4 ms·

Apple is not catering to minimum salaries in poor countries. Does this really need to be explained? $3499 is definitely enthusiast compatible. That's beefy gam

by kaashif 7mo ago

Apple is not catering to minimum salaries in poor countries. Does this really need to be explained? $3499 is definitely enthusiast compatible. That's beefy gaming PC tier, which is possibly the canonical example of an enthusiast market. This isn't tens of thousands of dollars for top tier Nvidia chips we're talking about.

embedding-shape 7mo ago
Seems I misunderstood what a "enthusiast" is, I thought it was about someone "excited about something" but seems the typical definition includes them having a lot of money too, my bad.
- darkwater 7mo ago
  An enthusiast in the hobby space is by definition someone willing to pour much more money that someone else not that enthusiast in whichever hobby we are talking about.
  - embedding-shape 7mo ago
    Well, and also has a bunch of money, not just willing. I guess locally we don't really have that difference, as two other commentators here went by, that's why I had to update my local understanding of "enthusiast". Usually we use it for how engaged/interested a person is, regardless of how much money they can or are willing to use. Learned something new today at least, so that's cool :)
    - darkwater 7mo ago
      In a hobby where there are (strong) HW requirements, it mostly takes for granted you have money to shell out for your hobby, indeed.
    - sgc 7mo ago
      Yes, when tech gear is sold as 'enthusiast' gear, it is almost invariably the most expensive non-professional tier of equipment. That is roughly the common understanding: Expensive and focused on features more than security required for public use; while remaining within reach of at least some individuals, not only corporations.
- pchristensen 7mo ago
  $3.5k is a lot of money, but not a ton by American hobby standards. It's easy to spend multiples, even orders of magnitude more than that on hobbies like fishing, wine, sports tickets, concerts, scuba, travel, being a foodie, golf, marathons, collectibles, etc. It's out of reach for lots of people, even in developed countries. But it's easily within reach for loads of people that care more about computing than other stuff.
  - oxfeed65261 7mo ago
    In June 1977, the base Apple II model with 4 KB of RAM was $1,298 (equivalent to about $6,900 in 2025), and with the maximum 48 KB of RAM it was $2,638 (equivalent to about $14,000 in 2025). (Source: Wikipedia via Claude Opus)
    - prewett 7mo ago
      Wow, 48k for $14000. Now you can get a MBP with a million times more memory for $3500 or so. Whereas that CPU was clocked at 1 MHz, so CPUs are only several thousand times faster, maybe something like 30,000 times faster if you can make use of multi-core.
  - chirau 7mo ago
    I live in America, I am very well compensated. Have been for 15 years now. $3500 is a lot of money. A lot. There is a tiny bubble of us tech folks who think it is accessible to most people. It is not. It is also the same reason Macs are still a niche. Don't take your circles to be the standard, it is very very far from it, especially if you think $3500 is not a lot of money. It is easy to confirm this, just look at the sales number of these $3500 devices. It is definitely not an enthusiast price point, even in the US.
    - 1123581321 7mo ago
      It’s a midrange to upper expense in the US if it’s your hobby. Most people don’t have a serious computer hobby but they golf, trade ATVs, travel, drink, etc.
- NikolaNovak 7mo ago
