Stairway Update
by Horace Dediu
Meet the new low end, same as the old low end, but better.
The arrows point out the new 17e price points. They are, of course, a replacement of the 16e but now there are two rather than three. The memory of the base model is double and all the other goodness is included. The 512 17e is $200 higher and the mid-size model is gone.
The only thing I note is that the doubling of memory is provided at the same price point suggesting more leverage and in contradiction to the assumptions being made by the DRAM catastrophe cult.
3 comments
Sacto Joe ·
“…doubling of memory is provided at the same price point suggesting more leverage…”
IMO part of the “leverage” is that there are very few model changes, which lowered manufacturing costs (every major change includes an expensive “prototyping” process that reduces net profit).
Yes, Apple’s competitors can ado the same. What’s really smart about this is Apple’s competitors can only keep the price the same by eating into their already thin margins….
AAPL ·
And certified refurbished iPhones (12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and SE) are available direct from some US carriers all the way down to $147.
Sacto Joe ·
Yep. Apple products are built for the long term, and its competitors are not. And that higher resale value is also a major contributor....
The only fly in the ointment is Apple's support for old operating systems. I have just been painfully discovering the cost of trying to use the latest Mac system on an older Mac. In order to stay updated on security, it's pretty much required that you keep your system up to date. However, installing the latest version of MacOS has REALLY hit my computer's usability, wasting hours of my personal time.
My desktop was a top of the line iMac in 2019. That's only 6 years old, which is nothing in my past experience with Macs.
IMO, Apple needs to put resources that extend security on old systems for Macs that go back at least as far as mine, allowing them to forego upgrades to systems that may be more "modern" but by the same token bog down older machines like mine. Yes, they'd sell less computers that way, but they'd have happier long time users as well. And they wouldn't give folks like me the impression that they're using a form of built-in obsolescence to sell me a new computer.....