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>Apple buys and uses so much RAM across all its product lines that it’s in a better negotiating position than the likes of Framework or Raspberry Pi, but CEO Ti
by Thorrez 7mo ago
>Apple buys and uses so much RAM across all its product lines that it’s in a better negotiating position than the likes of Framework or Raspberry Pi, but CEO Tim Cook acknowledged in the company’s last earnings call that memory pricing could begin to eat into Apple’s profit margins later this year.
- cyanydeez 7mo agoI would think the price gouging on memory tiers is why its in a better negotiating position. Having 200% markup means minor market conditions wont prevent them from payment.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo agoThere's also the fact that they were charging $200 to add 8GB of RAM before the prices went up, when that much RAM was something like $70 at retail. The problem then is that when the supply gets more expensive and you were already charging the maximally-extractive price to customers, they can't eat much more of a price increase, so instead most of it has to come out of margins.
- rafaelmn 7mo agoI was configuring my M5 MBP preorder and 48=>64 was 250 EUR so not sure if they cut prices or your numbers are outdated ?
- Detrytus 7mo agoPrices in the US are usually much lower than in Europe. I just checked and 48->64 ram bump is still $200 I just did a 14" MBP with M5 Max, 128GB RAM, 4TB SSD, nano-texture display. Price difference is $5849 vs 7004 EUR ($8136).
- rafaelmn 7mo agoI'd say half of that difference is that we have VAT included in price. But my point is that's a 16GB jump for 200$ not 8GB
- bombcar 7mo agoUS prices are often low enough that it's almost worth the flight just to grab one. 14' MBP M5 Pro 64GB - $2999 or 3449 €
- asdff 7mo agoActually that is relatively cheaper than Apple has ever sold ram. They would always charge $200 for each ram upgrade and it might have been only 4gb or less back then. The twist now though is they started soldering in the RAM with the retina macbook, so you can't run around apple's extortionate pricing like you could in the past and just buy components off the market. Such a stupid cartoon evil villain move too, just to force us into getting RAM from them. I have never been memory bandwidth bound (Apple's excuse for soldering in the RAM) in my life and yet I am forced to buy computers that optimize for this at the expense of things I actually care about like serviceability. And also consider the fact it incentivizes people to buy more RAM than they need today in effort to future proof their device, in a time of RAM shortages. And who knows maybe by the time that RAM amount is relevant the CPU can no longer keep up so the hoarding might not even be for anything either.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo ago> I have never been memory bandwidth bound (Apple's excuse for soldering in the RAM) This isn't even a plausible excuse. For the entry level machines, the soldered RAM only has the same memory bandwidth as ordinary laptops. For the high end machines it likewise doesn't have any more than other high end machines (Threadripper/Epyc/Xeon) which just do the same thing as Apple -- use more memory channels -- without soldering the RAM. And it's especially a kick in the teeth right now because it means you can't buy a machine with less RAM than you might prefer and then upgrade it later if prices come back down. If it's soldered then only what you can afford at the right now prices is all the machine will ever have.
- pwarner 7mo agoI think part of what's happening lately is that chip folks are start to realize they can make margin too. Maybe it's possible thanks to consolidation but for sure folks see the crazy margins nvida, apple etc have, and I suspect they're like - we want that too!