New Year new Macs

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bendud

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#303127 18-Jan-2023 09:51

New M2/Ultra MBPs, and the Mini gets an upgrade to M2 and a very welcome price drop.
This may be close to the end for my 2012 Mini that has been heavily upgraded over the years…

Good to see the USDNZD rate hasn’t scuppered the price drop.

B

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#3023158 18-Jan-2023 10:52

I laughed when I saw they were charging $350 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB RAM. And again when I saw them charging another $350 to go from 256GB to 512GB storage.

Seriously, why do people buy these?

Senecio

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#3023160 18-Jan-2023 11:01

reven:

I laughed when I saw they were charging $350 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB RAM. And again when I saw them charging another $350 to go from 256GB to 512GB storage.

Seriously, why do people buy these?

See the post above. When its an infrequent purchase the initial price is more reasonable. Myself, I'm still rocking 2011 base spec Mac Mini that I put a small SSD in and it is still going strong.

"This may be close to the end for my 2012 Mini...."

wellygary

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#3023171 18-Jan-2023 11:32

reven:

I laughed when I saw they were charging $350 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB RAM. And again when I saw them charging another $350 to go from 256GB to 512GB storage.

Seriously, why do people buy these?

Apple's RAM pricing has always been extortionary,

In the past you could escape it with some models that had user upgradable RAM, but the move to Apple silicon and an integrated Memory architecture now means you have no choice but to pay the piper....

alasta

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#3023180 18-Jan-2023 12:22

reven:

I laughed when I saw they were charging $350 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB RAM. And again when I saw them charging another $350 to go from 256GB to 512GB storage.

Seriously, why do people buy these?

Agreed. I am not a 'pro' user, but I went for the Macbook Pro anyway because it doesn't make a lot of economic sense to add these upgrades to a Macbook Air.

Batman

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#3023194 18-Jan-2023 12:56

i was tempted but then the screen is not as good as the 14" MBP M1?

sticking with the 14 M1

as to why pay crazy money for Apple - no idea. it works better than my XPS 15 which also costs the same but slower despite an 8 core i7 processor, runs hot like an iron, and battery life is less than half the mac despite having a 30% larger battery.

lxsw20

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#3023203 18-Jan-2023 13:47

Purchased a base 14" Pro today, should be delivered 9th Feb.

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#3023281 18-Jan-2023 14:49

reven:

I laughed when I saw they were charging $350 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB RAM. And again when I saw them charging another $350 to go from 256GB to 512GB storage.

Seriously, why do people buy these?

Pre M1 I'd completely agree

but since M1 it's a gamechanger. suddenly i can actually use the thing however i want for a whole day which no other Windows thing i know of is able to. it also has other features (assuming you have apple logins of course) - like hide my email ... etc ...

but yeah there are some things a Mac can't do

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reven

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#3023284 18-Jan-2023 14:52

I'm not saying M1/M2 arent great.

Questioning how they can get away with charging $350 for 256GB storage upgrade, and $350 for an additional 8GB of RAM. the CPUs are good, the prices on upgrading to what many would consider minimum these days is crazy.

really it should be 1tb standard tbh and 8gb to 16gb at $200 more would be high.

lxsw20

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#3023291 18-Jan-2023 15:08

Because if you want to use MacOS, what is the alternative?

reven

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#3023293 18-Jan-2023 15:14

yeah dont want to go down the route of use windows/linux/android instead.

but those prices for those upgrades is just not on, theyre clearly ripping people off and those prices are wildly out of range of any other RAM/storage options, just saying... vote with your wallet, or keep paying crazy prices.

reven

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#3023295 18-Jan-2023 15:21

personally, I kinda want a m2 mini for a freemium project I work on. its something that gives me a little money, but not much for hours I put in, and certainly not enough to pay for a mac mini let alone the upgrades.

I have some mac users (about 2% of my user base) that having a m1/m2 mini would be beneficial for me to have, its video encoding so uses a lot of RAM and storage, so I would need 512GB storage and 16GB at least. At those prices, those few mac users will just end up fending for themselves.

So yes, eventually I'll likely get one, but I'm voting with my wallet and that day will be a long way down the track (unless I get a surge in paying mac users, highly unlikely :P)

michaelmurfy

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#3023310 18-Jan-2023 15:58

@reven Honestly the ram requirements in MacOS is far, far less than Windows.

My Ryzen Windows workstation has 64gb of ram. My M1 MacBook has 8gb of ram.

And, to be honest, I find I can do everything I normally do totally fine on my MacBook also. I am not running VM's, I don't do anything particularly intensive but there are also very few times when I am working solely off the MacBook where I wish I had more ram. I fully agree for most MacOS users who just want a good general purpose machine that 8gb of ram for them is actually totally fine.

It is also noteworthy that because of how the SOC is designed that adding ram to it basically requires a whole different SOC and so to be honest given the speed of the ram (it is seriously quick) the upgrade price is somewhat justified. The Apple Silicon Macs are seriously great and while I can't quite switch my workstation to one (I do game) I have found that my MacBook has been the laptop I've been always looking for as it runs cold, has true all-day battery and runs bloody quick. I do not at all think it was a ripoff.

If you have not actually used an Apple Silicon product then IMHO your comments are unjustified until you've tried it. Until then, you just sound like an Android user wondering why iPhone users exist.

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bendud

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#3023443 18-Jan-2023 23:27

Agreed, it’s not just popping in another stick of RAM - it’s a whole different board.
As per the above posters, functionally the 8Gb RAM machined are pretty quick for most things and 16 seems loads. I rarely even make the fans spin on my MBP.
Good to see a price drop on the Mini
B

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#3023467 19-Jan-2023 07:26

reven:
I laughed when I saw they were charging $350 to upgrade from 8GB to 16GB RAM. And again when I saw them charging another $350 to go from 256GB to 512GB storage.

Seriously, why do people buy these?

If you don’t see the value don’t buy it. It’s not hard.

antoniosk

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#3023469 19-Jan-2023 07:30

https://www.apple.com/nz/homepod-2nd-generation/

Interesting this has also come out now, and for first time in NZ ($529).

Looks like they had a raft of things ready to go just before xmas, wonder why the delay? the new Mac mini is decent enough, although the fully loaded version with high horsepower is pricey. MacBook Pro spec bumps are nice enough.

________

Antoniosk

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