Some of the price increases seem disconnected from the component cost increases.
e.g. The HomePod and HomePod Mini share the same amount of RAM, but the HomePod is up $50 while the HomePod Mini is only up $30.
Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
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Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#412Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#413Some 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.
If the absurd memory prices might have some positive outcome, it will be consumers demanding that all their basic pack of apps are able to run on 16 and even 8 GB of RAM, by means of avoiding those that hog their machines. And consequently (hopefully), developers and their managers being incentivized by market forces to have a modicum of care for performance and not wasting bytes. Dreaming is free...
All Electron devs, let's go back to native-er toolkits! Qt and Slint are already here for proper FOSS apps, while a new generation of research and development on the field of efficient GUI toolkits would benefit us all so much.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#414This feels like the car market during COVID. In December Best Buy had a $1999 configuration of the M5 MacBook Pro on sale for $1749 and I scooped one up. Now that model is $2199. I suspect I could sell the computer I've been using for 6 months at a profit, which is just bizarre. But then of course it would cost a lot if I wanted to replace it.
I was going to upgrade my M3 Max to an M5 Max with more RAM. The machine I priced out was $5400 yesterday and costs $7500 today.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#415Some 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.
Yep. My gaming desktop is an old Ryzen 5, 48GB DDR4 RAM and an old nvidia 1660 super. Plays every game I want to play just fine still at 1080p, and even a few modern titles no problem. Most of my library can be played natively at 1440p too with some settings adjustments.
I suspect I can get a good 8-10 more years of use out of it, assuming components don't fail.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#416If you're in the US, Costco has certain models at the old price through Saturday (or while supplies last). Just pulled the trigger on a 24GB/1TB 13" MbA for $250 off the new price.
Amazon has Prime Day discounts off the old price today.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#417memory and storage companies are like oil oligarch right now
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#418Some 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.
Well Conversely, in 1996 you, your spouse, your kids, didnt need a pc to live your lives - having a pc or mac was something of a luxury Today smartphones, laptops and the internet are the base currency of the digital world - theres a reason Apple is so wealthy
> having a pc or mac was something of a luxury
Apple products are still luxury items. A cheap phone and a chromebook can replace most of the "base currency" features that you get when you buy Apple.
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#419With all the inflation going on and the AI boom affecting things like memory prices, I was surprised that eg. MacBook neo was priced where it was.
Yeah, for a few short months Apple had a really nicely priced entry-level machine. Now so much with a 20% price hike on an 8GB machine with soldered RAM
Re: Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
#420They simply couldn't cut into their fat margins, could they?
The huge markup on memory/storage upsells are were they make all their money