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No one is buying a base model Mac for local LLM. Everyone is forgetting the PC prices have drastically increased due to RAM and SSD. Meanwhile, Macs had no such

No one is buying a base model Mac for local LLM. Everyone is forgetting the PC prices have drastically increased due to RAM and SSD. Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change… at least for the models that didn’t just drop today. Mac’s are just a good deal at the moment.

briffle 8mo ago
the new models cost $200 more for each 8GB of Ram you add.. Ouch...
- Forgeties79 8mo ago
  That's been the case for years. Not new to the M5's
jsheard 8mo ago
> Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change Yeah because Mac upgrade prices were already sky high, long before the component shortage. 32GB of DDR5-6000 for a PC rocketed from $100 to $500, while the cost of adding 16GB to a Mac was and still is $400.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  I'm kind of curious how Apple's supply contracts actually work, because it's currently more attractive to buy a Mac with a lot of RAM than it usually is, relative to a PC. So if it's "we negotiated a price and you give us as much RAM as we sell machines" the company supplying the RAM is getting soaked because they're having to supply even more RAM to Apple for a below-market price. But if the contract was for a specific amount of RAM and then people start coming to Apple more for high RAM machines, they're going to exhaust their contract sooner than usual and run out of cheap memory to buy. Then they have to decide if they want to lower their margins or raise the already-high price up to nosebleed levels.
  - walterbell 8mo ago
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrupts-apples-nand-pricing-electronics-nn8tc https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrup... Apple has accepted a 100% price increase for Samsung's LPDDR5X memory, with DRAM supply commitments secured only through the first half of 2026. Tim Cook acknowledged during the Q1 FY2026 earnings call that storage price increases would significantly impact Q2 gross margins.. Apple is evaluating ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) as new supply sources, attempting to rebuild pricing leverage through supply chain diversification.

briffle 8mo ago

the new models cost $200 more for each 8GB of Ram you add.. Ouch...

Forgeties79 8mo ago
That's been the case for years. Not new to the M5's

jsheard 8mo ago

> Meanwhile, Macs had no such price change Yeah because Mac upgrade prices were already sky high, long before the component shortage. 32GB of DDR5-6000 for a PC rocketed from $100 to $500, while the cost of adding 16GB to a Mac was and still is $400.

AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
I'm kind of curious how Apple's supply contracts actually work, because it's currently more attractive to buy a Mac with a lot of RAM than it usually is, relative to a PC. So if it's "we negotiated a price and you give us as much RAM as we sell machines" the company supplying the RAM is getting soaked because they're having to supply even more RAM to Apple for a below-market price. But if the contract was for a specific amount of RAM and then people start coming to Apple more for high RAM machines, they're going to exhaust their contract sooner than usual and run out of cheap memory to buy. Then they have to decide if they want to lower their margins or raise the already-high price up to nosebleed levels.
- walterbell 8mo ago
  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrupts-apples-nand-pricing-electronics-nn8tc https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/memory-supply-chain-ai-disrup... Apple has accepted a 100% price increase for Samsung's LPDDR5X memory, with DRAM supply commitments secured only through the first half of 2026. Tim Cook acknowledged during the Q1 FY2026 earnings call that storage price increases would significantly impact Q2 gross margins.. Apple is evaluating ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) as new supply sources, attempting to rebuild pricing leverage through supply chain diversification.