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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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They'll continue selling these, purely because of two reasons:
Practically all of us know that the difference between these memory modules is pocket change, when mass produced like this, but for those extra couple cents, they get an extra 100$ from you
Thanks to the modern web, web browsing of one of the most RAM intensive tasks. Add a few Electron based apps and you're in hell.
For browsing the web 4 GB is enough, unless you do some multitasking. Still I wouldn't buy a computer with less than 8 GB of RAM nowadays.
Multitasking = more than one tab and the background tabs not immediately put to sleep.
This is called capturing consumer surplus through segmentation. There's a pretty good explanation of it here.
The long and short of it is that some people are just perfectly fine spending more money on a macbook, and apple wants to give them a good enough excuse to do so.
I think it's mostly to have a price tag that doesn't immediately turn off people.
Yes, Apple is expensive in general, however people are generally fine with paying a premium. But if they'd come at you immediately with the full price for a reasonably specced machine, it would still turn many people away.
Instead they fix you on with a high, but still somewhat reasonable price and then upsell you in steps for everything. Like sure you could buy the 128gb iPhone pro, but then the storage will fill up fast with photos and videos. A great camera system being the huge selling point of the device.
On a side note I actually find the 256gb non upgradeable/replaceable ssd much more egregious, than the 8gb RAM.
As you say, for people with basic needs (and that is actually a quite large group), it is enough for daily use. Those people just browse the Web, view photos and write short documents in word. However especially if they have an iPhone and take lots of picture/videos, they will still fill up that storage fast. And then it gets really frustrating, unless you maybe pay even more to outsource everything to the icloud and pay monthly.
The low ram and storage are to drive you up 2 tiers.
By the time you go "256gb isn't enough storage, so I'll pay 10% more for something useable", you are pretty much at the stage of "if I'm spending this much, I might as well get the ram upgrade as well". And suddenly you are paying $500 more.
Exactly my point. Not sure if there is a better term, but in some way it is a bait-and-switch tactic.
With the "starting at" sticker price of the lowest configuration they get you into the mindset of wanting (and being able to afford) their premium device. And then once you are mentally commited they it's the choice between spending even more or compromising on a premium device (where you really should have to).
That's just the reality we're in now. All components will eventually ship as a single bundle, and there's nothing you'd be able to do. Obviously there are speed and latency benefits to this, but it comes at a cost of a colossal amount of e-waste with hardcoded serial numbers. This only works in their favor, because the groups of people you've described will just return to the shop, and buy a more expensive model
An extra $100 takes you from 8GB to 64GB on a PC if you install it yourself.
If you have a laptop that supports that, yeah. Which you should, but definitely isn't always true.
Used to be true on Macs...good ol' days
That seems too cheap.
not by much; here in central europe a 2 module 64gb kit costs about 125€ (~135$ incl. VAT). not the greatest timings, but very much faster than the swapfile.
I do wish Apple had dimm slots for “slow” ram just to get the numbers up. IMO the 8GB model isn’t a serious offer and is to be ignored by anyone who tells the difference. That said, If I had only $200 for upgrades on a Mac I’d spend it on ssd. I had a 32/512 MacBook and I wish I’d paid up for 1TB. 16/1TB would’ve been more useful.
When they charge many $100s for an extra 8gb the value of the bare minimum 8gb doesn't look so terrible (if only comparing to Apple). Especially considering the performance of swap on a fast SSD.