Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#511

Post by geodel » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #336

chii wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a mac air is a luxury item, and its pricing reflects that. I don't think it's absurd at all. A similarly capable laptop could be had for a much lower price, so people that complain they cannot get this luxury item for an "affordable" price just sounds entitled to me.

> mac air is a luxury item 8GB of Ram is luxury? Rolls Royce is luxury. Luxury means status. A gold plated car is luxury ( for some). It's a whole different league. Macbooks used to be premium - better performance, better experience. Limited storage is not premium. If Porshe releases a car with 30 horsepower, and asks for £100,000, we have a word for that. A joke.

Calm down. Apple products are luxury for a lot of people in the world. One doesn't become arbiter of what is luxury or not all across just by looking some local things and coming up with quick-n-dirty definition of it.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#512

Post by flumpcakes » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

I saved myself about a £1000 buying a refurbished last years' M1 MBP with 16GB RAM & 1TB disk vs. getting the M2 brand new.

A 16GB with 1TB storage laptop shouldn't cost £2700. I really do think Apple are pricing themselves out of most markets.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#513

Post by shrx » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

geodel wrote: post #482

dbg31415 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electronics prices in the EU are simply crazy. I remember being upset that the same laptop cost more in Australia than it did in the US, then I realized that it had a lot more to do with Australia's corporate tax rates. Turns out... companies do pass on taxes to the end purchasers. It feels, and I don't mean offense here, that if the EU wants to tell companies which power plugs they can use, and stay heavy-handed w…

Exactly right. This assumption that physical goods can cost about same all across the world is hilarious. Tax policies, interest rates, inflation, exchange rates, local laws etc..etc cause so many things make items priced differently across geographies.

Funny how it happens to be the cheapest in the US, huh

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#514

Post by astrange » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

factorialboy wrote: post #328

LoveMortuus wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically correct, but I doubt salaries followed the inflation, so for most of people, it's just more expensive. :/

@ajross, money printing leads to inflation, not salary growth.

You can get inflation with zero "money printing" if the real economy shrinks. So how do you know you started with the optimal money supply?

(The answer is that only MV is real, not M.)

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#515

Post by bombcar » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

yazzku wrote: post #447

donkeyd wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of that? My mom who walks into a store doesn't adjust for inflation. Her income hasn't been adjusted for inflation, let alone exchange rate. Many people on HN can probably explain why the price is what it is now. That doesn't mean that people are willing (or capable) to pay that much.

It really is hard for some people to understand, right? Mom makes X Prices go up Mom still makes X

And Mom decides not to buy an M2, which makes perfect sense (to me) - most people's income eventually somewhat maybe adjusts for inflation at some time, but prices on milk and stuff adjust much faster.

One of the best ways to look at the effects of inflation is how long between "upgrades" of various things like cars, computers, phones, TVs, etc.

Also, everyone and their mother wanted to buy the M1 when it came out, because it was just so much better than what came before; but there's no real pressing reason to upgrade to the M2 from the M1, so most of the new purchases will be the last few Intel hold-outs upgrading, or new customers.

At $999 and a major performance increase, a new laptop might be a no-brainer (especially compared to replacing batteries, etc).

But at $1199 and a minor increase, why bother?

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#516

Post by justinzollars » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #199

justinzollars wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US economic dominance is about to go into hyperdrive Our biggest export is dollars. We accept ship loads of consumer goods and in exchange send the ships back empty. What a deal.

I have a hunch that’s exactly what it looked like for all past economic empires, no?

Its actually a sweet deal. But yes. Spot on.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#517

Post by spaceman_2020 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #286

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of Peter Zeihan, I'm also utterly surprised that no one even brings up the demographics debate. Everyone has been so indoctrinated on the "we have too many people" propaganda that they haven't even realized how fast birth rates have dropped across the globe (and they're dropping even faster now). The demographics of Europe, China, Japan and S. Korea are all terminal at this point. Outside of UK, France, and t…

> America, meanwhile, has decent native birth rate No, it doesn't. It's about 1.8 and dropping, and most of the higher values in that group are from recent immigrants, which are also having fewer kids. Educated folks also have lower fertility rates. The US is basically a mirror of Western Europe in this regard: https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility-rate... > AND a culture that's always willing to ac…

Even at 1.8, it's higher than the rest of the developed world.

