Some unc perspective: I paid ~$6,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a computer in 1996. Today, I can get the same power in a $6 single board computer. A powerful modern mini PC starts at ~$600. However painful these price hikes are, and they are painful, it is worth remembering that computing has become incredibly ubiquitous and cheap.
I'm still using ~10 year old PCs at both work and home. Running linux, still doing fine.
Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
311–320 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
RAM prices started climbing more than 18 months ago. Apple’s contracts are long-term but not that long-term: they probably just expired. (If you assume a 3-year contract, 18 months is how long it would take on average for a specific market shock to hit you)
That's a double edged sword. Assuming it's an 18 month contract, even when ram prices do go back to "normal" it's a year and a half until Apple has savings to pass onto to customers.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is fully likely that Apple will extend the life of the M1 in OS support terms because of this problem. They don't have much choice but to phase out Intel support, but they absolutely can make the choice to extend support for anything they make themselves, and they may well judge that deciding not to abandon support for the more price-sensitive to tide them over is worth the extra engineering cost. I person…
They can "make the choice" to continue Intel support also. It's not like they don't know what chips they used and have all the insider NDA info about them.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#314Glad I bought a fully loaded MBP a few weeks back and not now. The price on my exact configuration just went up a whopping 29%!
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#315Man, if there was anyone that could weather the storm with their thick memory margins (at least on upgrades), it should have been Apple.
Alternatively, they're launching improved products soon (like the rumored touch-screen OLED MacBook), and they want to raise prices now to (a) discourage people from buying last-gen tech ahead of increased prices for next-gen tech, and (b) give the new prices enough time to simmer in the consumer consciousness before launching the next-gen tech, to dull the shock of the price increase for next-gen tech.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#316Some unc perspective: I paid ~$6,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a computer in 1996. Today, I can get the same power in a $6 single board computer. A powerful modern mini PC starts at ~$600. However painful these price hikes are, and they are painful, it is worth remembering that computing has become incredibly ubiquitous and cheap.
The computing power available today is such a double-edged sword. We can do so much more so much faster, but then we (including myself in this) waste so many cycles on abstractions and frameworks and layers of libraries to make our development jobs easier.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#317WOW. I'm glad I bought the beast yesterday . The same spec machine I got yesterday is now $2800 more.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also inexplicably snuck in a 50% increase for the TV 4k, just to be extra greedy. Treat yoself Tim Apple!
That’s infuriating. I was hovering over the buy button last week, and now that’s a deal breaker. I was already going for the premium price point for hard-to-justify reasons.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#319Some unc perspective: I paid ~$6,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a computer in 1996. Today, I can get the same power in a $6 single board computer. A powerful modern mini PC starts at ~$600. However painful these price hikes are, and they are painful, it is worth remembering that computing has become incredibly ubiquitous and cheap.
And yet in some ways, modern computers feel slower than those from decades ago. Software today is so, so much less efficient than it was back then.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until China floods the market with their memory which is starting
I'm seeing it with NAND. Look at the AWS Prime ssds available, and it's a massive list of strange drives you've never heard of, with very few reviews available, almost all using YMTC. The prices aren't fantastic, but given that five sixths of the drive market is straight up gone, I think we need to start reviewing and hoping for the best here, fast. I really hope endurance is indeed as rated, that we aren't about to…