Apple is Robbing People with SSD Upgrade Prices...

[pastrychef]

From a business perspective, you charge however much customers are willing to pay and that's exactly what Apple is doing.

Of course, all of us wish for more RAM and more storage at lower prices, but if customers keep buying and paying, Apple has no incentive to lower prices.

 

[Bug-Creator]

While you’re right, I feel like being able to upgrade components yourself is sadly becoming less and less common

Still far more common then people actually doing it.

Probably there's very little to no profit for Apple considering the quality of the parts used in these laptops (screen, keyboard
etc)

I'm sure Apple is making a good profit on the base configs. But they are pretty good value compared to PCs with a similar spec.

If you need more than the basic configuration it is because you are a profesional and you get paid from the work you do with these machines

Problem is, the M1 Macs (Mini, Air and i) are consumer products and perfectly fine for that they also offer the compute suitable for most "Pro" uses and where applicable the builtin screen, keyboard, trackpad etc also match "Pro".
RAM and storage on the other hand are in clear consumer territory, and once you spec them up to "Pro" level the price jump to a proper "Pro" Mac isn't that big.

 

[unrigestered]

Apple upgrade prices are insane, but...
try to configure a comparable PC from a renowned manufacturer and you will see that you are going to pay more or less the same... sometimes a bit less, sometimes even more (sometimes the latter even for somewhat "inferior" hardware)

This has of course not always been the case, but recently more and more PC manufacturers seem to see the benefit in Apple's pricing for their premium models

yes, the upgrade prices between the models might be less (usually around 100 € instead of Apple's 230 € between most memory configurations), but the final price will be more or less the same, if you are considering features and built quality

edit: all this only applies to the laptop market as i have no interest in stationary systems

 

[theluggage]

How about $581 to go from 256 to 1TB on a Lenovo?

Ever heard the expression "two wrongs don't make a right"?

...plus you're talking about "OPAL" SSDs (an enhanced security specification) which will inevitably carry a premium (maybe the Mac's encryption is theoretically equivalent, but that's irrelevant if you are obliged to meet some security certification standard). Even then, the 256-to-512GB option is $36 cheaper than Apple's 256-512 upgrade. Part of the beef with Apple is not just the cost of the upgrades, but that they low-ball the specs on the base model.

All of the $1000-$1500 Dell XPS 13s, for example come with 512GB SSD, some with 16GB RAM. Look beyond Lenovo (who are probably still costing on the echoes of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM") and 1TB SSD is pretty common on any laptop over about £1500. Those are not "tech nerd" options - they're fully assembled, mass market products - and 'BTO' RAM and SSD upgrades are still around half the price of Apple (someone already posted Dell prices).

While the pricing sucks, not all storage is created equal.

Yes, some of the more extravagant claims made here come from comparing cheap SATA M.2 blades. However, even high-performance NVME x4 blades still cost substantially less retail (i.e. someone's getting a profit) than Apple's prices.

Apple's prices have little to do with bill-of-materials costs: they want $200 for an extra 8GB of RAM whether it's bog standard DDR4 SODIMMs for an Intel Mac Mini or a whole new SoC with LPDDR5 chips. Apple are a huge consumer of RAM and SSD and will be able to negotiate the best prices - they don't seem inclined to pass those savings on.

 

[Cognizant.]

From a business perspective, you charge however much customers are willing to pay and that's exactly what Apple is doing.

Of course, all of us wish for more RAM and more storage at lower prices, but if customers keep buying and paying, Apple has no incentive to lower prices.

Willing to pay and having to pay because it’s all someone can afford because they need to get into the Apple ecosystem are different things. Apple is charging what the market will bear, yes. But most people aren’t buying the bottom config because they’ve dreamt of having 8 GB of RAM or something. It’s what they can afford. The “Apple tax” is a very real bad tangible thing, especially when it comes to part upgrades. This is a far bigger issue than the cost of the devices themselves. The system on a chip configuration definitely doesn’t help this.

 

[pastrychef]

But most people aren’t buying the bottom config because they’ve dreamt of having 8 GB of RAM or something.

This is true of many things, not just Apple products.

Look at Snap-On 3/8 ratchet vs Husky 3/8 ratchet... They both do the same thing... But every mechanic's shop I've ever been to, I've only seen Snap-On...

