I had a black macbook in 2007 which I sprung the extra $200 for because I didn't want to be one of "those people" with a gloss white macbook and the extra $500 for a macbook pro was just too much. It was my daily driver and I got a lot of mileage out of it until 2015 (with some upgrades along the way) or so when I replaced it with a chromebook. I was really hoping this article would have something insightful but it literally just says:
"Was this modest storage upgrade worth the $200 premium? Absolutely not; Apple was charging more for the black enclosure because it could."
Yeah my initial thought was “because people are willing to pay more for it”; I’m happy to hear that that was somewhat the conclusion of the article.
People are irrational, they value things that don’t necessarily cost more to make, and sometimes even the fact that they need to pay extra for it, is in fact why they want it.
I’m reminded of that silly $1000 app in the beginning of the AppStore:
> People are irrational, they value things that don’t necessarily cost more to make
That’s not irrational. It doesn’t cost any more to make a lemon cake than a chocolate cake but a lemon cake is more valuable to me because I don’t like chocolate. Perfectly rational.
We’d like to see you make a rational, purely logic-based, and objective line of argumentation to justify why you like lemon cake instead of chocolate cake.
A shot at the why, would be that his digestion system might handle lemon better than chocolate, in combination with aquired taste, like the good memory of eating the first lemon cake at his birthday party and so on.
But objectivly proofing it, would require a very complex bio-chemical anaylsis of his digestion and neurological system as well as a deep psychoanalysis. Interesting research probably, but not necessary for determining that objectivly lemon cake has a higher value to him, because he simply likes it more.
If you're Betty Crocker and only 10% of your customers want lemon cake mix but 80% want and buy chocolate...yes, it does cost more to make lemon cake mix, because you buy chocolate ingredients at nine times the volume you do lemon.
If you're a cake mix company that only sells chocolate cake mix, switching up production to include vanilla has expenses all by itself. You now have to manage extra ingredients in your supply chain, schedule time to switch production and all the overhead and downtime in doing so...and your factory-to-retail logistics chain is now both more complicated and split between the two products.
If you retail cake mixes, why would you dedicate capital, storage, and shelf space to something that sells at one ninth the rate?
In continued good-spirited-conversation - if you get sick every time you eat something containing chocolate, I think it's completely rational to form an aversion to it.
I don't think that valuing something different from the production cost is irrational.
If I never paid more than production cost + some "reasonable" markup I wouldn't be able to buy a lot of things that I enjoy.
A smart business sells things at roughly the price that people value them. A key job of the business is making that cost them less then the selling price.
This is important in another way, too: by offering almost the same thing at two different prices, consumers get to self-select based on how price sensitive they are.
Since some people are willing to pony up significantly more for the black, they can offer the non-black at a slightly lower cost than they otherwise would, which means they can sell MacBooks to a segment of the market that would otherwise consider them out of reach.
Any time virtually the same thing is offered at different prices, you can either complain that it's unfair one target segment has to pay more... or realise that the flip side of the coin is that less price sensitive people subsidise lower costs for more price sensitive people -- which could seem completely fair depending on ideologies.
If you're a hardcore capitalist you see it as a way for the manufacturer to expand their target market without sacrificing profitability. If you're more on the left you see it as taking from the rich and giving it to the poor, without having to resort to coercion.
I have a minor quibble with the term 'subsidizing', since it is still being sold at a profit. It's just a lower margin, because the point of maximal profit in the lower end of a segmented market is necessarily lower than the point of maximal profit in a non-segmented market. It's not going to go into negative profit (and thus enable the customer to buy it "at a loss" for the business, whereby the business is effectively paying part of the cost of the thing on behalf of the customer) as a result of segmentation. So it's neither costing the business profit, nor is it offering the good at a per unit loss. It -is- offering the good at a lower margin than would make sense in an unsegmented market.
You might say this is why the iPhone is missing a telephoto lens rather than missing the ultra-wide lens.
Each lens/sensor theoretically costs a very similar amount of manufacturing cost to include, so theoretically if your goal was to give the customer the best value on a cheaper 2-lens phone, you would want to give them the two most used lenses: the normal wide lens and the telephoto lens.
However, Apple gates the more-desired telephoto lens to the Pro model, because it needs to balance the significant price increase with the reality that there isn't much of a manufacturing cost difference between Pro and non-Pro phones.
So, it's a market segmentation based on some desired features.
