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Comment by trebor | Hacker News Reader

Actually, they kept one of the oldest mistakes: overcharging. $400 to upgrade from 16GB RAM to 32GB. $200 to upgrade to 1TB SSD. These guys control the whole supply chain without middlemen like WD, Samsung, Crucial, etc — and they charge basically double what anyone else charges.

I'm not paying $2k for a laptop below what I need as a developer, when <$2k from literally anyone else will get what I need.

Apple is ridiculous. Inflation is murder right now, and they JACK the prices without delivering more value.

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Lenovo X1 Extreme charges $340 to go from 16GB to 32GB. Then $680 from 32 to 64GB. (regular price, there's a clearance sale now). $300 to upgrade SSD from 512GB to 1TB. It's $2400 for an X1E (at sale price. Regular is $4.3k!!) roughly at par to $2k 14" pro.

Surface Laptop Studio with similar specs at $2100. Costs +$600 to go to 32GB and 1TB (which == $400 + $200 upgrade you mentioned).

Dell XPS 15" is $2400.

If you were even dimly aware of current prices for high-end laptops you'd know the Mac is priced in the same expensive range. If you prefer $1K plastic crap that's fine. Some people like Velveeta and Canned Spam too.

What's interesting is Dell is shipping machines at top end with chips from generally older / slower nodes. Somehow Apple has some kind of lock on a lot of capacity at TSMC at the top end of the node range.

That XPS 15" is probably running a comet lake chip.

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/comet_...

Ie, 14mm, launched in 2019

That node size (less the ++'s) goes back to Skylake (when it was amazing actually) which is from 2015.

Don't buy them?

Acer sells MUCH cheaper machines all day:

$1.6K for a Predator here:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/2021-Flagship-Acer-Predator-Trito...

Apple has been told that their products (watch, airpods, iphones etc) have been too costly for decades now. And still makes money selling them.

What I don't get - Apple's stuff seems to last forever. My dell's just crap out (battery, drivers, updates etc). My wife on a mac -> she just goes and goes. I'd love to see the support histories on old ACER's and Dell's vs Apple.

I don't understand comments like this. They're not buying it and they're explaining why.

No, they are saying apple is making a mistake and that "Apple is ridiculous."

What they don't value is that apple, in the midst of chip shortage, is going to be doing delivery within ONE WEEK of announcement of an absolutely bleeding edge node solution.

I get it, your Dell Intel whatever is better and/or cheaper. I used to be on dell and now am on lenovo. But there is a reason apple charges what they do, a totally integrated solution, that just works, battery life for miles, not too hot on the lap etc etc. and available in seemingly insane quantities.

Seriously, ford parks cash cow F-150's and apple is turning out millions and millions of phones (100 million phones alone per year)?

You're being hilarious.

No one is using Dell or Acer here. We're just holding on to our old MBPs.

I wouldn't care about the notch for a 2k laptop but I do care for a 3500 laptop. Ontop of that I'll absolutely need more storage and ram so it's 4k laptop. But the notch. So ugly. Welp guess no 2021 MBP for me.

90 million iPhones in Q1 this year, 55M in Q2. Closer to 200M/year.

Eh, I’m still using a ~4 year old iMac. One of those that are painfully difficult to upgrade RAM. (And I keep repeatedly hitting the limit right now.) And I’m trying to keep it in sync with an even older MBP.

And you’re right: I don’t appreciate that Apple can deliver a week later. That’s not valuable when my machines still work. Not paying a premium for that.

I’ve been chafing at the upgrade cost of Apple laptops for more than a decade of using their products. The reason customers keep paying is for the reputation, and because of their short memories. The keyboard debacle, the screen issues, MacBook Air early gen laptops burning people’s laps… and those are just the laptop issues.

I’m upset because this is just another instance where Apple’s profit margin goes up substantially. Their markup is basically 4x higher than MSRP off the aftermarket RAM/SSD.

> What I don't get - Apple's stuff seems to last forever.

Especially the keyboards, and the speakers in recent years.

I’m running (admitting reluctantly) fine on my 2014 MBP. It works for everything I need it to. It can be slow for some tasks, but I still get all the updates.

I’m interested in the disparity between Apple and others with enterprise support programs. Virtually any other company will send you a loaner or replacement laptop under warranty and repair yours. Apple seems to just say “That sucks” and might fix your laptop.

I own MBP 2012.

