Reddit users complain Apple is ‘nickel and diming’ with new products

AP

• Apple users are complaining that the iPhone maker “nickel and dimes” them.
• A thread on Reddit has hundreds of comments from users complaining about prices for iCloud storage, dongles, and other examples where it feels like Apple has cut corners and pushed costs to consumers.
• The thread has garnered hundreds of complaints in a few hours.
• Apple is also raising prices for its new products across the board. 

Reddit’s “Apple” community is usually full of fans and owners trading gossip about new Apple products and handy tips and tricks.

But a thread posted early Thursday morning has the community in a tizzy, garnering hundreds of comments in a few hours.

“What example of Apple’s nickel and diming has annoyed you the most?” asked original poster irrealewunsche.

Apple products are expensive, and a long-running complaint is that even for the premium prices it charges, it could include more services or upgrades out of the box. 

People have complaints with iCloud:

“iCloud storage is my biggest gripe. They should’ve at least doubled the amount of the free tier since their newer phones capture much higher quality photos and they push us to upload to the cloud,” DucktectiveHutch wrote. 

iMau5 agreed: “I wish they had a storage plan in-between 200GB and 2TB … I’m fine paying $3 a month for 200gb but I’m close to filling that up between my wife and I, but $10 a month for the next plan up sounds a little much, that may sound silly but I try to limit myself on monthly subscription fees.”

People don’t like buying additional dongles and cords:

“The new, more expensive design of [MacBook Pros] since 2016 do NOT include a power cable for the power adapter. Just the USB-C cable between computer and AC Adapter. F—— ridiculous,” marriage_iguana observed.  

marriage_iguana is right: the new MacBook Pros do not come with the extension cord that enables the power brick to be connected to an outlet at a distance. Older laptops had it included. Now Apple sells it for $19. 

Apple

“Buying the USB-C power brick only to find there’s no way to connect the power brick to a laptop. Had to go back to buy the USB C cable,” groov2485 lamented. 

People also don’t like the 5-watt charger included with iPhones:

“Just kill the 5W charger already and start putting 12W chargers in the iPhone box. I have half a dozen 5W chargers that I never use because they charge modern iPhones so slowly,” a Redditor wrote. 

(Google’s Pixel comes with an 18W brick, which charges phones faster.)

And although the fact that Apple often charges $100 or more for storage upgrades hasn’t changed in a long time, people are still rubbed the wrong way about it:

“They deliberately make the lowest tier [storage] option something you can hardly work with to sell you an overpriced upgrade to what should really be the default option,” Yaaaayyy complained. “On my iPhone I can deal with 64GB if need be, but I upgraded my 13″ MBP to 512 GB for an insane overall price of 2250€. And that‘s with default RAM and processor.”

One common feeling among the Apple fans in the thread is that this sort of practice has been increasing lately:

“There seems to be lots of examples of this going on at the moment: removing the 3.5mm/lightning adapter from the iPhones, dropping the replacement nib for the new Pencil, the crappy USB C cable provided with the new iPad Pros, that only supports USB 2 capabilities,” the original poster wrote.

Price hikes across the board

Apple’s new MacBook has an upgraded screen — and a higher starting price tag.Kif LeswingThese complaints about “nickel and diming” come as Apple has raised prices for its products across the board and announced to investors that it prefers that they focus on revenue instead of unit sales as the top sign of growth.

Macworld broke the price hikes down recently: 

• Last year’s entry-level new iPhone, the iPhone 8, started at $699. The entry-level iPhone XR costs $749.
• Apple’s least expensive iPad Pro got a $150 price hike during this most recent refresh, from $649 to $799.
• The Mac Mini used to start at $499. Now the least expensive model is $799.
• There’s a new MacBook Air model that went on sale yesterday. It’s got a new display, design, and price: $1199, $200 more than before.

Apple asking users to spend more money on cords and storage space may be annoying, but it’s even more annoying when the computers are getting more expensive. 

Apple is still the most valuable publicly traded company, although it used to have a market value over $1 trillion, but its stock price has dropped after earnings last week.