I disagree with the idea that there's any sort of a positive "flip side" to this strategy from the customers' perspective. This is how profit is maximized. Apple could sell the iPhone 13 Pro for less money and still make a profit, but they know that customers of certain income brackets will pay over a thousand bucks for a phone.
If the iPhone 13 had a telephoto lens instead of the ultra-wide lens, and the ProMotion display, the iPhone 13 wouldn't cost a dime more to manufacture. In this configuration, there would be very little reason for most people to upgrade to the Pro model.
So the theory is basically that if they were to not segment the market this way, the price point of maximal profitability if they offered only one model would be higher than the price point of maximal profitability of the lower segment(s) achieved by segmenting it.
I.e., if the 13 and 13 Pro were nearly identical, yeah, there'd be no reason to upgrade to the pro model, and so Apple, being sensible, would instead offer one model. And the price of that one model would fall somewhere between the 13 and the 13 Pro; meaning that some people who can justify paying for a 13 now would not buy one at all (and you're not extracting as much as you could from those willing to spend more as you could by segmenting it).
By segmenting it, though, the (obviously highly inflated, still super high margin) cost of the 13 is lower, and Apple can put the cost of the 13 Pro higher, because each segment now has its own point of highest profitability (the point where price * number of people who will purchase it at that price is highest; generally the higher the former the lower the latter).
This is also why some graphics cards, for instance, were all made to the higher end specs, and then had chips locked away, damaged, or etc, just to create market segmentation. Even with the fixed margin costs, segmenting the market allows the company to maximize profit, but by doing so it also allows the lower segment to come in at a lower cost than if they were trying to maximize profits with a single segment. It's a "win/win" from an availability/affordability of goods and a corporate profit maximization perspective, even if it feels stupid and unfair to pay extra for the high end card, or be purchasing a 'crippled' card.
>However, Apple gates the more-desired telephoto lens to the Pro model, because it needs to balance the significant price increase with the reality that there isn't much of a manufacturing cost difference between Pro and non-Pro phones.
I believe this choice is because of another much more desired feature: Night Mode™
IIRC It works by overlaying and processing the two images from the ultrawide and wide angle lenses. It's why Night Mode is limited to the wide angle lense, and not available on the ultrawide, as the wide angle lense doesn't provide enough coverage for the ultrawide to produce a Night Mode image.
If Apple included only wide and telephoto, then Night Mode (As currently implemented) would be limited to the telephoto images, which would be a lot less desirable.
> People are irrational, they value things that don’t necessarily cost more to make, and sometimes even the fact that they need to pay extra for it, is in fact why they want it.
I think it would be irrational to value things based on how much they cost to make. The rational thing would be to value something based on utility to you. Why should you care how much it cost to make, unless you have as an alternative the ability to make it yourself?
The better aphoristic horse-kingdom-related summation is probably For Want Of A Nail:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
It’s quite a phenomenon that tech seems culturally committed to a disdain for anything it deems “not real”, such as emotions, aesthetics, law, or philosophy.
…especially if you consider that even product that don’t end as ‘vaporware’ are often immaterial.
They’ll joke about the uselessness of philosophy, then argue the differences between == and ===.
It’s really no surprise from there that they’ve happily embraced “fiat isn’t real” conspiracies and seek to improve that terrible state of affairs with a zoo of inscrutable algorithm-money.
I agree with some of this but totally disagree with the point about aesthetics. Form over function is a major strain of modern design, especially within Apple specifically.
Just as one example, I've been using a work issued macbook for over a year and I still regularly send the screen brightness or volume off the rails because I lightly rested a finger on the stupid touchbar. But hey, it looks cool to use the volume slider!
Yes, „form follows function“ is the version of aesthetics best suited for the enjoyment of people who are unwilling to admit that they can enjoy something without the need to legitimize their emotions with a sciéncy backstory.
More broadly, look at any discussion of web fonts here and you’ll find three suggestions to give everyone „three fonts and be done with it, screw those designers and the strange feelings I get when I see them on their skateboards.“
People are boundedly rational. The client base purchasing the black enclosure valued it for a few extra hundred USD relative to other things they may choose to spend their funds on.
I mean it’s a little unfair to compare it to the “I am Rich” app because there was a functional difference - a substantial increase in internal storage. 90gb may not seem like much but in 2008, going 160gb->250gb? That was a decent chunk. Worth $200? No. Worth something? Absolutely.
You may say spending $200 extra for a black enclosure is irrational, but then most of the world will say spending $1500+ on any MacBook is itself irrational. Ultimately people have their own reasons and justifications for spending their own money.
