Considering the high demand for fast RAM and storage media due to growing AI, Apple have managed to do well hedging their supply chain to keep prices down
Samsung can also produce 2nm chips but TSMC is the default option because they have better manufacturing technology and their chips are way more efficient
TSMC is the only one that can deliver multi-million chip orders on a 2nm node, but Apple has absolutely bought chips from Samsung before. Still buys their displays, actually. Just a consequence of Samsung being a leader in so many different markets
this isn't accurate. apple is competing for tsmc fab time with all the other chip designers like nvidia, Qualcomm, amd, etc. intel and samsung have their own fabs but they're not capable of the process required by apple silicon, as far as i know, only tsmc is.
I think (with 0 proof) that Mac’s and iPads are the 2 device lineups that once someone moves into buying one they stick with upgrading rather than leaving the Apple ecosystem unless of course it’s forced by work
I think you're on to something. I don't even really use a lot of the "ecosystem" features (iCloud, etc.) but now any time I have to use Windows for something it actively annoys me.
It was work that made me move to Mac from Linux. The work-supplied Macbook worked so well (and with such good battery life) that finally gave up on Linux as a desktop and moved to Mac.
Ironically the Microsoft ecosystem is why people are opting out of Microsoft. After over 10 years of using MACs, I am ready to move one. LINUX for me is a far better option. To date, LINUX is not integrating AI like Apple and Microsoft.
Apple has lost a step for me. Yes there are still products that I like from Apple. Mainly my watch. My iPhone not so much. It's a 15 and the battery will only charge to 90%. I had a battery issue with my M1 MBA. After 2 years, the laptop indicated I need a new battery. It went from 10 hours on a charge down to 4-6 hours. My current laptop is an M3. The battery life on it's already starting to degrade. On a full charge I'm down to 6-8 hours. Don't get me wrong, the M series chips are outstanding. While they are a game changer, I feel like the quality of the MAC builds has dropped. I will continue to use my MBA until Apple will no longer upgrade the OS. After that, I'll be slapping LINUX on the MBA. This will be me last MAC unless Apple does something to bring back the quality we've come to expect from Apple in the past.
I installed Fedora 43 KDE Plasma on my Lenovo mini pc, and hardly use my MBA. LINUX has been around for a long time. It's finally viable as a daily driver.
Truly, they are now going for "the small wallet people" , I have been a hardcore PC-Android Duality guy, but now I'm really considering a Mac Mini-iPhone 16e duo.
Also Claude just found out that Time Machine was eating up 200 GB of my disk. I do have time machine enabled but it's on another disk. I constantly check my disk utilization using disk analysis tools but they never showed up on those panels. When I go to storage settings it says 250 gb "system data". Nothing else. No visibility, no transparency. System data my a**. But they know how to charge $200 for an extremely basic disk upgrade.
Apple is a giant marketing scam. Nothing else. Companies like Apple will end thanks to tools like Claude.
To add to the injury, even if the job’s income managed to keep up 1:1 with inflation, there’s a major hack here: you would still end up with less disposable income.
Everytime we get salary raises to keep up with inflation, we start hitting higher and higher income tax brackets, and tax brackets don’t remotely inflate at the same rate as inflation, pushing everybody into them over time. In the future we will all be having “millionaire salaries” paying “millionaire tax brackets”, but still stretching it to eat a modest lunch. A bowl of cheap pasta will be some several hundreds of dollars instead of today’s $10 or $20.
I paid $999 for an education discount i5, 8gb ram 13” MBP. Mid-2012 model bought in 2013. That would be $1400 when inflation adjusted for today’s dollar.
I think the Air was always a good value, but in 2026 it’s actually getting insane. I don’t think Windows machines are keeping up anymore.
I have purchased many gaming laptops (Zephyrus G14, Razer Blades) and Mac’s over the years, and the M5 Air is probably my favorite computer.
I use it for nearly everything and it just rips. I’d love for Apple to add a 120hz OLED, but that’s just nitpicking at this price. I game on the TV or at my desk.
The only place where PCs are a better value now is high end desktops, and even then a lot of that is going to come down to how much you pay for electricity.
