OWC Introduces New Discounts on Thunderbolt Docks, Mac Memory Upgrade Kits, and More

Not if you're buying from Apple though. :p

Can you imagine how many more people would switch to Mac if the price of RAM and SSD upgrades were actually reasonable?

That's retail (buying quantity 1) pricing vs. massive corporate buying (for all Macs) pricing.

Yes, robbery. I like so much about Apple but this just about perfectly opposes much of the halo and makes them look exploitive IMO. But of course, that's easy when you act as your one and only "store" with no competition options for RAM & SSD.

It has also frozen me out of an easy sale of the new MBair on launch... and now has me seriously considering a PC laptop as my next laptop... where the price of say a 64GB Apple RAM upgrade can buy a pretty-loaded, high-rated whole laptop like this one (of many) around that price point...



Again, love that Apple, love that macOS but not enough to roll over and just pay any price for commodity items like RAM & SSD. Shareholders may rejoice but consumers do have a voice. If the latter is ignored, a wallet can shop elsewhere. In my own situation, I could get a lot of "on the road" (laptop) work done on a PC and then finish/polish it on the desktop Mac back at HQ.

But of course, I wouldn't even consider this if RAM & SSD were not 3X-5X market rates. And yes, over the last 20 years, I've paid an Apple "premium" many times... yet accumulated goodwill can be exploited only so far.

I remember buying 32GB in 2013 for over 400 CAD. Now I could get 64 GB for half the price.
Prices have gone down quite a lot.

Not if you're buying from Apple though. :p

I remember buying 32GB in 2013 for over 400 CAD for my 27-inch iMac. Now I could get 64 GB for half the price.
Prices have gone down quite a lot.

It really makes Apple look like thieves with their memory upgrades on Apple Silicon.

I chose the word carefully. It is a harsh term. But look at it purely as a consumer...

In Intel Macs where one could buy third party RAM or SSD, third party pricing was the norm. A PC buyer could not get much cheaper RAM or SSD than a Mac person. You want to load up an iMac with 64GB RAM? You are probably paying about the same as PC guy loading up his PC with 64GB RAM. Yes, Apple options were also priced high then too but Apple buyers could buy third party RAM for much less. For about 15 years, that was a "normal" way to get a lot of added value in a new Mac purchase.

Apple goes Silicon and- effectively- eliminates ALL competitors for RAM & SSD. Pricing leaps to 3X to 5X vs. competitive market pricing. Consumer wanting an Apple computer can no longer shop around for RAM & SSD. It's pay the "company store" price or don't buy at all. The word 'Exploitive' and the tradition of "Company Store" tends to go together. Where there is a single seller of anything with no competitors, pricing tends to run high. Bring in some competitors and prices tend to go down.

As is obvious from other posts of mine, I'm no Apple hater. Like you, I feel almost in the minority of viewing Vpro through "half full" or better lenses. But all things I write are from a consumer perspective... NOT a shareholder maximizer, nor caring much about "another record quarter of revenue & profit" for the corp. I want Apple Inc to be successful without feeling like I'm getting "robbed" in a purchase like this. I don't think AAPL needs 3X-5X RAM & SSD pricing to make a healthy profit... just as they didn't in the Intel Mac days only a few years ago.

And it's hard to know market rates for RAM & SSD and then look at Apple's rates for the same. For only the 8TB SSD upgrade alone ($2200 per Apple) not including the Mac too- just the SSD portion, I was able to purchase a fairly robust whole desktop gaming PC with 10TB of SSDs and 32GB of RAM.

Price Silicon and macOS itself higher since those are the unique elements here, not RAM & SSD... which are- basically- computing commodity elements. Net result could be the same high prices and profit but now the "premium" is associated with what is unique about Apple computers (the parts NOT available from competitors)... not in 3X-5X pricing of the same components available for PCs.

3X-5X RAM & SSD pricing doesn't feel very classic Apple-like... but it certainly delights the shareholders in modern AAPL. As a long-term Apple consumer- pretty much a 2-decade Apple everything guy- it just rubs me very wrong... and is evolving my halo'd view of Apple as such decisions persist.

I do. Clients often need Windows compatibility so I purchased a desktop PC for the first time in 20 years in support of adopting a Silicon desktop Mac and thus losing Bootcamp. I find Windows to be a step down vs. macOS but not nearly as bad as some Apple fans can go at it. In hindsight, I probably should have purchased a PC laptop to kill 2 birds with one stone (Mac desktop and PC laptop, so the latter could take over "on the road" duties).

For the things I do on laptops, I believe a PC can stand in for a Mac just fine... and would guarantee Windows compatibility (I do not confidently consider ARM Windows to be up to the task). But I'd much prefer it to be a Mac anyway... just not enough to pay 3X-5X pricing for RAM & SSD. I can appreciate the "Apple Premium" over these decades and have paid it for MANY things but this is towards an "enough is enough" moment and seriously making me rethink future purchases from how it was even 5 years ago (pretty much automatic Apple).

It's not a decision I have to make immediately, so there's time for Apple to either throw customers a bone to get "my" (and others thinking like me) money or keep maximizing on each unit sold for those shareholders. My existing MB is still getting the job done but it doesn't have a lot of time left.