Having own both the black and white Macbooks around that time, the extra $50 (over the white version with the same drive space) was worth it for a wrist rest that didn't look like it stained as fast as the top case on the white MacBook.
OTOH, I had the original white MacBook and ended up getting the topcase changed for free like 3 or 4 times though the first few years I had that machine (while the AppleCare was in effect). It was annoying that it was necessary, but pretty spiffy to periodically get a brand new keyboard and trackpad.
The real hack was to get the black macbook off the refurb store for the same price of the new white macbook. Same warranty and apple gave all their refurbs a look over. Sure you didnt get the white box but the regular brown box isn’t bleached but no one cared in 2007 anyways so maybe i’m wrong
This does seem to be contrary to, at least, many people's intuition about how pricing does or should work. I've seen an awful lot of small business owners start out pricing at what seems fair to them, as a professional in their space. Turns out market price was 50% or more higher than what they were charging, every single time, and getting over "I feel like I'm ripping people off" is sometimes a significant hurdle for them. In fact, it's my understanding that notions of fairness hold greater sway over pricing in some cultures than they do in the US and similar places. That seems to be closer to how people naturally want to operate, from what I've observed.
IMO, just price economics remains the default intuition for most humans. “The price is what you can sell it for” is too nihilistic for most people to accept.
The stereotype for "those people" is that they're willing to pay a premium for purely cosmetic differences, but the emblematic white shells are just the cheapest option available. By paying extra for the black macbook, you ironically became one of "those people" by trying to not look like one. :)
Same specs except 250gb HDD instead of 160gb which, in my opinion, isn’t something to scoff at in 2007/2008. Overpriced? Sure. But $200 wasn’t exorbitant for the upgrade. The blog dismisses that a little too readily IMO.
Another happy Chromebook user here. Apple has become too expensive when one can easily spec a PC laptop to be far better for less and have money left over for accessories. I can write code on my Chromebook (Linux), I have an SSH terminal for remote servers, and a great, always-on and updated machine. Total cost: $650 (Pixelbook Go). I've never understood why so many programmers and sysadmins feel the need to go straight to the Mac without considering any other option. I have an issued laptop from work running Fedora 35 and I in no way feel like I'm missing out. I'm not impugning Mac users, but it sometimes feels as if some of them have a holier-than-thou attitude towards anything not Apple.
>I've never understood why so many programmers and sysadmins feel the need to go straight to the Mac without considering any other option.
One reason I like my Mac is because the number of options is so limited. More or less, all modern Macs are pretty good. Solid machines, good OS, good long-term support, few surprises. Just pick your price range.
Chromebooks? Well, I'm glad you found one that you like, but from what I've seen of others' choices, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some are okay, some are great, some are crappy, and there isn't necessarily a good cue (like price) to tell the difference.
I've done laptop Linux in the past (well, Linux and various BSDs), and the top recommendation for any problem you have with it is to change distros. When I was 26, okay, yeah, I liked doing that. I'm well and truly over that now. I'm aware that it's a heck of a lot better these days, but even so, it still seems like a bit of a moving target.
Another thing in Apple's favor is their hardware is quite good. The $600 Chromebook will be worth zip in a year, while I could probably get a significant percentage of the sticker price for my Macbook. Not that I'd sell it, because my previous 2011 Macbook lasted (with some upgrades) as my main axe for a decade. That's not nothing.
I think the sysadmins and programmers aren't just moo-mooing like cattle when they go for the Mac. They often have particular and very good reasons. E.g., in my case, I'd rather go back to a clay tablet and pointy stick than give up BBEdit.
You make some good points. For me, my Chromebook, if still working in a couple of years, will be handed down to my kids to watch YouTube and surf the net. I rarely sell computers once I've used them. While Apple does offer iCloud as a backup, I dislike storing anything locally. This is where Google really shines. If something happens to this Chromebook that's fatal, I take a ball peen hammer to the SSD and screen, chuck it in the trash, buy a new one, and in less than 5 minutes, I am back up and running with almost nothing to configure. This is hard to beat. Since I do most of my work on remote servers, I really don't need more than this, but I understand why others do and can appreciate it. I guess I'm just tired of quite a few people I work around looking at me and my choices with disdain because they're not Apple. I have nothing against Apple HW or SW. It's not my need or want, but I understand why others feel differently.
I tried chromebook for quite a while and I could just never quite get it to match my workflow.
