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Apple Laptop Upgrades Costing 200% More Than Dells
An anonymous reader writes "C|net is highlighting the astonishing cost of Apple laptop hardware upgrades, compared to Dell — in some instances, Apple is charging 200% more for upgraded components, such as memory and hard disks. Either there's a serious difference in the quality of components being used, or Apple is quite literally ripping off those who aren't able to upgrade hardware themselves."
Top end vendor charges more for service than mass-market vendor.
Film at 11.
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Doesn't matter if it's trendy clothing, a trendy car or anything else, it's going to be more expensive if it's the 'cool' thing to do.
I vote that they are using higher quality then the sub par commodity dell components, but still charging more then they should because they can.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Everything you said makes logical sense, except for "supply and demand" at the end. You just got done saying that the demand is low!
my personal experience is that the Apple hardware is far superior and requires less upgrades and that is why the cost is much more. Supply and Demand.
Drink much kool aid?
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
I get my oil changed at the dealer for various reasons:
1. I don't know how to change my own
2. I prefer to use the dealer since they can do warranty replacement on the spot if something is broken
Yes, I pay probably twice as much, and I like it. Kinda seems like the same situation here.
I like Apple. I've got my MacBook Pro next to me. At home we have another MBP, a MacBook, and an iMac. In the past we've owned numerous other Macs (all the way back to an LC II).
So let me say... duh. It is very well known that Apple does this. Read any thread on Macs here on /. Someone says Macs are great computers. Someone replies "but look what they charge for RAM!". The someone else says "well yeah, Apple is like that, buy the RAM separately."
This OLD. This is STALE. This is well known by anyone who watches this stuff. It's stupid, but Apple is allowed to price gouge if they want. This is just some "journalist" writing about a "discovery" to get page-views.
Just don't buy your upgrades from Apple.
And don't give this guy the hits he doesn't deserve.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Cut him some slack. He also said that "Apple is quite literally ripping off those who aren't able to upgrade hardware themselves" (emphasis mine) when this is almost certainly not the literal meaning of ripping off.
A fool and his money are easily parted.
The thing is not about the 'dealer' generically overcharging. It's about Apple overcharging more than other vendors overcharging. All of them charge more for options for the general philosophy you hold justifying it, but overcharging more than a comparable competitor....
BTW, I did have the dealer change my oil during warranty because they sent me coupons for free oil changes for the duration of my warranty, but in the end, I find it hard to see how an oil change could break anything else, so I do it myself now that it is out of warranty.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Sometimes (the last two times) I change my own [automobiles'] oil. Sometimes I don't. The point is whether or not I feel capable or up to it and whether or not the money and time I spend is worth more or less than the money.
Personally, I wouldn't dream of paying someone to work on my computers. But that's just me... and probably most everyone here has similar sentiments. HOWEVER, the masses think of computers as difficult, scary and complicated beasts and would rather pay. If they bought an Apple, they are no stranger to the belief that they pay more but are getting more. While the latter is debatable, that's not the point. The point is that they are more than likely very comfortable with paying whatever price they end up paying or else they would seek less expensive alternatives... and there *are* alternatives. This is a classic "what the market will bear" capitalism. Leave it alone.
Huh? We're not talking about the base hardware here. We're talking about the upgraded components you can get. Those components are the same ones you can buy on pricewatch or anywhere else. Anyone who is buying RAM or HDs from the Apple store is getting completely ripped off.
And what does supply and demand have anything to do with it? Trust me, Apple has plenty of computers to sell to anyone who wants one.
I've been an Apple user for quite some time, and quite frankly, this is not news. This has always been the case.
Any time I configure a machine for myself, or help someone configure their machine, I always set any Apple accessories to the minimum, then budget in an order from Newegg, OWC, etc, for any RAM and HD expansion needed.
On one hand, yeah it sucks, however many of the newer laptops, especially the Macbook (not pro) line have made it very easy to swap out RAM and HDs, so it really isn't that much of an issue. The one place that you really have no option is if you want to upgrade the CPU.
Is it a money grab from Apple for those who don't know better/are timid of their own upgrades/don't care? Does it really matter? Quite frankly if you don't research before buying anything you are probably going to get taken. This also increases the market for 3rd party upgrade retailers from Mac users who are in the know.
I know there is this stigma that Mac users only care about looking cool and being clueless, however many of the Mac/Apple users I know do not really fit into that niche at all. Many of us chose the machines we have because they fulfill the needs we have, can run the software we desire, and at a price point we are happy with. Most of us have machine that look a bit worse for the wear due to being used day in and day out both in offices and on-site. Just because Apple marketing likes to play the 'cool' person card whenever possible to grow brand recognition, does not mean that there are not serious professionals out there using the platform for serious work.
