3 ms·

> You’re not paying for the bill of material. They’ve added more material (and cost) with the foam, and to make the product worse. A cheaper iPhone isn’t usua

> You’re not paying for the bill of material. They’ve added more material (and cost) with the foam, and to make the product worse. A cheaper iPhone isn’t usually a crippled high end model.

madaxe_again 3y ago
I’ve got news for you about how flash memory and processors are manufactured, binned, and fed out to distinct product lines. The general strategy is to make everything with the same die, and then bin the output based on manufacturing quality, defects, etc. Quite often, the manufacturing is too good, and therefore perfectly capable hardware is feature-limited in order to fill the lower end product lines.
- michaelt 3y ago
  And plenty of people buying those processors feel it's their right to 'overclock' to get the performance of a more expensive product - In the early 2000s people would even bridge connections on the chips with pencil to reverse multiplier locking.
  - berbec 3y ago
    Slot 1 300A Celeron pencil trick was the best. I lived with that for a while, and then I got a dual socket 370 533 Celerons on the BP6. That was an absolutely insanely overpowered machine for years.
teawrecks 3y ago
their options are to: * do novel research into making a sku that produces exactly $199 worth of sound quality, no more no less (more expensive) * sell everything cheaper, which is equivalent to making both skus sound identical (less profit) * not make a low end sku (pricing out potential customers) * create a low end sku for lower binned drivers (least bad option)
paxys 3y ago
Take apart the phone and look at individual parts and you will find that this is absolutely the case. Every large scale electronics manufacturer uses this strategy. And specifically in Apple's case they do spend more money doing stuff like soldering ram to the motherboard so customers can't upgrade them.
- miniBill 3y ago
  As much as I dislike Apple policies on general, the RAM is not soldered, it's integrated in the SoC, and it makes a HUGE difference in terms of SPEED. The soldered disk on the other hand... fuck that
  - chedabob 3y ago
    They started soldering the RAM to the logic board on the mid-2012 MBP.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      Initially this was discussing the iPhone. It’s one of those happy times when everyone is right.
- tzs 3y ago
  > And specifically in Apple's case they do spend more money doing stuff like soldering ram to the motherboard so customers can't upgrade them. Doesn't soldering RAM to the motherboard cost less?
  - crote 3y ago
    100%. Soldering RAM makes the engineering quite a lot easier, prevents a RAM module vendor from making profit, and gets rid of an entire assembly step because now you no longer need to install the RAM module. The downside is a lack of flexibility, because you are now committed to a very specific RAM chip and you need to spend effort if you ever need to change that - rather than just plugging in one of a dozen modules.

> You’re not paying for the bill of material. They’ve added more material (and cost) with the foam, and to make the product worse. A cheaper iPhone isn’t usually a crippled high end model.

madaxe_again 3y ago

I’ve got news for you about how flash memory and processors are manufactured, binned, and fed out to distinct product lines. The general strategy is to make everything with the same die, and then bin the output based on manufacturing quality, defects, etc. Quite often, the manufacturing is too good, and therefore perfectly capable hardware is feature-limited in order to fill the lower end product lines.

michaelt 3y ago
And plenty of people buying those processors feel it's their right to 'overclock' to get the performance of a more expensive product - In the early 2000s people would even bridge connections on the chips with pencil to reverse multiplier locking.
- berbec 3y ago
  Slot 1 300A Celeron pencil trick was the best. I lived with that for a while, and then I got a dual socket 370 533 Celerons on the BP6. That was an absolutely insanely overpowered machine for years.

teawrecks 3y ago

their options are to: * do novel research into making a sku that produces exactly $199 worth of sound quality, no more no less (more expensive) * sell everything cheaper, which is equivalent to making both skus sound identical (less profit) * not make a low end sku (pricing out potential customers) * create a low end sku for lower binned drivers (least bad option)

paxys 3y ago

Take apart the phone and look at individual parts and you will find that this is absolutely the case. Every large scale electronics manufacturer uses this strategy. And specifically in Apple's case they do spend more money doing stuff like soldering ram to the motherboard so customers can't upgrade them.

miniBill 3y ago
As much as I dislike Apple policies on general, the RAM is not soldered, it's integrated in the SoC, and it makes a HUGE difference in terms of SPEED. The soldered disk on the other hand... fuck that
- chedabob 3y ago
  They started soldering the RAM to the logic board on the mid-2012 MBP.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    Initially this was discussing the iPhone. It’s one of those happy times when everyone is right.
tzs 3y ago
> And specifically in Apple's case they do spend more money doing stuff like soldering ram to the motherboard so customers can't upgrade them. Doesn't soldering RAM to the motherboard cost less?
- crote 3y ago
  100%. Soldering RAM makes the engineering quite a lot easier, prevents a RAM module vendor from making profit, and gets rid of an entire assembly step because now you no longer need to install the RAM module. The downside is a lack of flexibility, because you are now committed to a very specific RAM chip and you need to spend effort if you ever need to change that - rather than just plugging in one of a dozen modules.