Apple just unveiled their new M3 family of chips on 10/30 at their “Scary Fast” event at an unprecedented 5PM PST time. In an unusual fashion, they released their M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips at the same event rather than focusing specifically on M3 and releasing the higher end chips later. The only chip they didn’t release yet was the M3 Ultra (and any other potentially higher end chips). They released all three chips inside the new 14 and 16 inch MacBook pros, refreshing them for the second time this year. For prospective buyers, not everything at the event was positive, but let’s start out with why people even buy Macs in the first place.
Apple currently makes arguably the best laptops in the world for most people. They just get the basics right which is surprisingly rare in the laptop world. Their entire laptop range is well built being made entirely of aluminum, have excellent keyboards, sharp displays, and the best touchpads. They also have outstanding performance per watt leading to a cool chassis, quiet (or no) fans, and great battery life. macOS is a good alternative to Windows for most people as it contains a great variety of software (including some excellent software built exclusively for it) and has a consistent pleasing design throughout. In fact, unless you are gaming or 3D modeling, there are few reasons not to choose a Mac laptop.
That is, unless Apple’s pricing scheme turns you away. For years, Apple has charged exorbitant prices for their RAM and SSD upgrades and soldered them onto the motherboard, forcing you to upgrade at purchase time. This is a problem because not everyone knows what their needs are going to be several years from when they buy the laptop. This means you can potentially over or under spec the machine leading to spending unnecessary money on upgrades or, worse, having to replace the machine sooner than intended. Of course, this is exactly what Apple is hoping you will do.
For RAM, the excuse of soldering is somewhat valid as they solder it right onto the chip itself making it very low latency. This makes a huge difference for their shared SoC approach of having the CPU and GPU in the same chip. This design also means the CPU and GPU can share the same pool of memory in a very efficient way. For storage, however, there is zero excuse and it is just a reason to gouge people.
The storage prices are around $200 every 512GB storage past the 512GB point. Going from 256GB to 512GB is also an increase of $200 for only 256GB extra storage. Upgrading to a 2TB is typically $800 for example. For reference, buying one of the fastest NVME SSDs off Amazon is about $99, and the kicker is that many of these are actually faster than what Apple provides. RAM is $200 every 8GB which makes a 16GB upgrade $400. On Amazon purchasing a kit of fast 16GB DDR5 laptop RAM is $40. This means Apple is charging around an 8x markup for storage and a 10x markup for RAM.
It has been accepted for years by customers but the lack of upgraded base storage and the ever increasing size of apps and files means the problem is getting worse. Also, competitors are starting to take the “right to repair” movement seriously and offer more upgradable and repairable designs making Apple look worse.
This brings us back around to Apple’s latest event. At this event, they unveiled a 14 inch MacBook “Pro” laptop for $1599 and touted it as a price reduction. In reality, this laptop was not the usual $1999 14 inch MacBook Pro from the past two generations with a new price tag; it is actually a trimmed down version. It has just the Base M3 (Not M3 Pro) and 8GB of RAM. Yes, 8GB of RAM for a $1599 professional laptop. Not only that but it also has only 512GB storage and only supports one external display.
Apple has always made these base models paltry to sell the higher end models by upselling but it is becoming ridiculous. Right now, Apple holds the laptop crown because they get the basics right and Apple Silicon is just so much better than the competition in terms of power to performance, but the landscape is rapidly changing.
Haptic touchpads recently became an option for Windows laptops and have been implemented to some success. These will largely remove Apple’s touchpad advantage. There are already Windows laptops with better screens and keyboards than MacBooks. This leaves Apple Silicon as Apple’s sole advantage and that too is in jeopardy. Qualcomm recently announced they have a laptop chip that they claim is more powerful than Apple’s M2 Max while using less energy. AMD is making great strides in terms of efficiency. Intel is set to release their 14th generation laptop chips that they claim will rival Apple in efficiency and are supposedly the biggest architectural upgrade for them in 40 years.
So, in conclusion, Apple needs to change their pricing and stop gouging customers as badly as they do. They have the laptop advantage right now, but for how much longer? Apple is the world’s richest and perhaps greediest company and that needs to change. Mac laptop sales are already down 40% (though this due to a variety of factors), and Apple’s response is to essentially give customers less in exchange for more money? Wake up Apple, before it is too late.
To comment, please go to this article on Medium