Apple is Robbing People with SSD Upgrade Prices...

[pastrychef]

Wrong - thats the view point of the bad actors from within Apple. Their first priority should be to follow the laws and be ethical in the process of creating value for those shareholders… by being a good corporate citizen, not bow to the whims of the Wall Street parasites. What Apple is doing now, with this is, anti-competitive and monopolistic. It pains me to see an iconic company that is beloved by so many for the products they have produced over the years to behave in such a deplorable anti-consumer way. They want to go around and portray themselves as being a privacy advocate, a supporter of clean energy, a force to help thwart governments overreach around the world, and on, and on; all things we as Apple fans support, only to blow up that image of being a good company, by being so openly and directly against consumer protection and rights… and at the end of the day, that’s what this is… a way to gouge the consumers of their products while at same time preventing another company from coming in and being able to compete against them.

How have they broken the law? How have they been unethical?

It's idiotic to assume that everyone who invests in AAPL is a parasite. There are tons of hard working individuals who save and invest. How is investing being a parasite? Lots of Apple employees are shareholders. Are they parasites too?

Apple doesn't own any monopolies in any market. Android has more marketshare than iOS. Windows has more marketshare than macOS.

How is Apple being anti-consumer? When has Apple products been the cheapest option? How has Apple acted against consumer protection and rights?

How has Apple prevented anyone from competing against them? If you want, you are free to build computers/operating systems and sell them as you please to compete against them. How is Apple stopping you?

 

[bobcomer]

Oh wait, literally none of that is true. It’s just possible that their actual goal is to charge as much money as the market will bear so that they can possess a larger share of societal wealth than others around them… and there’s nothing illegal about that. I do think there’s a certain immorality to it all, but that change should come from within, rather than being imposed by government. Wouldn’t that be something? A company like Apple deciding to take a little less from customers, give a little more to employees rather than 10s of millions to execs because it’s the right thing to do?

Dreamer.

 

[bobcomer]

Exactly. I’ve got a base storage M1 Air and absolutely no desire for more storage (think I have like 170gb free) because I literally never think about it.

Extra storage would be wasted.

All my machines have at least 1TB internal, and some have more. They all have external drives. One has 3TB internal, and 10 TB external. And I have 2 NAS's, 20TB and 10TB. I actually need all that for what I do. (mostly VM's for testing, development and remote work)

We all have different needs depending on what we do...

 

[bobcomer]

How have they broken the law? How have they been unethical?

Check out how many fines they've paid to answer that question.

 

[pastrychef]

Check out how many fines they've paid to answer that question.

I don't see that as an indicator of laws being broken but governments trying to squeeze companies for money.

 

[w5jck]

Or, you can do like most people do and buy your SSD elsewhere that's priced more competitively at ~$200/2TB and upgrade it yourself. Some Lenovo models even come with two NVMe SSD slots.

I call total BS on your phrase "like most people do". There is no way that most people do that. Most people have no clue how to do that. Most Apple Mac users don't have the skills set to swap out an SSD. You can't just throw out a term like "most" simply because "you" do that. Most people aren't you! For computers that are built to allow easy access to and upgrades of SSDs, then people can make those upgrades. But Apple goes out of its way to make it difficult, and that takes "most people" out of the category of the "few who can do such upgrades". Apple fully well knows that "most people" either cannot or will not attempt to upgrade the SSD, and thus they can charge ridiculous prices for more RAM and more SSD capacity.

This is not a new business practice at all. The auto industry has been doing this for decades and decades. Here is the $25,000 new model, but this is base price only. To get it with a few upgrades you might wind up paying $30,000. To get it fully loaded it might cost over $50,000! Welcome to capitalism... How do you think Apple became a $3 trillion company?

 

[TightLines]

How have they broken the law? How have they been unethical?

It's idiotic to assume that everyone who invests in AAPL is a parasite. There are tons of hard working individuals who save and invest. How is investing being a parasite?

Apple doesn't own any monopolies in any market. Android has more market share than iOS. Windows has more marketshare than macOS.

How is Apple being anti-consumer? When has Apple products been the cheapest option? How has Apple acted against consumer protection and rights?

How has Apple prevented anyone from competing against them? If you want, you are free to build computers/operating systems and sell them as you please to compete against them. How is Apple stopping you?

I am not about to get into a tit for tat debate with you on some of your questions or what you’re implying… its not worth it. However, I will say this, if you have some of those questions already, then there is nothing at all I will or could say that will change your mind.

Further, I have never once suggested anyone who invests are parasites… what I have suggested is there are Wall Street forces within Apple that represent some very influential institutional investors that are known for their unethical greed and how they will devalue a company in the false name of creating shareholder value… The likes of Goldman Sachs didn’t earn the knick name vampire squid because they were ethical and pro-consumer. Same goes with some other huge investment firms like a BlackRock that have a hand in the direction Apple goes via its board of directors, etc... so please don’t suggest I have or take what I do say out of context and try to twist into that narrative.