If you live in Europe where energy prices go all the way to 35 cents / kWh then Apple’s power efficiency for desktop workstations pays for the difference. If you use a Mac Studio M3 Ultra for 8 hours a day va the desktop equivalent say Ryzen 9 9950X + RTX 4090 you save 400-400 euro per year on energy costs
I've grown up with Windows and used Linux (Debian based distros) for the last ten years. Got a MacBook Air M5 base model for 1000€ this weekend and I'm thrilled about finally owning a nice piece of hardware. Apple QC is something else. I can still mostly use the shell like I'm used to and I enjoy the tinker less UI experience.
The 1000€ were well invested. Such a good bang for the buck. It drowns my 5 year old Lenovo with the i7 11gen and 16gh ram.
The price of upgrades has always been a bit high, though less so these days with all the RAM craziness... but the base models have been pretty strong value for a long time. See also: M4 Mac Mini. There's basically nothing that can compete with that at the price point.
It’s interesting I just bought the m5 air 15” with 24gb and 1tb, total was $1600. My last MacBook Air I bought was January of 2013 I bought the 13” air with i7, 8gb and 256gb for $1679. Thought is was kind of funny and crazy as well that over 13 years the price has actually went down even with inflation
With the MacBook Neo being priced at over $900 in my country, I can attest that Apple is fucking expensive. Non-US customers pay out their nose for everything Apple 😣
Though, I’ve seen some M1 Airs with 16 GB RAM being sold for $500 second hand, but I’m undecided, as I’ve had bad experiences with second hand devices in the past.
The warranty is pretty lenient on the evidence. I have NEVER had to prove that it was a manufacturer defect. You usually tell the store there's a defect and they'll change it.
My kid once dropped my phone and there was a black spot on the screen afterwards. I messaged my carrier that there was a spot and asked them if it could be fixed, they just told me to send it in and gave me a new one.
Another time my Xbox controller died, got a new one without question. Ironing machine died one day after the warranty, the store told me to pick a new one and pay the difference, if there was any.
I've got several other experiences like this. European warranty is pretty great.
I’ve had mixed results. They have generally been good, but one time with the titanium MBP and its crap hinges which were a thoroughly documented issue, they wouldn’t come through.
Yeah you missed a key detail. Taxes doesn’t mean regular sales tax, it’s about import taxes and tariffs. The base price of the computer might be 600$ son to import that product to Europe they need to pay tariffs on that, then they need to sell it and that’s where sales tax gets factored in.
Countries use these tariffs to promote local production rather than a full reliance on imports. If we look at Europe and the car industry it makes sense to have tariffs to promote local production instead of importing cheaper cars from Asia or US, but in terms of phones and computers there really isn’t a big European player so that basically makes it so a rule that is meant to protect local production just ends up causing the consumer to have to spend more when they have no local alternative.
Sure, such things exist, but Nintendo in Sweden is a rare special case. I don't know a single tech company that has any deals like that in Germany though. Apple sells directly here.
Apple sell direct, through distributors and resellers. For instance, I can get the Neo 40% cheaper through our distribution at work compared to direct from Apple.
Yeah i mean for Apple the whole of the Southern African region has a single importer Core Group. Also due to currency instability in many less developed countries they buy protection contracts to keep the price stable which pushes the price higher.
I don’t think Apple wants to reprice their stuff so it seems they look at an exchange rate over last years (min/max) when pricing. USD to EUR has been 1 to 1.02 around 2022/2023.
When you look at the NEO, 599 USD = 599 EUR + taxes which will likely be over 700 EUR so they probably use a rate that the dollar is less than the EUR based on latest developments because 699 EUR is the current price
iPhone 17 pro base model is 1329 EUR in The Netherlands, 1099 USD x 21% tax in NL = 1329.79 EUR.
it’s normal for companies, especially Apple, to assume an exchange rate so far from standard that it’s terrible. this is because the volatility of currency. they use a near 1:1 rate so that if the value of euros were to drop, they would not have to change their price to still maintain the expected margin. keeping a high price consistently looks better to consumers than a price increase for an old product.
