> 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 charg

> 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.