Shawn's Tech Articles
"Can you believe it? When I go to the local steakhouse, they charge me more than twice what the meat itself actually cost! I can grill porterhouses for the whole family for half of the cost of going to the restaurant, and then there's the cost of gas! WTF! Restaurants suck!"
And yet you keep going to them.
Geek squad, car mechanics, roomba accessories, batteries for power tools, printer ink cartridges, etc... the list is long of transactions that grossly favor the seller. This is business. Things are not priced according to their material cost, they are priced based on their market value. They cost what they are worth to the target market.
You could sit all day making little beaded merkins with fur trim and I won't pay you a damned cent because I don't want your damned merkins. You get paid what you're worth. Apple gets paid what their products are worth on the market. They have done the math and figured that they make more money by charging X dollars and losing a few customers than charging X to more customers.
I hate it too and when I do buy apple hardware I downgrade the memory as far as I can in order to save money by buying it elsewhere.
Think of it this way: Buying RAM at newegg or wherever is cheaper than buying it from apple, but it's also cheaper than buying it from dell. So skipping the RAM from both companies saves you money. Right?
Maybe you feel like people are getting ripped off, but that's just because you're sensitive to this area of the market. I think people are getting ripped off whenever they pay a premium for something made out of 'aircraft grade aluminum' or titanium or whatever. I work with those materials all the time and the phrase 'aircraft grade aluminum' is as useless as saying mil-spec or heavy duty. There are mil-specs for shitty things, too. 'Heavy duty' batteries are among the worst. And aircraft aluminum ranges in strength from steel down to something you can rip with your hands.
So screw people who can't open the memory access panel on their computers. Apple has free and detailed instructions on how to do that for all of their hardware. If you're paying that much for RAM, then you're also probably the kind of person who pays $45 for someone to do their oil change or $6 for someone to make their coffee for them.
Again: Market value.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Apple has been doing this all the way back to the original Macintoshes.
There's a reason that, when Apple licensed people to sell clones, Apple's business went to the clone makers.
Here at work, that surcharge for Apple to install something in the first place, test it, and cover it with their warranty (so I don't have to prove that a failure is not my fault before sending it back) still isn't as much as it costs for me or the local IT guy to install it and fix it when it fails.
Apple isn't selling upgrades to everyone, just the folks whose time is worth too much money. Everyone else can upgrade their machines themselves. This has the added benefit of letting them stock mostly a few baseline models in their stores and distribution channels.
It's been this way for effectively forever. Nothing to see here, get off of my lawn.
Your NFCG is about 10 times more competent with a PC or PC laptop than with an Apple. Most of them would be lost if you asked them to upgrade your MacBook. You can pay the NFCG now and pay extra to fix their mistakes later or you can pay Apple service now.
Adding memory or replacing the hard drive on a MacBook is trivial (as long as you have a size 0 phillips screwdriver). Anyone who can hold a screwdriver and is not legally blind can do it.
How is this news? Everyone knows that the Apple way of solving problems is to throw lots and lots of money at it.
Like the saying goes, if you have to ask how much it costs...
BTW, nice attempt at that "carefully hand crafted computer, made by artisans who trained for decades" canard. Apple is as mass produced as every other product out there (exploding batteries, anyone?). What IS different is that Apple manages to get at least 50% profit out of everything they make.
So hey, enjoy your "Apple Tax". Overpaying $1000 (or more, factoring in the life of the computer) is obviously way preferable to paying $30 for a Windows license. Riiiight...
I like Apple computers. Sadly, I also prefer to get the best bang for my buck. I don't change my own oil, but at the same time I do fix my own appliances, repair and build my own computers, and a number of other do-it-yourself type things because frankly, my family of five is single-income and I'm not exactly getting rich from what I do. Therefore, while I wouldn't mind owning a Mac, I just can't bring myself to part with the cash, even knowing that I could purchase and install upgrades myself without too much hassle. The system I built for myself for around $950 would easily be around $2500-$3000 if purchased from Apple, and I just don't have a few grand lying around (nor do I want that kind of credit card debt).
It has always been thus (at least since Intel Macs came around), and well known in the Apple aftermarket community, too. Buy your RAM in the aftermarket - but please get the good stuff (it's still much cheaper than from Apple.)
The remarkable thing is the bargain they give on the base MacPro system - last time I priced equivalent 8 core Linux boxes, you'd have to pay 25% more to get equivalent hardware with no OS installed.
Caveat emptor - shop wisely and save some money. And, if you're worried about your AppleCare warranty, just reconfigure yourself back to 100% factory parts before making the service call.
It's also a convenience charge, similar to how getting an umbrella at wal-mart is cheaper than getting the same umbrella at a golf course during a tournament once it starts raining.
stuff |
Why? Because people are willing to pay it. If they weren't, then they would lower their prices until they were.
