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This is the Dell XPS 13 Plus, and Dell charges $250 to jump from 16GB to 32GB.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the thing I specifically warned about in one of my earlier posts to you. If you look closely you'll see that $250 jump isn't just for the RAM. That's for an upgrade in the RAM plus something else (processor or SSD).* Do you understand? [See the bottom of my post for an example.]

Here's the difference for the RAM alone to go from 16 GB to 32 GB in the XPS 13 Plus: $150, just like I showed in my table.
Source: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/del...top/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/usexchcto9320rpl02

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*What you are looking at is probably something like this. Yes, by clicking on the upgrade to go from 16->32 GB, Dell increases the price by $250. But if you look closely, you'll see that, when you click to upgrade the RAM, Dell automatically also increases the SSD size from 512 GB to 1 TB. [In other cases, the upgrade may instead be to the processor, e.g., from an i5 to an i7—you need to look very carefully to check for such changes.] So to compare apples to apples, you need to carefully find upgrades that change the RAM alone, which is what I showed above:
1699820747076.png
 
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"Unified Memory Architecture" means that their CPU and GPU share the same memory. Which has upsides (it's extremely fast to share data between CPU and GPU, since there's no transfer involved) and downsides (you have less overall memory, since the GPU doesn't have its own).

It doesn't really affect the memory chips. Those are LPDDR5 in this case. An 8 GiB chip can be had for below $50. Apple can probably get it for far below that. Apple seems to generally use SK Hynix chips.

They're not special custom Apple chips. I don't know where this idea comes from.
The fact that RAM is baked on to the chip physically close to the processors is what makes them special custom Apple. I doubt if you find that on any of the Intel chips being discussed.
 
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Unfortunately, that's exactly the thing I specifically warned about in one of my earlier posts to you. If you look closely you'll see that $250 jump isn't just for the RAM. That's for an upgrade in the RAM plus something else (processor or SSD).* Do you understand? [See the bottom of my post for an example.]

Here's the difference for the RAM alone to go from 16 GB to 32 GB in the XPS 13 Plus: $150, just like I showed in my table.
Source: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/del...top/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop/usexchcto9320rpl02

View attachment 2311373
View attachment 2311374

*What you are looking at is probably something like this. Yes, by clicking on the upgrade to go from 16->32 GB, Dell increases the price by $250. But if you look closely, you'll see that Dell, when you click to upgrade the RAM, Dell automatically also increases the SSD size from 512 GB to 1 TB. [In other cases, the upgrade may instead be to the processor, e.g., from an i5 to an i7—you need to look very carefully to check for such changes.] So to compare apples to apples, you need to carefully find upgrades that change the RAM alone, which is what I showed above:
View attachment 2311379
Ok, that makes sense, my bad, but how is $150 that much different from $200? It’s a $50 difference.
 
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"Unified Memory Architecture" means that their CPU and GPU share the same memory. Which has upsides (it's extremely fast to share data between CPU and GPU, since there's no transfer involved) and downsides (you have less overall memory, since the GPU doesn't have its own).

It doesn't really affect the memory chips. Those are LPDDR5 in this case. An 8 GiB chip can be had for below $50. Apple can probably get it for far below that. Apple seems to generally use SK Hynix chips.

They're not special custom Apple chips. I don't know where this idea comes from.
I agree they shouldn't be significantly more expensive. However, conventional RAM chips contain the DRAM cells plus the memory controller. By contrast, Apple's memory controllers are on-die, so they need custom RAM modules that don't have memory controllers.
 
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LOL. If anything, Apple will just let the MBP start at $1799. They're not going to give up $200 per MacBook (Pro and Air) sold.
 
Ok, that makes sense, my bad, but how is $150 that much different from $200? It’s a $50 difference.
That $200 upcharge from Apple is to go from 16->24 GB. Dell doesn't have anything equivalent, so we have to look at their charge to go from 16->32 GB, and calculate cost/GB to do a fair comparison. When we do this, we see Apple is charging 2.67 times what Dell is.

It's like buying eggs. I can't say (with a straight face) that my $2.00 price for 6 eggs isn't much different from my competitor's $1.50 price for a dozen eggs, because it's only a $0.50 difference.

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Actually, the simpler way to look at this would be to see what Apple charges for those models that do offer the same 16->32 GB upgrade ($400 => 400/150 = 2.67 times Dell's price, i.e., the same result), which allows a direct comparison, but you wanted to restrict this to the base M3.
 
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Cost to assemble the components and computer have increased in cost
I’m not sure how true that really is. Manufacturing migrated from United States to China to control manufacturing costs. Currently manufacturing is migrating from China to Vietnam & India for the same reason.

But this is just a side issue. Apple is not a charity. Cost is only a consideration if it is large, Price is driven primarily by “what the market will bear” (or value if you prefer). Low cost (as compared to price) is not an issue. Apple is marketing themselves as a quality boutique commodity (sell fewer units at a higher profit). If you don’t find sufficient value in a boutique product (computer, car, shoes, wristwatch, handbag or RAM upgrade) then buy something else. As there are plenty lower priced alternative readily available, then there is no issue (AKA determining price for a laptop is not the same as the determining price for bread & milk).

Cost is not equivalent to Price or even value.
 
That $200 upcharge for Apple is to go from 16->24 GB. Dell doesn't have anything equivalent, so we have to look at their charge to go from 16->32 GB, and calculate cost/GB to do a fair comparison. When we do this, we see Apple is charging 2.67 times what Dell is.

It's like buying eggs. I can't say (with a straight face) that my $2.00 price for 6 eggs isn't much different from my competitor's $1.50 price for a dozen eggs, because it's only a $0.50 difference.