One thing that always messed with me was how much work it was to set up. If you step off the yellow brick road, the work arounds get to be really funky and hard to automate. So I had android apps that I'd download and then log into. For a lot of years my password safe didn't work well with it. Signal was an issue for a long time until they got the linux containers or whatever working, though for that you'd have to reset to dev mode and get a bunch of stuff installed.
I really like the idea. I run a linux machine, (usually whatever flavor $work is willing to provide), and at the end of the day, I run a bunch of terminals with tmux, a web browser, and signal. So in theory that seems like it should work. And, it seems like that was getting better last I tried. But you really have to be bought in on the google way to make it go.
I haven't messed with it for a couple years so maybe I should fire up my pixel book and give it another shot.
>If something happens to this Chromebook that's fatal, I take a ball peen hammer to the SSD and screen, chuck it in the trash, buy a new one, and in less than 5 minutes, I am back up and running with almost nothing to configure.
This is a compelling feature, and I get it. I'm old school enough that I much prefer having things local. I'm also contrary enough that I don't like how much clout Google has, and paranoid enough that I don't trust Google. But I definitely get the appeal.
Way back in the day, Sun came around to the corporate office where I used to work to demo the Sun Ray. Most of the tech people dismissed it out of hand as a gigantic heap of crap (and as it turned out, they were right, or at least in agreement with the free market), but I understood the appeal.
everything on my apple computer is also backed up in the cloud. if something untoward were to happen to the machine, I would also be up and running in 5 mins or so after purchasing a new one. so I am not personally sure what you mean by saying that google shines in this dept. I don’t see any difference.
also, not sure if you meant this literally — would you please consider taking any destroyed computers to electronics recycling instead of throwing in the trash, if at all possible based on your location? these things contain stuff that’s not really desirable to go into landfills - heavy metals, batteries, etc
Point me to one competing laptop (Windows or ChromeOS) with:
- 10+ hour battery life even when working on periodic compiles, and easily 15+ hours web browsing
- high DPI display
- faster multicore CPU performance than a Ryzen 5800X desktop CPU
- less than 5 lbs
- good trackpad and keyboard
- decent build quality
I believe this doesn't exist outside an M1 Pro/Max MBP. My MBP14 uses less than 0.5W package power during a Zoom meeting, that's less than what modern AMD machines use at _idle_. My old MBP15 used over 2 watts package power at idle. I can hit all threads with a big C++ or Java compile and the fans won't even be audible, and my laptop fits in a backpack and is small enough to use anywhere. The extra cost (~$1000) is not really that big a concern when you make software engineer salaries and your laptop is a tool you use every day on side projects to improve your skills.
I personally don't like osx, but I see why developers and sysadmins go for them. it's nice to have a product with "good enough" posix compatibility that is supported by a large company. the price doesn't really matter to the individual when it's paid by their employer. and a wise employer recognizes that a brand new MBP is still a very small part of the total cost to employ an FTE.
I would've written something just like this a few years ago, but when the M1 was released, things really changed. It really is a lot faster than most other laptops for many types of work, and especially so for its price point.
What are you talking about? Apple offers the most powerful laptop on the market, with the lowest power draw and longest battery life, for the price of a midrange PC laptop.
Unsure where you've been for the last year, but there's no laptop that has a better single thread performance or GPU.
Even at twice the power draw and expense, there's nothing quite as good as a macbook at the moment.
However, this requires you to be using ARM and not x86, and it requires you to use MacOS which has _interesting_ performance characteristics for certain workloads.
You might be right but your citations of cinebench are misleading, geekbench has much different performance numbers, the m1 is only beaten by a brand new and much more power hungry/thermal cpu.
It’s also not exactly an indicator of real world performance which is why I avoided linking to benchmarks.
It's possible the M1 has been dethroned for single core performance, but what you link is not a good comparison.
Claims of future performance are going to be met with a clear shrug because ultimately I've been able to put my hands on an M1 for over a year, theoretical future CPUs are absolutely no consequence.
Additionally what is failed to mention here is how much battery life you get. Which, Apple is easily leading on.
I'm quite envious of the M1 to be perfectly honest, for the thermal envelope it's unbeaten, and its barely being challenged one year on. But you'll take my Dell Precision and my Linux installation from my cold dead hands.
> Claims of future performance are going to be met with a clear shrug because ultimately I've been able to put my hands on an M1 for over a year, theoretical future CPUs are absolutely no consequence.
It is not theoretical. They ran their tests on a laptop that is already available for purchase.
Yes, the article shows a Geekbench win of 3% in single core performance. It fails to detail the enormous power consumption penalty Intel is paying to get that performance. That makes a huge difference in laptop usability.
