There you have it… new iPad Pros, a new Mac Mini and
macBook Air refresh. Quite some new devices Apple has
presented yesterday on it’s Event in New York. Available
from November 7th, 2018, you’ll be able to preorder now!

But what are the prices so far?

the iPad Pro 2018 lineup has it’s prices as follows and will be available in spacegray / silver:

		11.0″ no LTE	11.0″ with LTE	12.9″ no LTE	12.9″ with LTE
	64GB	799 US$	949 US$	949 US$	1149 US$
	256GB	949 US$	1099 US$	1099 US$	1299 US$
	512GB	1149 US$	1299 US$	1299 US$	1499 US$
	1 TB	1549 US$	1699 US$	1699 US$	1899 US$

Especially the top line model, the 12.9″ iPad Pro with LTE module costs a pretty penny! For that money you’ll get an MBP already!

But now on to the Mac Mini 2018:

		8GB RAM	16GB RAM	32GB RAM	64GB RAM
	3.6GHz 4-core i3	799US$	999 US$	1399 US$	2199 US$
	3.0GHz 6-core i5	1099 US$	1299 US$	1699 US$	2499 US$
	3.2GHz 6-core i7	1299 US$	1499 US$	1899 US$	2699 US$
SSD	128GB	256GB	512GB	1TB	2TB
	+0 US$	+200 US$	+400 US$	+800 US$	+1600 US$
Ethernet	Gigabit Ethernet		10GbE network
	+0 US$		+100 US$

So if you go for the big enchilada, make ready to shell out a whopping 4199 US$!

Although I do honor Apple’s attempts to put in as much power into a SFF case, some price steps are just insane. It looks like if someone has just doubled the upgrade prices with the doubling of the capacity. C’mon Apple! We all know that SSD and RAM aren’t following this scheme. Truth is: You can get 32GB RAM for 270 US$ nowadays (DDR4-2666) and the 64GB option kicks in for roughly 750US$.

So as with RAM it may be logical to go for the 8GB option and upgrade the RAM by yourself as you can save almost 50%!

With the SSD… yes… that’s the crucial thing with SFF: As the SSD is soldered, you have to decide how much space you need as you can’t upgrade it by yourself! Smooth move, Apple! But this is just freaking out as 2TB SSDs nowadays cost about 800 US$ if you opt-in for the high-end models! How do you rectify double the price here? And if you look into the smaller capacity updates, this is even worse! For once go with real figures here and not just double it. Let a professional IT specialist design the prices and not just an economy wizard who just knows the multiplication-by-whole-numbers method! This is a total slap in the face of your loyal customers and I guess the upper tiers might not sell well here! For the price of a fully maxxed iMac Mini one would rather seek for an iMac Pro or go for a really pimped MBP here!

Speaking of macBooks, here’s the MacBook Air lineup:

		128GB	256GB	512GB	1536GB
	8GB RAM	1199 US$	1399 US$	1799 US$	2399 US$
	16GB RAM	1399 US$	1599 US$	1999 US$	2599 US$

The MacBook Air was urged to become an update displaywise. 1366×768 weren’t up-to-date anymore. And again with the storage capacity the price rises. As the SSD can’t be upgraded (as it is soldered), Apple again has an opportunity to rip off the customer here! That 1.5TB update is for sure not eligible for a 1200 US$ price raise. Who does investigation on SSD price tiers anyways?

The RAM update is also again a double-it-pay-double-you-moron-game! That’s despicable! I mean, every normal IT guy would compare prices online and see that components don’t sum up like this! You should reconsider your price policy… urgently!

No normal person would opt-in for a 1.5TB MBA as the price buys you a well-equipped MBP 15″ already!

I guess Apple will face a hard 5-accross-the-eyes in quarter figures in three months. This is not how you treat your loyal customers, Apple!

Your price policy only reflects that the ones making the prices for you are just out for maximizing profit and fading out reality entirely!

The fact that your devices become more and more hard to upgrade by oneself as more and more components are directly soldered to the boards make that even worse! and if you look back, you’ll see that customers are already annoyed by such a behaviour! How far will you go until customers turn their back on you?

Oh and then there’s the immense price drive for customers outside U.S.A.:

let’s just peek on the euro prices for the max tiers:

The iPad Pro 2018 12.9″ 1TB LTE: 2099 €
The Mac Mini 6core-i7 64GB, 2TB SSD, 10GbE: 4969 €
The macBook Air 16GB, 1.5TB SSD: 3089 €

YIKES! 8-O – Yes, we have Halloween and these prices are scary indeed!