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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."
Also, compared to most smaller market players, both Apple and Dell are outrageously overpriced in this regard.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I think it's a little more than that. Apple is manufacturing their own "high end" status. They are marking up this service and the parts, when comparable (if not identical haven't RFTA) parts and labor are much more cheap elsewhere. It a common gripe with Apple, they leverage their software to push their price inflated hardware. To me that sounds a lot like what antitrust is designed to thwart. But hey it's not like they did something awful like preloaded a media player into their OS or something.
I once had a friend of mine explain to me he didn't have internet because it would cost too much to have an airport card installed on his precious Mac. He even had Wi-Fi in his apartment. That's just sad.
In other news, people pay for service. Seriously, I don't know many places at all that charge less than $40-50 min for a lot of simple things like putting in a stick of RAM. I do charge less - which most private clients comment on - but I only do that when I have the time to bother.
You are paying for the service. It's not a new thing. Have a look at internet hosting providers, where many will charge you an extra $60/month for an extra gig stick of RAM, or $600 outright to have it installed.
As for the quality of components, it's well known that Dell - and many others - use shit components. The last few Dell's I serviced (and I avoid them if at all possible now) had cheap, no-name brand BS boards, bargain-basement RAM, and feather-light cruddy PSU's. On top of this, oft-times stock components (floppy drives, etc) would not work in them, due to special case-configurations (such as the drive-screws being on top instead of bottom) that worked only with Dell components. The dell components were still genero-brand crap, but higher priced and altered enough that they were the only ones that fit.
So is it ripping off customers? Well, they're definitely paying more. But I'd consider a long-lasting, reliable PC at $1500+ a deal compared to a $500 unit that runs like crap and may decide to die (and take my data with it) anytime.
I haven't disassembled any of the newer macs in awhile though, but why not buy the parts and - if you don't want to pay Apple to install them - get a local geek to do the job?
This is not about some argument about which OS is better Microsoft of OS X or linux (cause linux clearly wins hands down), but come on Apple...
:P
But in all other respects, you are so not legit.
Really? Check out ram upgrades on their site - about 100 dollars / gig. On newegg or tiger direct for the same crucial ram, it's about 20 dollars / gig (sometimes less).
So absurd... get a grip apple, you're not that cool. Your advertisements are
I bought a MAC mini a few months back at the local MAC store. I asked if there were any spare DIMM slots so I could increase the memory. The answer was "no, and besides you have to do memory upgrades through us or else you void your warranty". Well, I told him I was able to install the memory myself and would do so rather than pay their high prices. As we closed the sale he asked me if I wanted to buy the extended warranty. I said "I just told you I am going to void the warranty as soon as I get it home ... why would I buy the extended warranty?"
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I upgraded the hard drive and memory on my MacBook Pro and had no problems with getting my machine serviced by AppleCare on two occasions. And those were full logic board replacements, not cursory looks at the battery or anything.
(It was the first-gen MacBook Pro. Lots of issues with those, although Apple did take care of me.)
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Fashionable vendor charges more for service than mass-market vendor.
Film at 11.
There fixed it for you :)
Apple computers have their uses to professionals, but to the average Joe on the street it's just a more fashionable (and perhaps reliable) computer - and those are the people who are getting fleeced because they don't know how to swap out some computer parts.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
the only thing Apple has over other vendors is better customer service: not technology.
And OS X. Compare Vista to OS X and you see that OS X wins in everything over Vista. Now, it is debatable if OS X is worth it, or if it is better then Linux, but compare Vista to OS X and you see that Apple has better technology then the average box you buy at a large chain of brick-and-mortar stores.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Don't you need a Torx #8 to get the drive off its sled?
Would be nice to have, but if you don't have one, then you don't need it :-)
No, you'd use superduper to just bitcopy the entire volume. It's free. It's fast. It just works. (yes, I had to add that last part)
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
It is antitrust if I cannot set up a business upgrading Apple hardware and charging a lower fee than they charge without them punishing my customers by voiding the warranty or pursuing me for advertising "Apple Upgrade Services"
I hate printers.
Probably true. I've heard that from others too.
I've also heard quite the opposite, and my own experience bears out that Apple tends to be more reliable. My wife's Powerbook is more than eight years old and has never needed repair (though it is well-used); my own PowerBook didn't need repair until year 3, and then only after being dropped for the fifth time. Meanwhile, I have several friends with Dell laptops who have gone through multiple service iterations in the first year, some quite extreme (like having a motherboard replaced TWICE).
As they say: YMMV.
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Can anyone besides me remember back when IBM clones took off while Apple was charging 100% markup? Jobs/Apple has become what is used to condemn. A bloated company focused on ringing money from it's customers.
Yes, because one is better than the other. The article is apparently talking about identical upgrades. You yourself mentioned that you could get the *exact* same memory stick for 3x less than what Apple wanted to sell it for. It's not like Apple is selling a better product for a higher price. They're selling the SAME product for a rip-off price.
I agree that it's not news that Apple is severely overpriced. That's been the case since... well, forever, I think. I think their prices are unconscionable. It's amusing, though, that many Slashdotters seem to forgive this sickening level abuse just because they're the hip company.
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.
You'd be surprised what can go wrong from a simple oil change. Back in high school I worked as a mechanic. I wasn't ASE trained, so all I was able to do were oil changes and tires.
