this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Apple

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Mac sales are down.

I’m really not surprised. They are just a bit too expensive once you start upgrading the storage and ram.

I have been holding out on buying a Mac since the M2 was rumored to come out.

I keep hoping that the base model will have a larger amount of storage and ram, but it does not.

They keep selling faster processors, but I do not need that, I need more storage and I’d like more ram.

At this point, I’m just going to buy a used M1 air. If Apple had 512 and 26 standard on the base air, I’d pickup a new one today.

Do you disagree? What can Apple do to increase Mac sales?

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

People always tell me how affordable the Mac mini is when I complain about Apples' pricing. Huh?
719€ for a computer that has 8GB of memory? Shared between cpu and gpu? In 2023?

Excuse me?

That's also just a waste of good wafers for how capaple Apple silicon is.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nice, I paid less than 300€ for a new PC with 16GB shared memory about a month or two ago. This was with a 512 GB SSD, Ryzen 5700U system so not exactly garbage

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a fantastic deal you got there

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not even a deal IME

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple could win over a lot more people by simply making user expandable systems.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

also cutting their price in at least half.

i can get better hardware than their "amaazing" chips for half the price where i live.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

I have used Macs for the last 15 years, so this is from someone who is deep into the ecosystem.

Apple can fuck right off with their pricing, Mac sales aren’t down because the market is challenging, Mac sales are down because they cost too much.

Give me an affordable Mac and I would have bought two or three in the past few years. Instead I keep holding out.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, they could decide to not gimp their base models and make storage and RAM upgrades cheaper, like you say. The new base M3 MacBook Pro only exists to upsell you to a M3 Pro MacBook Pro.

If they feel like they have to have a normal M3 MacBook Pro model, they at least shouldn't gimp it and give it 16 GB of RAM as default. Also, add another display controller to the base M3. We all know you don't do it just so you can upsell to an M3 Pro.

Like I said in another thread, Apple (like all companies) always try to upsell and that's fine as a concept, but these days some of the lower-end products sole reason of existence is to upsell the customer to a more expensive product. Make these lower-end products good products.

And yeah, storage and RAM upgrades should cost half as much at most. 16/512 should absolutely be the minimum default on $1,000+ computers as well.

Also, why would people upgrade from an M1 or M2 based Mac to an M3 based one? The vast majority of people won't.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I forgot about the base models having slower ssds.

Apple is really annoying. Sadly I have to choose between an annoying company or an incompetent company.

I’m on my last nerve with windows being absolute garbage, so I’m just getting a base m1 air.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Similarly to you, I hate some of the bullshit moves that Apple pull. But I installed windows in a VM, just to get an idea of where it’s at these days, and Jesus fucking christ, it’s abysmal.

There’s just no way I could justify switching to that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"I installed MacOS in a VM, just to evaluate it's GUI, and Jesus fucking Christ it's abysmal"

Hmm...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Correct. But the built-in advertising, tracking, spam and nerfed functionality is awful, too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If you haven’t tried Linux, for many people it’s a great option. I’ll keep my regrettable Apple purchase until it doesn’t work anymore and then go back to Linux.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I mean it might help their value proposition to not attempt to sell monitor stands for a thousand dollars. I will never forget the audience's collective incredulous gasp at that reveal.

[–] Grass 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This just in: computer performance has mostly eclipsed the requirements of most non-gamer users, and the next gen is not only exorbitantly expensive but only some very edge case power users truly benefit from the improvements which are at times suspect in if they even exist.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hope everything goes down in price a bit. Honestly Apple could afford it just to earn a bit of good will.

I think for the base price you get a really really good product despite 8gb memory. Most people just need it to perform and it does. But yea once you start upgrading it’s insanely ridiculous and it’s insulting to those who want more out of the best product they’ve made in a long time.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My work files are close to 100gb alone. I’d like to have them in the laptop, but with 256gb, I’ll be about half full.

But I’m not paying $200 to upgrade the storage. So I’m just going to have to keep it on an external drive.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I love Linux, but my work conferencing app is only Mac or Windows. But outside of work, I’m Linux mint on my desktop and steam deck for gaming.

I’m just really frustrated with Windows and it’s bugginess

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The base models are too gimped and anything reasonable is way too expensive. The machines are great, but they should be priced at least 20% lower.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AMD 7840U beats M2 in every single bench unless you really want macos.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anyone said framework 13"?

(Mines shipping in a couple of weeks)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Awesome idea, but overpriced. Not as much as Apple, but still a lot compared to Dell or Lenovo. I might still order it if Snapdragon Elite isn't readily available by the time I need to upgrade my laptop just to support a great idea and a smaller company.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They need to have certain margins to survive. These first years are crucial, if they gain enough market share I'm sure they'll stick around and will be able to apply better prices.

Right now I know that I'm overpaying, but part of that extra money I'm more than happy to give it to send a message to the entire industry: consumers WANT right to repair, upgrade and fully own the electronics they pay for. And our planet needs this as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Their pre-orders are always full and keep growing. Sure looks like they are doing very well.

I wonder if they are even considering offering an option with RISC architecture. I doubt RISC-V is coming any time soon, but SnapDragon Elite looks amazing even though it's ARM. Would love to get RISC based laptop from a manufacturer like Framework that doesn't lock it to specific OS unlike Apple or Microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm definitely expecting they do once RISC-V is mature enough (something I can't wait to happen!)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's been long enough that most of the people who wanted an M processor as their next laptop now got one, so I don't think it's surprising that sales are down, after the initial blips.

Overall computers are on the down. More people do their computing on tablets or just phones most of the time. In richer countries, windows marketshare is decreasing, and Apple's is increasing. Not really sure what else apple could do that they actually want to do.

It'd be nice if they had a MacBook SE type thing, but I don't think they'd do that. Chromebooks captured the education market so it's probably too late to do anything there. Mac minis are never in a position to break into the business small-PC realm because they aren't cheap enough. Also it'd be nice if mac minis were cheaper/better-value and more expandable, but people have asked that for years and never got it.

Storage replaceabity is a serious problem for their desktop offerings, but that's been an issue forever and they don't care because they sell iCloud, and their monthly services businesses are doing well.

[–] Gorgeous_Sloth 3 points 1 year ago

Quite a lot of people have bought an M1 Mac and they are still powerful and efficient devices. I guess most Mac users don’t feel the need for a change yet. Because Apple sold a gigantic amount of those.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


But all of the company’s other hardware divisions were down, and as CNBC noted, overall sales were down for the fourth consecutive quarter.

CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that the iPhone 15 lineup is showing stronger early momentum than the 14 series.

So you can see the impetus for Apple holding its M3 event earlier this week, where the company introduced updated MacBook Pros and a refreshed iMac.

With no new recent models to speak of, iPad revenue fell by 10 percent.

Apple’s CEO seems optimistic about the company’s position heading into the holiday shopping season.

“We now have our strongest lineup of products ever heading into the holiday season, including the iPhone 15 lineup and our first carbon neutral Apple Watch models, a major milestone in our efforts to make all Apple products carbon neutral by 2030,” he said in a press release.


The original article contains 345 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sales of most things are down, we’re returning to pre pandemic-boom normals.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Not particularly surprised.

By most accounts they're very capable pieces of hardware, but the prices are way too high for current conditions.

Think there's also a case of incremental performance improvements in the form factor becoming less perceptible, and also more people favouring phones and tablets over laptops for everyday use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Are macs still the status symbol they once were?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

if you can upgrade storage and ram. they're soldering shit onto boards now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Because profits

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

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