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And they're charging 200$ for an 8GB upgrade, not the whole 16GB!
That's what they charge, but your cost to upgrade is either $200 via Apple or $100 or so via newegg. The 8GB option is two 4GB dimms, and the 16GB option is two 8GB dimms, it's not like buying one more 8 GB dimm and throwing it in.
http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/various_ipad_thoughts
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/01/the-ipad-is-the-iprius-your...
As noted, this war was already fought and lost with automobiles. People overwhelmingly prefer the advantages gained over the tradeoff in self-serviceability.
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That's what they charge, but your cost to upgrade is either $200 via Apple or $100 or so via newegg. The 8GB option is two 4GB dimms, and the 16GB option is two 8GB dimms, it's not like buying one more 8 GB dimm and throwing it in.
But the cost to Apple is much less.
Is it unfair for Apple to produce a product that cannot be upgraded by the end user (RAM specifically) and charge so much to do the upgrade before it gets to you? No, because you are not compelled to purchase it. This isn't like when AT&T leased phones, or MS forced OEMs to include Windows on all their systems (and had a >95% market share). Apple has no monopoly, they have no special sway with corporations and gov't (in fact, their absence in those fields and success despite it is somewhat remarkable and speaks well to their business acumen). If the prices are unreasonable, and people stop buying the products, the prices or the product will change.
Wasn't the Macbook Air similarly expensive when it was first released? Found it, $1799 for the base model when first released (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/01/15Apple-Introduces-M...). People bought them, but the price came down on future versions. The same thing will happen here, and if it doesn't then it means the consumers don't mind.
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Many of Apple's suppliers are also competitors. Samsung, for example, supplies a lot of iPhone parts while also selling iPhone competitors. I doubt it would be that difficult for others to source an equivalent display, if they're willing to pay an equivalent price,
This isn't how it works. Apple has exclusive deals in place with many of its suppliers. Many of the parts Apple buy are either not available for anyone else, or not available at the same price. One way Apple has done this is to provide some of the initial capital needed for new plants/technologies. For example, if retooling a plant for new LCD production costs $1 billion, Apple might front 1/2 the money in exchange f…
Your argument would carry more weight if Apple had a much larger chunk of the market than all others.
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That's a lot of net profit into their pocket, for each unit. You should never price things based solely on how much the inputs cost. If people are willing to pay huge premiums for incremental RAM upgrades, Apple will gladly let them.
Paying 10% more for "better done right without further hassle on my part" is worth a lot to many customers.
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> The economics of replacing an entire device are finally starting to make sense How do they come off as sustainable and cool when their are responsible for all this trash production?
> How do they come off as sustainable and cool when their are responsible for all this trash production? How do they come off as sustainable and cool when Greenpeace was protesting in front of Infinite Loop a month ago?
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That's because the boards are getting more cycles in GPU and cache and things, which are more important than straightahead serial speed.
It's also because the power consumption is quadratic with the frequency. This is important if you agree that an additional hour on battery is worth much more than few cylces per sec.
The argument doesn't really hold up, as we're only given two choices: Upgradable, or amazing screen. If there was a third, "Upgradable and amazing screen" with the applicable price/weight tradeoffs, then the "we can choose" view would be more tenable. Regardless, the lack of upgradability isn't something that bugs me. My last two Apple laptops were "upgradable", but all I ever did was throw some RAM in there. The sub…
> Upgradability was a defect of technology not being good enough for long periods The other thing to consider is that the same applies to repairing technology. Why are we putting resource into catering for the tiny minority of a given product which experience mechanical failures which we can fix? 90% of BlackBerry users will never change the battery on their device. 100% of BlackBerries have a stupid door on the back…
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Pro means professional. It does NOT mean a person who wants the ability to upgrade their RAM/Hard Disk from a third party.
Well, it might. I guess it depends on your profession. If your profession is hardware hacking, IT, or maybe RAM disk upgrading, it seems like that would be included. So I suppose the "Pro" in "Macbook Pro" implicitly excludes those professions.