Quite the dichotomy. So do you have a modest proposal in mind? Perhaps Apple could be more Swift?
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Will Apple ever increase the base storage for Macs?
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Apple has ~100% market share of computers running macOS. Because switching operating systems is often expensive and inconvenient, that allows them to charge higher than market prices for their hardware.
Apple can keep prices high by offering what other companies don't offer (ARM SoCs, macOS...) In fact, Apple differentiates its products so much from the competition that its products become another "market" (iPhone vs smartphone, Mac vs PC).
The Apple customer and the non-Apple customer value differently what Apple offers. For example, most mac customers value macOS as the price difference between a mac and a similar, cheaper PC, while a PC player views macOS as a drag.
The Apple customer and the non-Apple customer value differently what Apple offers. For example, most mac customers value macOS as the price difference between a mac and a similar, cheaper PC, while a PC player views macOS as a drag.
256 is plenty for many, possibly most, people.
This thread also overlooks that Apple wants people to buy the monthly cloud storage, hence the ability to host your entire desktop, documents etc folders in the cloud.
Cheap monthly storage, constantly backed up, removing the risk of data loss and hassle of setting up a new computer? Sounds far more appealing to the average consumer than remembering to manually connect a physical external drive to run regular backups and then restore time machine on a new device.
(I’m not saying backing up is hard, I’m saying that for the average consumer who doesn’t want to think about their computer, cloud storage is a far more attractive proposition)
This thread also overlooks that Apple wants people to buy the monthly cloud storage, hence the ability to host your entire desktop, documents etc folders in the cloud.
Cheap monthly storage, constantly backed up, removing the risk of data loss and hassle of setting up a new computer? Sounds far more appealing to the average consumer than remembering to manually connect a physical external drive to run regular backups and then restore time machine on a new device.
(I’m not saying backing up is hard, I’m saying that for the average consumer who doesn’t want to think about their computer, cloud storage is a far more attractive proposition)
@JouniS does make a good point. You've probably heard the old adage that you don't buy a Mac for the hardware, you buy it for the OS. If you were OS-agnostic, you could probably get a PC with equivalent performance for significantly less. Apple Silicon changes that equation somewhat, but the fact remains that most Mac users (perhaps including yourself) buy Macs because they strongly prefer MacOS over Windows, and simply don't want to have to use Windows (or Linux). This effectively creates a captive market.
It's kinda like a cable company that only has a 10% US market share, but is the sole provider in your city. Sure, you could move to a different city, but you're not going to do that so, for all intents and purposes, they effectively have a monopoly on who you use for cable.
It also explains why Mac users are so passionate about what Apple does with Mac hardware. If you're a PC user, and don't like what Dell is doing with the XPS, you can buy an LG, HP, MSI, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Microsoft, etc., etc. If you're a Mac user and don't like what Apple did with the MacBook Pro, you can instead buy an...oh, wait.
Of course, Apple is not the only company that has managed to achieve this. If you're doing data science or ML, you may well be locked into CUDA, which means you're locked into NVIDIA hardware.
Having said that, I accept I'm going to have to pay more for Macs, since I view a Mac purchase as not hardware only, but hardware plus software, i.e., I'm paying extra for the much better quality OS.
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Except Your Mileage May Vary as to whether that is a valid comparison.
I'd say it's more like "you can switch to another cable company, but you'd need a new TV and you'd have to get used to a different news presenter" - not as impractical as moving cities would be for some people.
Point is - yes you can switch to a different OS if you really want to. Yes, even if you're running a business with a complex Mac-based workflow - because Apple have been charging premium prices for less-than-premium specs for ever and you've had all that time to gradually migrate. There really isn't much you can do on Mac that you can't do on either Windows or Linux - that world ended sometime in the 1990s - and a lot of the industry-standard applications that were Mac exclusives last century are now cross platform, often with the PC version receiving more active development. Yes, there will be a cost - but it's a finite one and that makes the difference, because it puts a cap on how much price gouging Apple can get away with, whereas the "monopoly cable provider" has a truly captive audience of people who really can't move because of kids in school, friends, relatives, employment, property prices...
Everybody should have an Apple Escape Plan against the day when they finally decide to lock down MacOS iPad style... especially if you're using computers as an essential part of a valuable business.
Specs have never been the only reason for cost.
Apple bundled software like Pages, Numbers etc while MS was not only still charging, but also putting users through the nightmare of registration.
Remember paying for each version of Windows?
The frustrating user experience like Windows not letting you have multiple dialog boxes open, deciding to install updates when it wants and restarting your computer, having to manually install drivers for things like printers?
Apple focuses on the overall experience. It was a revelatory experience when I got my first Mac and it got the printer drivers by itself, for example. Not to mention when it woke from sleep it was actually awake, unlike my previous Windows laptop that woke up very slowly and the resolution was out of whack and it needed a reboot to fix it. I like MacOS, but most of why I use Apple is because it’s just a far, far more pleasant experience with far fewer (almost zero) mental drains from the OS.
