Apple

I have an M1 Pro 16 and love it, but its already huge $3750 AUD price tag has ballooned to $4250 for the M3 Pro 16 whose only difference is the chip. I love my MacBook but unless Apple returns to earth with their pricing and/or makes the machines worth that much by providing more than the barest essential specs at those prices, I will be buying something else when this MacBook is done.

I'm not sure why people are surprised by this. In a lot of ways, Apple was a pandemic darling that didn't take as big a fall as the other pandemic darlings did when the pandemic ended. When the pandemic started, there was a big splurge in tech spending that benefitted Apple + the other pandemic darlings (Zoom, Fiverr) as the whole world was going remote.

But then the pandemic ended, and so tech sales went way down as everyone started to step outdoors again.

They released the first ARM Macs with the M1 chip during the pandemic, which were a big step up in performance and power efficiency over the Intel Macs they replaced. That further raised their sales as people upgraded their old laptops.

But the M2 and M3 had the majority of their work go into improving the GPU for apps used by hardcore gamers and creative pros; the non-graphics processing increases are not as substantial. The majority of their customers are not gamers or creative pros; they just use their computers for email, social media, and word processing or sometimes spreadsheet use.

So this is not surprising at all. Not when the pandemic ended, and the M1 was good enough for most of their users. I suspect their Mac sales will go up again in a few years when the M1 is obsoleted.

I don't like Apple. That'll probably show. But I like Microsoft and Google even less, so ultimately I do want them to continue to succeed for the time being.

They should sell cheaper x86 and arm laptops. If other manufacturers can sell decent midrange laptops for around $500 USD, so can Apple. They can even charge a bit extra for that Apple logo and still come in well under the $1000 minimum price tag now.

Though that in and of itself might be shooting themselves in the foot a bit. They have kind of a designer brand vibe, people might not trust reasonably priced hardware from them. So they'd probably want to adjust their marketing too.

I think they should do this, because declining sales tells us less people are willing to pay that premium. Though they should keep their current product line too. I like what they're doing with their Mx ARM chips.

If been thinking about buying a Macbook but I don't wanna commit a 1000$+ for a Laptop with an OS I have never used and I'm not sure how much I will like using it.

I don't get why they can't make a M1 based Macbook SE for 600$. The 300$ iPad for example is what got me into checking out iOS.

I got a Mac Studio recently, but my huge hesitation is that the CPU's TOTALLY suck lol. I only switched because I was genuinely sick of windows. And windows must have had a bug, because it kept hijacking my Chrome session with Edge EVERY Reboot.

But, now that the M3's have raytracing, maybe they'll suck less. Unfortunately, some areas, mac has definitely fallen behind on (like Aero Snap, we need magnet on Mac OS)

Read about a modular, upgradable PC laptop yesterday, the Framework.

Buffed it from the base and came up with a price of $3920. https://frame.work/ca/en/products/laptop16-diy-amd-7040/configuration/new?variant_id=454

A 16” MBP, with similar specs (96Gb RAM, since 64Gb unavailable)?

A paltry $4699. For.a.laptop. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/16-inch-space-black-apple-m3-max-with-14-core-cpu-and-30-core-gpu-36gb-memory-1tb#

SMH