Apple fans, What happens when a Macbook gets too expensive?

[TheLastUserName]

Long story short, i was planning on buying the new Macbook Pro M1x when it comes out, since i work with blender and video editing software i was contemplating whether I should really go with the Macbook and step into the apple ecosystem, I noticed a concerning pattern with apple products: They get more and more expensive every single year, Take iphone for example, Iphone 12 is 28% more expensive than iphone 11 and 40% more expensive than iphone XR, a phone released just three years ago, if that keeps up... See where i'm going with this?

I've asked a couple of people about this and they said "oh well you can just buy the older generation iphone, macbook & ipad" whatever, but this doesn't fix the problem it just extends it, in 5 years there probably won't be a older generation intel macbook pro's. I want to commit to a company, to a chip maker, to a Operating system that I could afford in 10 years. Nvidia cards just got much much cheaper with their 3000 series graphics cards making Windows laptops and Desktop pc's more affordable and at the same time cheaper, That sort of thing rarely if ever happens with apple products.

I own a small business with 7 employees. I had to decide if I was going to go cheap and by Windows/Chromebooks for everyone, or iMacs. The decision turned out to be quite simple: My employees are far more productive with iMacs. And other than swapping out the hard disk drives for SSDs, the 2013 iMacs still run flawlessly.

My point is: yes, Apple products cost more up front, but they will improve your productivity and last longer. In the end, this makes them a bargain.

 

[theluggage]

Unfortunately we saw another price jump last week, it really does seem like the only way is up in terms of cost. The base M1 Pro is £1900, that is staggering. Considering the Retina Macbook Pro in 2013 was sold at £999, which back then was 'revolutionary'.

Might want to check your pricing: according to EveryMac.com the 2013 13" retina MBP was $1699 (so probably around £1600 since Macs in the UK have long been priced as if $1=£1*) - you may be thinking of the 2012 "classic" nonretina 13" MacBook Pro which was ~ $1000 - but that had a low-def display and spinning rust for storage and really wasn't "revolutionary" (although it was nice of Apple to give it a final update and keep it on the books for a few years - something they should have thought of again in 2016).

Thing is, though, even the ~$1000 M1 MacBook Air will significantly outperform either of those - and the 14" M1 Pro will thrash that on anything optimised for multi-threading or GPU use.

In 2011 I bought a 17" MBP for about £2300 - in 2021 I can buy a 16" MacBook Pro for £2400 - substantially more powerful, 4 x the RAM, 512GB of ultra-fast SSD storage replacing 750GB of horribly slow spinning rust and a high DPI screen that more than makes up for the missing inch in terms of sharpness, colour and the flexibility of high quality scaled modes. That doesn't seem bad on top of 10 years of inflation.

Also, Apple have re-structured their range a bit - the old higher end "4 port" 13" MBP used to have a significantly less powerful CPU and weedy integrated GPU than the 15"/16" - the new 14" is more expensive but it is now pretty much just a 16" with a smaller screen (but still bigger than the old 13").

I think the problem is that we've enjoyed a period from 1980 to about 2010 during which computers doubled in power every 18 months while the price in figures stayed about the same or even fell - inflation didn't even come into it. The market has now matured, and we're starting to see more inflation (worse, we're seeing more artificial obsolescence and non-upgradability now it's no longer so compelling to upgrade your computer every 18 months).

That said, I think Mac prices "peaked" in 2016-19 beginning with the never-to-be-sufficiently-ridiculed 2016 MBP (which, unfortunately, coincided with Apple "reviewing" their prices outside the US) and ended with the release of the 2019 16" MBP (which had a substantially better spec than the 15" it replaced, but at the same price).


(* For US viewers: UK prices always include 20% tax which cancels out most of the difference between the £ and $, so UK Mac prices are $1=£1 at least to a first approximation - mind you, back in the 80s and 90s when the £ was higher and UK computer price labels didn't include tax, Apple still thought $1=£1 so UK prices are arguably better than they used to be)

 

[skaertus]

I have family in Brazil and I know what you're talking about. I was there earlier this week. Is buying used an option for you?

Some people buy used, but there is not a huge market for it.

What many people do is buy in the U.S. or ask someone (such as a smuggler) to bring from the U.S., thus avoiding paying taxes.

That is part of the story. The other part is the exchange rate, which has evolved very unfavorably, especially after the CarWash operation which unveiled the multi-billionaire corruption scheme, with all the political and economic instability it brought. The U.S. dollar skyrocketed in recent years, which, adding to the ever-high taxes, led to impossible prices for Apple products.

