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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

Of course. M1 is a huge success and I see more friends of mine buying Apple devices with multiple months of their salaries at this point instead of getting an AMD laptop with more RAM and SSD for half the price.

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But worse build quality and CPU and laptop power and...

At this point it’s not clear if Apple machines are overpriced in any way; they beat all their competitors at their price point.

The base price is reasonable, but the RAM and Storage upgrade costs are extortionate.

That's often the case from other OEMs as well. I just checked a Dell Latitude with a 256GB SSD standard. Upgrading to 512GB costs $146.99, and going from 512GB to 1TB is another $142.72. The retail price for a very good 1TB SSD is about $135, so when you pay for that 1TB upgrade from Dell, you would still be getting ripped off even if they also sent you the 256GB and 512GB drives. For $289 in upgrade pricing, Dell owes you at least a full 2TB of storage.

Sure, but with most other OEMs anyone tech savvy (or really just handy with a screwdriver) can buy the base model and get the upgrades separately.

Except that most people don't want to use Apple products, they're fine on Windows.

Sure, when she asked me about it, I told her to get it, try it for 2 weeks, and bring it back if she doesn't like it.

The value depends on the usage. I wouldn't run photoshop +illustrator together with 256G of SSD and 8GB of RAM (which my girlfriend uses a lot), but M1 is amazing for web browsing, which my friend does mostly.

If you want build quality you buy thinkpad and not apple.

I got a Thinkpad 3yrs ago to replace by (now 6-yr old) Macbook Pro. The Thinkpad died, while my MBP is still going strong.

What exactly do you mean by "build quality"? Do you just mean built from glass and aluminium? (hardly obvious choices for a laptop). IMHO, Apple can hardly claim to be leading in "build quality", what with glued-in batteries, un-repairable designs and keyboard reliability issues that have been ongoing for years.

> Do you just mean built from glass and aluminium? (hardly obvious choices for a laptop).

Aluminium bodies are way less prone to "oilification" (aka visibly shiny areas where one's palm rests), and I have yet to see any Windows laptop where the touchpad is comparable with MBPs in both size and quality (palm tracking, gestures).

> what with glued-in batteries, un-repairable designs and keyboard reliability issues that have been ongoing for years.

Battery replacements are possible even for someone with only moderate experience in hardware work, but I agree with you that the process is more complex than it used to be. Regarding the keyboard: get a 2019 16-inch MBP, it has a keyboard with real keys and a physical esc key.

> un-repairable designs

Quality actually means no need to repair and use it till becomes obsolete. That's why Apple's stuff have drastically higher re-sell value than the competition.

Only repair shops fancy to repair stuff, the rest of us prefer it not breaking down in first place.

Ancedotally, I have yet to meet a someone whose Macbook didn't break before it became obsolete.

A quality product shouldn't be so fragile to component failures. Bad RAM shouldn't entail an entire motherboard replacement.

I never met someone who's macbook broke down without spilling the punkin spice latte all over it and second hand market is flooded with old macbooks in mint condition.

LOL. Louis rossman would beg to differ.

no doubt. He made a career of it.

M1 is a good value - I am honestly amazed Apple didn't increase price points given the performance gains relative to the entire field, let alone their previous generation.

Apples pricing can be pretty funny from the outside. They certainly charge a ridiculous amount of money for memory and storage upgrades, on the other side some things are surprisingly cheap. Think of the entry level iPad for example. And now the Mini with the M1 getting cheaper than its predecessor. Short term, Apple could ask any price for the new M1 Macs. However, they have a longer term view with their pricing structure. For sure, they are having way less costs per device, as they don't have to pay the huge sums, Intel asks for their processors. The costs for Apple should be considerably down and they do relay that to the customer.

I suppose it was a wise movement to use that as a way to increase OS market share.

I still see people not liking macOS without even trying it out which is funny but if more people start using it around them, those average joes might start giving them a try which in turn gives Apple profit.

> AMD laptop with more RAM and SSD for half the price.

So you're saying a hypothetical laptop with two AMD cpus inside is more powerful than a M1-based MacBook, yet still less expensive.

What AMD laptop costs $600 and has more than 16GB of RAM?

In Hungary you get a Macbook Air with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM (cheapest M1) for $1440:

https://www.alza.hu/macbook-air-m1/18884163.htm

16GB with 1TB SSD is not available, but the official price is $2960:

https://www.apple.com/hu/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-h%C3%BC...

My girlfriend found a 14'' 16GB 1TB AMD 4000x laptop for $1050 there and loves it (ACER Swift 3)

Looks like VAT in Hungary is as high as 27% (is this the rate that applies in this case? VAT-inclusive pricing disguises this tax.), which accounts for much of the price difference.

Yes, 27% VAT + high tariffs are a toxic combination. At the same time for non Apple products there is maybe some dodging of taxes going on (like a company registered in Slovakia), you never know why a product is relatively cheap there, but you can guess.

I always used argep.hu for pricing computer bits. Dunno who's better

But would Apple be content with going from 5nm to 3nm nodes so "quickly"? Given that AMD has been able to squeeze out their Zen 2 and 3 IPC without the need to change nodes completely, it could make sense for Apple to do the same.

Yes. The answer to that is yes.

And Apple almost certainly have had the designs in simulation and test/initial sampling already. CPU design isn't an overnight thing.

Apple fundamentally has more units to spread their designs across. Also, for Apple performance per watt is king. Getting 5% better battery life for a phone is massive. For a desktop or even a laptop, it's nice, but maybe not worth paying the premium for TSMCs latest die shrink.

Most Apple users aren't techies.

So a macbook user can now feel he has the best computer and nobody else is even close. Nobody else is being manufactured using that magic. Maybe he'll even brag about that.

How much is that worth to Apple ?

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