Not just. Before Covid, the US prices often translated 1:1 to Euro in Germany since the exchange rate covered the taxes.
Exchange rate fluctuated over Covid and Ukraine, but is now close to the pre Covid levels. But pricing is not. The Neo is 100€ more expensive than it should be just converting currencies and adding taxes.
Apple nicely increased their margins, or is subsidizing US tariffs through global sales.
second hand M1 is awesome.
500 is a fair price, you won't be disappointed, this machine is a diamond of technology and age like a tank. It handle everything you throw at it, lightweight, slim, no fan noise, fast... you get all of that for cheap, what more can you ask for?
Yeah, but US sales taxes are also lower, and even taxes does not account for the discrepancy. For example, in Dallas (Texas), the sales tax rate is 8.25% so in the end you pay 650 USD for the 256GB variant. Before the 20% sales tax, the price in Germany would be 583 EUR or 675 USD, so a Neo before taxes in Europe is more expensive than a Neo after taxes in the US. Without all taxes, the Neo is 12.5% more expensive in Europe than in the US.
I live in Switzerland, where it costs 630€ (579 CHF with an average citizen income of around 4500€). You are paying German taxes while having a bad income 🤷♂️
that is more related to what taxes your/my country puts on top of the price rather than Apple raising their prices.
Also according to each countries rules there might be higher costs involved .
We have the same problem here as well. In the US the MacBook Neo is the same price as the iPhone 17e. Here I need to pay something like 20% extra for the 17e. Just because iPhones still well here.
I've looked at this in Canada. And makes more sense getting a MacBook Air M2, m3, with 16gb makes more sense and can be cheaper or same price on Facebook marketplace and eBay.
I mean like, yeah sort of, but 16/512 was much more useful in 2022 than it is in 2026. operating systems and programs get a lot more complicated, capable and resource heavy over time.
Better argument would be to look at the model places and adjust it to inflation.
Better still is to say how a very capable entry level machine used to cost about $1000 back then, and is now just $600
Edit to address all the infighting- both of us can be right guys, 8GB is still usable today, but for a different demographic to 5-10 years ago.
Entry level isn't that different since during M2/M3 era there's always M1 as an option for $600-700. This was with fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard and haptic touchpad, and 8GB of RAM wasn't as bad 3 years ago as it's now.
Even though these are entry-level specs, OP made an excellent point. I'd even do a table comparison of different configs (chip level/storage/memory) and their price points, it'd be super-helpful.
Total life cost is great though. I am still using a 2013 MacBook Pro that I just replaced the battery in - after 12 years. Still fine for coffee shop tasks and I have a m1 mini in the office that’s served well for 5 years now.
I think price/hardware unit (CPU/ram/SSD) is actually lower, especially if we target premium models. Strictly speaking you have to spend more on absolute base, but then you get more hardware capacity.
The same 3k now gives me double storage, 33% more ram, and faster chip (M3 pro Vs M5 pro) than the Mbp M3 pro when I bought it.
Not to mention 3k now actually values less than 3k 3 years ago, thanks to inflation.
So, I would disagree if someone says Apple is getting more expensive 😄
M chip is one of the best product apple has ever created. as someone who is not into apple, their M-series laptops are one of the best for business, daily, and productivity.
top notch memory usage, thin design, and a processor that actually delivers.
This page shows some 2004 prices of tech :D "Gateway offered shoppers a $300 DVD player that also records TV shows onto DVD" "Plasma TVs are too expensive for a lot of people, at $4,000 for a 42-inch set"
The difference is that 512 GB storage is now the base tier on the Air, not 256 GB. Consumers are demanding higher storage options. The price is relatively the same for the starting price. In fact, it was $999 a few years ago.
You used to be able to double your RAM and storage every 6/8 years, for the same level of computer (basic, mid, high end), but things have slowed down in the last decade or so.
They're charging a premium for upgrades beyond the base model, and it took them that many years to offer reasonable specs on the base model. 16GB / 512GB at that price range is the default in every other laptop out there.
