Apple will wring out $18bn by upselling NAND to fanbois – analyst Apple is on course to make $18bn in sales in its current financial year by upselling customers to higher NAND configurations on iPhones, iPads and Macs. According to estimates from Bernstein, a respected Wall Street analyst, Apple enjoys hefty double-digit gross margins on extra GB options of between 75 and 94 per cent. "The …
I'd be hesitant to call it an idiot tax, to be honest. There are plenty of people out there who like iPhones and feel they really need the extra storage space (keen photographers, perhaps). They likely know that Apple are charging hefty premiums for extra storage, but pay it anyway because that's what they feel they need.
Much as I don't like this kind of practice, I can't wholly blame Apple for it. It doesn't matter how much it costs to produce something, the pricing will always be driven by how much people will pay for it.
"It doesn't matter how much it costs to produce something, the pricing will always be driven by how much people will pay for it."
Which is why iphones don't have microSD slots, or headphone sockets. People want lots of storage, and some people like to use headphones, and if the cheap option is removed, they buy the expensive one instead.
I'm waiting with baited breath for the conversation with Mrs Anonymous Coward when she realises how much she's going to have to pay to stay in the apple ecosystem when she finally breaks her 6S. I still can't see her joining me in the Android camp though. Some people just like the way Apple stuff works.
Apple consistently screws over their customer base for profit. Until their customer base wakes up and does basic comparisons between vendor hardware / storage offerings, or at least starts demanding accountability for their product lines, you'll see no change.
The majority of Apple users are convinced low quality crap electronics get better when you add an Apple logo. That's on them. Any additional money they spend is an idiot tax.
https://youtu.be/04P2u-QOMHA?t=217
I think it is a very highly calibrated "idiot tax"
when you look at their lowest entry laptops 13-inch MacBook Air 128GB SSD £1099,
seems OK, bit small, BUT if/when you use that last byte of storage in that SSD,
the whole mac disk can instantly 'pissapear' , I've had all user accounts vanish, had all Keychains nuked, had the whole virtual structure of the virtual container of the apfs, gone - OK there's supposedly the AI SysIno/Storage/Manage - which tries to offload stuff & upsell iCloud _ but I rather think this is a deliberate ploy to upsell some unwary "idiots" to an entire new macbook.
relatives have taken their 3 year old , full, crashed MBA to Apple & come away with a nice new (emptier) MBA, just £1300 poorer.
I've taken the opposite approach and upgraded myself a 2GB/64GB 11"MBA (was v. cheap!) to a 2GB/360GB+ via some sort of OWC SSD blade that was on offer. Just this new SSD was also much faster than the Apple original, and the fast SSD meant that I hardly notice the RAM limitation, swapping is
sufficiently good.
Some of the recentish MBP's (prob not the latest, I guess those are soldered/welded) can take an apple SSD blade socket to M.2 adapter, made by some enterprising Shenzen company. Minor prob, It doesn't support 'sleep' - possibly quite deliberately from a shiny fruit company.
How good is it with several hundred people all standing under the antenna hitting the data hard? How about thousands?
Like how unlimited cable internet slows when the teenagers get home from school and start online gaming. Hell our internet got slow when the missus was online gaming. I don't the controllers make my wrists hurt (I have one less joint than you do, got them fused).
How good is it with several hundred people all standing under the antenna hitting the data hard? How about thousands?
Very good actually. The places where 5G will actually make a difference are places with high numbers of people where they can put quite a few antennae - think sports stadiums, train stations etc.
Of course, whether operators will actually put that much infrastructure in place is debatable, plus they will obviously require sufficient backhual to service that number of users, but if all those things are in place then 5G will be very good at ensuring they all get good signal.
Lots of "if".
Likewise, train stations, they can stream the cab view from the train with a 35 min delay
Or, you know, look up something on the internet whilst waiting for a train. Perhaps you've not encountered the joy of rush hour at a major train station with no signal because there are too many other people trying the same thing. I live near a stadium, often when there is an event the local retailers who use izettle over a phone network struggle for connectivity.
I get that it is cool to sneer and be cynical, but higher numbers of subscribers per cell is one of the key design goals of 5G. Its not solely about high speed downloads. Why wouldn't you want lower latency, better coverage and faster speeds?
>I'm sure getting the message about the leaves on the track via 5G is going to make a crowd very pleased indeed :)
Well:
1) It would be useful to know that the overhead lines are down, just outside the train depot, so no trains can leave the depot so services are suspended, before I leave home to rush to the station... [Scenario based on a real world event from a few years back.]
2) Knowing there were leaves on the line affecting one set of services can make the difference between sprinting across the bridge to platform 5, or getting a coffee and waiting for the delayed service on platform 1. Mind you, in this situation, you don't have time to mess with a smartphone, you have to make the decision based on retained knowledge and what the train boards are saying.
>Or, you know, look up something on the internet whilst waiting for a train.
Like the live arrives/departure information... It is surprising just how many stations there are where this simple task is impossible either from the platform or from a car in the car park (waiting to pick someone up) using either the free WiFi or 3/4G - trouble is I don't see 5G solving this problem.