I mean for most users, Rosetta + the ever expanding number of apps/games build for MacOS over the last decade, means it really isn’t the barrier it used to be. Plus there’s always parallels.
> the ever expanding number of apps/games build for MacOS over the last decade
I was under impression that the number was shrinking after Mojave cut support for 32-bit apps/libraries, since many developers never bothered to update their apps and games to 64-bit, much less native ARM.
With the M1 line being ARM, they are now offering something unique, but in the past I would basically agree with you. I'm probably going to buy my first MacBook in the near future just to have an ARM laptop running GNU/Linux that's more powerful than the Pinebook Pro.
> I've never understood why so many programmers and sysadmins feel the need to go straight to the Mac without considering any other option.
One reason is availability. Chances are, the PC laptop you took such pains to spec out are not nearly as available in case you need one on short notice. If I dropped my Macbook in the ocean this morning, I can walk into an Apple store and have a reasonable replacement by afternoon. Unless your PC specs are ok with random consumer/gaming laptops from Best Buy, you are likely looking at several days minimum wait, probably a lot more if they happen to be at the point in the product cycle where last year's model is in low stock and next year's hasn't come in yet.
Apple also have this problem. If you want a laptop with 2TB+ storage you must get it as a BTO option. Or if you want a 14" machine with 32GB RAM. You have to be happy with Apple's random SKU choices that go light on SSD and RAM choices but heavy on CPU performance. Either pay a bunch more to get CPU performance you may not want or need to get the storage and RAM you do need or wait.
At least with a lot of PCs you can upgrade RAM/SSD yourself and get it quick from Amazon rather than wait two weeks for the factory in China to do it for you.
I'm not sure - what makes a Chromebook cheaper than similarly specced regular laptop? I've looked at price/perf/quality and they seem to be fairly comparable.
Why not just buy a regular laptop and put Chrome OS on it?
You can't just put Chrome OS on any laptop. It's cheaper by far, and there's not dealing with cruft building up, updates mangling your install, patch Tuesday nonsense, slowing down over time, drive-by downloads, you name it. I admit that I do most of my work on remote machines, so I don't have to have a machine with heaps of horsepower to crunch code, compile, etc. I also don't use an IDE. I write code in a terminal window. I'm not a pure programmer, more dev/ops. I do work with a fair amount of code, but it's all Linux (Bash, Python) or PowerShell based, meaning the majority of my work is done in terminal windows. This approach doesn't work for everyone. My work-issued laptop runs Fedora 35 and it's a lower-end machine (i5 processor, 8GB RAM, run-of-the-mill Dell workstation laptop). I can use Remmina for RDP stuff, and the rest I can do with a terminal window.
As a frequent Chromebook user, Google does a lot of work on the touchpad drivers to make it a pleasant experience that you don't usually see outside Apple.
ChromeOS has natively supported running full linux containers for a several years, with basically full GUI support. You can essentially treat it as a normal linux dev machine whose browser lives outside your chroot.
I'll admit to salivating over this way of working, all the grunt happening somewhere else but my keystrokes being low latency (since they're locally rendered and lazily synced by the web browser).
But anyone who says a chromebook is comparable to a macbook is smoking something.
I'm not even saying that as an Apple Lover, I use linux, but I'm aware of the limitations of the platforms.
IME most people use macs not because they think they're better than everyone else; but because the development experience is very "happy path" -- and the hardware build quality is high.
I worked at the Apple Store when these were available. Anecdotally, a lot of people bought the black MacBook because of how it looked. Although I thought both colors were beautiful, the MacBook's screen wasn't ideal. It was highly glossy and had pretty poor viewing angle, especially compared to the MacBook Pro of the time (which was still available with a matte screen on certain models).
After using them for awhile, the palm rest on the black model would develop a nasty-looking sheen. The white one suffered from durability issues — the palm rest would chip in the place where the top case met the bottom case.
Those issues aside, I remember that time at the Apple Store with extreme fondness, especially the pre-iPhone days. We were slinging iMacs with Parallels and Windows XP to comfort the legions of switchers, all the while reassuring them that, yes, Macs had plenty of great software, even though its library paled in comparison to that of Windows. And, of course, iPods were the cash cow. Funny how things change.
Yeah, the quality of the plastic was dreadful. I got the black one and my wife got the white one. Out of the box, I still think mine was the most beautiful machine I've ever owned. But my wife's went brown, and both cracked round the edges.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's the only time an Apple product cost more than the same configuration in another color. (Except for the Apple Watch, but they are made from different materials)
The Jet black glossy iPhone 7 wasn't available in the cheapest configuration, but it cost the same as the other colors at the configurations it was available in.