Oct 1994: USD 1 = BRL 0.8470
Oct 1995: USD 1 = BRL 0.9545
Oct 1996: USD 1 = BRL 1.0207
Oct 1997: USD 1 = BRL 1,0959
Oct 1998: USD 1 = BRL 1.1799
Oct 1999: USD 1 = BRL 1.9557
Oct 2000: USD 1 = BRL 1.8475
Oct 2001: USD 1 = BRL 2.6858
Oct 2002: USD 1 = BRL 3.7459
Oct 2003: USD 1 = BRL 2.9026
Oct 2004: USD 1 = BRL 2.8505
Oct 2005: USD 1 = BRL 2.2331
Oct 2006: USD 1 = BRL 2.1615
Oct 2007: USD 1 = BRL 1.8217
Oct 2008: USD 1 = BRL 1.9205
Oct 2009: USD 1 = BRL 1.7786
Oct 2010: USD 1 = BRL 1.6804
Oct 2011: USD 1 = BRL 1.8804
Oct 2012: USD 1 = BRL 2.0254
Oct 2013: USD 1 = BRL 2.2118
Oct 2014: USD 1 = BRL 2.4617
Oct 2015: USD 1 = BRL 3.9788
Oct 2016: USD 1 = BRL 3.2332
Oct 2017: USD 1 = BRL 3.1636
Oct 2018: USD 1 = BRL 4.0267
Oct 2019: USD 1 = BRL 4.1734
Oct 2020: USD 1 = BRL 5.6435
Oct 2021: USD 1 = BRL 5.3905

The solution is usually to buy a PC. A very low-end PC, most of the time.

 

[Killbynumbers]

Really?
Powerbook G4 pricing 2004
View attachment 1876201

I wanted to buy one back then but could not afford it. I got approved for the card through Apple back then but only got a $2,000 limit so I used it to buy an HP laptop instead. It wasn't until the summer of the first iPhone that I could afford to but my first Mac, a 15" MBP.

 

[theluggage]

I wanted to buy one back then but could not afford it.

What you can see from the 2004 prices is that, since then, the "middle" of the Apple laptop range has remained at about $2000, the entry level has dropped below $1000 (starting with the "plastic" MacBook, which was effectively replaced by the later versions of the Air) and the top end has headed to infinity and beyond... Still, the 2021 16" sounds like a steal compared to the 2004 17" at $2800...

...and even the entry-level $1000 2021 laptops are considerably more capable than the $1600 2004 ones - not just in "absolute" terms but in their ability to replace a contemporary desktop.

The big price hikes seemed to be in 2012 (with the introduction of SSD only machines & soldered-in RAM) and 2016 (expensive MBPs that a lot of people hated, coinciding with a hiking of international prices). That's kinda worn off now - the 2019 Intel 16" offered better bangs-per-buck for the same price and with the M1, the Air is offering crazy performance without a price hike.

The high BTO prices seem partly down to the cost of larger SSDs. Apple price gouges on these like mad, but even so the regular cost-per-GB of SSD is still considerably higher than mechanical HDs - it's just that once you've gone SSD you really can't face going back to spinning rust.

 

[PabloGS]

The big price hikes seemed to be in 2012 (with the introduction of SSD only machines & soldered-in RAM) and 2016 (expensive MBPs that a lot of people hated, coinciding with a hiking of international prices). That's kinda worn off now - the 2019 Intel 16" offered better bangs-per-buck for the same price and with the M1, the Air is offering crazy performance without a price hike.

The high BTO prices seem partly down to the cost of larger SSDs. Apple price gouges on these like mad, but even so the regular cost-per-GB of SSD is still considerably higher than mechanical HDs - it's just that once you've gone SSD you really can't face going back to spinning rust.

I’m always in it for a bargain, and Apple pretty much put an end to this by soldering and gluing everything in although there’s more than enough space to actually put upgrade slots for RAM and SSDs.

Back in late 2008 when Apple presented the first Unibodies those machines were sweet for upgrading.
I bought a baseline 15” MacBook Pro with 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo for 1380€.

It served me well for 10 years because I was able to upgrade
- the DVD burner to a Blu-Ray burner, - the 250GB HDD to a 1TB SSD,
- the 2GB RAM to 8GB RAM
- the empty Express Card slot with a Cardreader,
and treated it with a higher capacity battery.

I was able to run the latest and greatest Mac OS using a boot loader until the logic board died.

My current one is a baseline late 2016 MacBook Pro 13” with function keys, which cost me 1380€ as well. On that one I was able to upgrade the SSD to 1TB post purchase. The rest already came soldered and glued in.

The current MacBook Pros come with everything soldered and glued built in, so you can’t really replace anything. You have to live with what you get and can’t extend its life by upgrading.

A shame, because
- Apple always markets their devices as greener and more sustainable than others, but if your device is short lived, how is that sustainable ?
- Apple effectively barred their less opulent customers from saving money by buying upgrade components that over time propped in price or newly became available, or do you recall Apple ever releasing a Mac with a built in Blu Ray drive?

If you open up a MacBook Pro nowadays you’ll find it has more than enough space to fit an user installable SSD and RAM in theory, but Apple just says: NO