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Your Apple Products Are Getting More Expensive. Here's How They Get Away With It. (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has never made cheap stuff. But this fall many of its prices increased 20 percent or more. The MacBook Air went from $1,000 to $1,200. A Mac Mini leaped from $500 to $800. It felt as though the value proposition that has made Apple products no-brainers might unravel. For some perspective, we charted out the past few years of prices on a few iconic Apple products. Then we compared them with other brands and some proprietary data about Americans' phone purchase habits from mobile analytics firm BayStreet Research.
What we learned: Being loyal to Apple is getting expensive. Many Apple product prices are rising faster than inflation -- faster, even, than the price of prescription drugs or going to college. Yet when Apple offers cheaper options for its most important product, the iPhone, Americans tend to take the more expensive choice. So while Apple isn't charging all customers more, it's definitely extracting more money from frequent upgraders.
[...] Apple says prices go up because it introduces new technologies such as Face ID and invests in making products that last a long time. Yet it has clearly been feeling price discomfort from some quarters. This week, amid reports of lagging sales that took its stock far out of the trillion-dollar club, it dedicated its home page to a used-car sales technique that's uncharacteristic for an aspirational luxury brand. It offered a "limited-time" deal to trade in an old iPhone and get a new iPhone XR for $450, a $300 discount.
What we learned: Being loyal to Apple is getting expensive. Many Apple product prices are rising faster than inflation -- faster, even, than the price of prescription drugs or going to college. Yet when Apple offers cheaper options for its most important product, the iPhone, Americans tend to take the more expensive choice. So while Apple isn't charging all customers more, it's definitely extracting more money from frequent upgraders.
[...] Apple says prices go up because it introduces new technologies such as Face ID and invests in making products that last a long time. Yet it has clearly been feeling price discomfort from some quarters. This week, amid reports of lagging sales that took its stock far out of the trillion-dollar club, it dedicated its home page to a used-car sales technique that's uncharacteristic for an aspirational luxury brand. It offered a "limited-time" deal to trade in an old iPhone and get a new iPhone XR for $450, a $300 discount.
Apple users want new well branded, logo showing bling the same way zombies want brains.
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I never thought anyone would buy a $1000 phone that was built for $140. That is probably why I am not in sales.
Apple can sell these for more money because everything else is treated like a knockoff. They are the dominant player, everyone knows that, and no one checks specs since they are all close enough to each other that it doesn't matter.
I know we can expect a raft of posts to follow that explain the important technical and religious differences, but the vast, vast majority of the people buying these just don't care about that stuff, they want to have what is socially considered the best.
I've been an Apple fan for years because the hardware *just works*. But back then I could at least upgrade the harddrives, add a gpu, ram etc. My last Mac was a Mini from 2012 with an i7 cpu (faster than the mini which came out in 2014 and fast enough that upgrading to the new mini is akin to throwing out money).
But over the last few years Apple has become increasing hostile to users. Gluing the batteries into the laptop case, soldered memory, middle of the road gpus etc. And now I'm seeing Apple charge $600 for a 1TB ssd upgrade for the new mini when that same drive is $150 on Amazon. GPU's now come in their own $600 case outside of the damn hardware — and now this T2 chip from hell which prevents user or third-party upgrades/fixes?! What. The. Hell. Apple. I suspect this will get much worse as Apple uses the fear of encryption + hackers to lock down their hardware even further under the pretence they are making you safer.
That said, I've been honing up on Linux the last few months and will build a rig in the new year and fully switch to Linux. It's the first time I'll use Linux as a *desktop* OS as opposed to a cloud service. Linux has come so far in recent years that in my testing I haven't found anything lacking (hell, Steam runs fine on it!).
I don't want to crap on Apple for invoking their right to be a capitalist company, I'm sure the shareholders are happy. But I'm done handing my money over to a trillion dollar company (I'll give it to Amazon instead — irony is not lost on me here...).
What they’re talking about is 100% true. I have tons of Apple devices. Multiple Mac Minis, iPads, iPhones, etc. And I found that the plastic parts of my MacBook Pro (2011) are failing and the hinge for the laptop lid will soon fail entirely. So I started shopping for a replacement. What I found is that the MacBook Air is insanely expensive for the performance you get. And if I buy a MacBook Pro? Also insanely expensive. They solder in all the RAM and NVMe drives. The real kicker for me? Paying $500 for an NVMe SATA drive that I cannot upgrade when I can buy a 1TB NVMe PCIe drive that has WAY better throughput when dealing with smaller files. In fact, the throughput difference is so huge that switching from SATA to PCIe drops a compile time on one of my projects by 70%, So what did I end up doing? I ordered a Lenovo laptop that supports NVMe PCIe, has removeable RAM, AND weighs half a pound less than the MacBook Pro. Oh did I mention that it also has a better processor and almost the exact same battery life? And I am paying $1000 less out the door, including buying my own NVMe PCIe drive to upgrade it with. I will never buy another Apple computer again. The only reason I own an iPhone is due to Apple making its money off of hardware sales and Google making its money off of spying.
