Being an Apple fan is an expensive hobby.
Earlier this week, Apple refreshed its MacBook Pro lineup, and as The Verge pointed out, the most expensive model now costs just shy of $6,700. It’s the most expensive MacBook Pro the company has ever released, if likely not the most popular.
Apple is no stranger to costly products: It’s been charging a premium for its aluminum-clad products for years now, even when its offerings aren’t the most powerful or modern. And Apple’s current crop of gadgets is no exception. The top model of all its major products now costs over $1,000:
(That iMac Pro costs more than a 2018 Nissan Versa.)
All of these prices also don’t include many of the rather necessary add-ons that consumers tend to buy alongside their Apple products, from cases and AppleCare, to mice, keyboards and monitors.
Conversely, the most affordable major products Apple currently offers are the iPhone SE, which starts at $349, and the Apple Watch Series 1, which starts at $249, although both of these are built on rather old technology.
Last year’s iPhone X was the first phone Apple released that cost $1,000, and many had reservations about such a pricey smartphone before it hit stores. But it seems that consumers were unfazed by the price hike: The iPhone X was the single-most popular phone Apple sold in the last quarter.
Apple is no longer just an electronics company. It is, and has been for quite a while, a luxury company. It sells an aesthetic, a design ethos, that many have tried to replicate, and few have done so with success. It markets its products more as lifestyle items than tech gadgets now, and Apple is one of the few brands that has been strong enough to buck the downward sales trend at physical retail stores in the last few years. Consumers have shown time and again that they are willing to pay for Apple’s premium.