 

[Frixos]

I purchased a brand new M1 MBA with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD a year ago for $1329, and I still think that was a good price.

Edit: I also got a free pair of AirPods that I sold, so I really only paid $1200 for the MBA.

 

[MayaUser]

Apple is Robbing People with SSD Upgrade Prices...​

If Apple is robbing you or people that you know, you should definitely call the police instead of making topics here
robbing is a crime

 

[NT1440]

Ever heard the expression "two wrongs don't make a right"?

...plus you're talking about "OPAL" SSDs (an enhanced security specification) which will inevitably carry a premium (maybe the Mac's encryption is theoretically equivalent, but that's irrelevant if you are obliged to meet some security certification standard). Even then, the 256-to-512GB option is $36 cheaper than Apple's 256-512 upgrade. Part of the beef with Apple is not just the cost of the upgrades, but that they low-ball the specs on the base model.

All of the $1000-$1500 Dell XPS 13s, for example come with 512GB SSD, some with 16GB RAM. Look beyond Lenovo (who are probably still costing on the echoes of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM") and 1TB SSD is pretty common on any laptop over about £1500. Those are not "tech nerd" options - they're fully assembled, mass market products - and 'BTO' RAM and SSD upgrades are still around half the price of Apple (someone already posted Dell prices).



Yes, some of the more extravagant claims made here come from comparing cheap SATA M.2 blades. However, even high-performance NVME x4 blades still cost substantially less retail (i.e. someone's getting a profit) than Apple's prices.

Apple's prices have little to do with bill-of-materials costs: they want $200 for an extra 8GB of RAM whether it's bog standard DDR4 SODIMMs for an Intel Mac Mini or a whole new SoC with LPDDR5 chips. Apple are a huge consumer of RAM and SSD and will be able to negotiate the best prices - they don't seem inclined to pass those savings on.

I don’t mean any offense by this, but I think you’ve missed the spirit and point of my posts.

Example: my “tech nerd” comments. I was pointing out that the “I can buy my own hard drive and install it myself” mindset is not common in regular people for whom a computer is a box that does things. I’m not sure how you translated that to 16GB and 1 TB drives are for nerds.

As for the “two wrongs don’t make a right”, implicit in your reply is an affirmation of the point I made, which was that these markups on RAM and SSD’s is standard in the industry.

It’s a long thread so I get that if you came across just one of my posts you may not have gotten where I was coming from so hopefully that clarifies.

PS. The “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” sentiment is exactly what I was going for with pointing out that ThinkPads are still very much the typical PC purchased for business (I switched my whole company to them after endless frustration with the HP Probook line, the last straw was when their 150+ MB *audio driver* “accidentally” had a ****ing key logger in them 🙄).

Keylogger Found in Audio Driver of HP Laptops

The audio driver installed on some HP laptops includes a feature that could best be described as a keylogger, which records all the user's keystrokes and saves the information to a local file, accessible to anyone or any third-party software or malware that knows where to look.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

Yes, this is what happens when you have very competitive hardware and software. Capitalism in action.

Commie!

 

[Apple Fan 2008]

Reminds me of people who thought Apple would lower its prices with M1, because Apple would pass on the savings. Right. 😄

Remember that Apple made the Mac Mini $100 cheaper when it got the M1. And also that Apple made the MBPs actually pro.

 

[Macative]

The fact that none of Apples current laptops are SSD upgradable

Irrelevant and not an actual problem.

still ship with a measly 256GB on base configs in 2022

Irrelevant and not an actual problem. More than enough storage for the majority of people who buy base model machines.

200 dollars for a 250gb upgrad

Everyone agrees that their storage and ram upgrade prices are obscene and offensive. But this is also where they make all their money on the Mac, which enables base prices to be lower.

 

[jav6454]

Much the same when buying a new car. Which engine would you like in it? One that will barely get the car moving or one that will thrust your eyeballs to the back of your head and drink way more petrol/gas. You know that 99.99% of the time the stock will do but.... Funny though, I don't ever recall seeing petrol/gas tank size on an options list. Guess if you want decent range on a super fast motor you have to strap a jerry can or two on the roof (External storage option).

Not the most accurate comparison or analogous example as petrol/gas tanks are standardized due to spacing constraints within a frame.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

This is true of many things, not just Apple products.