  I'm an immigrant to Canada, and yes, English has both literal meanings and colloquial meanings. In the most literal meaning, absolutely, "Enthusiast" just means a person who likes something, is excited about something. When it comes to market and products though, typically you'll see the word "Enthusiast" as mid-tier - something like: Consumer --> Enthusiast --> Professional (may have words like "Prosumer" in there as well etc:) In that context, which is typically the one people will use when discussing product pricing and placement, "Enthusiast" is somebody who yes enjoys something, but does it sufficiently to be discerning and capable of purchasing mid-tier or above hardware. So while a consumer photographer, may use their phone or compact or all-in-one camera, enthusiast photographer will probably spend $3000 - $5000 in camera gear. Equivalently, there are myriad gamers out there (on phones, consoles, Geforce Now, whatever:), an enthusiast gamer is assumed to have a dedicated gaming computer, probably a tower, with a dedicated video card, likely say a 5070ti or above, probably 32GB+ RAM, couple of SSDs which are not entry level, etc. Again, this is not to say a person with limited budget is "not a real enthusiast", no gatekeeping is intended here; simply, if it may help, what the word means when it comes to market segmentation and product pricing :)
  - brailsafe 7mo ago
    Additionally, "enthusiasts"/"hobbyists" tend to be willing to spend beyond practical utility, while professionals are more interested in pragmatism, especially in photography from what I can tell. If you're an actual pro, you need your stuff to work properly, efficiently, reliably, when it's called for. When you're a hobbyist, it's sometimes almost the goal to waste money and time on stuff that really doesn't matter beyond your interest in it; working on the thing is the point, not the value it generates. Pros should spend money on good tools and research and knowledge, but it usually needs to be an investment, sometimes crossing over with hobbyist opinions. A friend of mine who's a computer hobbyist and retail IT tech, making far far less than I do, spends comically more than me on hardware to play basically one game. He keeps up to date with the latest processors and all that stuff, he knows hardware in terms of gaming. I meanwhile—despite having more money available—have a fairly budget gaming PC that I did build myself, but contains entirely old/used components, some of which he just needed to get rid of and gave me for free, and I upgrade my main mac every 5 years or something. I only upgrade when hardware is really getting in my way.
- Dylan16807 7mo ago
  For an individual making median income in the US, it would cost 2% of your income to get a machine like this every 4-5 years. That's a matter of enthusiasm, not a matter of having a lot of money. Sorry that income is less where you are, but the people talking about the product tier are using American standards.
monsieurbanana 7mo ago
Did you need to add poor? Unless apple isn't catering to the US
darkwater 7mo ago
1200$ as the minimum salary covers probably 70% of Europe by population?
- NetMageSCW 7mo ago
  The Neo has enough power to do small LLM testing and pretty much anything else a bit slowly, and costs $600?
  - 0x457 7mo ago
    Neo tops at 8GB RAM. What LLM are you going to run there? Functiongemma? It can absolutely do some ML inference on it, but not much in terms of LLMs.
  - darkwater 7mo ago
    Maybe, but that does not mean that the Mac Studio is not very expensive hardware even for rich first world countries.

