[kabacha]

I really don't get it. How much difference could 8 to 16gb be in terms of price? Is Apple really doing this to save 20$ per machine?

Even if you somehow could argue that 8 is all you need now, what about in few years? No one should ever buy this device.

[sudosysgen]

They aren't doing it to save 20$ per machine, they are doing it to make the higher price of a 16GB machine seem more reasonable than if it was the base model.

[Fogest]

Yeah this screams classic Apple. Advertise the cost of the Mac as lower, but with a shitty option that most people will have to upgrade. Majority are not going to want to buy a 8gb laptop for that kind of money and not just bump it up to 16gb.

This reminds me of how movie theatres offer a small, medium and large but the large popcorn only costs slightly more than the medium, thus enticing you to go for the large.

[lhl]

It's worth noting that they are charging $200 for the 8GB memory upgrade.

The spot price for 16GB of LPDDR4 looks like it's currently ~$8 per DRAMexchange: https://www.dramexchange.com/

They're also charging $200 for a 256GB storage upgrade - spot price of 3D TLC is $3/256Gb ($24 for 256GB) - you can currently buy a 256GB NVMe SSD (full stick with controller) at retail for <$30 as well.

[wraptile]

This is pretty much the reason why I'll never will buy apple devices again. Recently I bought iphone 11 for my girlfriend as a present and the price difference between 64GB model (which honestly might as well be a dead brick in this data age) and 256GB model was around 30% in my country which is beyond absurd.

You can call me bitter but this sort of manipulation is making me extremely salty to the point where I'll be having seething hate for the company for the rest of my life.

[theonemind]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_effect

[MrBuddyCasino]

> How much difference could 8 to 16gb be in terms of price?

The RAM is embedded into the SoC. Maybe the 8GB are salvaged chips where half of the memory is unusable?

[thelittleone]

$20 at the volume they sell does add up.

But I think a more important factor is future sales. They will likely sell more laptops as these 8GB owners upgrade earlier (in 2-3 years) as the OS and apps continue to bloat.

So on one side they save $20 per laptop and they likely sell more laptops.

[wolrah]

> $20 at the volume they sell does add up.

So charge $50 more per laptop and make $30 more profit while not producing 8 GB junk that'll be e-waste in a few years because that's barely enough RAM to run an average browser session anymore.

[coldtea]

>Even if you somehow could argue that 8 is all you need now, what about in few years?

What about it? It's not like someone who mostly browses the web, checks email, works with office documents, and so on, will change what he does in a few years...

[kortilla]

> will change what he does in a few years...

The fatal flaw in this argument is the failure to realize that web pages are bloating, video is becoming more prevalent, higher resolution images, etc.

So “browses the web” has ever increasing hardware requirements if you want to maintain the experience.

[bryanrasmussen]

The large consumer market that uses mac for common computing activities will not need more soon, perhaps, but many of Apple's bulwark clients - graphic designers, musicians, and even developers - probably will.