Check out the following things one of the mechanics did at the garage (it wasn't me):
The first thing is to set it up on the lift, and you have to know where to do it, on the pinch weld or on a support part of the frame, etc. A minivan came in for a simple oil change. So this guy set it up totally wrong on the lift, it wasn't supported by the frame, but by the outer chassis, which got totally warped as he lifted the car by that. He got fired for that move, but only because that was his third royal screw up in 3 days.
The screw up this guy made before that was also from an oil change. The guy drained the transmission fluid, put in 4 quarts of oil, never checked the dipstick. (This is ridiculous because you never just assume it's 4 quarts, you always check the dipstick for the proper fill level). The owner drove the car a little ways down the road, then called from a pay phone to say his car stopped working. Brilliant. I have no idea if the transmission was damaged from running empty.
The screw-up prior to that, a car hood's hydraulic prop rod wasn't holding the hood up, so he wedged his hammer in there to hold it. When he was done, he just slammed the hood shut without removing the hammer, causing major hood damage.
I myself went to change the oil on a car where the drain pan threads for the plug were totally stripped, and the previous garage that did the oil change used sealant to keep the oil from leaking out. Luckily we were able to retap the threaded hole and put in a new drainpan plug, which worked nicely.
I've also seen cars where the previous oil change mechanic put installed an entirely-wrong oil filter, possibly damaging the threaded stud that it screws into. Putting in the wrong filter can mess up oil pressure levels and other problems.
So yes, anything can go wrong from simple oil changes.
Another point is regarding going to a general garage versus a specialist that works only one one make. If a garage is just working on Hondas or Fords, they're much less likely to screw up setting it up on the lift, or they'll know that when you replace a Honda's timing belt you always replace the water pump that is right there. Or they'll know that an obscure gasket on 2003 Ford Taurus fails quite easily (I'm making this example entirely up), so they don't need to waste time tracking down the problem, etc.
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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.
I'm reasonably certain that Apple has never manufactured hard drives. If you bought a hard drive from an Apple store, chances are good you could have gotten the exact same hard drive somewhere else. That has always been one great irony of Apple, that users think they're getting better hardware than PC users (and because of discount PC builders, in many cases they are), but dollar for dollar, they're not getting hardware that you can't get on a comparatively priced PC.
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Gee, I wonder how much of that is due to Apple customers refusing to give their beloved company a bad review.
Political contributions are not the same as "bribing judges".
First, political contributions from corporations are pretty much bribes. If you don't believe that, you're hopelessly naive. Second, if you're going to use quotes, actually include what I said in them. That's what they're for and doing otherwise is misleading. Since I never wrote "bribing judges" you're just making a strawman argument. I wrote "MS has bribed the US courts" which they have, albeit indirectly. They gave people money to get elected and those people, in turn, appointed new people to the justice department who strangely enough let MS off the hook with no punishment and a favorable settlement, after MS had already been convicted by their predecessors. If you can't connect the dots, well you probably are a very blissful person.
Perhaps you'd like to make the same assertions about Google [opensecrets.org] and IBM [opensecrets.org]. Or any other corporation for that matter.
Yes, I would. That is to say, IBM has certainly been guilty of trying to influence the courts with lobbying "donations." As for Google, they certainly have been trying to influence the legislature and the executive branch. Personally, I think all corporations should be banned from making any political contributions, since their is no valid reason for them to be doing so.
If you are indeed trying to convince someone that Microsoft is "bribing" judges or politicians based on what's in that link of yours, as opposed to playing the lobbying game the same way everybody else does, then I'd have to disagree with that.
The lobbying game is about bribing politicians. Just because it is legal doesn't make it any less of a bribe.
What?
MS may have gotten a slap on the wrist in the US, but it was a decent slap.
The EU continues to rake MS over the coals and has new, ridiculous demands every few months or so.
Apple's hardware is still better. Maybe not in the electrical sense, but in the design sense. At the high end, their towers are often cheaper than the competition, and are generally much better put together. With laptops, the Intel switch has led to a lot of people buying Apple-branded laptops just to install Windows on them. The superior quality of the hardware is definitely something that draws people.
As for the OS, it's clear that you don't really know what you're talking about. OS X borrows some pieces of the kernel and bits of userland from FreeBSD. It's certainly not "based on" FreeBSD. OS X has a continuous UNIX lineage that goes back to far before FreeBSD was even conceived.
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Maybe this is why Apple moved away from IBM components, and IBM did as well
Apple moved away from IBM because Steve Jobs asked for exclusivity on cell, and they wouldn't give it to them.
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a lot of people buying a system need or want OS X and Apple is the only vendor that sells OS X, so people buy their hardware from Apple, when what they really want is the OS. This is the result of the desktop OS market being monopolized.
Let's do some substitution, shall we? Would you agree with this statement:
So should Microsoft be forced to divorce WMC from Windows because some people want WMC but not Windows? Seriously.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
When he says Apple is a software company, it is in recognition that software plays a key role in its product. Steve is right that it is the software that makes the product unique. Without the "software", Apple would be someone putting out another crappy PC, MP3 player or smartphone.
But the quarterly reports tell the real story. Apple gets its money from hardware sales. It's true other areas (iTunes) are growing, but if you can know whether or not Apple had or will have a great quarter by looking at Mac/MacBook sales, iPod sales, iPhone sales. Last I checked, all four were hardware.
So I think you misunderstand what he means when he calls Apple a software company. They are a software company, but the software is designed to help sell the hardware. That's where their money is (at least right now).
If Apple were to stop selling hardware and only sell software (including licensing OS X), they would lose about 60-70% of their revenue.
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