I generally disagree with arbitrary hardware comparisons, like "why buy apple when I could build some gaming rig for $5" for obvious reasons that have been bea

I generally disagree with arbitrary hardware comparisons, like "why buy apple when I could build some gaming rig for $5" for obvious reasons that have been beat to death in every comment section ever, but you're very right about the hardware upgrades specifically. I want a new mac, but I feel like an idiot paying those prices for both ram and ssd upgrades, moreso than ever before. In CAD, at one point, ram upgrades were already too much at $200 or something, but I'd reluctantly suck it up and be happy with the decision anyway. Now they're literally $500 for each 16gb increment, and $500 for each TB increment. I'm not about to replace my existing mac with some Windows hunk of garbage, but I'll have to wait until I'm either rich or I can directly translate those upgrades into predictable dollar amount returns on the investments. It's bizarre that I price out a laptop that's $5k before tax that doesn't have more than a 512gb SSD, has only half the possible RAM, and doesn't even have the largest screen. On the other hand, the mid-tier option is probably still great, but costs about $3500 and also still only has a 512gb ssd