The places where 5G will actually make a difference are places with high numbers of people where they can put quite a few antennae - think sports stadiums, train stations etc.Wot? Like Verizon's NFL stadium 5G rollout? Verizon’s 5G network isn’t good enough to cover an entire NFL stadium:
Verizon yesterday announced that its 5G service is available in 13 NFL stadiums but said the network is only able to cover "parts" of the seating areas. Verizon 5G signals will also be sparse or non-existent when fans walk through concourses and other areas in and around each stadium.
"Very good actually. The places where 5G will actually make a difference are places with high numbers of people where they can put quite a few antennae..."
You can have all the antennae you want and it won't make much difference. The issue is not number of antennae, it's number of frequency spreads available. You could have 15 antennae in an area, but if they're all using the same spectrum, you're just wasting hardware.
>5g will give you a full 1tb or more throughput. If. You. Stand. Under. The. Antenna.
Doubt it, not because 5G can't deliver but the reality of why networks want to deploy 5G.
According to the specifications, my 2014 4G phone can handle up to 150Mbps - not been anywhere that has come close to delivering that speed. EE for example only offer 30Mbps download speed on their standard 4G service, pay extra for 60Mbps, which given for most users the most data intensive application is streaming tv/films...
Additionally, your device is going to need to run multiple radios and have the processor capability to process that amount of data - so battery burning and potentially hand/ear burning.
Finally, the purpose of 5G isn't so much to deliver high volumes of data to an individual user/device but to deliver reasonable volumes of data at a reasonable rate, to a larger number of users sharing a cell. So expect those very high download speed contracts to be expensive.
Has pretty much always been selling commonly available commodities (RAM, circuit boards, etc) at a huge markup because, wow the packaging of them is stylish and fashionable.
I'm surprised they haven't extended this business model into every possible area. Apple could start selling actual apples individually in trendy white plastic or metallic cases, for £30 each and loads of people would buy them and start saying "Mmmmmm...... these iApples taste so much nicer than ordinary apples!".
Back when we were together and I was in funds I would order posh chocolates from a Chocolatier in Paris (we've been to the shop) and they come very well packaged in fancy boxes with very thick strong cardboard covered in nice materials. But the chocs are divine.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Is when jehovahs witnesses buy iPads...
Did they not get the hint with the start up splash screen?
Apple have always ass raped their customers - from satanist Apple 1s to the beige Macs made with added razor blades - to that ridiculous 20th anniversary Mac for £10k if I remember right.
This is what a Gent by the name of Havelock Vetinari would refer to as "olds".
And let's be blunt, idiot tax is a reverse Carlinism - dribbling inbred fucktard tax is much more descriptive - 7 syllables you notice? The only real problem is most Inbredistanis need to be in mental low range to remember more than 4.
Lemme see. I just looked at HP's prices for its Elite x2 1013 G3. With 128GB of SSD: $1,499; otherwise identical with 256GB: $1,749. How about Microsoft? Surface Pro 6 with i7 processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB storage: $1,199; with 16GB and 512GB: $1,599. Dear, oh dear. Let's try the Dell Inspiron 13 7000 13". With 256GB, $1,199.99 (marked down from $1,98.99 — maybe my cookies tell them I've been sniffing around the competition); with 512GB AND 32GB of Optane thrown in, $1,249.99 (down from $1,448.99). My point is that most outfits are doing it, not just Apple. And Dell would get my business today.
Yep, the article and the conclusions do seem a bit dated. The biggest threat to Apple's model is people deciding not to be buy a new one not only this year, but next year as well. They've already intervened in the market to keep the resale value of older phones high and provide a disguised discount because sales were quite a bit lower than expected.
But they've been pushing into services, and thus repeat revenues, for years. With the walled garden this is what really counts as idiot tax, once it becomes you can use any streaming service as long as it's from Apple or Apple gets 30%.
@ Det. Evil - Thanks, couldn't be bothered looking up the numbers, but suspected something like this.
Source claims it costs companies $0.10 per Gb.
Based on numbers above:
HP charge $250 for +128Gb = $1.95 per Gb
MS charge $400 for +256Gb and +8Gb RAM. Say $50 for the RAM* so $350 for +256Gb = $1.37 per Gb
Dell (on sale) charge $50 for +256Gb = $0.20 per Gb
Apple charge $200 for +128Gb or +256Gb on 13" and iPads and $400 for +256 on 15", giving $1.56 or $0.78 per Gb
So while only Dell is going competitive on it (given it's a sale price too) Apple Mac Pro and iPad Pro are the next cheapest per Gb upgrades.
* why they don't just chuck it in the base unit too and bump the price by $20-30 I don't know...
....that in any 5G implementation I've heard of in the US, at least, the more memory the better for people who listen to music and/or watch videos on their fondletoys/fondleslabs. 5G cells are short range, and will eventually have decent coverage in city centers, but anywhere else in the US, it will be years before the coverage will approach what 4G is like today. If the hypothesis is correct (and I'd like to see where the original article's author got the wholesale prices Apple pays), Apple; profit is likely to increase, in the US at least.
In fairness the article doesn't specify what is included in the $0.1/GB cost Apple reportedly pays. This may include the supply chain to get it from foundry to assembly line. If it doesn't, as you suppose, look at it this way:
64GB of raw NAND is costing $0.1*64 = $6.40.
It doesn't cost $50-$6.40=$43.60 to run a supply chain, which is the point TFA is making! Even if the supply chain costs 3x the raw cost (i.e. $0.4/GB total) that still leaves a $24.40 margin (48.8%).
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