View attachment 2311401

Actually, the better way to look at this would be to see what Apple charges for those models that do have a 16->32 GB upgrade ($400), which allows a direct comparison, but you wanted to restrict this to the base M3.
What this fails to factor in though is that Apple’s RAM has value added due to the way it’s implemented. Even if we assume Apple’s using the exact same RAM chips, they’re Unified Memory system is far faster than the RAM configurations being offered by the PC competitors.
 
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And Apple knows that. This is, in fact, the sweet spot for the pricing.
We'll see about next time, I'm getting pretty fed up...

My next purchase is definitely not going to be an apple device of any kind, but we'll see next year.
 
The fact that RAM is baked on to the chip physically close to the processors is what makes them special custom Apple. I doubt if you find that on any of the Intel chips being discussed.
Well, contrary to marketing, the physical proximity is not why UMA is fast. Assuming that electrical signals propagate at half the speed of light, and assuming a clock speed of 4GHZ, an electrical signal can travel about 1.47 inches per clock cycle. Apple's unified memory has about a 300 cycle latency to access (actually, it was closer to 350 CPU cycles on the M1), so the vast majority of the latency is NOT from the time it takes the signal to propagate from the RAM to the SOC.

Apple's latency for RAM accesses is actually significantly worse than most PCs, the majority of which have lower RAM access latency than Apple's chips (if I'm not mistaken, the secure enclave is to blame for the high latency, as it does transparent hardware encryption of the memory). Apple's engineers (who are industry leading) have managed to make this not much of a bottleneck, and the gigantic on-CPU caches play a big part in this.
 
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Well, contrary to marketing, the physical proximity is not why UMA is fast. Assuming that electrical signals propagate at half the speed of light, and assuming a clock speed of 4GHZ, an electrical signal can travel about 1.47 inches per clock cycle. Apple's unified memory has about a 300 cycle latency to access, so the added latency from the signal having to propagate further would make a fairly negligible impact. We'd be talking about a handful of extra CPU cycles, not a substantial difference.

Apple's latency for RAM accesses is significantly worse than most PCs, the majority of which have lower RAM access latency than Apple's chips. Apple's engineers (who are industry leading) have managed to make this not much of a bottleneck, and the gigantic on-CPU caches play a big part in this.
Yup. For those who want more detail:

 
Yup. For those who want more detail:

Great quote from that article:

"M2 Pro looks costly not because of the Apple tax, but rather because giant monolithic dies on cutting edge nodes are expensive."
 
It's good we're seeing hit pieces everywhere:
Let them come. All attempting to churn out clickbait pieces for the sake of easy clicks and views.

This isn't Apple's first 1000+ comment controversy here that Apple has weathered through, it won't be its last, and I give it maybe one more week before it blows over and people just move on. The fact that the goalposts keep shifting here means that the critics don't really have a leg to stand on.

Maybe 8gb ram is insufficient for "pros" (whatever that means) and maybe $1600 is too expensive for a laptop to come with only 8 gb ram (again, by whose metric?). It's really up to the individual consumer to determine what specs and price point is suitable for them. What's really happening here is that we have a few people who want extra ram in their Macs, are apparently too cheapskate to shell out the few extra hundred dollars for them, and are attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill and pretending like they are waging a war on behalf of all Apple users who are being cheated by Apple, when it's really their own pockets they are looking out for.

This is the state of Macrumours today. :(
 
Great quote from that article:

"M2 Pro looks costly not because of the Apple tax, but rather because giant monolithic dies on cutting edge nodes are expensive."
Well, up to a point. TSMC's selling price for 300 mm N3 wafers is reportedly $20,000 (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-will-charge-20000-per-3nm-wafer), and I calculated you could etch ~450 M3 Pro's on one wafer (based on an estimated die size of 140 mm^2), which works out to ≈$45/die (not including manufacturing losses, which I've read TSMC has agreed to eat for the initial deal with Apple).

Plus that's separate from what RAM costs, which has been the subject of this discussion. Apple's net RAM cost/GB should not be that much more than the cost for conventional RAM.
 
Well, up to a point. TSMC's selling price for 300 mm N3 wafers is reportedly $20,000 (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-will-charge-20000-per-3nm-wafer), and I calculated you could etch ~450 M3 Pro's on one wafer (based on an estimated die size of 140 mm^2), which works out to ≈$45/die (not including manufacturing losses, which I've read TSMC has agreed to eat for the initial deal with Apple).

Plus that's separate from what RAM costs, which has been the subject of this discussion. Apple's net RAM cost/GB should not be that much more than the cost for conventional RAM.
It is not separate from RAM costs. You can't buy Mac memory without an M3 X and it's embedded costs, which include taping out the dies, engineering costs, manufacturing and all kinds of things.
 
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It is not separate from RAM costs. You can't buy Mac memory without an M3 X and it's embedded costs, which include taping out the dies, engineering costs, manufacturing and all kinds of things.
It is separate. The cost of the processor has no impact on Apple's BOM cost differential between, say, 16 GB RAM and 32 GB RAM. That's just a fact. Conflating the two just muddies the waters.

For instance, you can't buy Mac memory on a MBP without buying the rest of the Mac, which means, by your argument, you'd also need to factor in display costs, camera costs, keyboard costs, etc. when assessing memory costs. Hopefully you're beginning to see how absurd that way of thinking is.

Plus the argument you are making here is inconsistent with the quote you liked, which assessed die costs just based on die costs -- not based on the costs of other parts of a Mac, like the camera, memory, battery, etc.:

"M2 Pro looks costly not because of the Apple tax, but rather because giant monolithic dies on cutting edge nodes are expensive."
 
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