Perhaps you can name a company I can use to supply me with the components needed, and service to upgrade the storage space and RAM in the new M series products Apple has put on the market in the last year or so. I am sure you can think of and suggest someone outside of Apple, right? If not, why not?

 

[pastrychef]

I am not about to get into a tit for tat debate with you on some of your questions or what you’re implying… its not worth it. However, I will say this, if you have some of those questions already, then there is nothing at all I will or could say that will change your mind.

Further, I have never once suggested anyone who invests are parasites… what I have suggested is there are Wall Street forces within Apple that represent some very influential institutional investors that are known for their unethical greed and how they will devalue a company in the false name of creating shareholder value… The likes of Goldman Sachs didn’t earn the knick name vampire squid because they were ethical and pro-consumer. Same goes with some other huge investment firms like a BlackRock that have a hand in the direction Apple goes via its board of directors, etc... so please don’t suggest I have or take what I do say out of context and try to twist into that narrative.

Perhaps you can name a company I can use to supply me with the components needed, and service to upgrade the storage space and RAM in the new M series products Apple has put on the market in the last year or so. I am sure you can think of and suggest someone outside of Apple, right? If not, why not?

Yes, none of that nonsense mades sense to me, hence the questions.

I have yet to see any evidence of any investment bank influencing Apple to do anything unethical. Apple has nothing to do with the sins of Goldman Sachs and/or Blackrock.

If you don't like the inability to upgrade Macs, you have plenty of alternatives that allow for all sorts of upgrades.

It's not impossible to upgrade M1 Macs if you have the skills and the tools...

M1 Mac RAM and SSD Upgrades Found to Be Possible After Purchase

Technicians in China have reportedly succeeded in upgrading the memory and storage of the M1 chip, suggesting that Apple's integrated custom...

www.macrumors.com

Btw, how employees are compensated should be negotiated before accepting job offers, not after. Also, please show me some examples of public companies who willingly pay their low level employees as much as possible.

 

[Expos of 1969]

I have yet to see any evidence an any investment bank influencing Apple to do anything unethical. Apple has nothing to do with the sins of Goldman Sachs and/or Blackrock.

While Apple was not involved with Goldman's immoral, unethical and criminal activities which greatly contributed to the 2008 financial crash, Tim Cook was only too happy to partner with Goldman on the Apple Card initiative. For someone who supposedly bleeds for ethical and fair treatment of all members of society and is 100% behind helping the underclass and trampled upon, he certainly showed his true colours by teaming up with Goldman, What a telling, disgusting and low class decision.

 

[pastrychef]

While Apple was not involved with Goldman's immoral, unethical and criminal activities which greatly contributed to the 2008 financial crash, Tim Cook was only too happy to partner with Goldman on the Apple Card initiative. For someone who supposedly bleeds for ethical and fair treatment of all members of society and is 100% behind helping the underclass and trampled upon, he certainly showed his true colours by teaming up with Goldman, What a telling, disgusting and low class decision.

They could have partnered with any bank and something immoral, unethical, and criminal can be dug up about said bank...

 

[Expos of 1969]

They could have partnered with any bank and something immoral, unethical, and criminal can be dug up about said bank...

Perhaps, but they chose the poster child of immoral and disgusting behaviour. No digging required. It was all over the world press.

 

[Ethosik]

But it's not about the starting configuration, and never has been. It's about the money. People aren't saying they want the base M1/M2 to be 16/512 instead of 8/256, they're saying they want the base M1/M2 to be 16/512 and keep the current base price. And the reason they're saying this is because Apple charges literally double (and this is the literal use of literally) the industry standard for increased RAM and storage.

Dell charges $100 to go from 8 GB to 16 RAM, $100 to go from 512 GB to 1 TB storage, and $200 to go from 1 TB to 2 TB storage, in its consumer laptops.
Apple charges $200 to go from 8 GB to 16 RAM, $200 to go from 512 GB to 1 TB storage, and $400 to go from 1 TB to 2 TB storage, in its consumer laptops.

So Apple is not like the rest of the industry in this key sense when it comes to RAM and storage. Nor do I expect it to be. I accept that I pay more for an Apple product, in order to get the vastly better OS and customer service.

[I used the pricing for the Dell XPS 13 Plus, which uses the same LPDDR5 RAM as Apple does in its M2 Air and M1 Pro/Max/Ultra.]

Have you seen the posts here? Quite a few "512 and 16 should be standard" so yes, your first statement is invalid based on what people want a starting config being 512 and 16.

 

[pastrychef]

Perhaps, but they chose the poster child of immoral and disgusting behaviour. No digging required. It was all over the world press.

