6 ms·
Base 14" M3 MBP comes with 8 GB RAM at $1599 USD. That's pretty stingy.
by scrlk 3y ago
Base 14" M3 MBP comes with 8 GB RAM at $1599 USD. That's pretty stingy.
- nateb2022 3y agoEspecially when a 13" M2 MBA with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD comes in at $1499.
- Willish42 3y agoAnd yet _still_ 8GB of RAM as the baseline. It's probably as profitable as it is evil / misleading.
- sosodev 3y agoCalling it evil is a bit of a stretch.
- 3c6bYDXLMj 3y agoHyperbole like this is necessary for people to justify the extreme negative emotions they feel about a computer they’ll never buy having specifications that they disapprove of.
- Willish42 3y agoI'll admit "evil" is a stretch but I was thinking in terms of the amount of e-waste this causes due to insufficient RAM hurting the longevity of a $~2k+ computer e.g. https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology-media-and-telecom/apple-waste-generation-2095979/ https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology-media-an...
- spacecadet 3y agoIs it? Its pretty evil to overcharge and prey on a customer base who doesn't know any better, but would benefit from a more usable starting point, oh say 16... Tims a finance guy, they are kinda evil by default.
- Willish42 3y agoYeah, Apple customers tend to also just "trust Apple" and get whatever the recommended product is for their price point. Half the reason I find this troubling is ewaste, the other half is I'm sick of having to try to explain RAM to my MIL and ask how many tabs they keep open when asked which computer she should buy. If they had a better baseline memory (16gb) or a simple inexpensive upgrade that's the second option in the lineup instead of the higher storage cost, it'd be a simple, one-sentence "get that one". Even having to upgrade the RAM is a hassle when price comparing etc. They know this and it's - by design - misleading to the type of affluent less-tech-friendly users who prefer Apple products.
- astrange 3y agoNo one should have to care how many tabs they have open, and since browsers kill/suspend background tabs these days, they probably don't have to care about it either.
- spacecadet 3y agoExcept all of the browsers are shit at it. I know someone with so many tabs open it just shows a :)
- renewiltord 3y agoAmerica is truly a blessed nation. Their richest evil people simply make the most powerful consumer appliances available for a reasonable price. Their good people must be truly saints.
- spacecadet 3y agoWho? As far as I can tell every American is a psychopathic capitalist murder ready to drive their SUV over the next sand dune/forest/oil field/grandmas house you name it. Bought and sold in 1775 boy.
- sosodev 3y agoIt's a matter of perspective of course. I think if you claim that this makes Apple evil then you would also need to argue that most of capitalism is evil. Aren't the vast majority corporations just trying to make more money? I would disagree with that.
- pxmpxm 3y agoapple silicone doesn't need ram /half the people on HN
- flenserboy 3y ago8gb is pretty bad. I have an M2 Pro with 16gb, & that limit is regularly pushed, & that without regularly pushing things hard, resource-wise (then again, I've seen plenty of people on both PCs & Macs shut down whatever applications they weren't actively using when they switched between them. If testing shows that to be really common, I could see 8gb being plenty for the majority of users. Crazy user patterns, to be sure, but to each their own). If I get an M3, it will have 36 (or whatever Minis will have available) just for the headroom.
- tanx16 3y agoIt also supports exactly 1 external display.
- Waterluvian 3y agoLiterally the only reason I can’t use my work MacBook for any work that isn’t just testing Safari support. I was even ready to tolerate the terrible ram quantity given it’s so friggin’ insanely fast at javascript.
- PedroBatista 3y agoHey don't be stingy yourself, Tim's people said "it's the perfect MacBook for students and aspiring musicians.."! Seriously, you can't make up this stuff..
- Spivak 3y agoWhat do you mean, have you set foot on a college campus this decade? It's a sea of macbooks. A $1500 sticker price isn't stopping people.
- jordanreger 3y agoI proudly use an M1 Mac Mini but the fact that they're so full of themselves constantly makes me laugh(?)
- nextos 3y agoHere in EU, the price I get in the local Apple Store is 2029€ = $2153.
- throwaway019254 3y agoYou will need to convince your politicians to lower import duties and taxes. And that $1599 USD is without taxes. So not the whole US has this price. It was always worth for me to travel to Oregon to have zero tax.