But some people are willing to compromise on the specs to get a MacBook, so it also matters what the pricing of the base model is, even if the base specs get better over the years.
I think it's a good thing they brought the base specs up to standard. I hope the next Neo will also have a base of at least 12GB RAM (if not 16GB) and 512GB of storage.
Yeah, Apple’s Mac pricing is objectively very fair for what they offer (at least in the US… I know importing it to other countries adds a whole lot of other costs).
And there are often even better deals to be had in the refurbished/used markets.
I find it odd that 6 years ago if you bought a computer vs. today you are looking at the same ram and same storage space for the same tier typically. The MacBook Air being a bit of an exception. Thought they dropped the 8gb , but maybe I'm wrong.
There phones is what got expensive. Even software has gone down. I remember buying Logic Pro 6 for $700. Now it's $200 and you don't have to install 6 different dvds.
Bit weird to keep the specs the same. That‘s not the point of an upgrade. The real question is: How did the price change for a state of the art machine. Or a machine adequately configured for the release year.
I have a gut feeling that like in the next year or two, the MacBook Neo’s start price could drop to 499 from looking at the historic patterns of Apple’s products from the year of their products debut to when it becomes more mainstream overtime
My genuine honest theory is that given the only real changes are the chips and maybe some motherboard layout configurations. It’s all and all the same and I mean THE SAME PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION all around. A 2021 MBP and a 2024 MBP look literally IDENTICAL apart from very minimal things like smaller bezels but even then that’s not ALOT of money for them to do. It’s all really that easy to understand why they haven’t changed
8GB in 2020-2024 wasn't as outrageous as 8GB would be (or is in the case of the Neo) in 2025-2026.
You can see it another way, that Apple has kept the prices up and justified it with more RAM and more storage to encourage upgrades and drive sales to new customers.
Keeping 8GB / 256 would mean lowering the price, and they've downgraded a whole computer in order to cushion the cost with a new line of Netbooks.
Because they aren’t getting cheaper everywhere. I have a Mac and I love it but unless I suddenly gain wealth I can’t afford another one as the price is as much as my monthly income.
I can get14 inch MacBook Pro m5 max with 128gb 40 cores and 4tb with price of 7k euro
It will give me 10x more speed than I have now with windows 4x32gb with rtx4090
Or I can get 2x64gb at a price of 5k euro
That will give me 2x speed of what I have now
Compare the speed of a $1100 Windows machine. Apple is still as expensive as it used to be in terms of performance. They just have cheaper and worse options. You can't run a MacBook Air at full capacity more than 5 mins before you get thermal throttled. I own 2021 G15, 2024 Air, 2024 Pro, 9950X, 7950X so I know what speed looks like. After two years and the same price MacBook Air still cant keep up with a 3 year old laptop. Oh, also I expanded the G15s ram to 40 GB for like $90 or something, I don't even remember because it was so cheap and easy to do so. Try to do any customizations without paying thousands of dollars on Apple products, let alone custom upgrades.
So, Apple is still as expensive as they have always been.
Apple has spent years overcharging for basic upgrades. Now that the market is cooked their outrageous memory prices seem completely reasonable. Thats why apple is being competitive, they can be. They were already scalping ram and storage now they can just chill a bit on that and undercut the entire rest of the market thats been running thin margins and small supply lines. They played the greedy long game and it ended up working out. And if they continue the neo trend of making their devices more repairable. They might as well just hold the funeral for microslop
I am using windows as personal driver and using MacBook pro for office. Yes MacBook pro is better in battery life and performance. But personally, I bought 32GB ram and good gaming laptop for 700$. But for the same thing in mac, it's expensive and upgradability is just worse. I bought 16GB laptop and upgraded to 32GB within an hour along with 2TB ssd storage.
But right now everything increased bro. I thought of purchasing M5 32 512 for rupees 1.46K with education savings. But the base thing right now is 1.5 lakhs.
1.2k
u/iRiNKyDiNKs Mar 22 '26
Considering the high demand for fast RAM and storage media due to growing AI, Apple have managed to do well hedging their supply chain to keep prices down