I'm not questioning how evil Goldman was/is... But I also don't subscribe to guilt by association. That's like saying anyone who owns an Apple Card is low class and disgusting.

 

[OnawaAfrica]

how about instead of randomly whining about apples ssd prices, why don't u find out the chip number of the ssd chips and search what they cost to buy them from the same manufacturer

 

[Juicy Box]

How have they broken the law? How have they been unethical?

I think that Apple tries to follow most laws, but I think they do have unethical behavior when it comes to some of their business practices.

One thing that is closer on topic to the thread is the storage size of the AW Series 3. It is still currently being sold, but the storage isn't large enough to do OS updates. If I update the OS on my iPhone that is paired with my Series 3, then the update breaks the pairing with the AW until I update it as well.

But, I cannot update the AW due to there not being enough free storage for the update. I tried deleting everything that I could possibly delete on the AW, and there still is usually a few 100MBs needed to do the update.

Since there is no ports on the AW for the user to a computer and update that way, like you can do the iPhones and iPads, the only way to update is to unpair, and factory reset, then update and pair again starting like a brand new AW.

I think this is unethical behavior, especially the part where an update to the iPhone leaves the AW unusable until the update.

It would be different if the Series 3 was an old device, but it is still on the AW line up.

 

[PsykX]

At least they perform well, but they should lower the price by 20%, they would still make a very high margin...
It's like less than half the price usually.

 

[AlexMac89]

But it's not about the starting configuration, and never has been. It's about the money. People aren't saying they want the base M1/M2 to be 16/512 instead of 8/256, they're saying they want the base M1/M2 to be 16/512 and keep the current base price. And the reason they're saying this is because Apple charges literally double (and this is the literal use of literally) the industry standard for increased RAM and storage.

Dell charges $100 to go from 8 GB to 16 RAM, $100 to go from 512 GB to 1 TB storage, and $200 to go from 1 TB to 2 TB storage, in its consumer laptops.
Apple charges $200 to go from 8 GB to 16 RAM, $200 to go from 512 GB to 1 TB storage, and $400 to go from 1 TB to 2 TB storage, in its consumer laptops.

So Apple is not like the rest of the industry in this key sense when it comes to RAM and storage. Nor do I expect it to be. I accept that I pay more for an Apple product, in order to get the vastly better OS and customer service.

[I used the pricing for the Dell XPS 13 Plus, which uses the same LPDDR5 RAM as Apple does in its M2 Air and M1 Pro/Max/Ultra.]

Yes, because it’s not like apple is known for using faster memory and ssd’s than most of their competitors or anything. 🙄

 

[theorist9]

Have you seen the posts here? Quite a few "512 and 16 should be standard" so yes, your first statement is invalid based on what people want a starting config being 512 and 16.

I probably should have been clearer. What I meant was this:

When people say they want the base M1/M2 to be 16/512 instead of 8/256, what they really mean is they want to pay the base price for the 16/512.

So no, it's not about the starting configuration. If the 16/512 M1 Air were $999, they wouldn't mind if Apple also offered an 8/256 for $599, and charged their usual $400 for the upgrades. [OK, yes, you'd find some that would still complain, but far fewer.]

 

[pastrychef]

I think that Apple tries to follow most laws, but I think they do have unethical behavior when it comes to some of their business practices.

One thing that is closer on topic to the thread is the storage size of the AW Series 3. It is still currently being sold, but the storage isn't large enough to do OS updates. If I update the OS on my iPhone that is paired with my Series 3, then the update breaks the pairing with the AW until I update it as well.

But, I cannot update the AW due to there not being enough free storage for the update. I tried deleting everything that I could possibly delete on the AW, and there still is usually a few 100MBs needed to do the update.

Since there is no ports on the AW for the user to a computer and update that way, like you can do the iPhones and iPads, the only way to update is to unpair, and factory reset, then update and pair again starting like a brand new AW.

I think this is unethical behavior, especially the part where an update to the iPhone leaves the AW unusable until the update.

It would be different if the Series 3 was an old device, but it is still on the AW line up.

Wow. I've never owned an Apple Watch and have never heard of this...

I don't know if I'd consider this "unethical" but definitely a poor design decision. Apple has been stingy with base RAM and SSD size for a long time. I agree with those who say it's time to double the base configs.

 

[Analog Kid]

Wow. I've never owned an Apple Watch and have never heard of this...

FWIW, I own a Series 3 and a 13 Mini and have never had a problem updating my watch.

 

[Analog Kid]

I probably should have been clearer. What I meant was this:

When people say they want the base M1/M2 to be 16/512 instead of 8/256, what they really mean is they want to pay the base price for the 16/512.

This I agree with, though as I’ve explained in other threads, raising the base storage would likely cost the user more than the base storage plus upgrade for the lower storage sizes in particular because of how Apple segments their market.

