Subj : Re: the mac club
To   : Nightfox
From : RetroSwim
Date : Sat Jun 28 2025 08:42 am

 Ni> In the past, I'd noticed Apple would charge a lot for RAM, and I could
 Ni> buy RAM for maybe half or 60% of Apple's cost elsewhere and upgrade it
 Ni> myself..

The reason for this was mostly to dis-incentivise nonstandard configurations.

Dell, HP, IBM, etc also charged well above market rate for RAM, HDD, etc upgrades.

For the volume of machines these companies produce, their internal processes are optimised to the eyeballs, antithetical to the idea of a built-to-spec PC. The cost to customise your machine isn't just the parts, it's also the labour of someone to take your unit off the assembly or fulfillment line, change the parts, re-run burn-in and other QA steps, etc. Compare that with slapping a shipping label on a ready-to-deliver system, and flinging it into a FedEx truck.

It's easy to be cynical, but the reality is just boring old economics of scale.

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