It has:

* dead SSD, replaced on warranty

* dead battery

* dead keyboard

* dead audio

* some hardware issues, I think related to GPU (it panics sometimes)

* replaced charger, second charger is in bad condition, probably time to think about replacing it as well

It's the most terrible laptop I've ever owned. I owned plenty of laptops and I never had any issue with any of them. Macbook really set the bar.

That said, it kind of works... I use USB keyboard, USB headset, always plugged in, don't push it too far, as it starts to throttle very fast. But it loads some ancient macOS version, constantly nags me about updating it.

I'll buy new Macbook. Because of macOS. Reliability-wise I don't have any expectations from Apple. I bought plenty of Apple devices and I had plenty of issues with many of those devices. They definitely don't last forever. Apple software - that's what hooked me.

As far as anecdotes go, I'm 100% opposite I guess.

I have 2013 MBP, but have removed OSX and use it solely as a Windows machine. Nothing ever broke on it, and I use it solely for build quality and reliability.

I've been a Mac user since the 90s and a long time apologist for the Apple premium... I understand and have generally been totally fine paying for design, fit and finish, longevity, and attention to detail that's hard to come by elsewhere. That said, the absurd markups on storage and memory have always been REALLY aggravating to me, and were a factor in my decision to build a desktop machine instead of getting another Mac last year. It's not even a question of affordability, it just rubs me the wrong way. $400 for +16GB of RAM in 2021?? Nonsense.

What do you normally pay for 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM?

Supply chain issues complicate things a bit, but if I'm searching correctly the list price for Micron modules is ~$50 or less per 16GB.

Ultimately, though, my beef with their pricing is not really about this specific release which obviously uses cutting-edge components, but about Apple's general approach to pricing these upgrades. They'll happily sell you old tech with the same crazy markups. You can still buy a new 27" Intel iMac with 8GB of RAM and the option to upgrade to 16 for $200. That's just a normal 8GB DDR4 SODIMM, which you could instead order for $29, and it installs in about 15 seconds.

I get that businesses need margins to survive, but Apple's stinginess and customer unfriendly price structure with storage and memory has been going on for a long time and just really bothers me.

I like their products! Just let me spec it such that it deserves the "Pro" label without feeling like a chump.

Did you hackintosh? Because I sure as hell am not running Windows and Linux is great for VMs/containers/servers but doesn't run all my local software.

If you don't mind Windows, lots and lots of cheaper options. But you already knew that.

I installed Ubuntu and Windows, and set up a Mac VM in case I needed it, but haven't really used Windows or the Mac VM. I do use a lot more VMs than I used to–having lots of cores, RAM, and fast NVMe drives it has opened my eyes to a different way of using the computer.

> I'm not paying $2k for a laptop below what I need as a developer, when <$2k from literally anyone else will get what I need.

That's perfectly fine, you don't have to use a MacBook if the value isn't there for you.

Are they also not allowed to comment about it?

Just seems a bit pointless, that's all.

I'm never going to buy a Bugatti Chiron, but you won't find me going to their forums and bleating on about how the gas mileage isn't as good as my Ford Focus...

I have used Apple products because if you calculate how long they last and the original cost, they cost less over a longer period of time.

Or at least they did. This loss in value is what I’m complaining about.

And this isn’t Apple’s forums, now is it?

Here's the deal. I don't care if I can get something workable for $1000 less. When I'm making many times that with the laptop as my primary interface for work, I'd rather spend more just to make me feel that tiny bit better each day.

The touchpad alone is probably worth it.

Before all the touchbar and butterfly keyboard nonsense, MacBooks were the best laptops on the market, hands down. It looks like they may have reclaimed that spot with this update. I'd argue worth the premium if that is the case.

They charge what the customer would pay. As long as people keep buying, the prices will keep increasing.

I'll admit up front I haven't done the math on this MBP, but are the prices really so bad on a laptop$$/year basis?

If you look at a feature comparison, sure, macs have always looked like a bad deal, but that evaporates when you bring a time calculation into it. The surveys I have seen all seem to place macs at about half the failure rate of other devices, and they seem to last twice as long. everyone seems to have a shocking story from Lenovo/Dell et. al. about shoddy hardware and incompetent support for anyone without a $10mil+ PO. If you pay more up front, you can make it back by using the same device for longer.

This is literally what they have always done and they don’t see a reason to stop

Get used to it. Apple will likely bust their competition at some point.

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