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0 pointsAnthonyMouse2y ago0 comments

You're taking as your example the thing people are complaining about. 8GB of DDR5 is ~$24 retail, and that's the amount Apple is putting in their $1000 laptop. PCs of the same price typically have 32-64GB.

You're also using a time period that includes COVID and when the DRAM manufacturers got busted for price fixing.

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thfuran2y ago

>PCs of the same price typically have 32-64GB.

That's not a run of the mill consumer set up.

>You're also using a time period that includes COVID and when the DRAM manufacturers got busted for price fixing

No, I'm actually including two separate time periods where they were busted for price fixing. They were doing it in the late '90s too.

AnthonyMouseOP2y ago

> That's not a run of the mill consumer set up.

It kind of is, e.g. Steam hardware survey has more than 80% of people with at least 16GB of RAM and almost a third with 32GB, and that's a measure of installed base rather than new computers.

You can now find 64GB in <$550 laptops:

https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000D-110E6?Item=9SIA7ABJ459240

> No, I'm actually including two separate time periods where they were busted for price fixing. They were doing it in the late '90s too.

They started doing it at the end of the '90s. By then PowerBooks were already coming with 64MB and PowerMacs with 128MB:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powerbook_g3/specs/powerb...

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/specs/powerma...

In the second case it started only 3 years into your measurement period instead of 7, and then right after that was COVID. It's only now that the prices are starting to resume their historical downward trend and they're still slightly above where they were when the price fixing started in 2016.

But that explains why it's not a factor of 64 during this period. It's still the case that 8GB of DDR5 is ~$24. What reason is there to not include $100 worth on a $1000 machine? Or, if some excuse for that could be generated, why isn't there a $1100 machine with four times as much?

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