Dear Apple, stop overcharging for extra iPad memory

Windows does it with their entire operating system/office line - student licenses are the cheapest because it's all they can afford (otherwise they just pirate - since value to them is so low), home the next (same reason), then the office, then corporations (they can afford a lot - and they derive a lot of value).

You charge what people can afford in terms of value to maximise your profit and increase your chances of continuing to supply said value (or not) into the future. Apple sells most of their tablets very competitively, but they know that there are plenty of people out there who get plenty more value, and are perfectly happy to pay up. So to extract these profits they create stacked price/entry levels to actively help those who can afford overpriced memory and perceive large amounts of derived value to happily pay up for it.

Value perceived/extracted and not the price of creation are what's important to consumers in non-commodity markets and the suppliers who supply them.

You don't want to pay the extra? Don't. Get a 16Gb device, I have for both my iOS devices and I'm reasonably happy with it due to Dropbox/Box.net having a decent clients that allow me to expand my space concerns outwards.

The argument that they should charge less when people are willing to pay is ridiculous, they should charge what the market will pay, which in this case is $100 to move up the storage scale.

EDIT: Possibly this should be a separate comment. In the fashion world there's two well known UK clothing companies who occupy slightly overlapping markets, but with incredibly different price points. The material costs are roughly the same, stores in similar locations, staff wages the same and so on. Both have their products made in the same factory, by the same people. One charges about 2-3x for their products than the other, the other charges a 40-50% markup immediately. That's just how luxury goods economics end up working.

Although I guess it's not quite as bad with something like a notebook where at least you have the choice of buying your own upgrades and installing them yourself...

It amuses me that the author was aware of his kvetching, but went ahead with the article anyway.

Apple isn't really in the habit of cutting prices (this has exceptions and I'm ignoring various FX price adjustments). They're more about giving you more for the same money. So at some point you'll probably see the same prices but for 32/64/128GB. I'm a little surprised this hasn't happened already. I expect we'll see it next year. 2014 at the absolute latest. Perhaps this would be too much of a constraint on flash chip supply though (IIRC Apple is already the largest consumer of flash memory so doubling their demand would be significant).

I, for one, will happily buy a 128GB iPad.

That all being said, I think there are now three serious missteps in the post-Jobs Apple:

1. The Maps debacle;

2. Elongating the iPhone 5 to create yet another resolution (the relative uniformity of the iOS line with only 2/4 (if you could retina) resolutions was a huge advantage for developers). I really don't see the point; and

3. The Mini. Sure they'll sell millions of them but by that same argument Windows Vista was a success. IMHO 16:10/9 makes far more sense on the 7-8" form factor rather than the "fat" 4:3. Also, 7-8" tablets are moving to be 720p+ and this is below that at 1024x768. The price is also (IMHO) too high.

Google OTOH (disclaimer: I work for Google) I think has a lineup that is starting to make a lot more sense between the Nexus 4/7/10 at some pretty nice price points.

I guess that's a good comparison for this article because the Nexus 7 upgrade from 16 to 32GB is only $50.

EDIT: Two points:

1. I'm not calling the iPad Mini a Vista-level failure. Seriously, please read what I actually wrote (the whole electric car was also a big example of people not reading what I wrote but I digress...). I simply said that selling a lot of something doesn't preclude it from being a misstep; and

2. The whole idea of "excessive profit" with a luxury good is fundamentally flawed. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Ultimately it costs what it costs because the market bears it.

EDIT2: I understand very well why the mini is 1024x768. Perhaps I didn't explain my point very well. My point is that's not a very good resolution for a 7-8" tablet (IMHO of course). IMHO the 16:10 ratio works much better (YMMV) but they have their hands tied.

The author kindly gives you permission to bail on the very first sentence. Lesser pundits would bury that much deeper.

I'm frustrated by the fact the MacBook extra RAM/SSD is so expensive compared to manufacturing costs. But it's my only option, so I am going to have to pay it now aren't I?

The premise is simple: your market is divided into a very large spectrum of spending ability. So the most efficient way to charge each customer the best possible price is to simply let them select it themselves. For obvious reasons, you cannot sell the same product at each price, so some improvement is necessary at each upgrade. Quite often the upgrade is a token one, but sometimes people do need the extra features offered.

I see this all the time at restaurants, car dealerships, insurance companies and pretty much any other time someone is trying to sell me something.

If you find that a ridiculous argument, consider that, every time they haven't been able to make them fast enough to meet demand, their prices were too low for the market.

I do not think either of these viewpoints is right. This is simply a matter of "price to what it is worth, not to what it costs"

Off the cuff, let's go buy a laptop from Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc.

Lenovo's T430u is $730 with 4GB of memory and a 320GB hard disk. An additional 4GB of memory is $160, even though the consumer wholesale price of such DIMMs is $20. The cost to upgrade to a single 8GB DIMM is $450, even though the consumer wholesale price of such DIMMs is $40-50.

The cost to go from a 320GB 7200rpm hard disk to a 1TB 5400rpm hard disk is $170, even though the consumer wholesale price of such a disk is $110.

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Every OEM does this for memory and storage, because to the end user, there is an obvious, measurable benefit. Twice the storage means they can store twice as many things. Twice the memory means they can do twice as many things at once. This is why Apple doesn't mention clock speeds for their custom ARM SoCs, but instead how many times faster it is -- 1.0GHz to 1.4GHz doesn't resonate with people as well as "twice as fast", especially when if you looked at just clock speed you might think it was only 40% faster.

I'm echoing the feelings of a lot of others in this comment thread. Moaning about price of something but buying it anyway is a pointless exercise. By buying the product you're sending a clear signal that they can continue to charge the same price.

Part of me also wants the title to include the word 'please'—since this is a request, not a demand.

And, indeed, there are many products sold by companies where the per-item margin is huge compared to the materials cost. Perfume, designer clothing, fancy cars…and software. But we buy perfume anyway because we have lots of money but no perfume, and would rather have some perfume and a little less (but still lots of) money.

I'm reminded of an economics joke I once heard. An economist and his friend are walking past a concert hall. The friend turns to the economist and says "you know, I always wanted to learn how to play an instrument," to which the economist responds "clearly not."

Unfortunately not upgradable or expandable after purchase.

IIRC, PG said that. We're on HN. Rings any bells?