8/21/2026 at 4:37:14 PM
I feel sorry for any company trying to launch a new compute product during this window of extremely elevated RAM and SSD prices.This looks well built with a lot of attention to detail. It’s impressive that the price isn’t higher for this level of machining and build quality on a low volume product.
I could see this doing well in some niche studios where they value design of all of the products in the office, but it’s a tough niche. The graphic and video designers are all going to be buying Apple. The CAD and engineering people want something with a real GPU. Most developers want a laptop that they can take with them. It’s nice that parts can be upgraded, but anchoring to that CPU is tough.
by Aurornis
8/21/2026 at 5:04:01 PM
> window of extremely elevated RAM and SSD pricesIs it a window? It seems likely to me that we're going to be paying the LLM tax on all of our consumer electronics for the rest of our lives.
by applfanboysbgon
8/21/2026 at 5:17:24 PM
Yes, even memory manufacturers believe it is temporary which is part of the reason that supply has not increased to match demand and prices have spiked.by kube-system
8/21/2026 at 5:24:32 PM
> even memory manufacturers believe it is temporaryDo they? Is that why they've committed to literally doubling their production capacity in 5 years?
> supply has not increased to match demand
Supply can't increase to match demand, first because it takes, as mentioned, 5 years to bring substantial new capacity onto the field. But also because the demand is artificial and can scale infinitely backed by fake money. Even with the expansion, it is likely the new capacity will be bought up at the still-inflated prices, because the US economy is in a debt-building hysteria and OpenAI doesn't give a fuck about how much it spends because it's not spending its own money. Reportedly OpenAI was making its obscene RAM purchasing agreements simply to deny it to competitors rather than because they actually wanted or needed it.
by applfanboysbgon
8/21/2026 at 5:14:51 PM
They cant outspend each other forever. And with all the datacenters not even being able to be hooked up compute isnt the problem, its powering it.by JimmyBiscuit
8/21/2026 at 4:48:40 PM
Cost of RAM and SSD seems like a secondary challenge. Trying to piss up a waterfall is more in line with the reality that products that are first about design and second about capability face when entering the current workstation and laptop markets that have been iterated on for decades and haven't seen a dramatic new redesign ever.The closest such advance in recent years didn't happen and instead turned into the macbook neo. Apple could have released an OS for the iphone pro max model of phones that allow them to boot Mac OS when attached to a docking station. And sold a laptop formfactor docking station.
by wang_li
