the same price range or more expensive. > charges exorbitant prices for modest upgrades (currently $200 difference between 8 and 16 GB RAM. This is true, but it's also true in the PC world. And PC laptops increasingly come with soldered RAMs so you don't even have the advantage of upgrading it yourself anymore.
- Taywee 3y ago
  Macs are PCs. And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me.
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    > Macs are PCs. This is just being pedantic. "Mac vs PC" is just a widely known way to distinguish between Mac's and non-Mac's. > And looking at the Framework laptop shop right now, I see a 16GB DDR4 DIMM for $60, and you can throw in a standard M.2 storage module. Maybe Framework is just singularly better, but that's still a reason to not buy Apple for me. Ok now instead of looking at number of GB of RAM you get per price and show me quality and efficiency between these. I'm no hardware nerd/genius but from what I understand the Apple Silicon was out performing even what Apple CLAIMED in their keynotes and that caused everyone to scramble because they couldn't sit on their thumbs anymore. (Cough Intel) So yeah, you may get same numbers of RAM, but that RAM isn't equal.

roqi 3y ago

> The products do come at a bit of a premium, but, in my experience, it's well earned and is a premium experience as well. As a long time Linux and macOS user, I don't agree. Even though macOS is more polished than your average Linux desktop environment, it's really very hard to ignore the unjustified markup. Nowadays I can buy a miniPC with a Ryzen5 and 32GB of RAM for around 400€, but the cheapest Mac mini nowadays sells for over 700€ and comes with 8GB of RAM and an absurd 256GB SSD. Moreover, a Mac mini tops up at 24GB of RAM, and for that you need to pay an additional 460€ for your weak 256GB HD box.

krger 3y ago
>Even though macOS is more polished than your average Linux desktop environment, it's really very hard to ignore the unjustified markup. It's justified if people pay it. >Nowadays I can buy a miniPC with a Ryzen5 and 32GB of RAM for around 400€, but the cheapest Mac mini nowadays sells for over 700€ and comes with 8GB of RAM and an absurd 256GB SSD. So what's the problem? If you like running Linux on your Ryzen5 miniPC with 32GB of RAM for 400€, you're more than free to do that. Apple's not stopping you.
- chc 3y ago
  The original point of this thread is that they'd like to be able to get an M2 PC like that. So that's the problem.
  - krger 3y ago
    I, too, would like to pay Ford prices for a Rivian.
    - Taywee 3y ago
      I'll gladly play Apple processor prices for an Apple processor, but I'm not going to pay Apple PC prices for an Apple PC when all I really want is the CPU.
      - 3y ago

dijit 3y ago

People get upset because they don't have a "cheap" product offering. With Dell there's the Inspirons With HP there's the Pavillion With Lenovo there's Ideapads and Yoga's and stuff. With Apple, their cheapest laptop is comparable to a business laptop (Elitebook, Latitude), and their most expensive laptops are comparable to the "creator" laptops like Dell XPS or HP ZBook -- except the Apple computers have better build quality than those. But people only look at the spec sheet and claim it's overpriced. Apple are definitely guilty of gouging the price of upgrades, but that's just business sense, if you need the update then you have to trade how much it's worth to you- it's just that other manufacturers do not do that.

rfoo 3y ago
> it's just that other manufacturers do not do that. Yeah. So it's just that people don't complain about other manufacturers.
- joshmanders 3y ago
  > So it's just that people don't complain about other manufacturers. Because nobody expects the quality from these manufacturers like they do from Apple, so they don't get uppity about the price. They want Apple quality without Apple premium, or "to have their cake and eat it too"
jart 3y ago
Apple's whole trick to gaining performance is to trade away the ability to upgrade RAM because having the RAM/GPU/CPU all exist within the same chip improves the physical locality which decreases latency.
- paulmd 3y ago
  This is ultimately the same trick that consoles use in their APUs. At minimum it's a great way to bring power down and enable HSA/Fusion/M1 style unified-memory shenanigans, and in the long term it's going to be the only way forward with rising dGPU costs in the low-end market.
3y ago

FireBeyond 3y ago

With my cheesegrater Mac, Apple wanted $3,000 for 160GB of memory (to go from 32 to 192). OWC sells the same memory (same spec, same manufacturer) now for $620, though I believe I paid about $1,000. They also wanted another $3,000 for an 8TB SSD. Similarly, I was able to buy a 4xM.2 PCI card, and populate it with 4 x 2TB SSDs for under $1,500. Furthermore my PCI setup is faster than the Apple system drive (7GBps versus 5.5).

