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> This is just Apple marketing, defending a pricing and specification that is essentially robbery. as someone more into the DIY PC space, this was my opinion f

> This is just Apple marketing, defending a pricing and specification that is essentially robbery. as someone more into the DIY PC space, this was my opinion for a long time. almost by reflex, I mentally tally up what it would cost to build a PC with similar specs or buy a windows laptop off the shelf and laugh at the suckers who buy apple. before "apple silicon" was a thing, they would often sell macbook pros for $2-3k that were multiple generations behind what windows OEMs were putting in their laptops. but one day a very obvious realization hit me. apple has never competed on perf/$, and none of their customers care. their customers are very willing to pay extra or sacrifice on specs to get a well-integrated product with an OS that does not track their every move, does not shove ads down their throat, and reliably boots after an update. it's hard to put a dollar value on that or call certain SKUs "robbery" when nothing similar exists. if you want macOS or a chassis that doesn't look like it was designed by either a 14yo gamer or a 50yo corporate drone, there isn't much in the way of competition.

deleted 2y ago
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blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I agree with everything you said, for what it’s worth. I just feel that it is particularly greedy to save tiny amounts of money on reduced RAM or charge insane amounts for RAM upgrades well in excess of the cost to Apple. I know they can do it because there isn’t any equivalent from other manufacturers. But maybe the part that bothers me about their claim about 8GB is the timing of it. They’re going to have to increase baseline amounts to be able to support AI features in the future - but until those models come out, they have to essentially stretch the truth about how much RAM is “good enough” to sell what they’ve already brought to market, and that part feels deceptive. They aren’t leading with admitting that these devices are woefully inadequate for on device inference.
- leetcrew 2y ago
  I don't follow apple closely enough to know what on device inference means to the typical base spec mba buyer, but I'm going to guess they have no idea what that even means, let alone what they would do with it.
chipdart 2y ago
> [Apple] customers are very willing to pay extra or sacrifice on specs to get a well-integrated product with an OS that does not track their every move, does not shove ads down their throat, and reliably boots after an update. I think this is a lame attempt at rationalizing something that has no justification whatsoever. Nowadays, adding adequate amounts of RAM is not a cost concern. We have cheap miniPCs with 16GB and even 32GB of RAM being sold for less than what Apple charges for adding 8GB of RAM. This is not what any customer wants. Apple customers do not want to be short-changed, even if they are loyal Apple customers. Just read through this discussion. A browser such as Chrome quickly dries out all free RAM with a few tabs opened, which can be around 5-6GB of RAM on a Mac. You are also awfully wrong in claiming Apple products do not compete on perf/$. Apple has been for years pushing the idea they sell premium, high-performance hardware. Their switch from Intel to their own silicon is sold as a premium to pay for performance improvements. Each and every single version bump of their silicon has been marketed fully centered on performance. Even Apple's lame excuse for shipping substandard RAM sizes is centered on performance, and how Apple's weak 8GB shared memory matches other OEM's 16GB +XGB VRAM systems. And now all of a sudden Apple does not compete on performance?
- thejazzman 2y ago
  > lame attempt at rationalizing It's not rationalizing to state a fact. We buy what we want. I don't need a faster phone or a faster Mac. I'll take it, yeah, but that's not why I like the product Apple Silicon has just made performance another perk * I'm not an Apple fanboy and really wish they hadn't lost their soul in exchange for being a multi trillion dollar company. But I do appreciate that their hardware is way more affordable than it used to be (eg $699 M1 MacBook at Walmart)
- leetcrew 2y ago
  > Nowadays, adding adequate amounts of RAM is not a cost concern. We have cheap miniPCs with 16GB and even 32GB of RAM being sold for less than what Apple charges for adding 8GB of RAM. I don't that's an apples-to-apples comparison (pun intended). the ram in those computers is soldered to the mainboard, while it is part of the SoC in the newer macbooks. I don't know exactly how much that contributes to the manufacturing cost, but my intuition is that it would be significantly higher. > You are also awfully wrong in claiming Apple products do not compete on perf/$. Apple has been for years pushing the idea they sell premium, high-performance hardware. I don't think I am, unless "perf/$" means something very different to you. to me, it means the amount of performance you get for your money. apple is certainly crowing about "apple silicon" now that they have the best mobile parts, but I don't think even apple marketing would claim to outperform laptops from acer, asus, etc. for the same money. but this is all an aside to my main point. adding up the cost of a bag of parts is one way of valuing a computer (and one that makes a lot of sense for a tower that hides under your desk), but it's not the only way. you can also look at it from more of a product perspective: what does it enable you to do? if you're a video editor or developer by trade, it's easy to justify the cost of a $2-3k macbook pro, even with the understanding that it's a huge markup over the bill of materials. it is a thing you use to make money. the base macbook air is perfectly fine for watching videos, sending emails, and possibly flexing on your friends at college. I don't think it's unlikely that apple intentionally hamstrings their $1000 offering to make it unsuitable for professionals, but that's not something I get upset about anymore. the alternative is not a $1000 mba with 16GB ram and a 512GB ssd; it's a macbook air that starts at $1500.

