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xyst

Positives:

+ form factor

+ ARM/Apple silicon/SoC

Negatives:

- Apple tax on memory, storage

- non-upgradeable

- Apple tax on 1GbE to 10 GbE ($100 surcharge lol)

- maxes out at 64G of configurable memory w/ m4 pro

Got to give it to Apple. The traunches between different configuration levels is “small” enough to convince buyers to enter the next level.

It’s like “hey, you are already at $4000 for m4 pro with 64g. Just spend an extra $400-$600 for that bump in storage. It’s no biggy. We losing money at this point”.

I wonder how many consumers fall into this sunk cost fallacy scenario that Apple has designed.

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$100 for the 10GbE upgrade doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

A PCIe 10GbE NIC using the same Aquantia chipset as existing Macs is $80-$90. https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-XG-C100C-Network-Adapter-Single/...

edit: in fact, compared to Apple's usual price gouging for extra RAM/SSD/etc it is downright reasonable.

Not to mention, the vast majority of people don’t need 10GbE. Most users use WiFi and never touch Ethernet. Adding the functionality would just drive up the cost unnecessarily.

I would like to see 2.5GbE - that's getting pretty common on AMD/Intel machines now too. But afaik Apple love using Broadcom for 1G NICs, and I'm not sure they have a 2.5GbE chipset?

Agreed, stings that they don't include 2.5G. Even a single spinning disk easily saturates GigE, getting 2.5x that without the price overhead of 10G is a pretty decent value. Even $200 firewall widgets often include 4x2.5G.

Well yes, it's the most reasonably priced upgrade. But when you start upgrading the other options and you come into expensive computer territory it becomes another thing that you need to drop cash on when it feels like it should be default at this price. Many NAS have 2.5G or 5G interface now, so it's not like there is no use case at all...

I'm at the point where I wonder what my options are for unauthorized capacity-expanding repairs.

I sub to a content creator on YT that does exactly this. The amount of tools and expertise to undue the Apple soldering can be intensive.

He has done this for nearly every product line (iPhone, Mac Mini, iPads, …)

* Mac Mini storage upgrade https://youtu.be/ApAffuPAl5A

>I wonder how many consumers fall into this sunk cost fallacy scenario that Apple has designed.

Almost all of them, and the lowest tiers of the entire lineup are essentially ewaste in a box just there to push a few hundred $ on you.

I have to disagree - the baseline models satisfy the needs of many casual consumers and the price point puts it within their reach. For $600, most of us could give this to our parents and it would be great for 7-10 years.

For those who need more performance, better value is found at higher rungs of the product lineup, and this has been Apple's strategy for decades.

Think you should try some of the machines they ship in that range, for a long time the lowest rung was 8gb memory and 128gb storage, meaning you had a machine that booted with around 30-40 gb free for the end user which would then rapidly get eaten into as swap space when browsing then you'd hit the "Out of memory, close applications" freeze up.

It was e-waste through and through.

Storage is usually a non issue on the desktop macs. Just hang a TB disk off the back of it. I've got a 2TB disk hanging off my 512Gb unit.

Just ordered the base M4 Pro so will just plug that into it and carry on.

Millions, all of those not able to set up a desktop computer for themselves, or if they do know, not willing to spend the effort.

I would genuinely be buying one today if the memory upgrades were half as much and I could go to 128GB or even 96.

> I wonder how many consumers fall into this sunk cost fallacy scenario that Apple has designed.

Millions. Let that sink in.

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