Unless things have changed lately, buying a Windows machine always had additional costs over the device price that Macs didn’t. And if the higher prices go into more reliable software that puts user experience first, fine by me.
We don’t pay the companies for the parts. We pay for the overall product. It’s never been a valid argument to say “part X costs Y so we should only be charged Y+a tiny bit more.” That’s what building your own computer is for
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im also thinking to make a new topic about
Will Apple ever increase the base storage for iphones and Macs to 1T?
Will Apple ever increase the base storage for iphones and Macs to 1T?
Remember paying for each version of MacOS?
Remember when most PC sellers bundled MS Works or something with new PCs?
Remember having to buy MS Office - either for Mac or PC - anyway if you needed to exchange documents with 90% of the rest of the world?
...and it was an annoying experience when the printer drivers the Mac "got" were generic CUPS drivers which produced lousy results until I hunted down and manually installed the manufacturers' drivers. Which were then broken by subsequent MacOS updates, turning 2 of my former colour laser printers into landfill. Some of the "better printer experience" with MacOS was a consequence of buying more expensive full-Postscript printers.
Point is, it's very easy to cherry-pick faults in Windows and pretend that MacOS is perfect. It isn't. You're free to prefer MacOS over Windows (so do I) but the reality is that Windows 10 is a perfectly good OS that 90% of the world manage to use productively for everything from Facebook to Finite Element Modelling.
That is indeed the problem. Apple forced a monopoly position on upgrading your computers. Apple took the Apple Store approach.
In the past, people bought the base model and upgraded RAM and SSD’s themselves. The RAM on my 2010 MBP has life time warranty and the Samsung SSD had 5 years warranty. So not only did you saved money, you got better warranty too.
Now, all the components has to come through Apple with a huge Apple tax and crappy 1 year warranty.
People who starts these discussion wants cheaper Macs.
So instead of framing it as the base model needs better hardware. They should just be honest and say they think a Mac with more SSD space and RAM is too expensive.
nope, thankfully I switched to Mac after it had made software updates free.
I don’t think or claim that MacOS is perfect - all I’m saying is the price you pay is not down purely to specs or the markup on parts.
I had to use windows 10 at work. I remember getting to the office at 9 to get some work done before having to catch a train at 10 for a meeting elsewhere. I turned on my laptop and it decided, without asking first, that it was going to install updates. They took up the entire hour I had, and it happened for all 7 of us in my department. Our manager complained to our IT department about how it just wasted 7 man hours, but they couldn’t do anything.
Yes, Windows is an adequate operating system that will do what you need it to, but it’s still the same old Windows in various regards
If they can't do it, it doesn't really exist for them.
A Mac isn't just a sum of its parts where every part is replaceable. It is much more a monolithic object. If you don't like that, you should buy something else.
So my 15” 2010 MacBook Pro isn’t a Mac? It actually has the exact same RAM and SSD’s that Apple was putting in these machines. The only difference is, I bought them from a 3rd party shop for a fraction of the price and with 5+ year warranty included.
”Captive market” is overstating it I think but yes, like all companies, Apple attempts to differentiate their product from its competitors and some (perhaps much) of the value of a Mac is in the software it can run. As @Xiao_Xi points out though, any ability Apple has to raise prices because of exclusivity of MacOS is limited by their need to retain existing customers and attract new ones. I disagree they’re “another market” it’s still a competitive market among differentiated products— customers can and do switch platforms.
This all just further underlines my point that the comment I was replying to isn’t discussing “equivalent products” and so I’m not sure what it has to do with the selection of “base storage”, whether increasing that base would be at zero expense to the customer, or how Apple uses storage to segment their product by customer type and therefore the cost of the storage upgrade is carrying some of the system cost or the fact that the whole topic here is really just a complaint about price not base storage. That is the comment thread they were replying to.
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OK, then let's call it a "partially captive market" or a "technological monopoly"
.People can and do switch platforms, but let's not ignore the substantial barrier that would represent for many long-time MacOS users. Indeed, I'd say it's such a barrier that, if prices increased sufficiently, those users would go to the used market before switching away from MacOS.
Source:
A monopoly is a MARKET STRUCTURE in which only ONE seller sells a product for which there are no close substitutes. A monopoly is A PRICE SETTER, - ppt download
Government MonopolyTechnological Monopoly Natural MonopolyGeographic Monopoly TYPES OF MONOPOLIES When the costs of production are lowest if only one firm provides output. i.e. Water Companies When a firm controls a manufacturing method, invention or a type of technology. i.e. Apple® Patents...
slideplayer.com
I've always taken complaints about base storage and base RAM to be nothing more than complaints about price, since they're addressable by paying more. When people say they want the base storage to be 512 GB, what they really mean is they want the base model, which sells for the base price, to have 512 GB of storage. This is not to trivialize people's understandable desire for Macs to cost less.
