Marco.org

This clickbait article is sadly, unintentionally hilarious, but it’s especially worth nitpicking Atone Gonsalves’ misguided pricing argument:

Only Apple could get away with charging a $400 premium for a feature […]

What Retina Costs

Buying a MacBook Pro with Retina means shelling out at least $2,199 for a notebook with a 15.4-inch, 2880x1800 display. Top-end models approach $3,500!

By comparison, the cheapest 15-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,799, with half the resolution and a different but roughly comparable set of features and specifications. (The Retina version is smaller and lighter but lacks a DVD drive, and uses expensive Flash storage instead of a slower conventional hard drive.)

Let’s compare Apples to Apples:

“A $400 premium for a feature”
When each model is equipped with a 2.3 GHz i7, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD — the least-expensive specs available in common between both models — the non-Retina model costs $200 more than the Retina model.

“Top-end [Retina] models approach $3,500!”
When each are equipped with a 2.7 GHz i7, 16 GB RAM, and a 512 GB SSD, the Retina model costs $3,250 and the non-Retina model costs $100 more. (It’s possible to make the Retina model cost $3,750 by upgrading to the 768 GB SSD, but that option isn’t available on the non-Retina model.)

Clearly, Gonsalves’ pricing argument is based upon the assumption that an SSD-equipped computer is “roughly comparable” to one with a 2.5”, 5400 RPM hard drive — an argument that no informed writer, or anyone who has owned an SSD-equipped computer, would ever make.

ReadWriteWeb is better than this, and they should be ashamed to have published it.