[TheRealPomax]

I think the other big thing is that the base model finally starts at a normal amount of memory for a production machine. You can't get less than 96GB. Although an extra $4000 for the 512GB model seems Tim Apple levels of ridiculous. There is absolutely no way that the different costs anywhere near that much at the fab.

And the storage solution still makes no sense of course, a machine like this should start at 4TB for $0 extra, 8TB for $500 more, and 16TB for $1000 more. Not start at a useless 1TB, with the 8TB version costing an extra $2400 and 16TB a truly idiotic $4600. If Sabrent can make and sell 8TB m.2 NVMe drives for $1000, SoC storage should set you back half that, not over double that.

[jjtheblunt]

> There is absolutely no way that the different costs anywhere near that much at the fab.

price premium probably, but chip lithography errors (thus, yields) at the huge memory density might be partially driving up the cost for huge memory.

[wtallis]

> but chip lithography errors (thus, yields) at the huge memory density might be partially driving up the cost for huge memory.

Apple's not having TSMC fab a massive die full of memory. They're buying a bunch of small dies of commodity memory and putting them in a package with a pair of large compute dies. How many of those small commodity memory dies they use has nothing to do with yield.

[jjtheblunt]

Is there a teardown link available for what you wrote? If so, that’s interesting.

[cayleyh]

This has been pretty clear about all Apple chip designs, going back to some of the first A series afaik. They are "unified memory" but not "memory on die", they've always been "memory on package"-- ie. the ram is packaged together with the CPU, often under a single heat spreader, but they are separate components.

Apple's own product shots have shown this. Here's a bunch of links that clearly show the memory as separate. Lots of these modules you can make out the serial or model numbers and look up the manufacturer of them from directly :)

- Side-by-side teardown of M1 Pro vs M2 Pro laptop motherboards showing separate ram chips with discussion on how apple is moving to different type of ram configurations: https://www.ifixit.com/News/71442/tearing-down-the-14-macboo...

- M2 teardown with the chip + ram highlighted: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/07/18/macbook-air-m2-chip-tea...

- Photo of the A12 with separate ram chips on a single "package": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A12X

- M1 Ultra with heat spreader removed, clearly showing 3rd party ram chips onpackage: https://iphone-mania.jp/news-487859/

[jjtheblunt]

neat! thanks

[MBCook]

This is also a niche product. The number they sell is going to be very tiny compared to the base model MacBook, let alone the iPhone.

Apple absolutely loves to gouge for upgrades, but the chips in this have got to be expensive. I almost wonder if the absolute base model of this machine has much noticeably lower margins than a normal Apple product because that. But they expect/know that most everyone who buys one is going to spec it up.

[TheRealPomax]

It's Apple, price premium is a given.