I think the black glossy iPhone was one of the most beautiful phones Apple has built. It was the closest they got to a truly seamless, monolithic phone. And it didn't have a stupid glass back that always breaks!
This actually isn't true, one example off the top of my head is that currently the black Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard, and Magic Trackpad all cost $20 more than their white counterparts: https://www.apple.com/shop/mac/accessories/mice-keyboards
The configuration I'm talking about isn't visible on the screenshot. You could get the white Macbook as a build to order option with the same specs as the black one for less than the black one.
After 15 years, my black MacBook is in a closet. I will admit that it's still looking good compared to my spouse's 2007 white MacBook (that we still have). Running Linux on those was painful due to trackpad driver issues :(. Otherwise they would still be doing something in my household.
An interesting thing about these trackpads, the hardware was actually pretty bad. It can only move the cursor in the X or the Y axis at any given time, i.e. the hardware does not support diagonal cursor movement.
Apple's driver did a great job of masking that with fuzzing and (I believe) predictive movement, that's the reason it seemed good in Mac OS X. But you can even tell in OS X if you're really looking for it!
Tesla charged an extra $5k for red paint. The entire jewelry industry and most of the fashion industry exist by upcharging for the look. $50 for black. The US Department of Defense famously reduced eye injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan when they started issuing "stylish eyewear" (1).
Most engineers have no idea how much misery they inflict on the world by indulgently claiming that ignoring UX is the higher road.
Shouldn't the answer be obvious? This is Business 101. So many people put real effort into analyzing materials cost and then try to extrapolate that to what a product ought to cost at retail. Aside from situations where the materials are too expensive, they are basically not related.
Well no, it isn't obvious. Component and manufacturing costs do influence a significant part of the final sale price of a product, regardless of what people like to think. "Apple charges $200 more because they had to use a special manufacturing process which costs more" is an equally believable answer.
There is a ton that goes into products that goes well beyond materials.
I've seen the BOM + retail argument made many times regarding Apple computers. Interestingly, I also hear, "I wish DELLHPLENOVOACER would make a machine that's more like a Mac."
And that's what people are paying Apple for!!
If DELLHPLENOVOACER were to make a machine more like the Mac, their prices would come up to Apple pricing, and that would happen because delivering a product is more than the BOM materials cost.
There is a BOM for hardware and software
There is a Bill of Processes
And a Bill of Services
Often, and should be pretty much always, there is also a Bill of Requirements used for quality and compliance too.
Each of these things involves people, who need to get paid so they can continue to exist and show up for work. And they involve processes, materials, information, all of which are required to ship the product as intended.
Now, all that said, it's not like the BOM cost markup to retail is wrong. For what I'll call reference, or baseline products, it's often close! Those products are lean and mean, with as few processes and materials and information as possible included. And those products are a good deal for those people who don't need a lot of extras.
One example I can think of is the many video signal devices I see on Amazon. Things like VGA to HDMI boxes, for example. I've purchased a few, some being $20 to $30 and others approaching $100. The PCB is almost the same!
The cheap ones often leave a feature out, and I can see the components not populated on the PCB. They also come in rock bottom packaging and have plastic cases, connectors that are not reinforced, and on it goes.
My more expensive one has a nice metal case, all the features are present, included nice cables, not "will work at least once" cables, was packaged well, and the overall build quality was significantly better. I own an expensive one because the connector work is not good enough on the cheaper ones.
I bet the number of BOM items differs by less than 10 percent, yet the product cost difference is 2X plus a little. Quality components vs shoddy ones, or ones that may fail more, or were not quality checked at the source make a big difference in product cost, and that's just one example.
This is why Apple computers cost more. Apple simply does not ever ship a rock bottom, stripped down product. Most of the time, they ship exemplary products (in a given product class), and they add a lot of value, and most importantly, they ask that value be funded with purchase price dollars.
And in most cases, that value added is reasonable. If it were not, the people would not be buying the products.
When I was in middle school a friend gave me a black macbook that she said no one in her house used anymore after my iBook g4 was on its final leg. It was like, the nicest thing ever and I used the hell out of that thing. I was in near disbelief the day she came into school and pulled it out of her backpack, the fact that it was a black macbook.