It has nothing to do with the technology or anything else other than a business decision, aimed at making more money.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I agree with the other poster. If it takes you 40 minutes to do a hard drive in a MacBook Pro, unless you're a consumer, you have no business being paid to swap drives in a MacBook Pro.
Those machines are also EASIER than the old 15" PowerBook, where one would have to more artfully bend the metal clips above the optical drive back into place before reinstalling the top case. That procedure was the indicator of a tech's experience on Macs.
And if you strip screws on a MacBook Pro, you need to throw your cheap Chinese 99c store tools away and buy some Wiha drivers (or another quality set of tools.)
Because even as someone who works on those models, I really hate opening the glass/aluminum iMac models. Suction cups and dust rollers bug the crap out of me.
I would not, however, ever pay Apple for RAM upgrades. EVER. Unless I hit the lottery and didn't care about the extra $$$.
Just because it might have the "duh" factor around here, that doesn't mean that Cnet's target audience is nearly as tech savvy as the rest of us. Besides, it gives us a reason to bitch about something.
When Apple sells you upgrade hardware, they guarantee the upgrade hardware you bought works with the hardware you have. This guarantee places them at legal liability; You can sue them if it ends up being broken and they refuse to fix it. If you go buy RAM from the big-box store they do not guarantee it will work in your computer. Apple does. You are paying for their legal liability if the memory ends up being out-of-spec or something.
You could say the same thing about IBM selling parts for zSeries machines, or Sun and Sun parts. This is not uncommon in the workstation and higher markets. It is uncommon for PCs, and since the average slashbot has never seen anything other than PCs, they don't understand it.
Besides that, if the price is too high, don't buy it. There is no grounds on which to demonize Apple for charging what the market will bear. Apple (or Dell, or anyone else) is under no obligation to provide you a computer at whatever price you believe to be reasonable. You are not entitled to a Macintosh. (Insert California government joke here.) They charge what they want, and you pay them if you are willing. If you don't want to pay Apple's premium, don't pay it. If there are not enough buyers willing to pay the prices Apple sets, they will eventually be forced to lower their prices or go out of business. This is like me demanding IBM sell me a 2066 for $1500 because "disks are disks and it's just a big PC anyway, and I could build one off Newegg for $700"
Apple used to be a "QUALITY" vendor.
You paid more for the hard drives, and my friend's vintage first generation g4 still boots up perfectly on its original hard drive despite being continuously on for its entire life.
You paid through the nose for the monitor, but it had a 30% greater pixel density and better color fidelity.
Now they're utterly shitty tn panels, and nobody is stepping in to fill in this market vacuum.
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This OLD. This is STALE. This is well known by anyone who watches this stuff.
The point of the article could be to get more people to watch this stuff.
This isn't news. You get the same results any time you're buying from a software company with a hardware sales model, where the cost of the software is bundled into the hardware. It's the same if you're buying from Cisco, Network Appliance, or anyone else.
If OS X is worth an extra 40% for the base hardware, plus whatever the markup is for bundled upgrades, then you pay the extra for it. If it's not, then you don't. If you're buying Mac hardware to run Windows or Linux, well, you're an oddball minority at best.
A "rip-off" is unwitting theft or cheating. To "rip-off" someone, as a verb, is to steal from, hoodwink, or otherwise cheat someone else who is not privy to what is happening before the fact.
In this case, it is obvious that anyone doing their casual homework can figure out they are paying a premium for the same hardware on an Apple machine vs. a Dell or HP. This is hardly a "rip-off." It is simply the market at work.
Apparently, Apple feels that their customers are willing to pay that premium. They are charging what the market will bear. That's not a "rip-off."
An example of the latter would be a "switcheroo," substituting inferior components for what was advertised, for instance.
NOTE: I DO NOT OWN OR USE APPLE'S COMPUTER PRODUCTS; I OWN ONE 80GB IPOD "CLASSIC, AND THAT'S IT. I JUST LIKE PRECISE LANGUAGE.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Who cares what it costs or what the maintenance is? What you should be concerned about is Total Cost of Ownership. I have found Apple computers more expensive up front, with almost no hardware maintenance, little software maintenance, and greater longevity. This has equated to a lower TCO vs. WinTel computers... nrk
"By paying extra, we get to avoid the ignorant twit who thinks that computer brands are a religion."
Err... you're saying you avoid that by going *to* the Apple store?
I hate printers.
and it is one of the reason that Apple was crushed by the PC back in the day. Apple was simply too damn greedy. No, they don't market to the tech savy, but then neither does Dell. Dell built their business on value and good customer service (now, not so much).
The point is that if your mac was expandable (rarely were they upgradeable), you paid through the nose, hence the jokes about "Appletax". Now a whole new generation can discover it.
And that is why Apple made their money off the iPod in this century.
