Essentially, the fancier models subsidize the base ones. They do it so they can keep the base prices on their devices relatively low (which helps with marketing, and caters to the important student market), while maintaining high overall profit margins by charging high upgrade prices.

With Macs, it's double that.īut that's simply Apple's business model, and it's not going to change. When upgrade prices are modest relative to the latop's purchase price, most will simply get what they need and forget about it, so soldered SSDs aren't an issue.įor instance, if you're buying a Dell XPS, it's $200 to go from 1 TB to 2 TB. I think you're right that, for most laptop buyers, it simply comes down to $. Some have followed Apple's example and moved away from upgradeable RAM, esp on their smaller devices (you can upgrade RAM on the XPS 15 but not the the XPS 13), but I can't think of any other than Apple's that have non-upgradeable storage. Or if I accepted the half off 2015 iMac if I gave my 2012 to my uncle. Or if I accepted the handme down 2013 MBA

Personally I wish I did the following upgrades Between now and then is where they will make the minority of money. As the bulk of upgraders bought a new PC between 2020-2022 for remote work/learning then the next opportunity for ARM PCs to sell to those users would be 2025-2028. Intel's researched upgrade cycle is every 5-6 years. Heck, Apple already provided the workflow for that transition. What Microsoft and Qualcomm/Android ARM SoC makers need to work on are future Windows 11 fat binaries that allows programs to run on both x86 & ARM just like how Apple did it. X86 will end up being the next mainframe in importance where in the main advantage to it would be for native legacy x86 hardware/software support for the platform. In one competitive advantage Qualcomm could leverage their 5G/6G modem and out cost AMD/Intel.īy 2040 I see x86 dropping to near 20% PC market share because R&D of ~1 billion Android ARM SoC shipped annually worldwide (excludes any & all Apple devices) will make a drastic differentiator in that market.īy comparison x86 PCs ships this many annually worldwide

As those who demand Windows 11 will stick to the best hardware that can run it.

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