Sure, but they aren’t charging you anywhere close to cost. It’s painful for a company that size to add an option like this. Plus they know they can add a chunk on because if you’re in the market for that option, they know how much you want it.

The same discussion about cost/value comes up every single time.

Often, people will search for a random part that fulfills the same function, sort by cheapest, and then let their indignation run wild, completely ignoring the difference in form factor, other properties, or even quality.

That said, it’s no secret that Apple adds a healthy margin and an “inconvenience” tax.

In Apple’s ideal world, all people would purchase a handful of mass-produced configurations. This saves them in manufacturing costs, assembly costs, and logistical costs.

Apple also spent an ungodly amount on engineering to “make more with less”.

In the long run, this saves them money on lower-capacity components, especially at the quality and with the ancillary properties they're purchased. This is why spec for spec their iPhones and Macs look underpowered compared to competitors while performing the same if not better.

So, from their perspective, it’s “fair” to upcharge the “spec peepers” and professionals who really need it. The latter is generally less price-sensitive.

As you've stated people will make comparisons between the cheapest bottom rung slot-in ram against what's on offer from Apple's UMA. It's naive.

But even when one could just pop in your own RAM, many would still buy Apple's upgrade, which sounds insane on the surface. But there are actually pretty sound reasons for it:

1. They're buying the Mac hardware because it works. That's one of the core motivations for spending the extra to begin with.*

2. Adding ram is the gateway to unexpected crashes, such as errors that only pop up during heavy use, higher temperatures and the like. It doesn't have to be cheap either.

3. But if one is going for those cheaper components, one gets what they pay for: "mislabeled"(online fraud schemes), counterfeit, bottom-rung binned components sold as legit are par for the course.

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* A lot of brands say their products work, when they simply don't. Here's some of my own examples:

I'm now onto my 3rd brand of mesh wifi routers - why? Because what's out there is garbage, even when you pay a lot for it. It's clear that there is insufficient QA on many top brands, and they simply won't acknowledge that the product they've sold you doesn't perform.

I purchased one of the pricy 5k LG screens that were a total lemon, at this level of expense you don't expect school-boy errors in hardware. LG handled it poorly, both in their return and exchange options, as well as customer support and patches.

I 100% agree with your comment down to your anecdotes on mesh routers and TVs.

Specifically, when it comes to routers, it seems that manufacturers only ensure that the basic routing works adequately and that all the bells and whistles exist solely for marketing reasons.

This is so bad that their CS is trained to have you disable said marketed bells and whistles during troubleshooting, only to conclude that everything is fine as long as the basic routing functionality works and that anything that doest work beyond that is a “you” problem.