Macs have never been cheap. There was a period where the Air (at < $999) and the 13” Pro (at $1199) were fantastic deals.
Let’s go back in time to when the choices were the $1799 12” PowerBook, $2199 15” PowerBook, or the $1299 iBook
Let’s go back in time to when the choices were the $1799 12” PowerBook, $2199 15” PowerBook, or the $1299 iBook
It was a very relaxed experience for me, and I certainly hope that it's still the same with Apple. $1000 isn't chump change, but it's accessible for someone just a little above the poverty line like me.
And I agree with your parent poster. In 2009 I bought a MacBook aluminium for ~1050 Euro. Later I replaced the memory by 8GB and the hard disk by an SSD. You could open it with a simple lever to replace the hard disk, memory, and battery.
My 2016 MacBook Pro, which cost 1700 Euro in early 2017 was more expensive than my 2009 MacBook Pro after upgrades (of course, with a more modern CPU).
It's sad that we seem to be standing still on the memory/storage size front, paying even slightly higher prices. In the meanwhile extensibility has gone out of the window. The only winners are Apple and the subset of the market that want even thinner laptops.