My 2007 BlackBook was, I think, my favorite computer of all time. As a college student, it was such a huge upgrade from my previous Sony Vaio (that while beautiful, quite literally burned/discolored/cooked my upper thigh -- it took almost two years for the area to stop being discolored) and I gladly paid the Black Tax, with the justification that it was really just $50 if you compared it to a CTO price with the same size HDD. But honestly, the color WAS worth the price difference for me.
To this day, I think the plastic Black MacBook design is just perfect. I will always love the 12" PowerBook G4, but for me, that black plastic is just timeless in a clean and excellent way.
A side-effect of the Black Tax was that the cracked palm wrest issue that impacted a lot of white MacBooks, didn't seem to impact the Black models nearly as much (Apple replaced the top component I believe for people with yellowed or cracked palm wrests).
As much as I love my 14" MacBook Pro Max, if I could have it in solid black, I would love it (that or bring back the true rose gold color and give it to the Pro machines, cowards!).
Somehow I remember this to be the answer. First generation of ThinkPad devoid of IBM logo shipped the same year, and the black MacBook sort of signified death of the PC platform which Apple had been competing against.
I bought one for €25 about 4 years ago. Ironically for an Apple product, it's just about the easiest machine to modify for Libreboot (no need to tinker with RasPis or other hardware):
When I bought my first Macbook in 2009 (the unibody) it had a 160GB harddisk. The 250GB upgrade would cost €150 more I believe. I bought the 160GB version, went to the nearest IT shop and bought a 320GB disk for €120 and got that 160GB as a spare.
Sometimes Apple's overpricing works in your favor. I killed the cdrom in my black MacBook with unfortunate drink spill. Out of warranty, I took it to Apple to get a quote for fixing it, which was a ridiculous $400. I then made a claim on my credit card extended warranty for that amount which they paid and got a free drive from someone and fixed it myself.
I remember selling it and overall making a profit on it after 2 or 3 years of use.
The only bummer of owning a black MacBook was the charging Magsafe unit was still white. It's a (tiny) shame that Apple did not choose to color-coordinate it, like it does nowadays. The contrast was tough sell when considering the 'premium aesthetic' angle Apple was making.
It looked pretty cool nevertheless by itself and the size/weight felt quite right. Good old memories of running Snow leopard on it in early grad school days
The white 2006 Intel MacBook was my first Mac. Family members opted for the black one. Personally I never liked the black one. A lot of laptops from that era had cases in shades of black/grey/beige. Apple’s all white glossy case was very unique. However the black case did seem to be less prone to scratches. At certain angles small scratches were very visible on the white case. As the article points out the black model came with more storage but during this era of Apple computers the HDD/RAM was user upgradable. So for me at least the black model was not justified.
Both of these models irked me because the plastic used was prone to cracking. The bottom case started forming hairline cracks near the screen hinge/sharp corners. The case had a lot of flex. The screen did not perfectly align with the bottom case. The top cover of the keyboard started cracking off where you’d rest your wrist. I was very happy to replace it with a unibody aluminum design in 2011.
I bought the black macbook because IT WAS THE ONLY ONE IN STOCK, the cheaper ones were unavailable anywhere. The thing was initially unstable (bad firmware but apple patched it). I used it for years and then gave it to a friend who used it for a few years and gave it to her sister. I think it literally lasted a decade.
Apple follows many of the practices of the fashion industry. For example, the fanfare for announcements of new colors (which are highlighted during keynote announcements, as opposed to being a footnote), and having different sets of colors for different colors.
It fits the "luxury consumer electronics" segment they've created (how they've managed to create and maintain that is, I'm sure, a case study in business schools).
Charging more for an exclusive color whose only difference is that it costs more is classic fashion business sense.
See also, the origin of black pearls as a desirable item, which were originally thought as defective pearls until one savvy person started marketing them as exclusive and expensive. Or also Parmentier making potatoes appealing in France by having his potato patches surrounded by (easily bribable) guards.
It's the same with the black Magic Mouse and Magic Keyboard: an extra $20 for the color.
Most people will choose the regular silver accessories. That makes the black accessories stand out even more. And as we know, being unique is very valuable in a secular and individualistic time.
my first experience with apple support came via the black macbook. One day a giant bubble appeared on the outside of the lid it grew and then eventually popped leaving a glossy black layer exposed under it. At that time most people took their laptops to an authorized computer store not apple store - i did- and they refused to do anything because it was physical damage. I was young and didn't complain - just went home and was sad. About a week later someone from Apple called and said they would ship me and new one if I'd agree to send them the damaged one. I agreed, week later a new laptop showed up, I sent the old one right to apple HQ in my country.