Probably due to Apple's insistence upon a steeply-increasing price for its products because of the development costs of features that Apple tells its customer they want, as opposed to features that Apple's customers tell Apple they need.
I was a happy Android user for 7+ years. But to reliably get OS updates and upgrades, and not have to put up with a botched Android UI and bloatware, that meant buying a Nexus phone and tablet. Which I did, every 2 years or so.
But then Google decided to give up on Android tablets entirely, and give up on mid-price phones. They jacked up their prices, and a Pixel 3 now starts at $799. Well, guess what, that's the same price as an iPhone XR. And Google's last Android tablet offering before they gave up was actually more expensive than an iPad. So I switched.
With computers, nobody else is even offering a good Unix-based computer. Linux isn't competitive -- I use it for work, but sound and video are still a dumpster fire and don't count on hibernation working as well as a Mac either. If I didn't need to edit 4K video and work on music, I'd probably buy a ChromeBook, and sales of ChromeBooks seem to suggest that indeed there's an underserved market there.
Basically, nobody is putting in the time and money to clean up Linux (or BSD) and offer systems where sound and video editing, hibernation, and all the other basic functionality of a Mac is right there and just works. If you want that, you either have to put up with Windows and its myriad deficiencies, or you have to buy a Mac.
I'm a little surprised that nobody's deliberately setting out to build laptops that have exactly the same hardware as a Mac and are perfectly suited to hackintosh use. Give me a laptop with a proper keyboard and hardware that all worked properly with macOS and I'd be very tempted.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Apple understands that the purchase price of a device is in fact pretty much the least important things about it.
It isn't different than any other luxury device like an expensive home, car, clothing, etc. Once someone reaches a level of income where their time has significant value, the cost of luxury items is not nearly as relevant. The difference between a $1000 phone and $200 phone purchases every other year is $1 per day. It is the difference between a small fry and a large fry at McDonalds. If you have enough income where you aren't struggling to pay the mortgage, pay for car repairs, and feed yourself, how trivial is the difference between a small fry and large fry when eating fast food?
If someone is having trouble balancing their budget, buying an expensive phone every other year probably won't even make the top 20 things to fix in their spending habits.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"It felt as though the value proposition that has made Apple products no-brainers might unravel."
In what universe of delusion has Apple ever been a value proposition???????
Apple says prices go up because it introduces new technologies such as Face ID
And Face ID wouldn't be necessary if they hadn't removed the fingerprint reader, so in other words they're imposing the cost of solving problems to its customers that Apple itself caused.
EVERYTHING is getting more expensive ... except labor... wages haven't moved in 30 years.
Wages have moved significantly in the last 30 years. Just not for the working or middle class. The upper middle class which makes up most of Apple's customers has been growing rapidly for the last few decades.
Total compensation for the middle class has been rising as well, but almost entirely in the form of health care benefits. For instance the employer portion of health care coverage has increased 10% from 2015-2018. That is a compensation increase for those workers, they just don't see it in their salary figures. If health care plans were not tied to employers then it would be more obvious that pay has been increasing for most workers faster than inflation. Unfortunately so has health care costs.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
no one checks specs
Anyone intelligent does not check specs on mobile devices these days, because it's not raw hardware or software alone that matters - it is the combination of the two.
That is why iOS devices can get away with less RAM. Technically it's "lower spec" than some Android devices, but it ends up working better because iOS simply needs much less RAM to function well.
Same for battery, if you "check the specs" on an android device you might find a bigger battery where the entire phone has much worse real-life battery life than a similar iOS device.
Even highly technical people like myself stopped "checking the spec" some time ago for this very reason - my remain cognizant of what the specs are, but keep them in perspective within the entire function of the device.
"Checking specs" makes more sense with desktop and laptop hardware because there all of the OS choices have been heavily optimized over a long time (though even then the administration overhead matters a lot to me which is why I still will not run Windows).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Summary not just written and powered by smarmy Hatorade, its a honey pot for the same. You know Zombie Steve isn't holding a gun to your heads, right? You are perfectly free to buy an Android phone - even if it comes with a notch and costs just as much as an iPhone XR.
We are a capitalist society, they are not "getting away" with anything.
They can charge what they want, and if people continue to buy then they are not charging too much.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
You do know that Foxconn makes devices for almost every manufacturer right? That means your ire covers Dell, Lenovo, HP, LG, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
because it's got a ton of extra features that only work when you're texting somebody on an iPhone. It's a defacto social network. Take iMessage away and she'd buy a Samsung.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Apple makes good but not great products. They sell based on their reputation which they haven't deserved in years.
I think they have a reputation for protecting your privacy better than the alternatives, which they have and continue to deserve.
The contrast is the shit-show that is Android. It is a wild west scene of outdated OS versions, sporadic and unreliable security updates, non-removable bloatware, apparently rampant Chinese spyware, etc. Even otherwise good brands turn around and do this crap on their entry level and mid-range phones with just a few notable exceptions.
