Do you think that Apple's next line of Macs will be proportionately more expensive?

[leman]

I think that our 2014 MBPs were less than $2,400. Maybe $2,200 or less. I recall paying less than $2,000 for them with the educational discount.

You are probably talking abut the Iris Pro models, without the dGPU. They started at $1999 in the USA. The dGPU models were $2499 or even more back then, so actually more expensive than now.

The i9 is the biggest factor that I could see in getting the 16 price down. The GPU, second. It is possible that AMD might push Intel's prices down but I doubt it at this point. There are companies, including AAPL, where they would just stick with Intel.

That's exactly the thing. Those third-party CPUs and GPUs are expensive, and they require valuable logic board space for wiring and support components. I think this is the beauty of Apple Silicon — Apple could afford making much more complex chips that cost three to four times more to develop and manufacture, and still have a better profit than buying them from third party. Especially when you consider the savings from supporting components...

 

[theSeb]

My 2008 MBP 17 was $2,800 I think and it was the base model. Our 2007 MBP 15s were about $2,400 I think. So prices have gone down on the base models. A lot of components are cheaper too.

This is a fair point. I've forgotten about the 2008 MacBook Airs too

 

[pshufd]

You are probably talking abut the Iris Pro models, without the dGPU. They started at $1999 in the USA. The dGPU models were $2499 or even more back then, so actually more expensive than now.

That's exactly the thing. Those third-party CPUs and GPUs are expensive, and they require valuable logic board space for wiring and support components. I think this is the beauty of Apple Silicon — Apple could afford making much more complex chips that cost three to four times more to develop and manufacture, and still have a better profit than buying them from third party. Especially when you consider the savings from supporting components...

Yup. We have 2 2014 MacBook Pros without dGPU. They are still both in use daily.

Something else about Apple making their own chips - they reserve all of the leading edge and a good chunk of leading edge -1 which squeezes out other companies from making their chips.

 

[jerryk]

That's exactly the thing. Those third-party CPUs and GPUs are expensive, and they require valuable logic board space for wiring and support components. I think this is the beauty of Apple Silicon — Apple could afford making much more complex chips that cost three to four times more to develop and manufacture, and still have a better profit than buying them from third party. Especially when you consider the savings from supporting components...

The other thing is that Apple can make a SOC/SOM that is unique to the way Apple does things and supports solely Apple's design decisions. Intel/Nvidia/AMD need to keep many customers, perhaps with competing requirements, happy.

 

[thenewperson]

You are probably talking abut the Iris Pro models, without the dGPU. They started at $1999 in the USA. The dGPU models were $2499 or even more back then, so actually more expensive than now.

Had to go to archive.org to verify and it looks like you're right. It ended as 1999 (no dGPU; perfect version) and 2499 (dGPU). The 13" also had a 1299/1499/1799 grouping. No 1999 tho.

Looks like the 2199 version @pshufd is remembering is the 2013 entry 15" model which also had a dGPU. Also the top end model was 2599 at the time, with the same dGPU.

So things are a bit more complex with the MBP right now, but looking back it really is more in-line with previous pricing than I thought.