Look at Snap-On 3/8 ratchet vs Husky 3/8 ratchet... They both do the same thing... But every mechanic's shop I've ever been to, I've only seen Snap-On...


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It's been proven with some of Snap-Ons offerings is the same Chinese made stuff as much cheaper brands. Harbor Freight for example sells the exact same floor jack for like $200 give or take (don't quote me I don't recall the exact price) but the snap-on version was like listed for hundreds more. Snap-On Tool cabinets cost tens of thousands, but there are other far superior quality cabinets in the same price range. Sonic Cabinets for example.
OP problem statement is the giant gap in price increase for Storage space increase is not within price parity of stand alone drives in the same storage capacity ranges.

 

[pastrychef]

It's been proven with some of Snap-Ons offerings is the same Chinese made stuff as much cheaper brands. Harbor Freight for example sells the exact same floor jack for like $200 give or take (don't quote me I don't recall the exact price) but the snap-on version was like listed for hundreds more. Snap-On Tool cabinets cost tens of thousands, but there are other far superior quality cabinets in the same price range. Sonic Cabinets for example.
OP problem statement is the giant gap in price increase for Storage space increase is not within price parity of stand alone drives in the same storage capacity ranges.

That just reenforces my point... Companies will charge what customers are willing to pay...

 

[unrigestered]

you just have to look at the prices for Apple cables, monitor stands, or workstation rollers to see that their prices are freaking hilarious most of the time

 

[Analog Kid]

It's been proven with some of Snap-Ons offerings is the same Chinese made stuff as much cheaper brands. Harbor Freight for example sells the exact same floor jack for like $200 give or take (don't quote me I don't recall the exact price) but the snap-on version was like listed for hundreds more. Snap-On Tool cabinets cost tens of thousands, but there are other far superior quality cabinets in the same price range. Sonic Cabinets for example.
OP problem statement is the giant gap in price increase for Storage space increase is not within price parity of stand alone drives in the same storage capacity ranges.

I’m not enamored by arguing through analogy, but I have to ask: Is the price increase between Snap-On cabinets of different capacity in parity with stand alone sheet metal prices?

 

[JPack]

Remember that Apple made the Mac Mini $100 cheaper when it got the M1. And also that Apple made the MBPs actually pro.

Yes, only because M1 Mac mini lost 2 Thunderbolt ports. Apple prices USB-C ports at $50/each based on iMac pricing.

After making MBP “actually” pro, they bumped up the price by $200.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

I’m not enamored by arguing through analogy, but I have to ask: Is the price increase between Snap-On cabinets of different capacity in parity with stand alone sheet metal prices?

No idea. Looking online at the design of like construction difference between the snap on vs sonic you can see difference in quality. I don't have 1st hand experience. I was looking at garage cabinets at one point. Rabbit hole took me to some of the high end brands. Sonic, Rousseau, moduline. But this getting off point.

 

[doboy]

I literally died laughing reading this post and resurrected to post this

 

[oneplane]

Apple's prices have little to do with bill-of-materials costs: they want $200 for an extra 8GB of RAM whether it's bog standard DDR4 SODIMMs for an Intel Mac Mini or a whole new SoC with LPDDR5 chips. Apple are a huge consumer of RAM and SSD and will be able to negotiate the best prices - they don't seem inclined to pass those savings on.

Of course they will not 'pass savings on'. Their pricing is a combination of the standard 2x the BOM + Apple wants to make insane amounts of profit margins.

That said, 200 for 8GB of 'extra RAM' is not actually 'extra RAM'. For on-SoC memory is an extra internal SKU, only for Apple. For RAM modules its the same, but at a higher margin (probably). Each SoC interposer has two chips. You can't commercially make them viable with 1 chip and then 'add another one with a glue stick if someone clicks a button in the shop'. You'd have to rebuild the memory controller and invent dual-channel single-DRAM chips.

While we might think in terms of "there are two SO-DIMM slots, we buy 1 SO-DIMM of 8GB now and add 1 additional SO-DIMM of 8GB later" that is not how it works in their retail products. Regardless of what you order, you always get the same frequency/channels/coding configuration. And all of those have to be Apple SKUs too. And even worse: Apple makes very few actual base devices, they can't internally get a scale benefit. So if you are Dell or HP, your get a special SKU from Kingston for example. Generally, their ValueRAM plus perhaps some configuration changes like only single-loaded modules because you want a single space constraint. But you can use those across all SFF, Laptop, VEP, TV, Printer and network appliances. Apple can use that SO-DIMM in exactly two places: Intel iMacs and Intel Mac minis. That means that every additional configuration is much more expensive to include and to not eat into the budget models to pull in new customers, the base price has to be subsidised by all other prices.