by kaashif 7mo ago

embedding-shape 7mo ago

Seems I misunderstood what a "enthusiast" is, I thought it was about someone "excited about something" but seems the typical definition includes them having a lot of money too, my bad.

darkwater 7mo ago
An enthusiast in the hobby space is by definition someone willing to pour much more money that someone else not that enthusiast in whichever hobby we are talking about.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  Well, and also has a bunch of money, not just willing. I guess locally we don't really have that difference, as two other commentators here went by, that's why I had to update my local understanding of "enthusiast". Usually we use it for how engaged/interested a person is, regardless of how much money they can or are willing to use. Learned something new today at least, so that's cool :)
  - darkwater 7mo ago
    In a hobby where there are (strong) HW requirements, it mostly takes for granted you have money to shell out for your hobby, indeed.
  - sgc 7mo ago
    Yes, when tech gear is sold as 'enthusiast' gear, it is almost invariably the most expensive non-professional tier of equipment. That is roughly the common understanding: Expensive and focused on features more than security required for public use; while remaining within reach of at least some individuals, not only corporations.
pchristensen 7mo ago
$3.5k is a lot of money, but not a ton by American hobby standards. It's easy to spend multiples, even orders of magnitude more than that on hobbies like fishing, wine, sports tickets, concerts, scuba, travel, being a foodie, golf, marathons, collectibles, etc. It's out of reach for lots of people, even in developed countries. But it's easily within reach for loads of people that care more about computing than other stuff.
- oxfeed65261 7mo ago
  In June 1977, the base Apple II model with 4 KB of RAM was $1,298 (equivalent to about $6,900 in 2025), and with the maximum 48 KB of RAM it was $2,638 (equivalent to about $14,000 in 2025). (Source: Wikipedia via Claude Opus)
  - prewett 7mo ago
    Wow, 48k for $14000. Now you can get a MBP with a million times more memory for $3500 or so. Whereas that CPU was clocked at 1 MHz, so CPUs are only several thousand times faster, maybe something like 30,000 times faster if you can make use of multi-core.
- chirau 7mo ago
  I live in America, I am very well compensated. Have been for 15 years now. $3500 is a lot of money. A lot. There is a tiny bubble of us tech folks who think it is accessible to most people. It is not. It is also the same reason Macs are still a niche. Don't take your circles to be the standard, it is very very far from it, especially if you think $3500 is not a lot of money. It is easy to confirm this, just look at the sales number of these $3500 devices. It is definitely not an enthusiast price point, even in the US.
  - 1123581321 7mo ago
    It’s a midrange to upper expense in the US if it’s your hobby. Most people don’t have a serious computer hobby but they golf, trade ATVs, travel, drink, etc.
NikolaNovak 7mo ago
I'm an immigrant to Canada, and yes, English has both literal meanings and colloquial meanings. In the most literal meaning, absolutely, "Enthusiast" just means a person who likes something, is excited about something. When it comes to market and products though, typically you'll see the word "Enthusiast" as mid-tier - something like: Consumer --> Enthusiast --> Professional (may have words like "Prosumer" in there as well etc:) In that context, which is typically the one people will use when discussing product pricing and placement, "Enthusiast" is somebody who yes enjoys something, but does it sufficiently to be discerning and capable of purchasing mid-tier or above hardware. So while a consumer photographer, may use their phone or compact or all-in-one camera, enthusiast photographer will probably spend $3000 - $5000 in camera gear. Equivalently, there are myriad gamers out there (on phones, consoles, Geforce Now, whatever:), an enthusiast gamer is assumed to have a dedicated gaming computer, probably a tower, with a dedicated video card, likely say a 5070ti or above, probably 32GB+ RAM, couple of SSDs which are not entry level, etc. Again, this is not to say a person with limited budget is "not a real enthusiast", no gatekeeping is intended here; simply, if it may help, what the word means when it comes to market segmentation and product pricing :)
- brailsafe 7mo ago
  Additionally, "enthusiasts"/"hobbyists" tend to be willing to spend beyond practical utility, while professionals are more interested in pragmatism, especially in photography from what I can tell. If you're an actual pro, you need your stuff to work properly, efficiently, reliably, when it's called for. When you're a hobbyist, it's sometimes almost the goal to waste money and time on stuff that really doesn't matter beyond your interest in it; working on the thing is the point, not the value it generates. Pros should spend money on good tools and research and knowledge, but it usually needs to be an investment, sometimes crossing over with hobbyist opinions. A friend of mine who's a computer hobbyist and retail IT tech, making far far less than I do, spends comically more than me on hardware to play basically one game. He keeps up to date with the latest processors and all that stuff, he knows hardware in terms of gaming. I meanwhile—despite having more money available—have a fairly budget gaming PC that I did build myself, but contains entirely old/used components, some of which he just needed to get rid of and gave me for free, and I upgrade my main mac every 5 years or something. I only upgrade when hardware is really getting in my way.
Dylan16807 7mo ago
For an individual making median income in the US, it would cost 2% of your income to get a machine like this every 4-5 years. That's a matter of enthusiasm, not a matter of having a lot of money. Sorry that income is less where you are, but the people talking about the product tier are using American standards.

monsieurbanana 7mo ago

Did you need to add poor? Unless apple isn't catering to the US

darkwater 7mo ago

1200$ as the minimum salary covers probably 70% of Europe by population?

NetMageSCW 7mo ago
The Neo has enough power to do small LLM testing and pretty much anything else a bit slowly, and costs $600?
- 0x457 7mo ago
  Neo tops at 8GB RAM. What LLM are you going to run there? Functiongemma? It can absolutely do some ML inference on it, but not much in terms of LLMs.
- darkwater 7mo ago
  Maybe, but that does not mean that the Mac Studio is not very expensive hardware even for rich first world countries.