The thing that's holding me back from getting one is the memory markups. The base configuration is too low and I can't just change the memory myself because everything is soldered.
I used to give Apple the ole' eye roll for that as well. Then I realised, as I got a MacBook myself and dove into running Machine Learning models on it, the RAM setup is pretty unique.
Essentially, the RAM is so close to the CPU and GPU that it can effectively be used as VRAM, at least for the M1 and up chipsets as far as I'm aware. That means a 32GB RAM MacBook would be able to run incredibly large (e.g. LLM) networks on-device. Nvidia GPUs with that much VRAM (although they are clearly better at GPU tasks) can cost as much as an expensive MacBook already.
Yeah, the memory is overpriced. So are eyeglass frames (rimless are especially overpriced). But as long as you can afford it, a few hundred dollars isn't that much spread over a few years. Or, think about the other option. You can get a not-MBP and have a clunky experience [1] but save some money, or spend a the extra few hundred for a MBP with enough memory to be a great experience. (Assuming you like macOS, of course.) I interact with my MBP all-day, every day, and it's totally worth a few hundred dollars to get something I love using.
[1] In addition to the non-MBP hardware being clunky, your choice of OS is cutting your steak with a spoon (Windows), or a huge drawer full of tangs, handles, prongs, and spoon-bowl and you spend your time digging around to assemble a knife, fork, and spoon that are the same style and finally give up and settle for "well, it matches if you squint" (Linux). I love the idea of Linux, but I've never actually gotten my system to where I like it, just to where I can tolerate it.
When I looked at adding my ideal RAM and storage onto the base MBP M2 Pro model, the RAM upgrade came to $1634.56 (£1250), and the storage upgrade came to $2876.83 (£2200).
That's enough to be a long term purchase, so I decided to wait for the M3 and see if 3nm makes a big difference.
>Yeah, the memory is overpriced. So are eyeglass frames (rimless are especially overpriced)
That's not a very good comparison. Glasses are important for helping the visually impaired, while Apple memory is just an add-on for a luxury computer.
>But as long as you can afford it, a few hundred dollars isn't that much spread over a few years.
It is that few hundred dollars is a 10x markup over market rate (I've checked, and Apple's markups are actually that bad).
>You can get a not-MBP and have a clunky experience [1] but save some money, or spend a the extra few hundred for a MBP with enough memory to be a great experience.
I don't think my experience with my current PC is clunky, and if I get an M1 macbook, I'll be using Asahi Linux instead of MacOS.
I don't mind overpriced as much as the paltry maximum. Every other computer I have has at least 64GN of RAM, including all my laptops, but until recently you needed a Mac Studio to get that in Apple land. Among other things you can't run large LLMs on only 32GB.
