Apple charges fortune for memory upgrade

Of course you could just buy some Kingston memory which will probably work just as good and save yourself some money!

I think we get the message by now...

Andrew.

oh woah is me for being looked down upon or told i get what i deserve because of the computer i own. it's not trivial!
u guys are beside urselves.
if there is a mac user as suggested, please come forth and admit the blunder of paying more than half the price of job's macbookpro being that it's so obviously a folly and we all know there must be some stupid apple customer that knows no better! bless you, child, for lowering your defenses and humbly admitting something such as this, there is hope! never give up.
do what you want to do, f*ck these people, even if u're rich and know no better
now i'm beside myself too :)

Everyone knows Apple charges a huge premium for RAM and always has. Its not news. But ANYONE - PC or Mac user (after all when it comes to RAM a PC==MAC) who buys RAM retail (Apple Store, Best Buy, etc.) is uninformed. I just purchased 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 667 for $21US on eBay - including shipping - for my iMac.

... to see Apple customers being taken to the cleaners like that. It's like they deserve their fate.

Nice to see them raising the price by a power of 10! 

Two 1gb models can be found quickly for $45 USD and a single 2gb module for just over $100 USD.

Of course those two results didn't have free shipping.

And people like to put a dollar sign in the spelling of Microsoft! 

Is there some way of incorporating dumbass into the spelling of Apple and Fanboy?


My MacBook got 2Gb DDR2 PC2 5300 which cost me $60 + $4 shipping, but then it was Corsair and probably didn't come with a sexy white package or little apple logos all over it. They cost money ye know!

Jesus. I recently bought 2GB of PC2-4300 for my IBM ThinkPad at a mere £30 (decent Samsung stuff too). 

Who the hell would buy a Mac, honestly.

In the German store it's even more expensive:
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/germanstore.woa/wa/RSLID?nclm=96D4DAC9
But you can get it within 24h. :D

Never buy any memory @ Apple store!!!

This is why I have no respect for Apple customers.

Apparently, neither does Apple.

Whoever said money doesnt grow on trees is sadly mistaken i think its safe to say it does in the guise of multi-coloured apples!

I once bought a 1GB stick of RAM via a eBay page. The previous owner was a Mac user and he mentioned which machine model it came out of and the huge price he paid for it.

The picture and serial number showed me it was a simple Crucial job. But I was pleasantly surprised to get it for next to nothing.

I can only surmise that PC owners didn't bid as they were scared off by the Macintosh references the seller had dumped all over his page.

...what a bargain and to think I paid £60 delivered for 2GB of PC2700 memory the other day...

I would never buy a mac and this is one of the reasons, you can get the same thing from Crucial.com for $349

posted by : Mason, 12 November 2007 
"Is there some way of incorporating dumbass into the spelling of Apple and Fanboy?"

Call them Appleboys.


Hi, Doesn't opening your mac to put your cheap kingston ram, void your warrant?

I personally only use genuine Apple memory and am willing to pay a large premium knowing that it has been personally blessed by Steve Jobs himself. I'm not paying just for memory but the hip cool look styling of Apple RAM.

At least here, in the good ole Yewknighted Stayettes, you can pick up decent "Mac Approved" memory for cheap:

http://eshop.macsales.com/

They've got DDR2 upgrades for $50-60 a gig. Not super cheap, but I've dealt with them before, and they seem decent.

Note: I do not work for OWC. I bought PC133 DIMMS from them in the distant past. I had Kingston DIMMS in there before (AGP G4 PowerMac) and they were unstable. Got the "Apple approved" memory, and it all worked out fine.

Personally, I prefer newegg, but whatever.

On the Mac Pro, Apple charges $600 per 2GB FB-DIMM, about a $130 value. A 460% mark up would be high for crack.

I see that you cannot read. 4 GB's of memory is $1,200. 2 gigs is 500. Im not saying that it isn't expensive, but freaking read. I have talked with apple about the price and they said that the memory that they buy is the top of the shelf stuff, it will not fail, the cheaper memory might have some defects that might fail. I myself buy Kingston.

*

Hi, my name is John T. Welcome to Apple!
*

John T: How may I help you today?
*

You: Why is there such a price premium for upgrading to 4GB of memory for Mac's
*

You: The price of the memory is no where near that retail
*

John T: IT's more going from 2-4 than 1-2 because it's 3 more GB vs just 1 more GB with the upgrade to 2gb.
*

You: I understand that but I can buy Mac certified memory from Newegg 4GB for $249
*

You: And seeing as I start with 1GB in the basic model that just doesn't make sense
*

John T: You can put whatever memory you want if you choose to install it yourself. It's not supported, but you can go with a less expensive brand.
*

You: Ok thats fine thank you for your time
*

John T: Thank you for visiting the Apple Store. We appreciate your business.
*

Thank you for contacting the Apple Store. If you require further assistance, please call 1-800-MY-APPLE.


You have got to have a pretty bad case of "Teh Stupids" to actually buy memory from Apple.

I first noticed this when a friend of mine kept pestering me about how glorious mac is and how it would lead me to the promised land and all that crap.
So I went on to Apples website and checked out the prices.

When i closed my browser window I can pretty much guarantee that every shred of respect (what little there was anyway) that i had for Apple was pretty much gone... and buried... and probably incinerated too.