For the SoC-memory packages the same applies, and for their flash storage, the same applies yet again. As a bonus, the flash is even trickier because they made an actually secure in-flight encryption system that requires the equivalent of an A8 SoC as a flash controller. This is how they do T1 and higher Macs (including T2 and M1, and all Apple-SoC iOS devices), because both physical space as well as efficiency (in power, security and access control) this is the best way to do it. Yes, it's not interchangeable with TCG Opal, but Opal is a joke (and a bad one at that) as is LPC-based BitLocker. So while not great for people who want to tinker with their computers, it's great for everyone else.

Of course all of this comes at the cost of choices within the product line, but you still get the choice of using the product line at all. None of this is Apple-specific, you see the exact same thing in pretty much all non-consumer compute platforms. It's just that the lower end consumer compute platforms have been pretty crappy and we've all gotten used to it. Same goes for socketed components, those weren't put in there for the benefit of the consumer, those were in there because it's faster than using a soldering iron and easier to market multiple configurations. Same goes for Intel making the FPU optional back in the day while built-in FPUs were pretty much always cheaper and a better option.

There are two options here: raise the price of the lowest-tier models so they don't have to be subsidised as much buy the other models and lose a few customers because of it (and thus lose a bit of sale volume) -or- make less money by reducing the profit margins. I doubt either will happen, the pricing department (or whatever it is called) probably have all the sales, BOM cost, R&D cost, profit targets, retooling option costs etc. in a big formula and a price rolls out (adjusted for marketability of course) which is what we end up seeing on the sticker. But it's not like that 100 USD OEM extra cost on a bit of memory is 100% profit. Maybe 10% to 20% of it. Much higher than the competition, still not that much higher. But all together, higher than the 'buy it yourself, take on all the risk and responsibility yourself' of the individual components, which really shouldn't be such a surprise as people here seem to think it is.

 

[theorist9]

I’d like to buy a fast 1TB SSD for under 100 bucks.
Could you send me a link please? 😉

I haven't seen any top-end ones for that price. One of the fastest currently out there is the WD SN850 black; it topped most of Anantech's tests last year:

The Western Digital WD Black SN850 Review: A Very Fast PCIe 4.0 SSD

www.anandtech.com

It can be had for $140 for 1 TB, and $240 for 2 TB.

WD_BLACK 1TB SN850 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 7,000 MB/s - WDS100T1X0E

The future of gaming has arrived with the WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD. Long load times are obsolete with PCIe Gen4 technology, reaching up to 7000MB/s read speed and up to 5300MB/s write speed (1TB model). Spend more time playing and less time deleting, storing your latest and favorite games with up ...

www.amazon.com

 

[Dhonk]

while I understand OP, since we all have iCloud, files can be accessed anywhere. That's a better solution. Like how many people needlessly purchase higher iPad/iPhone configurations. I buy the base configuration on all devices and never come close to using it with how efficiently the system prioritizes storage and stores info in iCloud.

 

[Wildkraut]

Here is the thing, yes the prices are outrageous, but people have moved beyond localized storage.

For instance, there is no longer the need for large main drives or secondary drives for TV/movies as you can easily stream those or download the necessary ones.

Need to store documents for quick access? Google Drive, MS OneDrive, DropBox and several other are available, some even with large storage capacities on the cheap; more so if your company has cloud storage.

Media producers? NAS drives are standard for them or large external drives.

Photos and home videos? You can easily hold 10 years of those within 200GB for the average person. I for one have pictures and videos all the way back to 2006 and still use under 100GB to store those.

So in the end, large main drives have lost focus.

True, because Apple sucks at gaming and always will, but a modern AAA Windows Game installs +/-100Gb

 

[jav6454]

True, because Apple sucks at gaming and always will, but a modern AAA Windows Game installs +/-100Gb

No one is talking about games here because the amount of people playing games on iGPUs is quite... small.