I have an Android phone, and I am amazed at the rampant pitfalls one has to navigate to pick a good phone at a low price. The safe ways to avoid this seem to be to get a flagship phone from the likes of Samsung or Google, or to get an Apple phone. I did not begrudge my rather non-technically minded wife when her iPhone 5s wore out and she wanted an 8. I've had to do ZERO to help her out. $800 was very cheap for marital bliss, and the phone will likely keep her going for a good 3+ years.
The peanut gallery will tell you to just root your android phone and load Lineage OS, or similar. For 99% of the buying public that is useless advice.
With you there. I'm not fanboy but I've enjoyed their hardware for years, and I have a lot of it too. Yet I feel like they're going out of their way to deliberately sabotage the "low end" (well, their version of it). Started seeing it first in the iPhones, with the lower models getting horrible base storage options for one, and reserving arbitrary features for the "flagship" phones. Now their other hardware lines too.
I really, really wanted the Air. Or rather, I wanted what the rumors suspected of it. A lower-power machine with the features I personally needed. The machine that came out though feels.. purposely hobbled. Most especially the two USB-C ports, on only one side of the machine, and nothing else. Power, external video, everything goes through those two ports. God forbid I'm right-handed and have a need for some kind of wired input device..
Other than Lenovo (also Dell XPS 13), consider the System76 Galago Pro (itself a re-branded Clevo machine). It's almost the same dimensions and weight as the new Air (about an inch bigger on one side, and like 150 grams heavier; so some difference but not much). In that almost-the-same form factor they managed to offer a significantly better CPU (with slightly better on-board graphics because of it, for what that's worth), a 13" 3K screen (which has higher DPI and more resolution than the Air's new Retina screen). They offer a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 3 on it, which is capable of power input/charging, external video output, and all the rest that the Air's two ports offer, so there's feature-parity there. However, in that same chassis they also offer USB3 Type-A ports (on both sides!), HDMI and mini-DisplayPort, a DC power input, an SD card slot the Air removed, and even a wired Ethernet port. Most of the other things like the webcam and such are parity with the Air, no better but no worse. The Galago admittedly does not offer fingerprint reading or Secure Enclave or such that the Air has, so there is that. The Galago does offer faster NVMe M.2 options for storage, up to 2TB. A Galago Pro configured with the same RAM and storage space (at the high-end NVMe option) still manages to be $300 less than the Air.
Oh, and it did all this in a machine that was released over a year before the Air (early-to-mid 2017), by the way.
Is it necessarily a better machine than the Air? That's a matter of opinion. The port options I sure as hell think so. It doesn't get nearly as good battery life as the Air though thanks to that much more powerful processor. However I also don't have to eat up one of only two precious USB-C ports to connect power to it, unlike the Air. The Galago also isn't unibody aluminum, which tends to make it less durable (though reports are it isn't fragile either). On the flip-side, the Galago can also be opened and serviced, and its RAM and storage are swappable by the user. Hell, the damn CPU isn't even soldered down.
Anyway, I'm quickly rambling off-topic here. Point is, I think stuff like the Galago shows Apple could've fucking done better, and easily so. They have the design prowess, I don't think there's much question of that. It just feels like they didn't give a shit about something "lower end" and less profit margin like the Air, so they pissed out a hobbled design, had the gall to up the price on it, and then called it a day. And I don't blindly throw money at that.
Because no-one is making a phone for $390 and selling it at $390.
I like it so much will probably not even upgrade next year either, making for a good three year run on a phone.
You should look at OnePlus. I bought the first one in 2014 for $350, paid in full, I own the device. When the OnePlus 5 came out in 2017 my original was doing fine but I bought two, for $450 each or something, because my wife needed a new phone. Again, we own the phones, we aren't renting them from a carrier and paying the price back in monthly charges. My OnePlus One still works fine, although the Five does have dual sim cards, international radios, etc that warranted an upgrade. I didn't need to upgrade because of any issues with bad hardware or software, though, I could have gotten another year or two at least out of the One.
If you want to sit in your bubble and act like an iPhone is the single biggest source of enjoyment in today's world then that's fine, but don't act like you're using the iPhone for any reason other than your rabid devotion to Apple. There are plenty of companies out there doing good things with their products who aren't sitting on enormous piles of tax-avoiding cash, but if you want to shovel your money at Apple then go right ahead. Again, just don't act like Apple is doing something that no other company is doing other than hoarding huge piles of cash that they aren't paying taxes on.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
You know Zombie Steve isn't holding a gun to your heads, right? You are perfectly free to buy an Android phone - even if it comes with a notch and costs just as much as an iPhone XR.
Or even if it's perfectly usable, notch-less, has a headphone jack and removable battery, and costs $100 - $200.
I simply think that Apple admirers deserve the price they pay for ridiculously expensive hardware that, for Apple, is costing less and less. People who buy Apple products are either stupid or looking for design and status.
It felt as though the value proposition that has made Apple products no-brainers might unravel
I can't tell, was this written tongue-in-cheek? When was the Apple choice a "no-brainer"?