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Rory Reid, writing for CNET's UK-based Crave site, last week posted a provocative comparison castigating Apple for charging grossly inflated prices for BTO upgrades like RAM and hard disks for their laptop computers, as much as 200 percent higher from Apple, for what would be essentially the same quality or even identical drive from a third-party OEM supplier.
A 200 percent premium is pretty excessive, and it's hard to imagine what Apple U.K. is about with that. Happily, it's not nearly that bad with the U.S. and Canadian Apple Stores, but their prices for most hardware upgrades are still out of line with the competition.
Of course, the obvious alternative for savvy Apple system purchasers is to boycott Apple's grossly inflated hardware upgrade prices and get one's upgrade goodies from a third-party vendor. For example, I'm planning to get a new system fairly soon, probably a MacBook, but I'm not even considering ordering any specification upgrades from Apple except perhaps for the USB modem, and I'm going to check out modem alternatives as well.
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Whenever this argument is rehashed, there is always one important detail left out. When one upgrades a Mac with Apple-provided RAM, that RAM is now under warranty with Apple, too. As a result, if you ever have a Mac warranty repair issue and the RAM is suspect, Apple will never blame your problem on third-party RAM, requiring you to switch it out yourself and deal with a separate manufacturer’s warranty.
While it may not justify the UK Apple Store charging double, paying more for such Apple upgrades would certainly provide value for many people who are not techies and want no-hassle warranty coverage—they can send a Mac in for warranty repair and have all upgraded RAM and drives be covered, too.