And America always has the option of simply opening the gates a little and fill up the gap with practically any immigrant group it wants.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#518

Post by dimmke » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

game_the0ry wrote: post #370

drooopy wrote: post #32

In my case, I feel that Apple has priced itself out of the EU market with the latest Macs and iDevices. The new base M2 Air begins at €1500 after taxes which is genuinely an absurd amount of money to ask for a device that comes with 8 GB and 256 GB of non-replaceable ram and ssd respectively. The cheapest iPhone 14 starts at a bit over €1000. My plan is to keep my entry-level M1 Air for a few more years and then I'm…

FWIW, macs are high quality and last a long time. My wife needed a laptop for class a year ago, so I gave her my old macbook pro 13 i bought in 2014. I also had a macbook air m1 for personal use, which I replaced recently with a macbook pro 14 m1, and planned to give my wife the air. She refuses the air bc she likes the old 13 so much, and she abuses the shit out of it. How often does a laptop go strong for 9 years?…

My dad bought an 11" MacBook Air in 2011 - I think it was the cheapest possible Mac you could get at the time (maybe $900-$1000?) But I really wanted him to be on MacOS.

He basically never used it as a laptop, and it's been plugged in to an external monitor and keyboard for many years. He used to stack paper on top of it until I told him to stop it so it could vent better. I would update the software, but I think it's been a while since there's been a new security update. I picked it up recently while visiting and noticed it wouldn't close all the way - uh oh.

So I told him his battery was going bad and could explode. He took it to an independent repair shop the next day. They replaced it with a new battery and cleaned out over a decade of dust in the chassis for $120.

I tried to impress upon him that having the same computer for over 10 years without ever having to take it in (or really do any kind of maintenance besides software updates) is extraordinary - he understands now that computers are a little more like cars. They need to be serviced sometimes. Not nearly as frequently as cars. And those laptops were not known for having good thermals.

I'm on the verge of buying him a new MacBook just so he will be on the latest software - but for what he does (email, web browsing) the Air works just as well as it did in 2011.

I think I might end up getting him a gently used M1 Mac Mini though since it never moves from his desk and it would be under $500.

Anyways, I'm on an M1 MacBook Pro and it's hard to see myself buying a new Macbook Pro in the next 5 years minimum. I just don't need to. They fixed pretty much all of the problems their laptops had.

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#519

Post by wilsonnb3 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

leetharris wrote: post #341

KptMarchewa wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1650EUR for a laptop that won't have enough ram to run the browser in two years. That did not have enough ram 3 years ago... the fact they are still trying to sell 8GB as an useful amount outside of extremely budget laptops is insane.

I understand the frustration with low RAM Macs. I really do. I primarily work on a 32gb M1 Max. But I bought a M2 Mini with base everything (8gb/256gb) and it is still absolutely killer for 99% of things. I do a lot of dev, gaming, and casual stuff. It plays WoW at 100fps, Dota, streams all my GFN games, and the swap is fine when doing web dev.

I have the base m1 air and iMac and agree completely.

Most of the people who are saying that that 8gb is not enough haven’t actually used one.

A lot of them extrapolate that because their Mac with 16/24/32gb uses more than 8gb doing basic tasks, 8gb is not enough.

They don’t consider that modern OS’s and browsers are happy to use RAM that they don’t need because it is just sitting there otherwise.

The rest have memory heavy workflows (docker or VMs, usually).

Re: Apple halted M2 chip production in January amid 'plummeting' Mac sales

#520

Post by astrange » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

yazzku wrote: post #447

donkeyd wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of that? My mom who walks into a store doesn't adjust for inflation. Her income hasn't been adjusted for inflation, let alone exchange rate. Many people on HN can probably explain why the price is what it is now. That doesn't mean that people are willing (or capable) to pay that much.

It really is hard for some people to understand, right? Mom makes X Prices go up Mom still makes X

Not true for retirees because Social Security gets inflation adjustments.

Probably not true in general either except in stagflation.