So no, it's not about the starting configuration. If the 16/512 M1 Air were $999, they wouldn't mind if Apple also offered an 8/256 for $599, and charged their usual $400 for the upgrades. [OK, yes, you'd find some that would still complain, but far fewer.]

Sure they would, and not that many fewer. Not that many are complaining now, but the few that do are complaining loudly and relentlessly. I think people believe that by stirring up discontent in forums like this they can raise pressure on Apple to reduce their margins. I don’t see that happening…. Apple has a margin below which it’s not worth producing a product. Since so much of their profit is in the higher configurations, they’re likely to just drop the lower configs before they compromise their margins on the entire line.

Besides, there are plenty of applications where the base storage is acceptable. I’m sure they’re selling well enough. Again, it’s a small number of people complaining about storage being inadequate because they want their particular machine to be cheaper and they’re taking their personal problem and trying to frame it as a global one.

 

[theorist9]

This I agree with, though as I’ve explained in other threads, raising the base storage would likely cost the user more than the base storage plus upgrade for the lower storage sizes in particular because of how Apple segments their market.

..... I don’t see that happening…. Apple has a margin below which it’s not worth producing a product. Since so much of their profit is in the higher configurations, they’re likely to just drop the lower configs before they compromise their margins on the entire line.

Besides, there are plenty of applications where the base storage is acceptable. I’m sure they’re selling well enough. Again, it’s a small number of people complaining about storage being inadequate because they want their particular machine to be cheaper and they’re taking their personal problem and trying to frame it as a global one.

Yeah, that's along the lines of what I wrote in post #44:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-is-robbing-people-with-ssd-upgrade-prices.2348507/page-2?post=31195443#post-31195443

 

[pastrychef]

I feel the base Mac Studio with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD is the best bargain in the entire Mac lineup.

 

[Juicy Box]

I don't know if I'd consider this "unethical" but definitely a poor design decision.

If it happened, and Apple pulled the device due to the Series 3 breaking with each OS update, then I would have considered this a poor design decision.

Because it happened and Apple knows about the problem, but they still have the Series 3 in their AW line up, I would consider it unethical.

I agree with those who say it's time to double the base configs.

I disagree with this.

I can understand wanting storage upgrade options for cheaper, or wanting the base model cheaper due to it having only 256GB, but 256GB is still plenty for many people.

Earlier in the thread, I gave the example of my wife that loves her Mid 2012 MBA, and it only had 64GB a storage, which is plenty for her.

If Apple doubled the storage for the base models, and made the prices reflect the doubled storage, if I purchased the M2 MBA, I would be paying for double storage that my wife would never utilize. I am sure there are plenty of other people in the same situation.

Reading this thread, and many others like it, I think most people want the higher (512GB) storage, but at the base model (256GB) price tag. I can totally understand why they would, and would agree that Apple tends to overprice their storage options.

Apple has been stingy with base RAM and SSD size for a long time.

Sometimes it doesn't even make sense with what the storage options they have.

The ATV4K2 has 32GB as a base model, which is overkill for anyone using the device for just streaming, but is a tiny size for anything else such as gaming.

For only $20 more, it doubles the storage to 64GB, which is really cheap (for Apple), but still not enough for games.

 

[pastrychef]

If it happened, and Apple pulled the device due to the Series 3 breaking with each OS update, then I would have considered this a poor design decision.

Because it happened and Apple knows about the problem, but they still have the Series 3 in their AW line up, I would consider it unethical.


I disagree with this.

I can understand wanting storage upgrade options for cheaper, or wanting the base model cheaper due to it having only 256GB, but 256GB is still plenty for many people.

Earlier in the thread, I gave the example of my wife that loves her Mid 2012 MBA, and it only had 64GB a storage, which is plenty for her.

If Apple doubled the storage for the base models, and made the prices reflect the doubled storage, if I purchased the M2 MBA, I would be paying for double storage that my wife would never utilize. I am sure there are plenty of other people in the same situation.

Reading this thread, and many others like it, I think most people want the higher (512GB) storage, but at the base model (256GB) price tag. I can totally understand why they would, and would agree that Apple tends to overprice their storage options.


Sometimes it doesn't even make sense with what the storage options they have.

The ATV4K2 has 32GB as a base model, which is overkill for anyone using the device for just streaming, but is a tiny size for anything else such as gaming.

For only $20 more, it doubles the storage to 64GB, which is really cheap (for Apple), but still not enough for games.

I don't know how widespread the problem you experienced with the Apple Watch is... @Analog Kid stated above that he's never had this issue. So, if it's only a handful of people who have this issue, I'd hardly call it "unethical".

Maybe 256GB as base storage is okay... But, in this day and age, I think 16GB RAM should be minimum.

I don't understand the anemic amount of storage on the Apple TVs either. They def need more.