Tell HN: Apple Price Gouging

[kingkongjaffa]

I went looking for the latest line of apple computers I noticed they force you into the higher CPU's in order to get the higher amounts of unified memory.

So not only are they content charging +$400 or +$600 for RAM which in itself ludicrously overpriced, they force you to upgrade +$1000-2000 on the top CPU's.

Its impossible to spec a macbook pro or a mac mini with a base CPU and a decent amount of RAM. Total scam since they know people want the RAM to use with local LLMs.

This was not always the case - When I specced out my macbook pro M1 16gb it was entirely possible to get 32 and 64gb without any tie-in to CPU upgrades.

I was ready to drop a few grand on a new macbook pro M5 or M4 pro with a decent amount of RAM but it's currently set up to be an insane price gouge.

To get 32GB of RAM it's an M5 chip price $1999.

To get 64GB of RAM you are forced to to grab the M4 max CPU, and it's $3,899 on apple right now. What a scam.

[iwanttocomment]

When I specced out my macbook pro M1 16gb it was entirely possible to get 32 and 64gb without any tie-in to CPU upgrades.

You're misremembering. The Macbook Pro M1 (2020) supported a maximum of 16GB, and the base Mx chips have never been offered in a 64GB configuration.

[rekabis]

Even MacTracker, the Apple specifications database gold standard, confirms this.

And they invariably point out where the official Apple specs fall short of real-world options, such as the RAM limit of the 2018 Mac Mini -- officially Apple says it’s 32Gb (and for the longest time even sites like Crucial.com offered only 2×16Gb sets for that model), but MacTracker very quickly pointed out that it can take 64Gb. IIRC this was right after iFixit did their teardown and realized that the CPU did not have a 32Gb memory limitation, and successfully booted that model with 64Gb.

Now, from what I understand the M1 only allowed 16Gb as the max addressable memory - I dimly remember a video where someone tried to resolder with 32Gb of performance-identical chips that had twice the capacity, and it could still only see 16Gb of it - so it appears to be a hard limit either in the memory controller or as a direct feature of the CPU cores themselves.

[kingkongjaffa]

No.

https://mactracker.online/detailed.html?modelNumber=A2442&ty...

[u1hcw9nx]

Price gouging is a wrong term to use for Apple laptops. You can call it price gouging or profiteering when someone increases the price of basic necessities after a natural disaster or a similar crisis. Then it's often wrong and harmful.

There is no duopoly or monopoly in the laptop market. Apple computers are not "must-haves," and there are many cheaper alternatives. They are high-priced products—closer to luxury goods than essentials. Ultimately products are priced based on demand (what people are willing to pay) rather than just their production costs.

[u1hcw9nx]

RAM prices are high everywhere not just Apple.

DDR5-6000 2x32GB prices have increased five fold. https://de.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

AI clouds are eating all RAM available and increasing prices.

[jsheard]

True, but Apple is a weird case because they haven't actually raised their prices in response to the recent shortages. They were always this high, so their margins were enormous before.

[verdverm]

When I bought my Mac a few years back, their ram prices were 2-3x market price. If anything, they are competitive today

[hooch]

It's just how the memory controllers work in Apple Silicon's unified memory architecture.

You also get much higher memory bandwidth as you move up the scale, from 153GB/s at the bottom end to 546GB/s at the top end.

[mpcsb]

For the life of me, I can't get the fetish with apple machines. I mean, I get they are built very well, and it's all top tier, but the return on dollar spent is very dubious

[verdverm]

Having come from a Framework and Chromebook prior, their silicon is freaking fast by comparison.

There are no laptops with performance and battery life that come close. No fans needed either (Mac air)