wfleming 3y ago
Overcharging on those kinds of bumps is standard industry practice, though. I just checked Lenovo, and they want $224 to bump an X1 from 16GB to 32. And that’s a sale price, the normal price is $340 (which seems largely theoretical since thinkpads are eternally on some kind of sale, but that’s neither here nor there). Apple-to-apple (heh) comparison is tricky in this case since I don’t see LPDDR5 laptop chips for sale on their own, and this is a soldered-on-laptop chip so DIY after buying isn’t feasible, but an entire 32GB DDR5 desktop set can be had for about $100, so even if the low-power laptop form-factor commanded a premium, that’s still pretty egregious. Dell is similar: for a desktop they want $200 to bump from 16GB to 32GB DDR5. Apple might be a bit more daring with those prices than some PC manufacturers, but it’s hardly a behavior unique to them.
- godelski 3y ago
  The difference is that you can buy the upgraded parts from a third party. This has always been difficult with Apple. RAM was constantly soldered in, but at least it was possible for an advanced user to upgrade it. Nvme drives had needless proprietary connections. I upgraded my old Intel Air and a $20 adapter and a n Evo Nvme drive was larger and faster than anything Apple would offer, at a cheaper price. The pricing may be standard (a bit higher if we're honest) but the bigger issue is how far Apple goes to make you pay that premium. It borders malicious. It's also not great for waste, considering upgrading is near impossible.
  - wfleming 3y ago
    Laptops, at least, are increasingly all-soldered RAM from many brands. SSDs are mostly still m.2, I think, so at least those are upgradable. Mac Pros were upgradeable until this most recent iteration switching to their ARM chips. The other companies also use lower-spec components than you could buy for less yourself, same as Apple. If anything, the rest of the industry has been moving in Apple’s direction with these kinds of limitations. They’re not more evil than their competition, they’re just ahead of the curve. I agree Apple takes it further with the gouging than others. We should absolutely complain about it and criticize them for gouging! My criticism of the “Apple Tax” complaint is that 1. Nobody ever complains nearly as vociferously about other manufacturers doing similar stuff, and 2. The particular way people complain about Apple’s behavior is always phrased to kind of imply it’s unique and not just a more egregious form of a common behavior.

aktuel 3y ago

I agree with you on the engineering except the ridiculous notch situation and the soldered on SSDs, both are unforgivable. The only saving grace for Apple here is that all other manufacturers outcompete them on the unforgivable sins front.

dathinab 3y ago

> Apple's hardware is extremely well designed and durable. The thing is it often isn't. I mean there are many vendors way worse then Apple. But it often just seems/looks/feels to be extremely well designed and durable. But if you ask someone with expertise they often can point out docents of "corners cut" which are not well designed and hurt durability. E.g. for saving some mm of high, some cents of production cost, some very small amount of weight, or likely but not provable intentional fragility to enforce their ecosystem. IMHO it's very clear that reliability and stability are secondary and looks and feel are main priority. Doesn't mean that they don't have some very good engines giving their best to make things durable but when other constraints matter more it can be hard. But it puts the reason ability of their sometimes very excessive premium prices in question. Especially if you learn of they squeeze out their supply chain in ethical extremely questionable ways while hypocritically pretending to care about issue like child labor (if you squeeze your assembly line provider so hard that they can only make profit by using child labor and disgusting working conditions then no you do not care about child labor no matter how many times you force them to sign a contract where they agree to not use child labor and have proper working conditions).

zztop44 3y ago
I’m sure a laptop manufacturing expert would notice all the corners cut. But if I, as someone who uses these computers for ~8 hours a day everyday for more than 5 years per machine, don’t notice them, then does do those cut corners really matter? That said, I agree that Apple’s strategy of maximising shareholder returns by squeezing their supply chain to just under breaking point is disgusting and that they are ethically culpable for the inevitable results. They’re probably not alone in this, but they have the most market power and probably push it the furthest. This is definitely an instance where you can hate the player and the game.
- e44858 3y ago
  Louis Rossman gives lots of examples on hist YouTube channel. For example, in one case Apple appears to have cut some corners when designing the power supply for the SSD, so that when it fails it dumps 13 volts into the 2.5 volt SSD which permanently damages it: https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 https://youtu.be/7cNg_ifibCQ?t=309 In other videos he shows how Apple puts display data lines right next to high-voltage lines instead of separating them with a ground line, which means you’ll fry the board if you get a tiny bit of moisture in that area. So you will notice these cut corners when your device breaks and the repair costs almost as much as the original device.

gigatexal 3y ago

Yeah I agree. I’m all in on Linux but my wife still runs macOS. I still have an iPhone but you’ll pry Linux and i3 from my cold dead hands. That being said the apple hardware is some of the best. They’ve earned the right to recoup and then some by charging a premium for things even as silly as ram and storage imo. Software and such has taken a bit of a dive of late imo but it’s still a viable platform for devs to sell apps and services into. So shrug.