- makeitdouble 3y agoIt usually comes with a 2 year warranty, which adds to the costs.
- 3c6bYDXLMj 3y agoI think you mean, convince politicians to allow for the ridiculous tax-excluded display pricing that’s prolific in the US.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoWell the average VAT in Europe is about twice as high if not more than the average sales tax in the US. So I’d rather have to do some basic math but save 10% (of course different tax rates only partially explain the price difference, it still is significantly more expensive in Europe without VAT)
- sib 3y agoWhy is it ridiculous to allow for tax-excluded display of pricing? You couldn't run a TV or newspaper ad with tax-included pricing in the US since there are so many different taxing jurisdictions here (more than 13,000, as of early 2023). Perhaps what's ridiculous is that we have so many different taxing jurisdictions.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> ridiculous tax-excluded display pricing Why is that ridiculous? I don't pay sales tax, what else would you have them advertise?
- dottjt 3y agoThat's what happens when there's no competition. Come up with an equivalent product with more RAM at the same price and I'll buy it. Sadly (or perhaps gladly, depending on your perspective), there just is no equivalent to a macbook for many people.
- linguae 3y agoYup, it seems that the "Apple tax" has gone up quite a bit since Apple shifted toward soldered RAM and storage for their products. You get excellent Apple Silicon chips with their performance and energy efficiency, as well as the most polished desktop OS (macOS), but it comes at a steep price, especially at non-base configurations. There seems to be plenty of deals for base-config Macs at places like Amazon and Costco, but if you want 24GB or 32GB of RAM, it seems that no deals can be found; you must pay full price for a custom configuration from Apple. I was a long-time Mac user. I remember when my 2006 MacBook cost less than comparable PC laptops. My last Mac purchase was a refurbished 2013 Mac Pro I purchased from Apple in 2017; since 2021 I've switched to PCs. While I love the configuration choices and expandability of PCs, the operating system situation leaves much to be desired, in my opinion. The shenanigans Microsoft continues to pull with Windows as well as the Sisyphean development cycle of the Linux desktop ecosystem (systemd, Wayland, etc.) makes me peek at Apple whenever there's an announcement, but the steep prices for a Mac configuration that fits my needs are too much for me, and so I remain a PC user.
- dottjt 3y agoDefinitely the main thing preventing me from moving on from Mac is how bad Windows and Linux is. Around 6 months ago I actually bought a beefy desktop PC to play around with, dual booting both Windows and Linux and they were just terrible. The default keyboard shortcuts on Windows are a joke (not to mention, the lack of an additional modifier key which is present with mac, which makes shortcuts more difficult than it needs to be). Linux on the other hand, was so limited. People then argue that Linux is customizable, but I spent forever trying to customise it and half the time, the modifications literally don't work at all. I assume because there are so many distros and the eco-system is so fragmented that something is almost guaranteed to break.
- sillywalk 3y ago:( I think the base MBP from 2015 had 8GB.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 3y agoIt’s actually enough for light work, but you can get more ram just pony
- linguae 3y agoWhat's even worse are the upgrade prices: $200 to go to 16GB and $400 to go to 24GB. Anything more than that requires upgrading to the M3 Pro model, which has a base price of $1999 and a base 18GB of RAM. Upgrading to 36GB costs an additional $400. I waited for today's announcement because I'm in the market for a laptop with 32GB of RAM. Today's announcement looked really tempting! However, $2399 + AppleCare + sales tax for the 36GB M3 Pro MacBook Pro is too much for me, and so it looks like it's either a refurbished M2, a Framework laptop, or a ThinkPad for me.
- varispeed 3y agoGiven how much money Apple has, this is simple profiteering. Something governments should look at and come at Apple hard, given this behaviour is inflationary.
- seec 3y agoI agree and I think it's going to happen eventually. At least something is going to happen. It already looks like customers have been a bit wiser and stopped buying the most egregiously priced models. They are running their computer division to the ground with their outrageous financial mastermind strategy. They put up a good marketing front for their proprietary technology but there is no serious advantage to their stuff anymore. Most prosumer performance focused customers are switching or are thinking about it. You just need patience and enjoy the fall. Just a few years and soon enough nobody is going to care developing stuff for their platform, it will be mostly empty shells, but at least they are pretty, I guess. Patience my friend, karma will do its thing eventually...