Apple doesn't forbid you from providing your own upgrades. Anyone that has been around Macs for more than a few months knows where to order the exact memory sticks that they use for each model, at a fraction of the cost.
The 3GB upgrade for my Mac Book Pro was $99 including shipping, Apple wanted $300 or so for the upgrade. This is not an equivalent upgrade, this is the exact memory stick model that Apple was trying to sell me. And it is a customer allowed upgrade, so it does not affect my warranty coverage.
In the past it was not possible to upgrade the hard drives for Apple laptops, nowadays the cases are designed so the hard disk is easy to remove.
It is not a ripoff, Apple is not in the business of selling at cut throat margins by selling volume. They are in the business of selling premium items at a steep markup. It is just one of thousands of businesses in this country that operates the same way.
Go to your local Target and see how some 19" HDTVs are $400 while others cost twice as much. Price can't be the only criteria. There's a reason why a Sony HDTV costs a hell of a lot more than an Olevia.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
no they dont. the local Car audio shop charges the same price for a specific stereo to be installed in a car.
Right, which is analogous to saying that the local computer shop will charge the same to upgrade an Apple or a Dell.
now at the dealer is a different story. only fools get work or upgrades at the dealer.
Which was my whole point. Buying RAM from Apple is like buying a CD changer from BMW. It's not going to be better than what you could get from a local audio shop, and is almost guaranteed to cost you a lot more.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think the point most people are missing is that, sure it is cheaper to buy from an alternate reseller and install yourself, however the average Joe, isn't able to install himself. The other thing is that you are paying for the labor of a professional to install the item, as well as (in this case) the apple care provided with the item. I have a feeling that apple would frown at opening a computer and seeing 3rd party ram. Another note is that if you take apple.com and dell.com and compare computers, apple's are actually cheaper for what you get. Granted you need to compare EXACT components. Dell likes to cut corners on features most people fail to look for... such as cache on the processor. Go ahead, try it. The problem most people think to be apple being so overpriced is a misconception, really they just don't carry a low end model, they only go down to upper mid-range.
The comment gets to the core of the entire issue. Apple charges 200% more for the same components because their customers want to pay more. In an extremely wealthy society there is always a group of people who have much more money than the norm, and it is very important to these people that they are able to differentiate themselves from the rest of the population through a series of 'class markers'.
These are items that only they buy because they are much more expensive than similar items available for the general population. Yes these items are better quality, but the degree of higher price for better quality is much greater than would be justified by the cost of the components. So the wealthy aren't selecting these brand items solely for better quality. They are doing it to identify themselves to the other members of their class.
There are many companies that have always positioned themselves into this market niche. But Apple is one of the few companies that continues to insist that their excessively high prices are only a direct result of their 'commitment to high quality'. It is ironic that they have been successful at marketing their 'cool factor' by selling commodity components at such a large premium since the entire concept of 'coolness' in the USA is a set of behaviors and lifestyles designed to give dignity to people with little or no money.
The entertainment industry has been most successful at marketing this contradiction. Apple is the first technology company to do so as well. Even to the point of having their business revolve around a prima-donna rock star personality.
I've detected this about Apple ever since the introduction of the Macintosh, when this kind of mentality started at Apple. I recommend watching them for amusement, but don't buy their products even second-hand. Buy clones (for personal stereos) or functional equivalents (for personal computers).
Despite all their grandiose advertisements, Apple has always existed for only one reason: to transfer wealth from the wealthy (who need to have a non-proletariat PC) to Steve Jobs' bank account.
...and those are the people who are getting fleeced because they don't know how to swap out some computer parts.
I'm not sure if the newer macbooks are better, but it was a HUGE pain to replace the hard drives in the old iBooks. I suspect there are quite a few who know how to do it, but would rather pay more for someone else to do it for them.
Adding memory or replacing the hard drive on a MacBook is trivial (as long as you have a size 0 phillips screwdriver). Anyone who can hold a screwdriver and is not legally blind can do it.
The whole point is that a Mac User will never have a Phillips or Sony or even a Toshiba screwdriver. If there is no Apple screwdriver to do the job, the hard drive is irreplaceable as far as the Mac User is concerned.
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Apparently you've never purchased a PC from a major vendor like Compaq or DELL. I can tell you from personal experience that the price difference dwindles quickly once you go past the bare bones machine prices seen in ads.
I don't have a problem with folks choosing something else because of Apple's pricing. That's the beauty of capitalism. Vote with your wallet.
I do take issue with those same folks demanding that Apple should be making their OS available to them because they want OS X, but want an ultra-cheap PC hardware solution. Apple chooses not to and that is their prerogative. The monopolist arguments others have made are just disconnected from reality.
The laptop RAM issue sounds a bit red herring. Apple has been using standard RAM for quite some time and in most cases, the RAM has been user upgradeable.