Rip-offs: Apple Store Ram memory

I'm writing a piece on everyday tech rip-offs this week, and continue to be amazed at the sheer audacity of the Irish Apple Store in their price structure for Ram memory.
Basically, you can buy a quality set of two 2GB Ram sticks (4GB in total) for about €70 from various reliable and reputable online stores (Crucial.com, Komplett.ie etc). Incredibly, Apple's Irish store charges €320 for exactly the same product, and I mean exactly the same product. Incredible. My own theory is that they reckon Apple Store customers are used to just reverting to the Apple Store for parts and accessories, thinking that other outlets don't sell Apple-compatible parts. I've also noticed the O2 Store passing on these ridiculous prices.

Comments

[Orlaith]

Those Apple fanatics that queue up overnight to get an iphone are partly to blame. The hype surrounding the iphone just shifts the balance of power away from consumers. Some people would kill their granny to get an iphone so i guess you can say they are ripe for being ripped off.

[mj]

Some people will never crack open their machine and have no idea how to find the right sort of RAM. People who buy RAM from the Apple Store are people who don't know anything about their computers and do not wish to.

End of the day, if it was too expensive then people wouldn't buy it, right? Why do you care? You can go to crucial etc and buy it there.

What's more annoying than an Apple fanboi? The insufferable smugness of geeks who assume that because something has an Apple logo that it's automatically hyped.

Having used and ditched several PDAs and Smartphones, I'm happy with my iPhone. It solves the problems other smartphones leave out and doesn't bother tackling the problems that no-one other than the insufferable really care about.

[Mark]

If you want a real laugh go to the apple store online and max out a MacPro with RAM, it takes up 32Gb - who'd ever need that much? Anyway, +8K euro on Apple, about 2.5K on Crucial. I think it's like people who bring their cars to a mechanic for the smallest thing. If you can't be arsed to learn how to do simple procedures (with your computer or otherwise) expect a stupidity/laziness tax to be added. Here here on the iPhone MJ, best device I ever purchased.

[Michele Neylon]

It's not just Apple that charge silly prices for RAM. Dell does the same.

[Adrian]

HI MJ,

It's really not an Apple v PC issue. It's purely a rip-off issue. Same for Dell if they do it.

Adrian

(Writing from a MacBook)

[Orlaith]

MJ: I agree the iphone is nifty but it has so many inconveniences, they are petty grievances admittedly but they're also pretty basic deficiencies, like not being able to MMS, or replace the battery, not having a stereo bluetooth for people who want to use a bluetooth headset like the motorola S9.

I have a smart phone that does all those things - it's a HTC P3600. It was released without hype in September 2006 and yet we'll probably have to wait for the 4th generation of the iphone to have these features. The HTC P3600 also has a built in GPS with TomTom software installed unlike the iphone.

[Adrian]

Orlaith,

I agree with you on the lack of those facilities. The only thing holding me back from HTC completely is the Windows Mobile system, which is a little awkward.

[Orlaith]

Yep, that's a fair gripe. But then again it allows for syncronisation with outlook calendar etc and so it's purely practical. I'm not a mac user so it works for me :)

[celebrity video]

Valid points. Passionate discussion. Does Apple read it?

[Ayırma Büyüsü]

Valid points. Passionate discussion. Does Apple read it?