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Comment by causal | Hacker News Reader

The fact that Apple is still using a difference of 256GB storage to jump the price $200 is really funny to me. This is already a wildly premium device, but they just can't resist trying to scrape a little bit more.

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Did the $1000 Mac Pro stand and $700 wheels not make that clear already?

Their storage markups only get more obscene with retail SSD prices continuing to crash.

$800 to upgrade from 256GB to 2TB? A fast 2TB NVMe drive can be had for ~$130.

> A fast 2TB NVMe drive can be had for ~$130

Not if the drive is soldered to the motherboard..

With thin laptops you can maybe justify that as a necessary compromise for the form factor, but there's no good reason the Mac Studio shouldn't have a hatch on the bottom with two or three M.2 2280 slots inside.

You can put your own PCIe SSDs in the Mac Pro, but that's so wildly marked up compared to an equivalently specced Mac Studio that it probably cancels out any savings.

I remain flabbergasted that there's no model of Mac Mini or Studio which has M.2 slots. I believe the Doctrine is that Thunderbolt is fast enough that YAGNI but that's absurd given the amount of open space inside those things. If you look at a picture of the motherboard[0] it's dead obvious that there's room for one M.2, maybe two if they cared about it.

[0]: https://www.ifixit.com/News/57898/mac-studio-teardown

Thunderbolt is decently fast but the enclosures don't come cheap, it's an extra $100 or so per drive you want to hook up. The enclosure could easily cost as much as the drive you put in it nowadays.

>there's no good reason

There is: Not wanting to support end-user modified products.

Apple is never shorthanded on white knights, but more generally I can see why companies might opt to lock out customer modifications under practical pretexts.

That's their prerogative but I'm not spending thousands of dollars to be treated like a child who can't operate a screwdriver.

Hell, I'm sure they could make it a tool-less operation if they wanted to.

A PCIe/NVME adapter costs $10 on Amazon.

To USB you mean? The cheap ones only do 10gbps, not even a quarter of the speed a PCIe4 drive is capable of. 40gbps adapters are up in the ~$100 range.

The description[0] states: "Compliant with PCIE 4.0 X4 80Gbps full speed support." But I suppose it could be inaccurate.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/M-2-Adapter-Aluminum-Heatsink-Solutio...

Oh, that type of adapter. Those work but they'll only fit in the Mac Pro, which has a $3000 premium over a Mac Studio with exactly the same specs, so you're unlikely to come out ahead there.

Sorry, I realized I misread your previous comment. I thought you were saying the markup on a PCIe drive for the Mac Pro was too high. Now I understand you were referring to the markup on the Mac Pro itself.

Why would soldering it cost so much more?

I believe the parent is saying that Apple can charge more because the consumer has no feasible way to replace it themselves after purchase.

>with retail SSD prices continuing to crash

When was the last time you checked this? SDD prices have skyrocketed back up in the past ~3-5 months as Samsung and SK have reduced production to halt losses. Prices are now back to where they were ~12 months ago. At least in Europe.

That $130 is the current rate on Amazon for a 2TB PCIe 4.0 drive from a good brand.

Maybe it's a little more than it was, but still hilariously cheap compared to what Apple charges.

Sure, but Apple can charge whatever they want. People aren't forced to buy only Apple computers.

i bought a 2TB SSD for about that much in europe just two months ago. and i just checked the prices, they are still at that level. obviously you can find more expensive ones too

If they are not consistent about this then more people will start asking questions about iPhone storage tiers.

Why offer different storage SKUs at all? Just include the larger amount and bump the price by $30 or whatever.

I assumed it was a yield issue - because everything is on package now

The M-series SOCs have the RAM on the package but the NAND flash is still separate, same as ever.

It is absurd that Apple is still charging laughable amounts of money for tiny, inexpensive components. It was somewhat justifiable before when their products were simply better than anything else. Now, everyone else has caught up on quality, and charge vastly less. Even worse, Apple no longer innovates and simply doesn't care about making things that work.

For example, I bought an OLED Windows laptop that was nearly $2000 less than an identically equipped Apple device. Side by side, the Windows unit has better screen and at least equivalent chassis, keyboard, sound, and it has a better touchpad.

I have an iphone, and its primary purpose after being a phone is nav in my cars. 75% failure rate the last 4 trips I tried to use it for. Failure as in black screen. This is on top of Apple's increasingly useless nav that has tried to take me out into the boonies more times than I can count.

Eventually, people are going to tire of being insulted with high prices and subpar products and switch. I'm already there. The days of me paying to fuel Tim Cook's yacht are over.

Apple's headset is so poorly done that it is clear there is deep rot at the top of Apple. When I first saw that absurd front screen, I physically laughed out loud. How anyone at Apple let that through to final product is beyond me. Anyone who brought that crap to Jobs would have been fired on the spot.

> Now, everyone else has caught up on quality, and charge vastly less.

This is evidently not true for the Vision widget, which is the topic at hand. The hardware is in a league of its own. I would argue this is also true of the Watch line. I decline to discuss the laptop question, and for phones, sure, if you are ok with paying Apple prices for an Android, you can get one of comparable quality for the same amount of money. Just not for less.

Yeah and I've yet to see a laptop that comes close to a MBP either. Phone hardware isn't really any better than Samsung though IMO.

> The fact that Apple is still using a difference of 256GB storage to jump the price $200 is really funny to me

I've never understood this common opinion. The cost of materials is not a good representation of the manufacturing process, especially since the entire board is built as a unit and not a set of interchangable components.

Have people actually run the numbers on the costs of manufacturing the different variations or are they just comparing against the SSDs they can find on Amazon?

They also skipped headphones or bone conduction on it just to sell more Airpods.

I'd argue not to sell more AirPods, I mean sure it's a great extra bonus, but what is the other option you would prefer? that they cover the ears completely like big studio headphones? That they give you a pair of AirPods? Or that they make tethered AirPods? Or Bone Conduction, which means audio quality typically plummets and complicates how the device rests on the cheekbones.

All of those are various compromises that also suck for various reasons.

What about people with hearing issues? Most of these alternatives are terrible for people that wear hearing aids.

Valid points until you consider that they went with wearing speakers on your head. Anything detachable or able to be disabled would've been better. It's ridiculous to put speakers on a headset.

You can disable the speaker output in the AVP, I don't know why you think you can't.

Yes, but the point is that they didn't ship it with anything for the wearer to hear audio without disturbing those around. That aspect of the product makes no sense.

You do not want a VR headset that requires headphones to operate. That's one more set of batteries to charge. It's one more thing to adjust when switching between users.

The Quest is the same as the AVP. Both have surprisingly good audio. The AVP's built-in audio does a great job. You need headphones if you want privacy, first and foremost. Certain headphones will also enable spatial audio and stuff like that.

But Apple's audio approach here is very sound. It's nothing like the huge upcharge for more storage.

OP here. What the sibling comment said. The built-in speakers are fantastic, and like many other Apple enthusiasts I own Airpods Pro already as well if I need isolation.

By all accounts the built-in speakers are amazing, but tbf not usable if you need privacy or to not annoy people sitting next to you.

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