I remember that when first released it was possible to configure a white Macbook with the same specs as a black one for $50 less. So you were paying $50 for black, assuming you wanted the stats that were baseline on the black one.
If I was hypothetically in the market for a new Macbook Pro, I'd really like even more colour options than the Air. I'd pay at most $50 - $100 cad more for a really boss colour like the green on the new iPhone, but tbh grey and silver ain't cuttin it, idc how spiffy the internals are. I'd be pretty annoyed if I had to upgrade for some reason, but they still didn't have those options.
A while ago there was thread that argued (amongst other things) that you must be crazy if you make your product white. It said that white is always more expensive to produce because of more rejects along the whole production chain. It also argued that just because Apple could pull it off you couldn't.
I had one of these back in the day and I loved it. I sold it just a few years ago. Still one of my favorites. My one complaint, the white power cord and power brick. Come one apple, you're supposed be a leader in design. I realize cost justification was probably the reason for this.
The article seems to be trying to not say it's not market forces, but that's just Apple. Want to increase the value of something? Just put an Apple logo on it and people will think it costs more. Apple marketing is brilliant and disingenuous at the same time.
There was definitely a period over the last five or so years where Apple went back to largely trading on their name and macOS, for laptops. With the M1 they're now firmly back in the realms of shipping significantly better hardware than the rest of the market. The M1 Pro MacBooks are ridiculous - fast, silent, and the battery will comfortably last 10 hours unless you're compiling software non-stop. Throw Apple's industrial design, which is back on form, on top of that and you've got a great machine. The fact it doesn't actually costs significantly more than an equivalently powerful Intel laptop is icing on the cake.
I wasnt yet using Macs when those macbooks were sold.
But I really liked their design. I never got this "premium black" thing because i largely preferred the white one. Really iconic. I'd love if Apple (re)released computers with this design.
The new MacBook Pros hark back to those late 00's ones in more ways than just the appearance. You can tell that Jobs' permanent drive for being ever thinner, lighter, and less adorned with ports is finally losing its grip on the pro end of the range. I bought a 14" Pro recently and its so nice to be back in a world where the MacBook Pro is designed to get work done - the keyboard works properly, its got HDMI out, MagSafe is back, and its got a screen proportioned for work rather than watching films.
You can tell that Jobs' permanent drive for being ever thinner, lighter, and less adorned with ports
More Jony Ive. MacBooks had useful ports during Jobs' reign and several years thereafter (until the MacBook Pro 2015). It's only after Ive left Apple in 2019 that the ports came back (well, in 2021, but products are in the pipeline for a while).
Effectively, I like the new MBP design for a "work" computer.
But I miss the simple style of the white MacBook for a more "personal" computer where you want a pretty and sturdy computer you can move around the house and lend to your kids.
Plastic was more family proof. Yes you could scratch it but it wouldn’t instantly become ugly. Aluminium is nice and all until it falls from the coffee table and flattens on the edge, becoming both ugly and unsaleable.
Wait until these tech bloggers hear about Rolex, or any other luxury brand having limited color releases marked up higher than the "base model" sharing the same exact components.
Some people buy watches to simply see what time it is. Some buy 100x more expensive watches that also happen to display the time. All I'm saying is, there's nothing new about a brand marking up variations of their products because they are "limited edition" or whatever. It's just surprising to see the sentiment of some that are shocked that this is even a thing.
I always thought the white one looked cooler when it was fresh but aged much more poorly than the black one. Same with white sneakers, too much work to keep them icy white.
The blogger here is 100% positive that the black case material was precisely the same cost as the white material? What Apple engineer gave them this information?
And the cost of the material has nothing to do with the argument. I don't know why you'd imply that it "costs precisely the same", as no two materials would ever be exactly the same. But you don't adjust your pricing 39 cents either direction - you decide on a price based on what people will pay.
In the first line it says price discrimination requires different prices in different markets. While I’m sure there are examples of Apple doing this, how is changing the color and charging more for it in the same market an example of price discrimination?
It's a definitional distinction. The "black laptop market" is different from the "white laptop market", in much the same way as luxury good markets work (see also: the Apple Watch Edition). It's the same as with haircuts -- women have proven by and large to be willing to pay more for haircuts than men, so women's haircuts cost more, in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-based_price_discriminat...
Price discrimination gets a bad rep because of the name I think, but as Wikipedia points out student discounts are probably the best example and are basically uncontroversial.
"Was this modest storage upgrade worth the $200 premium? Absolutely not; Apple was charging more for the black enclosure because it could."