The complaints about the relatively low upper limit on available RAM are, by contrast, qualitatively different, even though they can also be addressed by paying more, because in this case you have to pay for capability you don't need. E.g., if you need 128 GB RAM (say, for scientific computations), but only need the processing power of the Pro or the Max, you are still required to buy the Ultra (or the Mac Pro). This should be relaxed somewhat when higher-density RAM chips become available. The M2 has 50% more max RAM than the M1, and I'm guessing the M3 will have double.
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Probably when 512GB size is a better cost effective option for Apple to purchase than 256GB.
Apple must sell the MacBook Pro 16-inch with M1 Ultra chip.OK, then let's call it a "partially captive market" or a "technological monopoly"
People can and do switch platforms, but let's not ignore the substantial barrier that would represent for many long-time MacOS users. Indeed, I'd say it's such a barrier that, if prices increased sufficiently, those users would go to the used market before switching away from MacOS.
View attachment 2018837
Source: A monopoly is a MARKET STRUCTURE in which only ONE seller sells a product for which there are no close substitutes. A monopoly is A PRICE SETTER, - ppt download
Government MonopolyTechnological Monopoly Natural MonopolyGeographic Monopoly TYPES OF MONOPOLIES When the costs of production are lowest if only one firm provides output. i.e. Water Companies When a firm controls a manufacturing method, invention or a type of technology. i.e. Apple® Patents...slideplayer.com
I've always taken complaints about base storage and base RAM to be nothing more than complaints about price, since they're addressable by paying more. When people say they want the base storage to be 512 GB, what they really mean is they want the base model, which sells for the base price, to have 512 GB of storage. This is not to trivialize people's understandable desire for Macs to cost less.
The complaints about the relatively low upper limit on available RAM are, by contrast, qualitatively different, even though they can also be addressed by paying more, because in this case you have to pay for capability you don't need. E.g., if you need 128 GB RAM (say, for scientific computations), but only need the processing power of the Pro or the Max, you are still required to buy the Ultra (or the Mac Pro). This should be relaxed somewhat when higher-density RAM chips become available. The M2 has 50% more max RAM than the M1, and I'm guessing the M3 will have double.
Otherwise we will probably need to wait 10 years until the MAX chip will be as strong as the Ultra chip is now.
Don't mind the German prices (WITH Tax), but i found this very interesting:
Macbook Air 2018: 1349€, 128gb/8gb. (1599€ i believe for 256gb SSD)
Macbook Air 2019: 1249€, 128gb/8gb. (1499€ i believe for 256gb SSD)
Macbook Air 2020: 1199€, 256gb/8gb.
Or in USD:
2018: $1199 ($1399 for 256gb)
2019: $1099 ($1299 for 256gb)
2020: $999 for 256gb
Not only did they double the Storage in 2020, but they also decreased the Price even further
The 2020 model price is for the Early 2020 Intel model, as well as the Late 2020 M1.
With the price increase of the M2 Macbook Air, which did seem disappointing, they simply matched the base Macbook Air Price, they had 4 years ago.
And i'm sure, due to inflation, both Dollar and Euro are worth less today, than they were 2018.
@ Thread: Of course they will. Idk if it's in 2 years, or 7. Or 10.
But they will. There is no logical reason not to believe that. Same, as when they increased the base from 128 to 256.
Apple probably has alot of these smaller storage Chips laying around, and also are known for beeing a bit shy when it comes to storage/Ram.
As Demands for Storage will change over the Years, they will also move to a higher Tier.
At some point, 512gb will be the smallest SSD you can get in any Mac. Because at some point, the manufacturing of 512gb SSDs will be cheaper (or not more expensive) than 256gb Chips.
Just as you won't find any 2gb DDR5 DIMM Sticks anymore.
Though, the "increase in Storage demand(both storage AND Ram)" in 2012 - 2022 didn't increase nearly as much, as back in 2002 - 2012. 8 gb Ram today aren't really much worse than 8 years ago.
Still, i 100% believe, at some point, 512/16gb will become the new Base.
No - what is “astonishing” is how many Apple users consider themselves experts on what configuration Apple should use. Apple Computer became the most valuable company in the world (or close) by NOT listening to the advice of many of it’s complaining customers with no known tech experience.
Harsh but probably fair. Those other companies that throw in stacks of storage are almost always competing on specs, so the extra is necessary even if the customers don’t use it.
Apple doesn’t compete on specs, and is aware that most people don’t touch the upper limits of their hard drive, and now cloud storage takes the brunt of it, many music collections have been removed off the hard drive thanks to streaming services, and a lot of power users prefer to just use external hard drives. There’s not a pressing need to double the base storage