deleted 2y ago

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blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

I agree with everything you said, for what it’s worth. I just feel that it is particularly greedy to save tiny amounts of money on reduced RAM or charge insane amounts for RAM upgrades well in excess of the cost to Apple. I know they can do it because there isn’t any equivalent from other manufacturers. But maybe the part that bothers me about their claim about 8GB is the timing of it. They’re going to have to increase baseline amounts to be able to support AI features in the future - but until those models come out, they have to essentially stretch the truth about how much RAM is “good enough” to sell what they’ve already brought to market, and that part feels deceptive. They aren’t leading with admitting that these devices are woefully inadequate for on device inference.

leetcrew 2y ago
I don't follow apple closely enough to know what on device inference means to the typical base spec mba buyer, but I'm going to guess they have no idea what that even means, let alone what they would do with it.

chipdart 2y ago

> [Apple] customers are very willing to pay extra or sacrifice on specs to get a well-integrated product with an OS that does not track their every move, does not shove ads down their throat, and reliably boots after an update. I think this is a lame attempt at rationalizing something that has no justification whatsoever. Nowadays, adding adequate amounts of RAM is not a cost concern. We have cheap miniPCs with 16GB and even 32GB of RAM being sold for less than what Apple charges for adding 8GB of RAM. This is not what any customer wants. Apple customers do not want to be short-changed, even if they are loyal Apple customers. Just read through this discussion. A browser such as Chrome quickly dries out all free RAM with a few tabs opened, which can be around 5-6GB of RAM on a Mac. You are also awfully wrong in claiming Apple products do not compete on perf/$. Apple has been for years pushing the idea they sell premium, high-performance hardware. Their switch from Intel to their own silicon is sold as a premium to pay for performance improvements. Each and every single version bump of their silicon has been marketed fully centered on performance. Even Apple's lame excuse for shipping substandard RAM sizes is centered on performance, and how Apple's weak 8GB shared memory matches other OEM's 16GB +XGB VRAM systems. And now all of a sudden Apple does not compete on performance?

thejazzman 2y ago
> lame attempt at rationalizing It's not rationalizing to state a fact. We buy what we want. I don't need a faster phone or a faster Mac. I'll take it, yeah, but that's not why I like the product Apple Silicon has just made performance another perk * I'm not an Apple fanboy and really wish they hadn't lost their soul in exchange for being a multi trillion dollar company. But I do appreciate that their hardware is way more affordable than it used to be (eg $699 M1 MacBook at Walmart)
leetcrew 2y ago
> Nowadays, adding adequate amounts of RAM is not a cost concern. We have cheap miniPCs with 16GB and even 32GB of RAM being sold for less than what Apple charges for adding 8GB of RAM. I don't that's an apples-to-apples comparison (pun intended). the ram in those computers is soldered to the mainboard, while it is part of the SoC in the newer macbooks. I don't know exactly how much that contributes to the manufacturing cost, but my intuition is that it would be significantly higher. > You are also awfully wrong in claiming Apple products do not compete on perf/$. Apple has been for years pushing the idea they sell premium, high-performance hardware. I don't think I am, unless "perf/$" means something very different to you. to me, it means the amount of performance you get for your money. apple is certainly crowing about "apple silicon" now that they have the best mobile parts, but I don't think even apple marketing would claim to outperform laptops from acer, asus, etc. for the same money. but this is all an aside to my main point. adding up the cost of a bag of parts is one way of valuing a computer (and one that makes a lot of sense for a tower that hides under your desk), but it's not the only way. you can also look at it from more of a product perspective: what does it enable you to do? if you're a video editor or developer by trade, it's easy to justify the cost of a $2-3k macbook pro, even with the understanding that it's a huge markup over the bill of materials. it is a thing you use to make money. the base macbook air is perfectly fine for watching videos, sending emails, and possibly flexing on your friends at college. I don't think it's unlikely that apple intentionally hamstrings their $1000 offering to make it unsuitable for professionals, but that's not something I get upset about anymore. the alternative is not a $1000 mba with 16GB ram and a 512GB ssd; it's a macbook air that starts at $1500.