Apple Now Charging Double for 16 GB of RAM on Its Entry-Level, 13″ MacBook Pro

[Tsing]

Image: Apple



The Apple tax appears to be alive and well. Yesterday, prospective owners of the company’s latest, entry-level 13″ MacBook Pro model discovered that Apple is now charging double for memory upgrades. Previously, customers could upgrade from the standard amount of 8 GB memory (2133 MHz LPDDR3) to 16 GB for $100. That luxury now costs $200.



As MacRumors points out, this is an unusual move because Apple launched this particular model less than a month ago. Critics believe that the company is merely attempting to maximize its profits, as supply chain volatility incited by coronavirus should have leveled out by now.



“Supply chains around the world have been disrupted in recent months due to the current health situation, but China, where most of Apple’s manufacturing partners...

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[Zarathustra]

This is why I'll never buy a computer from any brand unless it has socketed RAM slots, and a convenient little door so they are accessible.

Anything with soldered on RAM or that requires me to remove 27 little screws and open the entire case for basic maintenance falls into the "will never buy" category for me.

All the standard stuff (drives, RAM, WLAN card, battery, etc.) must be upgradeable/replaceable and easily accessible.

This is one of the reasons I am still using my old thick 2012 era Dell Latitude E6430s.

No idea what Id buy if shopping today.

 

[magoo]

MSI makes a pretty serviceable laptop.
My daughter has one I bought her for college, I could easily upgrade about anything
excepting the GPU chip.

 

[Eduardo_Domingot]

This is why I'll never buy a computer from any brand unless it has socketed RAM slots, and a convenient little door so they are accessible.

Anything with soldered on RAM or that requires me to remove 27 little screws and open the entire case for basic maintenance falls into the "will never buy" category for me.

All the standard stuff (drives, RAM, WLAN card, battery, etc.) must be upgradeable/replaceable and easily accessible.

This is one of the reasons I am still using my old thick 2012 era Dell Latitude E6430s.

No idea what Id buy if shopping today.

I don't mind removing the full case bottom but I fully agree on socket-able RAM. All those older 2GB and 4GB machines that were soldered are a complete waste of resources at this point. To be fair most tech ends that way, but it shouldn't be hastened by bad design.

 

[Zarathustra]

I don't mind removing the full case bottom but I fully agree on socket-able RAM. All those older 2GB and 4GB machines that were soldered are a complete waste of resources at this point. To be fair most tech ends that way, but it shouldn't be hastened by bad design.

I remember at time when a few year old PC would have been an obsolete hunk of junk.

Meanwhile my Dell Latitude E6430s, after upping the RAM to 8GB, and replacing the hard drive with a SATA SSD is perfectly usable for what I use laptops for (Basic desktop stuff, backup internet browsing when my desktop is down, travel use, and setting up new switches locally)

Not heavy use by any means, but the little Ivy Bridge i5-3320m is still plenty capable for basic desktop use. Especially since I run Linux on it.

 

[Burticus]

I remember at time when a few year old PC would have been an obsolete hunk of junk.

Meanwhile my Dell Latitude E6430s, after upping the RAM to 8GB, and replacing the hard drive with a SATA SSD is perfectly usable for what I use laptops for (Basic desktop stuff, backup internet browsing when my desktop is down, travel use, and setting up new switches locally)

Not heavy use by any means, but the little Ivy Bridge i5-3320m is still plenty capable for basic desktop use. Especially since I run Linux on it.

Yeah I have a little Asus laptop that could benefit greatly from a ram upgrade, it has 4gb soldered, non replaceable.

 

[Brian_B]

I've owned... 3 Powerbook / Macbook Pros in my life.

The first I bought in '03. I owned it until I got a new one in '08, and it still ran fine when I gave it to my brother. It may still run today, I don't know though.

I ran the '08 until I got a new one in '13, the '08 one still runs today, it's sitting in my office on a shelf, I let kids watch Netflix on it when people have to bring their kids to the office.

I'm still using the '13 one today. It's a bit overdue to be upgraded, but it's still my daily driver and runs ok, although in the past 5 years I do more and more work on my phone (yes, an iPhone).

I'm not going to quibble over an extra $100 for a machine that gets used daily for work for years at a time. Or the Apple Tax, for that matter: $2K+ doesn't make me bat an eye for a tool that I rely on for work. If I were to calculate it out to Cost per Useful Work performed, Apple has done extremely well by me.

The software costs always vastly outstrip hardware costs anyway, and software costs are dwarfed by the cost of time & labor.

Sure, you can get a {Insert Literally Any Other Brand Here} for less, and maybe get just as much work out of it. It's your money, you do as you please with it. I'll buy what I know works for me with mine.

 

[Grimlakin]

Yea once you are in the professional space @Brian_B then yea the costs of your system is mostly in licensing. I'll agree to that very heavily.

Where I work it kind of irks me that laptops we get. Even as an engineer getting the 'high end' laptop it's still kind of a piece. I'm grateful it has SSD but the size is anemic. The overall speed is... passable for doing 90% of what I do. But it does get clunky when I start running visio doing large busy diagrams. Let alone some of the more intense work using Project would just drag it down. (thankfully I don't do PM work... yet. )

I think a laptop should be up gradable, what I don't like about Apple is their Right to repair stance. And it shows in a lot of their design ascetic.

Thankfully though most of the software that used to be exclusive to Mac is now out there in the wild to run on Windows as well.

Laptops are great for professionals that nee to be mobile, and have been a life saver in 2020 quite literally.

Professionally I want a solid good laptop with dedicated graphics for when I travel. Something that could conceivably handle light gaming. (mobile quattro would be welcome.)

In the end though being able to swap out a drive and memory will extend the lifecycle of a consumer device quite easily. Looking for a 'cheap' laptop with minimum memory and a crappy SAS drive is fine... then drop another 300 or so for a good NVME drive and 16gb of ram and it will be a solid performer for anything but gaming. And really... that's fine.

Soldering on memory or storage for devices targeted for a consumer is just predatory sales. And people complaining about the price doubling for ram are going to pay it anyway... because they know the life cycle of the device will be crap if they don't.