Apple charges considerable markups for memory and storage in its Macs. The policy should be revisited, Tae Kim writes Wednesday for Barron’s.
On Tuesday, the technology giant announced several new computers—including updates to its 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops and Mac mini desktop. The professional laptops start at $1,999, while the mini starts at $599.
I initially thought the base $599 cost seemed like a bargain for a desktop Mac with its new M2 processor. Then I went to Apple’s configuration page to customize options, and my assumption fell apart.
The base model for the Mac mini has an anemic eight gigabytes of memory and 256 gigabytes of solid-state storage. Modern data needs require rising amounts of storage for documents, applications, and digital media. Selecting a more reasonable 16 gigabytes of memory costs an additional $200, while choosing one terabyte of hard drive storage is $400 more than the default configuration.
At a certain point, customers may revolt… Sixteen gigabytes of DDR5 memory costs $85 at Microcenter, while a one terabyte Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 drive that is likely faster than the drive in a Mac Mini costs $120. While upgrading to those storage and memory levels would cost $600 with a Mac mini, consumers can buy similar components off the shelf for just $205.
To be clear, you can’t just upgrade Macs with the above parts. Apple locks down most of its computers, meaning all the upgrades need to be made upfront at the time of purchase—directly from Apple.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, Apple marks up storage to a, um… healthy degree. Point granted. However, those charges offset the base configuration price, allowing Apple to offer a lower starting price. It’s a trade off.
But, with memory, Kim has no valid point. Apple Silicon — which is naturally only available via Apple — offers unified memory, not archaic RAM. 8GB of unified memory does not equal 8GB of RAM. Apple Silicon is a system-on-a-chip (SoC). Unified memory is a modern memory technology that can store the data held on an HD or SSD along with the data that RAM would hold and is pooled for access by the GPU and CPU. It offers significant performance and efficiency gains vs. RAM and therefore costs more. The increased cost of “Unified Memory Architecture” (UMA) is well worth it.
FYI:
The maxed out 14-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro costs $6,299.
The maxed out 16-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro costs $6,499.https://t.co/Ud0cAZYtT2#M2Max #MacBookPro #Mac #macOS #Apple #Tech #TechNews #Technology— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) January 17, 2023
The maxed out M2 Pro Mac mini costs $4,499.https://t.co/YXLH6PqiL7#MacMini #Mac #M2Pro #macOS #Apple #Tech #TechNews #Technology
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) January 17, 2023
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