Why Apple lost my sale on new MacBook Pros tonight

[Queen6]

Wow. I never knew this was possible!

As long as the 2014's HW is up for the task no need to fall into Apple's obsolescence trap. Might take a little reading here and on the linked site, however entirely possible to update the Mac to a newer if the latest version of macOS.

Q-6

 

[splifingate]

They specifically told me I couldn't do this.

Yes; quite frustrating.

Back in the day, one could place any amount of down-payment, and finance the rest with (for-example) Barclay's

I purchased new iPhone a few months ago, and I was able to do split-payments with Apple Card Monthly Installments (ACMI).

Unfortunately, split-payments with ACMI 12m/0% is not an option with Macs.

I visited to two physical Apple Stores last week (after not finding a way to do split-payments with ACMI on apple dot com for a new Mac), and all Reps verified that even *they* cannot accomplish such.

Not really a big deal, but it is an interestingly-odd change in methodology.

 

[MapleBeercules]

That's essentially how my chat sales support went down this evening. What a pile of crap. Add this to other frustrations:

8 core, 11 core, 12 core, 14 core, or 16 core CPU? 10 core, 14 core, 18 core, 30 core, or 40 core GPU? 8GB, 16GB, 18GB, 24GB, 36GB, 48GB, 64GB, 96GB, or 128GB RAM? And you can only mix and match certain things. Who the hell can figure this crap out anymore? It's a mess and a disaster trying to figure out what to get anymore. By far the most confused I've been since becoming a Mac user in 2008. And they've blown the die budget on beefing up a GPU that I will barely use unless they finally take Mac gaming seriously.

I want the M3 Pro which would be fine for my intermediate apps. Too bad I can’t get more than 36GB RAM, which I need for multitasking, because I tend to use a lot of apps at a time for my line of work. Right now I'm sitting at 48GB used of 64GB after a heavy multitasking day and probably should reboot soon. Ok then, I guess I'll get the M3 Max? Only 36GB of RAM standard, lol, or if you pay $800 freaking dollars you can get 96GB RAM. WAT. None of this makes sense, and 96 isn't even a multiple of 36. They are nickel and diming the ever living crap out of us right now for real.

BUT WAIT! You can bump it up to the M3 Max with the 16 cores instead of the 14 cores and you get 48GB RAM which also unlocks 64GB and 128GB but you can’t get 96GB. To add confusion to the matter, only some versions of the CPUs have higher memory bandwidth, and sub versions also have lower and higher tiers, which could affect GPU performance because the GPU shares RAM with the CPU over the high speed interconnect. And that’s also another reason I want more RAM is because it’s shared now! I need at least 64GB.

Not to mention this: Apple still starts their “Pro” machines with only 8GB RAM and only 512GB SSD for what is essentially a 2024 model. What a crock. Hell, my 2012 MBP had 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD! And it is nearly 12 years old. That's like getting a computer in 2002 with the same RAM and storage as a computer from 1990. It's wild. And they also didn't include the newly released Thunderbolt 5 (which they used to be on the forefront of supporting) for future proofing. At this point I may as well wait for the M4 and hope that maybe it has OLED but I wouldn't be surprised if you only get OLED with certain chips or probably only the 16" and not the 14". Maybe it will also have a hole punch camera or a Dynamic Island for FaceID as well as Center Stage support and WiFi 7 for future proofing.

Pisses me the hell off. I guess I’m going to wait until 2025 now. I wanted the 0% financing because we suddenly needed a new car this year and new cars are VERY expensive nowadays (always bought used pre-pandemic but they're barely cheaper now and a bad deal), especially for a family sized SUV, so we’re making triple car payments so we can pay that down by the end of next year. When our car is paid off I’ll just buy this outright in 2025 when the M4 should be out and I’ll just go ham with the RAM and storage so I don’t have to mess with this for like 8 freaking years!

The only person your punishing is yourself, your sale wont even show up as a line item at any meeting at apple that matters.

As someone who has had an M series chip now for 2 years, your ram estimates are going to be WAY off, because any x86 cpu needs to copy data from devices (GPU, CPU, HDD etc) SOC dont work that way, saving tons of ram in the process. And I can prove it with results, I have a 16gb windows pc with a 3600 AMD, I have a macgyver DVD image I wanted to extract 2 movies from, using Handbrake in windows it used 12GB of memory to run the encode.

Using the same setting and file on my M2 Macbook pro 8GB, and it never broke 6GB of ram...

and finally, you need to educate yourself on what the M3 is... How it was made and then you will understand WHY apple has these screwed up SKU for sale... Its 100% the manufacturing process and bad yield by TSMC period... when making these processors apple shoots for the best, when the processor is tested and doesnt meet the M3 MAX standard because of bad memory channel, GPU core or even CPU core, the component that isnt working is disabled and the CPU is binned as a lower model lets say M3 Pro, this is the reason you can't just swap memory and ram around, apple wasnt able to produce enough chips to let you pick any configuration.

Enjoy your 12 year old laptop, slow user experience and inefficient work flow all because you don't understand todays technology, I hope the person you're punishing learns their lesson quickly or its going to be a rough few decades to come

video with info on m3 processor production