And I agree, not even Microsoft disrespects their costumers in such a way.

Where I felt a sort of silent respect (and some annoyance) for Apple before, the thought of the memory prices (not that they are the only grossly overpriced thing they have) usually just makes me feel angry.


I just purchased this upgrade!! I thought it would help me check my email and listen to music faster. I just looked up the price of 2GB of ram on neweggs(?) HOLY CRAP $80 why didn't any body tell me that electronics can actually do a whole lot and not cost more than my car.

Everyday, I sit around and ask myself, "Why can't Apple have a monopoly over the world of computers instead of the WIntel/x86???!!"


oh wait.. no I don't.

I have 24GB of PC2-6400 in 1GB sticks sitting right next to me. Atleast 90% of this memory is Kingston too.

..Do you know how much it all cost me? £336. 
This is from normal online retailers aswell. Not Ebay or anything. 

And Apple want £820 for just 2GB of slower memory? I dont know whether to laugh or get really really angry. 

Also, i recently built a high-end Quad Core machine with a 8800GT + 4GB RAM for almost exactly the same price Apple want for just 2GB of RAM. 
If you wanted a similar performing Mac to this PC your'll have to pay about £2500, and it still wouldn't be as fast.

Apple really do rely on the knowledge that their customers don't know any better and take them for fools. But then anyone who is willing to believe Apple really does deserve to pay this much.

But at least they get an apple logo on the package for their extra £600!

I currently work in retail and was showing a customer, who came in for a macbook, an HP laptop. Both at £699, his conclusion within minutes was "Hmm. Those Apple adverts on telly are a little deceiving aren't they?" I didn't even have to spell it out for him which was the better deal, he just took a look at the specs.

My work here is done

.. they (mac users) shell out an abysmal amount of money to get a white stylish PC, with a redressed FREEBSD, they mortgage their house and car for a memory upgrade, yet they brag about how THEY are THE nerds, THEY own THE computer and THEY are so cool.

On the other hand, we poor dumb lamers have got less stylish cases (but the same or better hardware), work with a different flavour of the OS, have still money to pay for a 200 people marriage party BUT we are the losers.

Now... does that make sense??

Final note for Mac-Sadist-Users: you may as well be COOL, but I'm way cooler: the mainframe I work on a daily basis, beats the sh... out of any of yours machines; it faithfully serves over 9000 people, it's got a nice graphical interface (not for me, but regular users do have it) and it existed 20 years before your lousy machine was created. Oh, and I'm getting paid to use it! Now, THIS is COOL!

My experience has been that their own staff at the Apple stores refuse to support this thievery. Most recently, I was buying a MacBook at the NYC Soho store last year and asked about a RAM upgrade to 2GB. The sales guy said, "you don't want to do that here--it'll cost you $300 for the memory and another $300 for the installation. Just take the default setup and order your RAM upgrade online."

I'm not sure if this is a case of staff rebellion or if the gouge is targeted mainly at the ultra-wealthy who are spending their Bush tax breaks on Mac hardware. The computers themselves are very competetively priced: the $1300 I spent on that MacBook was a bargain for the quality of the box and its ability to run multiple OS (currently I have Ubuntu 7.10 purring along on a Boot Camp partition). And obviously, the pricing of the OS beats Vista to a pulp. 

No question that Apple's gouging, mainly on the iPhone, iPods, and Mac Pros. But for the iMac and Mini desktop and consumer laptops lines, they offer some good deals. Just don't expect any bargains on upgrading components.

Agreed with everyone here. I just got the new 24" iMac, and while it was a measily couple hundred and change to upgrade to the 2.8 Core2 Extreme proc, they wanted $850 to upgrade from 2 to 4gb. Who are they kidding here??

I laughed at the Apple guy, went home, got on the intrawebnet and ordered a 4gb set for my new rig for a mere $159 from OWC. And they are even giving me a $30-40 credit if I send them my old stuff which can further reduce the price.

Anywhere, here goes:

There's a shop called "other world computing" here in the States that sells decent memory at decent prices. Check them out unless you want to pay inflated Genuine Apple Prices.

Home of the thousand dollar RAID card!

Anyone that would buy parts like memory or HDDs from the Apple Store after seeing their deserves to get ripped off like that when its so easy to find these parts ANYWHERE! I just upgraded my MacBook Pro to 4GB from OCZ for under $100. By the way....memory is memory...That "Apple Memory" bs is just that...BS. But then I didnt get those pretty stickers :(

Looking at how the prices have changed,i can now get 4gb fitted for 150 form official apple dealer

Apple is the company which stole the iPhone name from Cisco; the iPhone design from LG and its very corporate name from the Beatles! The Beatles for crying out loud!!! Is nothing sacred? Apple has been sued three times by the Beatles. What a shameful record.

Apple is a monopoly: it controls the hardware and software. Years ago, when Franklin Computer Co. made a PC which was capable of running the Apple O/S, Apple sued it out of existence. Apple has built a legalistic and marketing moat around itself. Of course, this is the same company run by Steve Jobs who cheated Woz out of money early in their partnership.

Apple fanboys will pay the prices; few others will...

Apple Fanboys continue to understate Apple's RAM pricing. RAM prices are shown at Mac Store page linked below:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?nclm=7504C42F